December 29, 2013
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.
Continued
November 17, 2010
Pessimism about one's own nation is an all-encompassing and all-defining condition, because everything any of us positively can be or seek as individuals is affected where not wholly determined by our membership in a national community - the state broadly defined. When we refer to an "unhappy childhood," it will usually matter a great deal whether we're referring to our own childhood, and the same is true when we refer to the unhappy conditions of our national upbringing or to a "broken" national home. Yet national pessimism is still not the same as absolute pessimism. We can imagine the failure of any nation, including our own nation, as we have seen great national disasters, that would not equate with the failure of history itself. We could even come to equate the failure of a national idea as essential to some higher good: It would not be the first time for us, just the first time that we were referring to ourselves.
A national pessimist suffers a kind of exile from his own future, but he can still visit happier outcomes, on a kind of spiritual visa. Over time, he may even be accepted by the natives, and find a new home. Americans are particularly well-prepared to make this transition, because our national identity, paradoxically, is already built on the cancellation of nationality, on immigration and nothing else. Our new citizenship may not be full and authentic, of the blood and soil, but neither is the one with which we are born. The American idea at inception had before it a vast national phase to undergo, but what defined the American nation was that it was not and never could be a nation like the others: The idea of a new world had to take on a purpose-fabricated national costume for us to assume and sustain a place within the world of nations, but the realization of our idea could never have been contained in a merely national destiny. For the same reason, the victory of our "Greatest Generation," at our national apogee, was the victory over ultra-nationalism, in favor of a new international system implying the supersession of nations, justifiable as an American national project strictly on that basis. All of our history since that time has been governed by the same paradox of nationalized internationalism, but from the other, declining side, as accompanied by the conversion of American energy into mere mass - the accumulation of material wealth alongside the decay of national institutions.
We can therefore look forward to the completion of our creative self-destruction with greater hope, or at least with greater equanimity, than others in our approximate position have been able to muster. What we stand to lose is everything we never really thought was worth having. What we stand to gain is what we always sought.
On “East is West and West is East and Never the Met Are Twain (light posting)”
those whom the Gods wish to annoy, they first make read narc.
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Oh, my guiding sTar!
On “Faith-Based Politics In Place Of A Winning Program”
http://66.39.36.162/Galleries/Tunisia/images/ElJem.jpg
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@ Ken:
Pick a fight???
Naw.
Just throwing in a fact or two.
Is that threatening? Hope not, cause picking a fight with people who'll kill their own ignorant selves can't be any too safe for me.
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@ Ken:
gun owners and suicide. yes, Ken, that pairing is just a natural.
Welcome to California.
http://www.applications.dhs.ca.gov/epicdata/firearms/gun2000.htm
From 1991-1997 firearm homicides consistently outnumbered firearm suicides. Since 1998 firearm suicides has outnumbered firearm homicides. In 2000, this pattern continued, barely: Of the 3,092 firearm deaths in 2000, 1,488 were suicides, 1,478 were homicides, and 53 were unintentional (the remainder were either police shootings or of undetermined intent).
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@ CK MacLeod:
CK, your heart definitely is in the right place. Take whatever time it takes. A week or two if needed.
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I think that I would like some proof of that, given the likelihood that it's not delivering any great amount of oxygen upward.
On “Paul Ryan on Real Progressivism”
@ Zoltan Newberry:
I'll say!! Anybody who would argue over the internet about things such as those is potentially tyrannical.
Those are the sort of people that should be put into secret prisons and constantly hydrated.
Thiessen says they'll thank you for it.
On “On re-reading Liberal Fascism: Defining Evil Down”
what'd I do now???
those three exclamation points look pretty grim.
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Lot of the crowd watching "Our American Cousin" thought so as well.
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@ CK MacLeod:
I was going to encourage you to post it over there, as I think that it's a necessary fight for conservatives to have amongst themselves if they wish to uphold their self-view as careful as thoughtful folk.
But, I'll be damned before I urge a man to break his own rice bowl when I'm not gonna feed him.
(willing to send pot of frijoles negroes, ev'ry now and again)
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The last time I looked at the picture of the book, the Amazon best price was $4.43,,,,, now it's $4.01
Blame it on the Tsar!!!
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that's ok, Joe. you were about 30% correct. and that's indicative of some progress.
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@ Joe NS:
....that lasted into the Grant administration, IIRC.
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Pretty nice job, Tsar, pretty nice. I would even venture into a reading of your longer version should you place it before us.
Good work with Wilson and reminding us how his government of First Fascists violently suppressed all dissent and rigged that 1918 mid-term congressional election.
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@ Joe NS:
Ya mean that because the Income Tax was a progressive tax, it was a scheme thought up by Progressives?
Who woulda thunk it?
That wily old Abe.
On “Paul Ryan on Real Progressivism”
Quite right, Joe. Goldberg can argue that liberalism is akin to fascism because he doesn't define fascism.
red and yellow are pretty much the same as well.
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@ CK MacLeod:
It's been a while since any blotter was working through my bit o' brain ....