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Brian,
Another excellent article. It
seems that we get caught in a kind of timeless and tiresome orthodoxy that has
no sense of an orderly development or growth. Your
articles make clear that there was an order to the development of the industries
in the U.S. They were both, competitive within the states, but
protected from the rest of the world that would have devoured the infant
organizations. They made the same self-preserving decisions
that were like the decision not to help the French in their revolution
after the French came here to help us in ours. The issue was
survival. What about France and the American loans after WW
II? Too often it seems a simple issue of who has the power to make
countries like Argentina and Yugoslavia toe the
mark.
For me, the answer is that countries have the
right to exist for the sake of their people. I've been
listening to all of these various theories about things and so I've decided to
put some of the definitions of political formulas that I use with my students on
the list as well. Following is a short article on
Liberalism by Oxford Professor Brendan O'Leary. So many of
those in corporate power today represent themselves as "objective" and glamorize
private initiative and denigrate government while they are neither immaculately
neutral economically and often to their shame are not racially neutral
either. In practice, they have a predilection for purchasing private
prosperity at the price of public squalor. As Steven
Holmes a NYU Law professor puts it so elequently, that they enforce their
principles "not so much across the board as a selective defunding
of public institutions.....Their strategy is fairly simple: to fortify the
castle of the strong, it helps to enfeeble the siege equipment of the
weak."
In December I participated in a Binding Arbitration
for a member of our community who was protesting the loss of his 25 year job
with one of the large Media corporations in town. Because he is
Indian he was known commonly as "Chief Two Dogs F..king", on his job as a TV
Technician. A name that he was always offended by and that made
it difficult in his relations with his coworkers during the 25 years of his
employment.
His marriage was done in a
traditional Cherokee manner where he announced to the world that he
was married and assumed the responsibilites including being father to a
child. The corporation claimed that no one knew that he was Indian,
even though they had given him a vulgar name that related to his
background. When he complained both union and corporation ignored
the complaints. He was given a not too subtle message that he should
be quiet if he wanted to keep his job. But he is enough of an expert
to have worked in the highest echelons of his field with one of the major
corporations.
When his marriage broke up they refused to
recognize the Cherokee marriage as valid and fired him for lying about being
married. I was called in to verify that it constituted a marriage
within our tradition, which I did. What followed was
a total misreading of the man's styles of communication, his affect and his
language. When I protested the two lawyers and judge who were
all from another "out" group that I know well, refused to believe that they were
reading his "affect" incorrectly. The Media lawyer
was particularly racist in his comments and denigrating about our traditions and
whether our religions were valid in the eyes of the
law. They weren't valid from 1883 to 1978 in spite
of the "Liberal" traditions of the immigrants to America. Along with
banning our religion it was also legal to secretly sterilize our women in
the government hospitals. But since the U.S. Congress made it
illegal to secretly sterilize Indian women and to oppress Indian religions in
the same year, 1978, our religions have had equal legal standing with the
younger religions that inhabit these shores. The
racist lawyer made Johnny Cochran, O.J. Simpson's lawyer, look pallid in
comparison to what I saw and heard in that Arbitration room.
I concluded that the process itself was flawed and
that I would not cooperate ever again in such a travesty.
Meanwhile that Cherokee man is 56 years old, has lost his job and is not likely
to get another given his age and the cost of his
seniority. There were four ethnic groups with their
own cultures represented at the arbitration. I have
seen three out of the four mis-read and mis-judged in my own home state of
Oklahoma where they are the outsiders. In each case I have
protested against such chauvinistic ethnocentricity. But where
do I go here, when they are the ones doing the oppressing against my own
people?
Today he called. The Binding Arbitrator
had agreed with the corporation and the man lost everything.
"Their strategy is fairly simple: to fortify
the castle of the strong, it helps to enfeeble the siege equipment of the
weak."
Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc.
LIBERALISMLiberalism (from Latin liberalis, 'of a free man or woman') is the name given to a diverse set of political doctrines committed to ensuring liberty and equality for individuals, within conditions of limited and representative government. Liberalisms, in principle, are politically secular, and embrace philosophical rationalism and individualism. Historically, liberalism originated in Western Europe and North America and expressed the political aspirations of those who argued for freedom from state and church control of thought and expression. Liberalism has always stood for tolerance -although liberals are not thereby obliged to display tolerance towards the illiberal, especially those who would seek to abolish liberal arrangements. Liberalism is grounded in the belief that there is no natural moral order which can be confidently known by states or churches; therefore individuals must be free to pursue their own conceptions of the good- consistent, of course, with enabling others to enjoy the same freedom. It follows that liberals support freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom from governmental 'intervention' in the conduct of private life, and that the institutions of church and state should be separated. These beliefs
explain why liberalism and democracy are compatible although historically
liberalism has not always been associated with a democratic
philosophy. Indeed it was not until the mid-19th century, in the
writings of the French analyst Alexis de Tocqueville and the Englishman John
Stuart Mill, that liberals came to believe that democracy, individualism,
liberty, equality and the rule of law could be
reconciled. However, this reconciliation of liberalism and
democracy had been anticipated in the constitutional republican writings of
French- and English-speaking authors of the Enlightenment -notably in
Rousseau's The Social Contract and in The Federalist
Papers, written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, which
helped shape the American Constitution. American liberals, drawing upon the
thought of the French philosopher Montesquieu and the English philosopher
Harrington, prescribed checks and balances, and a separation of powers, as ways
of preventing the potential for governments to become despotic. It
is possible to distinguish several types of liberalism. In the first
place there has been a division between utilitarians and rights-based
liberals. Utilitarians believe that moral and political philosophy
must be based on welfare-maximizing principles: government and public policy
must be conducted according to 'the greatest good for the greatest number', on
the supposition that each person is to be treated as equally
important. On this conception the aim of liberalism is to ensure the
maximum degree of want-satisfaction, or alternatively to minimize the degree of
suffering experienced by people. The utilitarian foundations of liberalism can
be found in the writings of David Hume, Jeremy Bentham and James
Mill. By contrast rights-based liberalism, associated
historically with John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill, emphasizes
that individuals have (or should have) inalienable rights or personal autonomy
which should not be transgressed by any other individuals, groups, or, most
importantly, the state even in pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest
number. In this perspective, government should be based upon the consent of
individuals who contract with one another to protect their rights; and
government should be limited to the protections of these fundamental rights and
to the provision of basic services which individuals agree cannot be provided by
their own actions. In the second
place we can distinguish between classical or economic liberals, enthusiasts for
the laissez faire doctrines of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and new or
social liberals, like T.H. Green and J.M. Keynes, who were influenced by
socialism. Economic liberals emphasize the centrality of
private property rights and the free commerce of individuals as the foundations
of a free and prosperous society; and reject governmental intervention, except
where it is absolutely necessary, on the grounds that governmental monopolies
lead to inefficiency and stagnation. Classical liberals believe in
maximizing liberty and minimizing government, and in Adam Smith's doctrine of
the 'invisible hand': if agents are left to pursue their economic self-interest
they will, unintentionally, produce the best economic consequences.
They also embrace methodological individualism. Economic s
liberals are also likely to see democracy as a threat to the operations of a
free market society because democracy permits people to organize
against the consequences of market competition and therefore seek to ensure that
constitutional provisions can prevent governments from violating property
rights. New liberals
or social liberals, by contrast, reject the minimalist role of the state
envisaged in classical liberalism. They have a more wide-ranging
conception of freedom, positive liberty, which rejects the classical liberal
assumption that greater government means correspondingly less
freedom. They have historically been influenced by the political
theories of the Englishman T .H. Green, which were in turn influenced by the
writings of the German philosopher Hegel, by the American educationalist John
Dewey, and by the theories of political economy developed by J.M.
Keynes. Common to social liberalism is the belief that advanced
industrial society requires substantial state intervention in order to offset
distortions produced by the free market; and a rejection of the extreme
individualism which sees no place for society, community or the state in forging
the conditions necessary for individuals to be free and equal. Social or modern
liberalism is a friend of benign big government; believing that the welfare
state can and should raise the moral and intellectual capacities of citizens,
and enable genuine equality of opportunity. This
division within what was liberalism has led classical or economic liberals to be
called 'conservatives' in English-speaking countries, while the label
of liberalism has been claimed by the new or social liberals, who have often
allied themselves with social democrats and socialists. On the European
continent, by contrast, liberalism generally retains its classical meaning.
In contemporary political theory, liberalism is criticized by 'communitarians' for having an impoverished, atomistic conception of human beings, which neglects the profound importance of community in shaping individuals' capacities and morality - a criticism common to conservatives, socialists and religious critics of liberalism. Robust defenders of liberalism maintain in reply that it is precisely the virtue of liberalism that it does not take for granted whatever prejudices or values may be bestowed by tradition or communities, but rather requires that they be capable of rational justification. This rationalist impulse explains why liberals are so often in the vanguard of movements to reform societies and states. Brendan O'Leary
I realize that for scholars and professionals in the fields of economics and and political theory, the above is hopelessly simple but I found it helpful in explaining some of the confusions for a non-professional (me) in the government and economic areas. This is from a helpful reference volume that I picked up on a remainder table at Barnes Noble for a little more than a "song" and have been having fun for the last few months looking up various subjects for reading in times of "repose" and "release." The name of the book is the Bloomsbury Guide To Human Thought, Ideas that shaped the world. 1992 Kenneth McLeish editor. What do you think? I enjoyed learning about the history of the names Neo-liberal and Neo-conservative. It also helps me understand the position that Keith takes while still considering himself a Liberal. I always considered myself to be a Libertarian since I am an artist and believe in freedom of the individual and I taught in a Summerhill School for a while. However the nurture versus genetic issues that my type of Libertarianism depends upon, the Libertarianism of practice by people like Sir Herbert Read and A.S. Neill who resembled the educational principles of my culture and represented doorways for me into Western thought from my own culture, bears little resemblance to the elitist wealth of the Cato Institute and the Koch family. Cato is the pseudo Libertarian Institute started by the Koch family, which basically doesn't want any type of government that will charge them anything for what they have taken out of the ground for little but the effort to do so. (Oil) I believe in Liberty but I also believe in community and responsibility. What do you think? Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
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Title: FWD: US Fueled Argentina's Economic Collapse
- FWD: US Fueled Argentina's Economic Collapse Brian McAndrews
- Ray Evans Harrell
