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David Leonard, in today's NY Times , has a deceptively straight-forward piece about the debate over the debt ceiling, in which he states that the US cannot (i) maintain its social welfare programs, (ii) continue to have the world's biggest military, and (iii) also have distinctly low rates of taxation.  Something among those three, he tells us, has to give. What's important about Leonard's essay is that he recognizes that there is a trade-off among these  three elements--military spending, social welfare spending, and taxation--and not just the latter two. By contrast, the negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders in recent weeks, and the public debate as well, have proceeded as if the trade-off is only between social welfare spending and taxation--with there being almost no mention of military spending. Thus, even as Democrats in Congress have protested against any cuts in s...

When we study a particular way of thinking,  or conceptual schema, it is easiest to look for sites -- teaching texts or reference works -- where there is an exposition of the schema or way of thinking.  But what is at least as revealing is what people do with that schema or way of thinking: its social life, one might say.  To study this requires noting the schema's appearances out and about in the world. It is for this reason that I am struck by the use of "civilizational thinking" in two different pieces from the  New York Times  about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, both published on the 21st of May.  The first excerpt is from an article about DSK's wife, Anne Sinclair, and it included observations from Elie Wiesel, who--the article tells us--"was a close friend of Ms. Sinclair and her first husband."  Expressing "sadness for Ms. Sinclair," the Times reported, Mr. Weisel invoked a "Talmudic saying": " 'No one ...