42. LOE[PART 6]: MAZZINI, MENCKEN, AND DEMOCRACY: THE GOD THAT FAILED

Please remember to donate @ PayPal.Me/cultureanarchy to help out our show! 42. Liberty or Equality? [Part 6] MAZZINI, MENCKEN, AND DEMOCRACY: THE GOD THAT FAILED In this week's episode, we moved past Fichte and the origins of Romantic Nationalism in postwar Prussia, and move towards the new frontier of revolutionary sentiment in Italy. In the wake of the Napoleonic codes, the ending of the wars, and the retrenchment of counterrevolutionary conservatism [the divine right of kings] in Russia, Prussia, and Austria, one Italian revolutionary worked tirelessly to spread the sentiment of Christian Democracy. He did so while his country (like Fichte's Germany) was under occupation (by Austria). Nationalism is almost the inevitable consequence of occupation. Whereas kings were trying to regain power and prestige after the secular challenge of the zealous French Revolutionaries, Giuseppe Mazzini tried to transform "the divine right of kings" into the "divine right of the peoples" as the apotheosis of Democratic Man. But just like the divine right of the old regime, the divine right of the majorities in Christian Europe to tyrannize over the minority was just as shaky an idea. If absolute individual rights were to play no part in democratic society (and Mazzini did not believe in absolute individual rights), then what was to protect the enlightened children of God from the predations of their neighbors once the old world's kings and nobles were no longer a concern? Featuring music by Pietro Locatelli (https://musopen.org/music/2445/pietro-locatelli/cello-sonata-in-d-from-12-sonatas-op-6/), courtesy of musopen.org. Be sure to pick up your copy of my new book, The God Function: Deus Ex Grammatica (http://www.lulu.com/shop/morgan-a-brown/the-god-function-deus-ex-grammatica/paperback/product-23361685.html). 30% discount @ lulu.com! Also, featuring tracks by the Passion Hifi (https://soundcloud.com/freehiphopbeatsforyou): Cold Heat, I Close My Eyes, and Untouchable. Audio from A King in New York, a Charlie Chaplin film, provided with the expressed permission of Roy Export S.A.S. (www.charliechaplin.com), who holds the copyright thereto. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/culture-anarchy/support