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The Straussian Moment
gwern.net
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World
amazon.com
Fukuyama was so prescient. In a society with strong rights and material comfort, but light on demanding shared purposes and some degree of sacrifice, thymotic energies go searching. Some quiet into bourgeois hedonism; other will seek “metaphorical wars” and eventually real ones. https://t.co/PfwPxzto4Z
Twenty-five years ago Allan Bloom proclaimed a heresy: The supposed idealism of the 1960s was in fact a veneer hiding a new barbarism. He saw that our elite liberal culture has a very definite vision, however much it talks about diversity, multiculturalism, and the like: the relativism of moral truth. This anti-dogmatic dogma, he thought, is leadin... See more
In 1843, a young Marx described security—what he called “the concept of police”—as the “supreme concept” of bourgeois society. Fearful of those they have dispossessed, ruling elites have long utilized state violence to safeguard private assets, criminalizing both poverty and protest in the process.
Astra Taylor • Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions
Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority. Equality without freedom creates a more stable social pattern than freedom without equality.
Eric Hoffer • The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics)
Political corruption, instability, and conflict are the natural results of the abandonment of reason.