Yes Mr. Scott, the world is a dangerous place, some people within the Beltway embrace the idea and make a living off of it. Fear is such a rich vein to mine.

I await your concise summary of the material differences between todays political parties. By the way, as another minor qualification , I don’t need a 98.5 % “purity” level, unlike the neo-con, utopia holds no allure. I’d be content with a simple 50% rate or even just the batting average of a middling hitter.

Mr. Sabin, you’re sure schoolin’ me in the lost art of earthy-yet-bloggy satire and sarcasm. I mean, if only I could write something as hilarious as your lil’ revenge-fantasy above about imprisoning the neo-conservatives who “fooled” you and sending them to the terrorists in exchange for intelligence!

For the sake of the clarity you ask for, I hold that George W. Bush got, despite all else that he got wrong, the two key decisions he had to make right. Those were: 1) Whether to invade Iraq. 2) Whether to cut-and-run in 2006, or to surge. I’d guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40% of Americans hold this basic neo-con-esque view that remains so obviously idiotic and hateful to you.

If you can present a list of MATERIAL differences between the two parties TODAY and as they relate to the proper functioning of the American Republic, I’d love to entertain it. Personally, I will surely admit to embracing the role of a member of the permanent opposition but I would love to be able to embrace a principled political force that does not sail some reeking hulk of hypocrisy so gaily up the Potomac.

But, in general, thank God there is not consensus on this site, its one of the things that makes it distinctive. Frankly, more than a strong single party, I would like to see both parties strong and resolute and furthering the discursive form of government we once enjoyed. We are weak because both parties are weak. One weakened party, begets another.

Cheeks,
If there is anything slippery going on here it is the assertion that support of the Iraqi War…. an ill-considered war of choice and not defense….. is connected to either 9/11 itself or a prudent response to the events of that day. The previous administration started to respond prudently and clearly but then veered wildly off course into the neo-con inspired fantasy land. What I would have done is an essay in absurdity. As I mentioned, I suckered to Bush Administration blandishments and prevarication early on but I did not have access to their intelligence.

The root causes of 9/11 remain:
1. Realpolitik with the Oil Sheiks intermarried with the assorted grab bag of Perversions attending our relationship with Israel. Pakistan and India can be added into this volatile mixture as well
2. A lack of follow through and concerted action in Afghanistan after the Russians pulled out. In effect, we handed the situation to the Mujahideen and Osama who used the benefit of our training, arms and money within a devastated landscape to consolidate their growing movement known as the Base. Need I remind you that the Texans feted the Taliban during the run-up to the Bush II election?
3. American Empire, the zombie remaining from the Cold War.

Responding to the attack of 9/11 should have combined international diplomacy and law enforcement as well as the U.S. Military in a manner which kept the above 3 items clearly in mind. The most punishing impact from the actions of this government is that the threat of U.S. Military Force was greater before than after these wars. Not only have we bled the military of hardware and men, we have compromised its reputation as a result of diplomatic dithering, ham-handed strategic follow through and a lack of focus…chiefly expressed in abandoning the Afghan theatre for the farrago of Iraq….the “fight over there so they will not come here” ploy. In essence, we have laid the foundations for a permanent state of war.

There is, in the end, a clear tendency of the United States to be satisfied with chaos, destruction and death abroad and this, above all else, when combined with the corruptions and perversions of the rule of law here at home should sit everyone upright in their seats and then cause them to flee the craven partisan group-grope that is corrupting the remaining threads of the Republic in an effort to put what has been broken back together. Pull on that thread skippy.

Bob, 9/11 was a vicious attack upon innocent people but it was also a classic Cassius Clay Rope-A-Dope and we have obliged beyond their wildest dreams, even raising the bet with financial tomfoolery.

Yes, we can part company respectfully on this subject. All those forms of “families” you name are either constructed by us or somewhat fewer of them are constructed by a created order. If Freud is right about the fact that we are not culpable for sin, if Darwin is right that there is only space, time, and chance, and if Marx is right, etc. then everything is open to question about family and community. Thorstein Veblen gives a wonderful explanation of the origin of families: hunter-warriors had to have prizes, so they took the women of their fallen competitors, and so private property and the household came to be. If this is in play, then Emile is, too. And I’m willing to talk with you with all good nature about it, but it makes Rousseau still a moral monster.

Best (and I mean it), John

Family, community–these are either in the nature of things or they are pure constructs, there is little middle ground.

Well, we’ll just have to (hopefully respecfully) part company here then, as I believe there is actually a quite broad middle ground. I’m quite convinced, just by looking at the material history of the family unit in our own society, to say nothing of how families are conceived and maintained in numerous other cultures around the world (patriarchal, matriarchal, communal, monogamous, polygamous, traditional one-bread-winner, multiple-bread-winner, tribal, etc.), that “family” and “community,” opportunities for the realization of divine gifts they may be, are in part constructed through our own subjective participation with others. As things that are at partly constructed, they are therefore also things whose construction, I assume, can either further or retard the development of human virtues. Hence, examining their construction, as Rousseau and Marx and Freud all did, is a worthy endeavor. I’m not saying that to defend or agree with all which any of them said, but only to emphasize that I don’t believe it’s prima facie madness to assume, as Lasch did, that such “leftist” resources can’t aid in conserving the local.

Carl, you mean Thomas Spragens’s new book? Thanks for the reminder of it; I’ve seen it, but I haven’t picked up a copy yet, and I need to.

Bob, D.W., my apologies, but I’ll stay out of the 9/11 discussion for now. But do keep it up!

P.S. Mr. Sabin, when you said “Neither is preferable over the other to any significant degree,” I really had to laugh. That right there is a bad FPR dogma, (I know, thankfully, not for all of y’all!)a dogma apparently as true today as it will be tomorrow. No significant degree! But what WILL you do if “any” of the relevant degrees ever becomes signficant? Could your insides live with having to side with a side? One that is not 98.5% morally pure? Even for one election? Or, (gasp) two? Or is it to be No Significant Degree for Thee, for perpetuity?

P.P.S. I must now (sniff!) go shed my daily teardrop for each day the Hussein dynasty is no longer in power.

One does not “take Democracy ” anywhere. It does not fall gloriously out of bombay doors, nor issue from the ends of gun barrels nor creep in on the little cat feet of infantry. It springs up out of the ground a people stand upon and if they are lucky or prudent or both, they will quickly chasten the motivating democratic urge for something more along the lines of a Republic.

The nation may not have “turned the other cheek” but it has presented its smiling cheeks at both ends for an auto-drubbing of epic proportions. Pacifism aint my bag and I’ve stilled any urges at self abuse I might have ever possessed. I don’t think you can call my plan to drop planeloads of neo-cons over the Hindu Kush “pacifist”.

As to Rousseau, “thoroughly disturbed romantic” works for me. The essential problem with notions of a collective egalitarian spirit is that it has never existed for anything but tight knit homogeneous groups and even there, order and duty becomes more important than egalitarianism, thus creating havoc when government attempts to make it so…..and egalitarianism vanishes in favor of despotism or the grinding machinery of entropic social engineering…a fountainhead of embedded resentment.

This, of course, does not make it counterproductive to philosophically explore….away from government…the idea of egalitarianism or community.

John, I invoke the “moral monster” Rousseau (is that what he was? I thought he was a brilliant and thoroughly disturbed neurotic who happened to grasp the tragic elements of the modern condition exceptionally well) only to clarify an element of Lasch’s thinking: specifically, that Lasch, like Rousseau, took great umbrage at how he believed modern economic relations and modern culture were undermining what he believed to be the proper course for the moral development of the human individual. The claim isn’t to weigh Rousseau, but rather to simply argue that Lasch, as much as he may have been influenced by Marxist analysis and psychoanalysis, never bought into the historical or clinical determinism of Marx and Freud; he used them as tools to address structural and material obstacles to his moral goals, which very much follows what Rousseau was trying to do, at least as I understand him.

As for Lasch’s prescriptions for modern society themselves, well, you can call them sappy socialism if you’d like; Lasch himself and his students would almost surely disagree with you, but I’m not prepared to argue the point right here. As I read Lasch, he really did believe that a proper understanding of, as you put it, “the right kinds of abstractions” (involving such things as the history of capitalism, personhood, local independence, and property-owning self-respect) would show that families and communities really do help build both economic equality and democracy. You may find his conclusions silly, but that’s what they were: localism defended, as a part of broader defense of egalitarianism and citizenship.