/2011/09/if-not-us-who/ THE FREE ASSOCIATION Fri, 13 Nov 2015 11:17:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.3 /2011/09/if-not-us-who/#comment-1731 Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:11:06 +0000 http://freelyassociating.org/?p=1154#comment-1731 Thanks for this clarification on the source of the quote, Paul. Though I am a little bit embarrassed: I think I should’ve known this.

]]> /2011/09/if-not-us-who/#comment-1730 Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:19:15 +0000 http://freelyassociating.org/?p=1154#comment-1730 Interesting reflection. I would like to point out that Reagan’s “if not us, who?” is a version of the old maxim, “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?” (as referenced in the title of Primo Levi’s “Si non ora, quando?”). Which is, itself, a paraphrase of a saying of a much older “great communicator”, Rabbi Hillel, in the form “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am only for myself, what am ‘I’? And if not now, when?”. Of course, perhaps that middle question is one Reagan and his neoliberal cronies were less exercised by.

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