Hi Ham, > I don't like to use this forum for political debates, especially as Platt is > so much better at it.
I appreciate the compliment, Ham, but you have the knack of getting to the root of today's political problems with a few succinct words, as in your insights here. > 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. Yes. America is now on a downward slide back to tribalism. It may be that Pirsig has also seen the trend, prompting him to write the following: "My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all. God, I don't want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There's a place for them but they've got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. We've had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it's just about depleted. Everyone's just about out of gumption. And I think it's about time to return to the rebuilding of this American resource...individual worth. There are political reactionaries who've been saying something close to this for years. I'm not one of them, but to the extent they're talking about real individual worth and not just an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they're right. We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We really do." Robert M. Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I believe Pirsig pays greater respect to individualism than you believe and have made the case in a number of previous posts. But, your concise analysis of the present political situation is dead on. Thanks. Regards, Platt 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/
