Search Results for: oakeshott

A stimulating podcast debate about (IMHO) the greatest political philosopher of the last century here. I met one of the discussants, Ian Tregenza, at the recent Oakeshott conference. He knows his Oakeshott cold.

by Matthew Sitman One of the first questions I get when a person finds out I work at the Dish, and that Andrew is not just my boss but my friend, is about how we met. Unlike most of my generation, and probably most readers of this blog, I first encountered Andrew’s writing in his … Continue reading How I Met Andrew Sullivan

Perhaps the prevailing theme of this blog these past seven years has been the hope and promise of the Obama presidency. I’ve long insisted that his record will only be fully understood after eight years, that his role as the liberal Reagan of our time could not be glimpsed fully in real time – the … Continue reading The Long Game Of Barack Obama

A reader writes: I’m know you’re getting a thousand-and-a-half of these emails today, but some bizarre, sentimental impulse compels me to write my own goodbye. It’s hard to see you go, and it certainly came as a shock: standing at the urinal yesterday between classes, bored out of my head and reading the Daily Dish … Continue reading A Blogger Breaks Free: Your Thoughts II

Reviewing Richard Evans’ Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History, Cass Sunstein argues that what-if scenarios aren’t, as E. P. Thompson put it, “unhistorical shit,” but rather an integral part of the historical enterprise: Here is another way to make the point. Social scientists test hypotheses. They might hypothesize, for example, that if people have to pay a small tax for … Continue reading Why What Almost Happened Matters