Political commentary
For the past couple of months I have had a habit of checking the online version of the New Yorker daily for interesting essays and commentaries. Recently most have obviously been on the American presidential election, but also on the current financial recession, and other topics like the differing attitudes towards pre-martial sex between the republican and democratic camps in the US (I linked to this on Nov 4).
It is an unfailing liberal publication, delightfully intellectual and international. I can especially recommend articles and blog entries made by a guy called George Packer, a journalist and author who's written, we are told, famous articles on topics such as the Iraq war, politics, ideology and now the recent American election. I've added his blog to my links here. Check it out.
One of his main arguments is that conservatism and a blind faith in the unregulated market has swung, hegelian style, towards a time of liberalism, and a faith in a government of social welfare. One has to keep in mind that he talks about this from an American perspective, where the idea of public health care used to evoke dark images of 'Big Government'. And nothing embodies this change more to him than the election of Barack Obama for president. The 'tide of liberalism' as he discusses it would hardly be such a big shift in Europe. The pendulum swings more gently here one might say.
He's also reported from Burma, from the very relevant perspective of a journalist from a free country visiting colleagues in a country not so free (see the link in my previous entry 'Back ache').
Now I'm going to blow my nose, and crawl into bed with my latest favourite book. 'Farmhouse Cookery, Recipies from the Country Kitchen'. I will, by the time I go home to Sweden for Christmas, have mastered the skill of making pies. Proper English pies.
Night night.
It is an unfailing liberal publication, delightfully intellectual and international. I can especially recommend articles and blog entries made by a guy called George Packer, a journalist and author who's written, we are told, famous articles on topics such as the Iraq war, politics, ideology and now the recent American election. I've added his blog to my links here. Check it out.
One of his main arguments is that conservatism and a blind faith in the unregulated market has swung, hegelian style, towards a time of liberalism, and a faith in a government of social welfare. One has to keep in mind that he talks about this from an American perspective, where the idea of public health care used to evoke dark images of 'Big Government'. And nothing embodies this change more to him than the election of Barack Obama for president. The 'tide of liberalism' as he discusses it would hardly be such a big shift in Europe. The pendulum swings more gently here one might say.
He's also reported from Burma, from the very relevant perspective of a journalist from a free country visiting colleagues in a country not so free (see the link in my previous entry 'Back ache').
Now I'm going to blow my nose, and crawl into bed with my latest favourite book. 'Farmhouse Cookery, Recipies from the Country Kitchen'. I will, by the time I go home to Sweden for Christmas, have mastered the skill of making pies. Proper English pies.
Night night.
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