The Americans for Prosperity group calling itself a movement provides contact only to donate, not explain why this has all the hallmarks of a wealthy (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
When is it an attack and when is it evidence?
08/20/2023 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn a blog entry here on another topic, I came across this that I wrote: ” I’ve come to realize that ’attacking’ is another word (Continue Reading)
I hate it when I agree with conservatives.
08/17/2023 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy friend works as a volunteer in a reception center for asylum seekers. The volunteers were just joined by professionals, referred to as staff. The (Continue Reading)
What Libertarians Believe = What Libertarians Don’t Know
06/28/2023 Pat Barrett Add CommentI am using ‘libertarian’ loosely, applying it to any economic political thinking that believes everyone thrives if everyone is on his own. Mitt Romney is (Continue Reading)
Lost Cause Redux
04/21/2023 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe Lost Cause is an affectionate term to refer to the “cause” of slavery. The Lost Cause was followed by The Fascist Terror State. The (Continue Reading)
Lest we forget……….
04/15/2023 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe may find a figure rising above the turmoil of history to legendary status. All well and good as long as we see that figure (Continue Reading)
The Link Between Autocracy and Conservatism
10/20/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe link is authority, the principle of authority. Conservative writings are replete with the citing of authority as essential to order and order they consider (Continue Reading)
The Rest of the Story………
10/12/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentYears ago Paul Harvey had a radio spot called The Rest of the Story where he presented a commonly known event or personality and then (Continue Reading)
A matter of perspective
10/10/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentI grew up reading Hiroshima. Lots of liberals did. We bemoaned the horror of it all and felt bolstered by the nearly universal condemnation of (Continue Reading)
Up-date on the old M.O.
09/24/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy Magnum Opus is devolving into a series of entries on a variety of topics. Eventually I will have to go over all of them (Continue Reading)
The Moment I Knew I Had Lost My Country
04/17/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentFor a lot of people, the election of Obama caused them to ejaculate, “I want my country back!” Eight years later, another president was elected (Continue Reading)
Personal responsibility versus social responsibility
03/12/2022 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsKurt Andersen has made clear the course of thinking in this country derived from Milton Friedman: nothing matters more that making money except making more (Continue Reading)
Who is the true egalitarian
03/04/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen a conservative savages a poor person, a person of putative lower status, or anyone at a disadvantage, we liberals rush to their defense. But (Continue Reading)
What I Am Most Proud Of
12/10/2021 Pat Barrett 6 CommentsIn his Atlantic article, “Are We Doomed?” George Packer has two lines that went to something I’ve been saying ever since the rise of Trump. (Continue Reading)
No Serious Consequences
12/05/2021 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsIsabel Wilkerson so deftly put into frame and focus the experience of Black Americans, I wondered as I read what the obverse of that coin (Continue Reading)
What’s been happening all along is………
08/16/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis is an attempt to put together the essential matters we all have to consider. I was inspired by Francis Fukuyama’s Origins of Political Order (Continue Reading)
Juneteenth
06/17/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentSigned into law today is a new federal holiday celebrating the time in June, 1865, that slaves in Texas found out they had been freed (Continue Reading)
Cultural Condescension
06/03/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn interviews with Eliot Cohen, the authors, Saldin and Teles (terrific book so far) quote him referring to Obama’s “cultural condescension” and to how furious (Continue Reading)
Whence the anger?
02/21/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentAmericans carry beneath their Hail Fellow Well Met exterior a lot of anger. You can see it when you are out driving. But where does (Continue Reading)
What there is pattern, there is intention
02/01/2021 Pat Barrett 1 CommentWhen artists bypass rules and structures, their work can sound chaotic to anyone expecting the traditional patterns of rhyme, harmony, rhythm, tone, pitch, scale, mode, (Continue Reading)
Up to here
01/16/2021 Pat Barrett 8 CommentsMaybe we felt bad about Trump supporters and Trump voters being ridiculed by the leading-lights of the major culture, esp for thinking they are the (Continue Reading)
Symbols are important
12/02/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentOur language sometimes scrunches word meaning down into what is commonly heard. Symbolism is one of those words, as in “It’s only symbolic.” That takes (Continue Reading)
oases of reinstatement but our long
11/23/2020 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsHonor was lacking. Biden will tsk tsk us for saying a lack of honor was the principle in the Trump administration and in the Trump (Continue Reading)