Tag: Political Philosophy

The Best Articles I Read in 2020

 

Here at the end of 2020, I’m trying to close up a number of tabs I have open on my browser. Many of them are articles, and of that number I’m certain several were suggested or linked to by fellow Ricochet members, mentioned in podcasts, or discovered through searches prompted by Ricochet discussions. I was originally going to say “The 10 Best Articles…”, but the list is more than ten articles and I’m sure I’m forgetting some additional ones that I read months ago…it’s been a long year.

For this post I loosely define “the best” articles as those that challenged my thinking on an issue, were educational, were unexpected or deservedly scandalous, courageously broke with prevailing current narratives, or discussed an important topic otherwise ignored or forgotten. I’m not going to say which characteristic applies to which article as I’m trying to keep this post relatively brief, and each article could form the foundation of a post and become fertile ground for discussion. Some of the articles were written in years prior to 2020, but I just got around to reading them this year and they were either prophetic or remain pertinent to current events. Grouped with some of the articles I have read, I’m also listing what I’m going to read next in regard to that topic. These will have “to be read” in parentheses next to them.

The Future Is Coming for You

 

It may be irrational to fret about the solemn frippery contained in a BBC editorial. Still, I can’t help but shiver in absolute terror when I read pieces like this. Roman Krznaric, the author, believes that our political order is fatally flawed. Why? I’ll let him explain:

The time has come to face an inconvenient reality: that modern democracy – especially in wealthy countries – has enabled us to colonise the future. We treat the future like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation, technological risk, nuclear waste and public debt, and that we feel at liberty to plunder as we please.

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This essay written by Roberto De Mattei, and published by Rorate Caeli offers a European insight into the rebellion occurring in France at this moment. We certainly have our own problems with division in this country. The House and Senate have abandoned their responsibilities in the matter of immigration. Preview Open

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Dennis Prager has a great article in The Daily Signal on how the progressive rejection of societal norms is driving their childish antics. Leftists are the only source of their values. Leftists not only believe they know what is right—conservatives, too, believe they are right—but they also believe they are morally superior to all others. […]

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Like J J McCullough at NRO, I have concerns about the inclinations of many Americans toward concentrated power. But that should not be confused with royalty or aristocracy generally.  It is unremarkable that most Americans are not bothered by British royalty considering that the British government is as democratic as ours and that we have […]

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Nobody can plan the actions of even a thousand living persons, separately. Anyone attempting to control millions must divide them into classes, and make a plan applying to these classes. But these classes do not exist. No two persons are alike. No two are in the same circumstances; no two have the same abilities; beyond […]

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ACF Middlebrow #6: Paul Rahe

 

The ACF Middlebrow podcast continues with Hillsdale Professor Paul Rahe! We discuss the film he most assigns in class, Coppola and Puzo’s The Godfather, and the perfect introduction for young American college students to the study of different regimes, ancient and modern. We answer the question: How did the Martin Scorsese movie Silence inspire the professor to think about Western politics and the dichotomy between Caesar and Christ? Listen, comment, and share, folks! Please review & rate us on iTunes!

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I had a wonderful conversation last night with Cart T. Bogus about a 4-year-old piece – “Burke Not Buckley” – that he wrote for The American Conservative.  Bogus considers himself a liberal, but gave me some wonderful things to think about when it came to Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, and the history of […]

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Richard Epstein traces the origins and evolution of his libertarian thinking over a half-century in the spotlight.

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Next on my Thinking It Through Podcast:  I speak with Dr. Mark J. Boone (aka @saintaugustine) about politics, philosophy, the bridge between them, and Trump…..of course. My Website:  https://jeromedanner.net/2017/06/24/episode-43-dr-mark-j-boone-interview-on-politics-philosophy-and-trump-of-course/ Preview Open

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The American dream rests on the notion on “rugged individualism”: freedom, liberty, and equality of opportunity and a tradition of conquering physical, economic, social, and political frontiers. David Davenport, coauthor of Rugged Individualism: Dead or Alive?, looks at President Trump’s political philosophy, his record to date and suggests ways the new administration can restore this flickering American tradition.

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Though it is commonly believed today that civilizational changes are moved primarily by introduction of ideological insights, I believe history is moved mainly by introduction of technologies. Thus, where others cite “the” Scientific Method and “Enlightenment” philosophies as ideas which birthed the modern age, I have argued that communications, transportation, and production technologies were more […]

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A Strange New Respect for the Right? Part One

 

shutterstock_118040215Elections have consequences — above all, presidential elections, especially presidential elections that produce majorities in the House and the Senate for the party of the President-elect. Donald Trump’s election should have produced a bit of rethinking on the part of the Democrats in Congress. So far, however, there is little evidence for that. Instead, the Democrats appear to be circling the wagons and devoting their attention to what the feminists forty years ago called “consciousness-raising.” In the House, they re-elected as their leader the superannuated woman who drove them into a ditch, and there is a move afoot within the party, supported by the minority leader in the Senate, to select as chairman of the Democratic National Committee the most radical member of the House — an admirer of the Muslim Brotherhood who for a time flirted with Louis Farrakhan and who once compared 9/11 with the Reichstag Fire. In the mainstream press, what one reads from liberal commentators these days is mostly rant; and, on the campuses, there has been a descent into childishness, and temper tantrums seem the norm. With his tweets, Donald Trump seems to be playing the hysterical Left like a piano. Where, one is sorely tempted to ask, is the adult wing of the Democratic Party?

Here and there one finds a hint that there might still be adults in that hoary institution and that they suspect that it might be a good idea to stop demonizing their opponents and to begin examining their thinking. This is not happening anywhere on the campuses of our major universities, as far as I can tell. There, as never before, the wagons are being circled, and consciousness-raising has been mainstreamed. It is easy to demonize those who dissent — Barack Obama legitimized the practice by showing how it is done — and there is next to no one on any of these campuses capable of fighting back. For a very long time, the leading institutions of higher learning have been reluctant to hire, much less tenure, known conservatives. At a conference held at Harvard three years ago, one faculty member remarked to me that what he called “the entire Republican caucus of Harvard College” was in the room. They were three in number. At Yale, these days, there is, I believe, only one conservative on the faculty, and he is a computer scientist. When it comes to opening up minds and considering the arguments articulated by those who strongly disagree with current fashion, our universities will be last in line (if they get in line at all).

Where there is a hint, strangely enough, is in the press. Pravda-on-the-Potomac — which sports 50 columnists, not a single one of whom voted for Trump — is said to be looking for a pro-Trump columnist or two. Don Surber is not impressed:

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During a rather vigorous discussion on the audio meet up last night I had a half developed thought cross my mind. It was stated that what conservatism seeks to conserve is the libertarianism on which the nation was founded. These ideas are different from what conservatives in other nations would seek to prevent being supplanted […]

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What makes a government legitimate? What does legitimacy mean in regard to politics?  I have been wondering, again, about the conditions which require obedience to unjust laws. The question of legitimacy seems the most fundamental form of that ethical conundrum. Laws express authority. Before one accepts the laws of representatives or rulers, one must accept […]

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What is political philosophy? She is the last great child of nature. People come to see it in different ways according to their bent of thought. Some notice in the speech of Socrates, I know that I don’t know anything, the birth of science & man’s situation in the cosmos. Others notice, in some unpredictable […]

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Donald Trump, thus far, it seems will be the Republican Nominee for President in the 2016 race. One of his most touted characteristics was his knowledge of the economy and “capitalism” along with his prescriptions of how the American economic structure should be ordered and the like. The economy itself is generally a high ranked issue […]

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I hope everyone has seen this movie, the most impressive movie Kurosawa ever made. I hope, too, that whoever has not will find a reason to see it in this discussion. Please do not hesitate to ask questions or make comments, even to report hearsay or others’ opinions. Welcome all comers, I hope you will […]

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So I turned to the members feed of Ricochet to feast my eyes. Yesterday was a good day for comedy, so why not push my luck? I see an article that starts with a startling claim. Progressivism is nailed to the cross of wealth inequality. This is the problem with Progressives! They don’t get that […]

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Is The Communist Manifesto Misunderstood?

 

In college, I was surprised when an honest and charitable philosophy professor I very much admired claimed that Karl Marx is misunderstood. Marx would not have supported communism as we have known it, he told me. What was seen at the hands of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, or even Gorbachev was not communism as Marx envisioned it.

Next week, Ubisoft will release the next grand episode in its popular series of historical playgrounds, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Because the overarching theme of the Assassin’s Creed series (about as philosophically consistent as Star Wars) is a conflict between the freedom-loving Assassins and conspiring Templar oppressors, the game’s setting in Victorian London will emphasize struggles for power among the classes of industrial British society.