Liberals for Low Wages
I don’t normally write about immigration, because it’s not really my “thing,” but I agree with the restrictionists that there’s something very puzzling about progressive willingness to embrace a...
View ArticleWhat’s In A Name?
The website where you’re reading this is called “The American Conservative,” as is the magazine with which it is affiliated. I admit to being ambivalent about the name – partly for my own personal...
View ArticleThe Shape Of The Curve and the Insufficiency of Monetary Policy
And as long as I’m reading Kevin Drum’s blog, he had a piece about monetary policy yesterday that I’m still trying to figure out how to answer. It relates to a longstanding debate about whether...
View ArticleAn Obligatory Post-Election Post
Just a few quick observations on last night’s major results. First, Bill DeBlasio is a pretty standard liberal Democrat who ran a very good campaign against a weak opponent in a very Democratic city....
View ArticleAssortative Mating And Income Inequality
Kevin Drum throws some cold water on the conclusion of a recent study suggesting that assortative mating has been an important driver of rising income inequality: Marriage patterns weren’t random in...
View ArticleYou Know What’s Murder? Politics Is Murder
Kevin Drum asks a frequently-heard question: Do anti-abortion activists really think abortion is murder? Or is their opposition merely an expression of their broad discomfort with modern sexual and...
View ArticleTeaching Shakespeare, With Love
Meanwhile, sticking with Kevin Drum but returning to a more felicitous subject for this blog, a few weeks ago he asked: why can’t we teach Shakespeare better? I remember enrolling in a Shakespeare...
View ArticleDo We Know the Answers To Our Economic Problems?
I’ve been following a thread today about how the Democratic Party can get their mojo back, in which everybody agrees that the key is to do more to actually help working class (but actually working)...
View Article“Broken Windows” and the Urban Renaissance
There’s an active debate going on now in my city about the role of the police, and whether we’ve gone too far as a city in terms of the “broken windows” approach to policing. This approach argues that...
View ArticleWho Is the Left-Wing Equivalent of Donald Trump?
Kevin Drum asks: Is there anyone out there who could be the Democratic equivalent of Donald Trump? There was some inane blather earlier this month comparing him to Bernie Sanders, but that was always...
View ArticleWhy Defeating Daesh Is So Difficult
Ok, I know I said I had nothing useful to say about Daesh. And I really don’t. But Olivier Roy does, and this article is one of the best I’ve read since the attacks on Friday. Roy has basically two...
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Is Demography Electoral Destiny?
Kevin Drum has a rather strange post up about California and Proposition 187. He argues as follows: Here’s what California has looked like in presidential elections over the past 35 years: Unless I...
View ArticleThe Dialectical Utility of Explanations: Election Edition
Kevin Drum has a weird post up about how there are no big lessons of the 2016 election (at least not at the presidential level), because nothing much actually happened: Everyone wants to draw big,...
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This Stat Will Make Your EPOP
I don’t know why Kevin Drum went with a snarky header (well, actually I do, but that’s not a reason I’ll endorse), because this seems like a really good measure of employment to be following (courtesy...
View ArticleBurn After Reading
I have nothing to say about the latest revelations about Donald Trump Jr.’s emails, because Ross Douthat has said it all in pictures. Or, rather, the Coen Brothers did: I was not really a “Burn After...
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