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Theory & political commentary
Mitt Romney dug himself a deep hole this week when Mother Jones released a secretly recorded video of him speaking to a group of millionaires and complaining that 47 percent of Americans “are dependent upon government” and “believe that they are victims.” Scores of commentators have pointed out ...
Are you convinced that your moral and political views are the right ones? If you were to lay out all of your views and examine them, would they fit together in a coherent package? Are you open to new ideas that run contrary to your intuitions? In my last post I explored Bertrand Russell’s ...
Yesterday, nearly two thousand people “liked” this quote posted by Big Think on Facebook: Several subscribers appreciated the irony in Russell’s quip. Here are two: Below, I’ll return to the irony Thomas, Nancy and a few other Big Think Facebook perusers noticed — by the way ...
The Democrats have a lot to cheer about after a terrific convention in Charlotte. God, however, is shaking her head. On Wednesday, Mitt Romney lambasted the Democrats for removing a reference to God in their party platform. The sanctimony was thick: Our founding document the Declaration of ...
As I begin to come back to earth after Michelle Obama’s spectacular speech at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, what strikes me most about Day One in Charlotte is the contrast between the ways that the Democrats and the Republicans are talking about education. Looking over the ...
Mitt, we just met you Clint was crazy! So here's a blog post, "Gall me Maybe" (with apologies to Carly Rae Jepsen) I have a lot to complain about, but let’s start with my three favorite moments from the final night of the Republican National Convention: 1. In an excellent ...
Mitt Romney addresses the nation at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night. How well have his warm-up acts set the stage for his big speech? I’ll assess the four marquee speeches delivered on Tuesday and Wednesday during prime time. Grades are based on eloquence, argumentative ...
Following on the heels of the Pussy Riot verdicts in Moscow, about a dozen women from the feminist group Code Pink dressed up in vagina costumes outside the Republican National Convention yesterday to protest GOP policies regarding women. There were no arrests. Here was the scene: An unusual ...
I'm not sure any of the reader suggestions to replace the deeply unpopular term "redistribution" will quite cut it as bumper sticker slogans for the fall election. But leaving aside proposals from the right — Philopoemen's "coercive sharing" and Bill J. Canada's "THEFT," for example — comments ...
With Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, the 2012 election is shaping up to be a battle over whether and how the federal government should tackle the division of wealth in the United States, a gap that has been steadily rising since the 1970s. As the debate unfolds this fall ...
Quick: what percentage of wealth in the United States is held by the richest 20 percent of the population? And what percentage of the pie does the poorest 40 percent have? If your estimates match those of the average respondent in Dan Ariely and Mike Horton’s survey, you guessed that the top ...
If you’ve been watching the Olympics, you’ve been treated to a steady stream of ads for what promises to be NBC’s lamest comedy in recent memory: “Guys With Kids.” As a guy with kids myself, I’m planning to spend my Wednesday evenings this fall watching something other than scenes of frat-boy-cum ...
When I heard the news of Jonah Lehrer’s fabrications on Monday — indiscretions that led to an apology and his resignation from the New Yorker on Tuesday — my jaw fell. Like Michael C. Moynihan, who exposed Lehrer in an article in Tablet, I was “completely fucking mystified” why the Rhodes scholar ...
Does democracy require universal suffrage? Yes, I think so. So does the Supreme Court. Economist Bryan Caplan isn’t so sure. A few years ago Caplan identified several pernicious biases individuals tote with them into the voting booth and suggested that we the people are to blame for bad economic ...
When a German court in Cologne ruled last month that baby boys could not be circumcised for religious reasons, Jewish and Muslim groups erupted in protest while a chorus of voices arose to defend the ruling. Walter Russell Mead denounced the development as a sign that “it is now once again a crime ...