Curtis Bowman

Jobless Rate Reaches 17.5%

According to this article by Jeff Cox of CNBC, 17.5% of Americans are either unemployed or under-employed.

Charles Homans Reviews Peter Maass' "Crude World"

Charles Homans reviews Peter Maass' Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.

Max Blumenthal Talks About "Republican Gomorrah"

Check out this video interview with Max Blumenthal as he talks about his book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party.

E. J. Dionne Jr. on Campaigning in Favor of Public Services

E. J. Dionne Jr. explains how it's possible to win elections by campaigning in favor of public services that would be lost by cutting taxes.

Karen DeYoung on the Resignation of Matthew Hoh

Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post tells the story of Matthew Hoh, a former Marine who recently resigned from the Foreign Service in protest against our continued military presence in Afghanistan.

Be sure to read Mr. Hoh's letter of resignation (PDF, 880 KB). It explains his reasons for resigning in great detail.

Dominic Sandbrook Reviews Alan Allport's "Demobbed: Coming Home After World War II"

Dominic Sandbrook reviews Alan Allport's Demobbed: Coming Home After World War II.

This link will take you to a website devoted to Mr. Allport's book.

Christopher Cook Reviews Roger Bootle's "The Trouble With Markets"

Christopher Cook reviews Roger Bootle's The Trouble With Markets: Saving Capitalism From Itself.

Matt Miller on the "Trigger" for the Public Option

Matt Miller explains how a trigger for the health care public-option can be made to work.

Alexander Cockburn on the Obama Administration and Fox News

Alexander Cockburn explains how the Obama administration can fairly easily push back against Fox News.

Thomas Frank on Richard Hofstadter and the Paranoid Style in American Politics

Thomas Frank revisits Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." He deftly applies Hofstadter's essay to some of our present-day political turbulence.

Unfortunately, Hofstadter's original, archived article is only available to subscribers of Harper's Magazine. As far as I can tell, this is the closest that you can get to it without a subscription. But I noticed that what seems to be the full text of the article has been posted here.

Toward the end of Frank's article you'll see that he mentions that Hofstadter also referred to the right-wing paranoid as a pseudo-conservative. This put me in mind of Theodor Adorno's analysis of pseudo-conservatism in The Authoritarian Personality. And so I wonder whether or not Hofstadter was familiar with this book. I assume that he was.

You can find Adorno's main discussion of pseudo-conservatism in Part IV, chapter XVII, section B, subsection 4, which, at least in my edition of The Authoritarian Personality, begins on page 675. Here's a quotation from page 676 to get you started: "The pseudoconservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition."

Joe Conason on Executive Compensation in the Health Insurance Industry

Joe Conason looks at the bloated compensation of health insurance executives. It's no wonder that they oppose health insurance reform.

Jonathan Chait on the Worldview of Conservative Republicans

Jonathan Chait discusses a new survey from Democracy Corps that focusses on the genuinely hallucinatory worldview of the most right-wing Republicans.

An Excerpt from Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big to Fail"

Vanity Fair has published a lengthy excerpt from Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System -- and Themselves.

Robert Stewart Reviews John Keegan's "The American Civil War"

Robert Stewart reviews John Keegan's The American Civil War.

Thomas B. Edsall on Class Divisions Among Obama Supporters

Thomas B. Edsall looks at how the alliance between low-income and high-income voters is making it difficult for the Democrats to govern successfully.

Thomas Schaller on the Elderly and the Lack of a Real Health Care Debate

Thomas Schaller notes the irony of the fact that the elderly are complaining the most about government involvement in health care while simultaneously receiving the most government health care dollars.

Here's a significant excerpt from Mr. Schaller's column that addresses the widespread ignorance of how much the federal government spends on health care for the elderly:

So let's have a national debate about the government spending for health care, fine. But as we do, let's be clear about where - or rather, on whom - the government spends the bulk of its health care money: senior citizens.

Of course, elderly Americans have more expensive health care needs. And I can honestly say I've never met a single person who begrudges senior citizens the opportunity to live out their retirement years without enduring sickness or pain.

Nor, by the way, does President Barack Obama begrudge them. In fact, a significant chunk of his speech Wednesday night to a joint session of Congress was dedicated to allaying the concerns of seniors. No other group received attention.

"More than four decades ago, this nation stood up for the principle that after a lifetime of hard work, our seniors should not be left to struggle with a pile of medical bills in their later years," Mr. Obama said at a Saturday health care rally in Minnesota, as further assurance. "That is how Medicare was born. And it remains a sacred trust that must be passed down from one generation to the next. That is why not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan. Not one dollar."

And yet, on our televisions we see enraged senior citizens at health care town halls with signs warning about the rise of socialism in America. That is, the group most worried about government intervention into health care is the group that benefits from the greatest government investment in public health care the planet has ever witnessed. Are you kidding me?

Prior to the government's redistributive investments in Social Security and Medicare, poverty and illness made for a brutal end-of-life experience for millions of seniors. According the National Bureau of Economic Research, "a large increase in the incomes of the elderly stemming from pre-Social Security social programs and the phase-in of the Social Security system has coincided with suicide rates for that group dropping 56 percent since 1930."

Yet we have to listen to knuckleheads like Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, scaring seniors with bogus warnings about the government creating "death panels." But before Social Security and Medicare, the sad truth is that many seniors issued what we might call self-imposed death panel verdicts: They took their own lives.

I don't remember this many seniors complaining about socialism during the past four decades, a period during which the poverty rate among seniors was reduced to a third of what it was, Medicare and Medicaid expanded drastically, and Mr. Obama's Republican predecessor in the White House pushed through an expensive prescription drug benefit - in short, an era that witnessed a giant, "socialist" transfer of cash from younger Americans to their parents and grandparents, some of whom are now complaining about a too-big government.

As I've said before, in my darker moments I sometimes think that the elderly are the enemy.

Jonathan Sumption Reviews Max Hastings' "Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord, 1940-45"

Jonathan Sumption reviews Max Hastings' Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord, 1940-45.

Thomas Frank on Talking about Freedom

Thomas Frank looks at the Democrats' unwillingness to challenge the Republicans' claim to being the sole preservers of freedom in the U.S.

More: And while you're at it, read Frank's previous column on the oddity of a red scare without reds.

Gregg Easterbrook Celebrates the Life of Norman Borlaug

Gregg Easterbrook celebrates the life of Norman Borlaug, the agronomist who is sometimes called the father of the Green Revolution.

Paul Krugman on How the Economics Profession Got It Wrong

Paul Krugman looks at how most of the economics profession bungled the financial crisis.

At one point in the article you'll see Prof. Krugman quickly refer to a paper (PDF, 332 KB) by Raghuram Rajan that presciently warned about the systemic risk that was being created by the sort of financial innovation that contributed to the crisis. Prof. Rajan's paper is very long and somewhat technical at times, but overall it's fairly readable.

In the general discussion (PDF, 100 KB) held after the paper was given, you'll see that the august Larry Summers wasn't too impressed, saying that he found "the basic, slightly lead-eyed premise of this paper to be largely misguided."

Christopher Goodwin Talks to Frank Darabont about "The Shawshank Redemption"

Christopher Goodwin talks with director Frank Darabont about the unexpected success of The Shawshank Redemption.

Gary Wills Reviews Sam Tanenhaus' "The Death of Conservatism"

Gary Wills reviews Sam Tanenhaus' The Death of Conservatism.

Thomas Frank on Democrats and the Health Care Debate

Thomas Frank explains why Democrats have been losing the health care debate.

"Crazy is a Preexisting Condition"

Rick Perlstein, author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, looks at the recent history of raging right-wing irrationality.

Advertisements for Myself - #10

From time to time over the past few years I've mentioned that Yolanda Estes and I have been working on a book about the German philosopher J.G. Fichte. It's been a long haul, but it now looks as if J. G. Fichte and the Atheism Dispute (1798-1800) will be published in March 2010. Our book is a collection of translations and commentary devoted (as the title plainly indicates) to Fichte and the atheism dispute, a pivotal event not only in Fichte's philosophical career but also in the history of German idealism as a whole.

The complete manuscript is at the press, and so right now Yolanda and I are working through the production process. This page on the Ashgate website will give you more information about the book and its contents.

Why Nietzsche Probably Wasn't a Relativist

In an earlier post to my blog I published a review of Simon Blackburn's Truth: A Guide. I mentioned that I had written the review for a journal, but that I had withdrawn my manuscript after it was butchered by an amateurish editor. Instead of letting my work go to waste, I posted the review to my blog. I figured that someone out there might be interested in what I had to say about Blackburn's book.

Since I'd like to get even more mileage out of my review, I'm writing this post in order to lead people to my review from another angle. In chapter 4 Blackburn takes on the issue of Nietzsche's alleged relativism. I was rather unhappy with this portion of the book because I consider it unlikely that Nietzsche was a relativist. It's not just blatantly obvious that he wasn't a relativist, but a bit of reflection leads, in my considered opinion, to the conclusion that he didn't subscribe to relativism. My review briefly explains my reasoning.

If you're reading Nietzsche and would like to learn more about this topic, go to my review and scroll down to my discussion of chapter 4.

Graham Stewart Reviews Giles MacDonogh's "1938: Hitler's Gamble"

Graham Stewart reviews Giles MacDonogh's 1938: Hitler's Gamble.

Christopher Hitchens on "The Baader Meinhof Complex"

Christopher Hitchens has written an interesting article about The Baader Meinhof Complex.

Jonathan Chait on How the Fringe is Taking Over the GOP

Jonathan Chait looks at how the sort of fantasies typically found on the fringes of a political party are taking over the GOP.

"If I was a camel, I'd prefer to just get it in the head"

It never occurred to me that I would ever read the following sentence: "If I was a camel, I'd prefer to just get it in the head." It's a thought that never crossed my mind until now.

It seems that there are one million wild camels roaming around in Australia. Apparently, they're rather a handful, which has led the Australian government to consider culling the animals from helicopters. Hence one man's pithy observation about camels and headshots.