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The author describes Thomas Jefferson's life from his birth to his death. The paper focuses on his place & role in the creation & the formation of the US & the hardships accompanying that process. Multiple links of Thomas Jefferson with the European political scene of his time are depicted. Adapted from the source document.

The great story of don Quijote is the first novel in the literary West which attempts to restore the lost gestures (of mercy, chivalry, generosity, morality, & politicality as common interest), or rather bring them within the range of remembrance of the new epoch. Or, in the words of G. Agamben, "it tries for the last time to evoke that which threatens to elude it forever." The insanity of the epoch is manifest primarily through the insanity related to "loss of control over the gestures"; thus a demented gesticulation with absolute gestures of power becomes a universal symptom. It is precisely to this insanity of his time that the insane don Quijote responds with imagined or imaginary pure gestures of pure chivalry. This is the code of don Quijote's insanity: everyone claims that he alone is insane, but no one is aware that they themselves have fallen into the trap of insanity. The historical events testify to this fall into insanity, to the forgetting of every genuine chivalrous gesture, first & foremost towards adversaries, women, children, the elderly & the politically deprived. The end of religious tolerance is connected with the collapse of chivalrous idealism. The unhappy or lost mankind has lost its gestures of chivalry, morality & politicality, & this is the hour of the cruel world of outright political violence. The center of this world of dismay is the court as "the court of death," as the image of "evil giants" & "colossuses" which it sends forth from its deadly womb as the sole life-forces. Presently the court spreads the seed of wizardry as the seed of death to all corners of the world, as well as all arbitrary powers, from wizarding to nuclear, both in the present & in the future. Adapted from the source document.

The question of how the identity of a political party can be transformed not only ideologically & politically, but also conceptually, is one that preoccupies Croatian political elites, as well as observers of the postwar political scene in Southeastern Europe, where labels such as Right & Left no longer have the same relevance they once did. The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) has undergone a similar transformation since the death of Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, particularly as it has had to come to terms with the diminution of its status as the Croatian party par excellence. A key question for the party membership is whether the organization can overcome its recent past (marked by nationalism & war) & reify itself as a democratic political party along the lines of conservative Christian Democratic parties throughout Europe. 14 References. A. Siegel

The author's starting point is the assumption that the public is essentially political & also indispensable for democratic polity. After a brief analysis of the notions related to the concept of the public in different traditions, the author offers three essential elements for its formation: the liberal freedoms as a prerequisite of public life, the unseverable link between the public & democracy, & the legitimation & the control of power by means of the public. The public has a decisive role in all the functions of the state by ensuring three things: the legislature aspires to the public good, the public controls the parliament & government, & the court decisions are overt. In contemporary society the public sphere is safeguarded by parties, associations, trade unions, electronic media & the press in the sense that they prevent the parties in power to lead arcane politics. In the end, the author champions the idea of a proper distinction between the private & the public sphere, since the total public would mean the death of freedom-loving democracy. 6 References. Adapted from the source document.

The essay discusses the orientations for preventing the slide toward apartheid States. Beginning with the phenomenology of present mass displacements, it asks: are non-citizens people, and what are the limits of popular sovereignty? Is freedom possible if a good part of denizens is a partly free group? Five concatenated axioms are posed: that 1. the right to hospitality (eventually, citizenship) is a central human right); 2. each State -- or analogous community -- should give all its denizens the maximum possible of citizen rights; 3. our value focus ought to be on immigrant policy and on integration; 4. the status of "unfree labourers" refuses the principle of "one person, one vote"; 5. "no taxation without representation." The long-run alternative is wars and terrorism or civil cohabitation. This would include a foreign economical policy of "co-development", and no participation in wars (except in a present aggression against Europe). If capitalism today condemns a growing majority of humans to psycho-physical misery and premature death, then we may be facing apartheid and global civil wars. Adapted from the source document.

The essay discusses the orientations for preventing the slide toward apartheid States. Beginning with the phenomenology of present mass displacements, it asks: are non-citizens people, and what are the limits of popular sovereignty? Is freedom possible if a good part of denizens is a partly free group? Five concatenated axioms are posed: that 1. the right to hospitality (eventually, citizenship) is a central human right); 2. each State -- or analogous community -- should give all its denizens the maximum possible of citizen rights; 3. our value focus ought to be on immigrant policy and on integration; 4. the status of "unfree labourers" refuses the principle of "one person, one vote"; 5. "no taxation without representation." The long-run alternative is wars and terrorism or civil cohabitation. This would include a foreign economical policy of "co-development", and no participation in wars (except in a present aggression against Europe). If capitalism today condemns a growing majority of humans to psycho-physical misery and premature death, then we may be facing apartheid and global civil wars. Adapted from the source document.

The Partnership for Peace (PfP), created by NATO in Brussels in 1994, was an integral part of the Clinton administration's foreign policy toward Europe, based on the premise of a strong, viable NATO & democratic, US-friendly Europe. The military, political, & economic advantages the creation of PfP presented to the US are pointed out. Due to the Balkan War & Franjo Tudman's refusal to accept the Dayton agreement, Croatia was denied a PfP membership. However, following the Croatian president's death, his successors were eager to embark on the process of democratic changes in their country & thus please the Clinton administration by meeting its conditions for PfP membership, including (1) the acceptance of the Dayton agreement vis-a-vis the territorial integrity of Bosnia & Herzegovina, (2) cooperation with the International Tribunal in The Hague, (3) the facilitation of the return of war refugees, & (4) concrete steps on the democratization of the regime (free mass media, free elections, changes in the electoral law). It is noted that Croatia was accepted into the PfP to show other Balkan states, especially Serbia, that there are rewards for going democratic & showing willingness to cooperate with the West. Since NATO does not plan to increase its membership soon, PfP seems to be, for the time being, the principal format within which the security of Croatia & peace in the Balkans can be preserved. Z. Dubiel

The author analyzes the classical postulate of Hobbes' political theory, starting from the negation of man's social character, with which Hobbes broke from the Aristotelian tradition. The author also shows through Hobbes' theory that the category of fear is a crucial notion in modern political science. During the later development of political thought, however, the category of fear remained outside the main scope of interest of political theory, it was pushed on the margins of theoretical study & was thrown out of the field of politics. The author stresses that power, & the desire for it is Hobbes' political constant, seeing the thesis on power as one Hobbes' most significant politico-sociological or even anthropological theses. It could also be said that in Hobbes' model, fear produces power, namely, that power, to use the contemporary language of psychoanalysis, is a compensation for fear & insecurity. The author also shows that Hobbes built his entire political theory on conclusions which he drew from the analysis of an extreme situation, the situation of civil war, i.e. war of all against all. His doctrine of the natural state is based one the experience of civil war. People want the same things, of which there is not enough to go around, & so they become enemies. The author draws the conclusion that the superior sovereignty of Leviathan came about in the following categorical way: instinct for self-preservation -- fear of violent death -- distrust -- a conflict of all against all -- social contract -- sovereign power of the state of Leviathan. References. Adapted from the source document.

The author sees Schmitt's understanding of the political as a division into adversary groups that implies the possibility of physical liquidations of people, based on the conditioning of the political by the taxonomy of liberal thought, whose most consistent manifestation is the age of technology of the 20th century. According to Schmitt, contemporary liberalism understood as the age of technology represents an attempt at eliminating all the contentious issues of human survival through the faith in unlimited technological progress i.e. enabling communication by avoiding the issue of correctness at all cost. Based on Strauss' criticism of Schmitt, the author argues that Schmitt's concept of the political can be understood as the first step in the renunciation of such communication by revealing its disguised politicalness i.e. as a warning that avoiding the issue of correctness is the most dangerous response to it. In that case, however, the political as understood by Schmitt, by its logic aims to be eventually overcome, since its rationale beyond the age of technology lies exclusively in opening the space for asking the pertinent questions on the conditions & the goals of the survival of the human race. In the second part of the paper the author looks into the possibility that Schmitt's concept of the political, with Derrida's help, can be analyzed by using the concept of amity as its starting point. The enemy would be a figure of laying oneself open to death in the other, by which a friendly relationship is freed from its natural foundations & fraternization, retaining in amity a moment of a thoughtful decision for the other & preventing its degradation into a mere technique of cultivating friendship. References. Adapted from the source document.