Sublime

« Chaque passion publique se déguisa ainsi en philosophie ; la vie politique fut violemment refoulée dans la littérature, et les écrivains, prenant en main la direction de l’opinion, se trouvèrent un moment tenir la place que les chefs de parti occupent d’ordinaire dans les pays libres4. »

myth of American exceptionalism

the English plutocrat began to understand not only that the poor were impotent, but that their impotence had been his only power. The truth was not merely that his riches had left them poor; it was that nothing but their poverty could have been strong enough to make him rich.

The American Revolution and its aftermath coincided with two great transformations in the late eighteenth century. In the political sphere, there had been a repudiation of royal rule, fired by a new respect for individual freedom, majority rule, and limited government.

Without criticizing Hobbes’s metaphysics or ethics, there are two points to make against him. The first is that he always considers the national interest as a whole, and assumes, tacitly, that the major interests of all citizens are the same. He does not realize the importance of the clash between different classes, which Marx makes the chief cause

By the late 1800s, Nietzsche wrote that “God is dead.” What he meant is that a critical mass of the intelligentsia didn’t believe in God anymore, not in the same way their forefathers did. In the absence of God, a new Leviathan now rose to pre-eminence, one that existed before but gained new significance: the State.

nation is defined by its inherent virtue rather than by its future potential, politics becomes a discussion of good and evil rather than a discussion of possible solutions to real problems.

his fundamental conviction has remained constant: the horrors of late twentieth-century life, whether Nazi, communist, racist, nationalist, or utilitarian in expression, are the products of defective concepts of the human person.