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- Via Seth Masket, Andrew Sprung has written a sincere attempt to understand what he calls the "joyous cynicism" expressed by some political scientists, singling out Jonathan Bernstein as a prime example of this tendency. As Masket says, political scientists are less interested in advocacy and more interested in knowing how the system works -- the opposite of an activist repulsed by the impurities of politics. The "joyous" bit -- which I think is the wrong way of describing it -- comes from making your peace with the fact that politics will always be with us.
- Ezra Klein attempts to define the contours of income inequality (with graphs!) and concludes with five observations, one of which is "There's almost no relationship between the fortunes of the richest Americans and average Americans." Of course, one of America's two relevant political parties has made it their signature cause to make sure the wealthy pay as little in taxes as possible, and that regulation be kept to a minimum. That they are able to do this and still widely appeal to millions of non-wealthy Americans is, frankly, rather impressive.
- I don't get the point of Rich Lowry's year-end column celebrating the "fact" that America is "the greatest country ever" (a substantive critique can be found here). He doesn't use the space to expand on his and Ramesh Ponnuru's "American Exceptionalsm" thesis from last year, and there's not even any bashing of unAmerican liberals (William Kristol cheerfully takes up that noble cause). It's not even that I disagree with the metrics he uses to determine greatness, it's just that this "no apologies" approach to patriotism makes it difficult to take movement conservatism seriously.
- Remainders: The Founders were no libertarians; David Weigel's top ten conservatives to watch in 2011; new year, new wingnut Obama conspiracies; it could be Harry Reid broke so many filibusters because he faced so many filibusters; a photo tour of the relics of old Detroit; and we can (sorta) build water parks in Iraq but we can't afford to shore up basic infrastructure at home?
--Mori Dinauer
