The Rawness

Sarcasm and Snarkiness are both signs of childish or feminine behavior. Sarcasm is more common with teenage boys (as compared to how a Man would act) and Snarkishness is more common with teenage girls and women. I think that says something about liberals.

But, to your point. The two classic books of Liberalism are:
A Theory of Justice by John Rawls
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

A Theory of Justice either introduced or popularized almost all of the ideas that make up the current Liberal thought, like “Social Justice” (what he calls “distributive justice”), Tolerance as a political ideal, the Social Contract and “Justice as Fairness”.

Regardless of the specific ideas that are put forward in either book, they both talk about Liberty as being the ideal while advocating for soft Liberalism (basically, always being in favor of an ever growing state, though, they would never say that flat out).

Most other books that would get recommended would deal with a specific area of Liberalism like the Environment (Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, the book that started it all), Feminism (Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, again, started it all) or Ethno-centrism/Identity-Politics (I am not sure if any book is the “father” of the rest).

It is important to note that these are books that deal with Liberalism and not, necessarily, with Leftism where all you would need to do is read Marx and Engels.

Something else to note about these books is that the grand majority of modern Liberalism is “sectionalized”. That is, the wants and needs of the Afro-Centrists is often at odds with, say, the Feminists, which is at odds with the Environmentalists which is at odds with the Tolerance-crowd (i.e. Open Borders), which is at odds with…etc.

This is quite different than the old problem with Conservative where Main Street Republican were different than Wall Street Republicans. Luckily, for the liberals, the Neocons have done their best to destroy Conservatism.

T,

You strike me as a person that values reason and thought over some vague moral sense of what ought to be, so I will spend some time responding to your post. I wouldn’t have done the same for Sean Hannity or O’Reilly.

The conservative/liberal dichotomy is a false one I believe as most people fall into groupthink and fall onto one of two sides on all issues, which is ridiculous. So in that spirit, I’ll just pick two topics to go into that I know you’ve commented on previously: economics and race.

On economic distribution:
At the heart of the liberal philosophy on this issue, is a struggle to ensure the working man be as fairly compensated for his work as possible. I don’t believe unchecked welfare and giveaways are true to this philosophy. Similarly , I don’t believe Dick Fuld who received over $300M in compensation for driving Lehman Bros. into bankruptcy is true to this philosophy. The role of the liberal politician is to ensure that fair paying jobs ARE available in all communities so that if any citizen truly wanted to work and earn a decent living, he can do so. Increase the opportunity cost of not working by increasing the minimum wage. I’m more likely to work if Walmart is paying me $10/hr, but welfare is offering $5/hr, than if Walmart in absense of regulation offered me $5.50, while welfare offered me $5.

I used to be more of a libertarian on economic issues, but this economic crisis has forced me to revisit some of my views on this. If anything, this crisis has proved that a true free market devoid of gov’t oversight WILL lead to overzealous market leaders seeking to game the system. Similar to the theoretically optimal, but impractical political system of the “philospher-king”, the unbridled free market capitalism that republicans have long pushed with low to no taxes for corporations, and little regulation will eventually implode when a few very powerful entities continue in that neverending pursuit of capital growth..

The trap that many working & middle class republicans have fallen into on this issue, is that they’ve voted against their own economic interests for decades, because they’ve put more weight on social and moral issues that often have less impact on their day to day lives than economics.

A lot of republicans, probably yourself included, will have to own up to the fact that they’ve been fucked by the financial elite.

On race:
Ehh…I’m too tired, but I may do another post deconstructing your favorite book by Larry Elder.

As for your request for books, I don’t have any (don’t read too many political books), but here’s an interesting article about how the Democrats could reposition themselves to capture some of the republican base.

http://edge.org/3rd_culture/ha.....index.html

I’m not of the left, but besides John Rawls, the following seem to be fairly respected and broadly of the left:

Sarah Moller Okin
Thomas Frank
Martha Nussbaum

Paul Krugman used to be a very respected economist, before Bush hatred sent him off the deep end.

As for the old classics, you might revisit people like Rousseau, Mill, John Dewey etc.

It looks like the comment system munched my first try, so now you get the version without links.

“The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs.

“Lies My Teacher Told Me”, by James Loewen

Paul Krugman’s writings for Slate were the good stuff that got him hired to write crap for the NYT.

A while back, I enjoyed the columns of William Raspberry. Apparently, there is a compilation, “Looking Backward at Us”. I was impressed by his thoughtfulness, his anti-sarcasm if you will.

“The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era”, by David Halberstam (1965!) Includes coverage of the early Vietnam battle of Ap Bac. He’s a fantastic writer.

I had to dig deeply into my memory here.

If Richard Feynman counts as a liberal, you can read “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” Physicist game!

He’s not liberal at all, but I always recommend Theodore Dalrymple to anyone willing to listen.

Ha, I just got an advance copy of Theodore Dalrymple’s upcoming book “Not with a bang, but with a whimper” today! own a copy of Feynman’s book also but haven’t read it yet. i’ve actually owned it for years but just never got around to it.

I don’t have “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” but I have Loewen’s latest book Sundown Towns. I plan to get the rest of his stuff. He also has an Audio CD series offered exclusively through Barnes and Noble’s Portable Professor series that is REALLY good.

I only know Krugman through his NY Times stuff, but I absolutely loathe him. I respect a liberal who has no knowledge of economics pushing socialist crap, but it’s really infuriating to see someone who actually knows economics well pushing it, because it means he’s deliberately being a sophist.

No idea who WIlliam Raspberry is, I’m interested. I’m going to look him up now.

Good stuff Thursday, thanks. You ever gonna update your blog or is it done?

Thanks for the article brother.

Good stuff, but I’d love to read something that advocates a more radical form of liberalism, but not from a well thought-out viewpoint and not just a knee-jerk reactionary shrill viewpoint.

T, it is difficult, nowadays, to find a book that promotes a universal form of radical Liberalism because of how splintered it is.

For instance, a bunch of Feminists would likely be on board for some type of Reparations whereas their Union supporting blue-collar picketers would be absolutely against it.

But, if you are looking for something that would, at least, appear well-researched and radical, then you need look no further than Noam Chomsky. However, he doesn’t, as far as I know, actually advocate anything positive. That is, he doesn’t actually say what he thinks our Environmental policy should be, only that our Military is always wrong.

In short, if it attempts to be all-encompassing, then it can not be radical. If it is radical, then it can not be all-encompassing.

Not sure how giving Harvard educated suits in Washington $700,000,000,000.00 to spend buying up garbage from Harvard educated suits in New York is getting us unfucked by elites.

Plenty of people got duped (in the relatively-free market) into paying suits big commissions for risking their money. Now, in the not-at-all-free market bailout, the suits are going to take your money and risk it whether you get duped or not.

PS This is why people “vote against their interests” by voting against liberals.

A Theory of Justice and On Liberty are two liberal classics that I read in public policy grad school.

One suggestion, and I’m not sure if it fits what you’re looking for, is on the area of free trade.

Skim, or read book reviews of, “Kicking Away the Ladder” by Prof. Ha-Joon Chang, a Korean Oxford professor, who argues that no country ever got rich through free trade. Instead, most wealthy countries got rich through high tariff, protection of infant industry policies, but once they got there, they “kicked away the ladder” and prevented developing countries from using the same policies by using mechanisms like WTO and GATT to prevent protectionism.

Guerrilla Warfare
by Ernesto Che Guevara.

Great book. http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ.....ive=380601

The G Manifestos last blog post..Bloody Week in Tijuana: By The Numbers

Is liberalism even possible without rampant intellectual dishonesty?

I’m going to suggest an article – http://www.socialanarchism.org...../index.php – by an anarchist responding to Pinker’s Blank Slate book. And I think Blank Slate is very worthwhile, as well.
On hardwiring issues, in terms of why children turn out as they do, Judith Rich Harris is interesting. She has blogs supporting both of her books (No Two Alike, The Nurture Assumption) which are a cheap and easy way to sample, and to see if you want to go for the book.

I don’t know about all this other liberal conservative nonsense, but you know I come through with some real shit, and none of this psuedo-opposition. left right, liberal conservative, the one two punch of the global elite…

I present to you:

The Right to Be Greedy. Theses on the Practical Necessity of Demanding Everything.

The impoverished man typical of capitalist society, the so-called “greedy” man, is the man who is only excited by money, who is only interested in fragments of other people ? in buying their skills, their services, their products, and the rest is “none of his business.” He lives in a world of prostitutes, that is, a world of proletarians. He is the master of the partial appropriation of man by man, that is, of exploitation.n1

The rich man, the greedy man of communist society, is the man who has discovered how to appropriate the richest “thing” around, the most interesting and valuable object, the subject, beginning with the appropriation of himself as such; the man who has socially mastered the possibility together with the necessary conditions of this total appropriation of man by man, the coherence of whose social life is the self-need of man. This is the secret of what we mean when we say: the negation of capital is the realization of real wealth, subjectively and objectively.

The communist egoist, the genuinely greedy person, wants other subjects. The narrow egoist, the exploiter, only wants something from them.

Also,

John Taylor Gatto’s books – like Dumbing us Down, and the most important of all: The Underground History of American Education.

He analyzes compulsory “public” school system and its roots, and how it was forced on society by elites who needed a system to manufacturer classes of producers / consumers to fulfill the needs of industrial capitalism. He exposes the widespread myths confusing knowledge with “Education”.

Not explicitly leftist, or political, but its implications are.

Kenneth Rexroth; ‘Communalism’ and ‘An Autobiographical Novel’.

Christopher Hitchens; anything before 1992 is clearly left.

Michael Foot.

As much Trotsky as you can stand; or just check out the WSWS- World Socialist Website.

John Kenneth Galbraith, proud to tell the world that the only proof of a good politician is that he raises taxes.

And he’s an ex-communist enemy of the left, but Arthur Koestler.

America is a center-left country, so a lot of American center-leftists are suckups. Doesn’t make them wrong. But foreign leftists are a better read, IMHO. When you find stuff you like better please post them.

“A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn is a good liberal/leftie big-picture book. Pretty informative too.

FWIW, I don’t disagree with a lot of leftie criticisms of the U.S., capitalism, etc. Their solutions, on the other hand …

Yeah, I heard Zinn is good for getting info, but bad for being intellectually disingenuous in the presentation of said info though. I plan to try it anyway.

I’m definitely a fan of anything you recommend to me Jonathan, I’ve been enjoying Redneck Manifesto greatly (even if my schedule and commute only allows me to read like 10 pages a day )

Who Rules America? had a big influence on me, here’s an excerpt. It seemed to provide an objective background for all the claims about “the people versus the powerful,” as well as explaining clearly the separation between liberals and Democrats.

T. diddles little kids, and loves ass-raping Joe Quesada.

That should be Robert Frank not Thomas Frank.

Also, I do plan to return to blogging. However, I am currently preoccupied with work and trying to get my “game” in gear. Women are great, but I really like writing too and do plan to do more of it.

T,

Glad you are willing to at least open your mind about the other side. The People’s History of the United States is indeed a good read, and should be required reading in High Schools, in my opinion.

A guy that nobody has mentioned is Upton Sinclair, who was a proud Socialist, back when it was somewhat acceptable to be one. The Jungle is his most famous, and is a book everyone should read — its really interesting at the very least. Also, his book Oil, which the movie There Will Be Blood is very loosely based on, is something everyone should read as well, as it very clearly outlines the way the Oil industry has influenced our government since the turn of the last century.

Cheers,

Rick

I’m sure you’ve read the first one

The black middle class by Ellis Cose

Yellow by Frank H. Wu

Two books that aren’t really “liberal” but are extremely instructive:
1) “Bowling Alone” by Robert (?) Putnam
2) “Albion’s Seed” by David Hackett Fisher

A better “liberal” book than Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas” is:
3) “Deer Hunting with Jesus” by Joe Bageant

And finally, a favorite of my younger brother:
4) “Environment, Scarcity, and Violence” by Thomas Homer Dixon,
or even better his new book “The Upside of Down” which got some mad reviews.

“Collapse” and “Guns Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond are somewhat lefty as well.

I’m disappointed with your take on Krugman. It comes across as “Yeah he won a Nobel Prize and was remarkably prescient on the housing downturn and its effects, but he’s a liberal and therefore by definition a sophist.” C’mon.

My problem with Krugman is that i think he’s a very brilliant economist, but no matter what his argument, he will try to twist it into a Bush bash or Democrat cheerleading, no matter how far a stretch that connection is. But others get into it much better than I do:

http://www.krugmanwatch.com/

http://cafehayek.typepad.com/h.....prize.html

He truly knows economics, and I used to love reading him, but ever since he got obsessed with Bush-bashing you can’t always trust his conclusions once it enters the topic of politics.

Hmmm… I won’t disagree that politically Krugman’s a one-note commentator. Not being a fan of Bush that hasn’t bothered me too much.

Granted, as a long-time reader of the Washington Post I’ve only been aware of him since January 08. And at that time I found him irritating, since it seemed that every other week he was extolling the virtues of Clinton’s healthcare plan and denigrating Obama’s. Funny how you forgive and forget once a guy is backing your political horse.

Thanks for posting those links, T.