Things I liked, Sunday

The 1000 year old city of Southern Illinois, or: Knowledge is fleeting. 1000 years doesn’t seem like much in archaeological terms, and yet the pyramids and cities, the lives of Native Americans, are almost complete mysteries.

Pearlstein on federalism: After GOP tax cut, state Dems (West Coast, MA, NY?) could just raise state taxes and replace federal funding for health insurance, food stamps, etc. Presumably, that was the Republican idea all along.

Arthur Goldhammer on Marx:
"In recent years, there has been something of a revival of Marx in academe and the little magazines. What worries me about this turn is not the effort wasted on Marx’s more useless ideas, such as the labor theory of value. It is rather how his "othering" of political opponents influences the political attitudes of his young followers, heightening their antagonism to liberalism. Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte demonstrated his brilliant insight into the French society of his own time, but the stark clarity of his vision led him to transform the opposition of class interests into the clash of contending armies between which no dialogue, let alone compromise, is possible. ... Harmony would be achieved only when the class enemy was definitively crushed."