StephenKMackSD's Blog

Mike Lofgren at Truthout

http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779

John B. Judis  at The New Republic

http://www.tnr.com/article/john-judis/92958/obama-lincoln-debt-ceiling

John Gray at The Financial Times

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/059dda68-d30f-11e0-9aae-00144feab49a.html#axzz1X5bwcAGN

Some chapters from a book on America's decline titled:The Rise of the Republican Political Nihilists and the Decline of the American Republic, Politics/Economics/Ethics

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/opinion/brooks-the-rugged-altruists.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

How could I have missed this gem from David Brooks published on August 22 ,2011 titled The Rugged Altruists. One is not surprised that Mr. Brooks comes swiftly to the conclusion that altruism must draw its  inspiration and operational strategies from Capitalism, or else said altruism creates institutional myopia, not to speak of many failed endeavors, and furthers the ‘dependence’ of its recipients: charity and welfare are the great plunderers of personal initiative and the precursors of moral decline. All of this is deeply etched with the self-congratulatory tone of the latter day Puritanism that is the Conservative world view: The dammed and the saved. Mr. Brooks illustrates his essay with moving but self-serving stories that highlight the moral insights he offers. Mr. rooks is a thinker who finds the world conforms to his way of thinking, of cogitating about the dilemmas of the haves and the have nots.  And the many tragedies we can never know about, or even that our daily lives shut out all but the most important immediate facts of our daily struggles, and that the experience of altruism and its felt moral necessity, can or might be our way out of the trap of the immediate.One could uncharitably view this essay as an introduction to a thinker most revered by American Libertarians and other Republican fellow travelers, the sociopath, Ayn Rand, and her exaltation of greed, through her authorship of pulp propaganda novels.

Almost Marx      

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/28/9-11-s-10th-anniversary-the-death-of-neoconservatism.html

After reading Mr. Beinart’s essay I found myself contemplating a question: who did he write this for? Is Neo-Conservatism dead, or can even an unsophisticated reader like myself draw certain conclusions, from other sources, that might just put his conjectures in doubt? That doubt appeared because I had recently read David Bromwich’s lengthy, beautifully written piece at Al Jazeera titled Symptoms of the Bush-Obama Presidency of August 25,2011. Here is the link:

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201182185829490112.html

In comparison to The Bromwich essay Mr. Beinart’s effort seemed thin to say the least and almost had the telltale aroma of political apologetics or even worse the sound of counter propaganda. The possibility of, not the death of Neo-Conservatism, but its triumph, in policies of the Obama Administration is what Mr. Bromwich had argued- when I ran across this at The Atlantic by Conor Friedersdorf: Obama DOJ : John Yoo Memos on Spying Must Stay Secret.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/08/obama-doj-john-yoo-memos-on-spying-must-stay-secret/244312/

In the light of all this, one might just dismiss Mr. Beinart’s essay as a premature obituary of Neo-Conservatism, but also as an endorsement of the policy continuity of the Obama Administration with the inherited Bush policies: and an embrace of the inherent paternalism and authoritarianism of that destructive, murderous ideology.

Eternal Skeptic

Here is Professor Rodgers stunning historical precis of the Mythology of the Market as idea, political,economic and legal practice, in our national life. The pernicious idea of the Market as metaphysical quantity,historical/political actor and household god is here treated to a breathtakingly rigorus thirty five page history. He manages to make this historical recreation completely, absorbingly readable, and to top it off,not withstanding it utter complexity, comprehensible.Bravo!

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5542.html

I’m reading this in the morning and at bed time. I can’t read just one book. The confessions of a bibliophile, or just the result of my relentless intellectual ambition?

‘Like Adam Smith’s pin factory, these were metaphors all. The timeless, placeless,self-equilibrating register of individual preferences that was now more and more often being called “the market” was an abstraction , as complex and intricately manipulatable a figure of speech as any of the neologisms in the Keynesian vocabulary. But metaphores are not idle. They “think for us”Donald McCloskey writes.’ 

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=30906

My current reading is Age of Fracture by Daniel T. Rodgers. I’m facing the challenge of self-doubt as a reader. I’m swimming against a rough tide of my own ignorance, although Professor Rodgers writing is fluent and it’s meaning is easily comprehended, the historical periods covered are familiar to me, as I lived through most of them. Perhaps my own memory and the intellectually fine grained analysis of Professor Rodgers are in a low grade colflict? His grasp of a variety of topics is nothing short of encyclopedic and it is absorbing reading. I read about Age of Fracture in the TLS of July 29,2011 in a review by Michael O’Brien which prompted my purchase of the book.

Stephen