Political legitimacy is achieved by having a system of government in which the people agree to it, giving up a bit of their autonomy in order to gain the benefits of participating in the collective.
Walter Mosley could have been channeling the founding archons of Badgeria when he said:
This is a piece I stumbled across a few years ago; it’s interesting, especially considering when it was written: 1949. The author was looking back at Europe’s successive troubles and accurately saw the disturbance as an effect of the economics of the industrial revolution. The analysis seems pretty simple to me: imperialism was waning and the vast changes in the European powers’ economies brought on by new industrial processes (in particular, weaponry) created a perfect storm of events that – for a time – discredited capitalism. The Russian revolution was through the process of turning into Stalin’s dictatorship – discrediting communism in turn. Aristocracy, in the form of the family of elite pinheads who destroyed Europe, didn’t look particularly good, either.
One fascinating characteristic of the well-indoctrinated ultra-nationalist is they tend to lose their sense of reflexivity. Ultra-nationalism depends on authoritarianism and exceptionalism, so it doesn’t hold up well to challenges against its authority – after all, it wouldn’t have to be authoritarian if it were possible to justify their beliefs. What we wind up with is this weird sort of “what I say, goes, as long as it applies in the direction I want it to.”
As Ronnie Van Zandt said, “turn it up.”
The International Olympic Committee says: [ioc]
The goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind, in a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.
Elsewhere I have implied that the US, UK, Russia, and China are (to some degree or another) oligarchies masquerading as democracies. They probably could be ordered on a scale from greater to lesser – but that’s a debate for another day. Today, we’re going to consider some of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus as reported by Will Durant in Story of Philosophy. [amazon]
Memories of the Hofstadters are pretty minimal: we used to walk down the stairs of the apartment building on Claremont Ave – we were on the 11th floor and they were on 9. I remember the hollow echo of the stairwell, and the dizzying height.
Voltaire’s wit was often described as cutting and fast; “rapier-like wit” – he wasn’t a man of violence, but his passions could be ferocious and when he decided that someone’s ideas needed to be attacked, his pen really was as mighty as a sword.
Recent Gallup polls indicate that 51% of republican lawmakers favor legalization of marijuana.
In the last few months we’ve seen attempts by Kurdistan and Catalonia to gain independence. Both attempts were shot down with non-lethal but overwhelming military force. That’s clearly one difference between those break-aways and the more successful on in Crimea. These events ought to force any thinking person to ask “what is a ‘nation’?” and to wonder how nations establish their legitimacy.