[detbuch]

Originally Posted by spence

The "system" is obviously the entire thing. Not an academic perspective but the real world.

Those two sentences are such contradictions that it shouldn't be needed to point it out. But, beyond leaving "academic perspectives" out of the entire thing including the "real world," there is also the paradox of to whom belongs the academic perspective and for whom the real world is the model and cause for government.

Your assumption, I assume, is that the real world is the unhampered cooperation of rulers and their expert cohorts to mold society in light of their superior wisdom. Not by any guiding principles, but by newly concocted responses to old problems, the newer the better.

And that older, presumably defunct, prescriptions and restrictions such as the Constitution are no longer real, since not followed, but merely academic conversation pieces which obstruct the progress of the wise rulers by binding them to procedures that don't apply to the modern world.

The thing is . . . the Constitution was based on experience, on how the "real world" had historically operated, on the reality of human nature, and on the promotion and preservation of that common piece of human nature which history and experience taught was a yearning for freedom. It was, at the time of the Declaration, and is now, still the most advanced governing principle.

The Progressive idea of rule by smart intellectuals and technocrats unhampered by real world precedence, but guided by opinion based on untried, or tried and failed because of incompetence, efforts, is actually the more "academic perspective" And, ironically, it is not even newer than the American constitutional system, but as old as human tyranny.

My take on the Hollywood Reporter coverage is that he's frustrated with the obstructionist Right's position on Obama and how it's hampering our government from operating to the point of shutdown and real economic damage.

-spence

The "obstructionist Right's position" and the hampering of government by shutdown and the notion of "real economic damage" are obviously your perspectives. The Hollywood Reporter didn't mention any of that stuff. What bug he/it had up its butt is still mysteriously embedded there. Amazingly narrow of you to exclude the "Right's position" from the "entire thing" and to cast it out as part of some academic perspective. The constitutional basis for the Tea Party opposition, or "obstruction" as you put it, is far more intrinsic to American political "reality" than the phony whims and constructs of progressive top down ordering of people's lives. If the "entire thing" is what you vision, then the "vector" is toward economic collapse fueled by a debt not based on economic principles, but that is irresponsibly compounded by larger and larger impossible amounts. If their is no return to basic principles of American government, but continued rule by unprincipled power mongers who sap the spirit and responsibility from our people, and who spend the wealth of the nation into oblivion, if that continues, eventual collapse will be followed by despotic rule. And the "real world" will once again have to find its way back toward human dignity and freedom.