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Showing posts with the label rightist politics

Trump World: Thoughts from Goldberg

I wrote here recently about Omarosa. The tone of my comment was dismissive. You probably didn't believe, reading this, that I would return to the subject so soon. And I don't want to. But all the fuss about her -- her book, her tapes, her media tour -- even in the few days since I last wrote about her here, has exposed some important facts about the shaky coalition that now runs the country. Jonah Goldberg, portrayed here, writing for the old-line conservative journal National Review , catalogs the different worlds whence come this President’s appointees. His examples come both from those still at work within this administration and from those who have departed. Some of them are from the world of business or the military, like Wilbur Ross from the former or Jim Mattis from the latter ; others come from the Bannonite “counter-establishment,” (Bannon himself, and Gorka); others from the GOP hierarchy (Priebus, Spicer); others are movement conservatives, like Sessi...

Selections from a Correspondence

On Thursday I wrote here a brief notice of the passing of Jacques Barzun. Since then a fellow admirer of JB has asked me about two points: if I would care to comment on the tie between Jacques Barzun's thought and that of William James; and if I would share some selections from my correspondence with the former. Given the title of this blog, I can hardly reject the first of those invitations ... though I will put it off, perhaps for another week. Today, I will satisfy the second request. Here are four excerpts from Barzun's letters to me, each dated and preceded by some very brief comments by me (in ital) for context only. I won't even try to defend the views of mine that Barzun is criticizing here.  This is about him, not me. October 17, 1986. I had presumptuously made the case for libertarian political philosophy to him, while in the process dissecting what I saw as the faults of other libertarians, especially Robert Nozick. Jacques replied with good humor an...