In 2010, Ken Minogue penned his last full-length book The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life. As fond as I am of democracy I am still inclined to (begrudgingly) call it a critical tour de force. It’s a full-on assault on the assumptions, procedures, intricacies, and inner
Senator Cory Booker’s bill to legalize marijuana is righteous and beautiful. It is well-timed and well-crafted. It is noble… and it is doomed. That a progressive Senator would champion marijuana legalization, and that his bill would stand no chance of passing, highlights a deep and important problem in social
Drawing primarily on Karl Popper, Oliver Traldi argues that hot take culture diminishes our desire or ability to quietly reflect on events. In addition, they subsume complex human events into simplistic and pre-determined theories. Against this, I will draw on Charles Taylor’s philosophy of language and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s
The Liberal Currents Podcast LC Podcast #2: Sam Hammond on Capitalism and Social Justice Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 35:59 Subscribe Share Apple Podcasts Stitcher Google Podcasts Spotify RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in
It has been almost eight months since Donald Trump took office. If the rest of his term looks like these first months, we may have dodged a bullet. Rather than the authoritarian we feared, we would end up with a buffoon who almost reflexively self-destructs. In spite of having both
“The only sin,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1841, “is limitation.” It was in this spirit (and under this influence) that John Dewey wrote some years later in How We Think that “growth is the only moral end.” Growth as a theme runs like a golden thread through all of
Here’s something I’m ashamed of: Sometimes when I see a movie or read a novel and I’m not sure how to react, I search for reviews hoping they’ll tell me how. I can’t speak for anyone else, but the reason I don’t like what
In American politics, it is sometimes claimed that democratic majorities must never be “in chains,” as the historian Nancy MacLean has recently reminded us. This phrase is a truly remarkable piece of loaded language, because nobody likes chains. Chains are awful! And everybody likes democracy, provided we collectively forget about
The liberal tradition is centrally concerned with liberty. But the different currents within liberal thought naturally differ in their conceptions of freedom. (I take freedom and liberty to be synonyms and will use both interchangeably.) One of the most common distinctions drawn is between negative freedom and positive freedom. In
“Hot take” is among the most withering of insults available to describe a piece of opinion writing these days. We are told that the proclivity to author such “takes” is a symptom of frivolity or cynicism. Beyond their not-so-hot quality, the quantity of “takes” is also supposed to be a
Gender is both strange and hard to think about. Anyone who tells you otherwise probably hasn’t given it much thought. In this essay I will describe two common theories of gender. I will criticize them both. Then I will use the more interesting bits of each to build something
Those who have wrestled with the frustrating but seemingly trivial topic of political labels know that to embark on an analysis is to trace the contours of the snake devouring its own tail. It wastes time and energy to create further confusing distinctions which no one else is likely to
Liberal Currents LLC © . All rights reserved.