Not exactly, the dominance of the corporate class, shorthanded by the Chamber of Commerce, over petit bourgeois interest, and their willingness to collaborate with the regime, on a whole host of issues, is indemic, not only on this side of the pond, for Tory/UKIP, UMP/Front National, and CDU/CSU, Alternative, also Populares/Citizens,
A more interesting point, is the scenario the sequel presents, 33 years on, the victory over the Empire, has faded into Myth, the First Order, somewhat like the Siloviki, reigns over certain corners of the outer rim, their ferocity also suggests the Islamic State,
Except Avatar was about a fictional interplanetary war, whereas American Sniper is about a very real threat, which manifests itself not on in Ramadi, but Beziers or Birmingham
Eastwood's whole oevre, going back to the spaghetti western, is how does one deal with evil and corruption, from VanCleef's corrupt Union colonel, to Holbrook's police commissioner in Magnum Force, to Hackman's character in Unforgiven, if memory serves, it's about institutional corruption as well, for the similar reasons,
the sophistry endorsed by some of those on your twitter feed, re the Kyle story, is really breathtaking, it's as if ISIS never arose, which is Zarquawi's old outfit, with a new chief,
I was reading Candide, and was reminded that the great Lisbon earthquake, was a strong influence, on Voltaire's thinking, the atrocity of the 2oth arrondisement demanded something more profound,
re Fukuyama, as I've remarked before, he seems not to understand his own conclusion, the 'end of history' was a reset, not an end in itself,
no the 'hookup culture' is not synonymous with rape, these activists seem to ignore that detail in their paradigm as if this was the Victorian era, and not the aspect detailed in Penny Dreadful
vizzini, was the evil dwarf in Princess Bride, the more prominent the campus, the less likely the incident, Ramapo yes, UVA apparently not, Merry Christmas,
Only in a Vizzini sense, do we agree about a 'rape culture' where value clarification and use of intoxicants are a toxic brew, but that isn't the progressive argument is it,
No, I don't that's it, amorality is probably what rankles Strauss, although one might flow from the other, re Nietzche's mixed feelings about Gott en Totten, De Tocqueville had the prophetic vision, as did Orwell although he cribbed from Burnham,
I thought both Reagan and Lincoln were quite clear, Lincoln might have been a little hyperbolic, he didn't want to sound like Cicero, recovered in the 5th Century AD, when the state and the church had fused into one authority, and self government was a fiction, some might say, the regime of President Snow, was what Reagan might have feared in addition to foreign powers,
Actually no, Halabja was an example of how that doesn't really happen, even in '91, there wasn't a sufficient response, the Sunni tribesman of Anbar and other provinces are willing to join AQ not once but twice, so this is their 'liberated state' much like the Golden Square and the Baath,
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
(longer version of a comment left at a typically impossible discussion of Carl Schmitt at the Crooked Timber blog.)
the single most interesting question he raises, if not uniquely, then signally, is the constitutional paradox of the constituting/constituted power. That still deserves consideration.
I agree with this observation, and I've read all of JCH's comments on this thread with interest, while recognizing the difficulty and perhaps the impossibility of what he's trying to do here - among other things trying to defend an interest in "the enemy" to the enemy's committed enemies. (THE ENEMY was the title that Gopal Balakrishnan gave to his very useful intellectual biography of Schmitt, published in 2000[ (( The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt )) ]). Quite often, this very difficult if not impossible exercise coincides with another difficult impossibility: of trying to do philosophy on a blog comment thread.
It is just a bit more than merely ironic that those perplexed by the theory of the primacy for politics of the friend-enemy distinction so frequently and perhaps universally operate from friend-enemy presumptions in their discussion, or most typically in their refusal of actual discussion, of the same concept. That this problem would tend to recur is one strong implication of the theory underlying Schmitt's "Concept of the Political." A second or corollary implication is that this concept of the political implies a politicization of the concept, and finally collapses into or is revealed to rely upon, is an argument or the argument on, the concept of concepts at all. The question of the sovereign decision ex nihilo turns out to be a form of the more general and more basic question of existence ex nihilo - another form of the "why is there something and not nothing?" and another form of the "why am I bothering to offer a comment on a blog thread?" or "why am I declining to continue this discussion?"
(At CT I ended the comment there, but I'll choose here to continue a bit further:)
The explicability of the (any) decision (including the omission or refusal of decision) is inherent in the decision as a potential, but its not being entirely known or knowable, its character not yet having been determined, is what differentiates the decision as decision, or subjective experience/experience of subjectivity or of freedom of the will in the moment of decision (presence as self-presence at all), from that which is to be decided upon and the moment of decision, as concretely the result (result of results) of all decisions already made. "Who has not sat in suspense before his heart's curtain?"
The poet implies that we all have had that experience. One might suggest further that "to be at all as a 'who'" means to be in such suspense. It is in that moment that who one is or we are or we are/always were/are-going-to-be-henceforth is revealed to us, that we reveal ourselves to ourselves, as though from nothing - applying Schmitt's formulation regarding the sovereign decision. Only afterwards, precisely as in the judgment of a crime or in the larger "court of history," the individual's or society's or blog-thread-commenter's or the universe's true character having been revealed, does explanation including causal explanation become possible, though satisfaction, or the decision to be satisfied, necessarily and without exception takes a similar form (as necessity, as the exception). As was quite apparent to Kant and as we all know, but as we always eventually decide to suppress precisely in order to get on with life, the full explanation of the criminal's or the enemy's or our own conduct would eventually vacate the notion of any meaningful decision at all. My bad childhood produced my bad behavior. My bad education produced this incoherent blog comment. My loneliness and self-destructive tendencies explain why I am leaving why I did not leave this comment in full at this that forum full of mainly unsympathetic and even hostile interlocutors. Such totalities of explanation/explanatory totalities, or the position of complete determinism, eliminates subjectivity. They tell us that there never was nor ever is or can be a meaningful decision at all: There was the effect of causes, and the illusion of volition and meaning. Things did things to things, that is all (determinism as physicalist reductionism/eliminationism).
Naturally, inevitably, we or I refuse to accept this concept that has no meaningful spot for us or me, or, to say the same thing, we or I may at most pretend to accept this meaninglessness as meaningful: Either way, the origin of the self appears to be its own self-origination as though from nothing, in this instance in direct confrontation with the thought of its/my own nothingness: I insist on myself, on this now as not yet explicable, as still to be determined. For example, I might take the decision, and make what seems to me a fully reasonable decision, and what may turn out to be or to seem a fully explicable one, but without offering or being able to offer reason or explanation to myself or others, to stop here.
All the other guys and gals, the losers and the second-raters, the backworldspeople, are the ones who need policy and strategy: The Neo-Empire or Empire of Liberty is its own strategy and is by "being there" already the final determinant of every policy and politics. Hegemony is. It simply "lives hegemonically." All else on Earth if not necessarily in Heaven (nor necessarily not) is secondary, though perhaps usefully diversionary, since an achieved new consensus, as we occasionally set out to remind ourselves, would be counterproductive compared to the actual, virtually inarticulable but pre-eminently successful one, and possibly the sole true danger to it.
Expressed as mere opinion, as mediocritism strongly asserted, what Strauss or any honest human being has to say about certain not-possibly-true possible truths may become effectively indistinguishable from the views of cranks, lunatics, provocateurs, and traitors. To approach such not-possibly-true possible truths at all may mean asking to be counted a Nazi, for example - or even, if not worse than as a clearer and more nearly present danger, a "neo-conservative."
I don't take such phrases as categorically poor writing, although I leave to your judgment in this case. Whether Chaucer in The Knight's Tale, describing [...]
On “Only the Right Believes in Class Conflict Anymore”
OT, Jonathan Howard has a Cthluthu meets Marlowe type tale, Lovecraft and Carter, out, with some reference from the classic tale 'thing on the steps'
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the oligarchs in the right and left, will work together against 'the radical middle' FN is the Poujade movement redux,
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Not exactly, the dominance of the corporate class, shorthanded by the Chamber of Commerce, over petit bourgeois interest, and their willingness to collaborate with the regime, on a whole host of issues, is indemic, not only on this side of the pond, for Tory/UKIP, UMP/Front National, and CDU/CSU, Alternative, also Populares/Citizens,
On “In This Galaxy, Now”
A more interesting point, is the scenario the sequel presents, 33 years on, the victory over the Empire, has faded into Myth, the First Order, somewhat like the Siloviki, reigns over certain corners of the outer rim, their ferocity also suggests the Islamic State,
On “Open Thread”
Heykel doesn't answer the question, why Salafism is the default reaction among regime opponents, with the possible exception of Indonesia,
On ““A” rarely if ever equals “A” only”
whatever, btw that Presidential rant at the prayer breakfast, is reminiscent of those apologias when you came back from the underverse
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the prophets were quite clear, from Isiah on, certainly Jeremiah,
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the arrogance of humans conceiving of such a god, actually nothing new under the sun, Saul of Tarsus saw it nearly 2,000 years ago,
On “Feet First on Reagan, Neo-Conservatism, and Hegel”
well this episode of colonial marines extreme, was supposed to be an allegory of the Indian Wars, Vietnam and Iraq,
"
Except Avatar was about a fictional interplanetary war, whereas American Sniper is about a very real threat, which manifests itself not on in Ramadi, but Beziers or Birmingham
"
Eastwood's whole oevre, going back to the spaghetti western, is how does one deal with evil and corruption, from VanCleef's corrupt Union colonel, to Holbrook's police commissioner in Magnum Force, to Hackman's character in Unforgiven, if memory serves, it's about institutional corruption as well, for the similar reasons,
"
well this still demonstrates a moral vacuum, saturated in oikophobia, the notion that we are the greater evil,
"
the sophistry endorsed by some of those on your twitter feed, re the Kyle story, is really breathtaking, it's as if ISIS never arose, which is Zarquawi's old outfit, with a new chief,
On “Being Charlie – Updated”
it's an interesting notion about the Charlie Hebdo massacre, but as with the Aliens in ID 4, the answer is more obvious,
"
I was reading Candide, and was reminded that the great Lisbon earthquake, was a strong influence, on Voltaire's thinking, the atrocity of the 2oth arrondisement demanded something more profound,
re Fukuyama, as I've remarked before, he seems not to understand his own conclusion, the 'end of history' was a reset, not an end in itself,
On “Will’s Affront (An Untimely Post)”
no the 'hookup culture' is not synonymous with rape, these activists seem to ignore that detail in their paradigm as if this was the Victorian era, and not the aspect detailed in Penny Dreadful
"
no rape is a very serious offense with serious consequences, precisely it should not be bandied about loosely,
On “The Docket”
With the results from Tunisia in ,the Arab Spring will turn out to have been as enduring as the Revolutions of 1830,
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odd how 'the narrative' and the facts rarely align
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vizzini, was the evil dwarf in Princess Bride, the more prominent the campus, the less likely the incident, Ramapo yes, UVA apparently not, Merry Christmas,
"
Only in a Vizzini sense, do we agree about a 'rape culture' where value clarification and use of intoxicants are a toxic brew, but that isn't the progressive argument is it,
On “Feet First on Reagan, Neo-Conservatism, and Hegel”
A thought experiment, think of an alternate reality where the US adopted Hegelianism, and Germany adopted Locke, what kind of a world would that be,
"
No, I don't that's it, amorality is probably what rankles Strauss, although one might flow from the other, re Nietzche's mixed feelings about Gott en Totten, De Tocqueville had the prophetic vision, as did Orwell although he cribbed from Burnham,
"
I thought both Reagan and Lincoln were quite clear, Lincoln might have been a little hyperbolic, he didn't want to sound like Cicero, recovered in the 5th Century AD, when the state and the church had fused into one authority, and self government was a fiction, some might say, the regime of President Snow, was what Reagan might have feared in addition to foreign powers,
On “…and, Ultimately, to Destroy (3): Acceptance”
Actually no, Halabja was an example of how that doesn't really happen, even in '91, there wasn't a sufficient response, the Sunni tribesman of Anbar and other provinces are willing to join AQ not once but twice, so this is their 'liberated state' much like the Golden Square and the Baath,
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.