Warning: Undefined variable $args in /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-content/themes/bueno/functions.php on line 27

Warning: Trying to access array offset on false in /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-content/themes/bueno/functions.php on line 252

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-content/themes/bueno/functions.php:27) in /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-content/themes/bueno/functions.php:27) in /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-content/themes/bueno/functions.php:27) in /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-content/themes/bueno/functions.php:27) in /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-content/themes/bueno/functions.php:27) in /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-content/themes/bueno/functions.php:27) in /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-content/themes/bueno/functions.php:27) in /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-content/themes/bueno/functions.php:27) in /home/birdhop/birdhop.com/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1893
{"id":49,"date":"2019-06-11T18:15:52","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T23:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/?p=49"},"modified":"2024-07-24T12:08:13","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T17:08:13","slug":"democracy-is-what-finally-makes-america-great-canada-too-etc-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/?p=49","title":{"rendered":"Democracy is what finally makes America great (& Canada too etc, etc)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

*\u201cTemporal Infrastructure,\u201d 2019 \u2014 by Toronto artist Michael Seward.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n*(And yet when the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville visited and wrote about the early United States he admired \u2014 the side of the experiment that would soon fight a civil war to at least start to end African American slavery \u2014 he called his work *Democracy in America<\/em> [*v1, 1835 ; v2, 1840<\/a>]. \u201cCapitalism\u201d [or *Das Kapital<\/em>] was something the German intellectual Karl Marx would later criticize, researching and writing as a political refugee in London, England [*v1, 1867<\/a>, and then posthumously from Marx\u2019s notes by Friedrich Engels, son of \u201can owner of large textile factories in Salford, England and \u2026 Barmen, Prussia,\u201d v2, 1885 ; v3, 1894]<\/a>.) <\/p>\n\n\n
*<\/p>\n\n\n*
**No real-world democracy will ever be perfect<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n**
$\"\"$ <\/a>
From the Norman Rockwell painting, 1958<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
On one side of my own political consciousness, I suppose I naively wish for some vigorous pro-democracy push-back from at least one major side of American political culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I dislike Adam Tooze\u2019s characterization of progressive debate in the USA today : \u201c America\u2019s revived left wing \u2026 does not doubt the disastrous consequences of the Trump presidency<\/a>. Yet [for them]\u2026 he represents not a historic rupture but a continuity \u2026 Trump exposes starkly what the civility of Obama and his administration obscured\u2014the subordination of American democracy to capitalism, patriarchy, and the iniquitous racial order descended from slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, all this is true enough, on one level. It nonetheless ought to be possible to recognize the failings of Democracy in America, historical and contemporary, and at the same time still celebrate and revive the underlying democratic political energy that has recurrently made it possible for the USA to transcend these failings and move ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$\"\"$
\u201ca sense of time passing,\u201d 2019 \u2014 by Toronto artist Michael Seward.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
No real-world democracy will ever be perfect. Humanity itself is too imperfect. But every serious democracy is always working to make itself more democratic. What has made the United States of America stand out since its Declaration of Independence in 1776 is not the cultivation of some unique version of \u201ccapitalism\u201d (or \u201cfree market\u201d economics). It is the opportunity at least some sides of American culture (and geography) have recurrently offered increasing shares of the broad mass of the sovereign people \u2014 to enjoy a degree of freedom, prosperity, and political participation heretofore largely unknown, for most human beings in most of world history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
**Easier to think like this in Canada right now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n**
$\"\"$ <\/a>
*\u201cJust the latest in a long string of practical Democracy in America incarnations that go back to 1776.\u201d <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n*The Obama administration from this perspective was not a practitioner of a \u201ccivility\u201d that obscured the all too many ways in which democracy in America today is in fact subordinate to \u201c capitalism, patriarchy, and the iniquitous racial order descended from slavery<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Obama\u2019s government was just the latest in a long string of practical Democracy in America incarnations that go back to 1776. It was starting to define the latest, new and improved expression of the diverse democratic vision for an increasingly high technological 21st century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Trump administration is speaking for the side of the USA today that still fears this new and diverse democratic vision, and wants to return to some mythical past where, as Mr. Moore suggests<\/a>, \u201cCapitalism is a lot more important than democracy.\u201d Yet in the end, to pursue this reactionary vision is ultimately to abandon the historic American destiny and purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two further observations from Adam Tooze in the June 6 *New York Review of Books<\/em> may help summarize the argument here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n*
*First, he is almost certainly onto something when he writes : \u201c*The scope for a truly internationalist or cosmopolitan politics in the United States is limited<\/a>.\u201d But this is not what the Obama administration promoted. President Obama was still talking about a Democracy in and of America \u2014 albeit one that includes Native Americans, women, and African Americans like he and his wife and children, that reaches out to a new Asian America like his Hawaiian birthplace, and that probably has somewhat more to do with the California which was once part of Mexico than with the legendary Anglo Protestant Middle West. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
$\"\"$
*\u201cthe unreliability of an infallible memory,\u201d 2019 \u2014 by Toronto artist Michael Seward.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n*Second, Mr. Tooze suggests in his conclusion that \u201cthe most pressing question of the present\u201d is : \u201c Assuming current trends continue, will America accept its relative decline with equanimity?<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet America\u2019s \u201crelative decline\u201d is only something bound to happen (as the gross domestic product of the much more populous China and perhaps ultimately India too grows and grows), if capitalism actually is \u201ca lot more important than democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If democracy finally is the crucial American value, the sky for expansion is still vast and much unexplored. (Well \u2026 I am in fact a Canadian. And it may be easier to think like this in Canada right now than it is in the USA. I\u2019m not sure at the moment. I\u2019m waiting to see what happens in the Canadian federal election this coming October 21.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What does talk about democracy have to do with music and the arts \u2014 to say nothing of \u201cREDISCOVERING MODERN JAZZ 1940\u20131970″? For a starter try Woody Herman\u2019s version of Aaron Copland\u2019s 1942 classic, \u201cFanfare For The Common Man \u2026 An Anthem For The American Century.\u201d For the main course, according to a recent report […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,11,7,8,9,12],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bgs","tag-adam-tooze","tag-democracy-and-capitalism","tag-democracy-in-america","tag-democracy-in-retreat","tag-fanfare-for-the-common-man","tag-obama-and-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

*\u201cTemporal Infrastructure,\u201d 2019 \u2014 by Toronto artist Michael Seward.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n*(And yet when the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville visited and wrote about the early United States he admired \u2014 the side of the experiment that would soon fight a civil war to at least start to end African American slavery \u2014 he called his work *Democracy in America<\/em> [*v1, 1835 ; v2, 1840<\/a>]. \u201cCapitalism\u201d [or *Das Kapital<\/em>] was something the German intellectual Karl Marx would later criticize, researching and writing as a political refugee in London, England [*v1, 1867<\/a>, and then posthumously from Marx\u2019s notes by Friedrich Engels, son of \u201can owner of large textile factories in Salford, England and \u2026 Barmen, Prussia,\u201d v2, 1885 ; v3, 1894]<\/a>.) <\/p>\n\n\n
*<\/p>\n\n\n*
**No real-world democracy will ever be perfect<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n**
$\"\"$ <\/a>
From the Norman Rockwell painting, 1958<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
On one side of my own political consciousness, I suppose I naively wish for some vigorous pro-democracy push-back from at least one major side of American political culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I dislike Adam Tooze\u2019s characterization of progressive debate in the USA today : \u201c America\u2019s revived left wing \u2026 does not doubt the disastrous consequences of the Trump presidency<\/a>. Yet [for them]\u2026 he represents not a historic rupture but a continuity \u2026 Trump exposes starkly what the civility of Obama and his administration obscured\u2014the subordination of American democracy to capitalism, patriarchy, and the iniquitous racial order descended from slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, all this is true enough, on one level. It nonetheless ought to be possible to recognize the failings of Democracy in America, historical and contemporary, and at the same time still celebrate and revive the underlying democratic political energy that has recurrently made it possible for the USA to transcend these failings and move ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$\"\"$
\u201ca sense of time passing,\u201d 2019 \u2014 by Toronto artist Michael Seward.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
No real-world democracy will ever be perfect. Humanity itself is too imperfect. But every serious democracy is always working to make itself more democratic. What has made the United States of America stand out since its Declaration of Independence in 1776 is not the cultivation of some unique version of \u201ccapitalism\u201d (or \u201cfree market\u201d economics). It is the opportunity at least some sides of American culture (and geography) have recurrently offered increasing shares of the broad mass of the sovereign people \u2014 to enjoy a degree of freedom, prosperity, and political participation heretofore largely unknown, for most human beings in most of world history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
**Easier to think like this in Canada right now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n**
$\"\"$ <\/a>
*\u201cJust the latest in a long string of practical Democracy in America incarnations that go back to 1776.\u201d <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n*The Obama administration from this perspective was not a practitioner of a \u201ccivility\u201d that obscured the all too many ways in which democracy in America today is in fact subordinate to \u201c capitalism, patriarchy, and the iniquitous racial order descended from slavery<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Obama\u2019s government was just the latest in a long string of practical Democracy in America incarnations that go back to 1776. It was starting to define the latest, new and improved expression of the diverse democratic vision for an increasingly high technological 21st century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Trump administration is speaking for the side of the USA today that still fears this new and diverse democratic vision, and wants to return to some mythical past where, as Mr. Moore suggests<\/a>, \u201cCapitalism is a lot more important than democracy.\u201d Yet in the end, to pursue this reactionary vision is ultimately to abandon the historic American destiny and purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two further observations from Adam Tooze in the June 6 *New York Review of Books<\/em> may help summarize the argument here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n*
*First, he is almost certainly onto something when he writes : \u201c*The scope for a truly internationalist or cosmopolitan politics in the United States is limited<\/a>.\u201d But this is not what the Obama administration promoted. President Obama was still talking about a Democracy in and of America \u2014 albeit one that includes Native Americans, women, and African Americans like he and his wife and children, that reaches out to a new Asian America like his Hawaiian birthplace, and that probably has somewhat more to do with the California which was once part of Mexico than with the legendary Anglo Protestant Middle West. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
$\"\"$
*\u201cthe unreliability of an infallible memory,\u201d 2019 \u2014 by Toronto artist Michael Seward.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n*Second, Mr. Tooze suggests in his conclusion that \u201cthe most pressing question of the present\u201d is : \u201c Assuming current trends continue, will America accept its relative decline with equanimity?<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet America\u2019s \u201crelative decline\u201d is only something bound to happen (as the gross domestic product of the much more populous China and perhaps ultimately India too grows and grows), if capitalism actually is \u201ca lot more important than democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If democracy finally is the crucial American value, the sky for expansion is still vast and much unexplored. (Well \u2026 I am in fact a Canadian. And it may be easier to think like this in Canada right now than it is in the USA. I\u2019m not sure at the moment. I\u2019m waiting to see what happens in the Canadian federal election this coming October 21.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What does talk about democracy have to do with music and the arts \u2014 to say nothing of \u201cREDISCOVERING MODERN JAZZ 1940\u20131970″? For a starter try Woody Herman\u2019s version of Aaron Copland\u2019s 1942 classic, \u201cFanfare For The Common Man \u2026 An Anthem For The American Century.\u201d For the main course, according to a recent report […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,11,7,8,9,12],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bgs","tag-adam-tooze","tag-democracy-and-capitalism","tag-democracy-in-america","tag-democracy-in-retreat","tag-fanfare-for-the-common-man","tag-obama-and-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdhop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}