On the Importance of Not Seeing the Defects of Our Sytem as Its Essence
[On the thread "Another Dimension to the 'World Falling Apart' Piece," I posted a comment that I'd like to share more broadly. The occasion was one person's characterizing Lincoln as honest, and then another --Morley-- responding in this way:
you conceive Lincoln as being honest. In his most famous quote in the Gettysburgh address taught to millions of schoolchildren generation after generation, he states that the US was ‘conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" The Constitution on the other hand legalized not only slavery but the slave trade to increase it. IS that liberty and equality? Do you suppose Lincoln didn't know it? Is it necessary or permissible for political rhetoric to ignore or deny reality based truth?
Earlier in that thread, Morley had put forward some ideas about how the "liberal truth traditions" are antithetical to the recognition of the kind of wholeness I was speaking about in that essay at the beginning of the thread. I had not responded to his elaboration of that idea. But the ongoing tension remained between his pretty thorough rejection of the legitimacy and potential for good of the liberal ideal and the liberal system and my commitment to saving that liberal system and to rescuing that ideal from the illiberal dark forces that are threatening them. I describe that tension as "ongoing" because this has been a thread of interaction between him and me --publicly and privately-- since last fall.
And so in the context of all that I wrote a subtantial comment in response to Morley's brief challenge to Lincoln and his alleged honesty.
Here, a little further polished, it is.]
Response to Morley, who finds in Lincoln’s famous line that the United States was “‘conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” a grounds for challenging the honesty of Lincoln.
Here we see in a nutshell what I regard as being the central flaw in Morley’s view of the world around him (and around all of us) in the liberal American constitutional democracy.
Of course he is right that the Constitution’s handling of slavery detracts from the truth of the idea that the US was founded on ideas of liberty and equality. But what Morley does –again and again– is to take that flaw and make it the essence.
Morley knows history well enough to know that the thousands of years leading up to the Declaration of Independence (with the famous phrase about how “all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator” with rights, and the one about “the consent of the governed”) had very, very little of liberty and equality.
In that perspective, the founding of the United States was a huge step forward for liberty and equality. The big news about the American Constitutional democracy was not that it was flawed by its holding on to various residual elements of the unfree and inequitable world from which it arose. The big news is that the central idea behind it was a movement toward overcoming those terrible, long-ingrained injustices in civilization.
Yet as we see as recently as early this week, Morley considers the “liberal” ideals of the United States as wholly a facade, a falsehood glossing over the corruptions of power and wealth.
He is right to see those corruptions, like the plutocratic tendencies of our capitalist democracy. But it is a major error to see those corruptions as wholly discrediting the liberal ideas that our society’s plutocratic tendencies are always corroding.
He is right to see how power is very unequally distributed in America, despite the “one man, one vote” ideals that are enshrined in law and culture. But it is a major error to imagine that those liberal ideas enshrined in the Declaration of Independence are without real power and substance to shape the American experience over the past two-plus centuries.
Morley is right also to see in America’s systems for formulating and disseminating ideas and information a good deal of obfuscation and power-serving distortion. But it is a major error to conclude, as he routinely does here, that the American ideal of the search for the truth, of open inquiry, of good ideas defeating bad ones through the competition in the “marketplace of ideas” is just a fraud, and that it has not also functioned very well in many ways just as in the liberal dream.
Which of us is not imperfect EVEN IN THOSE AREAS THAT ARE OUR GREATEST VIRTUES? If Morley considers himself, say, an honest man, or a man who loves justice, or an ally of the oppressed, or one who speaks truth to power– all of which seem from my experience to be reasonably likely virtues for him justifiably to claim– would he think it just or truthful to characterize him as just the opposite of those things because one doubtless could point to particular ways in which –like the compromises over slavery in the American Constitution– Morley presumably also in some ways manifests dishonesty, or deceptiveness, or a willingness to enjoy the fruits of oppression, or a shrinking from speaking the truth to an unjust power?
It is unfair to see the shortcomings in the realization of the ideals as altogether nullifying the ways in which those ideals are real forces in the system (whether that system is a person’s character, or a nation).
For example, that line all men are created equal” penned in 1776, remained a powerful force in American culture, eventually eating through the ideology of slavery. That address that Lincoln gave at Gettysburg should not be seen as some gloss over the real dark truth about America but rather as a working toward the fulfillment of a genuine part of the American ideal. Lincoln has been described as effecting —in part with that speech—a kind of re-founding of America, working through the very contradiction that Morley has focused on in his brief critique of Lincoln.
Imperfect nation—but compared with what?
I have asked Morley on several occasions –here and elsewhere, in the context of the exchanges prompted by his repeated dismissals of the American system of liberal, capitalist democracy– to name other large-scale societies that are NOT built upon the liberal foundations that he despises and that have surpassed (or even matched) the level of decency and justice for the common man that have been achieved by liberal democracies in North America, Europe, and a few other places.
So far as I can recall, he’s not responded to that question on any of those occasions. But it would seem that in the absence of a plausible image of a better approach, the person who wants to help the world is obliged not to attack the best flawed system but to put his shoulder to the task of moving it toward a better fulfillment of its ideals.
I’ve had contact with lefties –back in the Bay Area in the late 60s–who thought Mao’s China was a Utopia of sorts. Their ideological forebears swooned for Stalin’s Soviet Union back in the 30s. And so on. The history of such illusions goes to show that “There are none so blind as those who will not see” is an equal opportunity problem among ideologists.
The world is filled with profound imperfection. What I love about Morley is that he’s passionate about wanting things to be better. But failing to discriminate between the good-but-flawed and the really-appalling is not how to make things better. And rejecting all that is flawed essentially puts one out of the game altogether, because there is nothing left.
The problem facing America now is not that it has all these long-standing flaws. The problem now is that the forces that advance and magnify those flaws have lately been winning the battle to shape the destiny of the country.
In order to form the United States, as Lincoln understood, those most aflame with the ideals of liberty and equality needed to make a deal with those whose lives were built upon the bondage and inequity of slavery. (Yes, I know, some of them —like Jefferson—were uneasily situated in both groups.) Was there any better option available in that time than to make the deal that was struck? I don’t know, but I’m willing to give our Founders the benefit of that doubt.
But nowadays, we are ruled by the spirit of the slavedriver, and meanwhile the better spirit of that founding vision of liberty and equality —the one that stood as an inspiration to peoples around the world from that era all the way up to those who fashioned Lady Liberty in Tienamen Square– has been attacked, shoved aside, stripped of much of its power.
It is hard for me to see how anyone can really help heal this problem who fails to recognize the importance of that spirit —the genuineness of its role in the American experiment– and who therefore refuses to ally himself with it.
July 22nd, 2006 at 6:39 pm
This post makes a point of enormous importance. U.S. misdeeds should not be seen as discrediting the principles to which centuries of Americans have generally agreed to cherish. The dishonorable behavior of some leaders says more about a weakness in the human character, as magnified by the power of those individuals who have risen to high office.
Actually Americans have never seriously disputed the high quality of these principles. On the contrary, it is precisely because the principles resonate in our hearts that unscrupulous leaders can use them to mislead us. So it is the problem of human leadership that should receive serious attention, ie., who rises to power, how and why.
Many on this website have sought to shift attention to “what should we do now,� and I believe that it is this leadership issue that offers the average progressive a real chance to contribute. We should give up quibbling about the imperfections of the people who want to advance progressive policies, and openly and avidly support them.
Why is it that, despite countless Republican transgressions and mistakes, Democrats seem to be getting so small an increase in public support. I say it’s because the media never has a good word to say about them, and neither do progressives. All I ever hear, from all corners of the political debate, is that the Democrats are inadequate. They are insufficiently hawkish or dovish, or too wimpy, or lacking magnetic leaders, etc. How should they step up when even progressives will not sing their praises?
Want to do something to make a difference? How about talking about the history of liberal accomplishments? How about empowering Democrats by pointing out the policies they want to install, and by forgiving their excessive caution and political calculation, given that they are up against a subtle and clever corporate-dominated media?
If I hear one more progressive tell me we need a third party, I’m going to scream. A third party will further split progressives, and even worse, it supports the position that there is little difference between the parties. That’s like saying that jaywalkers and murderers are about the same because they’re all law-breakers.
Democrats’ actions offer much to criticize, but let’s not. Let’s make a point to spreading the word that Democrats deserve support, or at least the benefit of the doubt, and privately hope that they will show, if in power again, that they’ve learned their lessons and want to make something great happen.
July 22nd, 2006 at 7:50 pm
Andrew–I strongly agree with what I take to be your main point–that our American ideals are something real regardless of the fact that our effectuation of them has been a work in progress in some ways and seems even more of an uphill battle right now. With respect, amen, bro, and I admire your eloquence.
I think you may have been a bit unfair to Morley on the use of the word “liberal.â€? From what I have seen looking only in the “Another Dimension..” thread, it appears to me that you, Morley, have been using something close to the current Republican version of the word “liberal,â€? which bears very little relation to what anyone I know who has ever described him/herself as a “liberalâ€? has ever really believed in. In one post you seemed to be repeating something that one published author–I don’t remember who at the moment–said the Bushites do, “They take their own faults and attribute them to us liberals.â€? http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=265#comment-6193
In another thread, you offered us the notion that “liberalsâ€? believe in a “welfare state.â€? http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=265#comment-6548 I refrain from taking attention away from what Andrew has written here by going into detail, but that is simply not a fair characterization, at least from current published writings I’ve read from those who refer to themselves as liberals or–more likely these days because “liberalâ€? has become a dirty word–progressives. The possible exception is that current self-styled “liberals” are advocating for univeral health insurance issue. I did not understand that you might have been referring to that specifically.
I do not assume that you have been intentionally misleading, Morley. I assume you are coming out of a mostly Republican environment in which the prevailing view of “liberalsâ€? is based on the misleading writings of Karl Rove. Karl Rove’s writings are quickly given to the Republican “talking heads,â€? disseminated through highly disciplined Republican organizations, and rephrased into books. I think you have simply believed too much of what you have heard and/or read about “liberalsâ€? from the writings of modern Republicans.
Let me respectfully suggest that you simply forego the use of the word “liberal� at all and refer to the words and writings of particular individuals. I will go further than I did in the previous thread and say that I think the word “liberal� has no commonly agreed meaning at all.
Andrew, again, this is a relatively small point, not meant to detract from …the Importance of Not Seeing the Defects of Our Sytem as Its Essence.
Relevant here, I think, to some of what Morley has said, is one of the major misleading Republican themes these days, that all politicians are the same, all corrupt. I strongly suspect that the purpose is to discourage the less organized Dems from turning out to vote. The more disciplined Republican organizations will bring their people out to vote.
Larry
July 22nd, 2006 at 8:03 pm
I believe that the intent of even those founding fathers who had slaves can be found in the fact that many of them freed their slaves at their death so that in death they could cleanse their souls of what they somewhat obviously felt was a contradiction in their lives with regard to to their ideals.
I find it hard to believe that anyone can read the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence and realize that although flawed, they provide the means to achieve a fairer, more just, liberal and equitable nation and civil environment. I believe that the Constitution is a live document, not a dead document and exists in the milieau of the society in which it is interpreted.
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:40 am
American Liberal constitutional Democracy is a noble quest, but Americans past and present have siezed upon this concept in a most self rightous way to preach their visions to the world at large, as if they are pupils in grade school who have not lived up to the school marm`s expections and are to be punished for their inattentiveness by military force. The fate of these dreamers is preordained, and they should be fearful: “Man is an ass if he go about to expound this dream.” (Shakespeare). …The American Dream!
July 23rd, 2006 at 11:09 am
James said: American Liberal constitutional Democracy is a noble quest, but Americans past and present have siezed upon this concept in a most self rightous way to preach their visions to the world at large, as if they are pupils in grade school who have not lived up to the school marm`s expections and are to be punished for their inattentiveness by military force.
I don’t understand the underlying purpose of your use of the word “liberal” in that statement James, so I will ignore it. If you think it’s really important you can of course explain.
Aside from that, I do disagree with you most emphatically by reason of your having omitted something that is most important.
Our government’s preaching has not been pure. It has been a mendacious and fraudulent cover for actions whose hidden but primary purpose has been economic control of the rest of the world for the benefit of the U.S. military-industrial complex and particularly for those who receive the most direct economic benefit from it. That fact has become and is becoming increasingly obvious to much of the world. There was a time when America had real recognition as a moral leader in the world–as a beacon of light. That time is now gone at least for now and for some time to come. What General Eisenhower warned us about has happened. But the fact that our ideals of honest elections, freedom of speech, and due process, for example, have been preached by our leaders at the same time that they have done their utmost to deny honest elections, freedom of speech, and due process both here and in the rest of the world does not reflect on those values in any way. The values themselves cannot be destroyed even by those who say one thing and do the opposite. And even if our leaders were sincere about caring that people live in societies where government was empowered, expected, and required to uphold and enforce those values, we have no right to impose those values on anyone outside our border just because we believe in them. We have the standards that we have because they were voluntarily adopted by people who were doing their best to prevent the tyranny they had been living under from arising in America. If we want to keep those standards and make them more real then we as individuals, alone and together, have to do whatever may be required to maintain them. They don’t stick by themselves. That’s what the founding fathers said, and they were right. If we are really going to lead the rest of the world as a country, then we will just have to to lead by example. We haven’t been doing a very good job at that lately, I’m afraid. Speak truth to power.
Larry
July 23rd, 2006 at 11:44 am
Thanks for correcting me; I`m a cretin at best. Americans have missed the boat because they do not engage in day to day engagement of the process to create the basis for a functioning Democracy. The Government, right now is, for the most part, dysfunctional. The public must play some role in determining policies; but you are excluded from the political arena. The repercussions are ominous `cause you just don`t get it: you can`t. Remember, you are an animal! “Man is a politcale animal.” (Aristotle). Why can`t you get it? It`s the camp you grew up in!
July 23rd, 2006 at 1:41 pm
James: Thanks for correcting me; I`m a cretin at best.
Larry: Cretin: “a) One afflicted with a congenital abnormal condition marked by physical stunting and mental deficiency and caused by severe thyroid deficiency; b) a person with marked mental deficiency.” Well, I suspect you’re really not one of those. If you are you have my sympathy. You may be mentally deficient, but it’s probably not marked. (just kidding
James: Americans have missed the boat because they do not engage in day to day engagement of the process to create the basis for a functioning Democracy. The Government, right now is, for the most part, dysfunctional.
Larry: I would say we have the basis, meaning our Constitution and our developed body of law. I won’t argue with your statement that the government is for the most part dysfunctional right now. Americans have failed, individually and collectively, to force our government to maintain and improve functionality.
James: The public must play some role in determining policies; but you are excluded from the political arena.
Larry: Being “excluded from the political arena,” whatever you might possibly have in mind with that, does not end it. Study Martin Luther King, for one example. (Man oh man I hated it when the military industrial complex flew those jets over his birthday celebration or whatever it was not long ago. I imagine someone might have been thinking, “Now he’s really dead.” :-7
James: The repercussions are ominous `cause you just don`t get it: you can`t. Remember, you are an animal!
Larry: Regardless of whether we want to call ourselves animals or not, we have the power to make decisions to control our own behavior and to carry out our decisions. See Man’s Search for Meaning by concentration camp survivor Dr. Viktor E. Frankl. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080701429X/sr=8-2/qid=1153682512/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-4897535-0411252?ie=UTF8
James: “Man is a political animal.� (Aristotle). Why can`t you get it? It`s the camp you grew up in!
Larry: I am not familiar with the Aristotle reference or its context in the original Greek. As far as English is concerned the definitions of the word “political” that appear most relevant in my dictionary are: “of, relating to, or concerned with the making as distinguished from the administration of governmental policy; involving or charged or concerned with acts against a government or a political system.” Based on that I would not argue about man being a political animal. You might want to check and see whether there is another definition that you consider more relevant and otherwise explain more about what you yourself consider the significance of the statement to be.
Peace.
Larry
July 23rd, 2006 at 3:24 pm
James–Please forgive me for responding the way I did to your feeling stupid. It was never my intent for you to feel stupid. I trust you’ll get over it.
Larry
July 23rd, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Larry, Andy has always been honest and argued fairly over the past year or so, in my experience, but the concept of ‘liberal’ has so many meanings that it is not possible to deliniate them all precisely in short pieces. For operative purposes I mean by it what you and Andy are.
And I tend to agree with Andy’s critique of my casual comment off your’s about Lincoln. And also that the Constitution, with all its class and racial bias, was progressive at the time. A step forward, even a great step forward, if you wish.
And Andy is quite right, I cannot claim that any national power system currently existing is one that I would identify with; I think they are all bad. They are all class-based, and serve the interests of the ruling class rather than the power interests of the people.
However, I claim that at the present time in history, the US power system is the worst enemy of the people of the world, and the worst enemy of the American people. It is the greatest threat to destroy us all by its increasing the probability of the nuclear war and its prevention of the world from destroying our traditional climate. Nor am I alone in this belief; Chomsky’s last book, Failed States, argues implicitly the same thing.
Andy claims that the major problem is the Bushites, and this is our fundamental disagreement. I claim the fundamental problem is military capitalism, and this would not be eliminated by electing another president to office.
In his lastest book, ‘The Sorrows of Empire” Chalmer Johnson maintains that the US is largely already a military dictatorship, with 2000 military bases around the world, half in the US. The US power system is substituting military globablization for economic globalization as it loses economic power, and the threat is a nuclear war with China in the coming decades, as another writer indicated in ‘War, Peace and War.”
The historical increase in the centralization of the power of capitalism, predicted by Marx, has overwealmed the institutions of democracy, which were largely fraudulent to begin with. In 1992, William Grider wrote a book called ‘Who Will Tell The People”, claiming, cogently, that the US was no longer a democracy, and all the juice had been sucked from its democratic institutions. What remained was merely dead forms. Most Americans agree, that’s why they don’t vote.
The Democratic Party has turned its back on the working class, essentially disinfranchizing them, and me, (although I vote anyway, God knows why). Military capitalism has become a bipartisan policy, although we tend to find the Gops more dispicable, forcedful, greedy, power lusting and evil. This terminal capitalism is not an aberration of liberal power systems, or at least the American power system, but central to its functioning. As it is to the Israeli power system. And, in my opinion, will eventually effect all liberal power systems.
What we need is a revolution. You may ask what will we put in place of what we have? I don’t know. But if the people are enlightened and mobilized, and allowed access to the mass media, they will eventually think of something.
Why do I think so? Faith. You have to have faith. But my faith is not in the gods, but in people.
July 23rd, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Response to Morley, who (almost) ends his message by saying, ” What we need is a revolution. You may ask what will we put in place of what we have? I don’t know. But if the people are enlightened and mobilized, and allowed access to the mass media, they will eventually think of something.”
I appreciate this message of yours overall. This ending thought, though, is one that I find dangerous, and I wonder why you don’t as well.
From our previous exchanges, I know you to be a fan of THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES, a book about how the lack of governance in a civilized system creates an anarchy out of which there is a selection for the reign of power, which is not very well correlated with the human good.
That is true not only in the intersocietal system, in which “might makes right” has predominated since the beginnings of civilized history. It also pertains to the intrasocietal system– i.e. to what arises within a society in the absence of a very well-constructed system to regulate the play of power.
In my thirty years of talking about THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES, I have found first Lebanon (late 70s and the early 80s) and then Somalia (90s) useful as a metaphor for the larger system of civilization: in each case, the breakdown of order leads to the dominance of warlords.
“If the people are enlightened and mobilized…they will eventually think of something” is like hoping for a cellophane barrier to hold back a hurricane. It is like hoping for a miracle.
All of history tells us that such hopes are in vain. What gives you any reason to believe that –in the absence of the kind of rule of law, and checks and balances, embodied in our Constitution, to contain and channel power, and to use power to nullify power, and thus to give genuine human choice a chance at prevailing over the selection for power– your revolution will produce anything other than one more of history’s many nightmares?
Take a look at the French Revolution, where people who put “faith in the people,” and in Rousseau’s “general will” ended up with the Reign of Terror and then with Napolean and his endless imperial wars in the name of democracy.
Take a look at the Russian Revolution, where the more benign and humane of the revolutionaries were used and then liquidated by the Bolsheviks, ushering in an era of tyranny in which tens of millions perished in the wars and imposed starvations and the gulags.
God spare America your revolution based on some faith in what people will “figure out” on the fly, and try to execute in the absence of any overarching structure to contain the play of naked power.
July 23rd, 2006 at 6:31 pm
Yes, mellenia from now humans will probably make the best of us appear as cretins; or not. There are many things I wish I could do better – the three R`s, photograpic memory etc. – alas, that is not to be. That`s what people like Andy are for; to lean on. The political process, to be functional requires participation. Representative Democracy places the resposibility on the members to serve our best interests: but will they, or have they? The evidence is clear and Katrina found them out: when times get tough, it`s every man and woman for themself! Aristotle refers to our instintive response to participate in the governing process; it comes naturally, like a cow chewing it`s cud. And that is where we are failing; failing to act, and exercising our free will to pursue the course of folly. That is when our Representatives give us what we ask for and deliver an empty plate. Paticipatory Democracy on the other hand is guided by the public with the reps serving as they should. The way it is now, the electorate has handed power from the people to the servants: “The greater the power, the more dangerous is the abuse.” (Edmund Burk)
July 23rd, 2006 at 7:01 pm
I didn’t mean to almost imply that we needed a revolution. I meant to state it outright. We need a revolution; a dangerous, disagreeable, and no doubt bloody upheaval that will destroy the US power system and install some other kind. There is no other solution for the military dictatorship that is being imposed on the American people. And the people of the world.
In the last two centuries there have beenmore revolutions in nation-states than ever before in history. They occur when the inequality of class power conditions an economic inequality that can only be solved by the overturning of the ruling class and the power structure that supports it. The bourgeois revolutions, in England, France and the Netherlands, put the capitalist class in power, breaking the power of the fuedal landowning class. The socialist revolutions destroyed the capitalist class as well, which was later reinstalled.
What is needed historically is an anti-capitalist revolution that places the dispowered in power; the working class, the racial manorities, women and gays, and the young.If there is to be a market economy, it must be strongly controlled by a power system in control of the population.
July 23rd, 2006 at 8:02 pm
Morley, let me say at the beginning that I pretty much agree with you.
Morley: Larry, Andy has always been honest and argued fairly over the past year or so, in my experience, but the concept of ‘liberal’ has so many meanings that it is not possible to deliniate them all precisely in short pieces. For operative purposes I mean by it what you and Andy are.
Larry: There are some extremely important things that Andrew and I have disagreed about. It seems very clear to me that he and I don’t hate each other, but we do still have some major disagreements. So I have to ask you to leave me out of the “liberal” category. To me it just is not worth diddling over the concept anyway. I do not recall once having used the word here except to question the meaning as the word was being used by one or another particular individual. Working out some agreed definition is not a project that holds any interest for me.
Morley: And Andy is quite right, I cannot claim that any national power system currently existing is one that I would identify with; I think they are all bad. They are all class-based, and serve the interests of the ruling class rather than the power interests of the people.
However, I claim that at the present time in history, the US power system is the worst enemy of the people of the world, and the worst enemy of the American people. It is the greatest threat to destroy us all by its increasing the probability of the nuclear war and its prevention of the world from destroying our traditional climate. Nor am I alone in this belief; Chomsky’s last book, Failed States, argues implicitly the same thing.
Andy claims that the major problem is the Bushites, and this is our fundamental disagreement. I claim the fundamental problem is military capitalism, and this would not be eliminated by electing another president to office.
Larry: No argument. In the time I have been posting here I have done much study and have reached the same conclusions. That is not to be taken as a suggestion that politicians are all the same, by any means. It is just that, since Eisenhower, Presidents have had to face power that is bigger than they are. Within and below that I still continue, for now at least, advocating for the Dems getting control of the House and many seats Senate as possible. I think there may be a discretionary area below the main power structure within which our government can still make some decisions. I imagine the Dems might be able to reduce the secrecy somewhat just as a strategy for carrying on the fight with the Republicans. Reduced secrecy would give us a little bit in terms of possibly having some influence.
Morley: In his lastest book, ‘The Sorrows of Empire� Chalmer Johnson maintains that the US is largely already a military dictatorship, with 2000 military bases around the world, half in the US. The US power system is substituting military globablization for economic globalization as it loses economic power, and the threat is a nuclear war with China in the coming decades, as another writer indicated in ‘War, Peace and War.�
The historical increase in the centralization of the power of capitalism, predicted by Marx, has overwealmed the institutions of democracy, which were largely fraudulent to begin with. In 1992, William Grider wrote a book called ‘Who Will Tell The Peopleâ€?, claiming, cogently, that the US was no longer a democracy, and all the juice had been sucked from its democratic institutions. What remained was merely dead forms. Most Americans agree, that’s why they don’t vote.
The Democratic Party has turned its back on the working class, essentially disinfranchizing them, and me, (although I vote anyway, God knows why). Military capitalism has become a bipartisan policy, although we tend to find the Gops more dispicable, forcedful, greedy, power lusting and evil. This terminal capitalism is not an aberration of liberal power systems, or at least the American power system, but central to its functioning. As it is to the Israeli power system. And, in my opinion, will eventually affect all liberal power systems.
Larry: I have never read anything by Karl Marx. I have great respect for William Greider. I have just skimmed the editorial reviews of Who Will Tell The People that are posted on Amazon. I do note that William Greider is still in there fighting hard, whatever his hope may be. I see his current writings frequently. I still have no idea what you mean by saying “liberal” power systems. None. But I don’t know that it’s important.
Morley: What we need is a revolution. You may ask what will we put in place of what we have? I don’t know. But if the people are enlightened and mobilized, and allowed access to the mass media, they will eventually think of something.
Larry: Being allowed access to the mass media, or at least the worldwide media on the internet, is something that is threatened right now, or so I understand.
Morley: Why do I think so? Faith. You have to have faith. But my faith is not in the gods, but in people.
Larry: Me I would not go so far as to choose between faith in God (whatever name) and faith in people. As far as I am concerned there is that of God in everyone. God might be a bit harder to reach in some than in others. *L*
Larry
July 23rd, 2006 at 8:03 pm
Lest I be misunderstood, when I didn’t respond to the part of Morley’s message that spoke of there already being a military dictatorship in the U.S., and when I also spoke appreciatively of Morley’s message, my appreciation was for the honesty, and with respect to the situation in the US I was simply letting Morley’s statement of our disagreement stand: “Andy claims that the major problem is the Bushites, and this is our fundamental disagreement. I claim the fundamental problem is military capitalism, and this would not be eliminated by electing another president to office.” Otherwise, I was going to just let that point of contention go unaddressed.
Now, besides wanting to make sure I was not misunderstood as having no objections to Morley’s characterization, I will venture a couple of points.
Morley suggests that “Military capitalism has become a bipartisan policy…” And he further says that “The US power system is substituting military globablization for economic globalization as it loses economic power..”
I’ll just say that the CLinton presidency certainly did not appear to me to be that of a militarist. Free trader? Yes, but not a militarist. I thought he waited two years too many to bring the US military to the rescue of the Bosnians in the rape camps.
There’s been plenty of the US military in the world, but the administrations of CLinton and Carter showed no great eagerness to employ it, I would say.
(And there’s certainly no evidence that the military governs, which is usually what’s meant by a military dictatorship. Even under the BUshites, the Military leaders are if anything cut out even from making basic MILITARY decisions, let alone running the government.)
Also, I’ve heard this idea before of the great decline of American economic power. From what I know –and I do pay some attention to these things– the American economic predominance in the world in 1999 was considerably enhanced from what it had been 15 years before. (Remember when the rising Japan was expected to surpass the declining US? Japan As # 1, and all that?)
I doubt that
July 23rd, 2006 at 8:24 pm
James said:
That`s what people like Andy are for; to lean on.
We can all learn a lot from Andrew. He is a very smart and thoughtful man, without a doubt. He has a lot to teach. So do other people. But might I suggest that you consider relying on your own conscience, not on Andrew or anyone else no matter who they are.
Peace
Larry
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Andrew said–
And there’s certainly no evidence that the military governs, which is usually what’s meant by a military dictatorship. Even under the BUshites, the Military leaders are if anything cut out even from making basic MILITARY decisions, let alone running the government.
I should say that I have been tentatively relying, perhaps too heavily, on a review by Andrew J. Bacevich of a book by Gareth Porter entitled Perils of Dominance. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050704/bacevich , the third page of the article in particular. According to Andrew Bacevich’s review, the heaviest influence on the presidents in the years covered came from “national security advisors.” Who influenced the “national security advisors” is another question. Extrapolating forward from those years to the present seems reasonable to me. Others may differ. I have not suggested that military leaders themselves are at the top of the heap or the top of the pyramid.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520239482/sr=8-1/qid=1153710123/ref=sr_1_1/002-4897535-0411252?ie=UTF8
Larry
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Let’s not make Sam scream; I wonder if he would sound anything like Howard Dean.
Tell you what, Sam, we have three candidates running in the Republican primary for U S Senate
One left Congress to run for Governor. He ran a good campaign and had a chance, then in the last weeks it came out that while in Congress he had voted to sell our TVA government built lakes to private developers. He lost; now he wants to go to the Senate.
Another has been a Congressman and left to run for the Republican Senatorial nomination for the previous vacancy. He was not nominated. He has been a Federal prosecutor and they say taught Constititional law at the U S military academy. His campaign is boasting that he helped write the anti-terrorism laws that ‘keep us safe’.
BANG! Enough ! Could that be the humongous so called Patriot Act ? And he’s bragging ?
The third has just put two million of his own money into his own campaign. What does the job pay, anyway.
He was finance Director, I think it was, for a time in the most corrupt State Republican Administration in memory. At the beginning of the campaign, trying to head off criticism I guess, it was announced briefly, he has sold the properties he has leased to the federal government.
Hmmm !
Today I heard on radio a religious ‘Bush supporter’ with that strange confident assertiveness that seems to possess these people who have no facts declare that really there were WMDs in Iraq. I can’t imagine myself screaming, Sam. BUT I’ll tell you what I did do.
I DECIDED TO VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S CANDIDATE FOR THE U S SENATE unless something horrible comes out on him . . . and he’s a Black guy.
Something’s gotta give ! Too much is too much !