This kind of gets to why I have a problem with the big ideas of the Continental tradition: big ideas fail. The kind of broad-brush analysis and overarching thematic work that Hegel did, and many after him have taken up, just seems woefully inadequate to a multifarious, messy world we live in, and perhaps more importantly, to the relatively small cognitive creatures that we are.

I've found myself thinking about Hegel in this regard more in recent years, in part because of Fukuyama's debt to him, and the rigidity of ideology driving American policy now.  The thing about Hegel, when I got through enough books to see how much it was all the same three-step, is that it just seemed impossible to me to construe his vision of the world in any other way than as an overlay on the world we live in, an organizing principle not in the sense that a law of nature is an organizing principle so much as the way in which I organize my laundry when I'm putting it away is an organizing principle.  To put it less charitably, perhaps, his big idea seemed to be not at all responsive to facts about the world, except in the sense of providing an imposing vision that facts should be made to fit into (which has great explanatory power, in the sense that it makes things seem to make sense, but not nec. in any other senses).  Marxism had the same defect.  And Bush policies, you could say, suffer from the same defect.  Not to say that there is a common intellectual origin to these things, but then again, mightn't there be?  To the extent that German idealism was wildly influential, from the immediate heirs to Kant on through the 20th Century, and to the extent that Hegel was in many ways the most accessible and arguably influential of these immediate successors, and to the extent that FF and some of his co-neocons are in some ways heir to these traditions, well, maybe what's infected George is a bad case of Idealism, not so much of a Wilsonian as a German variant.

Do you not think that our understanding of human nature and our recognition of its concomitant rights is more advanced than Thucydides' or Pericles'?

If our moral sense has advanced, should we be timid in acclaiming that advance -- and only, because we might be accused of promoting a teleological view of history?

They (the right) have it in their mind that--at bottom--left-leaning people are wimps. Afraid to strike back when attacked and with a deep aversion to confrontation. They see our pluralism and tolerance as symptoms of this character defect. So they think to themselves thus: We will wipe the floor with them. We will lie cheat and steal and we will not even make a great effort to conceal it from the public (e.g. lie about Iraq, cheat Gore and Kerry out of elections, and steal votes and taxpayer money like there is no tomorrow). Simultaneously, they will call themselves Moral, Patriotic, Pious, Industrious, and Defenders of our Nations Security, while sliming us with the opposite (Immoral, Unpatriotic, Licentious, Lazy, and Supporters of the Terrorist). Believing that we are cowards, they surmise we will not respond to this attack with equal and superior rhetorical force--that we will ignore those accusations or at best come out weakly defensive about it. I don't need to give you examples of just such reactions from the left time and time again (Think Kerry and Swift Boat Veterans). So in a sense they have made us believe of ourselves what they impugn of ourselves. Very clever psychology here at play. The result is that the more or less swing voters take the right wingers to be right about us, and thus not to trust us with power. Remember the American people will not elect what they perceive to be a weak person to power, So with that tactic and a lot of corporate money, they robbed us of power from all branches of government. (let's not consider that they have also gotten the country in a tragic mess).

I don't believe that it is un-Democratic to counterattack as aggressive as they are. And there is plenty to attack. The technical problem that we have is that the media is not willing to give us a voice. So we divorce ourselves from the media (oh we still read this or that article here or there, but the main action is taking place in places like this).

In sum we have to shed the image of being weak in "battle situations". The "well-meaning but idealistic and impractical weak liberal " image is not going to get us back into power. If "Make Love not War" was the central point of the 60, this second wave will have to build on that and go beyond that.

I say "kick ass and take names"