13 December 2011

Two very worthwhile articles

Very fine article up at The National Interest by Dr Amitai Etzioni.

‘[T]he nations of the euro zone must prepare the ground for fiscal federalism via a major community building drive, aiming to bestow on the zone the kind of loyalties so far only commanded by national communities—or they will have to scale back their conjoined activities, especially the common currency. A sociologist notes with much regret that there have been no successful drives to build communities composed of nations and that such a development—if it can be accomplished—would be slow and very demanding. It is too early to write a eulogy for the euro zone, but it is time to prepare the family for the sad state of the patient—and what is prescribed for him.’

And, on Naked Capitalism and The Distributist Review, the first part of a promised six-part series by Harvard postdoc Dr Andrew Dittmer, a warning worthy of George Orwell against the excesses of ideological libertarianism. Though extraordinarily witty, it cannot rightly be considered parody since a great deal of it consists of actual quotes from the work of an ‘economist’ of the Austrian school; definitely worth a read!

My apologies to my gentle readers; finals season being what it is, I should be as brief here as possible. Hopefully once I resurface I will be able to post something more substantive!

3 comments:

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  2. I am glad the interview with the libertarian quotes Hans Herman-Hoppe. Hoppe is often praised by Christian monarchists because he has argued that monarchy is the ultimate private government. Apparently, Hoppe's concept of monarchy would be OCP from the RoboCop movies, but with a crown. I really don't know why so many Christians find this ideology attractive.

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  3. Hi John!

    True, that. Sadly for us monarchists, the type of monarchy Mr Hoppe admires (or at least claims to) is the Enlightened Despot. All the right liberal ideology but, as Dr Dittmer very cleverly teases out, a highly totalitarian underpinning replete with Orwellian distortions of lexical meaning.

    I would like to hope that most of us monarchists have the good sense to endorse a more constitutional model... :P

    Best,
    M

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