I agree with this criticism of liberalism. What is left out is that they are parabolically "moon people". People who believe that understanding the other side and feeling their pain is OK in a society that has war as the root model for their system. The Moon parable of certain Native Peoples is a woman and is two faced. The dark of the moon is the reward she gets for being two faced. One side is of great beauty while the other is scarred from her lack of integrity. It is also the basis for the good guy/bad guy interrogation model of the fascists.
What is not said in all of this is that the problem is not simple failure to live up to the morality. But instead is a problem with the whole duality version of Democracy in left and right wing thought. The world is made up of many more versions of things than simple binary systems. The Aztecs had a binary system and look what it got them. There are 360 sides to every problem and that's just walking around it. If you count distances closer and further away from it then there can be hundreds of thousands of observations of great subtlety. With computers we can now explore all of these permutations. Instead we choose to think binary. Considering that the human is really capable of seven sided thinking, binary thinking is just plain old lazy thought. It creates group pathologies and the destruction of justice. REH On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 8:30 AM, Arthur Cordell <[email protected]> wrote: > Christopher Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has taught at > Columbia University, New York University, and Princeton University. He is > the author of "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" (2002), and "Empire of > Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle" (2009). Hedges > also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights > Journalism in 2002. He was a reporter for the NY Times for 15 years. > > The liberal class plays a vital role in a democracy. It gives moral > legitimacy to the state. It makes limited forms of dissent and incremental > change possible. The liberal class posits itself as the conscience of the > nation. It permits us, through its appeal to public virtues and the public > good, to define ourselves as a good and noble people. Most importantly, on > behalf of the power elite the liberal class serves as bulwarks against > radical movements by offering a safety valve for popular frustrations and > discontentment by discrediting those who talk of profound structural change. > Once this class loses its social and political role then the delicate fabric > of a democracy breaks down and the liberal class, along with the values it > espouses, becomes an object of ridicule and hatred. The door that has been > opened to proto-fascists has been opened by a bankrupt liberalism > > "The Death of the Liberal Class" examines the failure of the liberal class > to confront the rise of the corporate state and the consequences of a > liberalism that has become profoundly bankrupted. Hedges argues there are > five pillars of the liberal establishment - the press, liberal religious > institutions, labour unions, universities, and the Democratic Party-- and > that each of these institutions, more concerned with status and privilege > than justice and progress, sold out the constituents they represented. In > doing so, the liberal class has become irrelevant to society at large, and > ultimately, the corporate power elite they once served. > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > > -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
