a REAL progressive columnist quotes Hannah Arendt...

[arendt]

and shows what an amateur I am:

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan04/Stanton0122.htm

The End of Freedom
by John Stanton
www.dissidentvoice.org
January 22, 2004

<snip>

The American nation-state led by the Bush Administration, and the transnational rebel group led by Bin Laden, has brought to life the artificially fabricated insanity that Hannah Arendt so dreaded. But the situation is far worse than she could have imagined.

<snip>

Arendt points out in The Human Condition that one of the main goals of tyranny is to get the public, the followers to forget about opposition politics, to not ask tough questions. Right on cue, Bush’s minions lash out at any criticism of his/their policies as unpatriotic and unrealistic. Don’t Ask! Have Faith! They admonish.

<snip>

Perhaps Arendt’s most powerful and simple statement was that people need to think about what they are doing. She warned that the consequences of action taken today can’t be known or may not be controllable once set into motion. The individuals that remain need to think hard about who and what they want to become—ammunition and human capital in the violently absurd world of Bush and Bin Laden, or thinking individuals moving in the open space of a fearless society.

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In my defense, I will note that even Mr. Stanton is forced to
use copious simplifications of wording in parentheses when
quoting Ms. Arendt, e.g.:

"The preparation has succeeded when (people) have lost contact with (other people) as well as the reality around them; for together with these contacts, (people) lose the capacity of both experience and thought. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced (follower), but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (standards of thought) no longer exist.”

-- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

But, I am glad to see that other writers, more persuasive than I,
are beginning to mine the treasure trove of Ms. Arendt's writing.

arendt

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Eichmann in Jerusalem was a real turning point in my life

in considering philosophy

[Fovea]

2. Agreed.

Hannah Arendt is brilliant.

In the body politic of a democracy. The people are like the skin. They are the largest organ, their sensory input informs the brain of the body's overall wellbeing, and they are the first and most important line of defense against disease. When they stop doing their duty, misery and disease sets in. When they are doing their job the brain ignores them at its peril.