Liberalism and Democracy
Jeremy Weiland has some interesting commentary on the second installment of my Schmitt series at AltRight.
Btw, I actually think the third and fourth parts of the series are the most interesting. Stay tuned to AltRight for more.
Friday 3 September 2010 5:16 am
Some not-so-interesting commentary has arrived courtesy of the Aster brigade, unfortunately.
Friday 3 September 2010 8:36 am
Aster wants the force of the state brought to bear against the enemies of her in-group. History continues as it always has.
Friday 3 September 2010 9:07 am
Houser: “I didn’t really read the article but….did you know that Preston knows somebody who is a Christian???!!!!! Cooties!!!!”
Aster: “Poor me, I’m so oppressed, nobody likes me, boo-hoo-hoo, sob, sob….”
I wouldn’t expect characters like that to be interested in, much less actually understand, anything to do with a complex thinker like Schmitt, or to wait around for the end-game that reveals where I’m going with my profile of Schmitt’s life and ideas.
Friday 3 September 2010 12:33 pm
Ugh! I’ve dealt with Houser (otherwise known as Quexalcote) before. What a jerk. The time when I knew him, he was a typical neo-con…
Friday 3 September 2010 3:00 pm
“The time when I knew him, he was a typical neo-con…”
That makes sense. The one thing neoconservatives, neoliberals, neolibertarians, left-liberals, left-libertarians, and neo-Marxists all have in common is a hatred of any kind of cultural traditionalism in favor of an abstract univeralism.
Friday 3 September 2010 7:15 pm
I’m actually quite found of Houser and am a bit perplexed by his comment. He always seemed to me to be one of the constructive critics of all this. It’d be nice if we could have a conversation about it.
Friday 3 September 2010 8:24 pm
I’m willing to give him a chance if he’s willing to reciprocate.
Friday 3 September 2010 9:37 pm
Well I know him and I can’t imagine how anybody as condescending as he was (towards me) could debate in anything other than his usually puerile manner. His use of words like ‘transparent’ are just his typical code that he thinks someone is a ‘nazi’. Alright, maybe in the past when I exchanged words with him, some of the stuff I posted wasn’t too smart — heck, I was having some issues with my anger back then anyways.
Truth is, he became unpopular on Head Heritage for a good reason. When that mask of ‘coolness’ slips, it doesn’t matter how groovy your record collection is when you happen to have a rotten personality.
Friday 3 September 2010 9:40 pm
I should say Julian Cope’s Head Heritage forum where I delt with Houser.
Saturday 4 September 2010 1:09 pm
What’s sad is that we’ve had conversations about despair over the state and direction of things. We both see where the shit is headed, we both care about things like the environment and particularism (just not the particularism that is exclusive and provencial, but that’s why we’re on the left), we’re both Derrick Jensen fans. I’ve exhibited the self-righteous anger before and I can’t speak for anybody else but myself, but it’s very much a reaction to despair and hopelessness.
I was thinking the other day that the people who are pooh-poohing any cross-ideological coalition out of this sense of angry, desperate perfectionism are truly those who have, in a certain sense, lost hope. The people who have hope and a vision for how things could change for the better are motivated to engage in the messy work that changing the world requires. They see things in shades of gray because that’s where they’re focused. The ideals guide them, instead of holding them back.
Anarcho-pluralism and pan-secessionism and mutualism and particularism give me hope: hope that the decentralized, more level world so crucial to this planet’s survival and our preservation of human dignity is actually achievable. Because I’ve posited that it’s achievable, it doesn’t need to be perfect. But you have to take it out of the chat room, blogosphere, and mailing list and really test it.
Saturday 4 September 2010 4:48 pm
“But you have to take it out of the chat room, blogosphere, and mailing list and really test it.”
So how do we do this, then? The question of how to approach activism is one of my main areas of interest at present.
Saturday 4 September 2010 6:17 pm
Keith, I left the statement open for a reason. I do not know how we do this, exactly. One small step in the right direction is to take seriously the idea of bringing together thoughtful people from a variety of movements, ideologies, and identity groups and see what they have in common. You’ve been doing the reaching out, and we’re almost due for a “bringing together”. But it’s just speculation on my part.
Saturday 4 September 2010 7:03 pm
One model of activism that I’m really just not into is what I call the “60s” model. Picketing, carrying protest signs, public rallies with someone haranguing an audience through a megaphone, etc. is not the way to do it, IMO. The Left has pretty much worn that out to the point where it’s considered a joke by most onlookers. I haven’t been to such a demo since January 1991, and most demos I’ve seen since then as a disinterested observer strike me as an embarrassment. I think we need to find a more sophisticated model of how to influence public opinion.
It may be that some kind of “bringing together” could transpire by focusing on a wedge issue that’s important right now and that lots of people, mainstream and radical alike, are interested in. A few years ago, I would have said the antiwar movement was such an issue, but that seems to be finished. Nowadays, my best guess would be the economy, but that’s a pretty broad topic.
Saturday 4 September 2010 9:16 pm
So we have to find a narrow dimension sufficiently compelling, regardless of how you construct it.
I’d say the emerging intellectual property fascism is one possibility – it’s pretty obvious without much thinking what’s going on there, and it’s something that many on both the left and right can get behind. There’s a lot of implications to IP that can lead in radical, decentralist directions. Kevin Carson clearly thinks this is where it’s at – especially when you combine opposition to statist IP with advocacy for local economies, self-sufficient communities, and retooling the economic assumptions of people to something more sustainable. I’m inclined to agree – if you didn’t watch that open source ecology video on my blog, drop everything and watch it. It’s amazing what’s possible now – it’s like Karl Hess’s wet dream.
Sunday 5 September 2010 9:27 am
I think you’re moving in the right direction is the sense that we need to find a way to channel popular frustration with the recession/depression into a wider attack on the plutocratic structure of the economy: “IP helps create economic centralization, which leads to outsourcing, local unemployment, and the elimination of meaningful alternatives” or something like that. Ron Paul’s anti-Fed crusade is another example that seems to be getting some attention.