StephenKMackSD's Blog

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ClassicalStudies/AncientPhiloso…

 

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12351

David Brooks has a talent for the self-serving hyperbolic register. A reader of his latest exercise pretentiously titled Honor Code will be a bit taken aback by the rhetorical lengths he resorts to, as an argumentative ground to this latest essay. The ground is that American education is deeply hostile to nonconformist boys in it's Liberal Feminist myopia: social engineering. Little Prince Hal is the victim and hero of this political,moral melodrama. Of course, my few lines are very reductive of the essay, but Mr. Brooks is a very adept yarn spinner, to engage in a very American metaphor. Here is what I think may be the most relevant paragraph, after all the myth-making chatter:

"Schools have to engage people as they are. That requires leaders who insist on more cultural diversity in school: not just teachers who celebrate cooperation, but other teachers who celebrate competition; not just teachers who honor environmental virtues, but teachers who honor military virtues; not just curriculums that teach how to share, but curriculums that teach how to win and how to lose; not just programs that work like friendship circles, but programs that work like boot camp."

Mr. Brooks is an authoritarian and as such he celebrates the martial spirit: competition,win, loose,boot camp: words that are indicative of the vulgarized Social Darwinism, the ethos of dog eat dog, that is all pervasive in the Conservative mentality and sensibility. One must read this essay as instructive of the political uses of that hyperbolic register, but here Mr. Brooks pushes to its very limits, all without a hint of irony, while approaching a baroque self-parody. This is a very particular accomplishment.
American Litterateur
       
    

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/opinion/brooks-a-choice-not-a-whine.html?_r…

I lost my patience with Mr. Brooks after reading the first paragraph of this propaganda and will only quote that paragraph. I did read the remainder of the essay, but I fear anything else will lead to a loss of what is left of my civility. I quote aforementioned paragraph:

“Hostility toward the Supreme Court has risen sharply since Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. upheld the Obama health care law. People are apparently angry that the court didn’t rid them of a law they detest. But that’s silly. If Americans want to replace this thing, they should do it themselves.”

Political Cynic

 

 

The point of propaganda is to shape public opinion and Ross Douthat in essay The Liberal Embrace of Judicial Restraint has written it as a kind of self-celebration. It's casual in tone, given that it appears under the title of Campaign Stops, Strong Opinions on the 2012 Elections, it is even a bit breezy, given the subject matter. It is a kind of potted history, that exudes an all knowing I told you so kind of stance: his relish in his ferreting out of an obvious liberal hypocrisy regarding the rhetorical creature judicial restraint, a synonym for the Conservative epithet of judicial activism, while reinforcing the essential notion of Conservative probity. This self-created discovery is the product of his history as ideologically inflected story telling. It is a narrative constructed of convenient bits and pieces, a bricolage in service to the a priori rightness of post Brown v. Board of Education Conservative judicial politicking. Now Mr. Douthat carefully avoids the inconvenient actualities, the dismal,the bleak record of American Conservatism failure to engage with the legacy of institutional racism and the great turning point of Brown v. Board. It marked the re-invigoration of the Originalism in it's first and least attractive expression of States Rights, and it's unsavory, even down right repugnant cast of characters. Modern Conservatism has carefully washed itself of that taint, Mr. Douthat and others being the beneficiaries of that project. It could and must be argued that the point of the Originalists and Conservatism was to remake the judicial system that perpetrated that crime against Jim Crow and it 's institutional legitimacy. That became the raison d'etre of Conservatism aided by a concerted campaign to launder the political image of the States Rights/Originalists judicial candidates: Robert Bork being one of it's failures and John Roberts being one of it's successes. What a difference a generation of careful, patient grooming can make. Is the self-serving, even gleeful assertion that Mr. Douthat makes in his essay, that Conservatives and Liberals have almost reached a point of convergence in his argued notion of judicial restraint/judicial activism? Mr. Douthat succeeds in producing a collection of usable political arguments , fully reflecting the Conservative imperative to rewrite American legal history as a triumph of States Rights/Originalism with John Roberts as it's hero.

Political Observer

Schumpeter in his column of June 23,2012, in the Economist titled Adieu, la France, concocts a fable in which Robber Capital has worked it's magic and we stand in the ruin of the Free Market, where we must listen to Schumpeter point his finger at those French Socialist, and their economic castles in the air: that are a response to the failures of both the Free Market Ideology and it's successor Austerity. It is the perfect time to use that old political standby, misdirection: demonize the Socialists for a failure of pragmatism, and a faith in outmoded state planning. Also accuse them and the French educational establishment, namely the grandes écoles, of a kind of incestuousness, that manifests itself even in the very firms whom he defends against a ruinous Socialism. Prestigious degrees from any famous university in Europe or American can be a stepping stone into both government and corporations. Another fact of contemporary life is that universities have deep governmental attachments, whether public or private schools. But the French system becomes a part of his designated target, a confirmation of a certain French mendacity,a lack of forthrightness: the French aren't like us, socialism has already corrupted them, so we can expect the worst.

Political Cynic

"Obamacare Showdown"

Who can forget the audacious even bravura performance of John Roberts before the Judiciary Committee and his beautifully delivered defense of stare decisis? In retrospect it was an encomium, of sorts: the confirmation, The Citizens United decision. Legal pragmatism or politics? But does it compare, in it's mendacity and bad faith, to the outright lie of William Rehnquist, as he denied authorship, of a letter he asserted to be the work of Justice Jackson?

http://bclawreview.org/review/53_2/05_snyder_barrett/

The erosion of respect for the Supreme Court is the realization that it is not a legal bulwark, an interpreter of law, but a tool of a careful, respectable legal politicking. Let us connect the present day Originalism, that John Roberts most certainly is an adherent of, to the politically galvanizing Brown v. Board (decided in both instances 9-0) to an indigenous American political romanticism. A destructive, pernicious nostalgia for an imagined past, elided of the conundrum of racism and affirming the moral necessity of patriarchal power. Justice Roberts is Robert Bork scrubbed clean of any taint of the legal margin, the radical fringe of legal thought and practice. Expect the worst in the case of the 'Obamacare' decision, but be prepared for a carefully worded document exuding a cultivated but essentially absent political respectability.

Political Observer

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/opinion/brooks-the-power-of-the-particular….

 

I can see Davey all dressed up for any of the Springsteen concerts: bandana wrapped around his head, Wayfarers on,Springsteen tee shirt, cargo shorts and flip flops and holding a mighty forty ouncer. Am I hallucinating? Yeh, cause fanboy just harshed my mellow by talking some shit about The Power of the Particular, and w.t.f. “paracosms”. Fanboy just can’t chill and party and then go home and crash, no! He gotta get all up into it, and tell us about it: what is this some excuse for a tax write-off? Was it fun? Were you with it, or just some lame ass spectator, who just can’t stop his moralistic poser self?

GeriatricG

 

http://www.cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14628-9/foundations-of-the-america…

“Inderjeet Parmar reveals the complex interrelations, shared mindsets, and collaborative efforts of influential public and private organizations in the building of American hegemony. Focusing on the involvement of the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations in U.S. foreign affairs, Parmar traces the transformation of America from an “isolationist” nation into the world’s only superpower, all in the name of benevolent stewardship.”