tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post7459160285922960018..comments2024-03-29T02:03:49.151-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: The Bowdoin AffairDavid Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-6148910750323553842013-04-19T11:28:52.891-04:002013-04-19T11:28:52.891-04:00Dear Professor Kaiser,
this one has nothing to do ...Dear Professor Kaiser,<br />this one has nothing to do with your last post, but with the current situation in Watertown. As I know, that you moved after your retirement right to the spot, the entire world is currently looking upon, I just want to express my hope that you are fine and everything is as alright as possible. Stay safe - Gunnar Jopp, NCC 2012longitudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17980911549902668453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-55686312549778116942013-04-13T19:27:31.249-04:002013-04-13T19:27:31.249-04:00Hello from France!
I would like to make some obse...Hello from France!<br /><br />I would like to make some observations with regards to the mention of Charles de Gaulle, but I think a German could say the same with regard to Konrad Adenauer.<br /><br />I think that history unfolded quite differently in mainland Europe and in the English-American world. Here, the idea that the state had to act for economic justice emerged slowly and gradually - I remember reading about peasants asking the state to build them an irrigation channel and help them obtain better access to credit in 1848. The eight-hour day law was passed in 1919, annual leave was made mandatory in 1936, and so on. In fact, the main actions of Charles de Gaulle were :<br /><br />a) giving the state a (noticeably) better constitution, and<br />b) handling decolonization.<br /><br />However, in social matters, he simply was a continuator, not a revolutionnary.<br /><br />More generally, and please excuse me if, by holding this view, I sound like an arrogant foreigner (I'm just giving my outsider's vision, certainly not trying to insult anybody), but I think the very existence of those "saviors" of US history, be they named Lincoln or Roosvelt, is very disturbing.<br /><br />Firstly, a nation is not supposed to be in a need for salvation, except eventually in extremely dire military situations.<br /><br />And secondly, no matter how well-intentionned, social changes imposed from the top to the bottom may bring excellent results, but lacking broad and deep support from the popular mentality, these will always remain on shaky foundations, at the mercy of contrarian top-down impulses (think Roosvelt vs. Reagan). <br /><br />Since changes at the top tend to happen more quickly than mentality changes, this seems (to me) as creating more instability in the US social organization.<br /><br />Not that this instability is necessarily bad per se - if it were, the US wouldn't have been such a major center in the second and third industrial revolutions. Yet I fear it has a cost.<br /><br />(Additionnaly, if I may mention it : while these saviors have always turned out well for the US, in other countries, the experience has sometimes been very different. When France looked for one, it got Napoleon, Germany got Hitler, and Venezuela Chavez. But then, perhaps the US democratic tradition protects them better in this regard.)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08223371349163657725noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-62480461415921410692013-04-13T16:19:53.329-04:002013-04-13T16:19:53.329-04:00Professor
Thanks for this essay.
"The changes...Professor<br />Thanks for this essay.<br />"The changes in the humanities in the last forty years began largely in reaction to the Vietnam war, which was a betrayal of the nation by the state, albeit one of the kind which every state is likely to commit from time to time because of human nature. And those changes have all been designed to destroy the idea of a unified national community in favor of an idea of diversity. They have taught that states inevitably serve the interests of dominant groups. Many of the ideas of the new humanities implicitly give up on the idea of justice, since they revolve around images of eternally oppressed nonwhitemales. And that is why so many liberal young people emerge from our colleges and universities without any idea of how a renewed national community might solve our huge and growing economic problems. They know they favor gay marriage--as I do too--and they know the women among them will do just as well on the job market, such as it is, as the men, but economically and politically they are floudering in a world they do not understand...."<br /><br />This passage appears to hint, quite properly, to me, at modern deluded liberal globalism, which followed on New Deal interest group leftism, and has left the center and leftist elements of the country so weakened and unmoored.<br /><br />As i have noted, we always zigged when we should have zagged with respect to leftism.<br /><br />all the best, Aunt Katiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01266914664888937116noreply@blogger.com