QUESTIONS: that were raised during my conversation with Becky a couple of days ago, which I turn over to my intelligent readership to ponder and discuss:
1. Is 20th Century literature better or worse than, say, all literature that came before it?
(I'm a big fan of the argument that how you compare them is not by taking the best works by any given author from the two periods and comparing them, but by taking the second or third etc greatest works. I'd love to hear how a critique of this view might go)
2. Has the number of elites in American society changed at all over the last hundred years?
(we all know, presumably, that those elites have become a more diverse group... but are there really more of them?)
3. We can assume that all politicians and political actors have an internal reasoning mechanism that goes like this:
a. I believe in x, and consider it the rational and right thing to believe in, and so should vote for candidates/policies that further x
b. I would like to convince as many people as possible that x is rational and right, and that they should vote to support it
c. failing b., having people prepared to vote in support of x is a perfectly acceptable result whether they do so for bad reasons or none at all
Does this make political actors realists by definition, or can they still reasonably claim to be idealists?
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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