The decline of political terrorism & the rise of religious terrorism
The media has been reporting a lot about Anders Breivik. I’m curious about the tendency of some to label Breivik a “Christian Extremist”. Additionally, there is widespread repetition of the Norwegian official deeming him a “Chr…
“Fortress India,” things that make you go “hhhmmm”
I always consider Foreign Policy to be a shallower version of Foreign Affairs, but there are so many weird issues with this piece, Fortress India – Why is Delhi building a new Berlin Wall to keep out its Bangladeshi neighbors? First, the subhead. The uniqueness of the Berlin Wall is that it wasn’t meant to […]
Does heritability of political orientation matter?
At The Intersection Chris Mooney points to new research which reiterates that 1) political ideology exhibits some heritability, 2) and, there are associations between political ideology and specific genes. I’ll set #2 aside for now, because this …
The limits of the mean and the moderate
Red States vs. Blue States: Going Beyond the Mean:
In recent years, many scholars have explored the degree of polarization between red and blue states (red states are those carried by Republicans at the presidential level; blue states are those carried…
Lives of Confucius: Civilization’s Greatest Sage Through the Ages
Link to review: Lives of Confucius: Civilization’s Greatest Sage Through the Ages.
The Problem of Democracy
Link to review: The Problem of Democracy.
The Problem of Democracy
Link to review: The Problem of Democracy.
Political concordance among mates
A new study (which I can not find online yet) in The Journal of Politics has some interesting descriptive information on correlations between mates when it comes to politics:
On a scale of 0 to 1, where 1 means perfectly matched, physical traits (body …
The soft twilight of monarchies
Years ago I took a course on Tudor and Stuart England. Its primary focus was more on social and cultural aspects of British society at the time, rather than diplomatic history. Later I took an interest in the England of the Civil War era. One thing tha…
American Empire, American Bankruptcy
Image credit
Time has a worthwhile piece up, How to Save a Trillion Dollars. One thing the author brings up in relation to our exorbitant military spending is that in certain sectors the lead of the American armed forces technologically is such that…
Political moderation, education, and intelligence
After seeing this post up on how high information levels and education may lead to political polarization, I wanted to revisit the GSS data on political moderation and independence in light of educational attainment and intelligence. For the later I us…
Human population genetics & identity politics
Joshua Lipson has a column up in the Harvard Political Review, DNA and the New Identity Politics. I’m generally very keen on spreading insights from the biological sciences into other domains; not as an imperialist, but as a intellectual entrepre…
Culture differences matter (even within Islam)
I’ve been keeping track of events in the Arab world only from a distance. There’s been a lot of excitement on twitter and Facebook. Since I’m not an unalloyed enthusiast for democracy I’ve not joined in in the exultation. But I&…
The academy is liberal, deal!
A new article in The New York Times, Social Scientist Sees Bias Within, profiles Jonathan Haidt’s quest to get some political diversity within social psychology. This means my post Is the Academy liberal?, is getting some links again. The data wi…
What do the people think?
With all the geopolitical tumult and news I was a bit curious to see what The World Values Survey could tell us about public opinion in Egypt and Tunisia. Unfortunately, Tunisia hasn’t been in any of their surveys, though Egypt has. So I thought …
Polarization on abortion in the USA
Some comments below made me want to look at attitudes toward abortion in the USA by ideology over the decades. I know that political party polarization on social issues has played out mostly over the past 20 years or, but I assumed that this was less evident in ideology (mostly, liberal Republicans became Democrats and […]
Admissions of illiberalism
Recently I was having a twitter conversation with Kevin Zelnio and Eric Michael Johnson about the fact that I define myself as “right-wing.” Kevin kind of implied that I was poseur in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. I don’t wear my political beliefs on my sleeve too much in this space because 1) I find talking about […]
Why H. L. Mencken is popular with nerds
The 800-Pound Mama Grizzly Problem:
Ms. Palin, in fact, draws almost as much search traffic worldwide as the man she would face if she wins the Republican nomination: Barack Obama. And her name is searched for about 30 percent more often than the President’s among Google users in the United States.
Some members of Ms. Palin’s family […]
Tariffs, not trade?
In the the 19th century the Democratic party, rooted in large part among Southern planters who were dependent on exports of commodities and imports of finished goods, was the party of free trade. The northern Whigs, and later the Republicans, were the party of tariffs. They were the faction which drew support from the industry […]
Demographics as political destiny
From The New York Times, White Democrats Lose More Ground in South:
There are other signs that the realignment might not be permanent. Growing Latino populations in Florida and Texas, and in Georgia and South Carolina, could rearrange the political map again before too long.
And then there is the curious case of North Carolina. While Republicans […]