Sanford Levinson‘s Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We The People Can Correct It) is a truly depressing book. As I read it last night and this morning–in preparation for a meeting today with this semester’s Wolfe Institute Faculty Discussion Group–I grew increasingly enraged, perplexed, and then, finally, even more convincedContinue reading “Our Truly Messed-Up Constitution (And Those Dedicated To Keeping It That Way)”
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Ronald Reagan and the Casual Invocation of ‘Lynching’
In March 1983, Anne Gorsuch Burford, the chief administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, fired Rita Lavelle on charges of having abused the $1.6 billion Superfund that the US Congress had earmarked for cleaning up chemical spills and hazardous waste dumps. Allegedly, Superfund monies were being steered to Republican officeholders seeking relection. A few weeks later,Continue reading “Ronald Reagan and the Casual Invocation of ‘Lynching’”
Arendt and Sontag on Conservatism, Romanticism, and ‘Interesting’ Politics
Last week at Brooklyn College, the Wolfe Institute‘s Spring 2012 Faculty Study Group met to discuss Corey Robin‘s The Reactionary Mind, which aims to identify substantive theses central to that political tradition by way of an intellectual history of conservatism; more precisely, by close readings of some central works of the conservative canon. (The Faculty Study GroupContinue reading “Arendt and Sontag on Conservatism, Romanticism, and ‘Interesting’ Politics”
Samir Chopra 