- It’s really, really low to pick on Quakers trying to get a meeting house (read: church) built. Inga Saffron reports: Vandals with an acetylene torch crept onto the project’s muddy construction site in the middle of the night. Working out of view in the meetinghouse’s freshly cemented basement, they sliced off dozens of bolts securing the bare steel columns and set fire to the building crane, causing $500,000 in damage. Police detectives deemed the attack arson because of a series of confrontational visits from union officials days before the incident. They say the torch could only have been operated by a trained professional, and believe it was almost certainly the work of disgruntled union members.
- I read Dave Weigel regularly and recommend you do too. So yesterday there was an attempt to oust John Boehner as Speaker of the House. This involved several members voting for Allen West, who won’t even be part of the next Congress. Sometimes I think it’s a really good thing most people don’t pay attention to the petty issues and ways Republicans attack each other. Also: The Club for Growth says “no” on Sandy relief. #winning
- Eric Foner’s article on the Emancipation Proclamation is quite excellent. There’s a lot of bad history around and he cuts right through it. More importantly, he articulates something I wish I emphasized more – how revolutionary the directness of the document is: In it, Lincoln addressed blacks directly, not as property subject to the will of others but as men and women whose loyalty the Union must earn. There’s one line of the Proclamation in particular, where the Executive “will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom,” that not so subtly implies this.
- If I haven’t shared this with you yet, here you go: Ólafur Arnalds
-
About Ashok
I am a graduate student in political science at the University of Dallas who thinks the media is dumb for the most part, yet am immersed myself. I am looking to break my addiction, and this blog is part of the solution: Why not try to see what the past can tell us about the present, as opposed to seeing what the present has to say about the present only?
Currently residing in Cherry Hill, NJ. Facebook. Contact me.
-
OK, I’m sold. What should I read here?
- Analysis of The Gettysburg Address: Is Democracy Feasible?
- Analysis of Lincoln's "Second Inaugural:" Where do American virtues lie?
- Commentary on the Book of Jonah
- On "Batman Begins"
- From Love to God: On Hopkins' "As Kingfishers Catch Fire"
- On Emily Dickinson's "These are the days when birds come back..."
- The Coming Age: Macbeth and the Birth of the Modern World
- On Polemarchus: Commentary on the Republic of Plato, 331d-336a
- A Reading of Plato's "Crito"
- Towards a Nietzschean Understanding of Politics: Notes on "The Case of Wagner"
-
Archives
-
Meta
No Comments