Background for Nate

I am a professor of philosophy and political science at a liberal arts college in the Midwest. My areas of specialization are ethics, political theory and American constitutional law. Karl and I have been chums ever since our football and shot-putting days in high school fifteen years ago. Around five years ago, just before 9-11, my interest in modernist literature caused me for the first time to seriously delve into late 19th and early 20th century Marxist and Anarchist theory. (I remember having to step over the classic radical texts strewn about the floor of my apartment the day of the attacks.) I found the libertarian vs. authoritarian divide, embodied by the Marx-Bakunin rivalry, particularly intriguing, and for a short time didn't know where exactly I stood. Ultimately I became convinced that the essential Marxian tenets of dialectical materialism, which always seemed metaphysically false, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, which presumed that a workers' State would do what no State has ever done: destroying itself, were irretrievably false. I shared my interest with Karl, who seemed to gravitate toward the libertarian position--and Bakunin's "spontaneous action" theory--without any of my initial qualms. This blog is the publicized and pixellated version, more or less, of the ongoing dialogue on political theory and current events Karl and I have been having for years now between football games, documentary films and gluttonous bouts of ribs, chicken wings and pizza. We are making it public so as to invite deeper and wider discussion. While our beliefs have over the last few years largely coalesced around the Chomskyite libertarian-socialist point of view, Karl and I are hardly in lockstep. My personal Catholic beliefs and deep-rooted affection for the writings of certain Christian philosophers, especially Augustine of Hippo, have always seemed just as inscrutable to him as my Jesus-as-proto-anarchist theory has to most of my co-coreligionists. So, while he and I share the same website our views and writings are very much our own. More than simply a forum in which to organize our thoughts, this website is an invitation to discussion, particularly to those who thoughtfully disagree with its contents. The is no worse life, Socrates says in the Phaedo, than that of being an enemy of discussion (literally a "misologue"). I hope you'll be friendly, even if disagreeably so, to ours.