Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
If Perkins, the Progressive turned New Dealer, spent her life addressing problems left behind by Greeley’s Civil War generation—corporate power, exploited labor, political corruption, poverty—Rustin spent his battling injustices that the New Deal generation didn’t address: racism, segregation, and the threat of militarism to world peace. No one in
... See moreGeorge Packer • Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
What distinguished libertarians from mainstream pro-business Republicans—Mailer’s parade of delegates in Miami Beach—was their pure and uncompromising idea. What was it? Hayek: “Planning leads to dictatorship.” The purpose of government is to secure individual rights, little else.
George Packer • Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
Bill Moyers recalled Johnson saying that he had delivered the South to Republicans “for your lifetime and mine,” which would turn the whole structure of politics on a fulcrum of color. In their direst visions, after the Goldwater convention followed hard upon the civil rights bill, neither established experts nor shell-shocked Negro Republicans ant
... See moreTaylor Branch • Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65
politics but Federal
Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
Obviously Reich’s influence went way beyond just me. Alongside other authors such as Anthony Giddens[411] and Jeremy Rifkin[412], he was instrumental in crafting the message of a new generation of progressive leaders that the era of the steady, lifelong job was over. In a more global and unstable world, lifelong education was the new key to providi
... See moreNicolas Colin • Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age
to participate in the great decisions of government. There was, Lippmann brooded, no “intrinsic moral and intellectual virtue to majority rule.” Lippmann’s disenchantment with democracy anticipated the mood of today’s elites. From the top, the public, and the swings of public opinion, appeared irrational and uninformed. The human material out of wh
... See moreMartin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
The three decades between 1869 and the end of the century were a Republican era in the White House as well as in the Senate. Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Harrison—all were Republicans. The Republican philosophy—that Congress should be stronger than the President, and the Senate stronger than the House—ruled.
Robert A. Caro • Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III
example, was limited to a very few topics
Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
2002, and compare the result with the information accumulated from