Admitting I Can Be Wrong Edition
A couple years ago, Sam Roberts became a minor star in Canada for some really shitty song and its accompanying video in which he looked like Jesus stuck in a dingy at sea. I didn’t particularly care for it, but the mainstream media thought that he was one of those great “on the verge of breaking into the mainstream” sort of things – like the Arcade Fire on a smaller scale and slightly less well-dressed. He has recently released a new album, “Chemical City,” the first single from which is being played on Top 40, secretary/office administrator, and “best rock” radio stations. It’s actually quite good – I’m willing to admit it. I just hope he doesn’t look like Jesus anymore.
- Sam Roberts “Bridge to Nowhere” [
mp3] from the “Chemical City” album.
To make up for something this wimpy this week, something totally awesome – like the Blue Oyster Cult – will have to be featured next week.
6 Comments
it is cool to hear what you canadians (of Top 40, secretary/office administrator, and “best rock”) listen to. like it feels a little exotic or something to hear the everyday of another place. i guess and aust equivalent in terms of exoticness is the recent hottest 100 on ‘alternative’ government radio fm station triple j.
the song is good – yeah.
Hey nice work over on the Kotsko thread in which you disucss Strauss. I think a new reading of Strauss (and Schmitt) is in order, if we are to ever get out of the pro/anti Straussians/ Schmittians out there. I don’t identify as a ‘Straussian’ or a ‘Schmittian,’ but I think there are important aspects of their work to consider more carefully. Their incisive remarks cannot be ignored. Strauss just might be ‘the’ thinker of the twentieth century. but why?
I am highly suspect of dissmissals such as Shadia Drury in Regina, for one, who appear to have developed a deep and passionate hatred of the man. This might be justified considering the environment she was in Calgary Political Science, or the ‘Calgary School,’ where Strauss is read in the ‘neo-con’ way. The connections she draws to the current American administration is illuminating; however I do not think it should be the final word. As a critique of liberalism, Strauss and Schmitt offer a compelling case, if we care to spend the time reading them. Any thoughts?
Figured you would like it, Matt. For the most part, music of Australian origin, as it is understood in Canada, is likely limited to Midnight Oil. Most likely assume that AC/DC are American or something.
Barret, I personally haven’t gotten much out of Drury’s work. She seems to have written the same book twice: once on Kojeve and again on Strauss. Neither were especially good. The word I’d use to describe her reading of Strauss – or, rather, Straussians as she has little to say about Strauss himself – is “shrill.” As a work in political theory, it is lacking. However, as a polemic it is quite good (insofar as these things go).
Drury reviews Steven B. Smith’s book on Strauss, which claims to be a defense of Strauss’ defence of modern democracy (!?), in the most recent issue of Political Theory. Smith has a reply and Drury a rebuttal. I think she’s found her counterpart.
That there is an association between the Bush administration and the Straussian school cannot be denied. Further, it can’t be denied that they’ve held influential positions in the administration (and not just in defense and foreign affairs – Diana Schaub has a position in education, for instance). Whether the influence will be lasting or not is another question, of course.
Thanks Craig- I had a look at the debate, and it encapsulates what I was suggesting: Drury has a serious problem with Strauss in general, which continues to come through in her writing. Although she has spent the majority of her career working on Strauss, it isn’t clear what she feels Strauss offers to political theory. He becomes the problem and a curse to theory in general because of certain affiliations and ‘causal’ connections to the current US unilateral Administration. Drury sees Strauss as providing a theory of just violence, which is only partially correct.
Drury also seems to demonstrate some of my concerns with specific forms of liberalism. In one breath liberalism operate as though the doctrine is ‘natural’ and has no real presuppositions except ‘openess’ and the quest for ‘dialogue,’ yet her writing tends to indicate that there is only one way to read Strauss. Perhaps we need to read Strauss against these determinate readings, to more carefully understand what he was responding to. I think he was not only saying that myth operates to ensure that there is a clear division between ruled and rulers, or the mass and the thinkers, but also that liberalism in any of its guises does not escape this problem in itself. Liberalism, as Schmitt reminds us again and again, did emerge in a very specific historical horizon of thinking in the nineteenth century. Yet, Drury seems content to see Strauss less as a historian of ideas (responding to the problems set forth by Weber and Schmitt, to name only two) than a predictor of the future for foreign policy in the US.
My only comment about Smith is that he basically gets things right, except the part about Strauss being the best friend of liberalism. In my reading, Strauss was certainly NOT a friend of liberalism, no matter that he pointed to the limitations of that philosophy. Rather, for Strauss (and even more than for Schmitt, amazingly) liberalism was absolutely debilitating for politics because it feeds the fire of nihilism, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism primarily because of the separation between “public” and “private” myths and ways of being.
These are just some thoughts off of the top of my head. there is obviously much left lacking…B.
I’m not opposed to reading political theory in terms of its institutional context – Drury is certainly right to claim that it is significant that many of Strauss’ students and the students of his students went on to powerful positions in the American administration. Quentin Skinner, for instance, reads the history of thought precisely in this way. (Of course, there is a great difference in terms of sophistication and talent between Drury and Skinner, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility that Drury has made an important point – she has.) The problem with Drury, I think, is that she has moved from an analysis of political theory to an analysis of people who studied political theory and then went on to become bureaucrats and then dismissing the political theory out of hand on that basis. Qua political theory, Straussianism is, by far, the most successful political theory produced in post-War United States! They’re the only ones who have managed to actually direct policy!
Smith clearly fumbles the distinction in “liberalism, ancient and modern.” When Strauss speaks of “liberalism” in a positive light, he means the “liberalism” founded upon classical natural right. He specifically excludes the modern form, which is precisely the point of the debate with Kojeve (i.e., the defender of modern liberalism par excellence) in On Tyranny.
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