The science on low-carb vs. high-carb diets
The subject of this post is pretty far afield from what I usually write about, but the book I just read is so brilliant I had to write a...
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Jul 22 min read
"Journal of a Dissenter," 1996-2024
Probably unwisely, I've posted my lifelong "intellectual journal" online, here . It's a very long document that no one could or would...
Jun 254 min read
NATO's endgame appears to be nuclear war
[This article was published at Compact .] The world is at its most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Back then,...
Apr 176 min read
Thoughts on the Gaza genocide, the worst crime of the 21st century (so far)
My journal helps keep me sane. From January to March I've occasionally jotted down thoughts on the horrors occurring every day in Gaza,...
Apr 1610 min read
Notes on botany
I've found politics so incredibly bleak lately, and I've been so frustrated by my inability to make any kind of difference...
Oct 16, 202325 min read
Postliberalism: a dangerous “new” conservatism
[This article was published in The Philosophical Salon.] In Wilhelm von Humboldt’s book The Limits of State Action (1792), one of the...
Sep 8, 20238 min read
Postliberals against the common good
[Published at Common Dreams.] “The Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history,” says Noam Chomsky. It seems...
Sep 6, 20238 min read
Nikole Hannah-Jones, Frederick Douglass, and the Left
[Published at Dissident Voice and other places.] Twitter conversations with public intellectuals are rarely worthy of note, but a recent...
May 18, 20239 min read
Love of freedom defines the political left, not the right
[This article was published at Sublation and other venues.] Political discourse in the United States consists largely of lies and...
May 2, 20239 min read
What “security threat” does China pose?
[This article was published at Common Dreams.] Everyone who abhors war, detests imperialism, and favors cooperation between nations on...
Apr 21, 20237 min read
The second Cold War is more dangerous than the first
[Published in Compact magazine.] Twenty years ago, Noam Chomsky published a bestselling book called Hegemony or Survival. Since then, the...
Apr 19, 20234 min read
The left and the war in Ukraine
[Published at Common Dreams.] To be a leftist in the United States is a dispiriting experience, but in the last year one of the more...
Mar 11, 202326 min read
Dusk in Vietnam
[This is a short story I wrote twenty years ago after visiting Vietnam for a couple of weeks. It starts with a dream and ends with...
Feb 25, 20237 min read
How to rebuild the left
[Published in Dissident Voice.] One might as well state the matter clearly: given the realities of global warming, rampant environmental...
Feb 3, 202321 min read
The righteous outrage of Norman Finkelstein
[A book review published at Common Dreams.] As I was reading Norman Finkelstein’s new book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!:...
Jan 31, 202355 min read
The Book of Joe: A Satire of Capitalist Society
Here's an insanely long post. It's actually a "literary experiment" I wrote almost twenty years ago (as the following preface says, which...
Nov 4, 202222 min read
Only class struggle can save the left
[This article was published at Sublation.] A striking paradox of the history of the left is that it is full of self-defeat. From the...
Sep 25, 20222 min read
A free copy of my book
Last summer I published the book version of my Ph.D. dissertation, bearing the ungainly title Popular Radicalism and the Unemployed in...
Aug 31, 202219 min read
"Race reductionism" threatens to doom the left
[This article was published at Sublation magazine.] The reparations debate is getting old. But it shows little sign of abating. Academic...
Aug 9, 202213 min read
The myth of the "moderate" American
[This article was published at Compact magazine.] In the United States there exists today, and has existed since at least the 1950s, a...
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