> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of JKSCHW at aol.com
> << I think I have a lot more time for Mr Anderson's stuff than most here.
> English Questions is well worth looking at, as was his recent short book
> on postmodernism. His assessment that the right is more thoughtful than
> the left these days is not so wrong. >>
>
>I don't see many righests I would
> regard as thoughtful or evwen interesting. Fukayama wrote a book that
> deserves attention--The End of History Thing. What else? Bloom's
> Closing? You
> gotta be kidding. Bork's Slouching? Not to mention the worthless
> racist dreck
> churned out by Murray & Herrnstein, the Thernstroms, etc.
I find that conservative writers have become intellectually lazy in many ways; a generation ago, conservatives were battling the left with a wideranging attack on the welfare state and liberal culture. With the advances of Reaganism and Thatcherism, along with the fall of the Berlin Wall, conservatives have moved into a defense mode, promoting the present in panglossian terms of the best of all possible worlds. They are increasingly ignoring substantive responses to oppositional critiques in favor of rhetorical dismissal and mocking -- the recent straw man denunciations of the "mindlessness" of the Seattle/DC protests being a good example.
At a personal level, I've been incredibly disappointed in the conservative teachers here at Yale Law; their "law and economics" is of the mindless defense of the present corporate law with little engagement of any radical economic critiques. Where a generation ago they were storming the gates of Keynesian economics and the regulatory state with strong critical engagement, law and economics types in law are burrowing into the most narrow questions while retreating from the larger issues where they might have to engage more radical arguments.
As for the left, there are many radical thinkers who are too quick to engage in solipsistic debates with little engagement in the broader world, but there are still an amazing array of good thinkers out there. They are often heavily disengaged from the activist community, but even that seems to be changing.
-- Nathan Newman