Political Blogging

Some readers will recall that in the immediate wake of the horrifying election results, I expressed doubts about continued blogging related to political issues.  Since then, I've posted a few political items (some written prior to the election), more than I had planned, and largely because of encouraging and kind correspondence from various readers.  A few samples:

A law professor at Berkeley wrote:

"I just wanted to thank you again for all your blogging this year -- it may be a candle in the darkness (it really feels, especially in California, that the barbarians have just crossed the Alps), but it's been a great thing to see a rational and defiant politics so well articulated."

A philosopher in Australia wrote:

"Don't let the Bush re-election get you down too much - the vast majority of the world's population are on the right side of the barricades, and although Bush won again, a big difference from 2000 is that a big section of the American population got politicised in the process. Have a break and get back on the case on your blog - I'm sure for many outside the US like me it is a big source of political info and inspiration."

And another foreign reader wrote:

"I am British and have lived in Japan for thirty years, and have been following your blog and other excellent blogs like Talking Points Memo, Eschaton, Daily Kos, Matthew Yglesias and Hullabaloo. I know all of you are hugely disappointed by the results of this election, as I am, but I have been greatly impressed by the intelligence and principled passion of the writing in these blogs; you all seem to me to represent what is best about America.  So please keep at work.

"The other thing I wanted to say is that in his novel of 1939, 'On the Marble Cliffs', the German writer Ernst Junger, whom I hugely admire (he is not a simple 'right-wing' or 'fascist' writer, as many people suppose), wrote what I think is the most extraordinary description ever written of the seizure of power by an atavistic and evil force. In its time, it obviously had relevance to Hitler's rise to power, as well as to Stalin's take over of the Soviet Union, but Junger intentionally went deep, asserting that his novel was meant for all time, and the book is not tied to what may seem to be its occasions. For me at least, it describes perfectly, in its strange allegorical way, what has been happening in America: the take-over of the republic by a group of men who have no respect for the republic or sense of responsibility towards it; men who are, for all their protestations, no true patriots; who are, as Junger puts it, 'old connoisseurs of power'. It is an immensely rich, thought-provoking, but little-known book that deserves to be read very widely. It is naturally out of print in the English-speaking world."

I appreciate these, and other, encouraging messages.  I also am grateful to all those who send me links to interesting material--most particularly my father, who is the source of much of the good stuff I've been able to link to here, but also all the many faculty and students and lawyers and others who have forwarded items that deserve a wider audience.  Thanks to all for reading and for your interest and encouragement.  Let us all hope Bush & his bestiary of madmen and "old connoisseurs of power" go down to defeat, without taking us all with them.