DJ Scruggs

The real heart of the matter here is not the technical debate about historical analogies, but a core principle of constitutional government: the state must not be allowed to engage in large-scale systematic violations of the Constitution, especially when it comes to basic constitutional rights, like the birthright citizenship rights at issue in... See more

Putnam had said you can’t understand another person until you know what fight they’re in, what contradiction they’re working through. I saw before me two stories, equally true: Putnam was a genius who worked out a new logic of the mind. And Putnam was a janitor who died unknown. The only way to resolve a contradiction, he said, is to find the... See more

For me, a telling anecdote that first clued me into this hypothesis was when I debated Jacobin writer Meagan Day in 2018. When I pointed out that very few Americans are financially destitute, she responded that “it’s not just destitution, it’s disappointment”, and proceeded to describe her own frustration with the two unpaid internships she went... See more