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Politics

The Long View 2008-08-24: A Week before Labor Day

I find this satirical blog post by John J. Reilly pretty apt for the mood of our times. If you want a little context of what he was getting at, try this longer story “After the Eighth Day” for how the universal apocalyptic module in the human mind can transform

The Long View 2008-08-02: What is Happening in China; what is happening in America

The end of this blog post by John J. Reilly is an extended reflection on where he thought American politics was going. I’d say he guessed right. There are, I know, benighted Libertarians who say that any redistribution of income is illegitimate. For my part, I preach in season

The Long View 2008-07-27: Obama in Berlin

I’ve been enjoying vacation for a couple of weeks and thus the blog has been quiet, but let’s kick it back off again with The Long View from John J. Reilly. The occasion of then Senator Barack Obama speaking to an audience in Berlin gave John J. Reilly

The Long View: 2008-06-16 The Irony of Victory; The Two Swords; Habeas Corpus

John J. Reilly mentions Pope St. Gelasius I here in reference to the Two Swords of Luke 22:38. This is a minor and somewhat obscure reference in the Gospels, and is accordingly a somewhat minor element of John’s political philosophy: No doubt the doctrine in question is not

The Long View: Grand New Party

John J. Reilly’s review of Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam’s Grand New Party [Amazon link] encapsulates much of his political thinking, and should be regarded as one of his key essay’s on American politics. For example, John noted that the family structure of the 1950s was historically

The Long View 2008-05-31: Spelling Reform in the WSJ; The Socratic Struggle Session

John J. Reilly’s 2008 account of diversity training as a struggle session is a classic. He quickly intuited that the objective was mostly to provide legal and rhetorical cover in exchange for some time and money, a strange tax on business. A final point: Traditional autocracies were concerned with

The Long View 2008-05-26: The Return of History and the End of Dreams

Robert Kagan was a frequently reviewed author for John J. Reilly. The Return of History and the End of Dreams [Amazon link] was useful to John as he tried to generate a synthesis that would move us forward, instead of just arguing about which of our currently inadequate tribal positions