Cockburn on "crackpot realism"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Cockburn's subject doesn't require much analytical power,
>however; if what he quoted was at all representative, vanden
>Heuvel favors the imperial Bismarckian Welfare-warfare State,
>for which events like those of September 11th are indeed a
>great boon.  One can call that "the Left" if one wants, but
>at the price of a near-total loss of coherent language.
>
>-- Gordon

*****   Let no one...put off making sure of the populace until the 
time of danger arrives, because he may not...succeed in this.  For 
the people as a whole will not consider that they owe this benefit to 
you, but rather to your enemies, and since they cannot but fear that, 
when the need has passed, you may deprive them of what you have been 
compelled to give, will in no way feel obliged to you.

(Niccolo Machiavelli, _The Discourses_ [trans. Leslie J. Walker, S.J. 
& ed. Bernard Crick, NY: Penguin Books, 1970] I.32, p. 188)   *****

Evidently, Machiavelli estimated the populace's political 
intelligence more highly than Katrina vanden Heuvel, et al do.
-- 
Yoshie

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