September 12, 2013
The world's chieftain cannot serve the general interest effectively and reliably unless convinced that serving the general interest also serves "his" self-interest - that the two interests are finally the same or non-severable. When the chieftain falls into a depressive state - of apathy, or aboulia, or neurasthenia; doubting all, negating itself to negate all - the system fails, and the will to stasis is realized, or hypostatized, as crisis.
Continued
October 5, 2013
As a matter of history, the administrative state, the FDR state, that the Tea Partiers are glad to shut down temporarily, and that some would like to shut down permanently, is the same state that arose contemporaneously with the fall of the Weimar Republic, in relation to common and overlapping challenges, and that was consolidated in political competition and eventually at war with its immediate successor (which technically still functioned under the Weimar constitution). A serious discussion of an actual or potential crisis of liberal democracy in the leading liberal democratic nation-state, and on the system level – the level of basic responsibilities and assumptions of government – cannot help but take into account prior, concretely related crises, even if particular circumstances initially appear vastly different.
Continued
