Justin Green

Political Theory and Punditry from a native of Flyover Country

Tumblr Crushes:

Highly scientific.

Tumblr Crushes:

My tumblr crush list remains essentially unchanged since, well, forever. (although Torie frequently makes an appearance)

But a quick note. By my quick, personal (sorry if you don’t agree, but I ain’t changing it) labeling:

5 progressives;

3 libertarians;

One lonely conservative.

Bring your conservative friends to Tumblr!

Tumblr Crushes:

Been a while since I’ve posted one of these.

On a side-note, yesterday was an opportunity to hang out with the wonderful people behind Political Language and Pantless Progressive.

So here — follow all these people. You won’t regret it.

Reminder: My standing policy is to accept all requests from Tumblrs to meet up when you’re in the city. Seriously. It’s fun.

Tumblr Crushes:

Really slow week on my end. I promise to do a little better next week. In the meantime, here are some people you need to be following.

Tumblr Crushes:

I rarely post this on my main blog, but these people are too good not to share with my followers. Follow them all!

Here We Go

And thus begins my adventure with Leo Strauss. Pray for me.

On the Social Contract

My friend PoliticalProf has written a rather scathing post directed at libertarians. Here’s the conclusion of his piece:

Stop claiming no decision or action taken by anyone else can ever be legitimate over you in any way. Just stop.

Let me presume (correct me if I’m wrong) that PoliticalProf was responding to this recent post from my friend LaLiberty.

This debate warrants further discussion. Before going further, allow me to post a quick disclaimer:

While I hold (to a degree) a libertarian streak, you won’t find the non-agression principle at the core of my political philosophy. It strikes me as something that, while admirable, isn’t going to happen. Political societies are built on complex webs of loyalties, power relationships and myths. That might not be ideal, but it’s the reality.

So let’s chat about the social contract. Before proceeding, please make sure you’ve read (in full) the posts by PoliticalProf and LaLiberty. They should help clarify a few questions that may arise on the way.

seecircumlocutory:

Goldman Sachs Contributoins

Rather than pontificating on something I know little about, I’m going to pose a few questions for the political scientists of Tumblr.

Is there an impact on giving periods for candidates running unopposed? Will Obama, for instance, see dramatically increased fundraising once he has an opponent and a nearing election? Would such fundraising numbers have looked similar for Bush in 2004?

(via seecircumlocutory-deactivated20)