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%

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

“We can’t be a country with a paramilitary secret police because then we would be a nation with a paramilitary secret police” is something my brain genuinely says to me. I need my brain to change as fast as my world and that’s not easy.

"Western Europe reinforces to: Greenland. Western Europe reinforces to: Ukraine."

The resonances to Risk aren't exactly decreasing.
In my world, there's a certain reluctance to being merely, or in a knee-jerk way, a resist lib. That's understandable, even commendable. On the other hand, let's be clear: It's a hell of lot better, morally and intellectually and politically, to be a resist lib than a Vichy conservative.

“I once almost beat She-Hulk and other than that I’ve gotten beaten up by her many, many times.”

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Going through Adom Getachew's Worldmaking After Empire, and the Woodrow Wilson citations on Reconstruction and empire as tutelage for self-determination are eye-opening.

I think he himself would recognize Trump as a dyed in the wool Wilsonian, even if the historians who sanitized Wilson wouldn't.

There may well be many people who don't go because the US has become a worse place to visit, but there's no "cancelling" the nonrefundable tickets, and no link or evidence here about how a number was arrived at...

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Rank 'em

BTAS
JLU
Young Justice
Teen Titans Go
Harley Quinn
My Adventures With Superman
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.

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The key section:

Gonna be one of those nights.
doom, scrolling.

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"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

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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.