Charles Brown writes: >> And , again, left/right are pretty simplistic slang >> words. David's repeated glee at finding cases that are hard to >> classify as left or right gives too much weight to slang terms as a >> basis for analyzing the real world.
I know you all are not going to believe me, but I am really not trying to score cheap debating points. I have no stake in the game and it matters not one whit to me whether Samuel Gompers is on the Left or the Right, or Mussolini was on the Left one morning and woke up on the Right the next. I truly am trying to understand a phenomena for no other reason than my intellectual curiosity. I am intellectually curious, for example, why, for example, Chavez has a greater personal affinity for Ahmadinehad and Mugabe than he does for George Bush, and why, for example, the usual Leftist would point to Cuba as a preferable social system than to say, Singapore, and why, for example, if you tell me your position on Israel I could predict your position on Honduras, and on and on. I am not interested AT ALL in discussing the merits of any of this. I am much more interested in thinking about and understanding the underlying root assumptions, ideologies, beliefs, etc. that give rise to the phenomena, not taking any simple explanation for granted, and asking why, why, why. Living in West LA, I have the intellectually fascinating experience of living in a community of individuals who would not for a Republican if their lives depended on it, but are very "conservative" and traditional in their personal lives. They are successful, entrepeneurial, etc. -- people who are the natural base of the Republican party in much of the country. Such people are usually incapable of rationally explaining why they would not vote for a Republican, usually mumbling something about abortion or the religious right if pressed. I find such things inherently interesting. David Shemano _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
