Michael Lind | The Smart Set

Which American Dream?

Michael Lind — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 11:30:30 +0000

Many across the political spectrum assert that the American Dream is endangered. No American politician would dare to question that the American Dream must be preserved. But what exactly is the American Dream? In his 1931 book The Epic of America, the historian James Truslow Adams popularized the term, defining the American Dream as “that […]

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The Fantasy Worlds of Politics

Michael Lind — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 12:56:12 +0000

Having lived and worked in Washington, D.C. for most of the last generation, I have been impressed with the growing gap between the political and economic realities that confront policymakers and the fantasy worlds that are home to many political activists, ideologues, and pundits. In domestic policy and foreign policy alike, things change slowly and […]

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Attack of the Partisan Zombies

Michael Lind — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 14:00:58 +0000

The election of 2016 revealed an American electorate more deeply divided than at any time in history — or did it? In reality, there were far deeper divisions among blacks and whites, Protestants and Catholics, Northerners and Southerners, and other groups in the U.S. in 1950 or 1900 or 1850 than there are today. The inflammatory […]

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Originality Versus the Arts

Michael Lind — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 14:12:25 +0000

In the last century, originality has killed one once-flourishing art form after another, by replacing variation within shared artistic conventions to rebellion against convention itself. I blame the Germans. It was the German Romantics who introduced the idea of “original genius” to modern society. The artistic genius, according to 19th-century romantics, is a special kind […]

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DONALD TRUMP, REGICIDE

Michael Lind — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 13:00:04 +0000

The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States has come as a shock to America’s bipartisan establishment. Trump is clearly unqualified for the highest office in the land. He is not related to any former president, either by blood or marriage — and yet he won anyway. How could this […]

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Can Electoral Reform Save America?

Michael Lind — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 12:00:23 +0000

On this year’s Election Day, voters will be presented with a choice that can have profound consequences for democracy in America in the future. No, I’m not talking about the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I’m talking about a ballot initiative about electoral reform in the state of Maine. Voters in Maine will […]

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The Future of the Future

Michael Lind — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 12:00:58 +0000

The future isn’t what it used to be. We need new futures. Science fiction traditionally has had the task of providing us with alternative visions of the future. For the most part, it has done a terrible job. The main reason for its failure is that it assumes global uniformity. In optimistic visions of the […]

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What Politics Is(n’t)

Michael Lind — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 11:30:22 +0000

What is politics? The answer is not obvious. Most Americans on the left and the right either do not know or have forgotten what politics is. Conventional American progressives have pretty much abandoned any distinction between the political realm and society and culture in general, while conventional American conservatives treat politics as an exercise in […]

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What is Education for? Part II

Michael Lind — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 16:29:12 +0000

In my most recent essay for The Smart Set, “What is Education for?” I argued that the tendency to equate education with mere instruction neglects the more fundamental purposes of education: initiation into a cultural or civilizational tradition, indoctrination into a public philosophy — in the United States, democratic republican liberalism — and inculcation of […]

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What is Education for?

Michael Lind — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 11:30:08 +0000

What is the purpose of education? It is usually assumed that the major purpose of education is instruction: the transmission of information and the imparting of particular skills like the classic three R’s: ‘readin’, ‘ritin’, and ‘rithmetic’. But instruction is the least important part of education. Most information is accessible from books and the media. […]

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