Daniel Little
photo: Pat Buchanan, Newsweek, March 4, 1996 The election of Donald Trump in 2016 presented mainstream America with a shocking wakeup: right-wing extremism, with its dimensions of Christian nationalism, white supremacy, racism, and anti-LGBTQ bigotry, had somehow wound up on the carousel, and was now in control. This shouldn't be a complete surprise, since the …
Continue reading "Origins of American right-wing extremism in the 1960s"
Think about the many fronts in the war on individual rights and freedoms in Florida and other red states: vague but harsh limitations on what teachers can teach in K-12 and public universities (link) faculty members fired for teaching about the racial history of the United States (link, link) widespread book bannings in libraries and public …
Du Bois, Diaspora of Africans to the Americas W.E.B. Du Bois is well known for his pioneering work in American sociology, and most especially his studies of the social situation of African Americans in the reconstruction South. He was a singularly important sociologist in his time, and a wide swath of Americans have read his …
Continue reading "W.E.B. Du Bois’ stunning modernist data graphics"
The persistent fact of racial disparities in the use of deadly force by police officers in US cities is an intolerable injustice. The Washington Post has maintained a database of police shootings since 2015 which includes shootings but not other causes of death; link. This database shows a glaring level of disparity between black, Hispanic, and white persons …
Is it still possible to think big in western democracies about social and economic change in a way that substantially improves the lives and freedoms of most of society? We see the deprivation and indifference of the economic system that has governed most industrialized countries for the past century and a half, leading to gross …
There is certainly a working class in the United States, and it is a majority of the population (persons who earn their livelihood through wage-paying employment). But it is highly fragmented, mostly in the service sector, unorganized, and often disinclined to believe in the possibility of serious social change. A recent Brookings research report by …
An earlier post (link) highlighted the growing severity of inequalities of wealth and income in the United States, as well as Elizabeth Warren's very sensible "billionaire" tax proposal. According to a 2020 article in Forbes, "According to the latest Fed data, the top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion (or 30.4% …
What were the social conditions that led many English intellectuals in the 1930s to engage in fundamental critique of the society in which they lived? Why was social criticism so profound and sustained in Britain from the time of Carlyle and Engels to the surge of English socialism in the 1930s? The answer, of course, …
The appeal of Marxist socialism -- communism -- as an alternative to the consumerism, inequality, and exploitation of European and American capitalism was a powerful draw for many intellectuals in the 1930s, especially in the context of the great Depression and widespread crisis and deprivation of the 1930s. This interest extended to many prominent American …
Continue reading "A 1934 debate about communism among American philosophers"
Nietzsche's anti-moralism is a key theme in his philosophy and civilizational criticism. He regarded traditional European morality as "herd morality", the deplorable consequence of Christian values of subordination and ressentiment. It is hard enough to find in Beyond Good and Evil or Genealogy of Morals a basis for criticizing even the most grotesque examples of interpersonal brutality and violence, and …
Continue reading "Can Nietzsche support a decent political philosophy?"
Understanding Society 