The Story Behind ‘Epistemic Closure’
Posted by Ryan Dawkins
I have been wanting to write about the ongoing debate raging in the blogosphere regarding the idea of epistemic closure and the intellectual health of not only the political right, but the left as well. To my surprise, The New York Times actually outlined the basic contours of the debate pretty well yesterday. Rather than reinventing the wheel, here is what the Times had to say:
The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism’s proud intellectual history. First used in this context by Julian Sanchez of the libertarian Cato Institute, the phrase “epistemic closure” has been ricocheting among conservative publications and blogs as a high-toned abbreviation for ideological intolerance and misinformation.
President Obama: The Misunderstood Moderate
Posted by Ryan Dawkins
On Friday, David Brooks wrote a column lamenting the dire and depressed state of the political center in America. Adhering to a political philosophy that combines the best aspects of the thinking of Edmund Burke and Alexander Hamilton, Brooks places himself in the political center, calling himself a progressive conservative. After a brief interlude of hope of a centrist revival in the United States with the election of Barack Obama—a man who promised to move beyond the stale polarities of the past—Brooks notes that his fleeting optimism turned to cynicism, as America’s politics have become as polarized as ever.
Dividing the Opposition: Immigration Reform and the GOP
Posted by Ryan Dawkins
On Friday, Mother Jones Magazine published an online article describing the ways immigration reform, if introduced before November, could splinter the GOP in the run-up to the mid-term elections. It makes for good and interesting reading:
The Republican Party got badly burned when Congress last considered immigration reform in 2006 and 2007. Some GOP legislators, including Sen. John McCain, championed a bipartisan bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. But this proposition outraged the conservative base, who decried it as an "amnesty" for law-breakers. The right-wingers won the day—their attacks torpedoed the legislation. But this victory came at a cost. George W. Bush had worked hard to woo Latino voters, hoping to bring them into the GOP fold. In the 2008 presidential election, however, Latinos flocked to vote for Obama. Such fights "underscored their divisions—between their rural and conservative blue-collar supporters and their more business-oriented and pro-trade segments of the party," says Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. And the party has yet to recover from the fallout. "Republicans ought to be embracing them instead of chasing them away," says Davis, referring to immigrants. "It hasn't. It’s gone from bad to worse in some ways."
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