Representative Thinking, Paternalism, and Invisibility

Expanding Ganji’s Reading of Arendt

In a recent article published on Public Seminar, Rezvaneh Ganji criticized Republican Party presidential candidates from an Arendtian perspective, attacking "the GOP candidates’ minimal or non-existent capacity for what Arendt called 'representative thinking', which includes the ability to inhabit other standpoints." Immediately after, she qualifies her criticism by making reference ...
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Representative Thinking, Paternalism, and Invisibility

Krugman vs. Sanders

Scarcely a day goes by without Paul Krugman hammering away at Bernie Sanders. And the message is always clear. Change is difficult. It requires compromise. You can’t try to do too much. People like Sanders are ridiculous. They think all a President needs to do is snap her fingers and ...
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In Defense of Gravitas

  “I raise no objection to television's junk. The best things on television are its junk, and no one and nothing is seriously threatened by it. Besides, we do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant. Therein is our problem, for television ...
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Prisoners of the Prisoner’s Dilemma

Here is the problem. In my humble opinion, Bernie Sanders is clearly the best candidate running for the office of President of the United States of America. His policies are sound, his integrity unimpeachable, his intelligence undeniable. He is also attracting tremendous crowds, and raising significant funds while bypassing (as ...
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Shades of Gray

First of all, my apologies for the title: I thought it irresistibly appropriate, but unfortunately and unintentionally reminiscent of that awful series of potboiler novels. . . My aim is to try to broaden this attempt at dialogue initiated by Professors Goldfarb and Zaretsky in their point/counterpoint into a multifaceted conversation ...
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You Say You Don’t Want a Revolution

Conservatism, radicalism, and democracy in 2015

The New York Times’ David Brooks has long been the conservative that liberals hate to love (or at least like). It is easy to see why. Brooks accepts the possibility of reasonable disagreement with the likes of liberals such as Mark Shields or E.J. Dionne, ...

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