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Hello, and welcome to this web site of reflections on current events. When I started this site in 2005, the corporate coup d’etat of our state institutions was well underway. It is now virtually complete: the economy, government, education, and the two main political parties in particular are now completely beholden to Wall Street interests and the private profits of the people in these various offices. There is no revolt against them because liberals burned to the ground their once-cherished principles of equality, reason, and truth and thus left themselves no foundation on which to build an edifice from which to push back against corporate rule. Liberals have reduced themselves to the bankrupt ideas of identity politics, wokeness, and cancel culture, none of which offers help or hope to us.
The articles, book chapters, articles, and essays on this web site not only chronicle the downward slide from democracy to authoritarianism and into the dangerous territory of totalitarian rule, but many reflections here also offer the first blush of solutions to these issues. These are just some ideas for the beginnings of a resuscitation of a progressive movement. Being a philosopher, I am of course going to highlight the absolute necessity of a return to some semblance of objective truth, to reason, logical thought, and ethical principles to rebuild any form of a progressivism for tomorrow. Without such important pillars, we will only continue to see the corporate mouthpieces of so-called progressive politicians who offer nothing but platitudes and virtue signaling while selling the people out at every turn by voting consistently against the interest of their constituents.
I hope you find these commentaries and books helpful to your own thinking and a good focal point for organizing ideas and people in the future. For it is organizing that we must do—and now—if we are to survive the new authoritarian state.
Robert P. Abele
Books Published
Going to War: Ethics, Law, and History
(forthcoming 2023)
This book examines the ethical principles and history of how key thinkers in each age have challenged the use of war by political leaders, and what visions we might agree to and engage in to craft a future that leaves war as a distant last resort to settling political disputes. It shows how the ethical principles of limiting war have been consistent through the centuries, and how such agreement has led to the formation of international laws and treaties to instantiate those principles, both for domestic and foreign purposes. Without such limitations, the future is bleak for humanity: as weapons of mass destruction grow in both their power and their proliferation, as mercenaries rush to profit from war machines, as war is carried out clandestinely by State agencies that are not legally permitted to do it, and as war becomes technological (cyberwar), a concerted and knowledgeable push against this becomes an absolute necessity to assure the future of humanity.
This book argues that the primary function of human thinking in language is to make judgments, which are logical-normative connections of concepts. Robert Abele points out that this presupposes cognitive conditions that cannot be accounted for by empirical-linguistic analyses of language content or social conditions alone. Judgments rather assume both reason and a unified subject, and this requires recognition of a Kantian-type of transcendental dimension to them. Judgments are related to perception in that both are syntheses, defined as the unity of representations according to a rule/form. Perceptual syntheses are simultaneously pre-linguistic and proto-rational, and the understanding (Kant’s Verstand) makes these syntheses conceptually and thus self-consciously explicit. Abele concludes with a transcendental critique of postmodernism and what its deflationary view of ontological categories―such as the unified and reasoning subject―has done to political thinking. He presents an alternative that calls for a return to normativity and a recognition of reason, objectivity, and the universality of principles.
FLASHPOINT IN UKRAINE: How the US Drive for Hegemony
Risks World War III: Preview a chapter on Ukraine here.
In the chapter written for this book, Dr. Abele argues that any U.S. meddling in Ukraine is a violation of both the norms of justice and of international law. While Russia and other parties were also at fault, legally speaking, for the Ukrainian civil war, the focus is on U.S. actions, since the rest of the book is written from that viewpoint.
Encyclopedia of Global Justice: Read an expert from this book here.
Dr. Abele wrote 11 chapters in this book. Among them are essays entitled: “Noam Chomsky;” “Propaganda;” “Oil; “Language and Justice;” “The Hague Convention;” “The Geneva Conventions;” “State Terrorism;” “Torture;” “Global Justice and the Invasion of Iraq;” “Conspiracy Theory;” and “Capital Punishment.”
The Anatomy of a Deception: Preview chapter 5 of this book online here.
This book is a reconstruction of the public dialogue that ended with the United States invading and occupying the sovereign nation of Iraq. The focus is on thinking critically about going to war by examining what the public debate was concerning the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is argued here that the public case made for invading Iraq showed itself at that time to be a manipulation of evidence for a predetermined conclusion.
Democracy Gone: A Chronicle of the Last Chapters of the Great American Democratic Experiment: Preview the table of contents and preface of this book online here.
Has the American democratic experiment run out of steam? Have we replaced our democracy, through our inattention to it, with politicians lustful for power, with a form of centralized authority so out of touch with the needs of the common people that it is hardly accurately described as a true democracy anymore? It is the thesis of this book that our democracy has largely evaporated, and has left behind only an exoskeleton that once was its original vertebrate of ends and principles. The theme and call of this book is that it is critical to democracy in the United States that citizens once again become active participants in the issues of the day. Nothing less than the reclamation of our democracy is at stake.
A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act and Beyond: Preview chapter 4 of this book online here.
A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act and Beyond examines the controversial USA PATRIOT Act, passed by Congress six weeks after the horrific events of September 11, 2001. This new set of American laws allows the federal government broad powers to conduct surveillance on American citizens, in some cases without warrant and without judicial oversight. The book summarizes other programs put into operation to severely curtail the civil liberties of Americans, and other such programs and legislation that attack privacy, probably cause, due process, and free speech.
Read More of Dr. Abele’s Articles Here
- How Video and Online Reading Is Undermining Cognition. Protecting and Sustaining Classroom Teaching >>
- We Hold These Truths: An Updated Manifesto for the Sick, the Tired, the Poor, and the Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free >>
