Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Thursday, November 10, 2016

"Patriotism" and the U.S. Election

Was Hillary Clinton considered not “patriotic” enough by some? Patriot derives from the ancient Greek meaning “of one’s fathers”, or originally “father”, hence the familial word “Pa”.[1] Greek citizens were first termed patres and this is carried on by Romans whose senators were considered the “fathers” of the city.[2]  In other words Hillary Clinton was not considered a viable Presidential “patriot” by enough male voters simply because she is not a father.  Similarly the ‘birther’ movement triumphed by Trump targeted President Obama because his father was Muslim.

Our police are here to serve and protect, another masculine role in the binary world, and the FBI Director James Comey’s interference in the American election just 10 days before the vote, skewed the vote in Donald Trump’s favour, despite Secretary Clinton being ‘cleared’ a mere two days before November 8.  Similarly in Canada the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, unknown to many, tilted the federal election in favour of a Harper Conservative minority government in 2006, after Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin’s Finance Minister Ralph Goodale was investigated – and later exonerated, but following the vote.

Sadly, Hillary Clinton lost to the Pa’s and Grandpa’s of the United States, whose “patriotism” was rooted in an ancient – and stubborn - image of themselves as “fathers of the land.”




[1] Oxford Canadian Dictionary (2001).  See also Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (Toronto: Penguin Random House, 2015), p. 24.
[2] Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual, p., 27.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

U.S. Elections: Point of Reference

The psyche of the great masses is not receptive to anything that is half-hearted and weak.[1]
                                                                                         




[1]Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, tr. Ralph Manheim (New York: Houghton Mifflin/Mariner, 1999), p. 42.  Hitler began writing while in Landsberg Prison in 1924.