I was working on some spare-time notes for a period during which I do not in theory possess any spare time, and by now the notes are an unfinished opus. It struck me today that the footnotes to that not…
notes
I’ll be seeing me
Few of the visitors to this site on any given day leave comments or any other signs of appreciation or disagreement, or of attention at all, but, when I examine the trail of “views” they leave behind, I like to…
Congressraiser
Post-morteming the Mid-Terms.
Islamic Statism and Historical Necessity
Shadi Hamid begins his essay on “The Roots of the Islamic State’s Appeal” by noting first the tendency of political scientists, including himself, to see “religion, ideology, and identity” as “products of a given set of material factors.” In the…
Posted in History, notes, On Liberal Democracy in Relation to Islamism, Religion, War Tagged with: IS, ISIS, Islamic State, Reformation
replying to a comment on comments – part 2 (us v is)
(continuing reply to jch’s comment, with same proviso as before) 4 – Current Events or: Hegemony, What Is It/Good For? Now to current events, as we return to the original point of my intervention under the Quiggan post. jch says:…
Posted in History, Neo-Imperialism, notes, Political Philosophy, War Tagged with: Hegemony, Iraq, Islamic State, Syria
replying to a comment on comments – part 1 (teleonomy)
(With apologies to john c halasz, who could not have anticipated in his comment responding to my comment, under my most recent post collecting comments, that I would decide to make a couple of posts out of my reply. I…
Posted in History, notes, Philosophy Tagged with: agapasm, Hegel, historicism, Kojève, Peirce, teleonomy
us v is (What’s So Funny… 2)
…you do seem, at least, to be endlessly rationalizing U.S. imperial overreach, as if it were some sort of grand strategy upholding universal “liberal democracy”, where I tend to see incoherence, disintegration and devolution, on the part of grossly incompetent,…
Posted in Neo-Imperialism, notes, Political Philosophy, War Tagged with: IS, neo-imperialism, Syria, Turkey
What’s So Funny about Degradation and Ultimate Destruction?
If I find the time, I will finish and publish a more developed piece on America’s stance toward the Islamic State, partly in response to a post on by Adam Elkus and Nick Prime that, in the process of proposing…
Don’t Read “Don’t Read the Comments” Comments
“Don’t Read Comments” (@AvoidComments) says: Yes, sometimes comment sections contain insight and reasoned discussion. But do you really want to take that chance? The tweet was originally submitted on September 9, and re-tweeted yesterday, September 20, by Cathy Young (@CathyYoung63,…
Should We Care That We Don’t Care More about Scottish Independence?
Do or should I care about Scottish independence? Do or should we care whether we care, and should we be gravely concerned about our uncertainty on that question? As a vaguely or occasionally proud member of the Clan MacLeod, which…