
The Post-Hope Politics of ‘House of Cards’ - tjaerv
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/magazine/the-post-hope-politics-of-house-of-cards.html
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tjaerv
"'The West Wing' arrived in 1999 as a televised fantasy of what we wished our
government could be. 'House of Cards' arrived in 2013 as a nightmare of what
we fear our government has become. [...] The politicians in 'House of Cards'
[are] morally bankrupt and endlessly opportunistic. The show is no cri de
coeur, but a cold dissection of the post-Obama (or post-the-Obama-many-hoped-
they’d-elected), post-hope political landscape. It's a vision of American
government not as we wish it were, but as we secretly fear it is."

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dmk23
It is an excellent illustration of why the powers of government should be
limited.

Perhaps the most convincing argument for libertarian worldview to come out of
the pop-culture.

Who would want 'House of Cards' politicians to run their lives?

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thenmar
Yep, the world really is that simple - abolish government and things will get
better. It's a shame so many people don't realize how easy it is to fix all of
their problems.

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ihsw
Please stop being facetious, libertarianism != anarchism.

Libertarianism recognizes the value of governance, don't get confused, but it
asserts that certain individual rights as inalienable.

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rayiner
(Non-anarchic) Libertarianism goes beyond asserting that certain individual
rights are inalienable. It embraces the idea of limited government, which is
really quite an insidious and anti democratic concept when you think about it.
What classical libertarians believe is that government must exist for certain
limited functions, but that democratic forces shouldn't be able to expand the
scope of those functions. In other words, people should be bound by
government, but not be able to exercise self determination in shaping that
government, but rather must be bound by a government designed by philosopher
kings, who divine from sacred scripture which functions of government are
legitimate and not. The right to property? Makes the cut. Okay for the
government to hire jack boot thugs to enforce property rights. The right to
live free of discrimination and economic coercion? Doesn't make the cut. Not a
legitimate function of government.

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JoeAltmaier
I was with you up to the sensationalist examples. "Sacred scripture"? How
about "bound by a constitution created by the best minds of the day".

And how do you suppose rights are to be enforced if not the constituted
government? By saying please? Or everybody shooting it out? Hope you're a good
shot or your 'rights' go out the window.

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tptacek
Why exactly am I meant to be mollified by the fact that our Constitution was
the best thing that a bunch of rich, well-connected, slaveholding elites were
able to do with trendiest political philosophies of the 1600s?

And, how do you square an appeal to the framers of the Constitution for
limited government with the actual decisions of those framers over the first
30 years of the US Government?

In establishing a process that allows for the orderly application of the input
of the governed, of "clearing the channels" for democracy, the Constitution
has been an extraordinarily effective instrument. In establishing the
fundamental principles and values of that government --- something it barely
even tries to do --- it is much less effective. Searching the Constitution for
principles and values inevitably involves an element of tea leaf reading;
pretty quickly you're out of the text of the Constitution and into the
Federalist Papers, and now we're talking about a rule by three dead guys.

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thanatropism
Then again, this is based on Thatcher-era BBC's "The House of Cards".

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mseebach
_cough_ Macbeth _cough_

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girvo
I think that's why I enjoy House of Cards (both of them) so much. Macbeth is
easily, by far, my favourite Shakespeare play, no contest.

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jblock
Watching Veep right afterwards is a nice (and just as brilliant in other ways)
contrast.

