http://www.democraticunderground.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:01:46 Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:01:46 The New Deal-style liberalism that Buckley started railing against in the late 40's was closely tied to modernism and early 20th century ideas of progress. It was based on the belief that human beings were blank slates and you could engineer society into any shape you chose. It was generally well-... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/75 Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:13:42 When I was in high school in the early 60's, we were taught about Karl Marx's labor theory of value -- and were also taught that it was considered basic economic doctrine, apart from whatever opinion you might have of Marx's advocacy of communism.

The labor theory of value, as I recall it, states... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/74 Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:16:46 As a result of looking into Bush family history and related matters, I've come to several conclusions:

1) Support for fascism -- or at least for a kind of Americanized fascism-lite -- was extremely widespread among American business leaders in the 1930's. Some actively endorsed Nazi racial ideol... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/73 Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:43:33 This pattern of right-wingers in the US supporting and cooperating with ultra-right-wingers in Latin America is painfully reminiscent of the situation during the Carter administration, when fascist regimes were being supported by groups like WACL and CIS, by right-wing politicians like Jesse Helms, ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/72 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:14:38 This nation was created on the basis of a beguiling myth which grew out of social contract theory. The social contract argument was that people voluntarily surrendered some of their autonomy to a strong central government because the advantages it provided in the way of security and coordination of... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/71 Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:41:31 There are some good points in this piece -- but it seems to have the fatal defect of confusing free markets with capitalism.

Markets can be an excellent mechanism for allocating supply and demand -- but it is all too easy to rig the game. Corporations can artificially limit supply to increases p... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/70 Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:29:10 If I'm understanding this correctly, the standard argument for the free market is that natural market efficiencies will solve all our problems. If oil becomes scarce, its price will go up and both investors and consumers will turn to alternative technologies.

The problem here, though, is that co... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/69 Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:17:41 For example, suggesting that there are too many people on the planet because there aren't enough jobs for all of them seems to mean that "jobs" are the real inhabitants of Earth and "people" exist to serve them.

But it really starts with people. It always has.

The first question has to do wit... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/68 Sat, 30 May 2009 17:40:05 He says, "The real question is for the public, not journalists: Does it want to pony up for news, whatever the media that prevail? It’s all a matter of priorities. Not long ago, we laughed at the idea of pay TV. Free television was considered an inalienable American right (as long as it was paid for... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/67 Sun, 10 May 2009 15:22:24 I don't know if I'm just weird -- but there has been more than one period over the years when I've spent a considerable amount of time asking myself how I would react if this country ever went full-on totalitarian and the price for simply speaking out included the possibility of arrest, torture, eve... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/66 Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:24:09 The PC controversy may have started with attempts to remove ethnic slurs from public use and then proceeded to jokes about replacing "short" with "vertically challenged," but at least on college campuses it rapidly escalated to the thought police level.

When my older son was in college 10 years a... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/65 Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:50:32 The GOP conservatives in the 1950's weren't exactly a "rump group" or "burrowing from within." There had always been a strong faction within the Republican Party that was deeply resentful of the East Coast/Wall Street establishment. In the late 40's and 1950's, it was identified with Robert Taft a... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/64 Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:35:23 I was thinking about some of last night's threads, and it struck me that political definitions in this country come down to one very simple distinction:

- Leftists believe that the primary duty of government is to help the least among us -- to empower the poor, give voice to the disenfranchised, ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/63 Sat, 21 Feb 2009 11:46:52 For most of human history, everybody was basically equal. Some might acquire more strength or knowledge or personal charisma, but there was nobody who was defined from birth as innately superior or inferior.

All that changed with the rise of civilization between about 4500 and 3000 BC. For reas... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/62 Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:27:25 Risk-takers are valuable to a society. They're the people who are willing to gamble on starting new businesses, pulling up stakes and moving out to the frontier, doing things a little differently without any assurance it will work.

But not all of us are risk-takers. Most people would be happy t... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/61 Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:44:26 Hunter-gatherers who can't accumulate much stuff don't have wars. They have violence and murders -- and occasionally might get into group fights with neighboring bands -- but they don't have war in anything like the way we understand it.

War only appears in the historical record when people star... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/60 Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:42:51 When the National Security Act was passed in 1947, the country was falling into the first postwar recession. Worse than that -- nobody was sure that the Great Depression wasn't returning, as military production ended and returning veterans swelled the workforce.

At the same time, the Republicans... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/59 Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:55:08 A couple of years ago, my family was tapped to do a week's survey of everything we'd listened to on the radio. But when we sent the survey booklets back at the end of the week, not a one of us had listened to even a minute of radio broadcasts -- not even in passing in a store or waiting room. Not ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/58 Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:44:54 One of the essential aspects of 20th century fascism was the attempt to negate class warfare by convincing the working class that its interests were inseparable from those of the ruling class.

Racism is one part of that. It depicts all "real" Germans or Americans or whatever as being of common s... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/57 Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:40:47 Newspapers have been run into the ground because they were bought up by syndicates that wanted ridiculous profits rather than the steady but modest profit a local paper typically makes. Ditto for the book publishers -- or even worse, in some ways, because their corporate owners have pushed them to ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/56 Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:21:19 The Constitution simply isn't as great as the author thinks it is. For one thing, it depends on everybody being willing to play by the rules and show a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. When the Republicans decide they're going to game the system and spit in the face of 90% of the countr... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/55 Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:02:12 At this point, I don't know if Obama is thinking three chess moves ahead of the rest of us, or if he overreached in his community-organizer instinct to try to bring together warring groups. I certainly don't believe he intends to throw anyone under the bus.

But leaving Obama out of it for the mo... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/54 Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:02:34 Hunter-gatherers are dependent on the whims of nature -- farmers start to bend nature to their will. Early farmers are dependent on the rains that come to them -- more advanced farmers build irrigation works and aqueducts. Government itself represents a regularization of the distribution of goods ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/53 Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:54:19 The GOP is at its core the party of corporations and of the wealthy, and its problem has always been how to convince large numbers of people to vote for it. This has become more and more of an issue for them as income inequality has increased.

The Southern strategy is essentially the same answer... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/52 Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:21:44 You can see round one of the shift -- don't laugh! -- in 1930's cartoons.

Disney cartoons from the early 30's are all rural and small town -- with farm animals, rustic scenes, maybe at most a small town garage -- and project a sentimental small town sensibility.

Betty Boop cartoons from the sa... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/starroute/51 Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:01:20