Trump’s promises to immediately repeal and replace Obamacare, build a wall between the United States and Mexico, and dramatically restrict immigration indicates that he either doesn’t know anything about federalism or really doesn’t care.
American conservatives forged a large and powerful movement built on reverence for those checks and balances, particularly states’ rights. Yet they could not have done so if they had remained faithful to Burke’s suspicion of business and distaste for anti-establishment rhetoric.
And more about how Republicans abandoned Burke to build a Neo-fascist friendly GOP from Elizabeth Tandy Shermer.
I think the major way ideology works today is not by convincing people that things are basically okay, that the system basically works. I think most people realize that the system does not work. Ideology is in convincing people that they are the only ones who have figured it out. It convinces people that everybody else believes in the ideological model. If all the people who think that they’ve figured out that the system is rigged, met all the other people who also believed that, they would probably change their mind.
And more on anarchy, work and bureaucracy in this interview with David Graeber.
Historical memory is a phenomenon that is entirely sui generis, autonomous and independent. Some years ago, Polish and Ukrainian researchers initiated several joint projects. Under the auspices of the KARTA Centre, they produced more than ten volumes in the series Poland–Ukraine: Difficult Questions(Polska–Ukraina: Trudne pytania). It was not the questions that were difficult, but the answers. The difficulty in speaking scholarly truth often lies not in lack of access to documents, but in the fact that we are dealing with the spheres of psychology, emotions and a mix of high ideals and proclamations. At the same time, it concerns brutal acts, involving heinous and criminal actions. Mythology and historical memory rest on lofty words and push what was shameful, inhumane and wicked into the darkness.
And more from Adam Daniel Rotfeld on systems of international security and his Polish intellectual background.
Compliance is key to the legitimacy of any regime, and Sharp offers a handbook for how to effectively withhold it. His compendium of 198 Methods for Nonviolent Action presents a wide range of techniques—from letters and speak-outs to boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, blockades, and slowdowns—that citizens can employ to refuse an illegitimate authority. When coupled with more traditional forms of protest, these tactical disruptions of the normal functioning of the system can place immense pressure on dictators. Sharp treats authoritarian regimes as fragmented coalitions held together by a tenuous obedience to authority. Once the perception of invincibility is removed, such regimes can rapidly disintegrate.
And more from Rafael Khachaturian and Jeffrey C. Isaac on reading Gene Sharp for resistance.
Recognition is a key term in Hegel’s political philosophy. Instead of imagining a bargain being struck between society and an individual bearing various “rights” (like the right to privacy), Hegel emphasizes that the concept of rights is empty until we consider the individual in a context where there exist people and institutions capable of recognizing those rights, as well as the full humanity of the person bearing them. This is the deepest reason why Hegel does not share Marx’s or Rousseau’s view that modern history is a story of decline, much less (as Stephen Dedalus puts it in Ulysses) a “nightmare.” History for Hegel is intrinsically progressive, insofar as it is driven by a continuous negotiation between our self-understanding as individuals and the image we see reflected back to us by the people and institutions we look to for recognition. If the gap between my self-understanding and my society’s understanding of me grows too wide (if I know I am an artist, but my society does not recognize me as one), this is a cause of dissatisfaction, and therefore a stimulus either to change society or to adjust my idea of myself.
And more on social media's evolving relationship to theoretical constructions of individual rights from the editors of The Point.
