I'll just start by saying that once again I am thoroughly in agreement with everything you have to say here.
But just to pick out a few particular points:
Let that be a lesson to you, why are you pointing a pike at me you mad crazy bitch...help...help...dying horribly now...*splutter*. Love it.
Which don't seem that crazy, or delusional, or that far from what most liberal capitalists seem to want to tell us are their core values. Which in turn really makes me wonder how far these wonderfully humane and rational liberal types believe in their core values. Simple answer: they don't. More complicated but more accurate answer: some don't, most probably just haven't thought through the implications of their positions.
As to that *crazy* business of the government being accountable to the people: I recently read an article that made a very valuable point, using Robespierre and Fouché as representatives of two opposing kinds of surveillance (there was a lot of Freudian nonsense and the seemingly requisite Robespierre belittling - for this was by an American historian, and Supreme Being forbid that any American historian of the Revolution should go through a whole article without engaging in one or the other, and preferably both - but the central point was, surprisingly, not only solid, but important to emphasize). Basically, to cut a long story short, surveillance is a very necessary concept to both Robespierre and Fouché, but that's where the similarities end. With Robespierre, surveillance comes from the people and is directed, quite openly, at the government; with Fouché surveillance comes from the government, or more specifically from the police, and is directed at the people (secretly, of course). Now, this may seem like a pretty obvious point, but how many people leave it at "Robespierre and Fouché were both Revolutionaries who thought surveillance was important, clearly we can safely group them together"? And, to come back to your point, how many of these people are those same "wonderfully humane and rational liberal types" who applaud representations like Mantel's?
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regna
(no subject)
Date: Wednesday, 26 May 2010 04:18 (UTC)But just to pick out a few particular points:
Let that be a lesson to you, why are you pointing a pike at me you mad crazy bitch...help...help...dying horribly now...*splutter*.
Love it.
Which don't seem that crazy, or delusional, or that far from what most liberal capitalists seem to want to tell us are their core values. Which in turn really makes me wonder how far these wonderfully humane and rational liberal types believe in their core values.
Simple answer: they don't. More complicated but more accurate answer: some don't, most probably just haven't thought through the implications of their positions.
As to that *crazy* business of the government being accountable to the people: I recently read an article that made a very valuable point, using Robespierre and Fouché as representatives of two opposing kinds of surveillance (there was a lot of Freudian nonsense and the seemingly requisite Robespierre belittling - for this was by an American historian, and Supreme Being forbid that any American historian of the Revolution should go through a whole article without engaging in one or the other, and preferably both - but the central point was, surprisingly, not only solid, but important to emphasize). Basically, to cut a long story short, surveillance is a very necessary concept to both Robespierre and Fouché, but that's where the similarities end. With Robespierre, surveillance comes from the people and is directed, quite openly, at the government; with Fouché surveillance comes from the government, or more specifically from the police, and is directed at the people (secretly, of course). Now, this may seem like a pretty obvious point, but how many people leave it at "Robespierre and Fouché were both Revolutionaries who thought surveillance was important, clearly we can safely group them together"? And, to come back to your point, how many of these people are those same "wonderfully humane and rational liberal types" who applaud representations like Mantel's?