Anger, self-righteousness, impossible promises, blame: political conventions are for setting a tone. Here is the Democrats’ tone for the coming months going into the election. It was not to my taste. On top of the Republican convention, it felt like an enormous political irony. a disconnect, a view of an alternate reality, but one we have to live with, whoever wins the election.
Neither Obama nor Biden could avoid discussing the last nearly four years, but what they did was apply white-wash or worse. Peter describes that as “the new take is that things aren’t as bad as we think.” Pete’s continuing criticism of Romney has been that he was vague on specifics and policy, but Obama’s speech is an obfuscation of specifics and policy, probably since clarification would be so painful.
Since “fact-checking” seems to be a new fad, folks will spend the next couple of days parsing the speeches. My husband did that aloud right through the speeches. I find that thinking about specifics in the speeches of Democrats produces anger. It did in my husband, who erupted with “GM did go bankrupt!!! It was just government and not the private sector that picked up the pieces!” several times, maybe every time the topic came up, which was pretty frequently. Well, I said once, it was the best way to protect the unions and the pensions of union workers. “The unions…!!” he said, but I don’t want to reproduce his rhetoric from that point. Beneath his rant, he had a good observation; those at the Democratic convention have a tendency to conflate the middle class with union members. Perhaps that is how they perceive the middle class or perhaps that is the middle class they want to have or perhaps that is the portion of the middle class they have got.
I don’t know about Pete, but this convention left me feeling better about the Republican convention. Obama’s speech left me feeling not better, but not so badly about Romney’s speech. Both parties are talking about transforming America. As I was speaking to my students this week about “What is good?” as the basis for argument. First using Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and then later in the week, as I was trying to avoid party politics, the WSJ article of January of this year by Charles Murray, based on his book, Coming Apart, the ultimate questions we will be discussing over the semester are all about “What is good?” I have a surprising number of community college students, many non-traditional, who simply love the Ethics, because they are worrying about the best way to live. Of course, I have a larger number who do not like Aristotle, but they are the ones who live vulgarly for pleasure and they don’t like being reminded about it or they simply cannot be bothered reading anything.
The debate in this election could be about different directions for America to go and we could be discussing “What is good?” Or America could be going in a direction that is incontrovertible and that is Progress; then the only question is how fast we progress into a certain future. Republicans would take us slowly. Democrats would take us quickly. Maybe that is what the election is about, who can manage Progress most efficiently and with the least pain to the electorate. We’ve been going in that direction for a long time and I don’t know any American who is really happy about it. If we don’t like it, don’t think it is good, couldn’t we take some time to discuss what is good?
September 8th, 2012 | 12:55 pm
Odds are good that the folks who dislike Aristotle are being wise with regard to the “opening disclaimer”. The inquiry is only useful to a certain level of maturity.
On the other hand “Aristotle” does make a decent stand-in for Rhetoric. Presumably men of action throughout history have always had a distate for the rhetoricians and those who peddle puffery and empty words. Especially those who make a great habit of Puffery and Rhetoric.
Not being bothered to read anything does do much to escape the Greek disease of rhetoric and literature. Plug your ears with wax and dodge the sirens, itself Greek technology, for men of action (sailors, not gentlemen) interested in reaching the home shore.
Of course being tied to the mast and putting a real wax into your ears seems bad tech. Why not some American technology? Some Apple earplugs and a nice Ipod…
There is something to disliking or rejecting Aristotle and the Greeks. One isn’t sure on the other hand that such a rejection of the Greeks isn’t more in line with message of the Republicans. That is the rhetoric which supposedly speaks to the “demise” of the Greeks, bankrupcy, et. al…and a bunch of other nonsense disregarding the fact that our federal government is monetarily sovereign… i.e. Ryan as the disease of becomming Greek.
But if one is not to become Greek, why should one absorb Greek technology, knowledge, habits, or political structure? Why not commit Aristotle and Plato to the flames, or else ponder that maybe they are not Greek technology, rather Aristotle and Plato are american technology, or at least in english translations belong to the Universtity of Chicago press.
That is the Greeks are poor and broke because they cannot charge for the contributions to western civilization of Aristotle or Plato. The Greeks cannot via Aristotle lay claim to Rhetoric qua Rhetoric and charge the Republican and Democratic conventions a liscensing fee for the use of rhetoric, nor when you buy a copy of one of Aristotle or Plato’s works do any proceeds make their way back to Greece or the Greek people. Arguably all this philosophy on some level leads to interest in Greece as an archeology and tourism spot.
The Greeks in otherwords are incapable of asserting: You didn’t build that! But why should I trust a professor who teaches Greek technology, and yet is okay with the status of the Greeks as slaves to the Germans? In the sense in which both Biden and Paul Ryan might mean the word.
How is it that the Greeks were on the right side of World War II, and yet you drive a Honda (made in part in ohio) or a Mercedes? It seems an excercise in Pyrric victories and tragedy, and even here the French have monopolized the theorectical/copyright aspects.
But still the ascendency and continued vitality of the German and Japanese people should cause your students to demand different cultural philosophical studies. Or by a natural Odysseian inclination, plug ears so as to be unmoved by the teachings of the weak mediterranian peoples.
Why study Aristotle and not Karl Popper? The Romans were only fascinated by the Greeks for technological purposes. The Germans and the Japanese have more to teach us.
Also lets be clear about what Progressivism is. Progressivism is American technology and property, or rather is is a lose derivative product of american ideals and constitutional law. It begins in the american appropriation of the English, Scottish and French enlightment, but rather than remain philosophical, it takes on materiality via Article 1 section 8, clause 8, and via the work of Jefferson and others who established various offices and regulations on copyright, patent and trademark as well as various universities. Progressivism in terms of patent must be articulated within a single sentence. This is impossible. Administratively it is governed in part by the USPTO, and american exceptionalism is just Progressivism for conservatives, or obfuscators who wish to preserve trade secret or OPSEC. Progressive trickle down economics thus starts not with the tax code…but rather with the patent process. In order to register an invention one must submit it to the world or make it public. In exchange for the monopoly, and the capacity to build weath, society(or phosita who are sufficiently sophisticated, Aristotle’s disclaimer on crack) receives in return new knowledge or a technical process for implementing or creating a new or better product.