Jul 10, 202115 minAgainst liberal "pluralism"In the time of Trumpism, Michael Paul Rogin’s great book The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter (1967) shouldn’t be as...
Jun 26, 202149 minOn the inhumanity of Illinois's government in the 1930sIn case anyone is interested in the history of the Great Depression, particularly in Chicago, here's an excerpt from a chapter of my...
Apr 5, 202130 minThe rise of right-wing libertarianism since the 1950sSometimes as I read books I like to simultaneously summarize them, to facilitate the intellectual digestion. And also to post my notes...
Sep 24, 20204 minA despairing rantThese are interesting times. We have the "privilege" to be living in the era when centuries of capitalist evolution are approaching their...
Sep 8, 202022 minFrom Steve Fraser's "The Age of Acquiescence"I just finished reading Steve Fraser's masterful The Age of Acquiescence (2014), which compares the popular responses to America's two...
Aug 27, 202021 minThe remarkable perversity of idealismMany years ago, when I was a simple boy who thought he ought to know a lot about Hegel, I took masses of notes on his philosophy. Below...
Aug 5, 20206 minThoughts on classical fascism[Student notes from ten years ago.] Reading Robert A. Brady’s classic Business as a System of Power (1943), which influenced Chomsky....
Jun 29, 202015 minLaboring Against Racism: The Textile Workers Union of America in the South during the 1960s[An old student paper.] The conventional understanding of labor unions and their membership in the 1960s is of a conservative and...
Jun 26, 20208 minCapitalism and colonialismAs I frequently and tiresomely reiterate, academic writing tends toward sophistry, superficiality, and obscurantism. Personally, my...
Jul 13, 20184 minCritical thoughts on "The Alchemist"[Notes from 2006.] Reading The Alchemist, the novel that has sold tens of millions of copies. “To realize one’s destiny is a person’s...
May 28, 20185 min"Social Democracy Is the Best Form of Government"[As an undergraduate at Wesleyan University I wrote hundreds of essays not all of which, I think, are worthless. Here's a short one on...
Mar 31, 20188 minProgressivism, or "the Triumph of Conservatism"Years ago I took some notes on Gabriel Kolko’s classic The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History 1900–1916...
Mar 21, 201812 minNotes on Marxism and empiricism(Also see these notes.) Reading Maurice Cornforth’s Marxism and the Linguistic Philosophy (1965). A good book, not dogmatic or...
Jul 9, 20165 minElite pretentiousnessThe following is the beginning of an essay I wanted to write years ago on the concept of pretentiousness, a phenomenon the ubiquity of...
Jun 15, 20163 min"Sunbelt capitalism"[Random journal notes.] Reading Elizabeth Tandy Shermer’s Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics (2013)....
May 23, 20163 minFar-left, i.e., rational and open-minded[Old notes from my journal.] A lot of mainstream people would criticize me for immersing myself in leftist scholarship and journalism,...
Jan 12, 20166 minFragments on bourgeois ideologistsOn neoclassical economics.— Milton Friedman wrote a famous article in 1953 called “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” in which he...
Sep 25, 20154 minOn "The Reactionary Mind"Reading The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (2011), by Corey Robin. An elegant and erudite elaboration of...