Any sort of messianism is a no-no

Paul Kahn’s mis-prognosis of America’s social imaginary « The Immanent Frame: In the twentieth century, this belief in the nation’s messianic mission has coupled itself with secular liberalism’s project of universalizing human rights, by force if necessary. The rhetoric leading up to and justifying the Second Gulf War is one recent example, but the admixture of the two logics of redemption, millennial eschatology and secular teleology, has elicited valid suspicions of expansionism (markets, client states, geo-political influence) and accusations of ethically disproportional (mass destructive) means whenever the U.S. has embarked on a mission to make part of the world “safe for democracy.”

Global Online Privacy