Jacob T. Levy
jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Jacob T. Levy
@jacobtlevy.bsky.social

Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory, Associate member of Philosophy, Coordinator of Research Group on Constitutional Studies, McGill.
Posts here speak only for myself.
Americo-Canadian; liberaltarian; aging geek.
http://jacobtlevy.com .. more

Jacob T. Levy is an American political theorist and Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University. Levy is the Chair of the Department of Political Science at McGill, as well as the coordinator of McGill's Research Group on Constitutional Studies and the founding director of McGill's Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds. Levy is also a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and the Institute for Humane Studies. He is known for his expertise on multiculturalism, liberalism, and pluralism. .. more

Political science 68%
Law 8%

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They want it formally dead, but NATO is already functionally dead as a geopolitical reality. Even if he backs down (wouldn't bet on it), there's no going back from sending European capitals into a spiraling panic that the US is seriously about to invade one of them. You can't unring that bell.

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

The key section:

Gonna be one of those nights.
doom, scrolling.

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

Consider supporting @liberalcurrents.com, where in December *2024* @matthewdownhour.bsky.social was writing about how "America First" in principle means militarism in practice www.liberalcurrents.com/the-bellicos...
The Bellicose Stance of the State
The incoming "America First" coalition is likely to put the United States in greater, not less, risk of conflict.
www.liberalcurrents.com
I can't believe I'm posting this video - but we actually have to have a conversation about the real world implications of America going to war over Greenland.

Let me walk you through it. It doesn't turn out well for us.

fair, and I appreciate the restraint

I think this is pointless as long as Congress refuses to stand up to Trump’s claimed impoundment and rescission powers. He will simply not spend anything he doesn’t want to spend. The appropriations power isn’t, it turns out, self-enforcing.

I haven't seen "One Battle After Another," but I've seen the trailer often enough to ask: "Best Musical or Comedy" category? What?

"we will pick you for the opportunity through personal favoritism and then subsidize you until you think it's worth it because otherwise you'd want to do some normal secure profitable thing" is *absolutely squarely* the kind of thing Adam Smith spends hundreds of pages complaining about.
Common Sense, published 250 years ago today.

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George Washington said no offensive expeditions without Congress deliberating and authorizing. Madison insisted war powers vest in the legislature, not the executive. Trump just bombed Caracas without even notifying Congress.
Trump’s Bogus Rationale for Invading Venezuela Is an Impeachable Offense
The Framers would have regarded this president as an out-of-control lunatic in desperate need of reining in by Congress
www.theunpopulist.net

“Watching this was the first time I realized how much Julie Hagerty energy Alison Brie has.”

omg yes

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If anyone tells you they were here during the early days of Bluesky nod politely and back slowly away…

Harris is uh a little noncommittal these days on how central she was to the Biden administration.

He was *good* at being Hill ambassador!

And given how marginal he had been in the Reagan administration, you can understand why he thought so!

There were a lot of retrospectives when he died claiming that he was the first, but I found the evidence underwhelming, and I definitely don’t think he was reported on as a powerful administrative figure at the time.

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Archeologists have rejected the evidence of a “unitary” Bill Kristol, as recent scholarship has determined this sobriquet to refer to two distinct individuals active at about the same time with diametrically opposed politics

-ish. same for Harris. As I recall they were both pretty marginalized in decisonmaking but were more actively employed than traditional VPs as ambassadors to the Hill.

While lord knows I’d lock Vance in particular out of any building I happened to be in, this is also the normal employment position of all vice-presidents except Gore and Cheney.

and a lot more left-wing rather than right-wing, but that still aren’t actually good for us.

I don’t think he’s wrong about any of it, though I still find it to be worth it on balance (here though obviously not on Twitter).

He was vocal about the ugly dynamics on here when he was here and he continues to be vocal about the ugliness of social media in his blogposts. Self-righteousness, knee-jerk hostility, showmanship for the audience— the kinds of things that were terrible on Twitter and here are a little less bad…

Reposted by Robert W. Wallace

Grim and true thoughts from the departed-from-Bluesky Adam Kotsko

adamkotsko.substack.com/p/thought-an...
Thought and its vicissitudes
Reflections on some deadlocks in contemporary culture
adamkotsko.substack.com

I could understand just not loving it, but I can't understand the intensely negative reaction from some people.

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

Much of the right lives in an online fantasy world in which the left and progressives are uniformly antisemitic.

Meanwhile, the reality:

If it got a little predictable toward the very end, that's more than balanced out by how full of surprises it had been up until then.

First book of the year was RF Kuang, Katabasis, a wonderfully-written dark fantasy novel about academia. It is often take-your-breath-away brutal. Wouldn't have thought a book about magicians in Hell could have so many "it's funny because it's true, but it's *almost* too true to be funny" moments.
So if you’re a regime cheer-leader, well, that’s what you would’ve been then: a collaborator. If you’re horrified but trying to mind your own business, well, that’s what you would’ve been then: a keep-your-head-down coward. If you’re just a shitposting cynic, well… (etc. etc.)
Remember when you sat in history class and wondered to yourself, “I wonder what I would have done if were there?”

Well, now you have an answer: whatever you’re doing *right now* is what you would have done…
If all the people who knew Trump was a dangerously foolish and criminal man would simply be honest about him, he’d be out of office in a week. MAGA wouldn’t stand a chance against the combined mockery and condemnation of virtually every institution and influential person. But they won’t!