Being comfortable with complexity. It’s something that’s been on my mind for years. But I was reminded of it again after reading an otherwise-sneering Mother Jones profile of the New York Times’s “conservative” columnist, Ross Douthat. Now, Douthat isn’t “conservative” by any standard most folks would recognize around here (federal wage subsidies, anyone?). But what got Mother to ooohing and aaahing is that Douthat is apparently a thinker who is comfortable with nuance and complexity. The writer, Mark Oppenheimer, just could not wrap his head around the idea of a “conservative” who didn’t toe some O’Reillyesque party line. Of course,…
16 CommentsCategory: Poly-Ticks
Those blood-sucking vermin in state and national capitals and city halls everywhere
Ah, couldn’t you just see it coming? How to undermine a movement: turn its values on their heads. Palin and the tea-party “movement”: nothing new. First, the R-party is taken over by neo-conservatives (who are, of course, neither new nor conservative). Then the L-party falls into the hands of neo-cons. Now, only a year after its beginnings as a vigorous, Paulista, grass-roots movement for smaller government and fiscal common sense, the tea-party movement, too, has been co-opted by the same gang of warfare-welfare, centralized-power, to-hell-with-the-rule-of-law con artists. The specific power factions may come and go (or change their name and…
10 CommentsWell, pretty much the same thing I always do when I’m not in work-avoidance mode: writing about my old favorite topic, personal freedom. The name of the blog says it all. The writings here will be about “living freedom” in our own lives (rather than waiting or fighting for it to be politically bestowed). The blog’s name also says that freedom is a living thing. Okay, not a “living and breathing” thing like a dog or cat or you or me. But freedom will live as long as human beings breathe. As Viktor Frankl made so eloquently clear, freedom can…
8 Comments