Dr. Borcks lecture on love and friendship in relation to postmodern politics was a very refreshing perspective that we have yet to see in this class.  When we discuss love and desire in this course and the coupled one that took place last semester we normally discussed these "issues" in the context of art, literature, and personal relations. When discussing love and desire we have put a strong emphasis on the image of the other created to ultimately fill a void in the self, however Dr. Borcks research brings to light the different kinds of love and pondered by Plato and it put a stronger emphasis on our concept of the other and where it comes from and why we can either love it or be threatened by it. While I'm sure most people, much like myself found the work of Carl Schmidt hard to stomach his principle piece, the concept of the political, brought to light that the other can fall into two categories: The friend and the enemy. While Schmidts points on this dichotomous relationship were valid I felt he put far too much of an emphasis on the enemy and the meaning of it, without developing the idea of the friend much at all. From one view point I can understand that defining one through knowing the other is a perfectly acceptable way of understanding a concept however in this case he fell very short only because the issue is so complex. When Dr. Borck discussed the view point of naming the enemy says something about ones self and that by doing so a fraternal kinship is created with the enemy due to a certain kind of common ground likeness it really struck a cord with me. This begins to enter the area of questioning that revolves around what is the opposite of love, the first answer is always hate, however from my experiences when asked to define hate we say that it is the opposite of what we love. Therefore the two halves share a strong connection, somewhat like a mirrored image, essentially the same yet the complete opposite and this is where our hate of the enemy is born. That fact that we see all of the faults we wish to see fulfilled within the beloved exaggerated and exposed in the "hated" only makes us resent them more, its like a magnifying glass for imperfections. To bring it back to more of "Schmidt" styled answer think about the world political situation, as a world super power the US has a habit of wanting to correct and develop other nations, mostly ones with poor infrastructure and a unfairly governing body, but why is this? according to this theory we wish to do that because we can identify with the nation, we were there once and we refuse to be there again. By fearing a return to some sort of totalitarian regime and the decay of all we have worked for we try and fix these problems when we see them in other nations, out of some sort of disdain and hatred for the ruling body because it reflects what we never wish to be. On the other hand we have our allies, the other world powers with stable economies and fair ruling systems that we wish to best be and by being among their ranks we feel better about ourselves. The fraternal kinship that is commonly associated with the allies also works strongly for our relationships with our enemies because when taken out of our everyday concept of brotherly love it also encompasses brotherly resentment and brotherly competition.