TLP Weekend Edition (June 8-9, 2024)
TLP Weekend Edition (June 8-9, 2024)
What we're reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.
📖 “The rise of the abundance faction,” from the Niskanen Center and Modern Power: David Dagan introduces a great new Substack series on this important intellectual and political movement—from the center-left and center-right—focused on overcoming scarcity and captured/dysfunctional government on issues ranging from energy and housing to transportation and health care.
📚The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War, by Giles Tremlett: A masterpiece! The book on the heroic, doomed efforts of the International Brigades—”35,000 volunteers from sixty-one countries around the world came to defend democracy against the troops of Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini.”
📖 “The Tower and the Sewer,” by Mark Lilla: In The New York Review, dedicated liberal Mark Lilla gives a fair yet critical reading of a host of prominent “post-liberal” writers from the Catholic right. He says that earlier versions of their ideas offered important insights into the spiritual malaise plaguing many Americans from excessive individualism on offer from the cultural left and economic right. He writes about his own students interested in their ideas:
Like them, the students I meet feel the hollowness of contemporary culture, which is now heightened by the ephemeral yet fraught online relationships they have with others. So one can understand their romantic infatuation with the notion of Catholic tradition and its intellectual heritage, which promise structure and spiritual depth. (Something similar is happening to Jewish students drawn to the Modern Orthodox movement…) This makes them highly susceptible to dreams of returning to premodern Christian social teachings that would undergird a more decent and just society, and more meaningful personal lives for themselves. This is a vain but not contemptible hope.
But Lilla believes more recent works by these authors careen off track into less persuasive political polemics that reveal a “psychology of self-induced ideological hysteria, which begins with the identification of a genuine problem and quickly mutates into a sense of world-historical crisis and the appointment of oneself and one’s comrades as the select called to strike down the Adversary—quite literally in this case.”
📖 The debate over “neo-populism,” featuring pieces from David Leonhardt, James Pethokoukis, and Eamon Javers: Here’s a starter-kit of good arguments and debates on the emerging trends in both political parties focused on the future of governmental policies and the potential for new working-class coalitions based on economic populism and cultural moderation.
🎸 Grace Cummings, Ramona: Melbourne, Australia-based singer Grace Cummings has pipes like no one’s business. This Jonathan Wilson-produced gem features great songwriting, singing, and orchestration. Check out the track “Common Man” to get the basic vibe of this soon-to-be star.
🏏 T20 Cricket World Cup, various sites in the U.S. and West Indies: Americans hosting and watching cricket? Yes, and it’s fantastic! The U.S.A. already beat Canada in the tournament opener and won a thrilling, upset victory against Pakistan on Thursday in Dallas. Check out matches this weekend including the Netherlands vs. South Africa, Australia vs. England, and India vs. Pakistan.