Me on Jouvenel, Part One

I’ve been exchanging book recommendations with a conservative (blog) friend of mine, Mark Olson of Pseudo-Polymath. Mark Olson I recommended that he read Kenji Yoshino’s Covering and Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism by Jody Armour; in return, he suggested that I read Bertrand de Jouvenel: Conservative Liberal and the Illusions of Modernity and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology, both by Daniel J. Mahoney.

Though I got off to a late start and may never actually catch up, I have made my first contribution to the conversation, with my early thoughts on the work of Bertrand de Jouvenel’s arguments on the mechanics of power in a democratic society, and specifically, who should be empowered to check the state.