Carl Schmitt argued that without a friend-enemy distinction there was no 'political'. Increasingly that division is rotating around the distinction between reason and irrationalism. Reason is often construed as a political outlet for liberalism.
Conservapedia recently challenged scientific data for a bacterial experiment. From the article:
Of course, that lack of understanding [scientific illiteracy] might be expected from someone who seems to believe that there are distinct conservative and liberal forms of science.
Still, you can sense the beginnings of a response to the fact that the situation may be spiraling out of Conservapedia's control.
When a contributor suggested the exchange was making the site look bad, the response indicated that the any problems could be dismissed as a case of biased perception: "What sort of Liberal defeatism are you bound up in, and why do you assume, without examining the facts of the matter, that this has not gone well?"
The division is not really scientific, it is political with the friend-enemy distinction being enunciated clearly.
Barry Ritholtz has a similar issue with how the economy is portrayed through media:
We have heard longstanding charges of liberal media bias, going all the way back to Spiro Agnew's Nattering Nabobs Negativism (September 11, 1970). Whatever validity that Trojan horse might have ever had has now jumped the shark. ...
Indeed, the bias is precisely the other way -- between reality and ideological absurdity
It is too easy for those immersed in irrationalism to discard reason, data or rational methods and explain away an inconvenient world-view. Under liberalism and the dominance of the individual as a political entity the debate, too-and-fro of politics is supposed to establish a principle of the least dissatisfaction within constitutionalism.
Liberalism is intended to diminish the foe within, or the enemy of the state, by elevating the individual above the state. The friend-enemy distinction allows for the justification and establishment of the state of exception where the state can act in a manner that is repugnant to the doctrine of inalienable political rights. Effectively placing an individual outside of the judicial order.
Arguably the danger in the friend-enemy distinction is that it aids an environment where the executive can claim emergency and operate under a state of exception.
Most Popular on South Sea Republic
The articles that have been viewed the most:
Most Popular Restaurants in Phoenix
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Most Popular Hikes in Arizona
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Alternate Australian Constitutions
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
Archives For South Sea Republic
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
Who Is Cam Riley

I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
Websites Worth Reading
Websites of friends, colleagues and of interest;