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Politics

The Long View 2008-01-24: Ice Age; Democratic Fissure; Nominating Petraeus

There is an article quoted here by John J. Reilly the most effective way to to prevent the Republicans from nominating an attractive candidate for President like David Petraeus in 2012 was for the expected Democrat President to give him a job offer he couldn’t refuse. This is what

The Long View 2008-01-22: Don't Panic; Panic in 2016; Victory with Demobilization; Mahdi Watch

The James Fallows Atlantic piece “Countdown to a Meltdown” from 2005 is an absolutely fascinating bit of political prediction, let’s look at it in more detail, as it combines some of John’s obsessions with some of my own. Fallows wrote the article as advice to the incoming President

The Long View 2008-01-17: METI; Boltzmann; Benedict's Editors; Union of the West; NATO Slacks; A Defense of the Rotten Borough

Lots of items of interest in this blog post from John J. Reilly, but addressed very briefly. * The interaction between SETI and the transhumanism latent [well, latent in 2008] in libertarianism * Old man shakes fist at cloud, I mean John complains about the depth of a liberal education that cannot

The Long View: An Army of Davids

Self-assembling nanobots are vaporware, a concept without even a glimmer of actual technology behind it, so its is appropriate that they are used to advocate for libertarianism, a political philosophy without a constituency. Nonetheless, I could not help but reflect by the time I finished the book that, in some

The Long View: Heroic Conservatism

This long book review from 2007 is almost enough to make me remember why I liked President George W. Bush at the time. Michael Gerson, chief speechwriter for the 43rd President, had some genuinely good ideas. Unfortunately, giving the nod to subsidiarity in local relief initiatives cannot make up for

The Long View 2007-08-20: God's Politics

This is an amazing line: When you see an argument developing a vector as surprising as the vector this argument manifests, you know that it is under the gravitational influence of some ideological dark body. Also: Yes, the US has a "strong constitutional structure." In part, that is

The Long View: Bounding Power: Republican Theory from the Polis to the Global Village By Daniel H. Deudney

It is fascinating to return to this book review, written in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. At the time, it seemed more plausible that non-state entities might permanently destabilize the security environment, but in 2020 this has just become the new normal. And while I do find some value