Posts under ‘Ideas’

I apologize to Yogi Berra for the title of this post. I’ve been backing away from my former intense focus on events in this country lately, sickened by the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, among other things. I subscribe to a number of newsletters from various “liberal” sites and I have deleted all of [...]

Today is Mother’s Day, which has its origins in Grafton, West Virginia in 1858. There, Anna Reeves Jarvis organized a number of Mothers’ Work Day Clubs to improve health and sanitary issues in the towns of Webster, Grafton, Fetterman, Pruntytown, and Philippi. The clubs held fund-raisers to buy medicine for those who couldn’t afford it, [...]

I have long been fascinated with the rise of authoritarianism in this country – there are a number of links on the sidebar of this blog that direct interested readers to more information on the subject of authoritarianism. The following essay, by Henry A. Giroux, appeared on Truthout on February 15, 2010. I am posting [...]

I subscribe to a feed from Off-Grid, a source of information for people who are into self-sufficiency, gardening, building their own homes, photovoltaics, solar energy, and related topics. The most recent issue to land in my in-box featured a link to a Time Magazine article by Reihan Salam, entitled The Dropout Economy. I read the [...]

Randolph Bourne (1886-1918) was a public intellectual of the Progressive Era. His most widely known work is the long essay, The State, which was found among his papers after his death. Here is a short excerpt from the essay, which I think offers a way to escape from the insanity of Afghanistan by showing the [...]

Last Spring, I flamed out in anger after encountering the incredible short-sightedness of those who thought Tea Parties were the answer. I resolved to take some time off and I did, only coming back when Glenn Beck forced Van Jones to resign from the Obama administration. I felt then that I had to speak out, [...]

Chet Bowers writes that the Republican Party is not conservative. Rather, it is better characterized as promoting market liberalism. Liberalism, too, promotes the same thing. Is it any wonder that many progressives vote, usually Democratic, with a sigh of resignation, for the lesser of two evils? I’ve taken a list of characteristics of market liberals [...]

When I first read Chet Bowers’ work, I was a little bit puzzled by his definitions of the words ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’. Instead of falling into the swamp of the contemporary partisan divide, he goes back in history to retrieve the correct definitions of a conservative and a liberal. The following essay is long, but [...]

I find myself circling back to the theme of a post from March of this year, which was a review of a book, Mindful Conservatism, by Chet Bowers, by Rolf Jucker. Where did the conservatives with a coherent philosophy of conservatism disappear to? Why are they not raising their voices so they can be heard [...]

I’m peripherally familiar with Frank Schaeffer – the man who, with his father, Francis Schaeffer, played an important role in the establishment of the Religious Right in the 1970s and 1980s. It wasn’t until I read Mark Morford’s article and clicked on the link that led to a YouTube video of Rachel Maddow interviewing Frank [...]