{ Comments on this entry are closed }
David Schaengold
I’m very pleased to see that the fight against fast cycling, spandex, helmets, thin seats, and other automotive-like cyclalia has taken on a religious dimension.
Rufus writes, commenting on Ned Resnikoff’s generational self-indictment below:
What I find more interesting though is that both the left and right are expressing deep misgivings about that atomistic individualism. The right, of course, has been talking about this for decades in terms of the loss of tradition and the collapse of institutions of cultural authority, and the personal instability that collapse has caused. But, while the left doesn’t quite talk about the same things, I don’t know anyone on the left anymore who doesn’t talk about “the loss of community” in much the same way. So, there really might be a deep loneliness there that transcends politics.
This misses the real radicalism of the sustained critiques of “social atomism.” Rufus naturally psychologizes the problem, which changes from individualism to “loneliness.” The tendency to recast abstract nouns as affects has been well hashed out, most blogically by James Poulos, but like its master it returns sometimes as an angel of light, and must be resisted with equal vigilance. This turn vitiates the force of almost all radical critiques of contemporary Western society, because what is common to almost all of them, Marxist, traditionalist, Environmentalist, etc., is that they address themselves to objective conditions. So, a Marxist believes workers to be exploited even if the worker is delighted with his lot, thinks it fair, etc. A defender of our order would say that his being delighted with his lot, thinking it fair, etc., is just what matters. In the same way, a program to alleviate the loneliness of the citizenry (easy if sinister, as ThatPirateGuy writes: “If you talked to me before I met beth, I would have felt a lack of community and loneliness but I really don’t feel it anymore”) wouldn’t do anything to address the criticism that humans under liberal capitalism are “atomized.”
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I recently watched Goodbye Lenin, which is not very good movie, but I was surprised and pleased by its moderatedly positive portrayal of life in the DDR. Without playing down the unpleasant reality of political oppression, it depicts a Communist regime whose self-understanding, at least, was beautiful, and whose citizens’ occasional, halting attempts to live out the Communist virtues in the face of quotidian bureaucratic pettiness rendered even uglier the self-satisfied spiritual shallowness that came over from the West with reunification.
A thesis: During the 20th century the cultural self-understanding of the Communist states was ethical and the cultural self-understanding of the West was aesthetic. In the Warsaw states, at least, young men and women dreamed of a life of virtue and moral grandeur, of moral seriousness and unflinching selflessness, while in the West they dreamed of delights and adventures, of charming young flings and the contentment of children. The Kierkegaardian dichotomy explains, perhaps, why both worlds were so hostile, each in its own way, to true religion.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
To pull a page from his own writing, Damon Linker isn’t just wrong; his wrongness is a threat to American democracy.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I used to characterize the contemporary GOP as a party whose economic policy is “let’s eat the seed corn,” but perhaps that was unfair, and informed too much by my interest in infrastructure policy, as opposed to tax policy or regulation, where, at least in my ignorance, I can imagine Republicans faring better.
But Chris Christie is doing a good job of validating my characterization. Killing the ARC project is a crystal-clear example of destroying long-term prosperity for a trivial short-term fiscal advantage. The really sad thing is that the short-term fiscal advantage isn’t even terribly significant, especially since New Jersey will have to cut a $300 million check to the federal government immediately to pay the Federal Transit Administration back for the money it’s already spent on construction. The governor’s worry that the project could cost much more than expected is a reasonable one, and the moratorium to investigate projected costs and their associated risk for the New Jersey budget was prudent, but cancelling an absolutely essential project to safeguard against cost overruns is like euthanizing your beloved pet dog to make sure he doesn’t run away.
For a broad view of the economic realities that Christie either doesn’t understand or has chosen to ignore, read Aaron Renn’s analysis at Urbanophile.
Also, an update that may make the decision seem less totally crazy: Ray LaHood, the US Secretary of Transportation, is going to Trenton, along with with the head of the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). It’s possible that Christie announced the project’s cancellation merely to establish a negotiating position with the FTA. Depending on what he’s negotiating for, that could be a smart move. If he’s just trying to ensure that New Jersey isn’t on the hook for cost overruns I can’t blame him, but foisting the risk on the FTA or the Port Authority won’t improve the project by itself. If he can negotiate for a different route (the ARC route is far from optimal) or for better project management, then this political stunt, if that’s what it turns out to be, could end up benefiting the project, and in turn benefiting taxpayers and commuters.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Miss Mary 
Will Truman 
Mali Hawthorne 
Snorkle 
b 
areawoman