StephenKMackSD's Blog

http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/PoliticalTheory/?vi…

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-70228-7/american-neoconservatism

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-7486-4080-5/quentin-meillassoux

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15802-2/hermeneutic-communism

I had read this book some years ago, but was recently reminded of it by two essays published in The New York Review of Books by Professor Crews, titled Physician Neal Thyself. I have provide a link to the Review’s site where this two part essay is avalable for purchase. Or simply go to your Public Library, where I found the Review and the back copies readily available.It will be worth your time and trouble.

http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/frederick-c-crews/

http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item2702902/?site_locale=en_US

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/14/hillary-clinton-speech-to-economic-club-of-new-york-a-brilliant-moment.html

Here is Leslie H. Gelb adopting the rhetorical guise of the outsider to the Washington insiders who make and endlessly argue about Foreign Policy, intellectuals dedicated to the American Interest. He is one of those insiders, who receive calls from the White House about matters of import. Mr. Gelb freely and boastfully reported on that at The Daily Beast, so the pose of outsider rings absolutely hollow, except to add a certain luster, not to speak of necessary ballast, to his policy analysis. Hillary Clinton delivers a speech that emphasizes economic power over military power, in the midst of our precipitous economic decline, and Mr. Gelb through his celebratory rhetoric, stumbles over himself manufacturing encomiums to Madame Secretary.  My curiosity is peaked. What is afoot in the halls of power? Or did Mr. Gelb, like so many others, find the latest government concocted dark comedy, with Iran as it central villain, too unpalatable and farfetched to even consider seriously?

Political Cynic   

http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/History/17thC/?vi…

I keep going back to this old friend, when I have questions, and when I want to renew that friendship in pursuit of my intellectual quests.

Intellectual Quixote

Any attempt to ‘clean’ the private park, now in the hands of dissidents,will be a predictable end that will make real the power of a corrupt Capitalism. This is a reading that fully follows the mass media lead of handycapping the winners and losers to appeal to a mass auidence. But the lessons of the Depression are or should be foremost in minds of many i.e. the Bonus Army and how that was handled in an age not as closly connected as this one surly is. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on the career od Douglas MacArthur:

“One of MacArthur’s most controversial acts came in 1932, when the “Bonus Army” of veterans converged on Washington. He sent tents and camp equipment to the demonstrators, along with mobile kitchens, until an outburst in Congress caused the kitchens to be withdrawn. MacArthur was concerned that the demonstration had been taken over by communists and pacifists but the General Staff’s intelligence division reported that only three of the march’s twenty-six key leaders were communists. MacArthur went over contingency plans for civil disorder in the capital. Mechanized equipment was brought to Fort Myer, where anti-riot training was conducted.^[79] On 28 July 1932, a clash between the District police and demonstrators resulted in two men being shot. President Hoover ordered MacArthur to “surround the affected area and clear it without delay.”^[80] MacArthur brought up troops and tanks and, against the advice of Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, decided to accompany the troops, although he was not in change of the operation. The troops advanced with bayonets and sabers drawn under a shower of bricks and rocks, but no shots were fired. In less than four hours, they cleared the Bonus Army’s campground using tear gas. The tear gas canisters started a number of fires, and caused the only death during the riots. While not as violent as other anti-riot operations, it was nevertheless a public relations disaster.^[81]

In 1934 MacArthur sued journalists Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen for defamation after they described his treatment of the Bonus marchers as “unwarranted, unnecessary, insubordinate, harsh and brutal.” In turn, they threatened to call Isobel Rosario Cooper as a witness. MacArthur had met Isobel, a Eurasian woman, while in the Philippines, and she had become his mistress. MacArthur was forced to settle out of court, secretly paying Pearson $15,000.^[82]”

The question is not how the Legitimists will fuck this up, but when. Winning no friends in a highly dissatified electorate, unable to understand the why of Obama’s political surrender to the oligarchs. The only support that a ‘cleaning’ of the park will garner is from the usual collection of right wing hacks on the Murdoch Network, and ‘pundits’ like David Brooks and George F. Will and their intellectual clones and of course the Mayor of New York and his Wall Street allies.

Almost Marx   

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/10/13/us.occupy.wall.street/