Chris Sardo
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mcsardo.bsky.social
Chris Sardo
@mcsardo.bsky.social
320 followers 980 following 460 posts
Recovering political theorist, current history/government teacher, long-suffering Sabres fan.
Politics, pedagogy, music, Sabres, and other sad things. He/his.
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mcsardo.bsky.social
You'll be visited by three spirits.

The three spirits
Diagram of Hegel's philosophy. The word spirit is in a central green triangle, with the words absolute spirit, subjective spirit, and objective spirit in purple triangles touching the three sides of the central green triangle.
November 26, 2025 at 12:12 AM
mcsardo.bsky.social
So I'm glad that Gorsuch is worried about the "continual accretion" of executive power, but...come on. After Trump v. Hawaii, Trump v. US, Trump v. CASA and all of the shadow docket rulings that allowed the President to circumvent the spending clause of Article I,...
Transcript from oral arguments in Learning Resources v Trump: JUSTICE GORSUCH: Yeah. So Congress, as a practical matter, can't get this power back once it's handed it over to the President. It's a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people's elected representatives.
November 6, 2025 at 4:43 AM
mcsardo.bsky.social
Again this framing is wild. Sure it's an accurate assessment, but entirely decontextualized from the other states who are doing midterm redistricting without putting it to a popular vote.
Screenshot of New York Times notification reading: Prop 50 Passes. California voters agreed to aggressively draw the state's congressional lines to wipe out as many as five Republican seats.
November 5, 2025 at 4:13 AM
mcsardo.bsky.social
A clear demonstration of the power of framing. If you only saw this headline you probably would have a knee jerk aversion to Prop 50. Context matters. In a world where we know people aren't clicking past the notification we need to find ways to contextualize better.
New York times notification that reads: Election Day What to Know. Californians will decide if congressional districts should be redrawn in Democrat's favor. See when the polls close and more.
November 4, 2025 at 9:38 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
You love to see it
NHL standings with Sabres in playoff position Score of hockey game with Sabres beating Maple Leafs 5-3
October 25, 2025 at 1:47 AM
mcsardo.bsky.social
From @stevevladeck.bsky.social 's substack this morning on the real dangers of the admin 's 29th application to the Court for emergency relief - can the President make up his own reality and authority to use the military against citizens? open.substack.com/pub/stevevla...
Text reading: Third, and most importantly, it would allow the federal government to obtain emergency relief based upon either (1) a limitless view of what it means to be “unable to execute the laws of the United States”; or (2) an incredibly one-sided factual narrative that was expressly rejected by the district judge, and that the unanimous court of appeals panel refused to disturb. The justices aren’t factfinders, and absent some “clear” reason to believe that the lower courts erred in discrediting the Trump administration’s factual claims (when, in fact, there are lots of reasons to believe that the district court was right), to grant relief in the face of those findings is to not just show stunning disrespect to both the lower courts and the appropriate standard of review; it’s to send the message that the facts just don’t matter—so long as five or more justices personally believe whatever the federal government is telling them.
October 20, 2025 at 2:35 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
Putting the @doomtree.bsky.social care package to good use
Sign that says "No Kings No Way" with the logo from the album No Kings spray painted on
October 18, 2025 at 5:35 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
On a similar point from some undergrads:
www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
text reads: Sure, it may save time to, say, edit using AI. However, visiting a professor during office hours or collaborating with a friend to polish an assignment keeps every last word and twist of phrase rooted in human experience — the very experience the humanities seek to explore. There is a deep disconnect between dedicating one’s studies to the humanities and finding the assistance of other humans a waste of time. Some suggest that banning AI won’t make a difference, since there will always be students who use it regardless. But lowering standards of rigor for everyone helps no one. We do not permit cheating simply because we know many students will cheat; neither should we encourage the use of generative AI because many will be tempted to use it. Even if a student uses AI to achieve a higher grade than deserved, they have lost the experience that makes engaging in humanistic inquiry fruitful.
October 1, 2025 at 6:28 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
Hmm, I wonder who was President in 2019 and if there are any common denominators?
Text of New York Times Headline: First Closure Since 2019 Would Furlough Workers and Threaten Services. In back-to-back votes before a midnight deadline, each party blocked the other's spending proposal when neither coul draw the necessary bipartisan support."
October 1, 2025 at 1:54 AM
mcsardo.bsky.social
The one source I would add to this piece, is Frank Murphy's dissent in Korematsu v. US (1944), which also pitches the debate in pretty stark terms:
"I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States. All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States. They must, accordingly, be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment, and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution."
September 10, 2025 at 5:51 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
Got the strangest letter at school today.
1- I did have students write letters to elected officials after the AP exam explaining a lesson they learned from the class that is valuable to leaders today (some did write to the WH)
2- I highly doubt that this president approves of my APUSH class...
A letter from the president to my APUSH students indicating how inspired he is by their thoughtful attention to our nation's most critical challenges.
August 27, 2025 at 9:40 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
I mean, I doubt that Trey Gowdy has a sophisticated theology of the Trinity, but I think his oversimplification is not the real problem, given the account of the second person of the Trinity on John 1
The Word Became Flesh 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.
August 27, 2025 at 5:51 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
How can right-wingers read this and claim him (On Disobedience to Civil Government)?
If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth- certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate,
August 26, 2025 at 10:45 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
I was literally just listening to Butler's "Who's Afraid of Gender?" and heard them make this point clearly and forcefully in the context of TERFs:
text reading: "At the same time, they seem not to understand that they are calling into question the very existence of those with whom they argue. This is not the same as simply having a different viewpoint and a reasonable disagreement, since the TERF stance is nullifying the claims that trans people make about their lives, their bodies, and their very existence."
July 15, 2025 at 6:38 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
@lioneltrolling.bsky.social makes the same point in his sub stack this morning: open.substack.com/pub/johnganz...
An irony that a casual observer might miss is that this took place at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank founded by the students of Harry V. Jaffa. He would be rolling in his grave: Jafffa was the American right’s most powerful defender of Abraham Lincoln’s interpretation of Jefferson’s Declaration. In particular, Jaffa’s central contention is that “all men are created equal” actually means what it says. His most famous work, Crisis Of The House Divided: An Interpretation Of The Issues In The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, promulgates a thesis that is precisely the opposite of Vance’s. I’d refer Vance and his acolytes to a speech given by Lincoln in Chicago on July 10, 1858, shortly before the Lincoln-Douglas debates began:
July 9, 2025 at 2:53 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
In the Claremont Review of Books, Jaffa explicitly argued that the US was founded on a set of principles that aimed to transcend old forms of political community based on ethnicity or religion that were intended to be universal in scope.
claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-...
Text reading: The American Revolution and the American Constitution became possible only because the rights of man as man—the rights of an enlightened humanity under the moral order of the laws of nature and of nature’s God—defined the ground of civic friendship, subordinating the ancient distinctions, not only of religion but of ethnicity and race. Among the most remarkable but least-remarked features of the Declaration of Independence is the passage in which, after assigning a measure of responsibility to “our British brethren” for the tyrannical acts of their government, the Americans “hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.” The ancient distinctions of Greek and barbarian, of Jew and Gentile, of Christian and infidel, here disappear as the ground of human friendship and therewith of civic association. It is true that the distinction is made, within the Declaration, between civilization on the one hand, and barbarism and savagery on the other. The distinction between the first and the latter two is the distinction between those who do and those who do not respect the rights of others, under the laws of nature. Of course, the necessary ground for such respect is enlightenment: One cannot act on principles of which one is ignorant. As I have often written, the United States is the first nation in the world to declare its independence, not because of any particular qualities or merits of its own, but because of rights which it shared with all men everywhere. In so doing, it declared the ground of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” in a sense absolutely unprecedented.
July 9, 2025 at 5:09 AM
mcsardo.bsky.social
How is it that these are the only logical or possible two options?
June 17, 2025 at 5:00 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
Weird how the entire premise is non-existent.

www.npr.org/2025/06/02/n...
Text of NPR article: former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency says that he found that the federal waste, fraud and abuse that his agency was supposed to uncover were "relatively nonexistent" during his short time embedded within the Department of Veterans Affairs. "I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was," Sahil Lavingia told NPR's Juana Summers.
June 11, 2025 at 6:16 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
Nothing says "good faith concerns about antisemitism" like a project led almost entirely by Christians, targeting progressive Jewish organizations, and using antisemitic tropes of a global pyramidal conspiracy led by Jews. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/u...
Text of New York Times article: It singled out anti-Zionist groups that had organized pro-Palestinian protests, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, but the intended targets stretched much further. In pitch materials for potential donors, Heritage presented an illustration of a pyramid topped by “progressive ‘elites’ leading the way,” which included Jewish billionaires such as the philanthropist George Soros and Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois. It asserted that philanthropic organizations such as the Tides Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund were backing the antisemitism “ecosystem.” Later, the Heritage Foundation added the names of what it called “aligned” politicians such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren
May 18, 2025 at 9:29 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
Every single one of these headlines - from legal disputes about deportations without due process, to knowingly falsifying intelligence to dehumanize migrants, to ending benefits to immigrants, to turning the real life struggles and desires into reality tv - betrays a fundamental lack of humanity.
A series of Bew York Times headlines about recent administration actions on immigration
May 17, 2025 at 3:57 AM
mcsardo.bsky.social
Jack, just say lies, this is taking forever.
New York times headline reading: Embracing Afrikaners President Trump's decision to grant asylum to white South Africans is rooted in false narratives.
May 15, 2025 at 8:09 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
Real 2025 vibes: sovereignty outran journalism
New York Times headline reading "Kentucky Derby Winner: Sovereignty outran journalism, the favorite, to seize the $3.1 million purse."
May 3, 2025 at 11:24 PM
mcsardo.bsky.social
Hope drones
May 2, 2025 at 4:35 AM
mcsardo.bsky.social
Spending May Day with GY!BE seems appropriate
May 2, 2025 at 4:35 AM
mcsardo.bsky.social
I don't usually listen to Ezra Klein's podcast, but this interview with Asha Rangappa - formerly FBI, currently at Yale - is striking. If the President can laugh off disappearing a person in open defiance of multiple court orders, including SCOTUS, we're in openly authoritarian territory.
Screenshot of NYTimes article: So if you think it isn’t true, that’s great. I would prefer to think it isn’t true, as well. But if you think it is true, then what does that imply? What are you supposed to do if you’re standing on the abyss of 1973-era Chile? Our Constitution has one remedy for this, which is impeachment. This requires political will. It requires a certain consensus that this is unacceptable, that we are beyond the pale, that this is extraconstitutional: that this person is abusing their power, that they are violating their oath or violating all kinds of laws. To me, the constitutional crisis is the defiance of the judicial branch — but it is as much Congress’s failure to act in this situation. Whether it’s to step up and claw back some of these delegated authorities to stop the national emergency that he’s using for other things, or to take that final step and say: This is a step too far. I think we are in impeachment territory right now. These are impeachable offenses. This is a deprivation of rights. In my opinion. What you saw between Trump and Bukele was a criminal conspiracy to deprive people of their rights. It’s an agreement to commit a crime.
April 17, 2025 at 3:08 PM