Of all the world’s civilizations, past and present, none is more critical of its own history than the West.
Does it get overdone? Carried to absurdity? Lead all too often to a spiral of moral equivalency? Hello, McFly! The impulse to “more is better” is as human as hagiography (for the uninterested, that means ‘the opposite of hypercriticalism’). In the history of Western progress, though, the willingness to question the assumptions, decisions and outcomes surrounding major events has been a profound contributor. Compared to other societies, only the West has held itself even remotely to the standards it has professed, with unofficial voices openly and with relative liberty, challenging official ones.
When progressives dismiss the notion of American exceptionalism, they normally do so from the perspective that Americans and Europeans aren’t sufficiently different to justify the concept, yet the Western history from which America springs is itself exceptional. The circumstances of our founding could not help but distill this Western exceptionalism even further.
At least until now. You see, Rep. Keith Ellison is right about one thing: Rudy Giuliani’s remarks do indeed say that Barack Obama is “not one of us.” Obama’s policies are aimed not merely against American principles, but Western.
It is as if Rome had declared Hannibal its emperor.
obama’s a fascist soros-fellating bought-and-paid-for anti-american anti-jew piece of shit
and he needs to own it
Seems to me the primary thing about the ClownDisaster is his personal and internal incoherence. He doesn’t have the intellect to examine himself, let alone the vast sweep of the ideas of the Western world. If then his principle is found to be himself [“I won”], the puny sucker can’t be good for much. Which we might say is merely an indication that he’s a moron who has been confused [by a sufficient majority of the public, a being with its own problems] with a thinker.
So, less Hannibal than Caligula?
Or perhaps Nero, he of, “What an artist dies in me.”
In terms of how their respective twigs were bent, of the two I would lean more towards Caligula.
Still, my point is that Obama’s hostility to criticism, however founded, is alien.
Yah, I guess Hannibal has to be counted a warrior’s warrior among men. The ClownDisaster is no such in any respect — but claims to dream after his absent daddy. A real figment to the gods, the daddy, eh?
Surrendering to the Aryans makes for a nice precis of an anti-Western principle, no less than not bothering to ask the Americans what they think of it. What’s that old name? Oriental despotism, is it?
I fear Obama is less of a Hannibal and more of an Alcibiades.
Leave to Obama to not understand the use of “exceptional” in the 18th century sense. Sure lots of people miss this simple concept but, you know POTUS and all you expect more.
I fear Obama is less of an Alcibiades and more of a fascist piece of shit
To-may-to, to-mah-to.
Though if we could get ISIS to hire him away it would put so many things right…
>Though if we could get ISIS to hire him away it would put so many things right… <
no golf courses
The names of the ClownDisaster and Alkibiades (a very great man) do not belong in the same sentence, let alone in the same comparison. ClownDisaster matches up much more better with a fool, like say, Thersites, than he does with a man of substance.
Obama is what he thinks his father’s son should be.
>Obama is what he thinks his father’s son should be.<
nah valgal with helmet so he doesn't get "hurt"
>If living within the truth in the post-totalitarian system becomes the chief breeding ground for independent, alternative political ideas, then all considerations about the nature and future prospects of these ideas must necessarily reflect this moral dimension as a political phenomenon. (And if the revolutionary Marxist belief about morality as a product of the “superstructure” inhibits any of our friends from realizing the full significance of this dimension and, in one way or another, from including it in their view of the world, it is to their own detriment: an anxious fidelity to the postulates of that world view prevents them from properly understanding the mechanisms of their own political influence, thus paradoxically making them precisely what they, as Marxists, so often suspect others of being—victims of “false consciousness.”) The very special political significance of morality in the post-totalitarian system is a phenomenon that is at the very least unusual in modern political history, a phenomenon that might well have-as I shall soon attempt to show—far-reaching consequences.<
havel
I think this posting is timely to the discussion; certainly up sdferr’s alley in reading:
Just finished “Uncivilization”. I’ll include the link below. It reads as a grand unified theory of cycles of human civilization, from growth through decline, and posits that we are in an interregnum following the roughly 6 decades of Pax Americana.
I’m still digesting it, but it rings true on many levels.
http://www.artofvictory.com/UnCivilization-Download.htm
Interested to hear pw takes on this
>N SOCIETIES under the post-totalitarian system, all political life in the traditional sense has been eliminated. People have no opportunity to express themselves politically in public, let alone to organize politically. The gap that results is filled by ideological ritual. In such a situation, people’s interest in political matters naturally dwindles and independent political thought, insofar as it exists at all, is seen by the majority as unrealistic, farfetched, a kind of self-indulgent game, hopelessly distant from their everyday concerns; something admirable, perhaps, but quite pointless, because it is on the one hand entirely utopian and on the other hand extraordinarily dangerous, in view of the unusual vigor with which any move in that direction is persecuted by the regime.
Yet even in such societies, individuals and groups of people exist who do not abandon politics as a vocation and who, in one way or another, strive to think independently, to express themselves and in some cases even to organize politically, because that is a part of their attempt to live within the truth.
The fact that these people exist and work is in itself immensely important and worthwhile. Even in the worst of times, they maintain the continuity of political thought. If some genuine political impulse emerges from this or that “pre-political” confrontation and is properly articulated early enough, thus increasing its chances of relative success, then this is frequently due to these isolated generals without an army who, because they have maintained the continuity of political thought in the face of enormous difficulties, can at the right moment enrich the new impulse with the fruits of their own political thinking. Once again, there is ample evidence for this process in Czechoslovakia. Almost all those who were political prisoners in the early 1970s, who had apparently been made to suffer in vain because of their quixotic efforts to work politically among an utterly apathetic and demoralized society, belong today-inevitably-among the most active Chartists. In Charter 77, the moral legacy of their earlier sacrifices is valued, and they have enriched this movement with their experience and that element of political thinking.
And yet it seems to me that the thought and activity of those friends who have never given up direct political work and who are always ready to assume direct political responsibility very often suffer from one chronic fault: an insufficient understanding of the historical uniqueness of the post-totalitarian system as a social and political reality. They have little understanding of the specific nature of power that is typical for this system and therefore they overestimate the importance of direct political work in the traditional sense. Moreover, they fail to appreciate the political significance of those “pre-political” events and processes that provide the living humus from which genuine political change usually springs. As political actors—or, rather, as people with political ambitions—they frequently try to pick up where natural political life left off. They maintain models of behavior that may have been appropriate in more normal political circumstances and thus, without really being aware of it, they bring an outmoded way of thinking, old habits, conceptions, categories, and notions to bear on circumstances that are quite new and radically different, without first giving adequate thought to the meaning and substance of such things in the new circumstances, to what politics as such means now, to what sort of thing can have political impact and potential, and in what way- Because such people have been excluded from the structures of power and are no longer able to influence those structures directly (and because they remain faithful to traditional notions of politics established in more or less democratic societies or in classical dictatorships) they frequently, in a sense, lose touch with reality. Why make compromises with reality, they say, when none of our proposals will ever be accepted anyway? Thus they find themselves in a world of genuinely utopian thinking.<
havel
Obama love America the way that Kanye loves it when a white person wins a grammy.
Obama loves America the way Joker loves Harley Quinn.
obama does not love america
he hates america
and jews
and pipelines
and jobs
and Bill Clinton
[…] Alisa Doctoroff Major Donor to State Dept. Effort To Boost Arab Vote In Israel Protein Wisdom: Western Exceptionalism Shot In The Dark: Trulbert! Part XXVIII – Gladiators’ Waltz STUMP: Obamacare Tax Watch […]
The ability to be introspective about one’s culture, and especially to measure one’s current performance against established principles and standards is exceptionally healthy. Without it, the Abolitionists and Civil Rights activists wouldn’t have been able to claim the moral high ground to any degree.
However, every virtue can be exploited to the detriment of the virtuous by sociopaths and other demented souls who crave power that can be had only by demoralizing the populace into accepting their punishment.
And thus have the Howard Zinns of the world cowed us into grovelling submission.
THANK you sir. PLEASE may I have another?
The payoffs to post presidential Obama will be interesting.
-Damn fine post, McGehee. Well put.
-Hannibal achieved great and worthy things. Nero is more appropriate because both he and ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ have only brought about misery, destruction, and death. And, like Nero, ‘Obama’ is a Homosexual and a Coward.
Barack Obama loves America long time. If not too beaucoup.
Meghan’s coward daddy is also a coward so that makes two cowards
plus Mitch McConnell
so that’s three
but not Brucella Kardashian, who is very brave and determined to live life on HER terms