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Some call this the closing of the conservative mind. Alas, the conservative mind has proved itself only too open, these past years, to all manner of intellectual pollen. Call it instead the drying up of conservative creativity. It’s clearly true that the country faces daunting economic troubles. It’s also true that the wrong answers to those problems will push the United States toward a future of too much government, too many taxes, and too much regulation. It’s the job of conservatives in this crisis to show a better way. But it’s one thing to point out (accurately) that President Obama’s stimulus plan was mostly a compilation of antique Democratic wish lists, and quite another to argue that the correct response to the worst collapse since the thirties is to wait for the economy to get better on its own. It’s one thing to worry (wisely) about the long-term trend in government spending, and another to demand big, immediate cuts when 25 million are out of full-time work and the government can borrow for ten years at 2 percent. 

It’s a duty to scrutinize the actions and decisions of the incumbent administration, but an abuse to use the filibuster as a routine tool of legislation or to prevent dozens of presidential appointments from even coming to a vote. It’s fine to be unconcerned that the rich are getting richer, but blind to deny that ­middle-class wages have stagnated or worse over the past dozen years. In the aftershock of 2008, large numbers of Americans feel exploited and abused. Rather than workable solutions, my party is offering low taxes for the currently rich and high spending for the currently old, to be followed by who-knows-what and who-the-hell-cares. This isn’t conservatism; it’s a going-out-of-business sale for the baby-boom generation.

“When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?” — David Frum, New York Magazine

See more #longreads from New York Magazine

This is how Occupy Wall Street began: as one of many half-formed plans circulating through conversations between Lasn and White, who lives in Berkeley and has not seen Lasn in person for more than four years. Neither can recall who first had the idea of trying to take over lower Manhattan. In early June, Adbusters sent an e-mail to subscribers stating that “America needs its own Tahrir.” The next day, White wrote to Lasn that he was “very excited about the Occupy Wall Street meme… . I think we should make this happen.” He proposed three possible Web sites: OccupyWallStreet.org, AcampadaWallStreet.org, and TakeWallStreet.org.

“No. 1 is best,” Lasn replied, on June 9th. That evening, he registered OccupyWallStreet.org.

“Pre-Occupied.” — Mattathias Schwartz, New Yorker

See more #longreads about #OWS

We were never warned that we were going to be pepper-sprayed.

Lt. Pike walked up to my friend, and I am told that he said, “Move or we’re going to shoot you.”

Then he went back and talked to a few of his police officer friends. A couple of other officers started to remove people who were sitting there, blocking exit. Pike could have easily removed us, just picked us up and removed us. We were just sitting there, nonviolent civil disobedience.

But Pike turned around and I am told that he said to the other officers, “Don’t worry about it, I’m going to spray these kids down.”

He lifts the can, spins it around in a circle to show it off to everybody.

Then he sprays us three times.

As if one time of being sprayed at point blank wasn’t enough.

I was on the end of the line getting direct spray. When the second pass came, I got up crawling. I crawled away and vomited on a tree. I was yelling. It burned. Within a few minutes I was dry heaving, I couldn’t breathe. Then, over the course of the next hour, I was dry heaving and vomiting.

“Interview with a Pepper-sprayed UC Davis Student.” — Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing

See also: “Bad Education.” N+1, April 25, 2011

When I mention to Dollard that his severed-head scene might turn more Americans against the war, or even against the troops, he laughs. “The true savagery in this war is being committed by the American left on the minds of the young men and women serving over there by repeatedly telling them that their cause is lost.” He adds, “My goal is to desensitize young people to violence. I want kids to watch my film and understand that brutality is the fucking appropriate response to a brutal enemy.”

“Pat Dollard’s War on Hollywood.” — Evan Wright, Vanity Fair, March 2007

See more #longreads from Vanity Fair

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Grantland, The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, plus a guest pick by The Daily’s arts & life editor, Claire Howorth.

Hrdy’s book cannot resolve questions concerning the mental health of children not cared for by their mothers, but it provides a relevant cross-cultural and evolutionary perspective on such care. First, the ethnological record shows that the nuclear family, although not rare, has not been common either, and it has always occurred within a broader social setting. Polygynous families (with two or more wives), polyandrous families (with two or more husbands), extended families under a single roof, mother-child households in a compound comprising several wives of a powerful man, and other arrangements have long shown that isolated nuclear households—mom, dad, kids—are not necessarily the human norm.

Likewise, the working mother has always been a central part of the human scene, and the classic stay-at-home mom of 1950s television may have been limited to Western cultures in that era. Women gathered, gardened, farmed, fished, built huts, made clothing and other necessities, even hunted in some cultures, in addition to caring for children and performing other domestic duties. Mothers often could not discharge these duties without help. Our species is not unique in caring for offspring cooperatively, but our great ape cousins don’t do it, and we take it to extraordinary levels.

“It Does Take a Village.” — Melvin Konner, The New York Review of Books

See more #longreads from The New York Review of Books

Featured Longreader: Designer Sasha Lamb. See his story picks from The Quietus, Grantland, The Village Voice and more on his #longreads page.

In Amwell Township, your opinion of fracking tends to correspond with how much money you’re making and with how close you live to the gas wells, chemical ponds, pipelines and compressor stations springing up in the area. Many of those who live nearby fear that a leak in the plastic liner of a chemical pond could drip into a watershed or that a truck spill could send carcinogens into a field of beef cattle. (According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, 65 Marcellus wells drilled this year have been cited for faulty cement casings, which could result in leaks.) But for many other residents, including Haney’s neighbors, the risks seem small, and the benefits — clean fuel, economic development — far outweigh them.

On a Saturday morning in July 2011, Bill Hartley’s Styling Shop bustled with clients — a truck driver, a leaseholder, a landowner — all of whom profited from the gas boom. One was Ray Day, 64, a ginger-haired farmer, who, along with his brothers and sisters, owns nearly 300 acres of Amwell Township. Thanks to the money he received from allowing Range Resources to drill, build a compressor station and dig a chemical pond on his land, he has been able to reroof two barns, buy a new hay baler and construct an addition to his house for his 94-year-old mother. “I only buy something if I can pay cash,” Day said later. And he still has plenty of money left over. Was he planning a vacation, maybe to Florida? Day snorted good-naturedly. “Farmers don’t go to Florida,” he said.

“The Fracturing of Pennsylvania.” — Eliza Griswold, The New York Times Magazine

See more #longreads from The New York Times

Resuscitating a battered newsweekly in 2011 is a tough bit of business. Last year, The Daily Beast and Newsweek lost a combined $30 million. Ad page numbers tell how difficult it is, too: Newsweek’s ad page performance between April to September was down 18 percent, according to the Publishers Information Bureau quarterly report. This is easy to dismiss (what isn’t down these days!) — but Time is up 4 percent for the year, The Economist is flat and Newsweek is competing, year-over-year, against a version of itself that had an ownership change, a lame duck editor and a very uncertain future.

“Tough Times at Newsweek.” — John Koblin, WWD

See more #longreads from John Koblin

There’s more to Sony’s problems than acts of God and currency traders. The maker of the Walkman and the Trinitron hasn’t driven pop culture for years. Sony thrived in an era of stand-alone electronics. When the Internet arose and digital began to mean connected, iPods became the center of people’s entertainment lives, then smartphones and tablets—which Sony was late to produce. Even the quintessential Sony product—the TV set—has become a millstone. Sony has lost nearly $8.5 billion on TVs over eight years and expects to keep losing at least into 2013. Samsung, Vizio, and other upstarts have driven prices so low that one Sony executive says the company charges less for some TVs than it cost to ship them a few years ago.

“What Is Sony Now?” — Bryan Gruley and Cliff Edwards, Bloomberg Businessweek