uick & hard? Long & slow? From the front or behind? Doug
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What can I say? I was drinking and lost it.
The article was just blathering bullshit and contributed zero. Not a surprise to the sober, since there is no such thing as the conservative mind. However, the drunk and hostile harbor other thoughts---dark and suspicious thoughts. Maybe they DO know what they are doing...
Fuck'm. The best argument is a bullet. Kill the reptile brain, kill the conservative. Butt simple.
You say, well that is hardly a rational political position. However, the problem is that conservatism is not a rational political position. It is an irrational identity movement: white, insecure, mostly male, middle aged that has no rational political position on anything. (Interesting how it manifests that in a completely incoherent string of unrelated policy positions...)
The so-called conservative mind follows a kind of mass cultural simulacrum of an all American White Male Identity. George Bush is its icon. His slightly dazed and confused demeanor, his steroid induced hostility, his inability to actually speak the English language----these and other style accouterments are all there is. John Wayne. There is no there, there. One must stand firm, since there is no rational realm from which to mount a discourse or reflect---one simply IS a primordial rod of firmness---stiff, the tree trunk of authenticity. Der Leaderstiff Amerika.
I've spent months reflecting on why Leo Strauss tried to portray Spinoza as starting some kind of bible science with his Political-Theological Tactus. I can not figure out what Strauss was trying to do. The simple fact is he was just wrong. It was an idiot idea. Spinoza had no interest at all in starting a school of rational analysis of the bible. His purpose was to illustrate the stupidity of attempting to find a rational explanation for anything in the bible. He wanted to demonstrate that there was no rational structure to the bible or religious ideas and therefore they were not the proper founding material for society or a guide to human conduct, must less law. Spinoza didn't mount a critique of religion. Spinoza devastated religion.
Strauss desperately wanted to find a source for his own philosophical impulse within a German Jewish history and the fact is he could only find his opponents in the Enlightenment. I still can't figure out what motivated his profound anathma towards the Enlightenment. The contradiction of anti-Semiticism as a tolerated variant in a liberal society seems hardly worth a lifetime of research, study, and writing to oppose the broad Enlightenment program.
CG