Welcome to My New Website!
Those of you who have tried to open Blue Kennel have just been greeted with a surprise. Yes, my newly redesigned website is now here HowardAhmansonJr.com. We chose that domain so that way people who...
View ArticleAre Corporations People?
The ‘corporation’ has been an item of controversy in the past, and not only on the left. This The Economist article, “Peculiar people,” is a good primer on the issue. I would add that: 1. Most...
View ArticleMore on Manners and Customs
Some more issues on the issue of Manners and Customs. The issue of enforcement. Disobedience to Manners is enforced, let it be said, by discrimination and exclusion. Sometimes the person is...
View ArticleWhy Non-Suburbanites Distrust Suburbanites
I’ve had the great Arcade Fire album, The Suburbs, on in my car recently, and have been inspired by it to a few thoughts. Most people, especially people with children, aspire to a real house and not a...
View ArticleWhat Kevin Starr Doesn’t Get About Small Towns
I have been enjoying Kevin Starr’s volume in his cultural history series, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963. It is a period of which I have some living memory, and I have...
View ArticleThe Unbreakable Contradiction in Our View of Housing
Daniel Kay Hertz, a young urbanist from Chicago, [his website is https://danielkayhertz.com] has written the most succinct expression yet of why the whole issue of housing is a dilemma for Americans....
View ArticleWhy I am not a Communitarian
A philosophy called ‘communitarianism’ has often been proposed recently as an alternative to the growing libertarianism of our time. This philosophy, they say, can combine social conservatism and...
View ArticleA Conference Held to Honor my Father, Howard F. Ahmanson Sr.: “WWHD — What...
The “WWHD Conference — What Would Howard Ahmanson, Sr., Do?” — was held August 1, 2018, the year marking the 50th anniversary of my father’s death. I decided I wanted to sponsor it, mostly to honor...
View ArticleAgrarianism Without Agriculture?
The ever-surprising Ralph Nader has recently been reading some paleo-conservative sources, and has written a book entitled Unstoppable; the Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate...
View ArticleTwo Dilemmas Urbanists and Housing Advocates have to Face
First, we often have two inconsistent objectives. The first is good housing for all and ownership for many. The second is that home ownership should be a ‘wealth builder’ for those who achieve it....
View ArticleWhy The Dream Declined
The best single post on the decline of affordable housing that I have seen on one of my favorite sites, newgeography.com, is this by Roger Selbert. He most succinctly explains the reasons why the...
View ArticleNo Place Like Home Conference – June 3, 2013
This conference is being hosted by me and others to discuss the current state of subsidized home ownership in America, something that has been happening since the end of World War II but since the...
View ArticleInsights from Francis Fukuyama on the Problem of Crony Capitalism
This essay summarizes some of Francis Fukuyama’s historical perspective and insights on the problem ‘patrimonialism’ and its effect on society. I briefly suggest some ways to address patrimonialism,...
View ArticlePRIVACY, PROPERTY, AND THE POWER OF IMPOSING CONDITIONS
In this link we read that organizations are demanding disclosure of Facebook passwords as a condition of employment, or of being allowed to play on a college athletic team. Conservatives, especially of...
View ArticleWelcome to My New Website!
Those of you who have tried to open Blue Kennel have just been greeted with a surprise. Yes, my newly redesigned website is now here HowardAhmansonJr.com. We chose that domain so that way people who...
View ArticleAre Corporations People?
The ‘corporation’ has been an item of controversy in the past, and not only on the left. This The Economist article, “Peculiar people,” is a good primer on the issue. I would add that: 1. Most...
View ArticleTrump and Sanders: Where You’ve Seen Them Before
The rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is kind of a shock to the American system. But a European would know exactly, in my opinion, where they fit in. Trump is not at all a conservative...
View ArticleInsights from Francis Fukuyama on the Problem of Crony Capitalism
This essay summarizes some of Francis Fukuyama’s historical perspective and insights on the problem ‘patrimonialism’ and its effect on society. I briefly suggest some ways to address patrimonialism,...
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On the Urbanist Classic, “Crabgrass Frontier,” by Kenneth T. Jackson
One of the classic books on the history of suburbia is Kenneth Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier. It came out in 1985, two years before my personal favorite, Bourgeois Utopias, by Robert Fishman. This book...
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The Gerontocratic Democracy of Old Africa, and Gerontocracy in Our Own Time
Young people have always probably chafed against their elders. But in Africa, a gerontocratic system was instituted, which at least frustrated the development of a hereditary elite. And we are not...
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