Emperor Nicholas II was a great man and a weak leader. This is a pernicious combination. He was almost fanatically religious.
This is a good term -- it is something that I have thought about but have not yet put in the right words. This pathological obsession with the past is something that I felt in myself when I was in the little town of Tobolsk in Siberia. It was historically the center of the Siberian government and is a center of true Russian culture. It is also the town where Emperor Nicholas the II lived out his final days before he was sent to Yekaterinburg for the atrocious assasination of his family, his servants, and himself, and it shows. The people joke that they are proud to live in a city that did not kill the Emperor. The town also has connections to the Old Believers, a religion I have become fascinated by, so it was a very interesting trip. Anyways, I cannot agree that this antiquarianism is not always destructive. If anything, many countries need to turn to their roots -- not to their historical idols, but to the historical achievements and misdemeanors of their people.
This is an interesting idea that the podcast pushed me to. It is incredibly tough to achieve anything of value in a four-year presidential term. This will, however, be debunked in my next point -- this "moving average" of politicians is one of the greatest advantages of the American system.
This is a good quote, and it is almost correct, but I think there is a crucial element missing when I look at the means of those with whose ends I do not agree. (Did I phrase this right?) They probably feel the same. Perhaps the problem lies with the fact that there should be a sort of moving average of viewpoints that smoothes out the extremists to the point where they are irrelevant. This is something that the US has very much succeeded at creating -- in most other countries, even ones with strong institutions, policies change dramatically when different leaders or parties are in power. This is not the case in the US.