Well, it's summer, and I've always loved the Olympics and have spent a lot of time in the mornings this week watching the track and field. In lieu of a post, here is a link to an interview I did with a college classmate, Terrence McNally, for his very interesting podcast last week. I hope you will enjoy it.
Saturday, August 07, 2021
A change of pace
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2 comments:
Professor
I enjoyed the podcast.
It is awkward for S & H cyclicality that both Bannon and Rove have been attracted to it like honey.
Cyclicality is apparently a feature of late great power political and historical thought going back to Greek times and the Romans.
My view, as you know, is that it is not that good a theory.
But never having read it, I did not fall under the spell of its siren song. I know it mainly from your accounts.
Whig interpretations, in Butterfield's sense, such as this, have tended, over centuries now really, to pile on each other, and build rickitier and rickitier structures, political economic historical, on each other, as it were, both obscuring, obfuscating, and failing ultimately to vindicate, what I will call something like the actual course of events and ideas in the past that have long lain and labored behind and below it.
This has been the insuperable burden of reviionist history in the late 19th Century as well as the 20th and 21st Centuries.
All the best
Professor
Please forgive me for making another comment.
I thought the autobiographical material in the podcast was very interesting, which I had neglected to mention.
To unpack the Rove and Bannon remark, I would say that neither Rove nor Bannon took an interest in championing the S & H hypothesis because they thought that it was or is true. In fact, the opposite.
On the other hand, however, their not actually believing in it would go no way, itself, toward confuting it.
All the best
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