"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
7.11.03
QUOTE FOR THE DAY: You-know-who:
"We believe that liberty is the design of nature. We believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom, the freedom we prize, is not for us alone. It is the right and the capacity of all mankind."
"We believe that liberty is the design of nature. We believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom, the freedom we prize, is not for us alone. It is the right and the capacity of all mankind."
SWEET MOTHER MCCREE: I would be disinclined to post about this except that it both confirms a stereotype about Ann Arbor and was a big topic of conversation at work this morning:
"In other cities, City Council Member Wendy Woods' question, "What is considered human companionship for a fish?" may have seemed a bit strange.
But in Ann Arbor on Thursday night, it was part of an ongoing debate about proposed animal handling laws that were postponed until the Dec. 15 meeting.
As the council voted to postpone a vote 9-2, Democrat Council Member Heidi Herrell broke down and cried..."
"In other cities, City Council Member Wendy Woods' question, "What is considered human companionship for a fish?" may have seemed a bit strange.
But in Ann Arbor on Thursday night, it was part of an ongoing debate about proposed animal handling laws that were postponed until the Dec. 15 meeting.
As the council voted to postpone a vote 9-2, Democrat Council Member Heidi Herrell broke down and cried..."
WHO AM I?: No doubt there's no-one reading me anymore, aside from my five regulars, now that I've been tarred forever by a merciless Crescatter (note: it's generally best assumed that if I could be speaking in hyperbole, I probably am). But if anyone's curious, I'm a senior at a certain midwestern public university which has a reputation for being decent in my chosen fields: political science (#2 overall) and philosophy (I haven't checked the Philosophical Gourmet recently, but we tend to be top 5).
Politically, I tend toward the "vital center" or "mushy middle," depending on which friends of mine you believe. I've been variously described as a Stalinist, Marxist, fascist, revolutionary, Republican and fundamentalist, and all of them were (more or less) accurate accusations, except for the fascist one, which translated more or less to "my politics and yours are different, therefore you must be the embodiment of all evil on the planet earth."
I tend not to write about the things that interest me in a more scholarly way (I've gone toe-to-toe with friends over Montesquieu's connection between political and human bondage, the political consequences of the Exodus story and how realist theories of democracy might be made to be a little less value-neutral), but sort of general things I find to be interesting, more-or-less in politics and culture.
And if you feel like complaining about my godawful choice of blog template (I picked it specifically because of its unhipness), the horrible, horrible name I picked for my blog (I've been too lazy to change it to something else), or any other topic you like (such as my tendency to use intensifiers and qualifiers quite liberally), email me at ntroeste@umich.edu
Politically, I tend toward the "vital center" or "mushy middle," depending on which friends of mine you believe. I've been variously described as a Stalinist, Marxist, fascist, revolutionary, Republican and fundamentalist, and all of them were (more or less) accurate accusations, except for the fascist one, which translated more or less to "my politics and yours are different, therefore you must be the embodiment of all evil on the planet earth."
I tend not to write about the things that interest me in a more scholarly way (I've gone toe-to-toe with friends over Montesquieu's connection between political and human bondage, the political consequences of the Exodus story and how realist theories of democracy might be made to be a little less value-neutral), but sort of general things I find to be interesting, more-or-less in politics and culture.
And if you feel like complaining about my godawful choice of blog template (I picked it specifically because of its unhipness), the horrible, horrible name I picked for my blog (I've been too lazy to change it to something else), or any other topic you like (such as my tendency to use intensifiers and qualifiers quite liberally), email me at ntroeste@umich.edu
WELL: Apparently I've picked up at least one new reader. I stand corrected. Horribly, horribly corrected.
6.11.03
WHY BRITISH BANDS ARE BETTER THAN AMERICAN ONES: American bands write stupid one-off songs of no consequence whatsoever; British bands, e.g., steal from William Blake
LINK: For those of you unfamiliar with the Feiler Faster Thesis, which is pretty much the standard operating assumption in electoral politics nowadays, here's the original formulation of it.
LINK: Let's hear it for hot French non-socialists!
(Note: I haven't seen a picture of her yet, but the buzz is that she's quite easy on the eyes--just reserving my right to change my mind when I see the picture of her with the third eye and snakes growing out of her head)
(Note: I haven't seen a picture of her yet, but the buzz is that she's quite easy on the eyes--just reserving my right to change my mind when I see the picture of her with the third eye and snakes growing out of her head)
QUOTE: I'm very pissed that OxBlog thinks they're too good to have permalinks. I do, however, like this line of thinking:
"So, when Election Day 2004 rolls around, who will I vote for? Answer: I don't know. But what if things stay as they are now, with the Democratic candidates half-heartedly promising to rebuild Iraq while the Bush Administration says all the right things but only does half of them? And what if 20-30 soldiers a month are still falling prey to hostile fire while there is no clear progress toward the drawing up of an effective constitution?
Even then, I would find myself closer to the President's side. He has invested so much of his credibility in this issue that I think it will be all but impossible for him to declare victory and retreat, perhaps in concert with the United Nations. And part of me really believes that he is personally committed to seeing Iraq become democratic.
In my heart, I'm still hoping that the Democrats can put up a credible national security candidate. But Lieberman is a long shot. Gephardt seems solid on this front, but is a long shot as well. If Clark gets things together, perhaps it could be him. But in the end, I see myself forced into a situation where I may have to sacrifice my preferences on the domestic policy in order to ensure a responsible US approach to foreign affairs."
The rest is good, too.
"So, when Election Day 2004 rolls around, who will I vote for? Answer: I don't know. But what if things stay as they are now, with the Democratic candidates half-heartedly promising to rebuild Iraq while the Bush Administration says all the right things but only does half of them? And what if 20-30 soldiers a month are still falling prey to hostile fire while there is no clear progress toward the drawing up of an effective constitution?
Even then, I would find myself closer to the President's side. He has invested so much of his credibility in this issue that I think it will be all but impossible for him to declare victory and retreat, perhaps in concert with the United Nations. And part of me really believes that he is personally committed to seeing Iraq become democratic.
In my heart, I'm still hoping that the Democrats can put up a credible national security candidate. But Lieberman is a long shot. Gephardt seems solid on this front, but is a long shot as well. If Clark gets things together, perhaps it could be him. But in the end, I see myself forced into a situation where I may have to sacrifice my preferences on the domestic policy in order to ensure a responsible US approach to foreign affairs."
The rest is good, too.
5.11.03
PEOPLE LIKE ME, II: This bloke and this one both scored quite close to me on said politics test. I can sort of see our political resemblance, but, well, judge for yourself.
PEOPLE LIKE ME: apparently, my quadrant of the political world is a very lonely one, at least in the blogosphere. Consider:
"But now behold! Sometime in the last couple of days, Tim Lambert has plotted all of those who have reported their scores on the Political Compass quiz on a single graph. And what does the result show, in all its schematic glory? That I was right: as The Plainsman puts it in his analysis (scroll down a little bit), what we have are plenty of "vanilla liberals," lots of "right libertarians" and "vanilla conservatives," a few "centrists" and "leftists," a couple of serious "right-wingers," and only "a small dotting of populists/paleoconservatives/theocons," with next to nobody occupying the upper-left hand quadrant. Actually, The Plainsman thought he was the only one there, but has since corrected himself, which is right...because I'm out there too. In fact, I'm way out there; I'm the single most isolated blogger on that graph, with no one within two data points of me in any direction. So much for believing in both social justice and civic morality! (I wonder where communitarian godfather Amitai Etzioni would land on this graph?) While I certainly wouldn't call myself either a paleocon or a theocon, the fact that such conservatives are willing to acknowledge the necessity of--as I put it in a thread on conservatism on John Holbo's site a while back--"follow[ing] through on their cultural beliefs to a demand for stability and equity in the fabric of the economic order" leads me to have a certain amount of sympathy for them. In an earlier post (again, scroll down), The Plainsman describes himself as a "moderate communitarian conservative," a man with a "slight tilt toward economic interventionism and social cohesion." He is absolutely right to insist that such a position is anything but "authoritarian." Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much difference his and my arguments will make. The Plainsman and I might not actually agree with each other that much on particular political matters (class-based politics? religious establishment? environmentalism? the war in Iraq?), but one thing is certain: if quizzes like these, with all their faults, fairly accurately reflect or reveal the overwhelming liberal individualist ethos which shapes the modern world--and I'm afraid that they do--then communitarians like he and I are going to have a pretty lonely time of it, for perhaps a pretty long time."
"But now behold! Sometime in the last couple of days, Tim Lambert has plotted all of those who have reported their scores on the Political Compass quiz on a single graph. And what does the result show, in all its schematic glory? That I was right: as The Plainsman puts it in his analysis (scroll down a little bit), what we have are plenty of "vanilla liberals," lots of "right libertarians" and "vanilla conservatives," a few "centrists" and "leftists," a couple of serious "right-wingers," and only "a small dotting of populists/paleoconservatives/theocons," with next to nobody occupying the upper-left hand quadrant. Actually, The Plainsman thought he was the only one there, but has since corrected himself, which is right...because I'm out there too. In fact, I'm way out there; I'm the single most isolated blogger on that graph, with no one within two data points of me in any direction. So much for believing in both social justice and civic morality! (I wonder where communitarian godfather Amitai Etzioni would land on this graph?) While I certainly wouldn't call myself either a paleocon or a theocon, the fact that such conservatives are willing to acknowledge the necessity of--as I put it in a thread on conservatism on John Holbo's site a while back--"follow[ing] through on their cultural beliefs to a demand for stability and equity in the fabric of the economic order" leads me to have a certain amount of sympathy for them. In an earlier post (again, scroll down), The Plainsman describes himself as a "moderate communitarian conservative," a man with a "slight tilt toward economic interventionism and social cohesion." He is absolutely right to insist that such a position is anything but "authoritarian." Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much difference his and my arguments will make. The Plainsman and I might not actually agree with each other that much on particular political matters (class-based politics? religious establishment? environmentalism? the war in Iraq?), but one thing is certain: if quizzes like these, with all their faults, fairly accurately reflect or reveal the overwhelming liberal individualist ethos which shapes the modern world--and I'm afraid that they do--then communitarians like he and I are going to have a pretty lonely time of it, for perhaps a pretty long time."
FOR BECKY: Who's getting a lot of links these last few days... hmm... anyway, this is supposed to be good, and cheap as well (and approved of by a NYT panel, no less)
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