After WWI America (at least) got very insular. The foreign was bad. Isolationism became a major, and powerful, political force. So much so that in June, 1940, as France was surrendering, three of the four Republican candidates in the Presidential Primary were against the US getting involved.
Now, after fear-mongers and "never forget!"ers have tried extra hard to burn the skyjack missile attack into our brains, the foreigner, again, is suspect.
Even the immigration debate in the Congress is, regularly, associated with National Security issues.
d> Your post brought to mind a question which has haunted d> my thoughts in ghostly form like a passing neutrino: d> why was it so easy for the Hitchens/Bermans et. al. of d> the (real or imagined) left to not only sign on for d> the Bush crusade, but accept without question the d> concept of the West as a threatened and fragile d> flower? When you read the works of the cruise missile d> liberals, you can almost hear that sigh of relief the d> burden of broad thought has been removed - "now, at d> last" they seem to say, "we can get back to the proper d> work of praising ourselves and distrusting all d> others." This goes far, far beyond the actual d> requirements of real-world counter-terrorism and into d> something else entirely.
Hitchens had always supported Kurdish armed struggle against Saddam. I'm sure he knows the Chalabi of the Kurds, who fed him extra helpings of Saddam=Evil messages.
Berman? You don't mean Howard Berman, the Congresscritter from California, do you? Berman, Ackerman and Lantos are the top three Democrats on the House International Relations Committee. They all voted for the war.
If the Democrats take the House, they will have more influence. Lantos, for those who don't know, is the only Holocaust survivor in Congress.
On the other hand, if the Republicans keep the House, Jim Leach of Iowa will be the Chair of Int'l Relations. He not only voted against the war, he voted against the rule on the Hunter amendment which made a mockery of Murtha's attempt to discuss getting out of Iraq. He was 1 of 6 Republicans both times. He's a centrist, slightly left of the most right wing Democrats.
jks> I dunno if the US left has ever been big on kulcha, jks> much less high European kulcha -- humanistic or jks> scientific. As Tocqueville says (see, that already jks> marks me as an insufferable unAmerican snob, if jks> referrences to Trotsky, Goethe, and Newton didn't jks> already), in a democracy, of anyway in American jks> democracy, there are strong pressures to conform of a jks> lowest common denominator level of consciousness. Only jks> puts it better than that. I think the deliberate jks> choice of large sectors of the US left has been to jks> succumb to that (when it isn't indulging in jks> obscurantist Marxspeak or pomese) -- the soporific CP jks> writing style, the decision to write the ISO paper at jks> a 7th grade level.
-1 Alexis de Tocqueville +1 Baron de Montesquieu
Right wingers have been attached to the former for a while, while the Oracle of the American Republic is assiduously ignored by the same.
I think the RightWing, with Rush and Hannity and whatnot, are aiming far lower, nowadays, than the left is. They are certainly not out of the left's league in terms of this behavior, if I am missing something big.
Joanna> ....but what can a "classical" artist get out of rock and roll?
Classical music emerged from popular (then "folk music" or "peasant") songs that "everyone" knew.
Ted Quotes: Marx> "On the other hand, let us look at the question in its subjective Marx> aspect: only music can awaken the musical sense in man and the most Marx> beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear, because my object Marx> can only be the confirmation of one of my essential powers ? i.e., Marx> can only be for me insofar as my essential power exists for me as a Marx> subjective attribute (this is because the sense of an object for me Marx> extends only as far as my sense extends, only has sense for a sense Marx> that corresponds to that object). In the same way, and for the same Marx> reasons, the senses of social man are different from those of non- Marx> social man. Only through the objectively unfolded wealth of human Marx> nature can the wealth of subjective human sensitivity ? a musical Marx> ear, an eye for the beauty of form, in short, senses capable of human Marx> gratification ? be either cultivated or created. For not only the Marx> five senses, but also the so-called spiritual senses, the practical Marx> senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, the human sense, the humanity Marx> of the senses ? all these come into being only through the existence Marx> of their objects, through humanized nature. The cultivation of the Marx> five senses is the work of all previous history. Sense which is a Marx> prisoner of crude practical need has only a restricted sense. For a Marx> man who is starving, the human form of food does not exist, only its Marx> abstract form exists; it could just as well be present in its crudest Marx> form, and it would be hard to say how this way of eating differs from Marx> that of animals. The man who is burdened with worries and needs has Marx> no sense for the finest of plays; the dealer in minerals sees only Marx> the commercial value, and not the beauty and peculiar nature of the Marx> minerals; he lacks a mineralogical sense; thus the objectification of Marx> the human essence, in a theoretical as well as a practical respect, Marx> is necessary both in order to make man's senses human and to create Marx> an appropriate human sense for the whole of the wealth of humanity Marx> and of nature." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/epm/ Marx> 3rd.htm>
As discovered by Aristotle, iirc,
musical notes exist in harmony with each other
irrespective of the sophisticaion of the listener's ear Yet, if one's life is disjoint,
filled with undesired background hums
of industry, the groans of fast moving automobiles What makes you think you'd enjoy something that speaks of that which you will never have?