Excellent article, especially in articulating the need for a larger vision for Britain and Europe. It will need to be foundationally in touch with Christian values, if rhetorical ly secular, national but respectful of other nations and co-operating with them, and based on democratic wealth creation ..Perhaps a European Association of National States commited to real culture and democratic capitalism.
Democracy is the worst form of government. It is a mirage that never achieves realisation. It causes racism and it leads to wars. The First World War was caused by a democracy (Serbia) in which right-wing parties tried to curry favour with voters by adopting extreme irredentist stances, such as sponsoring the extremists who killed Franz Ferdinand. The same applies to WW2 - it was caused by a democracy in which a democratically elected political party (Nazis) took extreme irredentist positions to boost their ratings with alienated voters.
Democracy breeds racism. It sets up a process whereby political parties engage in extremism and minority vilification to win votes and drive their countries to extreme, flawed policies, which ultimately result in war. Democracy is based on majoritarianism and hence allows a majority to establish supremacism based on race or ethnicity. Singling out a minority as the "Hated Minority" and constantly vilifying/scapegoating it describes democracy. Professor Mann in 'The Dark Side of Democracy' shows how democracy leads to ethnic cleansing.
No less a figure than The Charlie Munger pointed out the flawed nature of democracy. He showed how India will never match China in economic development because India took the worst aspects of democracy.
I studied political philosophy and jurisprudence under Oxford professors such as Joseph Raz and Dworkin, but I now believe their ideas to be flawed. Whilst Isaiah Berlin was lionised, Carl Schmitt and Joseph De Maistre were never discussed. I have yet to see a single compelling liberal refutation of Schmitt's ideas.
I sincerely believe The Trump can establish himself as an Emperor and establish an outstanding and brilliant absolute monarchy - the House of Trump. This will usher in a golden age for America and the world, an age of peace and no wars. God saved Trump's life to prevent WW3 happening. We should be grateful.
Your anonymous contributor ranges widely across time and sources, demonstrating a showy erudition with some fairly novel synthesizing. Kuhn's paradigm shifts with Schmitt's "mythologizing" and the author's (presumably his own) "narrative function" make the argument appear quite original. But I was not convinced.
The piece has a distinctly Continental flavor, and it would have made Kuhn uncomfortable. He might also have disagreed with the author's "core" and "peripheral" notions and equating the latter to the practice of "normal" science. I didn't find that in Kuhn, but I'm willing to be corrected on that point. I talk about the essay's Continental flavor because underlying it is the unspoken belief in the supremacy of signification. A body of ideas with practical meaning attached to them is the signified. The language to express them and thus achieve consent or, failing that, provide the rationalization for coercion, is the signifier. And so on. Continental postmodernism grows out of this.
I prefer a more materialist-historicist account, though not a Marxian one. The rise of a vernacular culture in Carolingian Europe due to the growing importance of markets, trade and commerce, more generally, also led to the increasing power of the merchant class in the High Middle Ages. The origins of an assertive individualism are to be found here. But most important of all was the influence of those Islamic philosophers -- though badly crushed in the battle of ideas within Islamic culture -- who emphasized a methodological naturalism in their philosophical enquiry. The Scholastics borrowed some of it and of course the Nominalists came along and brought the whole edifice down.
The individual in the natural world and not the soul in the divinely constructed order eventually became the dominant idea. The Protestant Reformation took the individualism bit but left everything else aside. And the destruction from the Religious Wars paved the way for the Age of Reason and all the political ideas of universalism and mediated political institutions. The rest is modern history.
Excellent article, especially in articulating the need for a larger vision for Britain and Europe. It will need to be foundationally in touch with Christian values, if rhetorical ly secular, national but respectful of other nations and co-operating with them, and based on democratic wealth creation ..Perhaps a European Association of National States commited to real culture and democratic capitalism.
Democracy is the worst form of government. It is a mirage that never achieves realisation. It causes racism and it leads to wars. The First World War was caused by a democracy (Serbia) in which right-wing parties tried to curry favour with voters by adopting extreme irredentist stances, such as sponsoring the extremists who killed Franz Ferdinand. The same applies to WW2 - it was caused by a democracy in which a democratically elected political party (Nazis) took extreme irredentist positions to boost their ratings with alienated voters.
Democracy breeds racism. It sets up a process whereby political parties engage in extremism and minority vilification to win votes and drive their countries to extreme, flawed policies, which ultimately result in war. Democracy is based on majoritarianism and hence allows a majority to establish supremacism based on race or ethnicity. Singling out a minority as the "Hated Minority" and constantly vilifying/scapegoating it describes democracy. Professor Mann in 'The Dark Side of Democracy' shows how democracy leads to ethnic cleansing.
No less a figure than The Charlie Munger pointed out the flawed nature of democracy. He showed how India will never match China in economic development because India took the worst aspects of democracy.
I studied political philosophy and jurisprudence under Oxford professors such as Joseph Raz and Dworkin, but I now believe their ideas to be flawed. Whilst Isaiah Berlin was lionised, Carl Schmitt and Joseph De Maistre were never discussed. I have yet to see a single compelling liberal refutation of Schmitt's ideas.
I sincerely believe The Trump can establish himself as an Emperor and establish an outstanding and brilliant absolute monarchy - the House of Trump. This will usher in a golden age for America and the world, an age of peace and no wars. God saved Trump's life to prevent WW3 happening. We should be grateful.
Your anonymous contributor ranges widely across time and sources, demonstrating a showy erudition with some fairly novel synthesizing. Kuhn's paradigm shifts with Schmitt's "mythologizing" and the author's (presumably his own) "narrative function" make the argument appear quite original. But I was not convinced.
The piece has a distinctly Continental flavor, and it would have made Kuhn uncomfortable. He might also have disagreed with the author's "core" and "peripheral" notions and equating the latter to the practice of "normal" science. I didn't find that in Kuhn, but I'm willing to be corrected on that point. I talk about the essay's Continental flavor because underlying it is the unspoken belief in the supremacy of signification. A body of ideas with practical meaning attached to them is the signified. The language to express them and thus achieve consent or, failing that, provide the rationalization for coercion, is the signifier. And so on. Continental postmodernism grows out of this.
I prefer a more materialist-historicist account, though not a Marxian one. The rise of a vernacular culture in Carolingian Europe due to the growing importance of markets, trade and commerce, more generally, also led to the increasing power of the merchant class in the High Middle Ages. The origins of an assertive individualism are to be found here. But most important of all was the influence of those Islamic philosophers -- though badly crushed in the battle of ideas within Islamic culture -- who emphasized a methodological naturalism in their philosophical enquiry. The Scholastics borrowed some of it and of course the Nominalists came along and brought the whole edifice down.
The individual in the natural world and not the soul in the divinely constructed order eventually became the dominant idea. The Protestant Reformation took the individualism bit but left everything else aside. And the destruction from the Religious Wars paved the way for the Age of Reason and all the political ideas of universalism and mediated political institutions. The rest is modern history.