tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58498577055155892302009-11-27T07:45:57.727-05:00The Political Theory of Daily LifePatrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.comBlogger415125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-54928089506846179172009-11-25T15:40:00.001-05:002009-11-25T15:44:11.340-05:00

Thursday we commemorate the sacrifices and hardships of our forbears, and that first Thanksgiving feast that punctuated an otherwise difficult and often harrowing existence. We celebrate with tables that will (in many cases) overflow with food, and then with a weekend of shopping in anticipation of the gift-giving of Christmas. We give thanks for all that we have, in many cases, so much more

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-84153288271247852312009-11-23T09:27:00.010-05:002009-11-23T20:17:27.518-05:00

"What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter. The United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter." WILLIAM H. GROSSThe New York Times reports on its front page today that annual interest payments on the national debt will exceed $700 billion by 2019, compared to $202 billion today.In concrete terms, an

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-11428991694510734822009-11-20T09:36:00.004-05:002009-11-20T21:22:45.942-05:00

As reported in today's New York Times, New Orleans plaintiffs in a civil suit against the U.S. Government are elated at a ruling that has held the Government liable for the floods resulting from the landfall of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs, holding the Army Corps of Engineers "negligent [in the] maintenance of a major navigation channel [that] led to

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-7957867490200709822009-11-19T06:41:00.002-05:002009-11-19T06:44:04.320-05:00

This past weekend I had the pleasure and privilege of attending a conference at Notre Dame entitled "The Summons of Freedom." The conference was sponsored by The Center for Ethics and Culture, an interdisciplinary program founded and directed by Professor David Solomon of Notre Dame's Department of Philosophy. It was the tenth annual conference held by the Center, though the first I attended.

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-878125253748680572009-11-17T06:48:00.000-05:002009-11-19T06:52:52.985-05:00

On today’s campuses, the reigning principle on most academic matters is to avoid meddling in the affairs of others. Beyond very broad curricular requirements, we are to allow respective experts to patrol the boundaries and content of their own disciplines. It is considered to be bad form to snoop around in others’ business. But, this doesn’t seem to be a very good example of “critical thinking

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-56912321473178263822009-11-10T22:35:00.007-05:002009-11-11T07:13:07.974-05:00

Tonight I happened to attend a pair of extremely interesting, and strikingly juxtaposed, events. The first was a Bradley Lecture at AEI delivered by Peter Berkowitz entited "The New Progressivism." According to the description of the lecture - which is a fairly accurate summation - "The original Progressivism, the Progressivism that arose in the 1880s and 1890s and flourished during the first

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-50928612717839539802009-10-31T15:50:00.005-05:002009-10-31T15:58:45.314-05:00

I had a most enjoyable time at Mercer University in Macon, GA. A highlight was leading a discussion of the Odyssey with a number of students and faculty in their Great Books Program. In the evening I delivered a lecture entitled "The Sustainable Republic and the Alternative Tradition in America." The lecture was part of a series on the theme of "Republics, Ancient and Modern." I took the

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-40310625875261536092009-10-24T13:52:00.002-05:002009-10-24T13:55:14.061-05:00

I'll be delivering a lecture at Mercer University in Macon, GA, on Monday at 5 p.m. The title is "The Sustainable Republic and the Alternative Tradition in America." I join an estimable group of invited scholars in their lecture series entitled "Republics, Ancient and Modern." More information is here. If you're in the area, do drop in.

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-91160157823698706352009-10-20T00:23:00.003-05:002009-10-20T00:26:04.613-05:00

My latest column in the Georgetown student newspaper, "The Hoya":Diversity is a word that slips easily off the tongue of today’s college denizen, but rarely do we give it the scrutiny that it deserves. While academics will argue about nearly anything, one sees little evidence that there is much argument over the virtues or vices of diversity.A Diversity Initiative is currently underway at

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-81863898735444554782009-10-19T08:37:00.000-05:002009-10-19T08:38:08.930-05:00

Finally, a reckoning: Drew Gilpin Faust, President of Harvard, fesses up:At this moment in our history, universities might well ask if they have in fact done enough to raise the deep and unsettling questions necessary to any society.As the world indulged in a bubble of false prosperity and excessive materialism, should universities — in their research, teaching and writing — have made greater

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-55079161246855359602009-10-09T06:28:00.007-05:002009-11-06T05:37:48.935-05:00

A missive has gone out across the land and globe from the Director of the American Political Science Association urgently alerting members of the Association that Senator Coburn (R-OK) has proposed an amendment that would eliminate National Science Foundation funding of political science research projects. The letter reads:Dear Colleague,APSA has just learned that Sen. Coburn (R-OK) has proposed

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-74534194516154108272009-10-08T20:32:00.002-05:002009-10-08T20:36:16.585-05:00

Writing on the occasion of Ronald Reagan's death, the NY Times columnist David Brooks articulated the roots of Reagan's success in as accurate and succinct a way as I've seen. Reagan "revolutionized" American conservatism insofar as he transformed it from what had been a disposition to defend tradition and custom - and thus one with an orientation toward the past - to a movement motivated by a

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-32273467735698153972009-09-23T03:44:00.003-05:002009-09-23T03:49:34.054-05:00

I leave shortly for a train to NYC, where I'll be delivering a lecture today on liberal education. Among other things, I was looking forward to what had become one of my favorite little customs when I travel to NY - a trip to Arnold Hatters, a great hat store close to Penn Station. On a whim, I checked online to see if they have an online presence, just to have an idea of what I might look at

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-53846971330120449202009-09-21T09:19:00.001-05:002009-09-21T09:19:58.195-05:00

This article caught my attention yesterday - our hunger for electricity to power our "personal electronics" has grown so insatiable that very soon the United States will need to build "the equivalent of 560 coal-fired power plants, or 230 nuclear plants," according to the International Energy Agency. Since 1980 - when, on average, there were three "personal electronic" devices per house, that

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-37388553342070967202009-09-16T08:31:00.007-05:002009-09-16T08:49:32.516-05:00

It seems long ago now that I wrote an occasional column for "The Daily Princetonian." Let's say I had something of a contrarian streak, not feeling entirely persuaded that Princeton's orthodoxies were worthy of my fidelity. I realized one day that I'd struck a chord in high places when attending a gathering of Princeton's gliterati, and - wearing a self-identifying name-tag - a muckity-muck

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-48262579196691247812009-09-14T05:33:00.002-05:002009-09-14T05:52:18.899-05:00

Russell Arben Fox has treated us to his reflections of the recently concluded APSA here. It would be surprising if there were anything as thematic as what he reports here, given that the Association's annual meeting is a sprawling and massive sea of academics who at best gather in cliques of academic specialty, ideological similarity, or graduate school memories. But, perhaps at least by the

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-32691081181716321812009-09-09T09:32:00.002-05:002009-09-09T09:34:40.819-05:00

It has been a year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the subsequent near-collapse of the international economic system followed quickly by the massive increase of (at least visible) central government presence in nearly every aspect of our economic lives. In spite of this period of time that might permit reflection on these events, it seems we have yet to do a real accounting of the

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-86783434869638193662009-08-28T09:57:00.002-05:002009-08-28T09:58:57.061-05:00

I'm late to this, but have been spending the last few weeks of the summer break gorging on episodes of David Simon's acclaimed HBO series "The Wire." It is a fiercely gritty, profane, violent, tough-minded look at the inner workings of the city of Baltimore in its death-throes. The series is smart and sad, one in which people are more often than not trapped by a combination of circumstance and

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-5647728685456196852009-08-26T07:36:00.003-05:002009-08-26T08:07:54.742-05:00

From the indispensable Joe Bageant:"Dottie is doping out the Romney [WV] medical establishment for me: 'These Indians or Pakis or whatever they are run the hospital like it was a cheap motel. The place is dirty.... Anyway, I looked up our hospital on www.healthgrades.com. Cost me seven dollars. I learned that damned towel-headed doctor of mine has only four years of college someplace in South

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-57853950465297676072009-08-25T21:51:00.007-05:002009-08-26T08:17:17.619-05:00

Two seemingly unrelated stories:1. According to the White House OMB, the projected deficit over the next decade will be 9 trillion dollars. According to this story, this amount is "more than the sum of all previous deficits since America's founding." In case these amounts seem too vast to wrap one's brain around, here's a neat little program that might assist the mathematically bewildered.2.

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-80514424629764486722009-08-13T22:38:00.007-05:002009-08-13T22:56:42.878-05:00

Patrick Reilly of the Cardinal Newman Society weighs in on the EEOC's attempts to force Belmont Abbey College to cover contraceptives in its health care plan. Anyone who thinks that the "Benedict Option" is an option should note that the college was founded by, and still houses, a Benedictine monastery. The long arm of the gummint now has a longer reach than during the time of the first

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-38425874292790245552009-08-12T22:02:00.001-05:002009-08-12T22:11:22.091-05:00

Last week, Philip Bess - the noted Notre Dame University scholar of architecture - delivered a lecture in Washington under the auspice of the group "Conservatism on Tap." Bess's lecture was a first-rate summation of his book, Til We have Built Jerusalem, a remarkable and persuasive effort to relate the principles of new urbanism to natural law. In one arresting metaphor, he compared our current

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-47449362910041210472009-08-03T12:56:00.006-05:002009-08-03T13:22:31.743-05:00

Here's the text of the lecture I delivered for the ISI Honors Program Conference last week in Williamsburg, VA. It was a great group of students and wonderful faculty colleagues. Good times, good times.The lecture - which was too long by half - in a nutshell argues that a distinctive feature of Modernity is that it split apart our sense and experience of temporal continuity, fracturing the

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-78150745003455881572009-07-17T16:07:00.002-05:002009-07-17T16:09:55.976-05:00

Posts have been slow over the summer, a consequence of other writing projects. But, for the next two weeks things will grind to a non-virtual standstill: I'm off for some R&R and then the ISI Honors Program in Williamsburg, VA. We will return to our irregular programming here in August.

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849857705515589230.post-15001931814227711352009-07-17T06:59:00.003-05:002009-07-22T07:25:02.703-05:00

This article from today's Inside Higher Education informs us of a new study that measures higher education degree "productivity." But what, a curious reader might inquire, is meant by "productivity"? Using publicly available data (in hopes of making it easy for policy makers to replicate), the report starts with the total funding for each state's public colleges, combining state and local

Patrick Deneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05896083650697359163noreply@blogger.com7