The noble history of US elections

http://www.cracked.com/article_16680_5-presidential-elections-even-dumber-than-this-one-somehow.html

Also: 50 years of fiscal conservatism, aka a graph of the debt. Triggered by the debt clock running out of digits.

John Stuart Mill: always right

In an RPG.net discussion, I asserted that liberalism (and AFAIK conservatism, but I didn't feel up to speaking for them) had no equivalent to Marx for Communists or Ayn Rand for Objectivists. There are various theories and theorists, certainly, but they don't have the same central importance. Someone suggested John Rawls; having read part of A Theory of Justice I disagreed; it's a nice exercise, but ultimately a big rationalization (and I say that as a social contract fan), not far off in principle but the whole abstraction of it bleeds away the relevance for me. I don't remember if someone suggested John Stuart Mill.

I'd still say we lack a central book or dogmatist, perhaps partly because liberalism permeates our culture so much we imbibe the ideas, but also because of the pragmatic nature and content of the ideas. But this article in the New Yorker makes me think John Stuart Mill deserves such a place if anyone does: "always right" by our standards, relatively early, and influential to boot.

( quotes )

Although:

( On the American Civil War )

The blockade making the difference between Union loss and victory isn't an idea I'm familiar with. Presumably Gopnik just means the South would have gotten its independence but even so, could food an arms shipments outweigh the inferiority in population, industry, and railroads?