The cultural contradictions of democracy : political thought since September 11 / John Brenkman.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Political thought in the fog of war -- War and democracy -- Hobbes versus Kant? -- Leviathan -- The neoconservative illusion -- The frailty of human affairs -- Crises of the republic -- The argument -- Seized by power -- Death and the governor of Texas -- The new American exceptionalism -- The cold warrior myth -- Kant with Arendt -- Targeting Iraq -- Al Qaeda and ultimate ends -- A grammar of motives -- The imagination of power -- State of exception -- Arendt versus Agamben -- Schmitt and Hobbes -- Decision and covenant -- The ordeal of universalism -- September 11 and fables of the left -- First response -- Multilateral ambivalence -- Terrorism as symptom -- Chomskian certitudes -- Hardt and Negri's Empire -- The multitude and prophecy -- Iraq : delirium of war, delusions of peace -- The idealism of means -- The idealism of ends -- Neither left nor right -- The Atlantic misalliance -- Diplomatic intrigues and political truths -- Repudiations of the UN left and right -- The Hobbesian nightmare : occupied Iraq -- The ordeal of universalism -- Democracy and war -- Postnational cosmopolitanism versus liberal nationalism? -- Kant with Hobbes -- Habermas's Agon with Schmitt -- Hobbes with Kant -- Europe, or, the empire of rights -- Islam's geo-civil war -- Global neoliberal religious conservatism? -- No exit -- Conclusion: Prelude to the unknown -- Ideas and errors -- Arendt with Berlin -- Liberty without democracy versus democracy without liberty? -- Democratic striving and sectarian mobilization -- Untimely meditation.