StephenKMackSD's Blog

The Great Will opens his latest column with its provocative   title , ‘The charlatan’s response to the Tucson tragedy’ followed by his characterization of critics as indulging in ‘sociology’. Sociology being at its root Marxist with its main intellectual thrust a criticism of  Capitalism and therefore not worthy of being taken seriously ,by  thinkers such as Mr. Will and his readers.  This all being an effort to place the critique of  the  eliminationists  language of the No-Nothing wing of the Republican Party under a through going  conservative analysis, and most importantly a sub rosa defense . He speaks: ‘  But respites from half-baked explanations, often serving political opportunism, are impossible because of a timeless human craving and characteristic of many modern minds. The craving is for banishing randomness and the inexplicable from human experience. Time was, the gods were useful. What is thunder? The gods are angry. Polytheism was explanatory. People postulated causations. ’ Continue reading →

http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/index.php?shokey=bbriefing

Ian Masters is always worth listening to whatever the subject matter of the discussion. The January 9,2011 show, where he interviews a reporter and an economics professor from Arizona and is revelatory of the political climate of that state: a confluence of The Tea Party,The Minute Men and Neo-Nazis.Ian always asks the right questions; no BS ego trips or self-aggrandizing posturing, just good solid journalism, practiced by a master of the profession.

"Giannotti's mind was independent, forceful, and original, but lacked the unpredictable creativity of genius which we find in Machiavelli; and for this reason it may be taken as displaying in some detail the bent and the limitations of humanist political thought. His chief originality consists in his perception of virtu in a mixed government was a kind of power, and in his consequent attempt to define the four functions of government whose location determined the signore. But he failed to concentrate these functions and was obliged to distribute them instead; and the ultimate reason was that humanist political thought was overmasteringly concerned with the ideal of civic virtue as an attribute of personality, and in the last resort always turned from the establishment of institutionalized authority to the establishment of conditions, termed liberta, in which virtue might have free play and escape corruption."