StephenKMackSD's Blog

One must give Mr.Richard N. Haass his due for resigning his position in the U.S. Government over the Iraq war. A civic act of conscious, in answer to that war of imperial opportunism by Neo-Conservatives, that must be honored as an act indispensable bravery. Can the remainder of his career, in the contested territory of Foreign Policy be built upon such an act? Can this recent collection of Neo-Liberal cliches,a meditation on the coming year titled The New Old Year, it's centerpiece being a possible,argued war with the 'intransigent', 'bellicose' Iran (of current myth) be indicative of his thinking in this historical moment? Regrettably, there doesn't seem to be much here except those cliches. It seems utterly appropriate to expect something more from a man and thinker of Mr. Haass' ethical and professional stature.
Where could a curious, concerned reader look for an ethical/political/intellectual alternative to this shopworn opinionating? My recommendation,for an auspicious beginning point,would be Ulrich Beck's Twenty Observations On A World In Turmoil. Here, collected, are the challenging,surprising and consistently argued positions of a sociologist who breaks free of ethical/political cliche and brings to bear on the world's problems his prescient, ethically engaged intellect. I don't think any reader could ask for a better guide to the myriad problems of our world than he.
Political Observer
      

If your feeling a bit low and need some cheering up,a dose of political comedy is what you need – actually you crave it – then look no further than the latest episode of David and Gail Confront the World at the NYT website. This segment is titled Hagelian Dialectic. Mr. Brooks excels at the telling animated cliche, which leads to the intellectual cul-de-sac of decorous political chatter.
Ms. Collins plays her part as a somewhat doubtful interlocutor and foil to Mr. Brooks’ speculative animadversions with a kind of astonished bewilderment.  One small observation, for a Conservative, Mr. Brooks seems to harbor a wholly mechanistic view of the human person. Quite puzzling.
Philosophical Apprentice

In his long introductory remarks, which take almost half of his essay, Mr. Brooks can't resist a reprise of his oft repeated arguments on the inherent 'evil' of government i.e. The New Deal/Great Society and their 'entitlements' as destructive visitation, indeed, europeanisation of the American nation. The same old party line endlessly repeated, to the point of caricature, is nihilistic self-parody. Mr. Hegel is the end point of this diatribe, awash in hysterical exasperation and premature I told you so's. But first we must take the bitter medicine of American Decline, with a decorative walk on by the dour political romantic,Oswald Spengler. Add to this the 'fact', as asserted by Mr. Brooks, of President Obama's budget being equivalent to Rep. Ryan's 'policy entrepreneurship'.
Mr. Brooks does not address the failure of the 'Free Market' in 2008, and it's continuing failure up to this moment! We live in the reality of failed Capital! Forgive me, I have my own hobbyhorse to ride. The policy dimension that Mr. Brooks presents, for our exploration, in the person of Mr. Hegel, is that he represents a steep cut in American military spending, and his Republican credentials will assist in that europeanisation of a remade America: we are fated to a benighted social democracy and Mr. Hegel is the Trojan horse of a mendacious president. I've condensed the argument. The ascent of Mr. Hegel is the harbinger of the decline of the imperial project and the rise of an unenlightened social democracy, as Mr. Brooks argues it. Another denouement in the American Political Melodrama has occurred. We anxiously await the next act.
Almost Marx
     

This beautifully boxed and carefully confected collection of poisoned bonbons by Ms. Rubin represents the crisis of the waning power of 'The Jewish Lobby' i.e. AIPAC in the wake of the explosive revelations of the Walt/Mearsheimer book. To call this book a public relations disaster for the powerful recipient of American largess, Israel and it's domestic apologists, is to state the obvious: manufactured moral/political hysteria become a dire necessity. Enter stage left, the straw man of Chuck Hegel, exposed as antisemitic homophobe, a creature of the political mendacity of President Obama: a riff on the perennial reactionary myth of the otherness of Obama. He and Chuck Hegel are not one of us, simply put. The apostates cannot be tolerated, to state it in the terms that reflect the current political theology, at least in language congenial to Ms. Rubin and her fellow travelers. In terms of The American Political Melodrama, as replacement for the Fiscal Cliff, it will be an admirable, edifying successor.

Political Observer

The critical reader of Mr.David Frum will note the oft used strategy of letting others speak home truths that might seem disingenuous or simply self-serving, if Mr. Frum himself did the opining.Also, the quoting of seemingly analogous history that takes the domestic sting out of his polemics, like a good trumpet player he knows a muted note sometimes has a more telling effect, when located in foreign climes is another overused rhetorical gambit of Mr. Frum.  He is practiced, glib and utterly well spoken, but if one pays attention to the badly orchestrated campaign against Mr. Hegel, on twitter alone RJC's tweets are desperate even hysterical, it all adds up to a collection of school yard taunts: in sum Chuck Hegel is BAD man! The waning power of the American Likudkiks, the marker being the  Walt/Mearsheimer book, has had a radicalizing effect on AIPAC and it's political allies. Perhaps the point of Mr. Frum's exercise in bricolage, not withstanding Mr. Aron David Miller's intellectual/ethical primacy, is that he doesn't take the burning question of Mr. Hegel's nomination as something that requires his full attention and/or rhetorical energy?

Political Observer

The arrogance of David Brooks produces unintentional comedy:
"Well, I’d like to help the Republicans understand what’s going on in the other camp. First, Republicans should understand the mood in the White House. A month ago, the president and his team were gearing up for a fight. They were belligerent and tough-talking. Now, their mood is one of deep confidence. They’ve had a good month. The business community is on their side. Public opinion is breaking their way. Republicans are disorganized. The Obama folks project the self-assurance of a Duke basketball team warming up against a Division III school."
Mr. Brooks in Delphic mode? But there's more:
" He cannot have a satisfying second term if the next four years look like the last two, with a string of debt-ceiling-type budget showdowns. If Obama’s going to govern the way he wants, he absolutely has to crush the Republicans on the debt-ceiling threat and on tax rates.
He’s going to be willing to fight tooth and nail to put the budget-showdown-era behind us. He simply has to win this. He’s going to be willing to go over the fiscal cliff and blame it on Republicans."
Imagine this scene: Mr. Brooks conducts a long distance mind meld with the president and his entire political team. Spock, the great creation of the creative collaboration between Roddenberry/Nimoy aids in the discovery of the motives of the President of the United States of America! Dare we utter this home truth: Mr. Brooks plumbs the depths of comedy and melodrama!
Yours in astonishment,
Myra Breckenridge   

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