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paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
Paul Crider
@paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
9.1K followers 1.9K following 13K posts
Liberal in the Smith-Douglass-Mill-Anderson vein. Writer and editor for Liberal Currents. https://bsky.app/profile/liberalcurrents.com
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paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
lol
map of CA at 21% reporting showing Prop 50 at 65%.
November 5, 2025 at 4:25 AM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
17. The Right of the People - @ositanwanevu.com. Timely book I want to talk more about later. One helpful (and true) idea he describes well is that there is no single majority even in healthy democracies. Majorities are ephemeral, and many are possible from the same circumstances. Recommended!
Book cover for The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, by Osita Nwanevu. Background is dark blue, with small red script. It is overlaid with the title text, which is bold white.
October 26, 2025 at 3:30 AM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
16. The Book of Three - Lloyd Alexander. I read the Prydain Chronicles as a youngster. Rereading it to my 8yo this year I enjoyed it and think it holds up but ... I have to say some of the dialogue and character writing is a bit stilted.

Anyone else read these?
Cover of the Book of Three, by Lloyd Alexander, part of the Prydain Chronicles. The cover has a shadowy background of a bluish teal surface, and there's a black book lying on the surface with a celtic knot on the cover.
October 25, 2025 at 11:45 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
If you extend the benefit of the doubt to Platner, then you're a LIBERAL who offers grace even to nazis.

If you have a strict no nazi tattoos policy, then you're a censorious hall monitor LIBERAL out of touch with the authentic working class.

Liberals: damned if we do, damned if we don't.
Xitter post from Emma Vigeland. It reads: Censorious, hall monitor liberalism that refuses to accept growth in people--unless you're a corporate centrist and all is forgiven, just ask Cuomo supporters--is far more of a threat to the Democratic Party's chances in the future than anything dug up on Graham Platner.
October 22, 2025 at 2:43 AM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
Sobering context from @jvl.bsky.social. If you're in college right now, the Republican Party has been MAGA for as long as you've been aware of politics at all. www.thebulwark.com/p/all-the-pr...
But it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that we are a decade into Trumpism. These Young Republicans have never known any other type of Republicanism. I assume Trumpism will persist as the dominant feature of Republican politics at least to 2028 and almost certainly to 2032. By that point we’re talking about a full generation of Republicans who only understand politics in the context of an authoritarian project. “Normalized” isn’t even the word. For them, Trumpism won’t be some exotic political mode that was made acceptable. It won’t be a “fever” that breaks. It will have been their mother’s milk.
October 16, 2025 at 3:12 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
Mountain View Oktoberfest 2025.
Bearded white guy in lederhosen and a green flannel shirt with a leather hat drinking a dark beer from a 1L stein.
October 11, 2025 at 11:50 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
Obligatory Liberal Currents Mentioned meme.
Ghibli meme with girl holding champagne and a glass. Background is filled with images loosely associated with Liberal Currents, like book covers of Rawls, Levy, and Rorty; and images of Mill, Mills, and Smith. Among other items.
October 9, 2025 at 4:51 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
"the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa"
Image of Eleanor Roosevelt.
October 9, 2025 at 6:50 AM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
"the girlfriend of one of the founders if antifa"
Image of Germaine de Stanley.
October 9, 2025 at 6:47 AM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
A chonkier than expected 380 pages! I hadn't previously been able to see the Table of Contents.
First page of the Table of Contents. Including main sections 1. Two Biographies – or, Two Routes to the Quest for 'True Democracy' 2. Prelude to the Conflagration: From Paris to Fort Sumter 3. Toward the Convergence of Douglass and Marx: From Fort Sumter to the Trent Affair 4. From a Constitutional to a Revolutionary Civil War: 'the Cruel and Apocalyptic War Had Become Holy' Second page of Table of Contents, with sections: 5. The End of the War and the Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction Conclusions Appendix A: Douglass and Marx on the Paris Commune and the Labour Question in the United States Appendix B: Marx and Engels on the Race Question: A Response to Critics
October 7, 2025 at 7:35 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
Looking forward to digging into this! Though I have two other books I need to finish first. (My reading has really slowed down these last two months due to trying to find a job ...)
A book on a wooden table. The book has a black background with gray, green, blue, and yellow flowers, leaves, and stems. Title is The Communist and the Revolutionary Liberal in the Second American Revolution: Comparing Karl Marx and Frederick Douglass in Real-Time, by August H. Nimtz and Kyle A. Edwards.
October 7, 2025 at 7:28 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
Okay, here we go, before they are all hidden behind the junk that inevitably inhabits every horizontal surface. Doesn't include the annex shelves, nor, of course the Kindle virtual shelves ...
Three book shelves, featuring a lot of books on liberalism, Adam Smith, and libertarianism. Three more shelves of books, including a lot of books on economics, leftist stuff, Black political thought, and feminism.
October 7, 2025 at 2:15 AM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
nbd just rearranging the books, dusting, and determining which books are fated for the "annex book case" in the bedroom.
Aerial view of about a dozen stacks of books (about 10 tall in most cases). On carpet in a living room. Everything looks haphazard. Book titles aren't important here, but there is some Adam Smith, Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, and a few feminist texts visible.
October 6, 2025 at 10:18 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
Quote from Jane Fonda, 87, saying she's seen some shit in her time, but this is the most frightening moment of her life. "The only thing that has ever worked ... is solidarity: binding together, finding bravery in numbers too big to ignore, and standing up for one another."
October 1, 2025 at 9:13 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
Here Sunstein carries water for the unfathomably corrupt and reactionary justices Alito and Thomas. John Roberts, meanwhile, led the Court in explicitly placing Donald Trump above the *rule of law,* which is supposed to be one leg of the holy trinity of liberalism.
But you believe that all nine of the Justices are committed to liberalism of the sort that you outlined in your book and are trying to uphold it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I’m not going to name any names, but there is a conservative judge who did read the first couple of chapters of the book and did say, I agree with all of this. Wow. I would just say that I find it very hard to believe, especially with Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who seem to me to be kind of out-and-out partisan Trump supporters. This is completely fair to question. Alito is an extremely careful lawyer and a very precise judge. He is clearly taken with a certain view of our culture that is shared by many of Trump’s supporters. But is it possible to find an opinion in which he says, I’m going to go this way because the President is the law, or anything that verges on that? I think that’s very hard to find. Is there anything in his opinions that shows disrespect for freedom of speech or freedom of religion? I think that’s impossible to find. Thomas is an originalist. He’s the most committed originalist on the Court, who believes the Constitution should be understood in accordance with its original meaning. I don’t like that view much, but you can hold that view and be a liberal in the sense of believing in the rule of law, believing in freedom of speech. He does want to overrule New York Times v. Sullivan, but he’s not the only one who thinks that and that doesn’t make him illiberal. [That decision, from 1964, raised the standard for defamation lawsuits in a way that is seen as crucial to press freedom.] So I do agree with you. There are concerning things about political connections that appear, but in terms of the liberal tradition I’m not giving up on Justice Thomas.
September 24, 2025 at 12:28 AM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
This section out of his speech "It Moves" were what I was thinking of. To my eye, he's very materialistic. frederickdouglasspapersproject.com/s/digitaledi...
Text from Frederick Douglass's speech, "It Moves." It includes passages that nature is what it is and is utterly impervious to any pleas of faith or prayer. Text from Frederick Douglass's speech, "It Moves." It includes passages like this: "If the smallest particle of matter in any part of the universe is subject to law, it seems to me that a thing so important as the moral nature of man cannot be less so." And beliefs that faith can suspect natural law "may be dismissed as the outpourings of enthusiasm."
September 23, 2025 at 2:01 AM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
We have swole Hutts now. Finally, Star Wars is giving the Manosphere a character to look up to. #MandalorianAndGrogu
A muscular (?!) Hutt raises his arms in an arena with spotlights, as if egging on a cheering crowd.
September 22, 2025 at 9:51 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
(((They))) don't want you to know, but this is what Big Woke Vaccine is doing to our kids.
Image from The Matrix. Neo (pale, bald, white guy sitting in a vat of some red fluid, sinister metal tubes connected to various parts of his body.
September 22, 2025 at 9:05 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
"Hegemonic suicide" is a term worth keeping.
USA stabs itself with two knives while China and Europe look on with confused and concerned expressions. Meme image.
September 17, 2025 at 6:09 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
OMG! These are great.
Satellite map view of a neighborhood with several Wheel of Time-affiliated street names, like Lugard Rd, Emond's Fld Ln, and Foregate Pl.
September 17, 2025 at 5:43 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
Gonna have to move to Killeen, TX. By my count, there are 11 Wheel of Time references in the street names in this area. #WheelOfTime
Map of a small area within Killeen, TX. Several streets have names associated with the Wheel of Time, like Cauthon Cv, or Tanchico Dr.
September 17, 2025 at 5:25 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
"In the same way that madrassas radicalize jihadis, America's campuses are among the places in the U.S. *most* hostile to disagreement and debate."

You have got to be kidding me. Truly, Quillette walked so the Free Press could run.

"Je Suis Charlie." Yeah, Bari Weiss, we know. All too well.
Text from the Free Press including the line "In the same way that madrassas radicalize jihadis, America's campuses are among the places in the U.S. *most* hostile to disagreement and debate."
September 12, 2025 at 11:16 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
Girl Revan but romance with all the girls.
Pen and paper drawn image from Teen Girl Squad. Girl has arrows flying at her. Text reads "I have a crush on every boy."
September 12, 2025 at 10:04 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
White middle-aged man in suit and tie has head bowed and is praying. "Jesus, I see what you've done for other people, and I want that for me."
September 11, 2025 at 9:37 PM
paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com
The TechnoMAGA flirtation with Abundance is just today's equivalent of At least the fascists make the trains run on time. Change my mind.
Change My Mind meme. Pompous man with coffee mug sits at a table in a park. The sign in front of the table reads "TechnoMAGA fixation on Abundance is just today's Making the trains run on time. CHANGE MY MIND"
September 5, 2025 at 5:31 AM