Chris Navin

Post here. (link may not last)

Paul Berman’s original piece here.

Totten’s response after reading Berman:

‘So the well-meaning American anti-imperialists in Nicaragua were perceived by Nicaraguans as Soviet-style imperialists. And one of them, apparently oblivious to all this even today, is the new mayor of New York City.

I don’t know what to make of it. I really don’t. I have been running into people like this for years in countries wracked by terrorism and war and lorded over by tyrants. They simply fail to understand what is right in front of them even when it’s explained to them in plain English. I can only assume at this point that they’re unteachable. They are educated, yes, but their brains are full. No room remains for more information, or understanding.’

Health-care and education are necessary to secure the People’s Future, you know, and Dear Mayor will no doubt show solidarity with the workers and their unions.

Do you reckon he’s matured since then? How much pushback will he get from upstate?

NY times piece here on the Sandinista connection. De Blasio’s inner circle.

Some light humor:

Michael Moynihan reviewed Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’ which praised the Cuban Health Care System.

Christopher Hitchens took a helicopter ride with Sean Penn, and that tracksuit-wearing strongman of the people, Hugo Chavez-Hugo Boss:

It’s a long way out of socialist and revolutionary solidarity, which continually occupies the South American mind. One more revolution: Adam Kirsch takes a look at Mario Vargas Llosa. The Dream Of The Peruvian.

How’s that Russian reset going?:

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What about value pluralism…positive and negative liberty?: The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”

Classical Liberalism Via Friesian.Com-’Exchange with Tomaz Castello Branco on John Gray’

The End Of History? –Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’

Michael Totten At World Affairs: ‘The Once Great Havana’

Full piece here.

Now de Blasio may just be an older Leftist, running for office.

I don’t have much to say about NYC politics, but this does go to the larger theory that we lost much of establishment liberalism, or at least nationalistic liberalism, back during the 60’s cultural revolution. Perhaps if it ever makes a comeback, it will be as a brand of neo-liberalism more like the kind we find in Britain, reaching out from a further Left base.

Why would I make such a prediction? Well, because of the wretched state of the humanities, overrun with postmodernism and continental philosophy, for starters. Or the soft, redistributive collectivism of much of current liberalism. Or the fact that green thinking and feminism have made such inroads in our culture. Or the increasing nihilism in NYC alternative and artistic cultures.

Let me know if I’m wrong. Perhaps I’m responding too reactively to current conditions.

Michael Bloomberg’s had to navigate a career in information and finance, gradually over to using the bully pulpit of Gracie Mansion to push a kind of ‘nudging’ authoritarianism to achieve the social outcomes he wants. He’s drifted independent.

Now NYC, often a cultural trendsetter for the rest of the nation, may be turning further Left:

‘Bill de Blasio, then 26, went to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine in the middle of a war between left and right. But he returned with something else entirely: a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.

and:

‘His activism did not stop. In the cramped Lower Manhattan headquarters of the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, where he volunteered, Mr. de Blasio learned to cause a stir. He and a ragtag team of peace activists, Democrats, Marxists and anarchists attempted to bring attention to a Central American cause that, after the Sandinistas lost power in a 1990 election, was fading from public view. “The Nicaraguan struggle is our struggle,” said a poster designed by the group’

Solidarity!

Over at Ira Stoll’s Future of Capitalism:

‘Peter Beinart wrote an article for the Daily Beast heralding Bill de Blasio’s victory in the New York Democratic Mayoral Primary as the ‘rise of the new new left.” It describes Americans aged 18 to 30 as ‘Millennials” and claims, ‘unlike older Americans, who favor capitalism over socialism by roughly 25 points, Millenials, narrowly, favor socialism.”

If you were a beat, or a hippie, or now a hipster, you may not have to wear that Che shirt ironically any longer!

Addition: As a reader suggests, couldn’t you say the same of the Right? Well, the thesis here is that liberalism eventually runs aground into many of the problems of human nature, belief, ignorance etc. Some of its organizing principles take time to root, and now they have arguably deeper than before. One of this blog’s aims is to try and highlight some of the possible consequences of those principles.

Since it’s 1963 all over again: Clink on this link to explore the ideas of David Friedman, and his brand of libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism for yourself. Many of his positions are well-reasoned and should be considered on their merits. Few people make such a compelling and clear argument for private property and extend capitalism as far as it will go: Youtube Via Libertarianism.Org-David Friedman: ‘The Machinery Of Freedom’.

LIbertarianism at high tide against a particularly liberal administration?…Anarcho-capitalism: Pro-market, anti-state, anti-war…paleo-libertarian: Link To Lew Rockwell Via A Reader…Anarcho-syndicalist, libertarian socialist and sometime blind supporter of lefty causes: Via Youtube: (1 of 3) Kant, Chomsky and the Problem of Knowledge…Two Sunday Quotations By Albert Jay Nock in ‘Anarchist’s Progress’…new liberty away from Hobbes?: Repost-From Public Reason: A Discussion Of Gerald Gaus’s Book ‘The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom And Morality In A Diverse And Bounded World’