Philosophy, et cetera

Suppose you discover that your elected representative is a (literal) Nazi, who enjoys using racist slurs and openly advocates for reinstitut...

Jason Brennan argues that most people can't have the faintest clue about the expected value of voting for either candidate in an elect...

There's a certain dialectical move I sometimes see, wherein you criticize someone's political conduct as unreasonable on grounds tha...

It's interesting to compare the ways we talk and think about political vs non-political (civic/philanthropic or market) agents, advocacy...

Michelle Goldberg has an excellent opinion piece in the NYT on the recent ' civility debate ': The norms of our political life re...

To follow up on my last post , let's consider a Regan-esque  case for voting. The set-up:  Suppose there are two candidates, Good and ...

In ' Why Citizens Should Vote: A Causal Responsibility Approach ', Alvin Goldman argues that (i) there's a sense in which each v...

Hilzoy is, as usual, spot on : This is an instance of something that generally bothers me about many discussions of politics: the assumption...

Many are complaining that by reaching out to Rick Warren , Obama is offering a slap in the face to progressives. This is silly. Yes, Warren ...

A commenter recently criticized a post of mine for being 'partisan'. This strikes me as illustrating a common confusion regarding c...

In yet another great diavlog, Will Wilkinson talks with Jason Brennan about his thesis that some people should refrain from exercising the...

Peter Levine makes a nice point about value judgments in testing : It would be possible to create a valid and reliable test of the 10 greate...

I'm beginning to think that most media coverage of the election should be shifted to the 'sports' section of the newspaper. Ther...

I previously wrote about the launch of Change Congress , and why it deserves our support. So, readers may be interested to learn that they...

The dismal ABC debate raises many questions about journalistic ethics and the civic obligations of the media. One thing I want to explore is...

This presentation, from Stanford's brilliant Lawrence Lessig, is the best thing I've seen all year. He discusses how institutional c...

David Brooks speaks of "negativity and cheap-shot campaigning". But it's worth noting that these are two very different thing...

Democracy is only as good ( or as bad ) as the demos . Cf. Matthew Yglesias : If you have the relevant social conditions to support good gov...

A NYT op-ed argues that we should lower the voting age to 16: Legal age requirements should never stand alone. They should be flexible and ...

After detailing substantive reasons for supporting Obama (see also my old post ) Hilzoy concludes : I sometimes wonder why, exactly, people ...