Random Suggestions

If anyone's thinking of changing the name of the blog to something a little more catchy, I might suggest "The Bookclub Bandits," because it sounds bold and dangerous! Or better yet, "Scott's Thoughts." Say it out loud a few times. It's infectious.

Response To The Rosa

I think The Rosa makes a valid observation below regarding the potential pitfalls of American exceptionalism. I disagree, however, with his characterization of Reagan as

more involved in intervening in the affairs of other countries [than Carter].

The Carter administration was the first to attempt to make the internal human rights violations of other countries a valid American concern. The extent to which he was able to bully his vision into other lands was, of course, quite limited in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, the humanitarian concerns raised by Carter were the most agressive attempt to that point to impose American values elsewhere.

Reagan, on the other hand, was concerned primarily with the security of the United States. His actions reflect a tough, level-headed global leader. Whether it was the arms build-up or SDI, he was fighting to defend our way of life at home. Certainly, Reagan did flavor his main course of national security with humanitarian side dishes, but they were nothing more than that.

American Exceptionalism

Regarding Damien's Random Thoughts from Monday, your dissection of Carter as post-American draws the stark distinction between the gloom and malaise of that administration, and the "shining city on a hill" that Reagan envisioned (a reason, probably, that our country is profoundly better off today due to the Reagan presidency), but this reminds me of what might be a parallel distinction between Carter's acquiesence and the decidedly proactive approach Reagan took to foreign policy. While I may be seeing this through a foggy historical lens, I get the impression Reagan was more involved in intervening in the affairs of other countries, or was at least more resolute about standing up for American interests and values in the face of foreign bullies. Whether this approach was a reflection of his view of America as the lone and abiding superpower, or a cause of it, who knows? But I wonder to what extent American hegemony is linked to our tangles in a foreign theater, or what some would call "the neoconservative agenda" of asserting American interests and values globally, such as in Iraq today. Granted, Reagan was faced with a time bomb in the spread of Communisim, Soviet aggression, possible nuclear war, etc. But I wonder about today, absent a serious contender for the role of superpower, are our squabbles in the neighbor's backyard irreversibly tied to American exceptionalism?

Words

I recently began reading Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant. The book is the first in an interminable series called "The Story of Civilization." I found a passage today about language that I found particularly insightful:

In the beginning was the word, for with it man became man. Without those strange noises called common nouns, thought was limited to individual objects or experiences sensorily -- for the most part visually -- remembered or conceived; presumably it could not think of classes as distinct from individual things, nor of qualities as distinct from objects, nor of objects as distinct from their qualities. Without words as class names one might think of this man, or that man, or than man; one could not think of Man, for the eye sees not Man but only men, not classes but particular things. The beginning of humanity came when some freak or crank, half animal and half man, squatted in a cave or in a tree, cracking his brain to invent the first common noun, the first sound-sign that would signify a group of like objects: house that would mean all houses, man that would mean all men, light that would mean every light that ever shone on land or sea. From that moment the mental development of the race opened upon a new and endless road. For words are to thoughts what tools are to work; the product depends largely on the growth of the tools.

What a wonderful observation. And leave it to a volume originally published in the 1930s to refer to humanity's beginning as coming from "some freak or crank."

Normative, Evaluative, and Transient Properties of Legal Rules

For those who were at last Friday's meeting and are looking for more discussion of the uniqueness of legal reasoning, I would recommend Damien's posting on the topic.

Post-Americanism and the Baby Boomers

The first two points Damien made in "A Few Random Thoughts" actually brought to mind something I've thought about but haven't fully formed into an idea. That is, to what extent is American history in the post-war period really nothing more than the life story of the baby-boomers as a generation? From naivety and rebellion in the 60s and early 70s, to struggle and self-doubt in the 80s, to prosperity and achievement from the 90s to today it seems the classic story line of an upper-middle class person played out through an entire generation.

Shifting gears just a bit, for those interested in a glimpse of 1970s paternalism, I would recommend watching the Coleman-Mondale debate in 2002. You might remember that year Norm Coleman was running for the United States Senate against Paul Wellstone. The race was quite close when, two weeks before the election, Senator Wellstone was killed in a plane crash in northern Minnesota. The democrats replaced him on the ticket with former Vice-President Walter Mondale. The day before the election, Mondale and Coleman debated on national television. Mondale came off as a relic of the 70s that stood in stark contrast to a more modern (though certainly not ideal) candidate. His government-as-provider positions were of an earlier generation and had not gone through the smoothing process that most liberal democrats on the national stage suffer from today. Unfortunately for Mondale, his rough edges proved to be his undoing.

A few random thoughts

As I shan't be at the next meeting, I thought I'd go ahead a post a few of my musings now.

(1) I simply wasn't aware of the extent to which Liberaldom (as O'Sullivan describes it) had taken hold of the American psyche (at least of the chattering classes). The fact that in 1976 the national high school debating resolution was whether the world's raw materials should be harvested and managed by some world-centralized body simply astounds me---simply that the idea should have any currency, let alone enter the mainstream. That leads to my next observation . . .

(2) Carter as Post-American. That is a very telling and I believe trenchant observation on O'Sullivan's part. The author takes care not to belittle or disparage Carter's motives: he acknowledges that Carter is a patriot and certainly not unAmerican, but that he and his cohort were post American in that they believed that the era of American exceptionalism (of America as the city shining on a hill) and the Pax Americana were over, and that America had to get used to being a second class hegemon (pardon the contradiction) and gracefully accede to the demands of statism and social democracy.

(3) The nobility of JPII and Reagan. The fact that both were willing to forgive their would-be assassins I find remarkable and surely indicative of greatness. It wasn't until Weigel published his bio of JPII (which I highly recommend) that people began to realize the importance of the Pope's 1979 visit to Poland, with the Polish people chanting, "We want God." And I admit to thinking "what a great scene for Hollywood" when reading about the conclave, and JPII weeping when it became clear that he would be chosen and Cardinal Wyszynki, Primate of Poland, encouraging JPII: "You must accept. For Poland."

(4) I laughed out loud re the quote of the Polish trade union member in response to the question of why would you want to be a practicing Christian in a Communist country: "To prasie the Holy Mother of God and to spite those bastards."

(5) I also admit to weeping when reading the letter of the Cambodian PM whom we abandoned to the American ambassador: "I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular, for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty." May it never happen again!

(6) To what extent did the UK's victory in the Falklands prove its continued relevance to the world balance of power, and to what extent did it reveal the continued deadweight of a practically defunct empire?

Next Meeting

Our next meeting will be Friday, July 20 at noon. We will be discussing through Chapter 5.