Recommend your longform reads

Eboue said:
https://harpers.org/archive/2018/07/the-death-of-new-york-city-gentrification/
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I'm not entirely sure the problem is the super rich or billionaires, as he seems to refer more to. I think its more the merely 'rich' that rent the multitude of 1-2m dollar apartments that make up these 15+ story residential developments in Manhattan and elsewhere. I get the impression that the share of the total city population/workforce shifted even further from manual type labor to office jobs vs prior decades.

Good article, and I don't want to opine so much given I've only been here for 3 years. Guess I'm part of the problem... :nervous:
 
What Is Conservatism?
By Ofir Haivry and Yoram Hazony

"...In this essay, we seek to clarify the historical and philosophical differences between the two major Anglo-American political traditions, conservative and liberal. We will begin by looking at some important events in the emergence of Anglo-American conservatism and its conflict with liberalism. After that, we will use these historical events as a basis for drawing some political distinctions that will be highly relevant for our own political context..."

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/05/what-is-conservatism/
 
2cents said:
What Is Conservatism?
By Ofir Haivry and Yoram Hazony

"...In this essay, we seek to clarify the historical and philosophical differences between the two major Anglo-American political traditions, conservative and liberal. We will begin by looking at some important events in the emergence of Anglo-American conservatism and its conflict with liberalism. After that, we will use these historical events as a basis for drawing some political distinctions that will be highly relevant for our own political context..."

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/05/what-is-conservatism/
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Interesting article. Not read it in full (will do so tomorrow) but had a look at some sections which piqued my interest. I think it makes some strong arguments, but also perhaps misses some larger points as to why traditional liberalism and conservatism may not quite be applicable to politics today.

Conservatives hold that the only stable basis for national independence, justice, and public morals is a strong biblical tradition in government and public life. They reject the doctrine of separation of church and state, instead advocating an integration of religion into public life that also offers broad toleration of diverse religious views.
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This is interesting, and I think some of the criticisms of liberalism and how it applies to public life are fair and justifiable, but I don't think there's really any strong argument here for how you can reasonably expect religion to play a strong role in public life when scientific advancement and consensus has largely come to reject religion to a significant extent. Religion may have provided the basis for governmental systems under which we still live, but when people (arguably sensibly) abandon religion because it makes little sense, there's not a particularly strong argument for why these outdated traditions should persist for the sake of it. There's also not really a critique here (unless I've missed it further up the article) of the ills that religious institutions have often caused and the sinister ways in which they've often sought to control people.

Thatcher and Reagan were genuine and instinctive conservatives, displaying traditional Anglo-American conservative attachments to nation and religion, as well as to limited government and individual freedom. They also recognized and gave voice to the profound “special relationship” that binds Britain and America together. Coming to power at a time of deep crisis in the struggle against Communism, their renewed conservatism succeeded in winning the Cold War and freeing foreign nations from oppression, in addition to liberating their own economies, which had long been shackled by socialism.
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The presumption that it was Thatcher and Reagan who could be seen as responsible for winning the Cold War doesn't really hold up to a significant extent for me - the Soviets already had a lot of persistent problems that had been long-lasting over the years and Gorbachev's liberalisation in the 80s was what largely led to the SU's downfall, since greater freedoms allowed for greater support of democracy etc. There's an argument that the Soviets would've been fecked even if left-leaning leaders were in power at the time.

Additionally Thatcher and Reagan were only really for individual freedoms when it suited them. Issues like the war on drugs exemplify that, as do Thatcher's fairly regressive social viewpoints on a lot of matters. The liberation of both economies also caused misery for millions of people who were left behind and abandoned as a result of certain social benefits etc being removed, and led to a rise in inequality which continues to persist to this day. From that perspective the article comes across as fairly insulated from the realities of political life for a lot of people who've lived under the two conflicting systems mentioned in the article. A harsh critique could probably assert that both liberalism and conservatism were ways in which powerful people could secure their own positions in society and assert their authority over others, as opposed to deeply held moral ideals with the aim of serving the greater good.

The most important among these is the inability of countries such as America and Britain, having been stripped of the nationalist and religious traditions that held them together for centuries, to sustain themselves while a universalist liberalism continues, year after year, to break down these historic foundations of their strength.
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Again you could argue the weakening of states like Britain and the US doesn't really have anything to do with older traditions of conservatism or liberalism but instead is due to persistent economic inequality and issues such as climate change etc, the latter of which is fostered by free market capitalism which is inherently unable to offer solutions unless regulated in a way which I imagine conservatives would probably see as regressive.

I do think it's an interesting article and makes some strong arguments for why we shouldn't take some universal liberal truths for granted, and as to why conservative ideals have a place in society, even if it's to provide an alternative to liberal ones so we don't grow complacent, but at the same time I feel it's arguably presenting a whitewashed although well-researched account of history, many of the thinkers and politicians treated with a reverence that they don't necessarily automatically deserve.

Again - have still to fully read the article, so apologies if I've missed a key point or two in there that may stand against my argument here.
 
@2cents
Not sure if you've heard of him but Corey Robin has an interesting analysis of conservatism as a movement - unlike that essay (which I've barely started with), he starts with the French Revolution and Burke, and explicitly includes The Art of the Deal in his book. He says that while the policies they supportchange (pointing at Burke's views on capitalism), the core is a defence of hierarchy which remains constant.
He is interviewed by a sympathetic leftist here (May 9 2013 is a long one, Nov 30 2017 deals with Trump). This is him debating a liberty-loving conservative.

In the spirit of this thread, this is a long article by him: https://www.thenation.com/article/nietzsches-marginal-children-friedrich-hayek/
 
berbatrick said:
@2cents
Not sure if you've heard of him but Corey Robin has an interesting analysis of conservatism as a movement - unlike that essay (which I've barely started with), he starts with the French Revolution and Burke, and explicitly includes The Art of the Deal in his book. He says that while the policies they supportchange (pointing at Burke's views on capitalism), the core is a defence of hierarchy which remains constant.
He is interviewed by a sympathetic leftist here (May 9 2013 is a long one, Nov 30 2017 deals with Trump). This is him debating a liberty-loving conservative.

In the spirit of this thread, this is a long article by him: https://www.thenation.com/article/nietzsches-marginal-children-friedrich-hayek/
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Thanks, I'll check it out when I get a chance.
 
Very important article from the New York Review of Books

The Suffocation of Democracy

Christopher R. Browning

Christopher R Browning said:
Today, President Trump seems intent on withdrawing the US from the entire post–World War II structure of interlocking diplomatic, military, and economic agreements and organizations that have preserved peace, stability, and prosperity since 1945. His preference for bilateral relations, conceived as zero-sum rivalries in which he is the dominant player and “wins,” overlaps with the ideological preference of Steve Bannon and the so-called alt-right for the unfettered self-assertion of autonomous, xenophobic nation-states—in short, the pre-1914 international system. That “international anarchy” produced World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Depression, the fascist dictatorships, World War II, and the Holocaust, precisely the sort of disasters that the post–World War II international system has for seven decades remarkably avoided.
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Organic Potatoes said:
I’ve seen it argued that while political movements we’re seeing are commonly compared to those of the 20’s and 30’s, on an international scale it’s more similar to the run-up to WWI than II. HR McMaster was big on this, one reason he was so hawkish on certain issues.
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I can definitely see both parallels in a lot of ways. I think there is some of both eras being echoed currently in some ways.
The Concert of Europe essentially kept the international peace for decades analogous in many ways to the international structure after WWII. And the way the Concert broke down into bilateral alliances can be echoed in how Trump is breaking a lot of the international agreements and structures and wanting to re-do everything with bilateral US deals. The far-right populism focus is towards neo-mercantilism.
 
ErranMorad said:
There is a book just released by Steve Kornacki called 'The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism', that delves deeper in the subject if you are interested.
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Im ahead of you mate. Already bought it but haven't read. Reading How Democracies Die at the moment.
 
@Adisa
I think this video by Chomsky shows him reading the political situation (talk radio especially) in the 90s extremely well. It was what I listened to to make sense of Trump's election to (and today Fox and a lot of the net adds to talk radio's effect).
 
Three gloomy as feck doomsday articles on the current state of affairs in the 'liberal' West which nonetheless contain some interesting insights:

A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come

The Suffocation of Democracy

The dark European stain: how the far right rose again
 
2cents said:
Three gloomy as feck doomsday articles on the current state of affairs in the 'liberal' West which nonetheless contain some interesting insights:

A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come

The Suffocation of Democracy

The dark European stain: how the far right rose again
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The Anne Applebaum piece from The Atlantic should be required reading.
 
Just so I don't forget @Cheesy found this gem

Democrats Must Reclaim the Center … by Moving Hard Left
https://www.politico.com/magazine/s...reclaim-the-center-by-moving-hard-left-219354


"In fact, there are two kinds of political centers: There’s the ideological center—the one that Democrats are waging a civil war over. And there’s the majoritarian center—the one where most of the people are. If Democrats hope to be a majority party, it’s the majoritarian center they need to embrace. And to understand the difference between these two strains of centrism, it’s important to understand exactly what the center is measuring.

Imagine lining up every person in America on a yardstick, with the poorest person standing to the far-left edge of the stick (zero inches) and the wealthiest person standing to the far right (36 inches). Assuming that people are equally spaced, and that there is no correlation between wealth and weight—if you could balance that yardstick on the tip of your finger, the fulcrum would fall on the 18-inch mark, the exact center of the yardstick, with exactly half of all Americans standing to the left, and the other half standing to the right. Clustered on and near that 18-inch mark are the median American families—the middle-middle class—the majoritarian center of the American electorate, at least from an economic perspective.

Now imagine that very same yardstick with every American standing in their very same spots—only this time, rather than balancing people, we are balancing their personal wealth, stacked up in $100 bills. But because 2 percent of Americans (of which I am one) own 50 percent of the nation’s wealth, to balance this yardstick you’d now have to slide your finger nearly all the way over, beyond the 35-inch mark, just inside the far-right edge. This fulcrum balances the interests of capital, not people. And unfortunately, this is the yardstick of our current ideological center—a centrism informed by the bad economic theories that have guided the policies of both parties for more than 30 years.

This precarious balancing act helps explain why policies that would clearly benefit the majoritarian center are so often rejected as ideologically “far left;” for a centrism that seeks to balance the interests of capital is a centrism that seeks to balance the interests of the very wealthiest Americans against those of everybody else. It’s this sort of “one dollar, one vote” logic that led to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision—a logic that threatens to subvert American democracy itself. For a system that justifies the wealthiest 2 percent purchasing the same political influence as the other 98 percent, isn’t really a democracy at all."
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
Just so I don't forget @Cheesy found this gem

Democrats Must Reclaim the Center … by Moving Hard Left
https://www.politico.com/magazine/s...reclaim-the-center-by-moving-hard-left-219354


"In fact, there are two kinds of political centers: There’s the ideological center—the one that Democrats are waging a civil war over. And there’s the majoritarian center—the one where most of the people are. If Democrats hope to be a majority party, it’s the majoritarian center they need to embrace. And to understand the difference between these two strains of centrism, it’s important to understand exactly what the center is measuring.

Imagine lining up every person in America on a yardstick, with the poorest person standing to the far-left edge of the stick (zero inches) and the wealthiest person standing to the far right (36 inches). Assuming that people are equally spaced, and that there is no correlation between wealth and weight—if you could balance that yardstick on the tip of your finger, the fulcrum would fall on the 18-inch mark, the exact center of the yardstick, with exactly half of all Americans standing to the left, and the other half standing to the right. Clustered on and near that 18-inch mark are the median American families—the middle-middle class—the majoritarian center of the American electorate, at least from an economic perspective.

Now imagine that very same yardstick with every American standing in their very same spots—only this time, rather than balancing people, we are balancing their personal wealth, stacked up in $100 bills. But because 2 percent of Americans (of which I am one) own 50 percent of the nation’s wealth, to balance this yardstick you’d now have to slide your finger nearly all the way over, beyond the 35-inch mark, just inside the far-right edge. This fulcrum balances the interests of capital, not people. And unfortunately, this is the yardstick of our current ideological center—a centrism informed by the bad economic theories that have guided the policies of both parties for more than 30 years.

This precarious balancing act helps explain why policies that would clearly benefit the majoritarian center are so often rejected as ideologically “far left;” for a centrism that seeks to balance the interests of capital is a centrism that seeks to balance the interests of the very wealthiest Americans against those of everybody else. It’s this sort of “one dollar, one vote” logic that led to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision—a logic that threatens to subvert American democracy itself. For a system that justifies the wealthiest 2 percent purchasing the same political influence as the other 98 percent, isn’t really a democracy at all."
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Great article
 
It’s 30 years since the Rushdie fatwa was issued. Kenan Malik is a sharp interpreter of the whole affair, here are some of his writings on it:



 
We need some more content in this thread folks, I'm thinking of collating the articles and then getting them turned into books at my mate's printing business to give out as presents.

Copyright laws are for losers anyway.

Recommend your longform reads please.
 
Man with socialisation difficulties or a cold-blooded criminal?
(Irish Examiner)

Caroline O'Doherty said:
When [Eric Eoin Marques] first appeared in court here under an application to approve his extradition, special agent Brooke Donahue of the FBI did not mince his words, telling the judge that Marques was wanted on charges in the US because he was “the largest facilitator of child porn on the planet”.
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