Socialdem. 21st Century

Why Britain, and indeed other EU nations, ought to reject the EU, leave it, and dismantle it, or least why it should do so on democratic grounds.Now admittedly this documentary has a nationalist neoliberal or quasi-libertarian slant and some stupid nonsense here and there (I will discuss that below), but nevertheless it gets some crucial things right and is worth watching.[embedded content]Despite the confusion, the viciously anti-democratic nature of the EU is quite easy to explain: (1) the...

From Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies: “The so-called paradox of freedom is the well-known idea that freedom in the sense of absence of any restraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. This idea is, in a slightly different form, and with a very different tendency, clearly expressed by Plato.Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend...

Alan Macfarlane interviews Bob Rowthorn in the video below. Rowthorn had early connections with Cambridge Post Keynesianism, and was then influenced by Marxism from the 1960s and 1970s. Although he is sometimes classified as a Marxist, he now counts himself as an ex-Marxist, and not left-wing but communitarian. Nevertheless, his credentials as a heterodox economist are not in doubt.[embedded content]Towards the end of the interview, Rowthorn turns to social and political issues. He sees an...

[embedded content]The trouble is that, despite good points on economics, both Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky are pushing a leftism that has become intellectually bankrupt in important ways.Yanis Varoufakis supports the European Union and opposes nationalist left-wing or conservative movements who (rightly) want to leave it, despite his endless evidence given above on its utterly grotesque bankruptcy. Pathetic.Neither understand the catastrophe of mass immigration or the regressive left, or...

It’s not just the end of free speech, but also the end of humour.[embedded content]Just go back and look at Fawlty Towers, one of John Cleese’s comedy greats. There are things in this that would probably provoke screams of “racism” these days:[embedded content]

A brief and nice summary below.[embedded content]

I recently came across the concept of the “Alt Left” or “Alternative Left.” I still can’t find good information on this, or whether it really exists in any significant way, but see here, here, here, here, and here.See this video below where the “Alt Right” YouTube personality Millennial Woes interviews people who self-identify as “Alt Left.”[embedded content]For christ’s sake, this is a truly bizarre movement. Curiously, one of them seems to be a lapsed Marxist, but still spouting Marxist...

Sort of. Right here, here, here and here.Or here:[embedded content]What odd times we live in.But of course his views can change rapidly. I imagine there will be a fire-storm of conservative and libertarian outrage in the coming days, which I really can’t wait to see. Grab yourself a beer and let the fun begin!

For those of you who want a good list of critical analyses and critiques of Postmodernism, now updated.General Critiques Bawer, Bruce. 2012. The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind. Broadside Books, New York.Dennett, Daniel. 1998. “Postmodernism and Truth,” Butterflies and Wheels http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2003/postmodernism-and-truth/Detmer, David. 2003. Challenging Postmodernism: Philosophy and the Politics of Truth. Humanity Books,...

At least in terms of public rhetoric as described here and here. It is difficult to see how he could do both this and cut taxes (a promise of his) without driving the US into deep, deep deficits.We can also turn to Chapter 12 of Trump’s Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (New York, 2015). I am not sure how much weight one should attach to this supposedly ghostwritten book, which Trump signed off on. But for what it is worth we find the book praising infrastructure projects as a...