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A BIG thanks to the war crowd
February 19, 2003 08:20 PM
The 'lets wage war on Iraq now' crowd surged through public opinion for a moment, stopping by to drop some of their concerns into my comments box on the Anti-Democratic sentiments post. They too exception to my political teasing of the noble and witty Tim Blair
Thanks folks. It was good of you to give up your precious time and energy and read my humble blog. You delivered far more than I ever dared hoped for -- an insight into the political unconscious of Australian conservatism. Its there for all to see.
I had initially raised the idea of the conservative political unconscious in Anne Coulter & the US Gaze in relation to the US. There I mentioned the politics of blind fury. I described it as:
"what sits underneath the American patriotic narrative of innocence underseige by the Third World, the surge of patriotic pride and the going back to the basics. We can begin to get a grasp on this 'blind fury' if we see it as an aggressive stance of retaliation within Fortress America to the unspeakable Evil from the threatening Outside?"
I added that the politics of blind fury could also be " interpreted as a paranoiac acting out; a paranoia that refuses to include itself in the picture other than as an innocent gaze confronting a diabolical evil. "
And in another post on philosophy.com called Absolute freedom and terror. By absolute freedom I meant a:
"blind fury that is willing to destroy what stands in its way. What it constructs as its opposite----that which has to be fought and destroyed ----is a negative, which is called terror. A war has to be unleashed on terror. Terror must be destroyed. What this gives birth to is a self-destroying reality. So we have a dialectic of absolute freedom and terror and this makes for dark times." See the coments for the interesting and informed responses.
But I had no idea whether the political unconscious politics of blind fury applied to Australian conservatism. Now I do. What can I discern apart from the dualistic division of the world into goodies and baddies and might is right conception of justice?
If you read the comments in theAnti-Democratic sentiments post you can see the politics of blind fury in all its nakedness in the statement about my kind would be shot in the head if we gain any sort of power. You can see the absolute freedom in the reaction to the my suggestion that the UN should act as a contraint on the power of a hegemonic US--there should be no restraint at all--that is statism and 'socialist junta of hostile foreign powers overwriting the US constitution. You can see the totalitarianism in the remark that 'your kind [inferior weaklings] are born to be slaves and lick the boots of the strongman.'
So thanks folks for allowing me to see inside your political unconscious. It is much appreciated. I reckon that you must have a problem with my kind being allowed to speak and act the way we do in a liberal democracy. That means you have a big problem with a liberal political order per se.
Since I need a bit more I'll do a bit of reading about Joseph de Maistre's politics of the sword and report back. I promise.