Dr. Sabin, brilliantly rendered as always!

To everyone else, thank you for your opinions, criticisms, comments, and editorial assistance, very much appreciated and enjoyed.

At the moment I would say, ‘don’t hold your breath.’

Thank you. Excellent essay.

http://washingtonrebel.typepad.com/washington_rebel/2010/05/freedom-reflections.html

The Gnostic impulse had met its match. Perfection loses its charms when the imperfect surroundings are so providential…if a tad dangerous and full-bore challenging. When one must create one’s self as new each day…not as a revery but in order to survive, a certain pragmatism breaks out and the simple pleasures are elevated. Such things as one’s own rhythms of breath amidst the background noise of a growling stomach become more important than the patterns of social interaction in the Hindu Kush. Imagine that.

When the role of spectator within a smorgasbord of philodoxic abandon is the primary occupation, clucking sarcasm is elevated to an everyman’s art. Sneering is to be greeted with open arms, at least it is unsurprising.

Parody? Well, it occurs to me that any form of explorative thinking in this self-satisfied, knee-jerk gluttonous age is parody. Let us stand back and throw mud, how satisfying.

Another interesting thing to ponder is the dichotomy of individuals who master their egophanic tendencies living under a system whose dead-reckoning clearly tends toward the egophanic revolt.

The juxtaposition of “security” and “democracy” with “liberty” is exhibit one in the “english as second language” proclivities of this arrogant , incurious age.

Too bad your entire argument has been lost by the incessant use of pompous parlance.

But what do I know, I’m just a plebian.

Perhaps the confusion in this post in not Bob’s but ours.

I have to say that I don’t think this post captures what the spirit of the founding is or was. In spite of our ignorance, and absent the experience of any great awakening, I don’t think the founding can be summarized in Leibniz’s words that the ultimate reason of things in in God.

I don’t think the quid est deus occupied the founders in such a straightforward manner. The attempt at criticizing the marriage of the canon and feudal law (Adams), let alone the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom (Jefferson), or the sheer fact of Roger Williams’ RI and Providence Plantation were all answers to theological questions (or real problems). But I don’t see any of this motivated in terms of attempting differentiate a compacted order with which the colonists (arbitrarily?) found themselves.

However, I don’t see their republican nation building, with its emphasis on the individual citizen, as an egophanic revolt. It may be egophanic if one is truly concerned with discerning with defining or at least understanding what it is or which particular people truly mediates divine rule.

I think the general view of the founding was that such a role of mediation was not to be found amongst human beings. Such a radical separation has its dangerous pragmatism and potential Hegelian distortions. These have been shown throughout American history–one need not only look to the current Iraq war to find evidence. However, there are elements in American history–the real lived lives of Americans from top to bottom–which belie any hypostatization egophantism.

One must look to the (perhaps) overly differentiated content of American life. This mat ultimately be unsatisfying to one seeking a city to which one can call one’s own, but such it is. It leads many to schizophrenia, and the brightest follow Deleuze and Guatarri in terms of making such a disease a science–a schizo-analysis. This should be avoided in terms of a statesmanlike keeping of one’s head, which means pointing out what is true in the American founding and showing what leads to all sorts of perversion. But the tendency toward perversion–hypostasy and gnosticism–will never die. If it did, we would cease to be human.