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this week is slow at work. No classes to speak of (exam time is SO much more fun when you are the teacher) so I'm at my desk for a large portion of the day. Now, of course, I have winter camp to plan and, eventually, a whole other semester to look forward to. Still, it's been the perfect opportunity to cacth up on some reading.

 

Indulging my intense nostalgia for university days, I finally finished Tony Judt's lecture-cum-essay, What is Living and What is Dead in Social Democracy. Read the whole thing at: <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23519"> </a> A lecture given at my dear alma mater no less. (Omg, am I really old enough to have an alma matter already? shit.)

 

Anyway its quite interesting and, despite the academic-y sounding title, quite accessible. Plus, he covers many of my favorite topics: economics, cost benefit analysis, the welfare state, ethics, sociology, and cognative dissonance. No really, i was excited about that. :/

 

Anyway, I liked the article its worth a read if you've got some free time. However I completely disagreed with his conclusion. Judt, after drawing on both recent and not-so-recent history to assess the present moment, winds up calling for a social democracy of fear. I'm not sure whether this is an unfortunate misnomer or if it points to a deeper problem with his conclusions, but either way if fear is the future of social democracy I politely decline. I'm not sure that a social democracy of fear is better than any other system that relies on fear for its perpetuation, and I say this as someone much enamoured of social democracy. If fear is the only thing social democracy has left to recommend itself, I'd say we're better off going without.

 

Fortunately, I do not believe this to be the case. Judt comes much closer to the mark, in my humble opinion, when he points out that the left needs to be much more assertive in speaking of past gains. I think reestablishing a narrative, and an economic analysis, that is mindful of the contributions of social democracy and which includes a real awareness of its contributions to our collective wellbeing, is an importaint step to restoring some sanity to contemporary politics.

 

And sanity is something our political system desperately needs more of.