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Re: just curious... and America's special rights

Posted by caraher on April 15, 2007, at 1:58:33

In reply to just curious » fayeroe, posted by Racer on April 15, 2007, at 1:08:57

My understanding is that fayeroe is a Texan. Whether that also implies American can become a source of contentious debate...

A guy named Stephen Webb, a professor of religion where I used to teach, wrote an awful book a few years ago called "American Providence." It laid out one kind of answer as to why the subset of Americans who share his religious beliefs think the US has the right, no, the duty to play its part in "God's plan" through interventionist policies. In his religious fantasy world, the US and Israel are two nations endowed with some kind of God-given magical status that places them above consideration of such concepts as international law (which only really applies to all the other nations, untouched as they are by the special status God bestows on His Chosen Peoples).

I was most disappointed by the profoundly anti-intellectual thrust of his explanation for believing this is so. The bottom line was that this is simply a fact that right-thinking American evangelicals grasp by the grace of God or something, and the rest of us pawns simply lack the vision to see. There is no argument at all, simply emphatic assertion. It's telling that he quotes with approval the work of Carl Schmitt, a Nazi political philosopher, though he does have enough of a conscience to try to distance the elements of Schmitt's writing her draws on from Nazi ideology.

I first knew for certain that I was dealing with a tome from beyond the reality-based community when his thumbnail biological sketch of the current White House occupant asserted that he'd been a successful businessman. Though I suppose if you define "success" to include gaining wealth through bailouts by your father's friends and allies and to exclude sending the companies you lead into bankruptcy it's possible to make a case for his having been a success in business.


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poster:caraher thread:749806
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20070312/msgs/749957.html