Posts under ‘Ideas’

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

This post has been in the works for quite a long time and I will be using it as a basis for further investigation during the months to come. The previous post, which addressed some causes of the Boston Tea Party not commonly known, is related to the topic of this post in that [...]

On September 11, 1970, Spiro Agnew, in an address to the California Republican state convention in San Diego, uttered these famous words (crafted by William Safire): “In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club — the hopeless, hysterical [...]

Yesterday morning, I learned that Van Jones had resigned from his position in the Obama administration. On March 21, 2009, I wrote a post in which I explored the role of faith in advancing the goals of progressives. I learned then of Van Jones, so I am surely in the minority of those [...]

After I discovered Ernest Partridge’s Crisis Papers website, I did a little exploring and discovered his book, Conscience of a Progressive, which is a book in progress. Dr. Partridge has decided to not post to the Crisis Papers website as frequently as he has in the past so that he has more time to [...]