Attention: Starting December 14, 2019 Yahoo Groups will no longer host user created content on its sites. New content can no longer be uploaded after October 28, 2019. Sending/Receiving email functionality is not going away, you can continue to communicate via any email client with your group members. Learn More
- Aug 13, 2018Dear Colleagues:I am sympathetic with my fellow "Domer," Dr. Robert Cihak. Both he and I were fortunate to encounter Eric Voegelin and Gerhart Niemeyer in classes at the University of Notre Dame. He as an undergraduate and I as a graduate student at Notre Dame beginning in January 1965.If Dr. Cihak took one of two of Niemeyer's courses, either Modern Ideology or Recovery of Order, he would know that "conservatism" as it is conventionally interpreted as a political "movement" is an "ideology." As such, in the technical way both Voegelin and Niemeyer used that concept, is a "Second Reality" construction.Charles Murray, particularly, is an ideologue, and most Libertarians are ideologues.Giving Tom Sowell or Charles Murray copies of the New Science of Politics is a nice, but utterly useless gesture.I have addressed these issues with reference to Murray, and with respect to Libertarianism in my The Conservative Rebellion.As for Voegelin, at the time Cihak would have encountered Voegelin, Eric had little sympathy for "Conservatism" and criticized Gerhart for a panel he organized in 1964 at the annual meeting of APSA.The decline of "the West" is a reality of our time and academics like Charles Murray are a very large part of the problem. I address this in my next book which I have titled "Can this Country be Saved?" and touch on the "Conservative Movement" in two blog postings titled "Death of the Conservative 'Movement.'"Richard J Bishirjian
- << Previous post in topic Next post in topic >>