text:
Seeking Wisdom
Spirituality and Politics in an Era of Civilizational Crisis
About Seeking Wisdom
← Theology Has Escaped
The Shadow of Empire: Radical Orthodoxy and the Limits of Any Possible Christian Socialism →
Dark Liberation
Posted on 2021/04/21 by Anthony Mansueto
When interest in political theology began to emerge on the Christian Left and Center Left in the 1960s, those engaging the discipline were at pains to distinguish not just their specific theological positions but their entire set of questions and concerns from those which motivated the "Old Political Theology" of the NAZI jurist Carl Schmitt. This concern is reflected in the outstanding status questionis prepared by Francis Schussler Fiorenza in 1977 (Fiorenza 1977/2012), which makes it clear that the Schmittian problematic is simply one among many possible approaches, whether to a theology of the political or to what he and his associates call a "consciously political theology" as opposed to the unconsciously political theology which is created when theologians do not understand the social basis and political valence of their claims.
Specifically, Fiorenza identifies the following political-theological paradigms:
The tripartite distinction between mythical, philosophical, and civic or political theology associated with Varro (cited in Augustine 427/1972),
Augustine's doctrine of the Two Cities (augustine 427/1972),
An Enlightenment doctrine centered around natural theology and civic religion (Locke 1690/1967, Rousseau 1762/1962) ,
The political theology of the Catholic Restoration, within which he situates Schmitt, but which also includes the much earlier and somewhat different work of de Maistre and de Bonald (Bonald 1796, Maistre 1775-1821/1965,
The German political theology of the 1960s 1970s (Solle 1974) and
Latin American liberation theology (Solle 1974).
To these, even restricting ourselves to the limited historical and civilizational frame which Fiorenza analyzes, I would add, at a minimum:
Thomistic political theology, both in its original form, and in its Baroque and social Catholic/Christian Democratic incarnations (Goerner 1965, Gilson 1968), and
An entire spectrum of Protestant political theologies including, at least, early Lutheran and Reformed political theologies, the competing liberal and Evangelical political theologies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Neo-Orthodoxy, and an entire sub-spectrum of fundamentalist political theological, from Dispensationalism through Reconstruction and Dominion (Niebuhr 1951).
If we were to bring the typology up to date, we would need to add:
The Communio theology which developed in reaction to Latin American liberation theology (Ratzinger 1984, 1986) and
Radical Orthodoxy, which is distinctive in proposing the Church rather than the State as the architectonic political paradigm, (Milbank 1991).
All of this, furthermore, presupposes that we addressing only Christian political theologies. It does not consider the vast range of Islamic political theologies which have informed on the global political scene in recent years, or the various Jewish political theologies which have shaped Christian polities and which led, through the triumph of Zionism to the establishment of a Jewish State which has in turn become a significant point of political-theological interest to both Christianity and Islam. Nor does it consider the Indian, Chinese, Southeast and Northeast Asian, Indigenous American and African domains which make up far more than half of humanity.
And yet contemporary discourse around political theology in the broader academy has been dominated by precisely the Schmittian problematic, as indicated in the work of Agamben, Baidou, and Zizek, and to a lesser extent Foucault and Derrida, among others, in a way which makes Fiorenza's Eurocentric typology seem quite cosmopolitan in character. We will have the opportunity to return, in later chapters, to analysis of these various political theologies and the social interests they represent. It is the aim of this section to explain clearly just what Schmitt did that has been so been so captivating for the academy, as well as its links to the broader hermeneutic ontological and structuralist-poststructuralist lineages of which his followers form a part. We will also ask why it has been so captivating and show just how profoundly dangerous this problematic, in both its "Left" as well as its Right forms, has become.
To anyone who has followed the careful process by which the Right in the United States has cultivated a "bull-pen" of conservative and especially conservative Catholic intellectuals to help it map its road back to power since its defeat in 1932 and the failure of the "Business Plot" in 1933 to overthrow Roosevelt and install a fascist regime (Reimann 2017), figures such as Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger represent a familiar type. In the wake of Germany's defeat in the First World War and the democratic revolution of 1918, in which significant elements pressed for the transfer of power to workers councils on the Soviet model, and which even for the mainstream of the Social Democratic Party which opposed the Soviet model was part of a strategy for a peaceful transition to socialism, the ruling classes began plotting their restoration. Then as now the conservative Catholic small and petty bourgeoisie provided the intellectual shock troops for that restoration. Little did they know that they would also shape the direction of the Left a century later.
Writing in the 1920s, during the Weimar Republic, Schmitt advanced a pair of theses which have come to dominate political-theological discourse. First, he argued that all modern political concepts are simply secularizations of theological concepts (Schmitt 1922/2005). Second, he argued, against historic natural law theories and more recent concepts of popular sovereignty, that "the sovereign is he who decides the exception (Schmitt 1921/2014)."
The first of these claims is, despite the enthusiasm it has excited among secular intellectuals unaware of their own religious heritage, actually quite unremarkable. Nearly all the great thinkers of the Enlightenment saw themselves as working to realize in the secular arena the principles and values of the Christian (or the Jewish) tradition. Thus Locke grounds his doctrine of rights on the concept of property and his concept of property on the divine act of creation —and humanity's limited participation therein. Even as he undercut the historic arguments for the existence of God, Kant insisted that the moral principles of Christianity, at least as he understood them, were, in fact, obligatory on the basis of reason alone. And Hegel argues that
The divine spirit must interpenetrate the entire secular life: whereby wisdom is concrete within it, and carries the terms of its own justification. But that concrete indwelling is only … ethical organization. Hegel, G.W.F. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Hegel, G.W.F. 1830/1971 3: 552).
Indeed, Marx himself —Schmitt's ultimate adversary— says essentially the same thing in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction (Marx 1843/2009). Philosophy grasps the rational kernel in religion, and politics —in the form of the proletariat— realizes philosophy.
The criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.
The head of this emancipation is philosophy, its heart the proletariat. Philosophy cannot realize itself without the transcendence [Aufhebung] of the proletariat, and the proletariat cannot transcend itself without the realization [Verwirklichung] of philosophy. (Marx 1843/2009)
It is only the fantastic and untenable character of the claims made by both of the principal secular projects of recent centuries —technocratic or humanistic— to effectively deify humanity, whether through scientific, technological and economic progress or by creating a political subject which makes humanity the master of its own destiny, which has led those championing those projects to keep the theological, or rather theotic, character of their aims largely hidden —another issue to which we will return later.
Schmitt's second claim is more serious. In its original context it lays out the juridical groundwork for Hitler's suspension of the Weimar Constitution in 1933 in the Enabling Act or Reichstag Fire Act and thus for the whole NAZI regime. Here Schmitt is arguing that modern constitutionalism is a secularization not so much of Christian as of Roman ideas, though the specific points he cites are, for example, reaffirmed in Catholic theology (Aquainas. Summa Theologiae. I-II:95:4). Specifically, in the Roman tradition, laws were enacted senatus popolusque, "by the people and the elders together." Potestas or power belonged ultimately to the people, without whose consent no law could be effective, even if in practice this popular consent was given as the result of significant economic and rhetorical manipulation. But the validity of the law rested on the auctoritas or authority of the Senate, which determined whether or not it was in accord with higher principles which, in the Roman context, were rather ill defined, but which in a Catholic context would later become identified with natural law and in a liberal context with natural rights or established constitutional principles. In this sense the juridical role of the Senate was more like that of our Supreme Court than that of most contemporary "upper houses" of parliament.
Roman law had a provision, though, which allowed the Senate to temporarily suspend the rule of law in the case of a public emergency, and to appoint one or more "dictators" who were free to act as they saw fit in order to protect the Roman state. In the profoundly aristocratic (and thus anti-monarchic) political culture of Republican Rome, it was taken for granted that no one would abuse this power and risk the loss of respect on honor from his peers which, assuming command over sufficient land and labor to guarantee the ability to devote one's life to philosophically informed civic engagement was understood as the chief social good. But of course it was precisely this provision which through a complex series of events allowed the "dictatorship" to become permanent in the form of continuing military imperium which was, officially at least, created in order to protect the institutions of the Republic, and which eventually assimilated not just the popular potestas but also the senatorial auctoritas to itself.
It is Schmitt's explicit endorsement of this final move which constitutes his embrace of the NAZI Fuhrerprinzip, the embodiment in the Fuhrer of the senatorial auctoritas which Roman dictators never had under the Republic and which they gained only gradually and de facto under the empire.
This is, we should note, part and parcel of the same broader project as Heidegger's hermeneutic ontology, especially in his later thought after the "turn." Heidegger's early critique of metaphysics, set forth in Problems of Phenomenology (Heidegger 1927) and Being and Time (1928) focuses on the failure of thinkers, beginning with Plato, to grasp the distinction between Being and beings, and instead attempts to theorize Being as the beingness of beings –i.e. it thinks Being in entitative terms. Where the pre-Socratics, according to Heidegger, were able to think the self-manifestation of Being, something he associates with the term physis or nature, Plato and Aristotle increasingly use the language of morphe (form) and energeia (actuality). Form, and especially the Good or the "form of forms" is, for Plato, what really is and that in terms of which this world of appearance must be explained and judged. Aristotle goes even further down this road, arguing that it is form which actualizes matter, bringing things into being. Rather than simply allowing Being to manifest itself, to present itself as a question, it is reduced to something other than Being, something which can be comprehended –and once comprehended, used to ground our own process of making, our own process of bringing into being. Indeed, as Heidegger points out, the very notion of morphe derives from the language of the craftsman: it is the look or appearance given to something by its producer. Energeia, similarly, is rendered in German as Wirklicheit, from the root for work. Metaphysics thus grounds technology, and the larger technological mode of relating to the world.
Later (Heidegger 1941) Heidegger modified both his historical analysis and his philosophical position. Increasingly identifying ancient Greek and German romantic thought, he claimed to hear in Plato and Aristotle echoes of the earlier Greek aletheia or unconcealment of Being and located the crystallization of metaphysics in the "translation" of Greek thought into Latin, the language of road builders and empire makers, a crystallization which is completed in the Middle Ages when Being is identified with the supreme maker, the Christian Creator God. This process culminates, of course, in Thomas, who is the supreme philosopher of the "ontotheologic," the universal causal-explanatory system in which Being is simply an instrument for explaining and ultimately manipulating entities. Modern metaphysical theories, such as those of Descartes and Hegel –or for that matter Marx– differ only in giving human rather than divine subjectivity or labor pride of place. Nietzsche's claim that the world is just the "will to power" is simply the culmination of this long metaphysical tradition, and offers just one more formulation of the first principle.
Being, for the later Heidegger, manifests itself in a people only through the voice of the few who help it to discover its "god," a sort of mythos under which Being is revealed.
… the essence of the people is its "voice." This voice does not, however, speak in a so-called immediate flood of the common, natural, undistorted and uneducated "person." The voice speaks seldom and only in the few, if it can be brought to sound … (Heidegger >1934/1989: 319)
A Volk is only a Volk if it receives its history through the discovery of its god, through the god, which through history compels it in a direction and so places it back in being. Only then does it avoid the danger of turning only on its own axis … (Heidegger >1934/1989: 398-399).
The result of Heidegger's move is, we should note, in no sense a global abandonment of metaphysics, but rather a change in its aim. Where historic metaphysics terminates in the concept of Being as Such or its transcendental equivalents —the Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the One— in order to explain the universe and order human action, Heidegger argues instead for interpreting Being in its concrete historical unconcealments. Now this might seem entirely harmless or even attractive. After all, when we encounter another human being, we like to imagine that we do not begin by trying to explain them or use them to explain anything else, but rather attempt to understand them intersubjectively —something which requires interpretation. Beginning with explanation seems like an objectification and even an instrumentalization. But this is not really how we proceed. We first make a strategic and tactical estimate of who a person is —of their interests and networks and capacities— and what they intend, something which entails causal analysis and explanation. Thus, if the someone knocks on our door in the middle of the night (or at mid-day, for that matter) we do not simply welcome them in and begin a deep conversation, aiming at intersubjective understanding. We first need to know who they are and why they are there. After all, some people who knock on doors in the middle of the night arrest those they find and send them to death camps … Indeed, even if the individual approaching us is a colleague at the office rather than a stranger in the middle of the night, we want to make an estimate of their intentions before we decide how much to share.
But there is more. Let us say that the individual in question is planning to round up your people, gas them, then burn them in ovens. If you are going to resist you need not only to understand this person intersubjectively; you need to know why they are doing what they are doing so you can develop an effective strategy for resistance. And you need to ground a principle of value in terms of which the genocide can be authoritatively condemned. To put it in terms of Roman Law, both potestas and auctoritas depend on metaphysics as science or explanation: on demonstrating the ordering of the universe and everything in it to Being and to the Good. Rejecting metaphysics as science or explanation leaves us with no alternative but to accept the auctoritas of Being's latest unconcealment, even if that unconcealment takes the form of Hitler, and seek guidance for our actions only through an interpretation of that unconcealment. Heidegger's "gods" or "voices" of the people are the metaphysical equivalent of Schmitt's Sovereign, which decides on the exception and which possess in themselves (and not as interpreters of Being) the auctoritas to define the principles which will govern the social order.
We will, in a later chapter, see that a similar problem afflicts "modern science" —or at least its architectonic discipline, mathematical physics— which has been largely left behind explanation in favor of formal description —and the physical interpretation of mathematical formalisms.
It should be apparent by now just why Schmitt was so pivotal in the NAZI road to power. Like Heidegger he was able to interpret the rise of Hitler in terms which were attractive to a large conservative Catholic and Romantic constituency which had no doubt envisioned a "restoration" that looked very different from the one they got.
But why has Schmitt so captivated the Left, especially in the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union?
In order to answer this question we need to know that Schmitt's 1921 essay On Dictatorship — and to a significant extent his entire body of work— was, in fact a response to an earlier essay —The Critique of Violence— by Walter Benjamin, which addressed a critical gap in revolutionary political theory. The problem is this. Historically socialism understands itself as building on and completing the liberal and democratic projects, not as simply negating them. And central to these projects is the establishment of rule of law. This includes a legal framework which protects the rationally autonomous individual and which specifies a format of representation by which the "people" can elect the government of the day and make and change laws. But the laws which protect the rationally autonomous individual also protect the property owner, and indeed generally define rights in proprietorial terms. And both the formats of representation which specify democracy and the objective conditions under which political struggle takes place reflect a balance of power in which the exploiting classes —the aristocracy and especially the bourgeoisie— retain a significant advantage. How, under these circumstances, do we carry out an authentically revolutionary transformation which expropriates the bourgeoisie and brings the proletariat —the vast majority of "the people"— to power, and which sets in motion the decommodification of labor power necessary to realize the ideal of self-determination which motivated not just the socialist but also the liberal and democratic projects to begin with?
Liberal theorists generally resolve this question by appeal to some sort of natural rights theory —to the laws of nature and nature's God—- or else to some other strategy (such as Kant's categorical imperative) for grounding moral principles prior to any social contract. But of course the principles to which they appeal are precisely those which ground the private property rights which in turn make Capital possible. So a breach with positive law is permissible —but only when Capital is threatened. Democratic theorists such as Rousseau thus went further and grounded rights themselves in a social contract which is itself the product of democratic —or even revolutionary— processes. This puts on the table, as it were, the possibility that the political order is itself ultimately the product of violence even if it aims to contain such violence in the future. And this was precisely the opportunity which was seized by the Catholic "traditionalists" de Maistre and de Bonald who argue that it is indeed violence which is the foundation of any possible social order, and that the one legitimate form of such violence is the divine violence of the sacrifice on the cross. We can already see that this road leads us to Schmitt.
We have argued elsewhere (and will argue even more forcefully in this work) that the only consistent way to ground revolutionary transformations, especially when they require action outside of positive law, is on the basis of a robust if radically historicized natural law theory (Mansueto 2014), which is what we believe Marx actually outlined in the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction and the Communist Manifesto, but which he left radically underdeveloped. And this in turn requires a metaphysics of Esse. Now most social democrats and the communist right (the tradition of that includes Bukharin and Bogdanov, Gramsci and Silone) have taken such an approach in practice, gaging cautiously what degree of change is appropriate based on a careful reading of the social conditions. Thus the debates on the Left regarding whether or not the "objective conditions" existed for a socialist transition, or for some other more partial step in that direction. But others have followed the example of Rousseau and the French Revolution and grounded the legitimacy of the revolution and the revolutionary regime which emerges from it in revolutionary violence as such, a violence which Rousseau's sociologically more acute critics on the traditionalist Right correctly identified as literally or symbolically divine in character, in that it does not simply represent but actually defines justice. And this is precisely what Benjamin does in The Critique of Violence. Specifically, Benjamin identifies what he calls a divine violence, which aims at the constitution of justice outside of any possible positive law. It is this and this alone which can be the mediating term between one legal regime and another. There is thus a deeply rooted connection between the revolutionary left and the traditionalist right, one that goes back behind Benjamin and Schmitt to Rousseau and the traditionalists. While Benjamin —and later Derrida— argue for a "violence" which transcends the Law in the name of Justice, Schmitt argues for a violence which suspends the Law in the name of Justice. Neither can tell us what Justice is and neither believes it can be grounded.
Now neither Benjamin nor Derrida actually engaged in or directly advocated revolutionary violence, and while Benjamin might have had he connected with the Resistance rather than committing suicide, it should be clear that the poststructuralism is by no means actually a revolutionary ideology. Derrida's advocacy of "divine violence" means something else. In order to understand what it means, we must identify the precise social basis and political valence of poststructuralism generally and of the poststructuralist fascination with Schmittian political theology. And this, in turn, requires that we analyze the class composition the historic socialist and communist movements to which poststructuralism is largely a response.
While there can be little doubt that the industrial proletariat did, in fact, provide much of the mass base of both the social democratic and communist wings of the movement, and while it has always been peasant movements which have brought communist parties to power, the leadership of the socialist and communist movements has historically been drawn from what Marx and Engels called "the bourgeois ideologists."
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole (Marx and Engels 1848/2000).
This is the same group that Marx earlier identified as Philosophy, which he called the "head of the revolution (Marx 1843/2009)". It is also Hegel's "universal class" of liberally educated civil servants. It is what we are calling the "humanistic intelligentsia," (those trained in and attempting to live from —or at least devote their lives to the practice of the liberal arts and in particular the humanities and the humanistic social sciences). And while in the nineteenth century—and to a lesser extent even today— elements of the humanistic intelligentsia were and are derived from the bourgeoisie as such, this group (which is a social category and not a class), is predominantly petty bourgeois both in their origins and in their class position and, as capitalism develops, is subjected to increasing proletarianization. By this we mean that, on the one hand, unlike the proletariat as such members of the humanistic intelligentsia enjoy significant creative control over their work, but like the proletariat they see this control gradually slipping away, by way of attacks on academic freedom and faculty governance in universities, the decline journalism as a liberal profession, etc.
Since this is the group which actually does social theory and philosophy, we do well to take into account its specific interests as we analyze its theoretical products and assess them as political strategies. And by the early twentieth century the humanistic intelligentsia had three well defined political options on the table. The first was what we might call "professionalism," i.e. a privileged, semi-autonomous role based on the exercise of one's specific discipline within the context of bourgeois society, on the condition that it remain "value neutral," i.e. that it provide advice regarding the means to ends which are determined by others: nominally "the people," acting through democratic structures, but in practice the bourgeoisie. This is the option represented by Weber in Science as a Vocation (Weber 1919/1968) and is what today we often call a technocratic orientation. This option generally involves an alliance with the liberal and advanced, technocratic bourgeoisie and, in practice, with the more fully proletarianized elements in the population by way of social liberal and social democratic parties. The second option was communism —a bid for all-sided global leadership based on an alliance with the proletariat and other exploited classes, aimed at ending for everyone the commodification of labor which was the principal form of capitalist oppression experienced by the humanistic intelligentsia. In the context of this option, the humanistic intelligentsia trades some of its autonomy (actually a lot) for a global leadership role in the context of a Leninist vanguard or Gramscian counter-hegemonic party —again in alliance with the proletariat as such, the peasantry if there is one, and often in popular fronts with the liberal bourgeoisie. The third option was Romantic Reaction —an alliance first with absolutist monarchic and aristocratic and later with imperialist and colonizing bourgeois elements who, the intellectuals in question imagined, promised a return to a less instrumentalizing, preindustrial, precapitalist past. This is, of course, the option of the traditionalists de Maistre and de Bonald, of Nietzsche, and ultimately of Heidegger and Schmitt who, however, introduce a new element to the strategy. (Lukacs 1953/1980).
As King and Szelenyi (King and Szeleny 2004) have suggested, an integral part of professionalism as a class strategy is artificially maintaining the scarcity of professionals. This is something physicians, for example, have done very well, attorneys reasonably well, and academics very poorly. We are, after all, in the business of training our own competition. Pierre Bourdieu makes a compelling case (Bourdieu 1988/1991) that Heidegger's famous obscurantism, something which has since been mimicked by scholars throughout the humanities, was designed to confer on the philosopher an oracular mana which set him apart from ordinary humanity and, in effect, made doing philosophy inaccessible to the vast majority of people.
By the 1920s and 1930s the contradictions of historic socialism were becoming apparent. State ownership of the means of production turned out to be a means not to the decommodification of labor power but to the full proletarianization of the entire society. And Stalin began systematically liquidating precisely those elements with the humanistic intelligentsia who actually insisted on exercising the critical rationality which had drawn them to the socialist project in the first place. But this was also the period, of course, during which fascism was ascendant, as a cluster of political formations around the world drew on the alienation and authoritarianism generated by the commodification of labor power to legitimate the destruction of not just the socialist but also the liberal and democratic projects, and to militarize their societies in pursuit of the colonial empires which Capital needed in order to survive. Intellectuals like Heidegger seemed to imagine that they could leverage their philosophical obscurantism into a privileged position within, or even hegemony over, the fascist regime.
The Frankfurt School, with which Benjamin became associated played a critical role in this situation. On the one hand, the Frankfurt School represented "petty bourgeois socialism" par excellence. Drawn from the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, many of its members had studied Weber and studied with Heidegger and they were profoundly sensitive to the fact that the critique of capitalist instrumentalization could easily be turned on actually existing socialism. And their organic connection to the proletariat was very limited at best. Nevertheless, despite some ideological problems —such as Benjamin's fascination with divine violence and Adorno's radical pessimism—they maintained their commitment to the socialist project. And Fromm's (Fromm 1941) analysis of the links between the alienation engendered by the commodification of labor power and the authoritarian personality structure on which fascism depended are critical to understanding not only historic fascism but what has followed.
After the defeat of fascism, the liberal bourgeoisie —increasingly, it seems likely, under pressure from occult networks on the far right— broke the popular front and imposed on the humanistic intelligentsia a return to professional "value neutrality" which increasingly included an implicit or explicit "anticommunism" clause. Many of those who submitted —especially those who came from places of privilege themselves— found positions of honor and responsibility in the social liberal order; those who did not were marginalized. Meanwhile, however, the rapid expansion of higher education created a new "mass intelligentsia," which could not really be accommodated within even the also expanding ranks of the professional middle class, at least not at the levels of that class which provided the professional autonomy which the student generation of the 1960s saw being exercised by "the best and the brightest," who were actually a small, privileged stratum. This was the social basis for the student movement of the 1960s (which actually extended well into the 1970s, and which had a significant "afterlife" in the 1980s). And it is not surprising that the Frankfurt School, with its focus on resistance to the alienating impact of the commodification of labor power and its distance from the rest of the working classes, was an inspiration to this movement.
But just as the mass student movement was edging towards socialism, it became apparent that historic socialism was irredeemable. Krushchev's reforms beginning 1956 represented a break with the worst of Stalinist repression, but if anything seemed to move the Soviet bloc further away from the communist ideal of the decommodification of labor power. The Maoist alternative catalyzed the excitement of many in the 1960s and 1970s, among other things precisely because it targeted the persistence of commodity production under socialism, and led to the formation of an entire Maoist "new communist movement." But it soon became apparent that Maoism was, if anything, vastly more repressive, especially for the intelligentsia than Stalinism. Stalin murdered those he saw as a political threat. The Cultural Revolution targeted the entire intelligentsia, regardless of its political orientation or practical activity, even at the cost of nearly destroying Chinese Civilization. And while some of the later Third World national liberation movements, especially in Latin America, engaged a range of new constituencies, embracing, for example, a significant movement of radicalized Catholic clergy and laity, and largely avoided the creation of a monolithic single party state, they too turned out to be mostly about creating a national state bourgeoisie rather than about liberating people from the need to sell their labor power in order to survive.
In the Soviet bloc the process was a bit different. The humanistic intelligentsia welcomed periods of reform —1956, for example, and in a more limited way 1968, but was inevitably pushed to the side as reforms were either crushed or the opening they created reserved for technocratic managers rather than humanistic advocates of decommodification. By the mid-1980s, when Gorbochov made it clear that real reform was coming, the humanistic intelligentsia in the Soviet bloc had largely given up the dream of "socialism with a human face" and facilitated the collapse of the system and a capitalist restoration.
This is the point at which the political valence of the poststructuralist appropriation of Schmitt (and Heidegger) becomes clear. Beginning in the 1960s a group of French intellectuals pioneered a new strategy for the humanistic intelligentsia: what we might call "critical professionalism." Critical professionalism allows the humanistic intelligentsia to criticize the increasing proletarianization of their own stratum, while refusing to engage Capital, and thus abandoning the rest of the proletariat and working classes. We see this illustrated most clearly in the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault (Foucault 2007) argues that while premodern states aimed only a control over territory, modern states exercise a detailed control over bodies which he calls biopolitical. Thus ancient empires merely taxed their citizens; modern states (or rather the modern corporations which modern states protect) aim at total control of the production process. This thesis, which certainly points to something real but, we will argue, also misunderstands it, became the basis for the strange politics of an entire generation of the humanistic intelligentsia which aimed at resisting proletarianization without resisting Capital, or indeed without even mentioning its existence. Indeed, it is incontestable that historic socialism also represents a practice of biopolitics, so poststructuralism comes off seeming even handed and, if it not as enthusiastic about capitalism as the Right would like, this made it relatively unobjectionable. Heidegger's obscurantism was maintained as a way of promoting the artificial scarcity of professional deconstructionism, and we have the humanistic academy which took shape from the 1980s onward —perhaps earlier in Europe.
Agamben's work is located in this context, largely as an extension and correction of Foucault, who was his teacher. Specifically, Agamben argues that modernity represents not a modification of the concept or aims of of Sovereignty, but rather a shift from a discourse around Sovereignty and politics to a discourse around economy. This shift, he argues, is located genealogically in the emergence of a Trinitarian theology which distinguishes between God's Being, identified variously with the Trinity as a whole or with the Father, and his activity or the divine economy, identified with the relations between the Persons of the Trinity or with the Son. This shift points to the emergence of an immanent order which depends not on the establishment or application of principles or of law but on the concrete, empirical resolution of particular problems.
The strategy worked —for Capital. An entire generation of the humanistic intelligentsia (or more) was cut off from the struggle against Capital and focused on "deconstructive" activity which it understood as liberating but which was actually aimed at disarming the Left. But the strategy did not work for the humanistic intelligentsia itself. Graduate programs continued to churn out doctorates and universities cut tenure track lines and shifted responsibility for most of their teaching mission to adjunct faculty and a lower caste of largely unprotected "teaching faculty." And the handful who got tenure assisted their employers by denying it to anyone who questioned the poststructuralist orthodoxy. Seeking allies, poststructuralist academics offered their theories to the women's movement and to movements against imperialism and racism, which had the effect, in turn, of cutting these movements off from any possible alliance with the proletariat. It also promoted an "allergy to power" as itself instrumentalizing and oppressive, which condemned those who took this route to political impotence.
The result is an absurd situation in which very comfortable humanistic academics earning large salaries and still enjoying very significant autonomy (on condition that they not deploy it against Capital) talk about revolutionary violence and say other things which sound incredibly revolutionary —but intend nothing. Are they merely soothing their consciences by occasionally nipping at the hand that feeds them? Or are they up to something more sinister? The method we advocate is focused more on analyzing concrete impact than it is on ascribing intentions. Here two points are in order. First, political theology in the Schmittian mode has largely displaced the liberation theologies of the last century which, whatever their failings (which we will discuss in a later chapter), advocated a politics focused on the self-liberation of the proletariat and the peasantry. Where liberation theology got people reading Marx, Agamben, Baidou, and Zizek have them reading a fascist, just as Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze did before them. Second, while there has been a resurgence of interest in "socialism" during the past decade, very significant elements of this new maximalist left have flirted or worse with the alt-right and especially with the New Axis of which Vladimir Putin is the public center. For "genealogists" such as Nietzsche, Foucault, and Agamben this would, in fact, be enough convict. But at present we will leave the matter in the form of a question.
Over the course of the following chapters we will offer an alternative account of what a consciously political theology should look like —one which situates humanity's struggle for self-determination in the broader context of our desire for Being and which demonstrates the ways in which Christianity has hegemonized this desire in the interest of Capital, while engaging the political theologies of other spiritual and civilizational traditions. And this will allow us to settle accounts with poststructuralism and Dark Liberation by way of a more rigorous argument. But before we proceed, we need to consider the question of method.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1995/1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press
_________________. 2000/2005, The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans. Stanford University Press
_________________. 2003/2005. State of Exception. Stanford University Press
_________________. 2007/2011. The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Stanford University Press
_________________. 2010/2012. The Church and the Kingdom. Stanford University Press
_________________. 2011/2013. The Highest Poverty. Stanford University Press
_________________. 2012/2012 Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty. Stanford University Press
_________________. 2013/2015. Pilate and Jesus. Stanford University Press
_________________. 2013/2017. The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Days. Stanford University Press
Aquinas, Thomas. 1272/1952. Summa Theologiae, Chicago, Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Augustine. 426/1972. The City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson. New York: Penguin
Baidou, Alain. 1998/ 2005. Being and Event, transl. by Oliver Feltham; (New York: Continuum
_____________. 2002/2003. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Stanford University Press
_____________. 2006/2009. Logics of Worlds: Being and Event, Volume 2, New York: Continuum.
Barbour, Ian. 2000. When Science Meets Religion. SanFrancisco: Harper
Benjamin, Walter. 1921/1978. "Critique of Violence," in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz, tr. Edmund Jephcott, New York: Schocken Books
Bonald, Louis de. 1796: Théorie du Pouvoir Politique et Religieux.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998/1991. The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Fiorenza, Francis Schussler. 1977/2012 . Political Theology as Foundational Theology. Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America, 32. Retrieved from https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ctsa/article/view/2881
Fromm, Erich. 1941. Escape from Freedom, New York: Holt Reinhart Winston.
Foucault, Michel. 2007. The Politics of Truth. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e)
Gilson, Etienne. 1968 Dante and Philosophy. Glouster, MA: Peter Smith
Goerner, E.A. 1965 Peter and Caesar. New York: Herder and Herder
Gogol, Nikolai. 1836/2011. The Nose. Accessed athttp://www.gutenberg.org/files/36238/36238-h/36238-h.htm#Page_67
Guttierez, Gustavo. 1973 The Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll: Orbis
Hegel, G.W.F. 1830/1971 Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, trans. William Wallace. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press
Heidegger, Martin. 1928/1968. Being and Time, New York: Harper and Row.
———. >1934/1989: Beitrage sur Philosophie ("Contributions to Philosophy"). Frankfurt-Main: Klosterman.
———. >1941/1979-1987 Nietzsche. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Jaspers, Karl. 1953. The Origin and Goal of History. New Haven: Yale University Press
King, Lawrence and Szelenyi, Ivan. 2004. New Class Theories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Land, Nick. 2013. Dark Enlightenment. Accessed at https://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/the-dark-enlightenment-by-nick-land/
_____________. 2017. "AQuick and Dirty Introduction to Accellerationism," in Jacobite May 2017. Accessed at https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-to-accelerationism/
Lerner, Eric. 1991.the Big Bang never Happened. New York: Random House
1690/1967 Two Treatises on Government. London: Cambridge Univ. Press
Lukacs, Georgi. 1922/1971. History and Class Consciousness, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
———. 1953/1980. The Destruction of Reason. London: Merlin.
Maistre, Joseph de. 1775-18211965. Works. New York: Macmillan
Mansueto, Anthony. 2001. "Christianity, Antisemitism, and Empire," in Religion and Dialectics, Lanham: University Press of America.
_____________. 2005. Spirituality and Dialectics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (with Mary Mansueto)
_____________. 2012 Knowing God: The Journey of the Dialectic.Eugene, OR: Pickwick
_____________. 2014. Knowing God: Doing Justice. Eugene, OR: Pickwick.
___________. 2016. The Ways of Wisdom. Eugene, OR: Pickwick
Marx, Karl. 1843/2009. Contribution to the Critique of Hegel'sPhilosophy of Right: Introduction. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
______________.1845/2002. Theses on Feuerbach,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm
______________. 1848/2004. The Communist Manifesto. Accessed at
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
Milbank, John. 1991. Theology and Social Theory. London: Blackwell
Niebuhr, H. Richard. 1951. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper
Raschke, Carl. 2012. Postmodernism and the Revolution in Religious Theory. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. 1984. "Instruction Regarding Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation," United States Catholic Conference
______________. "Christian Freedom and Liberation," United States Catholic Conference
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1762/1962 Le contrat social. Paris: Freres
Reimann, Matt. 2017. These Wall Street millionaires literally plotted to overthrow the president. Timeline, August 17, 2017.
Sartre, Jean Paul. 1943/1993. Being and Nothingness. New York: Washington Square Press. Schmitt, Carl. 1921/2014. Dictatorship. From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to Proletarian Class Struggle (1921), Cambridge: Polity Press
_____________. 1922/2005. Political Theology. Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (1922), trans. by G. Schwab, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Segundo, Juan Luis .1976 The Liberation of Theology. Maryknoll: Orbis
______________. 1985 Theology and the Church. New York: Harper
Solle, Dorthee. 1974. Political Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress
Tipler, Frank. 1994. The Physics of Immortality, New York, Doubleday
Varro, Marcus Terentius. Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum libri XLI (Antiquities of Human and Divine Things), lost but quoted extensively in Augustine. City of God.
Voskuilen, Thijs and Sheldom, Rose Mary. 2008 OperationMessiah: St. Paul, Roman Intelligence, and the Birth of Christianity. Valentine Mitchell
Weber, Max. 1918/2004. "Science as a Vocation," and Politics as a Vocation," in The Vocation Lectures, trans. by Rodney Livingstone, New York: Hackett.
____________. 1920/1968. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribners
____________. 1921/1968. Economy and Society. New York: Bedminster
Žižek, Slavoj. 1999. "The Politics of Truth, or, Alain Badiou as a Reader of St. Paul," in The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Core of Political Ontology. New York: Verso
This entry was posted in Summa Theologiae et Politicae and tagged Agamben, Fascism, Heidegger, Marx, NAZISM, political theology, Schmitt, Zizek. Bookmark the permalink.


text:
Сан-Мартин-де-Пуса () — муниципалитет в Испании, входит в провинцию Толедо, в составе автономного сообщества Кастилия — Ла-Манча. Муниципалитет находится в составе района (комарки) Ла-Хара. Занимает площадь 104 км². Население — 850 человек (на 2010 год). Расстояние до административного центра провинции — 71 км.

Население

Примечания

Ссылки

 Diputación de Toledo
 Web no oficial

Муниципалитеты Толедо

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Bastien Inzaurralde
Gwladys Bernard (l.) and Clémentine Pirlot of La Barbe (the beard), a French feminist group, pose by a Paris subway wearing the group's trademark fake beards.
Philippe Wojazer/Reuters
France's minister for women's rights, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, leaves the Élysée Palace. President Hollande reestablished the post after 30 years.
Do French women need feminism?
Working French women, backed by generous government policies, enjoy a reputation for 'having it all.' But that may not mean what Americans might think.
By Sara Miller Llana Staff writer
Bastien Inzaurralde Correspondent
January 8, 2013 | Paris
When ex-model and former French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy made comments in the December issue of Paris Vogue declaring, "My generation doesn't need feminism," Anne-Cécile Mailfert, one of many French women catching the news on her iPhone, was aghast.
"What? No way! We have to do something," she characterizes the collective response of the organization she serves as spokesperson for, Osez Le Féminisme or "Dare to be a Feminist." They launched a Twitter barrage with the hashtag "#DearCarlaBruni, we need feminism because…" leaving French women to fill in the "why" for themselves.
"#DearCarlaBruni, we need feminism because people always assume I'm the secretary," was one common tweet. The campaign got so much attention that it finally prompted an apology from Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy – and handed a win to French feminists.
From afar, many think French women don't need such victories, at least when it comes to the child/work balance that so eludes American women. When Anne-Marie Slaughter published her polemic article in The Atlantic titled "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," which was devoured and debated by working mothers across the United States, not a few pointed out that French women often can have it all, thanks to social welfare policies that are virtually unmatched around the world. The subhead of a Slate article from November read, "Maybe working moms can have it all – in France."
But that's only half the story – the other half having been brought to the fore after Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and aspirant to the French presidency, was accused of sexually assaulting a New York City hotel maid in May 2011. The case shocked many with its frank discussion of certain commonly held French attitudes toward women.
In fact the Gallic nation, which spawned such strong feminist figures as Simone de Beauvoir, struggles to surpass its European neighbors in terms of gender equality, even as Christine Lagarde now runs the IMF and French President François Hollande introduced gender parity in his cabinet. French women sit in the bottom half of Europe's rankings on a slew of measures from the most recent 2012 World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index – even taking last place on the group's perceived wage-equality survey indicator – while sexism and even sexual harassment have been overlooked or disregarded as the necessary evil of an otherwise lovely cultural relationship between men and women. Just recently all the government's ministers were sent to 45-minute anti-sexism classes.
Marilyn Baldeck, a young feminist and head of the European Association Against Violence Toward Women at Work, says that she butts heads with deeply held social mores.
"There is cheese, bullfighting, and the French way of seduction," she says. "We are being accused of wanting to sanitize the relationships between men and women.... [It] is claimed to be a puritanical feminism ... an American type of feminism."
Pro-childbearing, not-so-pro-equality
On the brisk Parisian streets of winter, mothers dressed in stylish boots and overcoats roll narrow strollers, all covered with rain and wind flaps, down the sidewalks, en route to day-care centers and schools, many of them sponsored by the state. Such programs are one of several policies that help French parents balance work and family. Day-care centers, called crèches, are subsidized by the state. If mothers can't find places in the state-run crèches, they share nannies and receive generous tax refunds that make having a nanny affordable. Preschools are free, and all day, for children as young as 3.
"Having children and working is highly valued in France," says Hélène Périvier, codirector of the gender program at the SciencesPo university in Paris and mother of three young children. In Germany, for example, women are frowned upon – stigmatized as "crows" – for wanting to work, she says. "It has a deep impact on society."
Generous state support for working mothers is widely endorsed by French women, but many argue that, having hailed from a historic pro-childbearing effort, French women haven't really promoted gender or social equality.
"Domestic labor remains women's domain, crèche places are more accessible to those in wealthy urban areas, and career compromise after parenthood remains largely a female sacrifice," says Simon Jackson, an English historian at SciencesPo.
Still, many wouldn't wish it away. Stephanie Lumbers has a toddler and is expecting another child this month. She returned to work in marketing when her first child was 5 months old and now shares a nanny with another family. "We have it better than most mothers," she says. Unlike many American women, who commonly say they struggle to balance home and work, she says no one in her circle of friends – though she concedes she is among a privileged circle – lists that balance as their major concern.
That isn't the only aspect of being a French woman that is worthy of envy. Stereotypes abound in movies and literature about the sense of style and beauty of French women. The bestseller "French Women Don't Get Fat" is a testament to that global fascination.
French professor Anne Deneys-Tunney, at New York University, says that she finds the US, where she has spent the last 20 years, to be a more egalitarian society for gender relations. American women have certain protections such as clear sexual harassment policies that are strictly enforced, yet it comes at a social cost, including a cultural tone that many French would find distasteful and too politically correct. The French want legal equality that doesn't come bound up in the inability to compliment women at work.
"Women are freer here, but on the other hand, it has destroyed a certain charm, an innocence and lightness of life," she says.
But that freedom can, at its worst, have a social cost. In July in the wake of the Strauss-Kahn case, for example, the country's female housing minister, Cécile Duflot, was subject to shouts and wolf whistles from the right-wing opposition as she prepared to address the national Parliament in a flowery but professional dress. The speaker of the chamber had to ask the male representatives to stop hooting at her.
Yet Ms. Duflot didn't shy away from responding. As she began her address to the chamber amid taunting from the opposition, she said, "Ladies and gentlemen representatives, but mostly gentlemen, apparently."
Strauss-Kahn affair a turning point
These scenarios are not unheard of. Women in France have less access to justice when it comes to sexual harassment. According to the French Ministry of Justice, about 1,000 complaints for sexual harassment are filed every year, but only a few dozen lead to sentencing.
And overall, the World Economic Forum's index puts France at 57 of 135 countries in terms of gender equality, falling in ranking from the year before. It sits well behind the Scandinavian countries, all in the Top 10, as well as behind Germany, Ireland, Spain, and the US.
Yet the fallout from the Strauss-Kahn case, while a nadir, has also been a turning point. In August, the country passed a new sexual harassment law that raises fines to €30,000 (nearly $40,000, double the previous fine) and expands the definition of what constitutes harassment. Before, it was limited to an act "with the goal of obtaining favors of sexual nature."
Today, harassment is defined as "imposing on somebody, in a repeated way, words or behaviors with a sexual connotation that either undermine one's dignity because of their degrading or humiliating nature, or create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive situation."
In one case that Ms. Baldeck's group represented, a female employee accused a male colleague of repeated sexual harassment, including an attempt to tuck a pencil between her buttocks. The judge in the case, in 2008, ruled against her. "Even if the words, actions, and gesture of [the defendant] could be judged as inadmissible, crude, rude, seen as obscene, they do not constitute moral or sexual harassment," the presiding judge wrote. Baldeck won on appeal, but says that she'd never have lost in the first place in today's environment. In fact, she says the number of cases they deal with in any given year – 400 – is up from the average of 300 before the Strauss-Kahn case forced sexual harassment into the public consciousness.
Mr. Hollande, in addition to introducing gender parity in his cabinet, has also reopened a women's rights ministry – after it was shuttered for almost 30 years – and by sending his ministers to sexism-education class, he has underlined his commitment to equality, his administration says.
"It is simply to take some time to think about inequalities between men and women, their origins, the reason that it is sometimes difficult to change mentalities and thus behaviors," writes Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the minister for women's rights, in an e-mail. "It is about giving them the keys, the tools, for politicians to integrate women's rights as an automatic extension of their political work."
'La Barbe' strikes a feminist blow with wit
But feminist groups say there is far more to be done. One group called La Barbe – meaning "The Beard" in English but also a pun as an old French expression that means "bummer" – was founded in 2008 after a French female candidate from a mainstream party was fielded for the 2007 presidential election, leading to a barrage of public chauvinism. "We want to fight men's monopoly in power places," says Clémentine Pirlot, a gender studies student and active member of the group.
While La Barbe's intentions are very serious, it carries out its activism with a dose of humor and sarcasm. In November, Ms. Pirlot attended an economic conference with a group of women, where 14 speakers were scheduled to talk and all 14 were men. As is La Barbe's routine, about 20 minutes into the conference, Pirlot stood up and put on a homemade beard – "always with dignity," she says – and read out sarcastic remarks like, "Congratulations! There are no women here."
Pirlot carries a beard or two in her purse always. "You never know when you'll need it," she says. Often the bearded women are treated with respect, but at times their targets are hostile, even as they become a more common fixture on the Parisian landscape. One waiter at a cafe in downtown Paris sees Pirlot with her beard on and says, "Yeah, La Barbe!"
Baldeck says that these days in Paris one can attend a feminist event any day of the week and that the movement has been renewed by thousands of young women.
At Osez le Féminisme, the group has grown in three years to 1,500 members with 11 committees around the country, taking on everything from sex education to abortion to wage equality. Ms. Mailfert measures success in the reaction her job description generates.
"I think one of our main achievements," she says, "is that it is now not that taboo to say you are a feminist."
Test your knowledge Think you know Europe? Take our geography quiz.
Focus France's 'boys will be boys' mentality challenges gender equality
The 5 most educated countries in the world
The five most dangerous countries for women
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2013/0108/Do-French-women-need-feminism

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I walked into the kitchen after working on the computer. I had left my 3yo to have some "independent" play time. I got a familiar smell on the way there and realised as I turned the corner he had enjoyed every minute of his 'free play'... spreading baby powder over the floor. I also realised there was a broom next to the powder bottle. I was finding it difficult to make out if the broom was there because he tried to clean up on his own or if it was used to spread the powder further . The broom did both those jobs!
I wasn't angry, afterall it's only powder and I had got done what I needed to on the computer with no interruptions. So I said the normal, "what a mess", he replied, "I want to go to M's house" calmly again I said " we can't go to M's house until all this is cleaned, here is the vacuum". As diligently as he made the mess he was now cleaning it and I made sure I swept some crumbs for him to vacuum up too. It was a lesson to me that not all discipline needs to be punishment sometimes cleaning up after yourself is an important lesson and a consequence in itself.
Give your child the benefit of the doubt at least once: On this occasion I chose to look at the broom in the room as a tool for cleaning and not as an instrument for making the mess. So this changed my mood almost immediately.
A bargaining tool helps: In this case he wanted something that I was happy to give him anyway since my friend is M's mum.
My second choice was to use his bargaining tool and my positive view (that he may have tried to clean this up himself hence the broom) to explain that he needs to use a vacuum to clean up the mess.
On this occasion option two worked and I learnt that cleaning up may be an appropriate discipline technique.
Have you ever surprised yourself and reacted differently to how you normally would? What was that like? How did your child respond?
I see? my child sees?


text:
Ed White And Michael Tarm
Published: April 11, 2022, 6:22 PM
Tags: Robert Menendez, Pete Musico, Daniel Harris, Rod Blagojevich, Brandon Caserta, Kaleb Franks, Ty Garbin, Gretchen Whitmer, Barry Croft Jr., Adam Fox
EXPLAINER: 2 men in Gov. Whitmer plot could be tried again
FILE - This photo combo if images provided by the Kent County Sheriff and Delaware Department of Justice, respectively, shows Adam Dean Fox, left, and Barry Croft Jr. On Friday, April 8, 2022, jurors acquitted two men of all charges in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, but couldnt reach verdicts against the two alleged leaders, Fox and Croft. (Kent County Sheriff and Delaware Department of Justice via AP) (Uncredited)
DETROIT – A jury's inability to reach a unanimous verdict for two men charged in a conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer means the federal government can take them to trial again.
The jury last week acquitted Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta, whom prosecutors described as "soldiers" in the foiled plot, but deadlocked on the alleged leaders, Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. It was an extraordinary setback for the government, which claimed the men wanted to trigger a civil war before the 2020 election.
HUNG JURY
A hung jury is unable to unanimously agree on someone's guilt or innocence. It could be just one person on the 12-member panel who disagrees with the others.
Prosecutors can put someone on trial again or drop the case. U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge told reporters Friday that Fox and Croft are "awaiting trial and we'll get back to work on that." They remain in jail.
Mark Chutkow, who until recently led the criminal division of the U.S. attorney's office in Detroit, said he would be surprised if prosecutors fold, citing the significance of the allegations.
"The government has two cooperating defendants who pled guilty, who said they were part of the crime. That's pretty compelling evidence," Chutkow said, referring to Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, who testified for prosecutors.
Only the jury knows. U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker barred lawyers from contacting jurors for any post-trial intelligence, but jurors can reach out to them on their own.
Chutkow said it could help prosecutors and defense attorneys as they prepare for a second trial.
"As a litigant, sometimes you get in the fog of war," he said. "You've spent so much time with your case, you're not objective as to what it looked like."
Fox, who was living in the Grand Rapids area, and Croft, from Bear, Delaware, didn't testify. Their defense came through the cross-examination of the government's witnesses.
Fox and Croft might have been angry with Whitmer over COVID-19 restrictions, but there was no real plan to kidnap the Democratic governor, their lawyers insisted. They say undercover FBI agents and informants inside the group fueled wild talk.
Detroit-area defense lawyer Michael Rataj said the challenge for prosecutors in Grand Rapids will be picking a jury from western and northern Michigan.
"It's Trump country and they don't like Whitmer. Prosecutors have an uphill battle," Rataj said.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER OTHER BIG CASES WITH HUNG JURIES?
Prosecutors sharpened their focus after a federal jury couldn't agree on 23 of 24 charges at former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's 2010 corruption trial. Jurors said just one person was a holdout.
At Blagojevich's second trial, prosecutors skipped past his expensive taste for tailored suits and furs for his wife. He was convicted of multiple crimes, including an effort to sell an appointment to the U.S. Senate.
But prosecutors decided against retrying New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez. Many jurors at his 2017 trial favored acquittal. A judge subsequently threw out key bribery charges.
"Sometimes, there is bluster and chest thumping" by prosecutors about a retrial after a deadlocked jury, said Alan Tuerkheimer, a Chicago-based jury consultant. "But when the dust settles and they think more clearly, they can change their minds."
Learning how jurors voted can be crucial. A jury that was one or two votes away from acquittal is a sign of a weak case, Tuerkheimer said, and can dissuade prosecutors from trying again.
WHO'S IN THE WINGS?
Eight other men face state charges in either Jackson or Antrim counties. They're accused of assisting the others in the Whitmer plot, among other crimes, and have pleaded not guilty.
Whitmer's vacation home is in Antrim. Fox and Croft, accompanied by undercover operatives, took a night ride to check the location and look at a bridge that could be blown up during a kidnapping, according to evidence in the federal case.
The state cases have moved slowly since fall 2020; five men charged in Antrim still haven't had a key hearing at which a judge decides whether there's enough evidence to go to trial.
Defense attorney Kareem Johnson, who is representing Pete Musico, a founding member of the Wolverine Watchmen militia, compared the two acquittals in federal court to a thrilling basketball game.
"It's like when a teammate hits a 3-pointer. It motivates you to get back on defense and get a stop," Johnson said Monday.
Tarm reported from Chicago.


text:
June 18, 2016 Marks 55-Year Anniversary with Steinway & Sons Pianos!
Schmitt Music is proud to celebrate Fifty-five years representing Steinway & Sons pianos!
Since 1961, Steinway has chosen Schmitt Music to be its exclusive authorized dealer for Steinway & Sons pianos.
In honor of our 55th Anniversary as a Steinway dealer, Tom Schmitt, president of Schmitt Music, shared some thoughts about our relationship with Steinway:
Today (6/18/16) marks the 55th anniversary of our appointment as a Steinway dealer. Even though I was just a little kid at the time I can remember some of the circumstances because Henry and Polly Steinway came out to Minneapolis to make it official and to have a little celebration, and dad invited them to join us for dinner and a ride on our houseboat.
We didn't have a cabin or a summer home or anything like that, but my mom, sisters, Doug and I spent most of the summer living on a houseboat on the St. Croix River while dad commuted into the office every day. It was pretty small and crowded and so it was sort of a big deal to have guests for Dinty Moore beef stew, a cruise down the river and to join in as dad led us through some of his favorite tunes, like "Shine on Harvest Moon" and "Up the Lazy River", singing and accompanying himself on the baritone ukulele. Although Henry Steinway was a very down-to-earth person, he was a sophisticated Manhattanite and he must have thought he was teaming up with the Minnesota version of the Beverly Hillbillies!
"There's nothing else like it and no other piano should even be mentioned in the same breath."
That evening marked the beginning of an incredible partnership between our two companies and an enduring friendship with generations of the Steinway family and leadership team. In the decades to follow, with Steinway as our leading brand, our company became one of the largest and most awarded piano dealers in the industry. And Steinway emerged as one of the most respected and widely recognized brands in the world, instantly connected with the highest and most uncompromising levels of quality, performance, durability and artistic expression. Did you know that every year, year after year, over 98% of all piano concerts performed with major symphony orchestras all over the world are played exclusively on Steinway pianos? That's because the finest pianists in the world know they can only play their best and be all they can be – artistically – on a Steinway. There's nothing else like it and no other piano should even be mentioned in the same breath.
Meeting Henry and Polly for the first time made a lasting impression on me, but what I remember most about that evening was dad's excitement. One of his most important contributions when he returned to the company after serving in WW2 and Korea was to lead us into the piano business. And to finally be appointed as the Steinway dealer in our service area – a goal of his from the very beginning – was affirmation from the leading company in the industry that we were on the right track. That they wanted to be our partners for the future meant the world to dad and his team – and to the whole company really. He was stoked!
Steinway has undoubtedly been our most important supplier for all these years and with their new ownership, new leadership team and dynamic new products, the company is doing better than ever all over the world. We're grateful for the last 55 years with Steinway – it's been a great run – and we look forward to the next 55 with the same anticipation and excitement that dad had all those years ago.
Henry Z. Steinway and Tom Schmitt, photographed in 2004.
Visit your Schmitt Music piano store or schedule your showing with a Schmitt Music Piano Specialist, and let us help you find the perfect Steinway piano!
Click here to learn more about Steinway pianos at Schmitt Music.


MediaCutlet teamed up with Rutgers University Student Affairs to produce this video for their campaign to promote a more inclusive university that embraces diversity.
MediaCutlet aided in the creation of a focal point for a leader in New Jersey industrial real estate development's website.
Rutgers Athletics hired MediaCutlet to produce the Men's Basketball Intro video for the 2016-17 season to be played inside of the Rutgers Athletic Center during every home game.
General Pet Supply, based out of Milwaukee, WI, won Pet Age's Distributor of the Year award for the 2017 calendar. Pet Age is a BridgeTower Media division that covers the pet industry in print, online and through social media.
Jimmy Valvano's legacy is one that will live on forever; touching hearts around the world. His roots, however, lie in New Brunswick at Rutgers University where he was a player, coach and mentor for the Mens Basketball team.
Liberty Science Center hosts interactive Mythbusters "The Explosive Exhibition" where guests can test out myths previously shown on the popular TV show.
MediaCutlet collaborated with the team at Snailz to help market their mobile app launch. Snailz allows you to browse nail salons, book appointments, pay, and post reviews all through the app.
MediaCutlet collaborated with the team at Snailz to help market their product launch. The app allows you browse nail salons, book appointments, pay, and post reviews all through the app.
We create fresh, engaging content. Event highlights, dynamic time lapses, one-on-one interviews, promotional commercials, infographic animations and more.
Using projection technology we turn ordinary objects and surfaces into a display surfaces for video projection. This technology is completely scalable and can be used on buildings as well as small indoor applications or theatrical stages.
We develop fresh ideas and offer a wide range of design services including overlays and titling, communication design, data visualization, and explainer videos.
Drones are becoming ubiquitous with stunning aerial videography. Steadily over the past five years our team has been perfecting the delicate art of aerial cinematography using multi-rotor UAV technology.
Projection systems, HD displays, and LED display for any application. Video packages include optional technician(s) to operate the tech throughout your event.
Specializing in responsive, mobile first, beautifully designed web solutions. Proficiencies include e-commerce engines, blog platforms, custom design, web-apps, integrated with major content management systems focusing special attention to WordPress.
With powerful video projectors and cutting edge computer software we are able to transform normal spaces, walls, and textures into living, breathing displays.


text:
Game Galleries
Slovak Symmetry. Slovan Bratislava 4 Kunlun Red Star 3 OT
This scoreline mirrored the result a month ago when Slovan came to Shanghai – and Red Star duly skated off with a shootout verdict. Now, despite Sunday's defeat, Red Star can point to a run of nine games, seven of which have seen the team collect at least one point.
Progress report. Dinamo Riga 1 Kunlun Red Star 3
The last time these teams met, back on September 16 in Shanghai, Dinamo was in top form while Red Star was still finding its feet in the current season. Now, almost a month later, the tables are turning.
Closing in. Admiral Vladivostok 2 Kunlun Red Star 3
Our latest visit to 'local' rival Admiral was settled by Brandon Yip's late goal – but in truth, this was a game that we could have wrapped up earlier than the 59th minute.
Brave effort falls short. Kunlun Red Star 2 Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg 5
Red Star was unable to put the brakes on Avtomobilist's winning start to the season – but gave the KHL leader plenty to think about before falling in the third period.
Jussi Tapola postgame interview over Avtomobilist
postgame interview
Jussi Tapola postgame interview over Traktor
2018.10.05 KRS vs Traktor
Lazushin's shut-out inspires victory. Kunlun Red Star 2 Traktor Chelyabinsk 0
Red Star shrugged off Wednesday's disappointment with an impressive victory over Traktor. Goalie Alexander Lazushin recorded his second shut-out of the season, making 25 saves to deny the opposition.
Jussi Tapola postgame interview over Metallurg
2018.10.3 KRS vs Metallurg
Frustrated by a familiar face. Kunlun Red Star 1 Metallurg Magnitogorsk 3
Back in Red Star's first season of KHL action, Artyom Zagidulin had a brief but productive spell with our team. Although the young goalie only made six appearances while on loan from Metallurg, he picked up three wins and an impressive 94.7% SVG.
SKA sets record, loses game. September 28 round-up
SKA set a new all-time Russian record shut-out streak before finally allowing a goal. But after Avangard stopped the clock at 326:27, the Army Men saw their seven-game winning streak halted in a shoot-out. Sibir, meanwhile, slumped to a 12th successive loss after a 1-5 mauling in Minsk. Torpedo edged Red Star in an overtime thriller, while Admiral beat Neftekhimik in a shoot-out. Ak Bars rallied to beat Amur and Vityaz snapped a four-game losing streak with success over Salavat Yulaev.
Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod 3 Kunlun Red Star 2 OT
Red Star's latest road trip has been full of drama and there's plenty of encouragement for the team after picking a fifth point in three games here in Nizhny Novgorod. After back-to-back wins in Tatarstan, hopes were high for a third successive win and another opponent conquered for the first time. The roster was boosted by the addition of experienced Canadian forward Martin St. Pierre, best known in the KHL from his time at Barys.
A Ural goal rush and Avto's 11th win. September 27 round-up
The Urals was the place to be in today's KHL. While Avtomobilist was reeling off its 11th successive victory in Yekaterinburg, Metallurg and Dynamo shared 11 goals in Magnitogorsk. Elsewhere, CSKA beat Spartak in the Moscow derby, Sakari Manninen inspired Jokerit to victory at Slovan and there were road wins for Lokomotiv and Sochi.
Previous 1 2 … 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 … 63 64 Next
Fonbet KHL Championship Partners Season 2022/2023
Kunlun Red Star partners
Designed and made by ezelis


text:
Revolution, or Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Democrats Today
DIARY / davenj1 // Posted at 9:07 am on July 6, 2019 by davenj1
Caricature by DonkeyHotey flic.kr/p/Ct4G4K https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
In 2010 or thereabouts, the media was awash in stories about the "battle within the GOP." This coincided with the rise of the Tea Party and electoral gains where the Republicans took back the House is historic fashion. At that time, there were probably two legislative movements that determined the historic loss of Democratic seats- TARP and Obamacare. Regardless, the Republicans moved on the momentum of the Tea Party, itself a reaction more against TARP and bank bailouts than Obamacare at the time and Obama's "stimulus" simply added fuel to the fire. The House Freedom Caucus was eventually formed to push the Tea Party agenda legislatively. Unfortunately, many forgot how and why they made it to Washington and abandoned Tea Party ideals using a host of excuses. They found out that rhetoric was much easier than legislative action. Mainstream Republicans swallowed the Tea Party faction into their fold and just as there few, if any, Blue Dog Democrats left, there are few Tea Party Congressmen left.
The Democratic Party today is facing the same situation the GOP faced post-2010. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, finds herself in the same situation John Boehner and Paul Ryan found themselves in when they were Speaker. Unlike the previous two Speakers, however, Pelosi refuses to voluntarily relinquish power. Instead, she believes that she can reign in certain members of her Democratic caucus.
Today, if you listen to the mainstream media (when they talk about rancor within the Democratic caucus at all), Nancy Pelosi is sometimes called a "moderate" Democrat. Given her legislative record and her rhetoric, however, using the term "moderate" in connection with Nancy Pelosi is a huge misnomer. The difference between Pelosi and the new breed of Democrat in the House whose face is that of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not one of policy or ideology, but one of method.
Hot Take: After Lindsey Graham Called Her a Communist, AOC Says the Label Is a Tool for White Supremacy
There is very little daylight between the policy beliefs of AOC and Pelosi. Pelosi is less incendiary and stutters. AOC is incendiary in her rhetoric and talks like a Valley Girl. One likes standing before the cameras with her Congressional entourage somber faced while the other takes to Twitter and social media. But, at the end of the day, both have the same goal in mind: a radical transformation of America where coastal, elitist socialist policies are forced upon the country. Pelosi talks like she wants to make America Denmark while AOC seriously wants to make America Cuba. Pelosi knows how to weigh her words so as not to scare too many people while AOC suffers from verbal diarrhea.
A perfect example of the different methodologies is evident when it comes to immigration. They both seek immigration reform, for but the Democrats that means legalizing those here illegally and endorsing open borders. AOC and company call for the abolition of ICE, the enforcement agency for our immigration laws. Pelosi calls for reform of ICE which would transform them from being an agency of immigration law enforcement to one of glorified babysitter. Either way, immigration law enforcement is jettisoned.
Another example is the Green New Deal- a radical restructuring of American society where every socialist pipe dream is thrown into one package and disguised as the noble cause of saving the planet from exploding in a fireball. Whereas Pelosi basically backs virtually every proposal in that piece of garbage from retrofitting American homes, providing affordable housing, the elimination of fossil fuels, a living wage proposal, etc., she denigrated the proposal when asked. Why? Because in one fell swoop, an upstart Latina bartender from New York City laid the Democrat's vision of America all out there for all to see.
Pelosi, on the other hand, would rather legislate that vision slowly, incrementally and in a stealth manner. As Speaker, she controls the agenda and she knows when to strike while the fire is hot. It is why we have to pass legislation first to see what's in it. Pelosi is the face of socialism by a thousand cuts. She knows that well-meaning and nice-sounding programs that are nothing but new entitlements that will likely never be repealed. They may be temporarily reformed as the political winds change and Democrats lose their grip on power in the House- the inevitable ebb and flow of politics. Even welfare reform under Clinton did not wipe away welfare.
AOC and her kindred spirits are the revolutionary gadflies in the ointment who would look good in a Che beret and T-shirt. These are the blatant socialists who instead of climbing out of the mountains of central Cuba, climbed from under the rocks of liberal enclaves in Boston, New York, Minnesota, Detroit, most of California, and elsewhere. They are opening the can of worms that is socialism that Pelosi would rather open slowly. It's one turn of the can opener every so often whereas AOC and company are using an electric can opener with no stop button.
Either way, their vision of America almost completely overlaps. There may be some differences here and there mainly of which to what degree they move in the same direction. The biggest difference is the pace at which they move in that common direction.
What the GOP has going for them is the personalities of the leaders of these Democratic factions. And make no mistake, there is a rift between the two. Pelosi has shown her displeasure with AOC in the past by downplaying the Green New Deal. AOC defied Pelosi by bringing up impeachment when the Democratic caucus was asked not to do so. When asked by Leslie Stahl about the influence of AOC on Democratic politics, Pelosi replied, "That's like only five people," a not so subtle jab. Then there is AOC's promise (threat?) to primary incumbent Democrats who do not jump on her socialist train to hell. None of these actions sit well with a power-hungry person like Pelosi. Regardless, since January 2019, 68 Democratic members of the House have voted lockstep with AOC at least 95% of the time according to ProPublica. That has to frighten Pelosi and shows that there are more than "like five people."
Thus far, while it is true that Pelosi is socialist at heart, a phony, and a hypocrite of the highest order and thus a good representative of the Democratic Party, one has to admit she has shreds of tactical genius. In a way, Pelosi needs AOC because the latter is a blathering idiot that makes Pelosi look almost like a member of Mensa by comparison.
What frightens Pelosi the most is that the bartender from the Bronx is single-handedly ripping the curtain away from the reality that is the Democratic Party today- a quick descent into a socialist hell hole. Meanwhile, many of those Democrats on the presidential campaign trail are increasingly supporting the most radical ideas of AOC like the Green New Deal or Medicare For All. Not too many are extolling the virtues of Obamacare. Not too many are pushing back against the Green New Deal. Not too many are questioning the concept of a "livable wage." Not too many are supportive of a secure Southern border. And the list goes on.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a huge gift to conservatives and the GOP. She is proving what most of us know about the Democratic Party- that they are a band of graduates of the Frankfurt school of economic and cultural radicalism; in short, socialists. The question now becomes whether the GOP can take advantage of this rift and drive the AOC wing back to mountains of central Cuba. That would be partial victory- a small battle won. Full victory would be cutting off the heads of both factions, but that may be a task too tall for the GOP to undertake.
At the very least, let's encourage the rift between AOC and Pelosi. Make Pelosi account for every blathering Tweet and statement from AOC and her ilk. Put her on record and hammer the point home. Beyond the liberal enclaves of the coasts, the message of neither resonates with Americans. It is the reason they lost the presidential election in 2016 and, hopefully, their gains in the House in 2018 were a temporary setback, but one with a silver lining- removing the facade of "moderation" in the Democratic Party.
GOP lawmaker: I support Trump's policies, but not this - Hot Air
Burn! Senator Kennedy Says 'The Squad' Is 'The Reason that There are Directions on a Shampoo Bottle'
Tipsheet – Breaking Political News & Conservative Analysis


text:
Howie Mandel's Family: Everything We Know About His Wife and Kids
By Obianuju Okafor
Howie Mandel has been married to an entrepreneur and talent agent named Terry Mandel since 1980. The comedian and his wife have three children, two daughters, Jackelyn Perry Mandel and Riley Mandel, and a son, Alex Seth Mandel.
Howie Mandel is a family man better known to the public as a comedian, actor, and television host. Being someone who makes a living by having to come in contact with other people, whether it is to shoot a movie/commercial or host a TV program or comedy show, not many people know that he suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a type of mental disorder that comes in many forms but particularly has him terrified of contaminating germs.
Mandel, who has repeatedly made fun of himself about his condition, has a crippling fear of germs that refrains him from shaking hands with anyone, even excited contestants on his game show, Deal or No Deal, unless he has latex gloves on. His fear of contaminating germs does not only come when he comes in contact with strangers but also with members of his family.
To combat this, Howie Mandel operates two homes; one in California and a spotless penthouse suite at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, where he has shows all year round. The second home seems to be a convenient arrangement due to his work but it also serves as a place where the comedian could escape when his disorder kicks in, especially when a family member is ill. No doubt, the Canadian funnyman owes everything to the people closest to him, especially his wife Terry who has stuck with him through thick and thin.
Howie Met His Wife, Terry Mandel When They Were Both Just 12 Years Old
Talk about a ride or die, Howie Mandel and his wife Terry have had the eyes for each other since they were teenagers. At both just 12 years old, they met for the very first time at their local YMCA, Howie himself had revealed so in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. They would remain just friends until later in high school (they both attended the same high school – William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) when they decided to start dating.
For their first date, Howie decided to take his teenage love to the movies and did so in his mother's car, a Cutlass Supreme. A day that was supposed to be a memorable one for the young couple almost turned horrific as Howie narrowly escaped being in an accident; the car hit an ice patch and teetered on one side before it finally came down on four wheels, Terry had thought it was just one of his pranks but it was not, luckily for the two love birds, they escaped unscathed. We suppose Mama Mandel would not have taken it likely with her son the scratch to her Cutlass Supreme.
A post shared by Howie Mandel (@howiemandel)
Their love blossomed through high school, but when it came to taking school more seriously, Terry was ahead, while she made it to graduation, Howie did not. He was expelled from the school for impersonating a school official and hiring a construction company to build an addition to the school. He has always been that kid who loved to pull pranks, fortunately, he turned out well. Such kids always do anyway, but we digress…
Around the same time when Mandel's career began to pick up, he married Terry in 1980. Two years later, he began gaining recognition for his appearance on the medical drama St. Elsewhere. The couple has since remained inseparable and has stayed married for four decades and counting – a feat by Hollywood standards.
What does Howie Mandel's Wife Terry Mandel do?
A fellow Canadian, Terry is an entrepreneur and talent agent who is currently at Abstract Talent Agency. Her birth name is Terry Soil and she was born in Toronto, Ontario. Despite the fame her husband garners, Terry prefers to keep her personal affairs and past life private. She is only known to have received her high school education at the William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute before later moving to the US and attending Harvard University to acquire a degree in business.
Terry's career as a talent agent makes her able to spot huge opportunities and this came in handy in helping her husband Howie with a major career decision. She has been a supportive pillar of her husband right from the beginning when he began pursuing a career as an entertainer. In 2003 when Howie was originally offered the chance to host Deal or No Deal, he rejected the proposition as he had thought to himself that no comedian was hosting game shows at the time and that accepting it would ultimately kill his career.
He rejected the offer a total of three times and only accepted it after his wife convinced him to take the job. Fortunately, it turned out to be one of the greatest career decisions he has ever made. Many years later, Howie Mandel has described his work on the show as one of the best things that have happened to him. He is quoted as saying: "There is no show I've ever been part of or no project I've ever been part of, that has changed my life, that has changed my career, that is more exciting to be part of than 'Deal or No Deal.'" The American version of the game show which originated from the Netherlands has since its 2005 premiere been successful. The show was on hiatus in 2009, but old episodes continued to air in syndication, however, after it did return in 2019, Howie Mandel was still chosen to reprise his role as the host. He reportedly earns $70,000 per episode of the show.
Terry Is An Animal Lover
A post shared by Terry Mandel (@tmandel)
Throughout their over 40 years of marriage, Howie and Terry have certainly had to compromise on a few things in order to live peaceably. One of her favorite things in the world is animals and this is a big problem for Howie who is a germophobe and has OCD. He often narrates his concerns with his wife's hobby during talk-show appearances, nonetheless, the couple seems to be having fun with their differences rather than let it tear them apart.
On one occasion, Howie described how his wife loves picking up stray animals. He referred to her as a "crazy animal lover" during his 2018 appearance on Conan O'Brien's show and further narrated how a stray cat that she once picked up bite her and that the bite was not only big enough that she required stitches but that she also had to take daily doses of injection on her stomach to prevent rabies just in case the cat had rabies.
Howie also said of his wife that though she is an animal rescuer, other times, she simply picks up pets that come her way, and sometimes they have turned out to be pets owned by other people and have had cases where people knocked on their door to retrieve their pet.
While it may seem like Howie hates his wife's love for animals, that does not seem to be entirely the case, for her big surprise birthday gift when she added another year in 2013, Howie told Conan O'Brien that he rented an elephant just for his wife. However, it turned out to be a bad idea, as he later told O'Brien that he did not know what he was thinking. Howie narrated that the elephant pulled out their trees, pooped all over their backyard, and broke their sprinklers. He had nothing else planned as there was no lunch, birthday cake, or even guests to mark the event. However, being the huge animal lover that she is, chances are that Terry would have been elated just seeing an elephant in their home.
The couple has over the years given us a lot of couple goals. During the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, Howie told E! how he had been spending it pulling pranks on his dear wife. Terry had decided to spend the lockdown by putting together a series of different puzzles while Howie was busy hiding pieces of the puzzle when she was not looking and would laugh at her whenever she started looking for them. Their love story could make for an interesting romantic comedy, hello, Netflix!
Who are Howie Mandel's Daughters?
Name: Jackelyn Perry Mandel
Four years after they were married, Howie Mandel and his wife Terry welcomed their first child, a daughter whom they named Jackelyn Perry Mandel. She was born on the 14th of January 1984 in Calabasas, California. She attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, and earned a bachelor's degree in American studies. Later, she obtained her master's degree in education from the same university. Jackie makes a living as an elementary school teacher and has taught kindergarten, first grade, and second grade at schools around the greater Los Angeles area.
Howie's first daughter is married. She is married to Alex Schultz also known as Lex Larson, who is a disc jockey. The couple who met during their high school years and began their relationship as just friends exchanged vows on July 22, 2013. Their marriage which was planned by Mindy Weiss was held at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. She has also added YouTube vlogger to her repertoire and vlogs through her channel Life with Jackie. She also sells merchandise through the Instagram pages @shopjackelynshultz and @pjpartyschool.
Name: Riley Mandel
The youngest member of Howie Mandel's family is daughter Riley who was born in 1992. She is quite the book warm who in 2018 earned a doctorate degree, but like her father and brother, she has dabbled into showbiz in the past. She once served as a briefcase model on her father's game show, Deal or No Deal. Riley got engaged to Cameron Ehrlich on February 27, 2016, when he popped the question in Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco. They got married in July 2019. Cameron is a senior iOS engineer at Fair.com and previously at Cie Digital Labs. He owns Thirty Seven Inc., a mobile application development. He has also worked as the lead iOs developer for Whisper and Revo.fm. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Does Howie Mandel have a son?
Name: Alex Seth Mandel
Known For: YouTube Personality
A post shared by Alex Mandel (@alexmandel)
Yes, Howie Mandel has just one son, his name is Alexander Seth Mandel, he was born on September 30, 1989, in Calabasas, California. Alex is the only one out of Mandel's kids to strictly follow in his footsteps. He has an active career as an actor, director, and video creator. He made his first TV appearance in his father's TV series Howie Do It in 2009.
He would later appear as himself in TV shows such as Freak Encounters and Killer Holiday: A Conversation with Composer Kurt Oldman. His other self credits include Scare Tactics, Destination Fear, Larry King Now, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Deal with It. As a writer, he wrote at least 6 episodes of the TV series Odd Jobs, all of which he also directed. Alex Mandel has at least 6 credits as an actor, they include TV show, What Would You Do?, Killer Holiday, and the short film, House Meeting.
Alex Mandel also runs a vlog on YouTube and per his Instagram page, he frequently posts videos on Facebook. Like his father, he is into pranks and posts a lot of prank videos, some featuring his father. Mandel's son is not yet married, as of this writing but has been in a long-term relationship with a certain Andrea Wendel whom he frequently posts on social media. Popular net worth website Celebrity Net Worth has estimated his net worth at $500,000, though it pales in comparison to his father's $60 million, it is a decent figure when compared to his level in the entertainment industry.
Howie Mandel Has At Least 2 Grandchildren
Yes, Howie Wendel is a grandfather, the comic has his first daughter Jackelyn to thank for making him a grandfather. From her marriage to her DJ husband Lex Larson, she has at least two kids, a son named Axel and a daughter named Abbey. As a stay home mom, she frequently posts about being a mother in her vlog like gender revealing her kids' videos and getting hair cuts with them. In one of her videos, she reveals that her kids call grandpa Howie, and grandma Terry, "Nona and Papa."
Obianuju Okafor
With over 4 years of experience as a lifestyle and celebrity news content developer, Obianuju keeps her insights fresh by following up on the latest pop culture news and trends. When she's not working, she's likely still reading or watching the most interesting stuff online
How Old Is Alexis McAdams and Is She Married?
Gabimfmoura Biography: Everything To Know About Gabriela Moura
Does Andrea Mitchell Have Brain Tumor?
Truth About Jesse Watters Back Injury and Surgery
Lisa LaFlamme Health: Does She Have Brain Cancer or Surgery?
What Is FOX News Alex Hogan's Age and Is She Married?
Dan Abrams Illness: Is He Sick and Where Is He Now?
Who is Sam Slayre? All About The OnlyFans Model
Who is Sky Bri? All About The Instagram and OnlyFans Model
Does David Muir Really Have Face Cancer?
Who is Miku Martineau and How Old is She Today?
Who is Eva Savagiou and How Old is She?
Inside The Personal Life of Alvin Kamara's Girlfriend, Te'a Cooper?
Is Jessica Tarlov Married and Who Is Her Husband?
What Happened to Kate Yup and Was She Found Dead?
Is Monica McNutt Married, Who Is Her Husband and What Does He Do?


In Sweden, summer is about creating memories with the ones you love. Bring everyone together in a Volvo that looks good all year – the 2018 S60. Lease an S60 T5 Dynamic starting at $319 a month for 36 months ($3,499 cash due at signing). Or get up to $3,000 in allowances when you purchase an S60, now through July 2.
Reward yourself with an XC60, winner of the 2018 World Car of the Year and the 2018 North American Utility Vehicle of the Year. Lease a 2018 XC60 T5 AWD Momentum starting at $479 a month for 36 months ($3,429 cash due at signing). Or get up to $1,000 in allowances when you purchase.
Command the road in the XC90, a 2018 Consumer Guide Best Buy Award winner. Lease an XC90 T5 AWD Momentum starting at $539 a month for 39 months ($3,039 cash due at signing). Or get up to $3,000 in allowances when you purchase.
Hurry in to Isringhausen Volvo today to take advantage of these great deals.