"When philosophy paints its grey in grey then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." -- G.W.F. Hegel, 'Preface', Philosophy of Right.
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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx
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American conservatism as Counter Enlightenment
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November 21, 2010
In Neo-Cons and the Counter-Enlightenment at Logos Journal Philip Green characterizes American conservatism as the counter Enlightenment. He says that in the US the political institutions of liberalism are virtually unchallengeable—and have not really been challenged by the new conservatism—this comes mostly as a rebellion in the realm of culture.
This neo-conservatism, he states, hasn’t replaced classical American liberalism but it contends for power with it. Green characterizes American conservatism as the counter Enlightenment. He says:
At the root of neo-conservatism is the naked power approach to politics, heralded by the ex-Trotskyite James Burnham in his influential book The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, shortly after WWII. Burnham and his followers at first produced a political theory and eventually a political practice of what are, supposedly, competing elitisms: the conservative elitism of say Mosca, Michels, and Pareto against the radical elitism of Lenin, Gramsci, Marcuse, Althusser et al. In either case, the so-called “people” are, according to this theory’s proponents, necessarily excluded from any real say in political life. The theory became practice especially in the work and activism of Irving Kristol, the godfather of neo-conservatism, who in the 1970s in an influential essay—perhaps the most influential essay written in the 20th century United States—addressed corporate leaders and foundation heads on the necessity of taking steps to defend capitalism against the Left by explicitly funding right-wing theorizing and activism.
What has happened is the conjunction of this political theory of naked elite power, with the counter-Enlightenment: the anti-modern, ideological religious right. He identifies two examples of contemporary irrationalism of the religious counter-Enlightenment.
The first is creationism. The importance of this phenomenon can hardly be over-emphasized. It sweeps throughout the blue states, where in many communities overwhelming majorities reject biological science tout court; and even some of the red ones. The basis of creationism is either Biblical literalism or, worse, a wholly fraudulent “biology” known as Intelligent Design, masquerading as science in order to replace it.....The second example, of course, is the gay marriage hysteria. Here the materialism and rationalism of modern thought run entirely aground.....Every negative comment about gay marriage rests itself on the same foundation, that our civilization is “at stake.” No one is able to verbalize in the slightest how this might be so. Strengthening marriage symbolically apparently destroys it; more people undergoing the ritual of marriage apparently destroys it; two people affirming their commitment without benefit of a formal legal licensing process can be compared to looting, rioting, bestiality, and polyandry.
The style of this
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Yes this confrontational style of binary exclusions has infected all of so called conservatism in the USA. Their publications, both paper and electronic, stink of it. So too in Ozland.
Another feature of this confrontational style is the amount of no-nothing-ignorance that one encounters via both the opinion writers and especially the comments sections on right-wing "religious" blogs and websites - especially those that are "catholic"
It is almost as though none of the explosions of various kinds of entirely necessary critical theories etc of the past century never occurred. Or that such people are still living in the 18th & 19th centuries.