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um.. first if athenian democracy was "impractical" how did it manage to survive from some 500 years?
second, carl schmitt, the german hack constitutional theorist, argued that all democracy was impractical because it tended toward abstract debate, while conservatism tended to be grounded in the concrete--which is itself hilarious thinking about how the term gets deployed in the states today--but conservatives could not do much either, according to schmitt--what mattered was that in a situation of crisis a state of emergency would emerge and a single Leader would come to power and for schmitt this was a good thing, the dictator, because he was efficient--he could take Decisions without all the messiness of debate. that is why the fascists liked his theory so much.
third, there is a relation between the kind of religion and the form of political order--the romans, for example, understood this full well during the council of nicea, after constantine converted, during which they excised many gnostic gospels, not so much on "authenticity" grounds (otherwise all would have been excised) but on theological grounds--the more neoplatonic gospels stage a vision of the universe as hierarchical, which maps quite well onto the bureaucratic state--the state is legitimate because its form doubles that of the cosmos, for example.
as for christianity, i suppose it depends upon which elements you choose to emphasize: those from the gospels about teh dignity of the poor and value of all human beings are not so bad--others are quite foul---personally, i am sympathetic to the former elements--the idea, however, that what happens in this world is not of as much consequence as what happens in the next is a recipe for passivity--so i dunno. it is certainly not optimal for a political regime that would actually give people power. i dont have an alternative in mind---i am probably closest to the old nominalists--if there is an infinite god, then human understanding has no access to it--so the words (like god) are just words knit into systems of social control. if that is accepted, then it follows that nietzsche was probably right......
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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