|
July 07, 2005
Supreme Court Balkanizes The Nation
I usually leave the political and topical stuff to Eric. He enjoys it, I don't, and the resulting complementarity seems to work well for both of us. That being said, sometimes a political event takes place that cries out for attention, an event so shockingly conspicuous that even a confirmed politics-ducker like myself can't help noticing. I refer of course to the supreme court (they no longer deserve capitalization), and their recent Kelo ruling. To put it tactfully, it's a freaking outrage. Speaking more forthrightly, it rips the body politic a new one and then defecates in the wound. I have yet to speak with a fellow citizen, any fellow citizen, who approves of this judicial travesty. "WTF were they thinking?" doesn't quite do my feelings justice. "Rose Wilder Lane Week" continues here at Classical Values, and I thought that perhaps I could tie it in with my own personal dismay at the ongoing evolution (lethal mutation?) of our oh-so-modern takings doctrine. Luckily, Mrs. Lane has provided me with a colorful and trenchant anecdote. She had good instincts. I wish I could read her reaction to this latest betrayal of the little guy. I'm sure it would be forceful and direct. Here then is another excerpt from "The Discovery of Freedom"... Twenty years ago the Dukhagini in the Dinaric Alps were living in the same obedience to their Law of Lek. I tried for hours to convince some of them that a man can own a house. Well, there you have it. A sad story, but an instructive one. The highest court in the land has affirmed our right to live like impoverished Balkan peasants. Impoverished peasants of the 1920's, no less. What a piece of work. I yield the floor to Mrs. Lane, with a little added emphasis... Free thought, free speech, free action, and freehold property are the source of the modern world. It cannot exist without them.
posted by Justin on 07.07.05 at 07:10 AM
Comments
Reminds me of Clarence E. Manion's dualism between "European" collectivism vs. "American" individualism. But, then, what would Rand or Manion say differentiates Europe from Asia? Is not Asia far more collectivist than Europe? America is part of Europe, the most vital part now, the freest, mightiest, greatest of the nations of Europe, the most European, the most Western, the most Faustian, the most individualist, of the nations of Europe. Yes, tragically, the rest of Europe has sunk into the bog of collectivism, of "Asianism", and only America remains standing. But we must never forget our European roots. To the contrary, it is all the more imperative that we preserve all that is left of the great European high culture. That is our destiny. America is Rome, the rest of Europe is Greece. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · July 8, 2005 09:53 AM |
|
December 2006
WORLD-WIDE CALENDAR
Search the Site
E-mail
Classics To Go
Archives
December 2006
November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 May 2002 See more archives here Old (Blogspot) archives
Recent Entries
Laughing at the failure of discourse?
Holiday Blogging The right to be irrational? I'm cool with the passion fashion Climate change meltdown at the polls? If you're wrong, then so is God? Have a nice day, asshole! Scarlet "R"? Consuming power while empowering consumption Shrinking is growth!
Links
Site Credits
|
|
A reading:
"What is the specifically American sense of life?
A sense of life is so complex an integration that the best way to identify it is by means of concrete examples and by contrast with the manifestations of a different sense of life.
The emotional keynote of most Europeans is the feeling that man belongs to the State, as a property to be used and disposed of, in compliance with his natural, metaphysically determined fate. A typical European may disapprove of a given State and may rebel, seeking to establish what he regards as a better one, like a slave who might seek a better master to serve - but the idea that he is the sovereign and the government is his servant, has no emotional reality in his consciousness. He regards service to the State as an ultimate moral sanction, as an honor, and if you told him that his life is an end in itself, he would feel insulted or rejected or lost. Generations brought up on statist philosophy and acting accordingly, have implanted this in his mind from the earliest, formative years of his childhood.
A typical American can never grasp that kind of feeling. An American is an independent entity. The popular expression of protest against 'being pushed around' is emotionally unintelligible to Europeans, who believe that to be pushed around is their natural condition. Emotionally, an American has no concept of service (or of servitude) to anyone. Even if he enlists in the army and hears it called 'service to country,' his feeling is that of a generous aristocrat who chose to do a dangerous task. A European soldier feels that he is doing his duty.
A European, on any social level, lives in a world made by others (he never knows clearly by whom), and seeks or accepts his place in it. The American attitude is best expressed by a line from a poem: 'The world began when I was born and the world is mine to win.' ('The Westerner' by Badger Clark.)
A European is disarmed in the face of a dictatorship: he may hate it, but he feels that he is wrong and, metaphysically, the State is right. An American rebels to the bottom of his soul."
(Ayn Rand -- "Dont Let It Go", 1971)