It is, however, an activity conducted largely with reference to a known, shared, understood, intelligible, and factual, past and present.
I thought to make this remark, following on Pocock's remarks, on Clark's assertions, in Dynamics of Change.
This is the post from the other day:
Virtue, Commerce, and History.
The best of a bad lot in history, sadly, is quite recherche.
Virtue, Commerce, and History.
The best of a bad lot in history, sadly, is quite recherche.
Professor
Interesting waltz through American political History.
Regarding this paragraph:
"As for Illinois, it has become a Republican myth that Mayor Richard J. Daley stole the 1960 vote for JFK, with the false implication that Nixon would otherwise have won. Kennedy wound up with 303 electoral votes and would have had 276 and a majority without it. Forty years ago, as I pointed out in The Road to Dallas, a political scientist named Kallina effectively debunked that myth with a very careful analysis of the Cook County vote. What I realized watching the broadcast was that the sequence of events during the night did not support that myth either, and indeed suggested that if anyone was manipulating the vote late at night it was downstate Republicans. When CBS signed off around 5:00 AM that night, the count showed JFK ahead by 101,000 votes. As it turned out, Nixon won 55 percent of the 877,000 votes that remained to be counted--most of them downstate--and the margin narrowed to just under 9,000 votes."
Here's the real story behind the Daley myth:
The teamsters, and the Mob, both, not just in Illinois, or specifically in Chicago, delivered victory to Kennedy, for their own patronage reasons.
That is also why both John, and his truly clueless brother Bobby, were killed when they promptly betrayed in office both the mob and the Teamsters.
If you read Real Lace, you will learn that the Kennedys were pathological betrayers tantamount to a genetic defect.
All the best
Professor
Western Civilization has shown itself to be self destructive to the point that it more closely resembles the Balkan Peninsula every day or week, with migrants from all races and creeds pouring in helter skelter, to crowd out the horrific multi ethnic multi racial and creedal hodge podge of Western Europe, but also the now outmoded and far outgunned paltry white negro racial opposition here too.
Worse than pathetic, really.
Western liberal civilization has made its bed, and now must lie in it.
All the best
Oh, and fuck Nigerians up their butt.
Nigerians want American negroes and whites to send them money too because they are Nigerians.
I would suggest that a good place to start, at this very late point, is Clark's Intro, Thomas Paine.
It makes sense, however, to have already read, at least, his Intro to Remarks on the Revolution in France:The Critical Edition.
My personal view is that Randall Collins' The Sociology of Philosophies should be consulted, and read, in para materia where their time periods overlap, but also in general with constant reference to Clark if possible, and, on the other hand, Clark should be read with constant reference to Collins, if possible.
Not only are somewhat analogous concepts of historical context and historical drift important, but also connected notions of fame and the failure to achieve it, and charisma, both front and back stage.
Clark discusses, in Burke, the Roman intellectual background surrounding Burke's milieu and perspective.
For the larger Greek context for Burke, if any, such as it was, W K C Guthrie might still do, A History of Greek Philosophy.
Guthrie does outline a "Fifth Century Enlightenment", in a very important section in V. 3, but perhaps he himself understood the anachronistic implications of such terminology as well as anyone at the time he wrote. The problem of Socrates poses some of these issues in stark terms, as do the circumstances of his death.
This post is dedicated to J C D Clark.
Professor
Great account.
Many ethnic, and often racially somewhat diverse, immigrant populations, even both latino, are not special friends.
Just one example I know something about; long established anti Castro cuban Republican groups, versus recent leftist Puerto Rican Democratic socialist migrants.
These people are fighting their own intramural latino battles against each other in American cities, especially in places like Florida.
Similar ethnic if not also racist rivalries can be referred to ad nauseam.
Similar confrontations break out now in Western cities all over the world and constantly now. Recently Hindus and Muslims got into it in Leicester.
Iranian women shut down Berlin recently to protest treatment of Iranian women in the Muslim world, not in Berlin.
The USA especially is a haven for disgruntled poor ignorant and lazy malcontents from all over the world. Their diverse and conflicting and violent and limitless causes, wants, or needs, gets called democracy, human rights, equality, and liberty, and they have gotten a seminally great hearing here from the beginning, 1776.
All the best
