War and Warming: Polemical Blowback
Of all the sources of unintended consequences, war probably is the greatest. The forces set in motion rarely stop where the participants expect. The Civil War helped spawn the large industrial...
View ArticleDon’t Talk Like a Twit
I was hitchhiking around England in the Spring of 1983. It happened to be the middle of an election campaign: Margaret Thatcher was running for re-election against a professor named Michael Foot, who...
View ArticleSpeak out for the World our Kids Will Live in
Frank Luntz, the Republican focus group wizard, says a magic phrase for Republicans is “for the children.” Talk about kids, and voters are with you. So what do people who care about our habitat talk...
View ArticleThe Personal Is Ideological
I’m looking at a letter I received last fall from the Social Security Administration. It’s a statement of my account: how much I’ve contributed, how much I will get each month when I retire, how much...
View ArticleDefending the Commons, Defending Life
In a sense, President Bush has done humanity a service. He has provided a foil in a drama that was lacking one, and set in motion a politics that did not before exist. The president did not invent the...
View ArticleCommons Language: Provide the Words and They Will Speak
Language is a silent commisar in our political and economic life. What we can say – what we even can think about – is a function largely of the words that are available for us to use. “It is hard to...
View ArticleDon’t Talk Like a Twit
I was hitchhiking around England in the Spring of 1983. It happened to be the middle of an election campaign: Margaret Thatcher was running for re-election against a professor named Michael Foot, who...
View ArticleSpeak out for the World our Kids Will Live in
Frank Luntz, the Republican focus group wizard, says a magic phrase for Republicans is “for the children.” Talk about kids, and voters are with you. So what do people who care about our habitat talk...
View ArticleThe Personal Is Ideological
I’m looking at a letter I received last fall from the Social Security Administration. It’s a statement of my account: how much I’ve contributed, how much I will get each month when I retire, how much...
View ArticleDefending the Commons, Defending Life
In a sense, President Bush has done humanity a service. He has provided a foil in a drama that was lacking one, and set in motion a politics that did not before exist. The president did not invent the...
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