Democracy and Freedom

From further on in Berlin's essay, I come to the section about sovereignty, and how democracy and freedom are really fundamentally different things. The argument, which the likes of John Stuart Mill have made, goes like this: a popular government can oppress its people just as easily as an undemocratic one. Hitler was elected. Popular referenda frequently decide to oppress gay people in this country. Not only are liberty and democracy different, they seem to have a tendency to be at odds with each other. I think I have a bit of an answer to this problem, and ironically it is the same as the solution to a rather opposite problem that arises out of Rousseau's radical democraticism. 

The Problem With Rational Liberty

So I'm rereading Sir Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty for my Modern Political Thought class, having read it two months ago for my Intro to Political Thought class, and I am having various reactions to it. These are mostly criticisms of some of the doctrines described therein about such things as rational liberty, and even really liberty in the first place. 

If it's not against the rules, it's not cheating

So evidently Scott McCarron has accused Phil Mickelson, John Daly, and various other professional golfers of cheating. In so many words. And dozens of other players have called their behavior "inappropriate," seeking an unfair advantage, etc., though not using the word cheating. They are incorrect, and Phil's response, that the blame should go to the governing body and not to the players, is absolutely right.

Question Time

President Barack Hussein Obama is a brilliant politician. I have thought that most of the time I have been aware of him, though over the past few months my conviction has wavered. I am now returned to confidence in that opinion. The reason: his "question time" with the House Republican caucus.

And while you're at it, define "freedom," too

I just got out of my Modern Political Thought class, which was mostly a discussion of Sir Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty," and was themed around the question, "Is a lack of money a lack of freedom?" Many in the class argued that it was not, because no one was actively preventing this hypothetical poor person from doing anything. Berlin's essay somewhat supports this definition, at least as far as his "negative liberty" goes: he defines this as freedom by either an individual human or a group of humans to do as they wish without coercion from one or more other human beings. This is opposed to something like the human inability to, for instance, fly on our own power: no active human agent is preventing us from doing this. I have several problems with this definition:

Define "Blizzard"

Evidently, a blizzard must last for at least three hours to count. Fuck that. We had a temporary little blizzard here in Providence this evening, completely unexpectedly (by me), and it was awesome. Especially since I went walking through the snow clear across campus today only to discover my destination not really there, twice. (Which was actually kind of fun. Honestly.)

Here's another thing I liked about Obama's speech, and I kind of think it might be something I like about a lot of Obama's speeches. I didn't notice it at first, but some good old-fashioned hard numerical analysis revealed it and I think it's important. He doesn't use values buzzwords.

O! BA! MA!

I must say, I really, really liked the State of the Union speech. Sure, I don't agree with 100% of his policies; the spending freeze still sounds somewhat unnecessary, though they might be able to leverage it politically (I'm inclined to doubt this), and of course if I were President we'd be in many fewer wars right now. But none of that was new to this speech. My favorite line, in a sense the "thesis statement" of the whole thing, was, "I don't quit." That man giving that speech was not the kind of person who is going to settle for a world in which he can't really get anything done except for meaningless half-measured that are more in line with the opposition's worldview than his own. That was the main thing I wanted to see, and I saw it.

The Honest Hypocrite

I stumbled upon this train of thought thinking about how I rate the 43.5 Presidents that there have been so far, and specifically about Thomas Jefferson. I was recently discussing Jefferson and Adams with my grandmother, who commented that Jefferson is basically just a complete hypocrite. I can't really disagree with that assessment; after all, the man owned slaves, and the only way to avoid being a hypocrite if you own slaves is to be philosophically pro-slavery and Jefferson was not that, so he was a hypocrite (I think he was to some degree in other ways as well). Nevertheless, I'm quite fond of the man. Part of that, I think, is my general inclination in favor of anyone who calls themselves a Democrat, throughout history, but it's not just that; after all, I can't stand Andrew Jackson or Polk through Buchanan. So here's my theory: there are different varieties of hypocrites, and many of them are not all that repugnant, not necessarily. So here's my typology:

The State of the Union is...?

...stronger, I'd say, than most people give it credit for. The State of the President? A somewhat more complex question. All in all, though, I am excited for this speech, I think one way or another it will be a turning-point, and as an amateur political scientist at least that can't help but be fascinating.

New Foundation

Obama needs a catch-phrase. I've thought this for a while. He really does have a very ambitious domestic policy agenda, rivaling certainly that of the Great Society programs if not the New Deal (and maybe, just maybe, rivaling the New Deal as well). Every time a previous progressive President has presented such an agenda, it's had a catch-phrase. Teddy Roosevelt had the Square Deal, Franklin Roosevelt (obviously) had the New Deal, Harry Truman had the Fair Deal (they weren't great originalists, but whatever...), Kennedy had the New Frontier, and Johnson the Great Society. Other than the Fair Deal, most of these programs got enacted, and they certainly made great strides toward reshaping our society. Obama's policies are just as important and major and good (in my opinion), but he doesn't have a catch-phrase. Until now.

Massachusetts Very-Post-Mortem

My first substantive blog post! It gets to be first, even though it's a week out of date (horrors!), because I promised various people some in-depth analysis of Massachusetts, intending to do so on this blog, and then didn't get around to it for a while. So here goes. I am going to format this by asking myself a series of rhetorical questions, and then answering them, just because that's how this speech seems to be outlining itself in my head.

Layout help...?

In trying to edit the layout, I find myself running into the following problem: I would like for the general aesthetic of the site to be kind of dark-ish, but I absolutely do not want the text of the blog postings to be white text on a dark background. Ideally the sides would be a picture of something, but I would definitely like for them to be a nice dark blue color and the middle not to be. Any ideas? I can't seem to figure anything out...

This blog exists!

...whereas it hadn't previously! 

For those of you who aren't acquainted with this song, the title is taken from the Jethro Tull song/album A Passion Play:

"Legends were born surrounding mysterious lights

Seen in the sky -- flashing!"

I expect that the bulk of the postings will be basically political in nature, essentially for when I have something to say that I want to say to the world as a whole that is too long for a Facebook status, but probably not everything will be in that category. I plan to customize the layout shortly.