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
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
My pleasure.
Agree about the song, though I think the "haunting" aspect mostly comes from the historical context, as I discussed way back when, also a bit reminiscent of the effect when a movie psycho-killer likes to hum or whistle a certain tune. I think almost any song, but lullabies especially, are vulnerable to that, "gone to sleep" being a common if not universal euphemism for "died."
I'd never heard of Asch's and Vogel's works, and glad to know about them.
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