From Jacobin, Ian Williams on geek culture: What is Superman in the twenty-first century but a corporate mascot, albeit one with a lavish backstory? (and a response by Jase Short: “Geeks are more than passive consumers of corporate media”); and Gavin Mueller on how no act of consumption is completely passive, but even the most active types of consumption form a shaky ground for serious left politics. David Sessions on the scourge of liberal moralism. From Column F, why would anyone actively choose not to be a liberal? Here are ten possible reasons (and more). Colonialism though is not just about race, it is also about that great unmentionable, class: Deirdre O'Neill on the gentrification of the Left. Adam Puchejda interviews Zygmunt Bauman on the future of the left. Nudge nudge, drink drink: Joe Thorogood on the prosaic geographies of libertarian paternalism. David Brin on libertarianism, creativity and Silicon Valley and on how "neo-reactionaries" drop all pretense: End democracy and bring back lords. Geeks for monarchy: Klint Finley on the rise of the neoreactionaries. Welcome to the century of the Trotskyite monarchists, the revolutionary reactionaries, and the fringe politics of the paradoxical. An excerpt from The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine and the Birth of Right and Left by Yuval Levin (and more and more). Your genes influence your political views — so what? Larry Bartels on how genetic “explanations” of political attitudes and behavior are neither impossible nor illegitimate; they are just not very interesting (and why biology belongs in the study of politics: Scholar of genopolitics John Hibbins defends the field).
