Studies show the first part, and the part in parenthesis is more or less mystical pantheism, or imagination at work.

That is the Cartesian is not welcome in France. He is not welcome because he sort of destroys the mystique of source origin and sponsorship, that which makes a Champagne a Champagne. A vital element in Christening ships, a drink that unites people across generations at funerals and weddings. A beverage of solemnization and celebration. At the very least french blood and soil, transubstantiated into pure joy! (insert more pantheistic history+immagination, more puffery, more of the sophistic industrial complex).

What Toqueville was saying when he said that americans were naturally cartesian, is essentially that they could start on new foundations without deep traditions (and the puffery+sophistry+pantheism, that veils a mechanical Lockeian/Newtonian understanding of the world). A man could make his reputation, there was not a hierarchy of “historical/pantheistic/aristocracy”.

Of the three french theorists named I think I agree with Michea. This is because Liberalism and Lockeianism coincides with a “real property” structure. How one comes to have ownership in something is by mixing ones labor with it. Not so with Trademark, here one comes to have ownership in something by mixing ones imagination with it. Or not “ones’ immagination, but the imagination of others. Perhaps an imagination rooted to some degree in facts, in consumer reports, or even in blood, sweat and past sacrifice of the sort that stubbornly requires even more commitment. This is where the sophistic industrial complex comes in, high priests of Pantheism all(and technically speaking arch ennemies of Descartes and Analytical Philosophy).

The end of american exceptionalism is to make people believe that america is good and the source origin and sponsorship of all that is good. Who that is respectable actually argues this? No one, but it would be the “holy grail”. In the same way, if you can make someone believe they are a tree, that is pretty awesome (from the standpoint of the sophist/cult leader, the high priest of Pantheism, aka the Evil Genuis.)

Of course in my opinion the idea of a brainwashed/zombie Marine is more of a joke the Army shares uncomfortably with certain academics. The idea of the academics is that he is captured by the Brand, or the “ethos”, i.e. the pantheism of american exceptionalism, and the marine corps history. The Army, it almost makes sense to say, seeks the truthful mean between pantheism and Lockean/Cartesian Deism(aka technical/mechanical skill).

So in terms of American Exceptionalism the Army is the THIRD WAY, and the Marines are the ones who drank a bit too much cool aid(A sugary beverage for naive/imaginative kids?, or a cult drink?)

How do you know that Pantheism isn’t simply Trademark? That is you want to take your product which would be a commodity (to a Cartesian, something functional) and imbue it with sophistry/poetry, or secondary/relational meaning.

The third way better work, because your customer is going to be pretty pissed if there is too much Pantheism in the good and not enough substance. When Toqueville was praising the americans as Cartesian he was saying they lacked imagination, they lacked the brands+aristocracy+Pantheism of the French.

The americans lacked Champagne, they did not have Cabarnet, they did not have a palate. When you drink a CABARNET and it is has an oak like finish, maybe you are a tree.

As i said the program turned pretty much on waves. I will call it a debate between waves and dams.

michea argues that liberalism, which begins with hobbes, locke etc., by the logic of waves turns into progressivism. They are related, not antithetical, doctrines. The first wave leads inevitably, even exorably to the second. To put it into American terms, natural rights leads to progressivism (i won’t bother here about the third wave; two generations of waves are enough.) You will notice that one of the few to make this argument is Peter, who in many of his writings shocks the conscience by calling the progressives a certain kind of lockean.

Finklekraut erupted in response. He said no, liberalism is the antithesis of progressivism, so why should they be conflated? Liberalism, for example, rests on the idea of a fixed anthropology, a human nature, whereas progressivism denies a fixed human nature and speaks of perfectibility of man; liberalism is supposedly moderate and favors limited government, progressivism has usually called for forms of large government without rights and restraints…. and on and on. So Finklekraut has the idea of a damn. Modernity has passed from liberalism to progressivism, and it is for good liberals to rebuild the damn, to be good beavers and reconstruct the old barriers, and to beat back progressivism. Finklekraut regards progressivism as alien to liberalism. In this sense at least, finklekraut is like most who write for the CRB and most who live by the distinction of liberalism, progressivism, founders good, wilson/dewey/croly bad..

Michea reposnded. He said of course there is a formal difference, a huge one, between liberalism and progressivism. But, under wavism (or what he calls the logic of liberalism), liberalism will almost inexorably turn into progressivism. Progresssivism is not alien to, but a envelopment of liberalism. And he tries to show why. Liberalism, he says, was developed to end the utopias or moral projects of the classics (use politics to make men virtuous) and the Christians (use politics to make men righteous). The only way to fight these ideologies, he says, was not to propose another idea, but to oppose them by a fact. The fact would be a kind of progress. Stop the ideas, and some of the wars would cease and man, in a free society, would become wealthier and healthier….this would be a fact, not an opinion. Hence, michea argues, liberalism was always and from the first a form of progressivism. It was a cautious progressivism, based on the sober fact that man was not very good, but a progressivism nonetheless because the acceptance of this idea of a flawed human nature was the wisdom that would bring us progress via the market etc. Progressivism rejects large parts of liberalism but in the name of its progressive program.

So what Michea calls the logic of liberalism is an embrace of the idea of waves….

I won’t tell you any more about Funklkraut’s rejoinder; it’s time to go have a glass of rose, which we have been able to do on Sunday for a long time now in Charlotteville. I like those damns of liberalism. And just before I order my glass of wine, I’ll buy a 32 ounce cup of coke, just to celebrate my freedom….