![]() ![]() The founders assumed that the “two Cardinal objects of Government” were the protection of both the rights of persons and the rights of property. Instead, each was a necessary condition of the other. You might even be a woman!įourth, liberty and equality were not the terms of an either/or choice. Hereafter (18th century on) the site of self-discovery and determination was not necessarily political action as per classical republican theory (from Aristotle to Machiavelli), so you didn’t have to be a citizen to achieve individuality. Third, the idea that individuals were the basic unit of political deliberation and decision, but also of social order-not groups determined by their social or national origin, nor their economic function, but individuals who could acknowledge yet would depart from such origins and functions. ![]() Second, a commitment to the supremacy of society over the agencies of the state, or, put another way, to the sovereignty of the people “out of doors,” in civil society, people equipped with rights the state could neither confer nor abrogate. The American Revolution repudiated this capacity of the British state, and, in doing so, it opened up the modern space between state and family we call civil society. Until the 18 th century, monarchs, princes, and/or parliaments could seize property at will, or impose taxes without justification except the need to fund the state and its agents, including the corporations that served its imperial purposes. In 1930 by contrast, the US was already a 150-year-old republic, founded on and rooted in four liberal principles.įirst, a hard-won distinction between society and the state (public/private or power/freedom) had been established by the abolition of monarchy and the assertion of natural rights, among them the rights of property and the rights of persons. 1870-1930 through monarchy, militarism, and statist command of markets. The modern German nation-state, the Weimar interregnum included, was forged ca. I think the fundamental difference between German and US culture at that precarious moment, halfway through the Great Depression, was the weakness of the liberal tradition in Germany, or, what is the same thing, its remarkable resilience in the US. confidence, and complacence in equal measure. Hope you and your family are doing well in these strange, dangerous times.įascinating quotes there, fear. I responded as follows, edited and expanded for clarity: … “ that within the German nation still the forces are active that would turn against a barbarian anti-Jewish policy.” The Jewish German newspaper Jüdische Rundschau wrote this on 31 January 1933. In a declaration of 30 January, the steering committee of the central Jewish German organization ( Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens) wrote that “as a matter of course” the Jewish community faces the new government “with the largest mistrust”, but at the same they were convinced that “nobody would dare to touch constitutional rights”. Theodor Wolff in Frankfurter Zeitung, Jan 1933Įven within the Jewish German community, in spite of Hitler not hiding his ardent antisemitism, the worries appear to have been limited. The diversity of the German people calls for democracy.” it would be impossible to establish a dictatorship in Germany because there was “a barrier, over which violence cannot proceed” and because of the German nation being proud of “the freedom of speech and thought, it is a hopeless misjudgement to think that one could force a dictatorial regime upon the German nation. He appended these citations from German sources of January 1933: “Can you ask Jim if he thinks that we are in the 1930-1933 Weimar and rise of the NASD phase of our history?” ![]() ![]() In the wake of Trump’s incitement to insurrection, a friend forwarded this query from her lawyer: ![]()
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