Max Borders

Max Borders - Winter Edition

The Washington Examiner archives my posts here. My personal favorites are:

• Critiquing Arthur Brooks a little then I compliment him indirectly in this one.
• A piece on the corruption of psychiatry, which got interestingly positive response.
• The city of Houston crowding out philanthropy (nicely put).
• And one on the gap between rich and poor, which I would love to expand into a book.

Still plugging away at Ideas Matter, of course. 

• These posts got a lot of traction due to the controversy about Francis Fox Piven. Part One and Part Two.
• Otherwise, I enjoy writing the occasional obscure piece about art or DDT.
• Explore the whole site. Job security is nice.

My book review of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody arrived at my home in print yesterday. The Journal is Conversations on Philanthropy, which is edited by the brilliant Lenore Ealy.

Daily Caller archive is here. I need to do something for them soon.

I wish I could focus more. Believe it or not, I prefer not to blog, but rather to hunker down with a really well-researched, well-crafted piece of writing. I feel like I try to do too much, so I get kinda sloppy and all over the place. Then again, I love to write, so who am I to complain? Still, I hope this year brings opportunities for me to do more focused writing.

Thanks for checking out this survey of my recent work.

Max Borders - Up to No Good in November, December

Tons and tons at Ideas Matter.

In the Washington Examiner:

• One on longevity and the coming fountain of youth.
• One on anemic concepts of human nature.
• One on the implications for a partial Obamacare strikedown.

In the Daily Caller:

• One on Government as God.
• One on The Liberal Gene.
• One on locking arms with athiests.

 

LInks, Traces, Bits and Bytes

Daily Caller ran my personal story of wrestling with stereotypes.

Still plugging away at building up Ideas Matter. I hope you'll sign up for the newsletter, Dear Reader.

Had a piece over at the Examiner on my HSA experience and fallout from Obamacare. For the record, I didn't put the apostrophe in the title.

Tea Party: Starfish or Spider?

I offer my answer in this piece. Here's a sliver:

The functional reasons are compelling: You don’t want your organization to dissolve because your leadership gets sandbagged, or because your information system is way too top down. But function and form is just one reason the Tea Party should never formalize... 

A formal (hierarchical) organization - like a political party - is not only too centralized, but it becomes less effective as a check on government power. Currently, the Tea Party is coalescing around anti-incumbent, anti-elite and anti-state-power themes. It moves from without and, due to it’s form, is not as corruptible. Don’t believe me?  Try lobbying the Tea Party. 

There are trade offs, of course. What you lose when you’re decentralized is decision-making power, carried out at some instance, based on some plan. You can’t just turn, go straight, or back up on a dime. Tim Kaine or Michael Steele can’t either, but they can turn the ship with commands and controls to a far greater degree. Their organizations are more like spiders.

But the pluralism and broad theme-orientation of the Tea Party makes it effective in ways that really count: like keeping politicians accountable, raising a stink, and getting people to the polls--which is currently the only game in town when it comes to checking Leviathan.

Read the whole thing if you like.

Examiner Posts - Texas Economy, Nat Geo on Warming

• The first post is on the strength of the Texas economy. Texans largely weathered the recession and I explore why here.
• In the most recent post, I analyze a rare piece from National Geographic - one that seems to concede a lot more about the issue of global warming than most MSM outlets have been willing to.

George Shultz: Turmoil and Triumph - Documentary, Website

Okay, so for my day job, I spent a good three months putting together this website on George Shultz - a companion to the documentary film, which airs on PBS Monday night. So naturally I want people to visit and explore. 

George Shultz is a very interesting man. Is he more interesting than the Dos Equis man? You be the judge.

(See also today's WSJ review of the film by Dorothy Rabinowitz.)

UNCSA: Keeping the Heat On

Here I'm keeping the heat on the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, despite the protestations of their Chancellor, John Mauceri.

A Toe-Dip into Populism

In this post, I wax a tad populist defending the tea party movement:

Okay. Keep your traditional views and values close to your bosom as a soldier would a photo of his kids. But get out there and fight like hell--without the kid gloves, if necessary. To "true" conservatives everywhere, I say: Throw your powdered wig on the flame of liberty. Lay your teabag across the lofty bridge of the stodge's nose. Throw up your coattails and expose your rosy bumcheeks to the elites who toss our tax-dollars carelessly into the gullet of Leviathan. And for goodness sake 'rouse the rabble. We've got a lot more to lose right now than our sense of decorum.

I don't know how well I do populism, but I don't like seeing (mostly) normal people with legitimate concerns get pissed on from both the left and right. 

Apply the "Shock Doctrine" in Haiti

Probably won't win any humanitarian awards with this post for the Washington Examiner. A sliver:

I've never understood how allowing people to be freer to do anything is an imposition - unless you think of human beings as children or lab rats. Despite whatever warmed-over Marxist meta-narratives Klein and Winterbottom would have us swallow, Haiti could use a lot more Milton Friedman right now.Why? Because Haitians are a people who have nowhere to go but up.

Read the whole thing. 

Promiscuous Blogging

Been writing on other sites, so allow me to share:

• A couple of Examiner Posts here (Obamacare Epicycles) and here (Google and China).
• An oped in the Raleigh News and Observer that's not making me any friends in Winston Salem.

Plus, a very good thinker out West has decided to re-publish my piece on Panarchy himself in pamphlet form. Pretty cool. $5.00 ain't bad to spread peace and prosperity around the world while getting rid of tug-o-war politics.