Thanks, Libertarians. Also, Some Miscellany

Dwelling on the pervasiveness of totalitarian viewpoints these days has made me realize that, um... well... okay. I like libertarians. There, I said it. Thank you, libertarians. I'm glad there is you. I'm a conservative, and it seems I've posted enough in the last five years on this ol' blog about how you shouldn't fetishize liberty the way you do. After all, you share with conservatism an understanding of what is at stake between totalitarianism and individual liberty, and you strongly champion the latter in a world in which so many people are hypnotized by the former. Did I mention I'm glad there is you? I am. Every time I think of you. XOXO!!

Some notes:

I'll be posting on Goldberg's chapter on the New Deal this weekend. I love a book in which each chapter is richer than the last, and so far, this book delivers. The reason it will be read twenty years from now is that it is well argued and full of factual support, insightful at many points, highly non-trivial, and true. What's the genre of the book? Applied political philosophy. It's a philosophical analysis of "liberalism" and "fascism," using historical data. Historians and political scientists will be too quick to criticize it, just as the ichthyologist I mentioned a post or two back was looking at things a level or two in abstraction below his interlocutor. The book is philosophical analysis, not history or political science.

My series on war and moral responsibility continues. A post on Michael Walzer's article on Dirty Hands is coming right up.

Finally, this is a philosophy blog. I hope you'll dip into the archives. The posts there haven't aged. Unfortunately all the comments got deleted by Haloscan or somebody a year or so ago. But it's all good, as the kids say these days.