Friday evening roundup

The two topics of the week come together: civility and food. Civility about people's food choices. I mean, if you're going to villainize people who actually care enough to question the food system and make informed choices, find a better derogatory term than "fouche bag." That doesn't even connote anything. Meanwhile, let's not feed into their stereotypes by purchasingequally unhealthy high-end foods. Contrary to the anti-foodie undercurrents in this piece, it's not about the trends or celebrity-driven fads. It's just about good food. Check out that last site and this one for some vegan and macrobiotic recipes, respectively.

Not that any of the above is surprising, given the virulent anti-intellectualism sweeping the country. Sometimes I find Rothkopf tiring, but that quite a good article. Along similar lines: how the foreign press is parsing the Tea Party.

And coming back to sanity for a minute, I loved these lines from this article about Germany's identity crisis:

The question is this: Does participation in democratic procedures have only the functional meaning of silencing a defeated minority, or does it have the deliberative meaning of including the arguments of citizens in the democratic process of opinion- and will-formation?

The more the scope for action by national governments shrinks and the more meekly politics submits to what appear to be inevitable economic imperatives, the more people’s trust in a resigned political class diminishes.

The United States has a president with a clear-headed political vision, even if he is embattled and now meets with mixed feelings. What is needed in Europe is a revitalized political class that overcomes its own defeatism with a bit more perspective, resoluteness and cooperative spirit. Democracy depends on the belief of the people that there is some scope left for collectively shaping a challenging future.

Okay, these horrendous puns are worse than they seem, since "yuan" is actually pronounced "yu-en."