A Couple of New Posts at Entitled to an Opinion.

"Open Minded Activists?" and "Do Iranians deserve progressive and (for those who haven't heard of Hillary Clinton's distinction) liberal sympathy?"

A Picture from the Critical Review Seminar, "Challenges to Classical Liberalism." San Antonio, June 2009.

Taken from the Critical Review Alumni page. Go there to see them all. Photo credit goes to Shterna Friedman. Jeffrey Friedman is (sort of) found second from the right, in the back.

Some notable attendees: Micha Ghertner, of the popular libertarian blog Distributed Republic; Guinevere Nell, of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis (CDA), who also has a book forthcoming; Matt Machaj, from Poland, of the Mises Institute; and Bogdan Enache, Romanian journalist and likewise a contributor to Mises.org. Both Guinevere and Matt have articles forthcoming in Critical Review.

Those especially enamored of economics, and the "economic way of thinking," found Jeffrey's anti-public choice perspective hard to swallow. I don't. I've written before about how "pragmatism" and "centrism" are political philosophies, and the log-rolling and otherwise friendly seeming "wheel dealing" an extension of that. Weber's "ethics of responsibility," which includes the above, is par for the course for politicians. Those removed from it remain in critical awe of how often said politicians deviate from the "ethics of conviction"; a conviction easily worn on one's sleeve when not trusted to advance political matters, one way or another.

As for voters, there is little reason to believe that they are moved by a disincentive to know the truth about economic matters anymore than libertarians are moved by an incentive to know the same. Bryan Caplan accuses Friedman of being sophistical (really, it's him being sophistical?) when the latter charges him with propagating an oxymoron in the name of "rational irrationality," but given that Caplan doesn't show why the layperson should know just enough about economics to then shrug it off in the name of a psychic benefit that is costless, I think the Friedman point is defensible.

Anyway, great seminar. Too short though. In years past it was three days, not two. We had to skip over much of the reading material, unfortunately, which is why I'm still reading what amounts to essentially five or six free books, ranging from evolutionary psychology to public opinion and beyond.

A Couple of New Posts at Entitled to An Opinion

"Mario Rizzo, Jeffrey Friedman and Ideology" and "The Intellectual Origins and Application of 'Militant Democracy'."

Pictures from Manattan

I spent 2 days and 3 nights in NYC recently. The point was to attend, in full, the Telos conference on New Administration: War, Class and Critical Theory. There's more in that title than I can rightfully chew on, given that my interests don't lie in political philosophy per se, much less Critical Theory. Matt Mueller has a discussion of CT here.


I ended up extremely late, due to a 12 hour train ride down from Rochester that was supposed to be about 7. I decided to sleep in rather than attend the entire conference, seeing as how I was receiving no academic credit for it (yes, I bought a ticket, but that came with a year long subscription to the journal, so it's still worth it). I caught the last two lectures by Adrian Pabst and Ernie Sternberg, the latter of whom delivered a neoconservatish spiel on "Left Fascism." As for Pabst, I've written about him here.



















Photoshoot, fashion and pose (and mini boombox) looking to be circa 1990.
























Kereem, from Turkey, bartender at a place called The Porch in the East Village. The dj is from Turkey too, and it turned out the owner of a recommended hot spot (not a wi-fi hot spot) down the street called Nu Blu is also Turkish. Kereem and I discussed the AK party in Turkey, which is getting kudos in some corners for challenging the anti-democratic Kemalist military rule in the country - the only institution supposedly protecting secularism in Turkey - though some are skeptical of the AK party, believing it to have a religious agenda.




















Ahistorical propaganda by a subway entrance.




















Dengue Fever performing on what looks like cable access, live in NYC somewhere.

























The soft paternalism of the pragmatic age, in which questions of democracy and economy are supplanted by an administered freedom which, apparently, holds that young men need to eat better, be more academic and, rather amorphously, "respect" women.




















The Telos conference, held in the beautiful Puck building at NYU. Adrian Pabst in the center, back, with Ernie Sternberg to his right.





















The "Crunch" gym, where you can "party to weekly live DJs while you work out." But doesn't partying include drugs? They aren't healthy. Oh, the temptation to have it both ways.

On Diana Mutz And More

My first post for TGGP's Entitled To An Opinion blog is here.

I will no longer be blogging at The Art Of The Possible

Indefinitely.

But the archive is here.

I will be blogging at The Art Of The Possible

Indefinitely.