Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto II: Criticism of Morality
§274 Whose will to power is morality? The common factor of all European history since the time of Socrates is the attempt to make moral values dominate all other values — in order that they should not be only the leader and judge of life, but also of: (1) knowledge, (2) Art, (3) political and social aspirations. “Improvement” the only duty, everything else used as a means to it (or as a force disturbing, hindering and endangering its realisation and therefore to be opposed and annihilated –). A similar movement in China and India.
What is the meaning of this will to power on the part of moral values which has developed so prodigiously?
Answer: Three powers lie concealed behind it: (1) The instinct of the herd opposed to the strong and the independent; (2) the instinct of all sufferers and all abortions opposed to the happy and well-constituted; (3) the instinct of the mediocre as opposed to the exceptions. Enormous advantage of this movement, despite the cruelty, falseness and narrow-mindedness which has helped it along (for the history of the struggle of morality with the fundamental instincts of life is in itself the greatest piece of immorality that has ever yet been witnessed on earth –).
Hillary Clinton doubtless thinks it would be extremely cool to be the first female President of the United States, and I suppose I do, too.
But: Is there any other good reason for her to run? I’ll be damned if I can think of one.
She has become a vastly more likeable person in her last 25-years of public life, and isn’t nearly so irritating today as she was at the beginning of her husband’s first term. And, by all accounts, she is very smart and hard-working. I think, too, that her heart is in the right place, that she has a sound grip on the devastation of the middle class which has occurred since the 1% reclaimed their Gilded Age ownership of the country.
So why can’t I feel any enthusiasm? I think it’s because she is an inferior administrator — Benghazi, the e-mail thing, for two examples — and her trimming over the years tells me she is just another ambitious but unimaginative hack; nor has she the charisma that effective leadership requires in a media-obsessed age. Given the flat-out insane pack of wannabes amongst the Republicans, however, I can picture myself voting for her — but without enthusiasm, and mostly to deny the Republicans the opportunity to do more damage than they already have over the past decade.
When Wall Street drove the American economy over the cliff in 2008, it should have been evident to anybody with two eyeballs and a functioning brain that stiff economic reforms were needed. But Wall Street spent hundreds of millions to overcome that, and mostly prevailed.
One of the very few people in Congress who had the character to fight them was Elizabeth Warren, and that’s who I would like to see in the Oval Office.
Elizabeth Ann Warren (née Herring; born June 22, 1949) is an American academic and politician who is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. She was previously a Harvard Law School professor specializing in bankruptcy law. Warren is a prominent legal scholar, and is among the most cited in her field. She is an active consumer protection advocate whose scholarship led to the conception and establishment of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren has written a number of academic and popular works, and is a frequent subject of media interviews regarding the American economy and personal finance.
Following the 2008 financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Barack Obama.
Here is her speech at Netroots Nation, 2014; if you’ve never seen it, watch it now.
There are multiple draft movements afoot, and state committees, and she has invariably responded to those efforts by saying she is not running for the presidency. Let’s hope she changes her mind.
I’ve just added one of those reader polls to the right sidebar, and it will stay up till election day; it’s right at the top, you can’t miss it.
So far, there are three announced Republican candidates for the Presidency of the United States: Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. There is one announced Democrat, Hillary Clinton, and one reluctant target of a draft movement, Elizabeth Warren. I’ll update the list as time goes by, presumably with Rick Santorum, Ben Carson, and who knows who else?
Chuck Lawless, Dean of the Graduate School at Southeastern Seminary, has observed that some evangelicals just don’t evangelize the way they ought, and has put together some helpful advice for restoring the fervor.
Here is my favorite:
At least once a week, take a couple of hours to see your community with God’s eyes. Drive around, praying as you go. If you see worship sites for other world faiths, grieve for those who worship false gods. Pray for the children and teens who attend schools you pass. Go to a local shopping center; sit and watch the shoppers. See them as sheep without a shepherd. Pray for them, knowing you may be the only person praying for those folks that day.
How do you designate that time in your organizer? “Drive around grieving and weeping”?
Deliberately or not, Lawless has put his finger on the psychological trick exploited by prayer and self-improvement books from Think and Grow Rich to The Secret: Obsess, and mobilize the subconscious to change behavior.
Hillary Clinton doubtless thinks it would be extremely cool to be the first female President of the United States, and I suppose I do, too.