McCarthy’s unusually actually reasonably conservative conservative foreign policy

July 17, 2014 | Posted in International Relations, Neo-Imperialism, notes, Twitterei | Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments ↓
  1. “Liberal democracy depends on empire, but there are strict limits to what empire can achieve” @ToryAnarchist‘s essay deserves a careful read 10:19:07, 2014-07-17
  2. #pt Schmitt (of ’36!)1 v Hegel-Kojève-Fukuyama, Strauss hovering benignly, neo-cons, isolationists, leftists shunted aside.. @toryanarchist 10:39:20, 2014-07-17
  3. realize I didn’t link @toryanarchist‘s essay earlier discussed: http://t.co/fOw9wy7sx6 11:39:19, 2014-07-17

Notes:

  1. actually ’38, in The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes – a book taken by Schmittians to mark failure of Schmitt’s Nazi project and retreat from practical politics. [↩]

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2 comments on “McCarthy’s unusually actually reasonably conservative conservative foreign policy”

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  1. It is a good essay. One quibble:

    Liberal democracy is unnatural. It is a product of power and security, not innate human sociability. It is peculiar rather than universal, accidental rather than teleologically preordained

    The use of “natural” throws things in the wrong direction, as it frequently does. It appears to present a binary of the natural, apparently here this means, human sociability, the universal and teleological, and the unnatural, meaning the specific (ie the contingent), power and security.

    If the universal is natural, it must be contingent. Otherwise, like God, it is apart from, beyond, the natural.

    In the context of the essay, this may be nit-picking, but in the context of previous discussions here, it seems worthwhile to point out.

    Reply

    • I agree that at points McCarthy slips in his attempt to overthrow Hegel et al, and that specifically the opposition natural/contingent isn’t sustainable. For parallel reasons, the question arises whether a liberal democracy or any community that doesn’t believe in itself as a mediation of a universal good (or of eternity or of the immortal or transmortal) can sustain itself as a community or politically. He at times seems aware that “we” are not and cannot be ready to give up on ourselves in this way, but seems to hope that for practical purposes enough of us can go on believing anyway.

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