Reading @zachdcarter's wonderful book on the Age of Keynes inspired me to write this essay, which offers both an appreciation the book and reflections on the benefits of other modes of intellectual history. Thanks to @LDBurnett and @Ideas_History for posting it on the blog./1
Thinking about some recents posts as well as some of my own work, I wanted to call into question Keynes's notion about how ideas travel, by showing that the ideas of "practical people" (JMK said "men") can sometimes proceed those of "economists and political philosophers." /2
I encourage everyone interested in questions about approaches to intellectual history to follow @AAIHS@BlkPerspectives@JHIdeas@Ideas_History (just to name a few) as well as the many scholars/writers who are expanding the boundaries of intellectual history. /3
meant *precede* not "proceed." Thanks @bonnie_honig for the catch.
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One important point missing from the discourse about Steve Scalise calling himself ‘David Duke without the baggage,’ is that, when he used the label, this was already a viable political lane, one used to describe other politicians, before Scalise. /1 theguardian.com/us-news/2023/o…
In 1990, the Alexandria Town Talk used the phrase "David Duke without the baggage" to describe a winning political formula in Louisiana politics. /2
In 1991, U.S. Rep. Clyde Holloway, seeking to advance in the Governor's race, said he was "a great alternative to David Duke, without all the baggage."/3
A central fact is that, in the midst of a UAW strike, Trump spoke last night at a nonunion factory. Yet the @nytimes mentions this only at the end of the 6th paragraph and the @washingtonpost brings it up in only the 19th paragraph. These are failures of framing./1
It seems disingenuous for the Times subhed to claim that both Trump and Biden spoke to people "affected by the United Automobile Workers strike," without mentioning at the outset that only one of them spoke directly to striking workers. /2 nytimes.com/2023/09/28/us/…
Similarly, for the Post headline to be that Trump "demands union votes" without mentioning at the outset that he did so at a nonunion factory strikes me as somewhat misleading./3 washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/…
A few comments on this piece, which makes some good points but also imo mischaracterizes key issues. /1 nytimes.com/2023/03/27/bri…
To say, "Today’s left is less...patriotic than the country as a whole and less concerned about crime and border security," is to take the conservative critique of "the left" as accurate rather than the perspective of those who self-define that way./2
In contrast, this summation of the pre-Trump Republican Party accepts their self-description: "Republicans were mostly comfortable pushing for lower taxes and smaller government (other than the military)."/3
No doubt, GOP rhetoric in 2024 is "dark," perhaps unprecedentedly so, but this piece understates the continuity in the apocalyptic style in conservative political speech./1 washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/…
There's not much "sanguine optimism," in Ronald Reagan's fearmongering 1961 anti-Medicare speech, which ends with his claim that "you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children... what it once was like in America when men were free."/2 americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronal…
Here's a thread I did last year on a NY Times article that posited a similar discontinuity./3
Republican claims of being angry--visceral or otherwise--is often reported as being newsworthy in itself, in a way that it is not for other groups in society.
One of the modes of elite victimization is to take claims of anger among the powerful to be a self-justifying force, rather than to address the question of what justifies that anger. /2
A good question to ask is why are they angry about the enforcement of the law--in this case ensuring that the wealthy actually pay the taxes they owe?/3
"Punctured myths make us better students of history, but they leave nothing to live up to. Shame is a shaky foundation for any project of renewal." I'm not sure why the first claim necessarily follows or why history should necessarily promote a "project of renewal." /2
Moreover, I don't think that the history of "terrible subjects" is necessarily based on a model of producing feelings of "shame." /3