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Tag Archives: politics
Afghanistan
I have been meaning to write on Afghanistan for a while and today’s column by David Brooks has finally prompted me to write it. Brooks’ argument is simple. All the military experts are sure we can do this, but they are not sure that President Obama has the the resolve to do it.
They do not [...]
Obama and Expectations
I finished the previous post on the rather optimistic thought that Obama’s aspiration to be a president of the United States, to connect with conservatives as well as liberals, is what the times call for. This is worth looking at more closely.
Firstly, there is this from Yglesias on that prize.
But in semi-defense of the Nobel [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged ethics, global warming, idealism, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama, philosophy, rationalism, realism, Tibetan autonomy Leave a comment
A True-Born Englishman
—
A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction.
Daniel Defoe (1703, h/t Sullivan who has the rest)
Pat Buchanan’s rant on the passing of WASP-supremacy has attracted no soul-searching whatsoever as far as I can tell. As Serwer say, ‘good riddance’, and very well said too, but Robert Farley’s response I thought was [...]
Why I Read Blogs
Further to my previous post, here is a selection of Monday posts from my top five bloggers (this time in reverse alphabetical order).
Brooks and Lazy Debt Moralism
I do enjoy reading David Brooks, perhaps because there are few I disagree with so agreeably. David has written a column today praising the responsibility of the Tories for their fiscal responsibility. I suppose responsibility is a relative thing and relative to the Republicans the Tories are indeed responsible. The problem is that nobody has [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged debt, ethics, GOP, irrationalism, public finance, sentimentalism, Tories Leave a comment
Iran
I didn’t expect to be blogging on this. I watched in disbelief as the public was manipulated into the Iraq war in 2002 and blogged intensively on the standoff with Iran over its nuclear programme in 2006/7 until the 16 US intelligence agencies unanimously signed off on the remarkable 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged Enlightenment, ethics, Iran, NPT, nuclear, philosophy, sentimentalism, war Leave a comment
On Anger
The articles on this blog have taken an angry turn lately, which is to say I have been highlighting the complete uselessness of anger. This conviction is informed by my Buddhist study and practice where anger is almost semantically tied to negative (i.e., counter-productive) action. As always the intention is the key point, anger [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged anger, Buddhism, compassion, ethics, love, non-violence, Obama Leave a comment
The Dalai Lama on Obama