Shklar's great knowledge of the Enlightenment contrasts Machiavelli to Montaigne and Montesquieu. — Banno

How would Machiavelli know about Enlightenment? For a philosopher who built her career in Post-WW2 American academics in one of the most famous Ivy League Universities, it's obviously a more easier task.

Basically, Machiavelli wrote The Prince for basically a ruling Mafioso.

So what kind of instructions and guidelines would Pablo Escobar or the current leaders of the Mexican drug cartels value in their reality in which they live? Would Shklar be useful to them for practical guidelines in their day-to-day work? Both Pablo and Judith lived in the same time, so it would have been theoretically possible.

Basically my point here is that we never should take a philosopher out of his time, place and context when we look at what he says. Or at least the author should remind the reader that when and where a philosopher lived and how different were those circumstances. In fact when the circumstances are noted, then truly revolutionary or groundbreaking thinking can be found. Machiavelli or Hobbes come to mind when people compare them to later philosophers, but whenever Machiavelli is referred to I come a bit critical. Niccolo is a low bar in my view to paint as the bad guy and to take an intellectual whack at him.

(And anyway, a good politician should never admit reading or even knowing anything about Machiavelli. It's such an obvious and typical way to attack and smear someone as being Machiavellian.)

Sorry. Error in writing. Thanks for the correction. Put it better.

Probably our main disagreement comes from the fact you think you're elevating the public perception of JP rather than slandering him horrifically. Who would want to listen to JP after reading your "take", I have no idea, but if you say in your opinion, you're helping to make him look good, what can I say, agree to disagree lol. — Judaka

Perhaps it's telling of our times that Peterson is referred to being a philosopher.

Anyway, I have become extremely sceptical to anyone who today is a critic of some person. Now days there simply is no objectivity or any will to try to understand the other. As a Finnish saying goes: it's like "The Devil reading the Bible". It gets interest, clicks. The critic has either an agenda or simply promotes his views to his or her own tribe of similar thinking people. Perhaps it is far too confusing for people if you agree with one thing and disagree with another thing that some person has said. That seems lax, weak. Nope, tribalism has to dominate! You are either for or against and either with us or against us!

The solution? Listen to the people yourself and make up your mind without the people who have chewed the message for you before hand.

Still I don't think there is more to discuss to answer the OP's question.

Question: Do Europeans think of 'European' as a national status? Or are they Estonian Europeans, French Europeans, or Greek Europeans? This American doesn't think of anyone as "European" apart from their national status. — Bitter Crank

And do people in the US refer to Americans as those living in the American continent? Next time someone refers to 'Americans', do they mean also Chileans, Argentinians and Haitians? I don't think so.

Biden started with his first policy decisions.

Looks partly like a "third" Obama administration (as basically his administration is largely made up of Obama administration veterans):

- Halting of the construction of the border wall by terminating the national emergency declaration used to fund it was a sure bet. But I guess Trump got 5 miles of totally new wall built somewhere where there hadn't been anything.

- Lifting the Trump travel ban was obvious. Yet you have the pandemic and all the restrictions with that, so...

- Undoes Trump's expansion of immigration enforcement within the United States.

- Joining the Paris climate accord was obvious too. Cooperation is good on this subject.

- Rescinds the Trump administration's 1776 Commission, directs agencies to review their actions to ensure racial equity. (1619 Project wins! The US was built on and for slavery, or something through those lines. Oh those evil founding fathers.)

- Requires executive branch appointees to sign an ethics pledge barring them from acting in personal interest and requiring them to uphold the independence of the Department of Justice. That surely will solve all problems.

- Directs OMB director to develop recommendations to modernize regulatory review and undoes Trump's regulatory approval process. (Did Trump have a process?)

- Halting the Keystone pipeline, so I guess that rail transport of oil is a winner then.


Well, Biden started actually like Trump: reversing on day one his predecessor's decisions. But unlike Trump, I guess Biden got a lot more reversed on the first day that Donald did.

That's the healing from the first day! :joke:

At first Pinker sounded too optimist and that he forgot in one article to mention the First and Second Civil Wars of Congo (and the millions of dead in those conflicts) made me angry, but I've come to value Pinker very much (and he's not so optimist at the present as before).

I've not been a huge admirer of Peterson, however as he (Peterson) has been quite outspoken with his conservative views, this has caused the anger and the attacks on him, even politics (or philosophy) isn't his actual subject as I think it's clinical psychology. Yet his opposition to the Canadian bill made him part of the "culture war", an unholy thing to do. Still I don't think him as a "cultural warrior", someone eager to comment on everything and to take the role to be a defender / attack of one side. Holding conservative views now days makes you a rambling "cultural warrior", I guess.

Besides, the OP has it's obvious bias, as I don't think Peterson simply isn't a philosopher, even if he's interested in it. He's more like a commentator, who hasn't been anymore on the stage.

Still I think academic people ought to engage in political debate and not shun away from it, even if it's not their specific field. Many are far too timid to comment publicly the "hot potatoe" subjects. And perhaps they have a point with cancel culture and how hostile public discussion has become. Yet many of them are still smart and the those in academy should take part in public discussion. Good example from the left is the leftist-libertarian Noam Chomsky who named his first book aptly The Responsibility of Intellectuals. Still Chomsky is a linguist and that he doesn't see anything good in the US and especially it's foreign policy basically makes him an odd political historian. Yet naturally he isn't one. He is more an activist, just as his first books name refers.

gave already the simple answer.

There's no way to turn it into something else. Even it's name tells should what it is.

That it has some similarities to nation states hardly matters. The UN can have armed forces and basically could go to war against a country (like it did against North Korea), but nobody thinks it's a country.

Damn. 4000 died of covid on Biden’s first day. That’s more than 911. — NOS4A2

I think that for a long time more people have died than on 9/11. Wasn't that number reached in the end of last year or so?

What's dubious about the portrayal? Peterson styles himself as a culture warrior against the left. — Echarmion

Lol. Yeah right, a culture warrior. You don't even notice how funny you sound.

Biden did shit except show up and not stumble. — Benkei

Which is exactly the thing how to beat Trump. Not doing much is sometimes the correct thing.

Not to be a Bernie, which likely would have kept Trump in office. Yet now he has to do much with Covid-19, or otherwise it's back to the normal situation of the President being a hated person.

Why is Jordan Peterson this lightning rod to the leftists, that furiously denounce and ridicule him? Why are people even talking about this Canadian academic?

a) The simple fact is that Jordan Peterson came into the media focus and public discourse thanks to his opposition on a bill in Canada " Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code", which basically was a critique of political correctness and identity politics in legislation.

And of course critique of PC culture in an obscure bill in the neighboring country of the US still got a lot of attention in the highly polarized era of Trump. This made him something of a lightning rod, because conservative values from an academic person are more rare these days. Add one famous interview that became very popular in social media, and then "Jordan Peterson" became to be this "controversial" person on the right.

b) In an age where right-wing discourse was dominated by a populist simpleton like Trump and Fox News, there weren't many intellectually interesting commenters in the public debate. Hence Peterson filled that void. In a similar manner, a leftist biologist named Bret Weinstein came to the national attention (in the US) during the 2017 Evergreen State College protests, and afterwards was someone that was interviewed a lot as a critic of present PC culture and other modern leftist eccentrics.

c) Thirdly of course his actual work got interest and his books on self-help (like 12 Rules for Life) became best sellers and created a following, which curiously was portrayed to be "right-wing", which is a rather dubious portrayal.

Talk about crowd size. The crowd in the farewell ceremony:



No wonder he asked everybody to bring five people...

A fitting end. Next phase: the pictures of Trump lawyers going to court.

But will the anti-Trumpism persist? — NOS4A2

Wear your MAGA hat around and find out yourself.

(Btw, did hostility towards Hillary Clinton persist after the 2016 elections among the Trump crowd?)

Still waiting on this huge uprising. The seer ssu keeps promising me more violence. Or, like everyone else, he was duped. — NOS4A2

WTF uprising you are talking? It's not a Civil War with a Bull Run at the start. The timeline I'm looking at is the first term of Biden (if he of old age makes it to 2024) and it will be more of, well, the same. Now it's the post event media frenzy, where the news will minute by minute follow if anything happens in the inauguration or before it. But just have a wider focus.

But if you ask, already just few days from the Capitol storming, another group takes the streets:

NEW YORK (WABC) -- A Black Lives Matter protest in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan ended with protesters clashing with police, resulting in more than two dozen arrests and eleven officers injured.

The protesters started at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall Park, where they were met by a large number of officers.

Protests are going to be the norm, NOS. For various reasons. The only thing Biden can do to take control of the situation is to succeed in fighting the pandemic.

But there's the Great Trump "See you later" -ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base!

Please come with other five people! (Remember crowd size?)

33 pages and nearly 1 000 replies and the administration is taking office tomorrow.

Yet have to say that the OP from was spot on. This is the kind of opinions I look for in this forum.

And one Finn was wrong, but I said it was just a possibility :sad:

But in my defense, then another popular thread about one Coronavirus was just starting too.

A real coup requires military support, right? I think most coups are done by generals. — frank

Not actually. A military coup is different.

Do notice that an autocoup or selfcoup is still a Coup d'état.

A self-coup, or autocoup is a form of putsch or coup d'état in which a nation's leader, despite having come to power through legal means, dissolves or renders powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assumes extraordinary powers not granted under normal circumstances. Other measures taken may include annulling the nation's constitution, suspending civil courts and having the head of government assume dictatorial powers.

It is what has basically happened in Venezuela and in 1992 President Fujimori was successful in this in Peru. The US here follows a long tradition of American countries, actually.

The Capitol rioters were prepared to execute Pence and congressmen deemed traitors. They weren't prepared to take over the government. — frank

Naturally they weren't taking over the government. The Government was and still is for a few hours the administration of Trump. They were urged to do what they did by the acting US President. In their view they were defending the Constitution from fraudulent elections, which Trump and his gang have been beaten the drum for a long time.

Yet thanks to the Ultimate Disaster President, things went like this. It took even less time that I suspected from Trump's supporters to go from people Trump loves and "that should now go home" to Trump condemning their action.

This is probably the most important lesson that America must learn from Trump. The simple fact that after the coup attempt Republicans did not unanimously support impeaching Trump shows just how many people in this country do not really support the system that is in place anymore. It shows how ignorant people are to really believe that it would be better to have totalitarianism than the current system.

Our Democracy literally won't survive. Even if we deal with Trump in the most severe way, the next Republican will be dictator. — Garth

This is the scary thing.

When something like 34% of Americans still support Trump after this debacle, there obviously would have been the support base for an autocoup. Those people who now stormed the Capitol do truly think that the election was stolen, Trump's propaganda machine had worked perfectly on them. The fiercest supporters do live in their alternative reality and in an real autocoup, their victory celebrations would be an essential part of the image for the coup. (It should be mentioned that naturally not all of those who voted for Trump think this way)

Hence to stage an autocoup would have been totally possible: Trump supporters would be even on this Forum repeating a line like: "There was allegations of serious fraud that could not solved before January 6th and hence the current administration continues as an interim government." It simply would be a "special case", not an overthrow of the Constitution. The unthinkable could be the new normal. And then of course those protesting the autocoup would be portrayed as the insurrectionists.

Having watched more video of the insurrectionists, it's clear they have been mentally poisoned. More gullible and desperate for the most part with some truly mendacious ring-leaders thrown in. — Baden

The New Yorker's Luke Mogelson's video is one of the "best" out there I've seen, which captures the moment. We see the Shaman and the gang in the Senate floor. In American fashion they had at least a prayer moment on the senate floor. Have to say that the part where the one sole policeman is trying to convince them to go is bizarre (policeman: "OK, can you please now go...").

But seriously speaking this was an extremely close call for the US.

Had the US President not been the Ultimate Disaster President, but a marginally efficient autocrat with the balls to push through, it would have been totally possible situation to stage and to have a successful autocoup. Just put at the late stage Michael Flynn to be the acting acting secretary of Homeland defense or /and head of the Defence department (or similar whackos), Giuliani as the acting attorney general and into the crucial places with QAnon people. The Democrats would not seen what would have hit them. They simply wouldn't have had the imagination to think that it would be possible in the US, just as the Capitol Police didn't understand what the Trump crowd could do. You see, someone like Flynn would have understood that it's going to be really two possibilities: either go through or it's a life sentence. When suddenly people are put into that kind of situation, choose either power or certain jail or death, they would have to truly committed. The essential crowd rejoicing on the streets would have been there, when the election results would have been sent back and a committee would have been put up to "really look at the fraud".

Biggest issue would have been the armed forces. Trump did use extensively generals (to later fire them or them resigning from their positions), yet Trump never got pro-Trump generals into leadership positions. And it is telling that the armed forces was even now an important actor in this fiasco: they had to come out and say that Biden is the next President and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to say to Nancy Pelosi that the nuclear weapons were safe. Hence the military has been part of the political equation, which actually is terrible.

Now (luckily?) it was the epic fail of Trump. Trump as usual was clueless and didn't understand that he did instigate sedition. Only thing for him was to tweet and watch his television at what his supporters, who he loves so much, were doing.

Time to lock this thread on the 20th. — Benkei

Oh you think Trump will instantly go away with an impeachment on the way and other court cases? It's over when Ivanka Trump, in order to get money and public commiseration, releases her tell all book about she was sexually abused by her father. That's way down the road. Sorry Benkei, Trumps not past. Only his sudden death would stop the debate about this huge trainwreck that just happened.

It is bullshit. Marxism is basically dead outside of philosophy and economics. Never met a Marxist scientist in my life. Plenty critical of unconstrained capitalism though, as well as pro environmental action, pro equity, etc. — Kenosha Kid

And there are plenty of conservatives too that are critical of unconstrained capitalism, pro environment and pro equity, actually. At least here.

But so true. I did have one economics teacher who was a Marxist. He did give us one whole lecture on Marx when we were studying economic history (other 19th Century economist got only a part of a lecture). I also studied economic history and thought that the student were OK (even if the social history students were strange), until I once went to the homepages of the economic history students and found a picture of Marx & Lenin there with the caption that the students were "A small group of Marxists that are darn proud to be so". I found it a bit puzzling and then asked a girl at work (that had also studied there at the same time) about what was with the homepages. She replied "Oh yeah, I found it very strange too."

Given your loathing of the nanny state, I suppose you are out there haranguing the rich to cough up enough money to keep the private safety net operating. — Bitter Crank

NOS doesn't have to.

He's an expat tucked away safely in welfare-state Canada (if I have got it right), from where it's so pleasant to comment the huge Trump trainwreck that has happened in the US. Just like, uh, people like me from the other side of the Atlantic.

Am I right to assume, it's a 'progressive' endeavour, to seek knowledge that explains the world we live in. — Edy

It just looks like that.

One reason of course is that leftist ideology is atheist. However when you take a large group of scientists and add engineers there, it just looks to be leftist as the discourse in the university, at least the loudest people, are leftist, but likely it is a normal varied group. I simply don't buy the idea that universities are bastions of marxism, as some say. It's usually bullshit: you likely find just one or two loud mouthed activist that paint some faculty to be "red" and of course young students that before landing in their cushy careers, blow off steam in a rally or two. Besides, scientists don't openly show their political ideologies and why should they? To be a great volcanologist your political views don't matter so much.

Disagreeing with right wing members has so quickly and consistently seen me named as a communist, or an identity politician, or some such that I don't even bother to disagree. From my point of view, there's usually nothing meaningful to discuss.

I've always appreciated your pro-capitalist contributions though, even though they're entirely incorrect of course ;) — Kenosha Kid

Jeering and ridicule simply don't work and tell far more about the person doing it than the object of ridicule.

When I was younger I had a similar kind of dismissive attitude towards the people on the other side of the political spectrum. Yet one has to remember that the World is so complex that totally reasonable, smart and educated people can have totally opposite views on just how to tackle the current problems of our time. When you weed out the fringes, the populists and the utopians, both sides do have points. The real difference are the solutions given, not noticing the problem.

Far better to know just exactly why they make the wrong conclusions.

It should hinder e.g. racism, which tends to live on the right. But not always (e.g. anti-Semitism in the British Labour party.) It doesn't matter where it comes from, it should not be tolerated imo. — Kenosha Kid

As you yourself noticed, racism is a separate issue and not dependent on the right/left divide. More typically is that the response if someone brings up ideas of some thinker or philosopher is quite different depending on the political side. For some reason, one side invokes a serious and cordial response, while another is invokes jeering. But this is quite natural for especially those who feel passionately of their ideology and see the opposite side as basically evil.

If the tables would be turned around (meaning there would be only a few leftists here), I think there would be even more jeering and hostility, which I think is something because of the times we live in and the vicious culture of social media (that has settled here too).

And being a centrist is like being an agnostic: both atheists and theists are annoyed at you being so indecisive about such a clear yes/no question.

Honestly, I feel squeezed on three sides -- the same old crap from the Right, postmodern identity politics from supposed "allies" who don't realize they are corporate stooges, and utopian dreams from the Revolutionary Socialists. — Garth

Ah, the squeeze of political polarization!

Choose your side and pick up the flag given to you and march along, Garth.

I'm guessing that it's mostly American-style right-libertarians (who often hate being called "right-libertarians") who are identifying themselves in the "neither" (second largest) or "both" (second smallest) groups. — Pfhorrest

I'm guessing that those who identify themselves "neither" think that because they don't agree with leftist anarchists / antifa-types or with the alternative right / Trump & QAnon-types, they think they aren't left or right.

Do notice that the option "centrist" was missing from the questionnaire. That despised and vilified option by both the left and the right.

Then what are we arguing about? — Garth

I think the real topic is if the leftist bias hinders open discussion, which is crucial for the forum to work.

If there's a Civil War in the US, it's now fought inside the GOP.

And as usual, the Republicans aren't the sissies in US politics:

:up:

Thanks for the reply, Baden. This seems the case and may indeed be right, the signs are all there (lot's of OP's, not much interaction/defending your opinion after starting an OP and so).

Perhaps one sentence about this in the Guidelines would perhaps be good, if it leads to banning. There can be those that don't know as many of us do from the university, that copying text directly without quoting is serious cheating. Or at least in the How to write an OP, if the actual guidelines are kept short (which also is good).

That's why the "one could of course quote..."

As the site guidelines say:

Don't start a new discussion unless you are:

a) Genuinely interested in the topic you've begun and are willing to engage those who engage you.

b) Able to write a thoughtful OP of reasonable length that illustrates this interest, and to provide arguments for any position you intend to advocate.

c) Capable of writing a decent title that accurately and concisely describes the content of your OP.

Banned Rafaella Leon for copypasta plagiarism. — Baden

Well, one could of course quote Olavo De Carvalho. I guess that wouldn't be a reason to be banned. (If it would, I'm really starting to worry about this site).

And we might get an heated debate about current Brazilian politics! That might be educative.

(Here's the site of Olavo de Carvalho , from which I assume Raffaella copied at least one message of her.)

the United States were fascist under Franklin Delano Roosevelt — eduardo

Yet a wartime economy isn't the basis of the economic structure of a country, especially when at peacetime those limitations and government control is eased. Yes, once the industry was geared to fighting the war, not one single car was built for the consumer market. After the war such regulation was obviously lifted.

we had to put up with the nonsense of Russian collusion for years, — NOS4A2

The Mueller report was damning and would have been the basis for impeachment in any other administration. The problem was, Mueller left it up to Congress to act on the findings of obstruction, and Congress declined to act, because they were so thoroughly bullied and intimidated by Trump. — Wayfarer

Case example of Trump supporters being in an alternate reality.

But of course, they just see here that anti-Trumpers are attacking Trump and simply don't look at the facts objectively. Did the worst accusations I heard be found to be true by the Mueller report? No, but enough was found as Wayfarer states. And let's remember that the Mueller probe was of Trump's own making. Had Trump just shut up and remain calm, there wouldn't have been a Mueller probe in the first place and the FBI would have simply stated that "Yes, Russians were active in the 2016 elections. Period. Nothing else". And the Democrats would see the FBI director Comey as a Trump stooge (as Trumpsters don't selectively remember the October surprise that Comey gave to Trump with opening the Hillary investigations, which is the way Trumpsters work).

There's the similarity to the repetition of the statement of the elections being fraudulent and stolen clearly visible. And it works as we can see. This polarization will just continue.

Socialism has killed over 100 million dissidents and spread terror, misery, and famine over one quarter of the Earth. All of the earthquakes, hurricanes, epidemics, tyrannies, and wars of the last four centuries combined have not produced such devastating effects. — Rafaella Leon

Some have estimated, that in wars of the 20th Century about 108 to 150 million people were killed, with WW2 being the worst (with perhaps 70 million or so dead). Yet I agree that Stéphane Courtois, Andrzej Paczkowski and Nicolas Werth are totally at the correct range of putting such a high number on deaths related to communism.

Yet it's better to talk about simply about communism, the violent totalitarian side of socialism. That might be history now, but socialism isn't. Why? The fall of the Soviet Union and it's satellite states wasn't such a blow that as was given to fascism and national socialism at the end of WW2, so the ideology didn't become a banned one. There were no American tanks on the Red Square when the Soviet Union fell and the present Russian leader sees the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. Obviously any kind of similar re-thinking of ideologies didn't happen in Post-Soviet Russia as happened in (West)Germany after WW2.

Then some socialists condemned Marxism-Leninism of the Soviet Union, even if those were a far smaller group as now people say. And lastly, not all socialism isn't Marxism. Western social democracy, which could generally be defined as socialism, is different from the totalitarian communists. And as they, the social democrats, have been in fact for ages the vehement enemies with communists (if one looks at the real history), they don't see themselves related to Soviet communism or maoism. To assume that social democrats are just some light-version of communists would be similar as to think that a libertarian and an authoritarian extreme right-winger are from the same mold.

All above makes it so that communism isn't treated as fascism or national socialism, even if Marxism-Leninism should be put in a similar way to the dustbin of history. That's just the World we live in.

If Trump is to blame for the expressions and acts of others, who should I blame for the expressions and actions of ssu? I’d love to know who possesses enough magical powers to control your tongue and motor cortex. — NOS4A2

What???

Are you now questioning if people can or cannot be incited? Oh boy.

Or wait a minute, did the second impeachment of Trump happen for the reason that Trump possessed magical powers to control peoples tongue and motor cortex? I think I missed that!

I think that Eric Weinstein had an interesting and a bit different take on what happened in DC. Interview by Saagar Njeti and Marshall Kosloff. As always, nice to listen to a bit something else:

In fact if money is a process of the living it stand to reason that it’s less of a jump than the statement “the living is a process of the dead/inanimate (physics/chemistry). — Benj96

So you mean as people are living entities and people have invented money, so there's the reductionist link? With extreme reductionism many fail to notice how information is lost in the reductionist thinking, which assumes everything can be answered by looking at the parts and not the whole, for example.

But that wasn't what I had in mind...

It was basically that with living entities we have a quite solid foundation with biology and natural sciences. To live a living organism needs energy. That's a fact and cannot be avoided or disregarded. It's simply false that we could assume that there are living organisms wouldn't need energy at all.

However with money and a monetary system, it is not dependent anything else that perhaps humans being around, but other than that, issues like what is money, what is the value of it differ arbitrarily and can be totally different. There is no right answer. And thus here it simply gets illogical. Some can view money one way while others view it another way. And economist can make an economic model of how the monetary system works, but that can change through time.

This is even more obvious as we think of money as debt or how important the trust in a monetary system. Now you can make a model of how the monetary system works at a specific time in a specific place, but that can change to something totally else. For example, some time ago you would have a big difficulty to make people think that something like Bitcoin would be money.

magine Trump were stupid enough to listen to this guy. — Michael

Not many guys going to Trump nowdays.

Besides, Trump has got the people around him who he wanted and who he deserves.