And why is Charles Foster Kane so conspicuously absent?

Spot on. It can be funny listening to American political dialogue from outside the bubble – the Democrats would be a centre left (and a hell of a lot more Centre than Left!) party in any other Western country, I feel.

Still, Australia suffers from the same syndrome of the Tyranny of Opinion, except we are all good Benthamite utilitarian Whigs.

Sorta the same, but we swapped the ‘Manifest Destiny’ claptrap for a ‘Lucky Country’ smugly materialist apoliticism…

a) Was Glenn Reynolds really in Tron?

b) The “Plan 9 Guy” is, of course, Tor Johnson.

But on the second page, your quote from “The Paranoid Style” is attributed to Douglas Hofstadter, the author of “Goedel, Escher, Bach,” when of course you mean the not as erudite Richard Hofstadter. Needless to say, if Horowitz got hold of that error, he would use it to discredit the ENTIRE PROJECT.

Before entering politics, Tom Delay got his exterminator’s license at de Maistre’s famous St. Petersburg Academy in Sugarland, Texas, where he played wingback for the Exalted Executioners.

But—who the hell does Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore) have to foreclose on to get some service around here? I also nominate Scar, from Lion King. And Coach Bob Knight, but only the photo where he’s got the bullwhip. And Mr. Pennybags.

This is fun. Were you also talking about a book or something?

I’ve been meaning to read Hartz (both Liberal Tradition and Founding of New Societies but I haven’t quite gotten there yet.

“Considering the Federalist desire for a high-toned government filled with better sorts of people, there is something decidedly disingenuous about the democratic radicalism of their arguments… In effect they expropriated and exploited the language that more rightfully belonged to their opponents. The result was the beginning of a hiatus in American politics between ideology and motives that was never again closed. By using the most popular and democratic rhetoric available to explain and justify their aristocratic system, the Federalists helped to foreclose the development of an American intellectual tradition in which differing ideas of politics would be intimately and genuinely related to differing social interests. In other words, the Federalists in 1787 hastened the destruction of whatever chance there was in America for the growth of an avowedly aristocratic conception of politics and thereby contributed to the creation of that encompassing liberal tradition which has mitigated and often obscured the real social antagonisms of American politics. By attempting to confront and retard the thrust of the Revolution with the rhetoric of the Revolution, the Federalists fixed the terms for the future discussion of American politics. They thus brought the ideology of the Revolution to consummation and created a distinctly American political theory but only at the cost of eventually impoverishing later American thought.”

Good riddance to bad baggage, I say. May our never-ending flow of immigration keep us from ever having so much national cohesion that we abandon Liberal ideals.