Kyle Brady: A Blog

A Word from Michael Walzer, Ctd.

2012-02-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

... though the nation-state may be less tolerant of groups, it may well force groups to be more tolerant of individuals.

from Michael Walzer's On Toleration (1997)

A Word from Michael Walzer, Ctd.

2012-02-22T05:00:00.000-08:00

Toleration in nation-states is commonly focused not on groups but on their individual participants, who are generally conceived stereotypically, first as citizens, then as members of this or that minority.

from Michael Walzer's On Toleration (1997)

A Word from Michael Walzer, Ctd.

2012-02-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

Among histories and cultures, the nation-state is not neutral; its political apparatus is an engine for national reproduction. National groups seek statehood precisely in order to control the means of reproduction.

from Michael Walzer's On Toleration (1997)

UPDATES 2012-02-20

2012-02-20T11:56:00.002-08:00

I was interviewed for a brief part in a San Francisco Chronicle story, regarding an incident online a few years ago.
My Spring 2012 semester at SJSU, the last undergraduate one, has begun, with Senior Seminar / Honors Thesis, Local Government and Politics, Modern Political Thought, and an Independent Study project focusing on international relations' realism.
I'm still waiting to hear back from CUNY and UC Riverside in the U.S., Oxford and Univ. College London in the UK.
I am now a published author on Amazon, where copies of my Bibliography can be acquired. Unless published in an academic journal, all future pieces will be published, in digital and in print, exclusively through Amazon, until further notice.
I'm working on a late-stage revision of my Modern America: The End of Political Discourse and Social Cohesion treatise, which will be followed by a revision of my exegesis project on political education and society. Both will be published in the near future.
My reading list, as of late, organized alphabetically:

Terry Christensen and Tom Hogen-Esch's Local Politics: A Practical Guide to Governing at the Grassroots (2006)
Tom Clark's Jack Kerouac: A Biography (1984)
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (1668)
Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs (2011)
John Locke's Second Treatise on Government (1689)*
Juan Linz and Alfred Steppan's Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation (1996) [selections]
articles:

Peter Burnham's "Towards a Political Theory of Crisis: Policy and Resistance across Europe" (2011)
Damien Cahill's "Beyond Neoliberalism? Crisis and the Prospects for Progressive Alternatives" (2011)
William Niemi and David J. Plante's "The Great Recession, Liberalism, and the Meaning of the New Deal" (2011)
Sebastian Rosato and John Schuessler's "A Realist Foreign Policy for the United States" (2011)
Janet Spitz's "Intentioned Recession: An Ideologically Driven Re-Structuring" (2011)

* not for the first time

A Word from Michael Walzer, Ctd.

2012-02-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

But sovereignty also has limits ... Acts or practices that "shock the conscience of humankind" are, in principle, not tolerated.

from Michael Walzer's On Toleration (1997)

A Word from Michael Walzer, Ctd.

2012-02-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

Toleration is an essential feature of sovereignty and an important reason for its desirability.

from Michael Walzer's On Toleration (1997)

A Word from Michael Walzer, Ctd.

2012-02-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

... international society is not anarchic; it is a very weak regime, but it is tolerant as a regime despite the intolerance of some of the states that make it up.

from Michael Walzer's On Toleration (1997)

A Word from Michael Walzer, Ctd.

2012-02-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

Imperial rule is historically the most successful way of incorporating difference and facilitating (requiring is more accurate) peaceful coexistence. But it isn't, or at least it never has been, a liberal or democratic way.

from Michael Walzer's On Toleration (1997)

A Word from Michael Walzer, Ctd.

2012-02-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

Nor is it intolerant of difference to ban a programmatically antidemocratic party from participating in democratic elections; it is merely prudent.

from Michael Walzer's On Toleration (1997)

A Word from Michael Walzer, Ctd.

2012-02-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

The forms of coexistence have never been more widely debated than they are today, because the immediacy of difference, the everyday encounter with otherness, has never been so widely experienced.

from Michael Walzer's On Toleration (1997)

A Word from Michael Walzer

2012-02-14T05:00:00.000-08:00

Tolerating and being tolerated is a little like Aristotle's ruling and being ruled: it is the work of democratic citizens.

from Michael Walzer's On Toleration (1997)

A Word from Aristotle, Ctd.

2012-02-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

It is clear, then, that there are branches of learning and education we must study with a view to the enjoyment of leisure, and these are to be valued for their own sake; whereas those kinds of knowledge which are useful in business are to be deemed necessary, and exist for the sake of other things.