Mitch Wagner

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• Commented on Crib Sheet: Saturn's Children
  Slave societies are by no means static. Consider the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, as well as the US from the first colonial days to 1865. Plenty of innovation and change in those societies. We do not abjure slavery for...
• Commented on A Bad Dream
  I'm not trying to excuse Obama's behavior. I'm simply trying to find an explanation. And I'm assuming for the sake of this discussion that Obama is not simply an opportunist. I'm assuming he believed what he said then, and he...
• Commented on A Bad Dream
  Mitch, by "coup" would you be referring to something like the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln or of John F. Kennedy? No, I am not. A coup isn't just an assassination. It also requires the overthrow of the government. In these...
• Commented on A Bad Dream
  Is there a reasonable scenario for the next 50 years that results in a transition to a better world without the intervening stage of mass violence? Because I gotta say, mass violence is not my thing. My thing going online,...
• Commented on A Bad Dream
  damien-wise - Stability and smooth transition are also a great benefit of republican democracy. The alternative is that succession is often decided by civil war or coup....
• Commented on A Bad Dream
  As someone said: People whose job it is to solve a problem have a strong interest in preserving the problem. That applies to big things, like the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, and the War on Crime. Lots...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Halting State
  zhochaka - Interesting points. Discussions of virtual worlds tend to devolve into whether they will become mainstream. I'm guilty of participating in that myself -- I did so right here. But that tends to bury a subject that to me...
• Commented on A Bad Dream
  julianmorrison (122) - You raise an interesting issue, related to one that I, as an American, have been considering for the past couple of weeks. Barack Obama ran against the foreign policy positions that he now espouses. So did Joe...