{"id":3512,"date":"2008-10-28T07:10:57","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T12:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3512"},"modified":"2008-10-27T18:33:13","modified_gmt":"2008-10-27T23:33:13","slug":"one-big-homegenous-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3512","title":{"rendered":"One Big Homegenous Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the odd Saturday night, I can be found sitting in on Marty Owings’ show, “Radio Free Nation, on BlogTalkRadio.\u00a0 One of the occasional callers is a fellow from Detroit\u00a0– also a BlogTalkRadio host –\u00a0who usually hits two talking (or, more accurately, bellowing and slurring)\u00a0points:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. “I favor unity.\u00a0 Americans need to be united!\u00a0 I want to lead Americans to unity!”<\/li>\n
  2. “I’m not using any Republican ideas.\u00a0 Republican ideas are all bool-shee-yut”.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In other words, “let’s have unity; everyone agree with me”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    I was reminded of the caller when I read this bit – an interview with French lefty philosophe <\/em>Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy<\/a>\u00a0– last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    It’s a reminder of the big <\/em>reason I bailed out on the left over 20 years ago – because so much of what The Left believes is just so utterly awful.<\/p>\n

    L\u00e9vy<\/p>\n

    Why Obama should be chosen, in my opinion: No. 1, because it would mean really the end — and the complete victory of the battle begun in the ’60s. No. 2, because it will mean the end of a new American evil, which is the dividing, the Balkanization of American society. This is another counter-effect of a great idea, which was tolerance. You so much tolerate that you tolerate the American society to be in separate bubbles having their own peculiarities, and so on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Obama must\u00a0stamp out “peculiarities”?\u00a0<\/p>\n

    The first time I read this, I thought perhaps\u00a0it was an artifact of the translation from French to German (the piece originally appeared in Spiegel<\/em>) and thence to English.<\/p>\n

    No such luck:<\/p>\n

    Obama as president will mean all these bubbles submitted to a real ideal of citizenship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    The “real ideal of citizenship?”<\/p>\n

    L\u00e9vy\u00a0is part of the intelligentsia – which seems to be a union gig in France – but to me the “real ideals of citizenship” in America are:<\/p>\n