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The David Copperfield Community * Writing Community * Translated Greek Poems More picks (this is a 100KB page)
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The new anti-Americanism Empire concludes with a section called “Militant,” printed entirely in italics. “In the postmodern era, as the figure of the people dissolves, the militant is the one who best expresses the life of the multitude: the agent of biopolitical production and resistance against Empire.” Hardt and Negri praise “the communist and liberatory combatants of the twentieth-century revolutions” and assure us that “militancy today is a positive, constructive, and innovative activity.” The most nauseating part of the book comes at the very end: “This is a revolution that no power will control—because biopower and communism, cooperation and revolution remain together, in love, simplicity, and also innocence. This is the irrepressible lightness and joy of being communist.” Although written in the abstract language of the graduate
seminar, Empire has an ominously pragmatic aim: to undermine faith in the
liberal institutions that inform American democracy. It is a poisonous book
whose ultimate goal is not to understand but to destroy society. Harvard
University Press should be ashamed of publishing it. Sensible citizens should be
alarmed that it is glorified by trendy intellectuals and the press. It is
sometimes suggested that America’s culture wars are over. The adulation
showered upon Empire and its authors, together with the horrible events of
September 11, show that the real battles have yet to be joined. Force of destiny An agnostic, Verdi portrayed God as alternately absent and
alarming - the non-existent being to whom the characters of The Force of Destiny
address endlessly unanswered prayers: the judgmental deity of the Requiem who
terrorises man into cowering submission and whose church on earth has become, in
Don Carlos, an instrument of oppression.
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Hellenism in Music: Lost Art and Culture Recovered Raymond Aron & the power of ideas The primary target of Aron’s polemic was fanaticism. But he
also recognized that the defeat of fanaticism often leads to a contrary
spiritual sickness, indifference. Both are expressions of the ultimate enemy,
nihilism. Skepticism, Aron wrote, is useful or harmful depending on which is
more to be feared at the moment: fanaticism or apathy. The intervening faculty
that orients us appropriately is practical wisdom, prudence, “the god” (Aron
quotes Burke) “of this lower world.” In other words, skepticism for Aron is
not the end but a means. The return of decoration After the death of Queen Victoria, ornamental architecture fell
into disrepute. A century later, Giles Worsley sees signs of revival. Movie criticism can be refreshing Genuine and valid remarks on current and past movies. Make a
bookmark!
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