The republican principle is eminently satisfied! The People are setting monetary policy through their representatives! It's all fine!
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I agree with you that the Trumpist approach is pre-eminently Schmittian, but though experiment/inquiry time! How much, though, might it also owe to a Rosseauian approach to the unitary idea of the General Will, with Trump and his movement somehow embodying the same genuine will of the people.
aug 28, 2025, 10:19 pm • 10 0 • view
It's the same line of descent. Schmitt critiqued Rousseau some but it was as a kind of Roussean revisionist, he agreed with most of the premise and explicitly based a lot of his own theory on it. Many have argued JJR was the proto-totalitarian and there's a fair amount of truth in that.
aug 28, 2025, 10:28 pm • 15 0 • view
Yeah. I think Rousseau was quite genuinely not a Nazi, but it's a hop, skip, and a jump from him to the Nazis
aug 28, 2025, 10:37 pm • 13 0 • view
Basically if you run Rousseau's theories but take away even a little bit of his genuine concern for the common good, you get Nazis
aug 28, 2025, 10:42 pm • 13 0 • view
You can cut him some slack because during his lifetime he has very little direct experience with secular tyrants chose by the people to embody the general will.
aug 28, 2025, 10:47 pm • 9 0 • view
If we're contrasting with Schmitt, I think it's quite notable that Rosseau never contemplates particular executives embodying the general will, but something that wavers between a massive legislative body, a town meeting from hell, and a supernatural vibe detector. No individualist dictators there.
aug 28, 2025, 11:03 pm • 8 0 • view
Yeah he would hate that modification of Schmitt's with a passion. He hates the whole device of representation, and Schmitt takes it to the extreme (making him an unholy fusion of Rousseau with Hobbes)
aug 28, 2025, 11:21 pm • 3 0 • view
Yes, that was part of Schmitt's critique basically. As ever, he asked the right questions and then chose the worst answers.
aug 28, 2025, 11:04 pm • 9 0 • view
I've never read Schmitt on Rosseau + should, my experience w him is limited to basics like Crisis of Parl. Democracy. He's a disconcerting person to read. Moreso because I studied w a guy personally interviewed him a bunch of times in the 1970s and early 80s, explained a lot re Schmitt's humanity.
aug 28, 2025, 11:08 pm • 5 0 • view
It's in Dictatorship (1921). I recently sat down with The Concept of the Political for the first time in a dozen years and... it sure does hit different now. As in it's physically nauseating to spend time with him, how intelligent and persuasive he can be in the service of pure distilled evil.
aug 28, 2025, 11:16 pm • 9 0 • view
I've never actually read any of his stuff because I basically can't stand to. Same reason I haven't read Mein Kampf!
aug 28, 2025, 11:21 pm • 6 0 • view
One thing it convinced me of is if you can find his conclusions persuasive and beneficent rather than viscerally repulsive, that's probably not an intellectual failing so much as a deeper, pre-ideological failure of moral sentiments. Which is why it so chillingly cuts to the heart of the matter.
aug 28, 2025, 11:22 pm • 5 0 • view
For the most part I think his heart was genuinely in the right place!
aug 28, 2025, 10:52 pm • 6 0 • view
Yes that's my point. He was trying to do something better but not understanding how things would ... get out of hand because it had never been tried. As opposed to Schmitt.
aug 28, 2025, 10:53 pm • 2 0 • view
Give JJR a history of the 19th and 20th Century and he makes changes to his theories. Schmitt had those histories and still ended up a nazi
aug 28, 2025, 10:54 pm • 2 0 • view
There's an alternate timeline where he lives another 20 or 25 years and the revolution never gets any bloodier than Lafayette becoming prime minister in a moderate-liberal constitutional monarchy.
aug 28, 2025, 10:58 pm • 6 0 • view
His greatest work in that timeline is the Trial of Napoleon - after a failed coup.
aug 28, 2025, 10:59 pm • 4 0 • view
For sure. He wasn't evil and he wasn't wrong about everything. But he was wrong in some very consequential ways.
aug 28, 2025, 10:51 pm • 3 0 • view
There is a big difference between being wrong because he didn't know how some of his theories would manifest in real life vs Schmitt who was wrong after seeing what his theories did to the world.
aug 28, 2025, 10:52 pm • 4 0 • view
And then there are the people right now who know how Schmitt's theories turned out and still say yes please I'd like some of that.
aug 28, 2025, 10:59 pm • 4 0 • view
aug 28, 2025, 11:00 pm • 1 0 • view
Right. He didn't have the racialism and eugenics and social Darwinism etc., but those aren't the hot molten core of it, which is why they don't show up much in Schmitt, either. He very pointedly pretended to not even care who in particular ended up on which side of the friend/enemy distinction.
aug 28, 2025, 10:43 pm • 4 0 • view
Yeah. Rousseau is pretty explicit that his system only works in a small and homogeneous community!
aug 28, 2025, 10:47 pm • 5 0 • view
The ever-popular spherical cow of political philosophy.
aug 28, 2025, 10:49 pm • 5 0 • view
Turns out if you wish away the central problem of political life, politics gets easier! (In your mind, anyway)
aug 28, 2025, 10:54 pm • 4 0 • view
Rosseau did also have an unnerving faith that, if only we could clear out the cobwebs of "reasons people disagree with me," which to him were all because of superstition, covetousness, and pride, that perhaps the uniform community was not so distant after all.
aug 28, 2025, 11:01 pm • 4 0 • view
The new Soviet man, so to speak.
aug 28, 2025, 11:02 pm • 3 0 • view
To be fair, he was ultimately a big influence on all three of democracy, fascism, and communism. Which is... I mean, that's a legacy I guess.
aug 28, 2025, 11:03 pm • 2 0 • view
If only we didn't have to do complex things
aug 28, 2025, 10:51 pm • 3 0 • view
Great example of a high brow Bluesky conversation. Can't wait for MAGA folks to add to it given their history of intellectual acumen.
aug 28, 2025, 11:23 pm • 4 0 • view
after all congress could abolish the fed or make it non-independent at will.
aug 28, 2025, 11:07 pm • 1 0 • view
Josh Chafetz lays this out really well, in this podcast among other places. I know you both are conlaw and election experts but in case others want to listen fyi! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...
aug 28, 2025, 10:13 pm • 1 0 • view
📌
aug 28, 2025, 10:40 pm • 1 0 • view