blatham wrote:Quote:BTW, Blatham - you appear to follow both Limbaugh and O'Reilly far more closely than I. Why?
george
These two people account for perhaps two percent of the conservative movement voices that I attend to. And I attend so as to understand what is going on in contemporary American politics. The mythologies and the cliches and the boilerplate assumptions obscure and distort. A broad survey is the only way to get perspective on the actual reality of things, so well as we might approach that.
More deeply, I treasure the 'american experiment' far more profoundly than most here understand and I believe I have good reason to suppose that this experiment in liberty, always tenuous, humans being as they are, may very well come acropper as a consequence of this modern conservative movement.
I fear you won't ever get around to Krugman's latest book. I wish that you'd take the tip from your friends thomas, dyslexia and myself, America-lovers all. At the very least, and after backing some old ideas into a corner and instructing them to shut the phuck up, do read this piece by tomasky from the NYRB...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20813
Well I did read the Tomasky piece you linked. Interesting. He starts out describing what he calls the excessively combatative and partisan character of the Conservative movement, implicitly contrasting that with the supposed non sectarian, serene objectivity of "progressives". He then goes on to say what a neat guy and accomplished economist Krugman is and to - at great length - rationalize his transformation into a rabid, sectarian, combatative left-wing progressive, bent on demolishing the evil forces of the Republican Right.
I was particularly amused with the irony and self-righteous hypocrisy that pervaded the article, though I doubt that the author - in his self righteous pomposity - was at all aware of it.
Frankly I don't spend much time reading contemporary political commentary - of either side in these struggles. The histories of these movements are clear enough, as are the various issues on which they are contending today. I don't believe that wading through the opinions of self-appointed spokesmen of either side will improve either my understanding of the issues or of the motives of the contending parties.
I have enough boyhood memories of the ethnic, organized labor, and progressive/socialist intellectual stew that made up Democrat politics and electioneering, as well as the activities of the counter 'anti New Deal' forces that opposed them, to realize that very little of lasting import has changed - only the formats are different. It also reminds me that the "American Experiment" has always involved hard political combat between opposing forces, and that contemporary sages - on both sides - have always predicted doom and the unraveling of the social contract at the hands of their dark, dark foes.
Instead my reading focuses on things I must do - an utterly boring tract on the valuation of companies by various accounting methods; details of the rapidly advancing process of licensing of seven new nuclear powerplants in the U.S.; and on other stuff that I really like - just finished two interesting volumes of History you may well find interesting - "The Middle Sea" by John Norwich (a history of the Mediterranean); and "Rites of Peace" by Adam Zamoyski (Napoleon's fall and the Congress of Vienna). Not only were they enjoyable for the historical color and the many slants on the human character they provide - they also refresh my appreciation for just how nasty are those vile Europeans whom I am reputed to so loathe. (Though I do admire Metternich). Also there was "Faust in Copenhagen", a wonderful character study of the early 20th century physicists who created quantum theory (Bohr, Dirac, Heisenburg, Pauli, Gamov, and the rest), written by an American physicist, Gino Segre. Fascinating.
"expressing two opposing opinions on one thing".
