George Will On Stephen Colbert: Can The Right Avoid Many Dangers Of Idealism?

Full interview here.  (scroll to last video, link may not last long).

Will is public enough to have a character, but he’s deeper and less foolish than the dread Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly.

As he navigates the tricky public-thinking-man-in-America waters, what are his ideas about how to move conservativism ahead?

His new book, ”One Man’s America…” here.  His most recent columns here.

Addition:  Will discusses China, Obama and McCain, and even Hillary Clinton here (~7:00 long)

The NY Times On Equal Parenting: When Mom And Dad Share It All

Full article here.

The author, Lisa Belkin, showcases a series of husbands and wives with children who are going against the grain, and attempting to create:

…“equally shared parenting,” a term the Vachons have embraced.”

There are reasonable arguments here, and issues here that affect all of us: work/life balance, family, raising children, tradition:

“The point…is not to spit at tradition for the heck of it but rather to think things through instead of defaulting to gender.”

I could be convinced. Yet, is the equality stick the best tool by which families should measure themselves and challenge these norms? Isn’t this inviting all kinds of other problems?

“Social scientists know in remarkable detail what goes on in the average American home…Any way you measure it, they say, women do about twice as much around the house as men.”

Most men already have incentive to do some of the housework if they love their wives, and wish to continue to have love, companionship, and kids (in part, a way to pass on their genes). Also, of course, social science has its limits as most good social scientists would point out.

What about biology?

“Women, she says, know that the world is watching and judging. If the toddler’s clothes don’t match, if the thank-you notes don’t get written, if the house is a shambles, it is seen as her fault, making her overly invested in the outcome.”

How many guys do you know who worry about writing thank-you notes? As the article mentions, this isn’t an option for everyone.

———————————————————–

Later on, it pretty much becomes a parody of other hot-button liberal issues:

“Jo would not disagree with Deutch’s point that she had a role in creating that inequity — choosing to major in international rural development…”

Poor Jo…will she never win?  There’s this from a lesbian couple:

“We developed a wonky theory,” Dorea says of all that talking [sic]. “You need a rabid N.G.P. — nongestational parent. The N.G.P. has to push if you are going to get an equal relationship”

Dads-to-be take note!

Addition:  From bloggingheads: The purpose of women is to bear children?

Another Addition:  If you’re like me, you’re exasperated with this line of thought.  Even if liberalism is more grounded and deep than this, it still promotes an idealism that can be dangerous to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the rest of us.  When will they bottom out?  Do they need to bottom out?  How will the right respond?  What effect does this have on our institutions and our freedoms?

by wallyg

 

Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?

Full article here.

Paris has something that Scruton admires.  It’s not just an aversion to central planning (and perhaps the political and social philosophies associated with it) that makes Paris special, but also a resistance to modernism, and even postmodernist architecture.  Visitors will:

“…quickly see that Paris is miraculous in no small measure because modern architects have not been able to get their hands on it.”

Modernism may even have a lot to do with a certain aesthetic totalitarianism, a desire to grant the architect the ability to see all in his vision, and plan other peoples’ lives accordingly.

“…a later generation rebelled against the totalitarian mind-set of the modernists, rejecting socialist planning, and with it the collectivist approach to urban renewal. They associated the alienating architecture of the postwar period with the statist politics of socialism, and for good reasons.”

In modernism’s place (souless airports, blank modern facades speaking only to themselves) Scruton suggests Leon Krier’s New Urbanism and a return to more Classical architecture. New England towns might not be a bad place to start, but also:

“The plan should conform to Krier’s “ten-minute rule,” meaning that it should be possible for any resident to walk within ten minutes to the places that are the real reason for his living among strangers.”

Well, minus the car anyways.  Are you persuaded?

First National Bank of Houlton, Maine

Some of Le Corbusier’s work here, examples of Modern Architecture here.

See Also: Brasilia: A Planned City and Review Of Britain’s “Lost Cities” In The Guardian

 

Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”

Full post here. 

Why have so many people promoting gender and racial equality been allowed to pass as mainstream liberals…and not have to answer for the inherent threat their ideas can pose to our liberal democracy and the institutions that support it?

It’s a good question.  

Key quote:

“More recently Richard Rorty made an attractive attempt to reconcile the most avant-garde postmodern theory with a defence of the institutions of the Western liberal democracies, but the Mill of On Liberty still reigns supreme.”

See Also: What Can Liberalism Be? Much More Than It Is Now.

 

Lisa Randall On Charlie Rose: Warped Passages

Lisa Randall presents some of her theory on why gravity is so weak in relation to the other forces.  Her latest book, Warped Passages, can be found here.

 

How Many Delegates Do The Candidates Need?

CNN has a very good round up here:

-How it’s different for Democrats and Republicans
-Who are the delegates (as a group, not individually)
-How they’re chosen
-How they determine which candidate wins within a party (the nomination).

Beasts of burden working for the people, right?

 
by pirate johnny

Anne Applebaum in The NY Sun: Medvedev

Full post here.

Her opinion:  No rule of law.  No real capitalism.  No independent political parties.

Is Medvedev even a legitimate leader?

 

Friday Quotation From The Atlantic Monthly

Liberalism, with its pat logic and focus on structural inequities, offers no balm for this sort of raw pain. Like the people he preaches to, Cosby has grown tired of hanging his head.”

-Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic Monthly from ‘This Is How We Lost To The White Man.”

Is the conservatism of Cosby and many a barbershop a way to guide young black men to deeper national goals and moral commitments…say…beyond racial identity (Nation of Islam, Black Panthers) and peer groups (gangs)?

Is there a black conservative movement forming now?  in a few decades?

by childrensdefensefund

Roger Sandall: And Back To Plato We Go?

As to the previous post, I wonder if artists, romantics, poets and dreamers (idealists of all stripes) who give up their art or are compelled to re-examine their ideas aren’t susceptible to pursuing the same idealism within politics.

Sandall knows of where he speaks regarding romanticism. He is essentially an artist and film-maker, and it’s tough to imagine an artist in the Western World who hasn’t been influenced by Romanticism. Perhaps also in his experience of pursuing aesthetic beauty, narrative and storytelling, he can illuminate the plight of the Aborginal quite well.

Is it the relation with one’s desires that can determine the limit of one’s ideas?

It’s a matter of debate, and I’ll put this quote up, found here:

“This also meant that the artist is two steps removed from knowledge, and, indeed, Plato’s frequent criticism of the artists is that they lack genuine knowledge of what they are doing. Artistic creation, Plato observed, seems to be rooted in a kind of inspired madness.”

by Rickydavid

Roger Sandall: Marveling At The Aborigines, But Not Really Helping?

Full post here: Where Romantic Pastoralism Meets Indigenous Realities.

Roger Sandall explores the difference between some of the realities of Aboriginal life and the romantic pastoral image that the larger Australian culture projects onto the Aboriginal:

“The kindest service to Australia’s northern Aborigines which journalists of any seriousness writing for weekend papers can do is to avoid encouraging still more false hopes, especially among the well-intentioned southern middle-classes who read their stuff; and the notion that anyone can find a place in today’s Australia—on or off a cattle station—without literacy, numeracy, and a full mastery of English is simply untrue.”

The hypocrisy on display is familiar to us all. This is sentimental and secondhand support of the native population. It doesn’t recognize the depth of its own cultural ideas and traditions (language, laws and ideas which have often been used against the aboriginal) yet it’s not necessarily interested in the moral sacrifice needed to include these people into the culture either.

Within these bubbles, aborigines languish with no past and little future, and a twisted incentive to live up to these romantic images.   In response, Sandall seems suggests the best way foward is to teach them the language, laws and ideas.

I’d like to offer a politically pragmatic point: people are always going to be dreaming silly and naive dreams like this (both majorities and minorities), and if you’re a politician, you have a duty to represent these people. If they have money, they get more influence with you.

While it’s not exactly the moral high road, this seems to be the current American solution:

by NichK

The Mohegan Sun Casino