[Krimel]: > I think it is wrong to see hidden political ideology behind every bush. > It smacks of paranoia. The "egalitarian" mindset, such as it is, > emerged from the abandonment of the racist mindset that preceded it. > I don't see how postmodernism connects to collectivism even > tangentially. Perhaps you could explain that.
I don't like to use this forum for political debates, especially as Platt is so much better at it. But this issue has gone beyond politics and is influencing the MoQists' perspective of morality, cultural history, social justice, individualism, and even the metaphysics itself. The egalitarian movement began in the U.S. in the aftermath of the Great Society (c. 1964), and its effects on governance, academia, social legislation, and journalism have radically changed America's values. Children today are taught that Democracy means "social equality" rather than individual freedom. Our nation has allowed itself to be intimidated by an alien culture on the premise that discrimination is a bad word. Last week the head of the Islamic Society of North America demanded that Sen. John McCain stop using the word "Islamic" to describe the terrorists, while the Canadian-born journalist Mark Steyn is awaiting trial before the Canadian and British Human Rights Commission for the crime of "hate speech" for writing a book warning against the dangers of Islam overwhelming Europe. In Britain, non-Muslims are being banned from public swimming pools during prayer time. It's interesting that radical Islam places little value on the individual who, in this country at least, was traditionally respected above the tribe or collective group. But America's educational system has mandated that schools teach third-world cultural values as equal to those of the Free World. This is all part of modern liberalism, of course, whose agenda is to redistribute wealth through entitlements and welfare programs that will transform entrepreneurial capitalism into collective socialism. It's no coincidence that sociologists, authors, and film-makers see this as an opportunity to exploit 'political correctness' in terms of collectivism. They play down the individual and extoll the masses under the banner of "progressive reform". Philosophers like Pirsig have joined the trend by positing subjectivity as a myth and portraying man and his intellectual faculties as products of biological and social evolution. Ideas, values, principles and concepts are no longer credited to the individual but are defined as levels or patterns of some collective intelligence, force, or cosmic realm. And so on. You may call my concern about the postmodern mindset "paranoia", but you can't deny the current worldview that I've described. I've witnessed the transformation of society for three-quarters of a century now, and it's enough to convince me that we may have already passed the point of no return. Cheers, Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
