THIS WE MUST PARSE...
-----Original Message----- From: "David B. Shemano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Jul 2, 2004 6:19 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Sowell "Traditional justice, at least in the American tradition, involves treating people the same, holding them to the same standards and having them play by the same rules." ___________________ Here Shemano proves that Sowell is indeed a hack. Taking an advertising slogan, i.e. American tradition, fair play, equal standards, which in the real history of the US has had exactly nothing to do with the development of its capitalist economy, and designating it as the real history, the real freedom, the real economy. That's what hacks do. I always find Hegel's definition of liberalism "A philosopy of the abstract that capitulates before the world of the concrete" so appropriate for dealing with hack theories, although I might change it to read "...that covers up for the world of the concrete." Can anyone looking at the real history of capitalist economic development find an American tradition that coincides with Sowell's hackery? Where is the fair play? In Slavery? In theeExtermination of the indigenous peoples? The NYC anti-draft riots? In the fraud and brutal exploitation accompanying the development of the railroads. How about Plessy v. Ferguson? How about in the assaults upon workers, organized privately and through the state against workers trying to organize for better wages? Where is the equal treatment? In the discrimination in employment. In strike-breaking? ____________________ . "Cosmic justice tries to make their prospects equal. One example: this brouhaha about people in the third world making clothing and running shoes -- Kathie Lee and all that. What's being said is: Isn't it awful that these people have to work for such little rewards, while those back here who are selling the shoes are making such fabulous amounts of money? And that's certainly true. But the question becomes, are you going to have everyone play by the same rules, or are you going to try to rectify the shortcomings, errors and failures of the entire cosmos? Because those things are wholly incompatible. If you're going to have people play by the same rules, that can be enforced with a minimum amount of interference with people's freedom. But if you're going to try to make the entire cosmos right and just, somebody has got to have an awful lot of power to impose what they think is right on an awful lot of other people. What we've seen, particularly in the 20th century, is that putting that much power in anyone's hands is enormously dangerous. It doesn't inevitably lead to terrible things. But there certainly is that danger." _______________________ Once again Shemano shows that Sowell is a hack, obscuring reality by pretending to apply simple rational analysis and then inflating the simplistic analysis as profound historical insight. Everybody play by the same rules vs. enormous power? Exactly what and how would you get any and everyone to play by the same rules when the rules themselves are a function of enormous power. Has Sowell ever seen a maquilladora? Or a clothing factory? Has he ever seen workers in food processing plants, slaughtering, preparing chickens? You cannot get the owners of these plants to abide by even a minimum set of rules regarding health or safety, or even fire codes, much less rules that might be "fair." And putting that much power in anyone's hands is enormously dangerous? We are not talking about one person here, again Sowell distorts, and I would say deliberately, the social organization of classes, with individual corruption, arbitrariness, etc. as if those qualities were innate dangers of the human being and not historical expressions of the needs of property and class. ______________________________ Later in the interview, there is this exchange: "I notice that in New York liberal circles, people generally prefer arguing over ideals to discussing what might work. Being on the side of the angels. Being for affordable housing, for instance. But I don't know of anybody who wants housing to be unaffordable. Liberals tend to describe what they want in terms of goals rather than processes, and not to be overly concerned with the observable consequences. The observable consequences in New York are just scary. " _________________________ More hackery. Creating the mythical New York liberal circle, (he left out Jewish) as the well-meaning but ultimately destructive engine of anti-freedom. What a load. What liberals? Doing what? How does this account for the social changes in housing stock, the real deterioration in living standards after 1973; the explosion in single parent working women families below the poverty line after 1979. This faux erudition pretending to be pithy insight is nothing but the William F. Buckley short course in pseudo analysis. And for those of you who don't know, some 30 years ago, "Three Dollar Bill" Buckley agreed to an SEC directive banning him from holding office in a public compay due to swindling shareholders and partners in his own little experiment in entrepreneurial capitalism.
