Canary in the Coal Mine - Day

12:40AM - Obama to Host Seder Dinner

Tonight at 6:30 p.m., the president and First Lady Michelle Obama will welcome a handful of friends, staff members and their families into the executive mansion of the White House. The Seder meal will feature a traditional menu of matzo, bitter herbs, a roasted egg and greens, along with the reading of the Haggadah. In a letter to mark the beginning of Passover on Wednesday, Mr. Obama wished Americans a “peaceful and relaxing holiday.” He called the story of the Jewish people’s ascent from slavery to freedom in Israel “among the most powerful stories of suffering and redemption in human history.” “As part of a larger global community,” Mr. Obama wrote, “we all must work to ensure that our brothers and sisters of every race, religion, culture and nationality are free from bondage and repression, and are able to live in peace.”

3:37PM

Lielisks raksts: Goodbye, homo economicus!

9:36PM - The Warwick Debates on Nationalism

What follows from this analysis? First, that in a world of political and cultural pluralism where states and ethnicities operate with rival conceptions of the nation and its boundaries, ethno–national conflict is endemic. Second, that nations and nationalisms are a political necessity in a world of competing and unequal states requiring popular legitimation and mobilisation. Third, that because so many people feel their nation performs important social and political functions, it is going to take more than a Maastricht Treaty to wean them away from these deeply felt national allegiances. And finally, because so many nations are historically embedded in pre–scendence of the nation and the supersession of nationalism, of which so many utopians have dreamt!

— Anthony D. Smith, Nations and their pasts