Here’s Teddy Roosevelt talking to some undergrads at the University of Paris in 1910: It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic, in any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the classes represented in this audience to-day; but only provided that those classes possess the gifts of sympathy … Read more
For what is probably my second favorite takedown of The Huffington Post, after last year’s TNR cover story by Isaac Chotiner. (The Atlantic’s Ray Gustini calls Mayer’s tirade “less than cogent,” but surely his facility with extended metaphor makes up for that.) But now let me say a word in HuffPo’s defense. Unlike Mayer, I believe that a … Read more
One non-bigoted case against the erroneously-named “Ground Zero mosque” seems to go something like this: “Religious freedom is legitimate and important, and the promoters of the planned community center have a constitutional right to build the complex in Lower Manhattan. But still, the community center should be built somewhere else, out of sensitivity to earnestly … Read more
I’m starting to think that Ross Douthat may have a split personality disorder. As I wrote a few weeks ago, Douthat has “a wonderful way of casually saying things that you don’t hear many conservatives say.” Today’s column is no different: he begins by explaining that the usual conservative arguments against gay marriage have “lost … Read more
The manufactured controversy over what has ludicrously come to be called the “Ground Zero Mosque” has a lot of depressing aspects. But easily the most surprising and, for me, upsetting development is that the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish human rights organization, has sided with Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and the other opportunistic GOP pols who … Read more
From the Economist via Bloomberg, the most worrisome news I read today. The gist of the story: China’s banking regulator told lenders last month to conduct a new round of stress tests to gauge the impact of residential property prices falling as much as 60 percent in the hardest-hit markets, a person with knowledge of … Read more
The Harvard Political Review has joined with other college political publications to form the Alliance of Collegiate Editors (ACE), hoping to generate cross-campus dialogue on political issues. The first topic we will discuss is class-based affirmative action. Class-based affirmative action is an issue on which unorthodox liberals and unorthodox conservatives seem to have found common … Read more
The Breitbart/Sherrod saga feels like so much political drama. It is a kind of spectacle custom-made for Politico reporters and political junkies — mildly entertaining, for a little while, but signifying virtually nothing in the end. Witness, for instance, some of the ridiculous accusations that have been thrown around in the past two weeks. In the last fortnight: … Read more
Sometimes you read a Tyler Cowen post and you think to yourself, simply: Did he really just say that? Here’s Cowen on payday loans and unprotected sex: The unprotected sex is riskier and less prudent than borrowing money at an annualized rate of two hundred percent. Why prohibit one and not the other? Many of … Read more
Recent Harvard Law graduate Joel Pollak, running for Congress against Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), has invoked Steve Biko, the martyred South African anti-apartheid activist, in defense of Andrew Breitbart, the amoral media commentator who recently went after an innocent civil servant in order to advance his race-baiting political agenda. According to Pollak, Breitbart embodies Biko’s “simple … Read more