nihilism (uncountable)
- (philosophy) Extreme skepticism, maintaining that nothing has a real existence.
- (ethics) The rejection of all moral principles.
- (politics) (capitalized by protagonist Turgenev) A Russian anarchistic revolutionary doctrine (1860-1917) holding that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake, independent of any constructive program or possibility.
- The belief that all endeavors are ultimately futile and devoid of meaning.
- "…the band members sweat hard enough to earn their pretensions, and maybe even their nihilism" (rock critic Dave Marsh, reviewing the band XTC’s album Go)
- Contradiction (not always deliberate) between behavior and espoused principle, to such a degree that all possible espoused principle is voided.
- The deliberate refusal of belief, to the point that belief itself is rejected as untenable.
Joe Klein has an interesting article up at Time about the descent of the Republican party to swimming in the sewer.
Now its often brought up that the left had its crazies too-and the arguement is correct save for one fact that Klein highlights. In previous years, the loons did not have the keys to the car. Even during the 70’s when the Democratic party was very liberal. If the Blue Dog Democrats can get some more of their number elected-the Democratic party can save it self from its more extreme elements-at least moderate Democrats stand a better chance of being elected than their Republican counterparts:
An argument can be made that this is nothing new. Dwight Eisenhower tiptoed around Joe McCarthy. Obama reminded an audience in Colorado that opponents of Social Security in the 1930s "said that everybody was going to have to wear dog tags and that this was a plot for the government to keep track of everybody … These struggles have always boiled down to a contest between hope and fear." True enough. There was McCarthyism in the 1950s, the John Birch Society in the 1960s. But there was a difference in those times: the crazies were a faction — often a powerful faction — of the Republican Party, but they didn’t run it. The neofascist Father Coughlin had a huge radio audience in the 1930s, but he didn’t have the power to control and silence the elected leaders of the party that Limbaugh — who, if not the party’s leader, is certainly the most powerful Republican extant — does now. Until recently, the Republican Party contained a strong moderate wing. It was a Republican, the lawyer Joseph Welch, who delivered the coup de grâce to Senator McCarthy when he said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" Where is the Republican who would dare say that to Rush Limbaugh, who has compared the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler?