StephenKMackSD's Blog

I will be brief. This book is not Law and the Inner Self by Prof. White, nor is it the damming polemic rejoinder to Prof. White's book, that is Law without Values by Prof.Alschuler.
Here we have a long piece of reportage, simply put. It does not pretend to be a literary biography, it could not meet that standard. Ms. Biskupic is a reporter and functions in that capacity quite well, although she sometimes stumbles maladroitly into the role of enthusiast, while not wholly partisan, which puts any notion of objectivity in a kind of unwelcome comic relief. Such locutions as 'he nailed it' seem out of place. I think she is good at describing the arguments in cases before the court, that does not betray sympathy to either side, which adds value to this book, in fact that could be considered the book's strongest point. That was what I was looking for.
Justice Scalia is an authoritarian, Ms. Biskupic's biography makes utterly clear that he fits that political/psychological profile. His fealty to Executive Privilege dates back to the Nixon/Ford era. But Justice Scalia is not content to lecture from the bench his errant colleagues, in withering but shopworn sarcasm, he uses his many appearances and his long association with The Federalist Society, to promote the Originalism/Textualism canard. Originalism/Textualism i.e .Jim Crow Nostalgia fits quite handily in to one of the founding myths of Reaganism, white victim-hood. Justice Scalia is also skilled at exploiting another Conservative myth: the malfeasance, mendacity of the Warren Court: it is his raison d'etre, his stock and trade.
Political Observer

http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=978…

Ross Douthat's meditation on the Newton school massacre opens like a bad television melodrama: a scenic travelogue with a pretentious voice over, about the menace lurking under the veneer of bucolic small town America, the reality of suburbia’s quiet desperation wedded to the illusory search for an unattainable safety. Although he does manage, in a kind of mysterious literary alchemy, to create an atmospheric of a certain power, you must give him his due. Which then surprisingly, but inexorably turns to Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov for some decorous curlicues, made up of the literary musings of a politically terrorized sinner, that lend this essay of tactless hackery some weight. What he's trading on is the usual Christian sadomasochism, God works in mysterious ways etc., and the fact that 'evil' exists, and that it can't be overcome: the 'fallen state of man', we are cursed beings, the usual shopworn chatter of both his Conservatism and his Christianity, they are synonymous. Mr. Douthat revels in this scalding bath of Augustinian self-loathing, as a kind of theological realism, abetted by his dour, self-hating Russian ally. Mr. Douthat articulates his message to the hungering throng that desperately needs answers! One can almost hear the faint echos of hosannas, as fitting ending of this cinematically inflected essay.

Queer Atheist

In this age of failed experts and expertise, not to speak of the utter failure of Capitalism, and the total lack of an alternative, Mr.Niall Ferguson makes a lengthy appeal, in his essay of November 30, 2012 titled Turning Points, to his readers that he is the expert to which his readers are obliged to pay heed. One of the foremost exponents of 'Free Markets' and 'Empire' produces a set of arguments- well, not so much a set of arguments, but a set of assertion that he, of all the experts capable of demonstrable misreadings of current history and the future, must be trusted to provide the most pertinent historical narrative. Mr. Ferguson is an expert at the historical counter-factual, although his near contemporary Robert Harris in his brilliant literary debut Fatherland, demonstrated the poverty of that genre of historical analysis, when compared to the power of literature. The intellectual garnish is applied with a heavy hand, Kuhn's paradigm shift is the opening thrust: the other thinkers are not aware of the slowness of the approach of this 'event' in historical time, a resort to the high sounding reference, but a sign of a pernicious historical myopia. Here Mr. Ferguson enumerates the 'six slow acting drivers of history in our time'. There's just a whiff of Hegel here:

1. Technological innovation;

2. The spread of ideas and institutions;

3. The tendency of even good political systems to degenerate;

4. Demographics;

5. Supplies of essential commodities;

6. Climate change.

Mr. Ferguson points the way to a more enlightened practice of history, while scolding those lazy,dubious opinionators, who shroud their intellectual laziness in the mantle of Mr. Kuhn's salutary idea. That Decadence is number three is not surprising, that always dependable epithet, that is the passionately held obsession of Conservatism, across those once rigid national boundaries. And garnished with a telling quote from Bismark about American political naivete, or should we more accurately call it American witlessness? Mr. Ferguson makes himself an unwelcome, but candid guest. Yet we are only at the half-way mark in his essay, and the antagonists to American hegemony are the internal expression of American 'liberal isolationism', as threat to the imperial reveries of Mr. Ferguson, the perennial threat of the economic rise of China: the Yellow Peril economically  re-imagined and the Arab Spring turning into The Islamist Winter. This looks like Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations with fresh fresh application of powder, paint and an almost flattering costume change.

Marcus T.T.     

                     

Page 4

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745653960.html

One can start with this ludicrously inflated title that Mr. Brooks tacks on to this self-serving essay about the argued Republican reappraisal,as it continues after the defeat of 2012. The Cold War Liberals and Conservatives thought that the very idea of Glasnost and/or Perestroika  were utterly impossible. The notion that internal reform was even thinkable within the Soviet political system was never considered by the Kremlinologist of yesteryear. Yet it happened under Gorbachev. That Mr. Brooks should find this term useful, demonstrates that he wishes to place the Republican reappraisal of 2012 in world-historical terms, the possibility of the impossible i.e. an end to the political nihilism and plutocratic obsessions of the Republican Party, in the persons of Marco Rubio and a more politically moderate Paul Ryan.This reeks of  the opportunism of a party hack: history accelerated to suit the needs of political expediency. Mr. Brooks, of course, solemnly admonishes the Republicans that failure to 'reform' will lead to political irrelevance. Mr. Brooks favors the role of the stern, unyielding prophet.
Political Cynic      

  

http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item6821595/?site_locale=en_US

http://www.ucd.ie/news/2012/12DEC12/031212-UCD-Philosophy-Professor-awarded-R…

 

“Sometimes you have to walk through the desert to get to the Promised Land. That’s the way it is for Republicans right now. The Republicans are stuck in a miserable position at the end of 2012, but, if they handle things right, they can make 2013 an excellent year — both for their revival prospects and for the country.”

Here is Mr. Brooks sounding like an Old Testament prophet, not the blood obsessed zealots of that loathsome document, but as re-imagined by Walt Disney, the American kitsch-meister: all very benign under a heavy coating of syrup.  All this is perfect for a generation of readers brought up with television as a constant companion.

This essay is more of the same advocacy for Simpson-Bowels austerity as the key to a prosperous future, with dire warnings about the political/ethical blindness of the present.  Mr. Brooks counts on the short memories of his regular readers.  Once an exponent of Free Market economics, this destructive mirage brought the world’s economy to near ruin, he has replaced that destructive folly with its ideological twin, austerity.  

Mr. Brooks has failed to address the continuing failure of Capitalism. Never will he address that issue, with any degree of honesty.The project of rescue consists in the Republican Party saved from their own plutocratic obsessions, their political nihilism. All of this is without surprise, just a slight change of tone. It should be kept in mind that the long term goal of American Conservatism is the destruction of what is left of the New Deal and the Great Society. Conservatives have accepted that a policy of slow but steady erosion of these programs will bring the desired results, argued as a response to dire political necessity.

Almost Marx   

       

To characterize Ross Douthat, in his essay of December 1, 2012 titled More Babies, Please, as sounding like some turn of the century Germanic prophet of doom and inevitable decadence. This, as more and more people realize that their lives are important in themselves, set free from a  ‘civilizational’, religious, nation state, even biological context:  the realization of the possibilities of human freedom, is revelatory of his linkage of the sine qua non of growth, in Capitalism, and the Catholic Church’s belief in unfettered procreation.

Philosophical Apprentice            

Reading the comments section of any posted opinion piece on internet sites can be helpful in focusing your attention on issues that seem less than clear upon your own reading: a way of paying attention through a third party, an intellectual refraction that brings focus to your thoughts. Mr. Douthat’s essay of November 24, 2012 titled Our Enemy, The Payroll Tax is more of the same from this Conservative opinionator. The Conservative project is to subvert what is left of New Deal and Great Society programs, Social Security and Medicare, dismissively called ‘entitlements’ ( I put this word in quotation marks because it is lie.) And the means to this end is to end the payroll tax. End the revenue stream and you end these programs. As presented by Mr. D.  it’s more like eliminating these programs on a kind of installment plan. His polemic, coming so quickly after Romney’s decisive defeat – one wonders at this moment of questioning for American Conservatism 2012, what Mr. Douthat is thinking?

He manages to rehearse the many rhetorical voices of that Conservatism: the screeching political theology that sees every political event as a mortal combat between God and Mammon, the cry of anti-tax fundamentalism, the inherent evil of bipartisanship and more importantly this paranoid gem:

“Payroll taxes are a relic of New Deal Machiavellianism: by taking a bite of every worker’s paycheck and promising postretirement returns, Franklin Roosevelt effectively disguised Social Security as a pay-as-you-go system, even though the program actually redistributes from rich to poor and young to old.”

The most salient question here is : when have the Republicans done anything for young or old?

But more importantly Mr. Douthat does not address the failure of American Capital to provide the good jobs that Americans need, this in the face of massive corporate profits, long after the government bailout. Good jobs with benefits:  in order to buy a home, support a family, send their children to college, and retire in economic comfort rather than want. After long argument is support of the renewal of the payroll tax holiday:

“So there is only one question conservatives should be asking about the payroll tax holiday: How do we make it permanent?”

Publius

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