Part 18 (1/2)

CHAPTER SIX.

THE DYNAMICS OF TRANSFORMATION.

1. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 160.

2. Edward S. Corwin's ”The Const.i.tution and What It Means Today”, rev. Harold W. Chase and Craig R. Ducat (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 106.

3. See Niccol Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), bk. 2, chaps. 4, 19; The Political Works of James Harrington, ed. J.G.A. Poc.o.c.k (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 32025.

4. The Greek and Roman political theorists, such as Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero, were aware of the existence of contemporary empires, yet they ignored them in their cla.s.sification of types of political regimes.

5. New York Times, April 19, 2003, A-3.

6. For an engrossing account see Toobin, Too Close to Call.

7. According to Toobin, ibid., 19394, President Clinton wanted Gore to urge street demonstrations, but the latter chose not to.

8. Ironically, while the Republicans constantly attack the Democrats for their close a.s.sociation with Hollywood celebrities, it is the Republican presidents who emulate the action-heroes of the movies.

9. New York Times, June 9, 1991.

10. The resolution required that the president consult with Congress ”in every possible instance” before committing forces; further, Congress, by a concurrent resolution, could direct the president to remove forces already engaged abroad if there had been no declaration of war by Congress or authorizing statute. I have borrowed from the account given in Edward S. Corwin's ”The Const.i.tution and What It Means Today”, 10810.

11. On the n.a.z.i a.s.sault on democracy and const.i.tutionalism see Bracher, The German Dictators.h.i.+p, chaps. 35; Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, chaps. 45; Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, chaps. 45.

12. See Corwin, Total War and the Const.i.tution.

13. Ibid., 8.

14. At this writing American generals and civilian officials have stated that the occupation of Iraq may require that the United States remain in control for up to five years. The continuing Iraqi resistance and daily American casualties suggest that the second Gulf War, if only of a guerrilla type, will be a prolonged one.

15. During the preemptive war against Iraq, television and newspaper photographers were prohibited from taking pictures of the caskets of American soldiers at funeral ceremonies on military bases.

16. A consulting business (Frank N. Magid a.s.sociates) that advised the major news media about commercial prospects provided a survey for its clients showing that war protests registered last of all topics tested among 6,400 viewers nationwide. See Frank Rich, ”Happy Talk News Covers a War,” New York Times, July 18, 2004.

17. Secret tribunals outside the legal structure were an important fixture of n.a.z.i rule. See Bracher, The German Dictators.h.i.+p, 210, 213, 263, 351, 352, 359, 364, 418.

18. One should not forget that n.a.z.i success in these elections was facilitated by violence against rival parties, especially against the Communists and Social Democrats. See ibid., 178 ff.

19. Jonathan Weisman, ”Study: Bush Tax Cuts Add to Middle-Cla.s.s Burden,” Was.h.i.+ngton Post, as reprinted in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 13, 2004, A-7. See also David Cay Johnson, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich-and Cheat Everybody Else (New York: Portfolio, 2004).

20. One notorious example was the secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and representatives of various energy corporations. Every effort to force the divulgence of the ident.i.ty of the partic.i.p.ants was rebuffed on the grounds of ”executive privilege.” Court decisions upheld the Cheney position.

21. See ”GM Thrives in China with Small Thrifty Van,” New York Times, August 9, 2005, A-1.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE DYNAMICS OF THE ARCHAIC.

1. Samuel Huntington, ”Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite,” The National Interest, November, 2002, 16.

2. Cited in Charles Marsh, ”Wayward Christian Soldiers,” New York Times, January 20, 2006, A-19.

3. Cited by Nicholas D. Kristof, ”Believe It, or Not,” New York Times, August 15, 2003, A-29. Kristof also notes that among non-Christians in the United States 47 percent also believe in the Virgin Birth.

4. Certainly not all, or even the vast majority, of evangelicals and fundamentalists are seriously involved in politics. Many scrupulously avoid political engagement and many are involved in social programs that benefit the poor. It is a matter of dispute as to whether their charitable activities are ever separated from proselytizing.

5. The quotation is the t.i.tle of a book by Falwell. Cited by Marsh, ”Wayward Christian Soldiers,” A-19.

6. For a study of the salvational and millenarian elements in n.a.z.i ideology and their influence in the Weimar period, see David Redles, Hitler's Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation (New York: New York University Press, 2005).

7. The line is from the Bhagavad Gita, which Oppenheimer had read in the original Sanskrit.

8. For details on the historical formation of fundamentalist notions of ”inerrancy” and ”the Last Days” in the United States, see George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 18701925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 4952, 54, 5657, 1078.

9. New York Times, September 11, 2003, A-1. It is worth recalling that fundamentalism in the United States is also distinguished by its lack of interest in social programs. This att.i.tude dates back to the first part of the twentieth century, when the forerunners of the current fundamentalists broke away in protest over attempts to develop a ”social gospel” attuned to the problems of industrialism. In contrast, evangelical leaders are strong defenders of capitalism. One of the notable Was.h.i.+ngton collaborations is that between evangelicals and the radically antigovernment (and politically well connected) Norquist Americans for Tax Reform organization. See Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 90 ff.

10. Cited by Nicholas D. Kristof, ”The G.o.d Gulf,” New York Times, January 7, 2004, A-25.

11. The exceptions were Heidegger and Husserl. See Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). See the essay ”Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy.”

12. See Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), especially chaps. 2 and 7.

13. See my essay, ”America's Civil Religion,” democracy 2, no. 2 (April 1982); 717. For historical background, see Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Cla.s.sical Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), chaps. 89.

14. For the background to the idea of republicanism, see J.G.A. Poc.o.c.k's cla.s.sic The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975) and the fine studies by Joyce Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992) and Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (New York: New York University Press, 1984). See also Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), and Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 17761787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), especially chaps. 2, 3. and 11.

15. Still suggestive is Harold Rosenberg's The Tradition of the New, 2nd ed. (Boston: Da Capo, 2001).

16. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. W. B. Todd (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 1:454, 456.

17. I do not want to be understood as a.s.suming that in the distant or recent past the United States was in possession of a more or less ideal system and that it has suddenly been hijacked by right-wing fanatics. Our system has always been a work in progress and a contested terrain. We need only recall that ”democracy” was not in favor among many of our Founding Fathers; that the original Const.i.tution explicitly accepted slavery and did not include a bill of rights.