Why Yanks just don't get it
Don Libby
interpretation of environemental science in UK newspapers):
>
> It is a bit perplexing, and worrying that stuff that is common currency over
> here in Europe is either not known about at all, or openly derided by
> individuals/organisations in the USA. Is there some reason for this?
>
> I'm not trying to start another argument, I'm just interested to find out
> why there should be such a vast difference in interpretations of data
> between two continents, who are presumably counting the same numbers, etc.
> I mean even our government and university bodies talk quite openly about
> this stuff, so why don't you?
This is a good reply. I am always more interested in a dialogue from
which both parties and the audience in attendance may actually learn
something new, positive, and constructive.
I too have observed the difference you describe, and have a few
suggestions for reasons why it may be so. First, you should know that I
am indeed a social scientist, and one who has spent many years of
post-graduate study in environmental sociology and human ecology. That
is not an appeal to authority or credentialism to brag that "I know what
I'm talking about better than you do", only to give you some basis to
understand where my opinions come from, and to counter-act the natural
tendency to believe that people who disagree with us are simply ignorant
of the facts and the arguments that support our own position.
So here are my off-the-cuff guesses at explanations for the
intercontinental drift that you mentioned:
1) Socialism is a much more powerful and pervasive influence in Europe
(also commonwealth esp. Australia/NZ and to a lesser extent Canada),
especially among the intelligensia. The history of the USA is such that
class differences were never so intense as to generate a clear common
sense of class consciousness: Americans defined their national identity
by forging a common union to overthrow the monarchy and aristocracy.
Although the French revolution essentially accomplished the same end by
the same means, class consciousness was firmly rooted in France and this
explains the particularly strong identification of French popular
sentiment with the proletarian class and its instruments of power
through governance by the principles of socialism and communism. Such
sympathy for communism in the United States is largely lacking due to
the diverse origins of its immigrants. However, the severe oppression
suffered by the ancestors of African Americans and the continuing
(though gradually weakening) climate of racism makes communist ideology
and the primacy of social justice more appealing to many American people
of conscience, regardless of race or ethnicity. Such sympathy is
especially prevelent in American academe, as it is in European academe.
2) Given the somewhat more favorable conditions for incubating
socialist sentiment in academic circles, and through the exercise of
democracy where socialist ideals have more widely established mass
appeal, in European high-level policy circles as well as in European
academe, the proposal, debate, and discussion of ideas that have
intrinsically egalitarian implications, or the implication of public
power for the achievement of collective goals in the common interest
over and against the exercise of private power in individuals' own
interest through free enterprise, imply that European intellectual
and political discourse proceeds rather more quickly and directly to
consensus than is the case in the United States, where a balance of
opposing powers characterizes the political process as a check against
"absolute power" and the preservation of minority rights.
3) Due in part to the greater share of power excercised by private
enterprise in the US, and the expression of dissent from that quarter
regarding the establishemnt of policies that restrain free trade and
interstate commerce, it is often supposed that the private sector is
"against the public interest and common good". To European eyes
predisposed to more favorable agreement with, and less active resistance
to, political arguments put forward on grounds of common cause, the
excercise of resistance in the United States by the private sector is
quickly identified in the European collective conscience as class
conflict: the US private sector is perceived as bourgeosie interests in
direct conflict with, and oppression of, proletarian interests, and is
therefore judged to be inequalitarian and unjust.
4) To American eyes, the private and public sectors are alternative
means to achieve the end of satisfying human needs, wants, and desires.
The American consensus recognizes a market-based resource distribution
system as the most efficient means to supply goods and services demanded
by private households and firms. The consensus also recognizes market
inefficiences that accompany the provision of public goods, which is
justification for government intervention in economic activity in order
to attain a higher state of social welfare than could otherwise be
achieved by the unfettered operation of market forces alone. The debate
in America often centers around the relative powers to be granted for
the provision of public and private goods to the public or private
sectors: rather than class conflict as it is understood in Europe, the
conflict is polarized on party lines for more or less government
involvement in private affairs to promote the general welfare, provide
for the common defense, preserve the union, etc. This division along
party lines belies the mainstream consusus that bureacratic
administration by the public sector is the preferred restraint on the
operation of bureacratic adminsitration by the private sector: however
much bureacracy is despised in the popular imagination, the consensus in
mainstream American culture is tacit acceptance of bureacratic
administration in a capitalist political-economy. These power
relationships are better described by the theories of Max Weber than by
the theories of Karl Marx, which may account for some of the difference
of opinion between the US and European community (and its extended
family).
5) Dissent in the US takes both intellectual and populist forms, which
may be progressive or reactionary and regressive. Progressive dissent
is sometimes the product of academic intellectual work. For example,
American Entomologists Paul Ehrlich, David Pimentel, and Edward
O. Wilson are oft cited by the ideological vanguard of the international
environmentalist protest movement. European Greens must acknowledge a
great debt to the system of the American University for producing the
kind of free inquiry and free expression that provides vision,
leadership, and direction to our impulse to restrain the most
destructive and undesireable aspects of modern industrialized society.
John Muir, a giant figure of environmentalism of centuries past and
founder of the Sierra Club, did in fact graduate from the very same
University that I graduated from about one hundred years later, and for
which I am today employed. There is currently in American Academics a
lively debate on the role of science and scientists in policy
development and advocacy. This internal friction in American Science
parallels the internal fricition in American Politics: it generates
much heat but often, to the puzzlement of Europeans, produces no
coherent direction or clear consensus.
6) Populist dissent often takes a negative reactionary cast with a
decidedly anti-intellectual bias. Thus our culture of openness,
individuality, and free expression gives rise to a wide variety of
social movements accross the political spectrum from the extreme right
to the extreme left, from the extremely conservative of status quo, to
the extremely destructive of status quo. The very large variety and
diversity of these minor movements may inhibit the emergence of major
movements. The generally high level of education of the public and
freedom of the press also contribute to the inhibition of radicalism,
while at the same time filtering the emergence of genuinely progressive
reformist social movements among those that do attain to the status of
major protest movements. However, the domination of American cultural
life by instantaneous electronic mass media has to some degree relaxed
these prior restraints by speeding up the spread of ideas, attitudes,
beliefs, values, opinions, and behaviors, and removing some of the
filtering of these emergent social identities that was previously
provided by direct social sanction in local communities where acts of
dissent could be observed and judged in a more circumspect and
deliberative manner. Bad ideas used to be hard to get started going
around, and if started, had difficulty gaining social support. Removing
immediate social sanction by broadcasting bad ideas through cyber-space
and over the air-waves creates new possibilities for movements to gain
instant mass momentum. The self-selective nature of the media ("if you
don't like it, then just ignore it, or change the channel") virtually
guarantees that like-minded individuals will rapidly construct their own
communities of proscriptions and prescriptions for action without the
traditional American struggle of opposing forces to negotiate a
broadly inclusive and socially acceptable balance of power. Without the
benefit of trial by peers, or the need to come to grips with opposing
views, or even to acknowledge or be aware of opposing views, it is a
condition that is ripe for the proliferation of bad ideas buttressed by
intense "group-think" and conformity to subcultural norms.
7) Under these conditions, the environmentalist protest movement has a
dual character: there is the serious question of applying environmental
science to the understanding and solution of environmental problems and
the underlying mainstream consensus that we owe it to our children to
deliver a world of natural beauty, free from the potentially lethal
consequences of our present actions. Then there is the absurd
melodramatic side where a subculture of professional protesters and the
radical chic of meaningless protest for the sake of protest to strike a
pose, either as moral crusader or as a-moral anarchist, together with a
media circus and well-meaning but ill-conceived manipulations of base
emotions, especially fear, have fed on each other to create a mob of
frightened people lashing out at anything and every product of industry
that has ever been rumored to cause harm by any defintion under any set
of conditions no matter how unrealistic, where the "worst case" becomes
utterly indistinguishable in the public mind from the every-day case.
8) Despite the electronically amplified high volume and visibility of
this (now international) giant papier-mache death-head parade, there
remains in America the system of checks and balances by which new ideas
can be soberly evaluated to weed meaningless fads out from serious
problems. That these ponderous evaluations should take place in
scientific journals and in government institutions makes these
institutions suspect as tools of the establishment. Conservative in
nature as they resist rapid and radical social change, and without hope
of delivering the exciting adrenaline rush of direct street action to
meet demands for whatever cause: witholding instant gratification being
the source of frustration in an increasingly agitated mob whose
attention may easily turn away from the cause du jour, and toward the
abolishment of the establishment that is regarded simply as an
impediment to progress. Without the checks and balances that
characterise the slow and indecisive nature of American politics and
fractious nature of American Science, perhaps the European
intelligensia, body politic, and mainstream citizens are more easily
swayed by the sentiments expressed by their angry youth, for the sake of
preserving the establishment from the ravages of full-scale
anti-establishement assult in the form of violent revolution -- the
prediction made by Marx in lands where Marxist thinking holds sway.
In short, establishment thinking in Europe is permeated by German
idealism, whereas establishment thinking in the United States is
permeated by American pragmatism.
Just my two cents' worth.
-dl
jddescr...@my-deja.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The revolution in France was a failure because it was controlled by
just another side of the king's men coin of control and manipulation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Such
> sympathy for communism in the United States is largely lacking due to
> the diverse origins of its immigrants. However, the severe oppression
> suffered by the ancestors of African Americans and the continuing
> (though gradually weakening) climate of racism makes communist
ideology
> and the primacy of social justice more appealing to many American
people
> of conscience, regardless of race or ethnicity. Such sympathy is
> especially prevelent in American academe, as it is in European
academe.
>
-----------.excerpted, see original----------------------------------
Good insightful and largely accurate comments but I think that you
should draw the socialist distinctions more clearly. This has been
done in America by the philosopher of the American idea of individual
freedom; Ayn Rand. She saw these issues as very fundamental and
important in explaining why the world was taken over by the dark
ages of king's men rule for 100 generations and how it could and is
happening again. From the history of the last century we can clearly
see two main branches in european socialism, the right socialists and
the left socialists. What unifies them like the hitler/stalin pact to
invade Poland and start WW II is the desire to live by theft from
others-invasion/conquest. The main motivation for this king's men
attitude arises from different root causes for the right and left
socialists wanting to over others; I) the right socialists of hitler
germany and mussolini italy and tojo japan and...tend to be more
material power oriented and military. The left socialists of stalin
russia and moa china and pol pot SEA tend to be more academic, more
idea power, the over power of the king's chant and spiritual ideology.
You correctly emphasize these latter types because they most represent
the intelligence to over the free people. If these socialist
distinctions are not clearly made then much confusion and surpise can
result. Imagine the BS [British socialist's] surprise {fabians,
marxists,...} when they found out from comrade stalin that they were on
hitler's side in starting WW II?
Good seeing. JD
-------------------------------------------------
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
John F. Opie
<snip>
>In short, establishment thinking in Europe is permeated by German
>idealism, whereas establishment thinking in the United States is
>permeated by American pragmatism.
>
>Just my two cents' worth.
>
>-dl
Hi there -
Let's also not forget the failed "Bauernrevolution" (Farmer's
rebellion) of 1848 in Germany. It was initiated by the resignation of
King Louis Philippe of France, which led to an increase in the voting
population from 250 thousand to over 9 million. Those deciding what
happened in politics therefore increased massively. Let's not forget
that Germany wasn't yet Germany, but rather a group of German states
loosely confederated und run for and by a plutocracy of landed
nobility.
Unrest developed because of several poorly managed harvests, rising
food prices and the use of soldiers to put down food riots in 1847.
When the king of France abdicated and the Republic was established
with general voting rights, liberals and democrats (not ours, theirs:
this was, after all, at this time a monarchy with extremely limited
voting rights) called for a constituting national assembly. This in
turn called for freedom of the press. This and other liberalizations
wer largely ignored by the nobility until the calls came to arm the
masses and for the various kings, etc to abdicate and make room for
democratic institutions.
There was no central command for this revolt, and as a result, and
because the masses were indeed either unarmed or poorly armed,
standing troops made fairly short work of insurrection. The key
members of the revolution were the bourgeousie, which fought incessant
political battles with guild members and workers/farmers for ideology
and political control. Hence at the end of the day they failed to
mobilise the masses in order to deny the nobility cadre and resources:
more fundamentally, the "l'etat c'est moi" thinking of 17th century
European thought was not rejected, but rather affirmed by the crushing
of the rebellion and the brutality of Prussian soldiers used in other
German states.
In the US, the revolution of 1776 was also, thanks in part to George
Washington's rejection of a kingship, a break with what the Germans
call "Obrigkeitsgedanke", of the State being above criticism and above
reproach in all things.
The State in this sense in Germany wasn't destroyed until 1945, and
continues on today. I get looked at strangely by my colleagues (ok,
more strangely than usual...) when I recommend that taxes be cut and
the role of the state be reduced and that the state is incompetent,
for instance, when it comes to trying to foster increasing computer
skills and the like.
And continental Europeans don't really get why you need to separate
out powers: parliamentary systems here lack this almost completely.
Fundamentally, we agree. :-)
John
Harold
[deleted to save bandwidth]
>In short, establishment thinking in Europe is permeated by German
>idealism, whereas establishment thinking in the United States is
>permeated by American pragmatism.
>
>Just my two cents' worth.
While I have some disagreements, I would comment that it was very good
and thorough.
Have you authored a paper on the subject? If so, where can I find it?
If not, why not?
Regards, Harold
-----
"Economic ignorance is the breeding ground of totalitarianism."
---John Jewkes
Don Libby
>
> On Sun, 26 Mar 2000 23:12:54 GMT, Don Libby <no....@tds.net> wrote:
>
> [deleted to save bandwidth]
>
> >idealism, whereas establishment thinking in the United States is
> >permeated by American pragmatism.
> >
> >Just my two cents' worth.
>
> and thorough.
>
> Have you authored a paper on the subject? If so, where can I find it?
> If not, why not?
What you see is what you get: it's a stream of consciousness spouted
right off the top of my head. Why not published? Unfortunately some of
us must trade their labour value for the means of subsistence at an
inherently unfair rate of exchange (Marxspeak for "since I don't have
tenure I have to work for a living").
-dl
TRVTH
Here are a few ramblings.
Planted in the American psyche, I think, whether we know it or not, are
Montesque's writings concerning tyranny, especially of the majority, which
informed and influenced others such as Jefferson, Madison, and J.S. Mill.
Add John Locke's various arguments to that, the experience of the Puritans
in England, the exodus of the "Pilgrims" from that conflict, and an annual
turkey dinner, and you have the American mythology which informs and shapes
the American psyche. A bit of religion, functionalism, and post-modernism
goes a long way.
Dictatorship can be thrown upon the people either by one person or a
multitude. Yet, it remains a dictatorship, which is likely why Marx
referred to the dictatorship of the proletariat as the stage before the
communism. It is still a tyranny, it's just that the tyrants are a
different class of people. Rampant democracy in the form of socialism and
communism (whatever those are, since their denotations and connotations
continue to grow-- we are all busy post-modernists, it seems) can result in
tyranny of the majority or, as it did in the Soviet Union and has in China,
tyranny of the aristocracy under the guise of dictatorship of the
proletariat (majority). Using Marx's own rhetoric, I would say any who
dispute this are suffering false consciousness. Americans also fear tyranny
of the aristocracy. We tend to fear tyranny because our national mythology
teaches us that tyranny in any form is contrary to one's purpose on earth
("endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable (sic) rights"...the
Natural Law argument for liberty). This Natural Law of liberty has its
roots in European culture, going at least back to St. Augustine's "City of
God", if not further. It appears that, based on empirical evidence, this
argument was rejected for the most in Europe, as socialist/utopians from
both the right and left, inspired by the Enlightenment, sought to give each
common man's all for their causes since the late 18th century, especially
preying on the groups of people traditionally preyed upon by the various
elites of Europe. The argument for a Natural Law of liberty was accepted in
the colonies and then the United States, however. Americans and Europeans
likely see the world differently because we have, essentially, grown up
differently. Our ancestors fled Europe (and elsewhere, for the most part)
because conditions there were considered intolerable. There were some like
John Milton who actually sympathized with the "Pilgrims" as they fled
England, believing they held the promise of a better future. The following
generations who made their lives in North America then witnessed the
continued butchery in Europe, up to and including WWII. We were able to
watch from a distance, at first, and then chose to share in the misery to
create a better, freer future for all. All of this made us suspicious of
how Europeans saw the world and acted out their vision.
The irony is, of course, that the United States has a mixed economic and
social structure, in part because of our increased exposure to the European
worldview and the need for cooperation after WWII. We grew tolerant of the
savagery in the Soviet Union, if only to prevent a thermonuclear holocost.
Yet Americans remain suspicious. Even more ironic is that the United States
initially willfully enslaved Africans, despite debate of its morality at the
time, and then imposed and continued to maintain a near-nazi like tyranny on
the indigenous (and if not indigenous, certainly the first) peoples under
the guise of improving their lives by moving them from savagery to
Calvinistic civilization (perhaps the basis for our individualism, as Max
Weber suggested), as President Andrew Jackson spoke in one of his State of
the Union addresses. Then again, wherever Europeans have gone this is the
pattern.. even in Northern Europe with the Sami (sp?).
Is the American fear irrational? Our national mythology and the empirical
evidence of Europe and Asia's history of war, culminating in the great
bloodbaths of the twentieth-century, tells us it is not. Empirical evidence
suggets we continue to flirt with these tyrannies ourselves. The
intelligensia on both sides of the Atlantic appear intent on rationalizing
socialism by denying its potential for tyranny. Yet, we now have China
threatening to socialize Taiwan right off the map. Apparently the Chinese
don't like the idea of freedom (or is it capitalist competition?). And for
those who believe a prelate to capitalism is democracy, China's experience
should have them re-evaluating their weltschaaung.
I believe a balance needs to be struck between the freedoms of the
individual and the needs of the community, though I tend to favor the
individual. I am a moderate communitarian, in that respect. Some aspects
of the person are public, and some are private (and some are secret, and
should remain so). Tyranny, as with any form of slavery, enslaves both the
tyrant and the slave, as Marx wrote most correctly. Unfortunately, Ayn Rand
preached in favor of an equally problematic tyranny, as far as I'm
concerned: the tyranny of the individual, to which all society must bow. It
seems to me as dangerous a tyranny as any, and Thomas Hobbes addressed its
effect most eloquently in Leviathan. If she had not read it, perhaps Ms.
Rand should have before she stole Neitszche's idea of slave morality and how
to defeat it from the Genealogy of Morals. The American individualist must
remember, however, that she was from Europe. She understood first-hand the
dangers of totalitarian tyranny, and appears to have gone to the opposite
extreme to prevent and defeat it. Ironically, this "great" American
philosopher of individualist philosophy appears as influenced by Marx's
version of dialectical materialism as anyone. Sadly, unlike Marx, I don't
think the pendulum ever stops swinging, and I'm suspicious that any real
synthesis occurs in human relations. If there is progress, it may only be
measured in millimeters (or fractions of an inch on this side of the
Atlantic).
Don Libby
>
> Ayn Rand. Ugh. Warmed-over Neitszche.
> measured in millimeters (or fractions of an inch on this side of the
> Atlantic).
Brilliant! Hear, Hear.
-dl
Harold
>Harold wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, 26 Mar 2000 23:12:54 GMT, Don Libby <no....@tds.net> wrote:
>>
>> [deleted to save bandwidth]
>>
>> >In short, establishment thinking in Europe is permeated by German
>> >idealism, whereas establishment thinking in the United States is
>> >permeated by American pragmatism.
>> >
>> >Just my two cents' worth.
>>
>> While I have some disagreements, I would comment that it was very good
>> and thorough.
>>
>> Have you authored a paper on the subject? If so, where can I find it?
>> If not, why not?
>
>What you see is what you get: it's a stream of consciousness spouted
>right off the top of my head. Why not published? Unfortunately some of
>us must trade their labour value for the means of subsistence at an
>inherently unfair rate of exchange (Marxspeak for "since I don't have
>tenure I have to work for a living").
I can understand that.
Regards, Harold
----
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge
authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties;
blind faith the one unpardonable sin."
---Thomas H. Huxley (1825-95)
jddescr...@my-deja.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------
You obviously haven't studied the Ayn Rand theories [ART]
and are very "post-modern" confused about the history of
human ideas. The thread starter would probably tell you
that the left socialists of academia took over philosophy
and made it transparently worthless on purpose. Your
confusion was the intended purpose. Ayn Rand asked; "Who
Needs Philosophy?" Her point was that we all have
philosophies which we develope over our lives whether
confused like yours or not. The question is does it allow
us to self guide [ SOUL = Self Ownership of yoUr Life] and
achieve an optimized happy life or are we enslaved to the
king's men manipulators [ currently called socialists,
whether of the right or left]?
You are confused that she was on the right socialist side of
the king's men [king's mentality] coin. Actually, the
sharp distinction that her theories draw is between the free
people who believe in the American idea of free people and the
socialists [or king's men] who believe in overing others by
command and manipulation. You somehow tolerate socialists and
call it communitarianism. Rather the good, limited republican/
democrat form of government that is the American balance of
community and individual family life is free people determined
in free markets. There is actually an independent world of the free
people spirits [FPS] and the king's men spirits [KMS] which are
identified by the Ayn Rand theories [ART].
Of course all socialist are not totally evil like hitler socialists
or stalin socialists. Rather it is a measureable/countable property
which corresponds to the extent to which they are antilife. Some of
the best of the socialists would be close to the worst of the free
people spirits [FPS] but all socialist believe in and practice to
some extent the control, command, and in general take from and impose
on others. They are inherently aggressive coercers but the amount of
Fing [ forcing, fearing. frauding ] that they use and thus their danger
distance differs.
Although all the Ayn Rand theory people are average free people
seeking to reach the pinnacle of the ideal free people happy
accomplishment no one actually reaches this ideal, continuously and
forever. They are, in general family business = capitalism
inventors and builders. The socialists call US the masses. In ART
Ayn Rand asks why have WE [Wealth Engine] allowed the king's men,
the social manipulator [socman] to rule US down through history until
America? How have WE allowed them to set the aggenda of life as
sacrificing for their king's rich living auf[authoritarian force] the
loot that they steal? WE see US as productive free people living by
voluntary exchange with small good government while seeking to achieve
the goals of the American DECLARATION [ the American IDEA].
Good seeing. JD
--------------------------------------------------------------------
TRVTH
<jddescr...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8bs106$nn1$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
>
> You obviously haven't studied the Ayn Rand theories [ART]
> and are very "post-modern" confused about the history of
> human ideas. The thread starter would probably tell you
> that the left socialists of academia took over philosophy
> and made it transparently worthless on purpose. Your
> confusion was the intended purpose. Ayn Rand asked; "Who
> Needs Philosophy?" Her point was that we all have
> philosophies which we develope over our lives whether
> confused like yours or not. The question is does it allow
> us to self guide [ SOUL = Self Ownership of yoUr Life] and
> achieve an optimized happy life or are we enslaved to the
> king's men manipulators [ currently called socialists,
> whether of the right or left]?
Randians are as Marxist as Marx when it comes to praxis. It is the filter
through which they "objectively" filter (evaluate and construct) reality
through perceptions. They don't seek to "objectively" understand anything
because, being the good proprietors they are, they hold title to "the
truth". Second, the illogic of the ad hominem attack is very common for
Randians: you're not smart enough, you're not familiar with some bit of
arcana which they hold sacred and, thereby, gain special knowledge, you're
just too liberal.
Randianism is, as far as I'm concerned, a religion. It has it's prophet:
Ayn Rand. It has its scripture: her texts. It has an actual formal church
structure in the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org). It has symbols of
ultimate good and evil: the so-called libertarians are always good and the
liberals are ultimate evil, ironically the same view of liberals expressed
by Joseph Goebbels' in 1937, when he spoke at the National Socialist party
Congress. ("We can account for this baffling style of mutual admiration
between Bolshevism and Western Liberalist Intellectualism only if we assume
it to be some form of mental disease".) It also fulfils the various
requirements suggested of religion by various researchers in Keith A.
Roberts' "Religion in Sociological Perspective", among them that it gives
its followers a sense of meaning (a faith to rally around) and belonging
(the intimate contact which is likely lacking) to manage their lives.
Amazingly, Randians don't perceive themselves as adhering to a demographic,
but they do. They tend to be American, white, middle-class, males in their
late teens and early twenties. They tend to be poor at relationships with
others, especially women, which may be integral to why they seek a sense of
belonging which allows them to feel the separation to which they are
accustomed (I know it's a paradox, but so many of us live a paradoxical
existence that it shouldn't shock anyone). Essentially, they all want to be
Howard Roark, whom they consider the ultimate hero. As the perfect symbol,
he is the creator of his own vision, realized in the physical structures he
designs and builds, perpetually struggling against the
"go-along-to-get-along" types. He is his own man regardless. Yet, he rapes
a woman in what may be his first "sexual" encounter. Only his lust matters,
and it gives him license to do what he will. Indeed this religion of
individualism apparently allows for the imposition of will with no regard
for the other, who is merely an object to be used up. Nothing new here:
pure Neitszche.
What they don't understand is she didn't say anything original. She just
arranged things in her own way. The same is true for the symbol of Roark,
of course. But this re-arrangment of the original ideds of others is no
sin. Few people say anything original: maybe a handful in the whole history
of the planet, and we probably aren't even aware of most of them.
Now, hopefully, our European brethern can see a bit of a difference in how
Americans view the world. We do not share a world view. We have extremists
and moderates. We have Nazis and Communists and everything between. The
extremist individualists persuaded many to follow them in 1980. The
government, which had pursued perhaps its most socialistic path yet in the
1960s and early 70s, was viewed as a failure. It appeared emasculated
through the failures to win the war in Vietnam, control the rising price of
oil, and prevent or resolve the kidnapping of U.S. embassy personnel in
Iran. The people were discontent, they heard the siren's song of Ronald
Reagan, and converted. The abject failures of his policies, and those of
George Bush, which were actually dedicated to making their friends and major
campaign funds contributors rich by spending borrowed funds with them to
rebuild the military, led to a general discontent with government in any
form. Bush was removed from office in favor of Clinton as one expression of
this anger. And when people perceived nothing had changed between 93 and
94, they heard another siren's song from Rep. Newt Gingrich, in the form of
a "Contract with America", (or as I call it the "Contract ON Ameica"-- in
the best Mafia sense of the word). There was a revolution at the ballot
box, and the majority political philosophy in Congress was converted in a
day to strong, rugged individualism. Yet nothing changed until one fateful
day the Congress refused to appropriate money to run the government, and the
president let it close down. Since then the rugged individualists have been
losing ground, but they still appear in firm control on the national level,
and at many state and local levels (especially in the southern and western
states).
>
> You are confused that she was on the right socialist side of
> the king's men [king's mentality] coin. Actually, the
> sharp distinction that her theories draw is between the free
> people who believe in the American idea of free people and the
> socialists [or king's men] who believe in overing others by
> command and manipulation. You somehow tolerate socialists and
> call it communitarianism. Rather the good, limited republican/
> democrat form of government that is the American balance of
> community and individual family life is free people determined
> in free markets. There is actually an independent world of the free
> people spirits [FPS] and the king's men spirits [KMS] which are
> identified by the Ayn Rand theories [ART].
Thank you for proving my points expressed earlier. Perhaps you should begin
with the work of Durkheim and work your way back through Neitszche, Spencer,
Comte, Mill, Rousseau, Montesque, Locke, Hobbes, More (Utopia), Machiavelli,
St. Augustine, Aristotle, Plato, and any others folks care to suggest, so
you gain an appreciation for the great conversation that has taken place
since at least 500 BCE. Sadly, American schools no longer teach an
education grounded in the classics, so American students are ill-prepared to
deal with weak ideas like those of Rand when they are exposed to them in
high school (as a matter of fact, the aynrand.org folks have a contest aimed
at 11th and 12th graders, offering money for essays written about her
novels-- they know who the most impressionable are and why, I think).
Further, most American students entering college are ill-prepared to study
at the college level, which is why the first two or more years are spent on
remedial studies (referred to as the "Core"), such as basic history, basic
literature, basic english, basic science, beginnier philosophy, and in some
cases math classes beginning at the pre-algebra stage. Of course if the
American schools attempted to teach a classical education, the religious
right would have a collective stroke because their children would be exposed
to ideas that may actually lead to a questioning of the world view into
which they've been indoctrinated.
Whew! Forgive me for my ramblings, but the Randians are very taxing because
they are so persistent in treating people like objects to be managed rather
than fellow humans who require nurture and love, just as they do.
"Movements born in hatred very quickly take on the
characteristics of the thing they oppose."
J. S. Habgood, British Theologian
"It is not necessary to understand things to argue about them."
Pierre August Caron de Beaumarchais,
French Author and Dramatist
jddescr...@my-deja.com
-------------excerpted, see original-----------------------------------
You apparently read some of the Ayn Rand theory [ART] works before
you gave up on individual freedom. I would suggest trying to
understand "Atlas Shrugged" since it is a closer model of
America today since the socialist take over has progressed
far beyond "The Fountainhead" which you reference. In the book
the conflict of someone like Bill Gates who wants to produce
great real wealth but doesn't want to carry the socialist
masters on his back are treated.
Although you deny it, you have learned something from ART in that
you are trying to make your own reasoned decisions. This is what
is called SOUL [Self Ownership of yoUr Life] in my models based
on ART. You are wrong to give up on freedom but you are trying to
figure it all out. The second area where you make a large mistake
is in characterizing the Randian people. Since the philosophy is
about the American idea of individual freedom as expressed clearly
in the DECLARATION those people who beliecve in ART are the same as
those who believe in this American idea. Thus they are as diverse as
any American, like Ayn Rand, who decided she believed in freedom.
You are right that she was from europe and she understood the king's
men rule of europe very well. She talked to the point in many of her
lectures at Ford Hall Forum in Boston. I don't think you will ever be
convinced about why she loved American freedom so much after running
on country roads in socialist russia with her family trying to stay
alive and avoid the evil of socialist manipulations [socman]. If you
ever have an open mind about understanding the natural freeedom drive
of the human nature then her lectures are still available on audio
tapes. Europe was mainly treated in the question and answer sessions
after the lectures.
Good seeing. JD
----------------------------------------------------------------
Matt
"TRVTH" <no...@urbiz.com> wrote in message
news:RkqE4.3617$64.1...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
>
> <jddescr...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:8bs106$nn1$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> >
> > You obviously haven't studied the Ayn Rand theories [ART]
> > and are very "post-modern" confused about the history of
> > human ideas. The thread starter would probably tell you
> > that the left socialists of academia took over philosophy
> > and made it transparently worthless on purpose. Your
> > confusion was the intended purpose. Ayn Rand asked; "Who
> > Needs Philosophy?" Her point was that we all have
> > philosophies which we develope over our lives whether
> > confused like yours or not. The question is does it allow
> > us to self guide [ SOUL = Self Ownership of yoUr Life] and
> > achieve an optimized happy life or are we enslaved to the
> > king's men manipulators [ currently called socialists,
> > whether of the right or left]?
>
> Randians are as Marxist as Marx when it comes to praxis. It is the filter
> through which they "objectively" filter (evaluate and construct) reality
> through perceptions. They don't seek to "objectively" understand anything
> because, being the good proprietors they are, they hold title to "the
> truth". Second, the illogic of the ad hominem attack is very common for
> Randians: you're not smart enough, you're not familiar with some bit of
> arcana which they hold sacred and, thereby, gain special knowledge, you're
> just too liberal.
There's something to your analysis, in regards to your comparing certain
aspects of Objectivism to aspects of Marxism. Though, I'm still sympathetic
to what she identified as the fundamentals of her philosophy, ie: reason,
enlightened self-interest and capitalism.
Jddescript uses some rather kooky terminology, and is guilty of ad hominem.
Minor convictions, though JD seems pretty set in his ways.
> Randianism is, as far as I'm concerned, a religion. It has it's prophet:
> Ayn Rand. It has its scripture: her texts. It has an actual formal
church
> structure in the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org). It has symbols of
> ultimate good and evil: the so-called libertarians are always good and the
> liberals are ultimate evil, ironically the same view of liberals expressed
> by Joseph Goebbels' in 1937, when he spoke at the National Socialist party
> Congress. ("We can account for this baffling style of mutual admiration
> between Bolshevism and Western Liberalist Intellectualism only if we
assume
> it to be some form of mental disease".)
Actually, according to the ARI "faction", libertarianism is wrong, despite
the fact that the modern American libertarian movement owes a lot to the
popularity of Rand's ideas. The members of the opposing faction are know as
"Kelleyites" or "tolerationists", and are friendly to other identified
libertarian groups including the Libertarian Party. There are other more
fundamental and substantial reasons for the split though.
There's an essay rationalizing this split with ARI and the libs on the ARI
site @ http://www.aynrand.org
Also, to consider Objectivism a religion as you have above, is dubious. Your
criteria for considering it such appear to be so broad as to include any
group who have formed a consensus around certain ideas. Also, it neglects
what is, if not -the- then -an- essential premise of what is a religion
which is mysticism, which Objectivism utterly rejects. Even if one disagreed
with some of the conclusions Objectivists have reached from their premises,
they do use the commonly accepted methods of inference, deduction, induction
and such other methods of logic in reaching them, and the acceptance of such
methods -are- a tenet of Objectivism, and aren't supposed to be taken on
faith.
> It also fulfils the various
> requirements suggested of religion by various researchers in Keith A.
> Roberts' "Religion in Sociological Perspective", among them that it gives
> its followers a sense of meaning (a faith to rally around) and belonging
> (the intimate contact which is likely lacking) to manage their lives.
Is Marxism a religion? I don't think it can accurately be called that, nor
O'ism. Certainly they share things in common, but so does any group or
individual espousing any ideas; they believe in something. However, the
adamant atheism of both sets of ideas, I believe disqualifies them from
being actual religions. I have seen some individuals attack the "Scientific
Establishment" with the "religious" epithet, based on similarly flimsy
definitions.
> Amazingly, Randians don't perceive themselves as adhering to a
demographic,
> but they do. They tend to be American, white, middle-class, males in
their
> late teens and early twenties. They tend to be poor at relationships with
> others, especially women, which may be integral to why they seek a sense
of
> belonging which allows them to feel the separation to which they are
> accustomed (I know it's a paradox, but so many of us live a paradoxical
> existence that it shouldn't shock anyone).
Well, since the books have mostly been published for the American market and
the white, middle-class demographic is the single largest sector of the
population, it doesn't surprise me that there's a lot of numbers there.
However, you can't conclude from that that therein lies exclusion regarding
the acceptance of the ideas anymore that if that demographic ate more tacos
than low-income blacks then low-income blacks dislike tacos. Overall
readership between groups is a large factor as is an interest in
politics/philosophy in general. Do I need to name examples? Based on my
experience with them, my position would be that accounting for some
randomness in dispersal, those adhering to or sympathetic with Objectivism
make up a -fairly- accurate slice of the overall population with only a
moderate tendency to maleness.
Your latter series of descriptions rings of pure fabrication, stemming from
what you'd like to believe the conclusions to be rather than much empirical
observation. What study are you reading from? I know plenty of Objectivists
and this just seems like a lame way to smear people based on what is your
rather faulty understanding of who Objectivists are. "Objectivists? Oh yeah,
insecure, nerdy, sociopaths who can't get laid, it's obvious." That's not an
argument it's cheap psychologizing.
For starters, they're as diverse a group as any other and just because they
all have similar conclusions on some subjects doesn't mean they were all
reached from the same pre-context. However, I can safely say that your
characterization is not any more true of Objectivists I've known than it is
of any other and appears to be just another instance of correlating factors
masquerading as causation. Don't let your disagreement lead to this sort of
lame and irrational branding.
> Essentially, they all want to be
> Howard Roark, whom they consider the ultimate hero. As the perfect
symbol,
> he is the creator of his own vision, realized in the physical structures
he
> designs and builds, perpetually struggling against the
> "go-along-to-get-along" types. He is his own man regardless. Yet, he
rapes
> a woman in what may be his first "sexual" encounter. Only his lust
matters,
> and it gives him license to do what he will.
This is simply a misrepresentation of how this encounter occurs in the book.
Rand writes the scenario such that the Dominique character makes it
painfully obvious that she wants Roarke in a bad way. The confusion arises
from the fact that Rand is able to narrate the thoughts of both parties so
both's intentions are known to the reader. To Roark it was obvious that
Dominique wanted him to take her and he was right, because she intended him
to know and we know because that's how it's written. This is fairly obvious
to most readers and it's small surprise that those pre-disposed to an
un-charitable interpretation of the scene will blank-out the full context.
> Indeed this religion of
> individualism apparently allows for the imposition of will with no regard
> for the other, who is merely an object to be used up. Nothing new here:
> pure Neitszche.
An argument proceeding from a false premise based on a loose interpretation
of a fictional scene, contradicted explicitly by the positions argued in her
non-fiction work.
> What they don't understand is she didn't say anything original. She just
> arranged things in her own way.
This is pretty true.
> Whew! Forgive me for my ramblings, but the Randians are very taxing
because
> they are so persistent in treating people like objects to be managed
rather
> than fellow humans who require nurture and love, just as they do.
>
Don't you think that on all the internet I can find an individual arguing
any and every position poorly? Also, your assertion that Randians believe
"in treating people like objects to be managed" is antithetical to the very
essence of Rand's political and moral arguments which, even if they aren't
original, are passionate and sound defenses of self-government and
free-society, not "treating people like objects to be managed" which would
imply she's some sort of socialist which is quite ridiculous.
TRVTH
Ayn Rand did not come up with a new idea or philosophy. She is a plagurist,
but then again so is everyone since Plato, in one form or another (and he
probably was, too, except we just don't have much of a written record of
what came before, perhaps as a result of Constantine's destruction of the
Library at Alexandria, Egypt, to prevent any philosophical conflicts with
his primitive fascist-Christian state). She simply re-arranged old ideas
into works of fiction and non-fiction. Where "The Fountainhead and Atlas
Shrugged" is concerned, Neitszche beat her to it with "Thus Spake
Zarathustra". The old Persian prophet waxes stridently on how one must
change in order to throw off slave morality and become the Superman. Of
course, old Freddie was reacting to the philosophical struggles of his time
and just before, reacting most certainly to the arguments of the
Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment theorists, including the utopian
positivists (Auguste Comte being their leader), socialists (including Marx--
at times some of it seems to be a dialog between he and Karl), eugenicists
(like Herbert Spencer, whom I loathe), and soforth.
If I may, let me demonstrate using the first paragraph you wrote, the rich
the history of just one idea supposedly arrived at objectively by Ms. Rand,
demonstrating it is not an original idea, giving you a few reading
suggestions (assuming you've not already read them).
Matt <md...@home.com> wrote in message
news:uOBE4.2470$Ja5....@news1.crdva1.bc.home.com...
> There's something to your analysis, in regards to your comparing certain
> aspects of Objectivism to aspects of Marxism. Though, I'm still
sympathetic
> to what she identified as the fundamentals of her philosophy, ie: reason,
> enlightened self-interest and capitalism.
Enlightened self-Interest, also called rational self-interest, is a
fundamental philosophy of the Enlightenment. The dialog about self interest
goes all the way back to Plato, who felt unbridled democracy was dangerous,
owing to the death of his mentor and friend, Socrates, at the hands of a
democratic state (let's here it for capital punishment!! - also ironic how
so many Christians favor capital punishment, considering what happened to
their savior ;o)]. Aristotle also addresses it in "Politics" and the
"Nichomachean Ethics" - the latter of which is a dreadfully long book.
It shows up in:
* St. Augustine (City of God - In book 5 there is an apology that seeks to
reconcile God's plan with the doctrine of free will given to man by God to
allow him the choice of the path of righteousness or perdition. This is the
KEY concept that sets the ball rolling, to be bolstered by a bizarre
influence that comes from the rediscovery of the Americas, the witnessing of
indigenous women giving birth to children without any displays of emotion or
pain, and the need for the philosohpes to reconcile what is different about
the native woman (a person living in Nature, or as Columbus wrote, "en
dios", and an artificial person, one who is "civilized").
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1201.htm
* St. Thomas Aquinas - "Summa Theologica" (The second part considers what
leverage a man's will has or does not have).
http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/
* John Locke (Natural Law argument of liberty, found variously
- "The Second Treatise on Government"
http://www.swan.ac.uk/poli/texts/locke/lockcont.htm
and "A Letter Concerning Toleration"
http://www.orst.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke2/locke-t/locke_tolerat
ion.html
* Thomas Hobbes - "Leviathan" (Argument about Man in Nature vs. Artifical
Man)
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/Depts/RSSS/Philosophy/Texts/LeviathanTOC.html
Montesque - various
http://books.mirror.org/gb.montesquieu.html
* Adam Smith (considered the father of modern capitalism - his magnum opus
is "The Wealth of Nations"):
http://www.bibliomania.com/NonFiction/Smith/Wealth/)
* Voltaire (Candide - the novel of a man who finds out this is not the best
of all possible worlds and that one should concentrate on tending one's own
garden).
http://www.literature.org/authors/voltaire/candide/
* Rousseau -
- "What is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorized by
natural law?" at:
http://www.constitution.org/jjr/ineq.htm
- "The Social Contract of Principles of Political Right" at
http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm
* Henry David Thoreau - Originally "Resistance to Civil Government", later
called "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (and I think an important work on
self-sovereignty, another term for what Rand supposedly discovered
"objectively").
http://www2.cybernex.net/~rlenat/civil.html
* John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
http://books.mirror.org/gb.mill.html
* Max Weber - "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism"
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~hw8m-rkm/weber/world/ethic/pro_eth_frame.html
(There is still a copyright on Talcott Parson's translation, and I'd suggest
grabbing this from a bookstore - not expensive, and beautifully translated).
What we are dealing with here is what has been called "the great
conversation". It spans 2500 years, and perhaps longer. Rand, based on
reading all of The Fountainhead, some of Atlas (it's boring stuff), and her
essay on Objectivism, said nothing new. Her thing was arrangement, not
originality.
Now, the concept of enlightenment/rationality has several meanings. It can
mean, variously, informed/knowledgable (as in you have all the information
necessary to make a decision), or it can mean the application of logic, it
can simply mean one is empowered to make a choice. It means many things,
and does not carry an objective definition. Indeed the way one applies the
term is learned, applied based on a given situation, and may require
personal deliberation. It is not realized objectively. Rand's definition
tends to span knowledge and empowerment (knowledge is power?). Yet, it is
used by her sycophants to insult the intelligence of skeptics, such as
myself. I'm skeptical of anyone or anything that says he or she or it has
all of the answers, as though life is some puzzle or question to be solved
Her solution is simple: be productive, be selfish. But as with most simple
answers, they tend to be simplistic as well and, consequently, wrong in
part.
That said, I am neither a communist nor an objectivist. I am a soft
communitarian. We have rights, but we also have responsibilities. Rights
to NOT pass to us from nature. We create them for personal and mutual
benefit. Some times when we pursue what we believe is our self-interest, we
actually encounter that wonderful "law of unintended consequences", and end
up hurting others and ourselves at the same time. Rand's philosophy
suggests one has some sort of a crystal ball for divining what acts will
maximize personal benefit. My 40 years on this planet tell me otherwise,
and that we must step carefully as though walking through a mine field.
But, that's my empirical opinion and should not be accepted as a general
rule for anyone. I am not as arrogant as Rand in that respect.
I'll stop here. This reading material should keep you busy for a few years.
One suggestion, though. Pick up Hans-Georg Gadamer's work on hermeneutics,
first. I think it would be interesting to read that before reading these
other works, just to see how it acts as a filter when evaluating the other
works as texts in the context of their times.
Matt
> Let me try this once again for the benefit of jddescript and you, Matt.
Hey, I understand what you're saying. You'll also notice that I agreed that
Rand's philosophy wasn't really original in my first response.
Anyway, I enjoyed your earlier analysis of American culture. I'd just like
to point out that I'm not actually an Objectivist, but am merely
sympathetic. I only wished to point out what I believed to be a few errors
in your exposition on it, which wasn't totally off the mark, as I've said.
Interesting links BTW.
Safe travels,
Matt
plaw...@arcbs.redcross.org.au
.
.
The following
> generations who made their lives in North America then witnessed the
> continued butchery in Europe, up to and including WWII. We were able
to
> watch from a distance, at first, and then chose to share in the
misery to
> create a better, freer future for all.
I can't answer for people's motives at the time, but the actual
outcome - measured from our point of view - doesn't feel like
"a better, freer future for all".
All of this made us suspicious of
> how Europeans saw the world and acted out their vision.
Well, it's the outcome - a world made safe for democracy as
interpreted by the USA - that made us suspicious "of how [you]
saw the world and acted out [your] vision". We certainly noticed
what we lost from the old world order, and what we never got
from the new one in later years.
In passing, it's worth noting that "tyranny" must have developed a
special meaning to the American mind. In Europe, even in Britain,
it still has the significance of a false claim to authority,
where authority is a claim or basis of force and rule which allows
them to be exercised. In a practical sense, that makes authority less
likely to be challenged and more likely to be able to call on help
from those that respect it when it is. Tyranny has the opposite
qualities, but any connection with harsh rule is purely incidental.
It's just a matter of righteousness. Once you take on board the
underpinnings of modern democracy a lot of talk about tyranny is
tautologous, but when they started on about it in the 18th century
they were actually challenging the basis of authority so they could
substitute a new one.
One result is a confusion caused by the "tyranny of the majority".
If you go with the tautology you read that as undemocratic. That
can make it harder to recognise real life examples if they sneak up
on you. Actually, the tyranny of the majority is 100% democratic,
by any consistent use of the term. It's merely the case where two
different things clash that are usually symbiotic, democracy and
liberty. That in turn obscures the fact that some liberties are
undemocratic, and the fact that the two concepts should NOT be
treated as identical equivalents. (You can slip into this if you
only acknowledge majority-respecting-minority as true democracy
and true liberty.)
Remember your phrase "a better, freer future for all"? It also
conceals that creative tension. Freedom/liberty works through
empowering "each", democracy through acting on and through "all".
In many contexts "each" and "all" can be used almost interchangeably,
but once in a while there's a serious deviation from the two, in
principle, in practice and in outcome. The Tragedy of the Commons
is one such, herd immunity as applied to vaccinating children
another. PML.
Gilgamesh
recently wrote:
By the way, I have been currently studying evolutionary psychology and
sociobiology. They seem to postuate the idea that essentially,
selfishness for social creatures is a bad thing (shall I use the word
in a Neibhurian sense? Sin). Can't spell his name, but you get the
idea.
I.e., tit for tat theory, tragedy of the commons, and so
forth.
The goal of a good society exists as an ideal goal whose
implementation will always be imperfect. The imperfect society exists
due to the conflict between our social nature and essential
selfishness. Due to our social nature, government is a logical
outcome, and due to our selfish nature, a necessity. Aristotle
observed that humans are social and political creatures and Plato
pondered the nature of the just society, believing that no person is a
good citizen alone.
The freedom established by the Constitutional founders was
based in "ordered liberty" and not unrestricted radical individualism
(O' Brien, 1999, p. 10). If we want a good society, we need to
respect and understand the principles that foster a good society and
have established the American state.
Plato taught that before we can ascertain the nature of the
good society, we need to first determine the nature of individuals
(Sahakian, 1966, 59). Thomas Hobbs, whose political philosophy helped
contribute to the formation of modern democracies, formulated the
social contract theory based on the Golden Rule. Hobbs believed that
people were basically untrustworthy and corrupt and needed to bind
together into a social contract with each other for self-preservation
(Sakakian, 1966, p. 69-71). This concept was further developed by
James Madison, know also as the "Father of the Constitution." Madison
and the other founding fathers proceeded "on the assumption that the
primary political motive of man was self-interest, and that men,
whether acting individually or collectively, were selfish and only
imperfectly rational (Marshall, 1977, p. 344). This view of human
nature is complementary to the modern theological formulation of sin
by Reihold Niebhur, that the essence of sin can be found in selfish
pride that negates the worth of the other.
Since our moral nature stems from our social nature, we must
first examine the social aspects of culture and the cultural heritage
of the American Republic to determine the truths that American culture
is build upon. Within the western tradition both secular thinking and
religious thinking postulate the essential selfishness of individuals
and the need to provide some structure to insure the good life for
all. American experiment concerning democracy and liberty rested not
on the divine right of kings to rule, but on the theory of the social
contract and the principle of natural law.
Thomas Hobbes explicated the idea of the social contract. To
escape from the brutal state of nature, (where the law of nature
rules) selfish humans agree (or contract) to give up their freedoms in
exchange for security. As noted before, the idea that humans are
selfish is not foreign to Scripture. For Hobbes, the social contract
establishes the need for government for, as Aristotle believed, the
common good. Society helps us transcend the state of nature, as we
trade freedoms for safety (Sommers, p. 464-471).
Natural law theory goes back to the early Greek philosophers,
who believed there is a natural order to the world that provides
guiding principles for society. However, we should not rest upon
natural law alone as "Slavery, injustice, inequality of wealth, war,
all these were accepted as being ordained by 'natural law.'" (Niebhur,
1960, p.76). Natural law theory needs to be informed by reason and
theology, lets it degenerate into Neitsche's belief that might makes
right, and the strong have a natural right to rule the weak. Moral
law stems from natural law in that the principles found within natural
law support the premise that people ought not violate that order.
With the idea that there is a purpose to natural law, it can serve as
a theological teleological ethic and guides behavior. Within the
Christian tradition, fundamental human rights are seen as being
guaranteed not only by God, but also by the order of nature. Natural
law in this context is a normative transcendent ethical concept that
implies natural rights. Natural rights, therefore, that are those
right established by the creator that exist above and before the
rights given or recognized by the state. In the Declaration of
Independence, these natural rights are considered to be life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
The balanced view of human nature, Hobbes' social contract,
natural law theory, natural rights creed along with the influence of
faith established principles that guided the informal and formal
relations of American culture.
It does seem as if the common social fabric of American
culture is unraveling at a rapid pace and that "something has gone
wrong," (Brander, 1998, p.5). William Bennett, in his list of
"Leading Cultural Indicators " documents that in the past thirty years
we have had a 560 percent increase in violent crime, a 400 percent
increase in illegitimate births, a 200 percent increase in teenage
suicides, a quadrupling in the divorce rate, and a tripling of the
divorce rate (Bennett, 1994). Transcendent moral virtues have been
relativistically downgraded to personal values of choice; natural law
is suspect and rejected due to its transcendent claims; and secular
humanism seems to be the official ideology of popular culture. Since
social and political order rests on moral foundations, abandoning our
moral traditions is a disruptive action that will lead to social
decline, societal stress, and an increase in crime. These symptoms
are signs of society in change and perhaps even that are ill. Freud
believed that a society can have conflicting demands and thus manifest
mental illness (Brander, 1998, p. 36). According to Durkhiem, one of
the signs of a weakening society was a increased suicide rate
(McKenna, 1980, p. 65). Aside from increased incarceration and
increased suicidal ideation, another sigh of a society under stress or
a society manifesting mental illness is a degrading of manners,
customs, and behaviors, especially among the upper classes, and
increased cruelty (Brander, 1998, p.201) (Eberly, 1998, p. 6). Could
it be that the increased media and real violence are also symptoms of
a sick society?
Conflicting demands in a changing culture may also manifest
itself as culture lag. Simply put when different parts of culture
move at different speeds, the disharmony in culture can be understood
as culture lag (Ogburn, 1964, p. 61). It would seem logical that a
culture that is under stress from pluralism and multiculturalism,
especially so in an increasingly fast paced tempo, would experience
cultural lag. It may be that the culture war may be a manifestation
of cultural lag. Additionally, the church being naturally traditional
and conservative, may lag behind society. In some sense, perhaps the
church should lag behind culture as an anchor that holds on to that
which is important in society. Not all social change is good.
It was noted in the introduction that the strength of America
lie in the radical sense of personal freedom and rugged individualism.
However, radical individualism has taken this concept and pushed it to
the extreme so that individualism threatens the very foundation of
American culture. Amazingly, this possibility was foreseen by the
Frenchman Tocqueville, one of the clearest observers of American life.
While greatly admiring American life and culture, he prophetically
warned that, "Under pressure from individual autonomy, opinions would
be relativized, mores softened ...While individual rights govern the
lives of men, the ends of man fall into neglect (Manet, 1996, p.
54-56).
For most of American history, Americans balanced individualism
with social ties to institutions to which they belonged (Eberly, 1998,
p.79). Both community and family commitments have been loosened in
the search for greater individual choice. (Eberly, 1998, p.9). Even in
the largest of civic associations, the church, there has been a
growing trend towards increased individualism. One researcher (Warren,
1998) chronicles a change in American churches from the 1930's to the
1940's where the attributes of personality for a strong democracy
changed from character traits to personality traits. Part of the
trend to personality traits was the promoting of inner growth and
individual freedom (537-555). Individual freedom without communal
responsibility also contributes to societal decline. Individual
choices need to be balanced with the context of community and
relationships (O'Brien, 1999, p. 10).
The emphasis on rights combined with radical individualism has
served to undermine the web of social ties that allowed for a strong
cohesive culture build on trust and good will. A fairly recent
concept has developed that combines natural law with empirical data to
postulate a theory of moral ecology. The value of moral ecology is
that it provides natural law with some empirical data to critique
social practices and perceptions. Basically, moral ecology can be
understood by the principle of the tragedy of the commons. As defined
by ecologist Garret Hardin, it is in the interest of each individual
sheep in a grassland to get as much from the grassland as he can.
Sheep are well know to graze down to the roots. What is good for the
one sheep is disastrous for the flock. What is good for the
individual in society may not be good for the whole. In this sense,
radical unrestrained individual freedom has become a source of
disruption in society (Hertzke, 1998, p. 629). The question is
raised, "How can liberal societies, which leave individuals and
companies largely free in the moral arena, shield themselves from
cumulative moral depredation?" (Hertzke, 1998, p. 629). Since as
Aristotle noted, we are social creatures, it makes sense to balance
individualism with responsible social constraints. Moral ecology uses
social science data to discover what practices are proving to be toxic
to civil and communal life.
It can be seen that the promoting of radical individualism,
undermining social bonds, weakening of the family, Balkanization of
American culture through self interest politics, negation of religion,
and growing secularization of culture have proved to have negative
social consequences. There is not agreement on what is causing the
problems in society. Perhaps due to cultural lag and disagreement on
what the solutions are, our culture is in conflict.
That there is conflict in society is obvious as the social
indicators reveal. However, there is not even consensus on what the
fight is about. For some the conflict is not so much between
believers and non believers as it is between transcendentalists and
empiristics. (Wilson, 1983, p.65). Others see the conflict as "...
the struggle over the principles ... that define the permissible and
the impermissible (and) the acceptable and the unacceptable..."
(Bennett, 1993, p. 25). As another author put it "We are engaged in a
cultural war, a war about values." (Wilson, 1993 xi). Still others
believe that the concern over values and principles masks the real
struggle between the older traditional European Christian culture with
the newer pluralistic and multicultural America (Shearer, 1998, p.1).
Some put a racial spin on this struggle by claiming that, "Any talk of
mainstream or common values is typically dismissed as window dressing
or code language for dominant White, male, Eurocentric interests."
(Smelser & Alexander, 1999, March need page, 913). Finally, one writer
even thinks that culture wars are is a good indicator that reflect a
diverse society that allows more and more people to opt out of the
value system of others (Gillespie, 1999, p. 24). As noted before, the
Declaration of Independence was written with a reference to
transcendentalism both secular and religious. Regardless of who is
fighting whom, and if it is good or not, those who deny a transcendent
realm of moral authority find themselves in opposition to the secular
and religious transcendentalism of the founders as revealed in the
Declaration Independence. The essential nature of this difference
is rooted in an understanding of truth.
Secularism has been successful in reducing claims of
transcendentalism. However, without a common binding moral principle
for society, the law becomes the medium and final arbitrator of
behavior. It is along these lines that it has been noticed that
"...when a society is divided on cultural fundamentals and when its
leaders lack legitimacy, they 'compensate' for this deficit of
integration by relying on systems of political coercion." (Smelser &
Alexander, 1999, March, p. 913).
References
Anderson, Brian C. (March 1996): Tocqueville and the Nature of
Democracy. 1996 First Things 61 (54-56).
Arkes, H. (1992, Winter). Natural law. Constitution. 13-18.
Barnett, R.E. (1997, Summer). A law professor's guide to natural law
and natural rights. Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. 20, (3),
655-681.
Bennett, William J. (1993) The De-Valuing of America. Summet Books:
NY.
Bennett, William J. (1993) Quantifying America's Decline.
http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/onprin/v1n1/bennett.html
Bennett, William J. (1994) The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators;
Facts and Figures on the State of American Society. Touchstone Press:
NY
Boice, J. M. (1996). Two cities, two loves. Downers Grove, IL:
Intervarsity Press.
Brander. B. G. (1998). Staring into Chaos. Spence Publishing
Company: Dallas.
Brown, R. M. (1995, Summer). Toward a just and compassionate society:
A Christian view. Cross Currents, 164-174.
Carter, Stephen L. (1993) The Culture of Disbelief. Basic Books.
Colson, Charles and Nancy Pearcey. (1999, January 11). The sky isn't
falling. Christianity Today. Vol 42 Issue 1, 104.
Colson, C.W. (1996, November). Kingdoms in conflict. First Things,
34-38.
Cox, W.F. (undated). Chapter 1 - Equality. Virginia Beach, VA.
Dupris, Louis. (1997, July 16-23). Seeking Christian Inferiority: An
Interview with Louis Dupre. The Christian Century. 654-660.
Eberly, D. E. (1994). Restoring the good society. Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Books.
Eliot. T. S. (1940). The Idea of a Christian Society. Harcourt: NY.
Gaede, S. D. (1993). When tolerance is no virtue. Downers Grove, IL:
Intervarsity Press.
Gillespie, Nick. (1999, April). All Culture, All of the Time.
Reason.
Vol 30 # 11 . p. 24.
Heddendorf, Russell. Principles of a Christian Perspective in
Sociology (113-134).
Henry, Carl F.H. (1995, January). Natural law and a nihilistic
culture. First Things, 54-60.
Hertzke, Allen, D. (1998, Fall). The Theory of Moral Ecology. The
Review of Politics. Vol 60 Issue 4, 629-659.
Hobbs, Thomas. (1997) Of the State of Men without Civil Society, in
Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life. Christina and Fred Sommers.
Harcourt Brace College Publishers. NY.
Lippmann, W. (1943). An inquiry into the principles of The Good
Society. (pp 241-251,342-351, 362-368, 372-389). Westport, CN:
Greenwood Press.
Jeffrey, Terence P. (1999, March 19). Justice Blackmun's Brave New
World. Human Events. Vol 55 issue 11.
Marshall, P., and Manuel D. (1977). The Light and the Glory. Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.
Meyerson, Adam. (1997 May/June). Family Faith. Freedom. Policy
Review. 28-37.
Niebhur, Reihold. (1960) Moral Man in Immoral Society. Charles
Scribner's Son's: NY.
Ogburn, William F. (1964). On Culture and Social Change. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press.
Prager, Dennis. (1999, March 22). God and His Enemies. National
Review. P. 51.
Putnam. (1993). The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public
Life. http://epn.org/prospect/13putn.html.
Putnam. (1999). Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital.
http://jhupress.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_democracy/v006/6.2putnam.html.
Robinson, Marilyn. (1998, September). The Way We Work, the Way We
Live. The Christian Century. 823-832.
Rose, Peter I. The Study of Society. (1967). Random House: NY.
Van Leeuwen, Mary Stewart. (1998, July 29 - August 5). Parenting and
Politics: Giving New Shape to 'Family Values.' The Christian Century.
719-721.
Sahakian, William S. (1968). Outline - History of Philosophy. NY:
Barnes and Noble Books.
Sahakian, William S., and Mabel Lewis. (1966) Ideas of the Great
Philosophers. NY: Barnes and Noble Books.
Schambra, William A. (1997 Fall). Building community top-down or
bottom-up?: Local groups are the key to America's civic renewal. The
Brookings Review. Washington. 20-22 vol 15 issue 4.
Shearer, S. R. (1999, March 18). Culture Wars. Religion in Politics.
www.endtimesnetwork.com.
Smelser, Neil J. And Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1999 March). The Public
Representation of Culture and History. The American Behavioral
Scientist. Vol 42 issue 6
Stott, John. (1990) Decisive Issues Facing Christians Today, Old
Tappan: Revell.
Tillich, Paul. A Theology of Culture. Oxford University Press, NY.
1959.
Wilson, James. (1993) The Moral Sense. New York: The Free Press.
Wall, James M. (1992). Religious Freedom: Tensions and Contentions.
The Christian Century. 35-36.
Wall, James M. (1995). Changes in Attitude: The Lost World of the
1950's. The Christian Century. 947-948.
Warren, Heather V. (1998, September). The shift from character to
personality in mainline Protestant thought. 1935-1945. Church
History. Vol 67, issue 3, 537-555, Chicago.
Manent, Pierre. (1996). Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy.
Translated by John Waggoner. First Things 61, 54-56.
jddde...@my-deja.com
no....@tds.net wrote:
> TRVTH wrote:
> >
> > Ayn Rand. Ugh. Warmed-over Neitszche.
> > If there is progress, it may only be
> > measured in millimeters (or fractions of an inch on this side of the
> > Atlantic).
>
>
> -dl
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Another area where I don't believe your original analysis is
adequate to properly understand what is happening the world
is about the aggressive coercion parts of socialism. Ayn Rand
told us that the socialist attempts to take over the world,
particularly in the twentieth century, {after the American
revolution} could result in another dark ages of 100 generations
of king's men rule unless we are smart (enough) to understand
and stop them. She taught that the socialists were just the
current embodiment of the idea of the special people of social
manipulation [socman] after the old time king's men had finally
been defeated by the American revolution. Thus to understand
these progressive destructions of human rights and freedoms,
that are called the socialist waves of world take over by the
SIC-OWES [Socialist International Conspiracy - One World
Everywhere Socialism] one must carefully understand the impact
of the American revolution on human happiness to start with.
Ayn Rand emphasized this beautiful side of human history in
her works. Although there never was an explicit philosophy to
represent it, until Ayn Rand - actually Charles Peirce did
some good work but the king's men spirit of socialism largely
suppressed his work - the principals were clearly outlined in
the DECLARATION. When you talk about world happiness and our
futures I think it is important to clearly understand how much
of the happiness, that exists since the dark ages, was
culminated in the American revolution shaking the king's men
rulers auf [authoritarian force] the backs of average freedom
loving people, the FPS [Free People Spirits] that is the
American great attraction for so many around the world =
the opportunity to be free = happy and safe from the king's men
rule of socialism.
Good seeing. JD
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Coburn
> Here are some tidbits I excerpted out of a much larger paper I
> recently wrote:
I wonder how many trees were chopped down to provide the paper for the
whole article? I read this stuff and it is LONG. It seems to be heavy
on the assertion that rights were defined by the Good Fairy before men
and societies ever evolved. Of course only some of us can actually hear
the Good Fairy, and the rest are to take it on faith. My own opinion is
simply that "rights" are those social laws that are enforced by the
MAJORITY. The if the Good Fairy disagrees with what the MAJORITY would
define as "rights" then the Good Fairy's representatives are not doing a
very good job of convincing the MAJORITY that the Good Fairy is "right".
What all of that means is that WE EACH have a social responsibility to
say exactly what we believe and why we believe it. We must seek the
opinions of others and share our own and that is what makes a society.
The consensus is what we have. All else is simply a personal belief, an
illusion or "rights".
jdescript
theory[ART] which I think are well presented and truthful. I'm
always amazed at the difficulty some people have in
distinguishing an attack and a defense. Of course it is one
reason to follow the highly moral properties of ART since if we
can't distinguish the good and the bad then we don't know
whether freedom is natural or serfdom is natural for ,human
happiness. The king's men, the socman [social manipulator] would
say that since they control our lives if we say, as RUSH does,
that our earning are our wealth then we are "stealing" the
socman dues, their natural loot.
I was responding, similarly to an explicit attack on the works
of Ayn Rand. Saying that the author is philosophically confused
was merely repeating what he had admitted to;
Dictatorship can be thrown upon the people either by one person
or a multitude. Yet, it remains a dictatorship, which is likely
why Marx referred to the dictatorship of the proletariat as the
stage before the communism. It is still a tyranny, it's just
that the tyrants are a different class of people. Rampant
democracy in the form of socialism and communism (whatever those
are, since their denotations and connotations continue to grow--
we are all busy post-modernists, it seems) can result in tyranny
of the majority or, as it did in the Soviet Union and has in
China, tyranny of the aristocracy under the guise of
dictatorship of the proletariat (majority). Using Marx's own
rhetoric, I would say any who dispute this are suffering false
consciousness.
Someone who can't distinguish the historical American
republican/democratic free market government, which the ART
supports, from socialism and "post-modern" "thought" is
obviously going to have a lot of confusion about the Ayn Rand
theories, as your attack response to him vividly brings out.
I can understand why you find my terminology simple yet complex
and objectionable. I wish you didn't think it was kookish but
rather just crude and highly direct/explicit. I consider it one
of the advantages I have in doing my models. Since I make no
pretence at presenting ART in a beautiful and literary way it
makes my efforts much easier. My models are all based on ART
[and the symbolical geometry of William Rowan Hamilton = also
called the HV for Hamilton Visualization]. Ayn Rand did the
great literature aspects of ART and I just use the ideas. Anyone
who wants to trace my terminology to her works can do it
although much still hasn't been indexed at the level of
Aristotle's works. Don't expect the socman or the king's men or
the authman [authoritarian manipulator] or the PEMAN [ power
elite manipulator] and such to be so labeled. The literary ART
world doesn't work that way. One of her great, and explicit
breakthroughs was in convincing book editors that she could, in
reality realized, present deep and encompassing philosophy in
works of fiction. None of them beliecved it until Fountainhead
began to sale by word-of-mouth. I'm sure you know that all her
works are still widely sold. I especially use her unique theory
of concepts which is sort of a dimensinless analysis of reasoned
thought. Of course, the main indispensible thing I use [ that I
purchased from her over many years ] is the array of ideas that
happiness is an objective science. Roughly that; the good people
are the free people. Understand the FPS [ Free People Spirit ]
and we can find great happiness, as Ayn Rand did in her life
accomplishments.
Good seeing. JD
-------------------------------------------------------------
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TRVTH
<plaw...@arcbs.redcross.org.au> wrote in message
news:8c19lc$k9l$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <RV9E4.1588$9m6....@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
> "TRVTH" <no...@urbiz.com> wrote:
> .
> .
> .
> > generations who made their lives in North America then witnessed the
> > continued butchery in Europe, up to and including WWII. We were able
> to
> > watch from a distance, at first, and then chose to share in the
> misery to
> > create a better, freer future for all.
>
> outcome - measured from our point of view - doesn't feel like
So you would have preferred a future lived under Hitler, with the
"undesirables" being sent off to their death in the camps? Would you have
preferred being enslaved in one way or another by Papa Joe?
I guess freedom is relative, like everything else.
>
> All of this made us suspicious of
> > how Europeans saw the world and acted out their vision.
>
> Well, it's the outcome - a world made safe for democracy as
> interpreted by the USA - that made us suspicious "of how [you]
> saw the world and acted out [your] vision". We certainly noticed
> what we lost from the old world order, and what we never got
> from the new one in later years.
What did you lose? What was this order? Perhaps this is the source of our
inability to "get it". What we know of Britain in the 19th century is
summed up in the romantic novels, and Marx and Dickens tales of nightmare.
How about the wars that came every 20 to 30 years, just like the predictible
cycles of economic boom and bust? See, I'm concerned that people
over-romanticize the past, making of it something that never was, seeking to
return to a fantasy. So please tell us what it was like, what was lost.
>
> In passing, it's worth noting that "tyranny" must have developed a
> special meaning to the American mind. In Europe, even in Britain,
> it still has the significance of a false claim to authority,
> where authority is a claim or basis of force and rule which allows
> them to be exercised.
Not according to your Mr. Locke, from whom the founders of the U.S. drew
inspiration. Perhaps the differences can be summed up this way (and I'm not
the first to do this). In America, our liberty is based on "freedoms of."
In Europe, they are based on "freedoms from." We diligently guard the
freedoms of, here, but I am not persuaded that Europeans do the same with
their "freedoms from". If they did, there could have been no Hitler,
Mussolini, Lenin, or Stalin. There would have been no class consciousness
of their deprivations (failure of freedoms from.. want, for example), and
thus no revolutions. See, I think our revolution was simply the beginning
of the revolutionary cycle that led to those that occurred since, in Europe,
when class division was finally perceived and cried out for a remedy. In
our case, it abandoned the notion of "freedom from", since it didn't work,
in favor of Mr. Locke's "freedom of," which begins with the right of
self-sovereignty and the right of a people to overthrow a government if it
fails to serve the people as it should. That is a European idea.
In a practical sense, that makes authority less
> likely to be challenged and more likely to be able to call on help
> from those that respect it when it is. Tyranny has the opposite
> qualities, but any connection with harsh rule is purely incidental.
I am of the opinion that all opinions are ultimately appeals to authority.
Indeed to offer a "rule" of logic, including that which decries the appeal
to authority, is itself an appeal to authority.
First, in your assumption appears to be the claim that the only way to
ultimately govern is by the use of force. If so, the burden of proof is on
you to demonstrate this. Not even Machiavelli held this idea (and I know
I'm in the minority on this, but I think "The Prince" was a satire, not a
"How to" book, because old Nick was forever juxtaposing the ease of
governing with the consent of the governed with the amount of work necessary
to hold a people by force).
I know it's been said that both the best and worst forms of government are
despotism, but by placing rule in the hands of one, whether that is a
monarch, commintern, dictator, or majority (as in a pure democracy), it
makes it too easy for the one to pursue his/her/its agenda at the expense of
others and not for the good of the whole. If the ruler is benevolent, who
perceives a duty to serve, it can be a positive experience for the whole.
If not, minorities can find themselves being shipped off to camps and
exterminated for the good of the whole. That both Europeans (and Americans)
followed this model is an uncanny coincidence, don't you think (the Nazi
camps, the American Indian reservations as concentration camps of a sort)?
But it is the very thing Montesque was driving at when he discussed the
weakness inherent in democracy (and why the ancient Greek states fell). If
power is that concentrated and institutionalized and it turns malicious,
there is only one way to remove it: revolution. If rule is gained by the
consent of the governed and turns malicious, it can be turned out through
the electoral process. Both take cooperation, but the latter takes far less
blood.
> It's just a matter of righteousness. Once you take on board the
> underpinnings of modern democracy a lot of talk about tyranny is
> tautologous, but when they started on about it in the 18th century
> they were actually challenging the basis of authority so they could
> substitute a new one.
And here you thrust a cogent argument into the realm of ad hominem attack.
Granted some of our more radical types here in America are indeed
self-righteous. But most Americans simply want to be left the hell alone to
make their own life's decisions without the heavy hand of government telling
them how to live. If the assumption that it is necessary to have a
democracy or, as in our case, a democratic republic in order to attain
liberty, so too is the the assumption that the best government is attained
when rule is by one person or group destined or better suited to rule
(government, in whatever form) by virtue of some virtue of birth, rearing,
training, or any other reason one can rightly divine. I tend to think since
European democracies adopted proportional representation in their
parliaments, they've managed to diffuse power nicely, to prevent any one
party or group from gaining the power to impose intrusive rule on others.
We accomplish the same here by dividing powers between the three branches of
government, between the federal and state governments, and between the
government and people. There may be a great deal of activity in all of
these bodies, but it makes it far more difficult to get anything done
because coalitions must be formed to do so. And considering the contentious
nature of people, especially people posessed by ideals, it almost reaches
the level of laissez faire (a European term we've borrowed to mean
unintrusive government).
>
> One result is a confusion caused by the "tyranny of the majority".
> If you go with the tautology you read that as undemocratic. That
> can make it harder to recognise real life examples if they sneak up
> on you. Actually, the tyranny of the majority is 100% democratic,
> by any consistent use of the term. It's merely the case where two
> different things clash that are usually symbiotic, democracy and
> liberty. That in turn obscures the fact that some liberties are
> undemocratic, and the fact that the two concepts should NOT be
> treated as identical equivalents. (You can slip into this if you
> only acknowledge majority-respecting-minority as true democracy
> and true liberty.)
It is a tauthology, indeed. Yet, that doesn't negate democracy as a
government capable of holding tyranny at bay. Montesque's argument and that
of the American political philosophers, like James Madison (Federalist 10),
was that the majority needs to be impeded in its ability to affect policy
and, essentially, impose tyranny. Madison's solution was to diffuse power
throughout government and make it difficult to gain a majority. All votes
outside and within government are by vote, and in that respect it is
democratic. To create policy here it takes either the approval of several
branches of government, as is the case with a "bill" passed by Congress and
signed by the president, and in the case of an amendment to our
Constitution, it takes a supermajority vote of 2/3ds of all members of the
U.S. Senate and approval of 3/4 of all state legislatures: no small
accomplishment. If the United States wishes to go to war, the president
must persuade Congress to authorize it with a bill. Coalitions must be
built to do this. And even then all of that activity, with the exception of
a Constitutional amendment, a bill can be declared "unconstitutional" by the
U.S. Supreme Court, as can any state bill by any state supreme court. It is
very difficult to make a law and have it stick in the United States. In
this way it was Madison's intention to minimize the ability for a majority
to impose its will on a minority. The United States is not a pure democracy
because of this. It is a democratic republic. Your forms of government use
proportional representation, in part, to accomplish the same, it seems to
me.
But now I'm getting redundant.
Does any of this make for perfection? Of course not. There is no such
thing on this planet that I've seen in my 40 years on it. There is always
room for improvement. But there is one thing I've learned: we pay for
increased safety in the currency of self-sovereignty (or as an American
would put it: liberty). As the old Buddhist idea holds: we must always give
up something to gain something else; to walk one step forward, you must give
up the last step.
TRVTH
<jddde...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8c1cpu$nf7$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <38E12CE4...@tds.net>,
> Another area where I don't believe your original analysis is
> adequate to properly understand what is happening the world
> is about the aggressive coercion parts of socialism. Ayn Rand
> told us that the socialist attempts to take over the world,
> particularly in the twentieth century,
Any extremist group in power can do this. Any. Because it served her
political sensibilities, Rand chose socialists and communists as her focus.
That was rather a bit of a tautology, wouldn't you say? One could lump into
that equation fascists of every stripe, including the Nazis. I think one
could also lump in any society that must perpetually and perfectly submit to
the wills of individuals. What a miserable place that would be, where
anyone could dump nuclear waste on his property, regardless of the effects
on others.
Liberals are not socialists, however. Nor are they communists. This is
where your analysis goes drastically wrong. (This is also the same mistake
Goebbels made in his 1937 speech, formerly cited). Liberals believe in
social equality and social justice. We believe people are enlightened
beings who can work together through government to create better working
conditions for all while being careful to not take rights from one
individual or group to give them to another. We are also concerned about
the manufacturing of "rights" by people seeking to impose their will on
others (in this respect there is a bit of communitarianism in liberalism).
We especially believe government has a role to play economically, which
(using my own terminology) is a bit of a pyramid scheme. We believe
government has a role in stimulating the economy during downturns in the
business cycle. Since adoption of Keynesian liberal reforms, we have
witnessed in 50 years the greatest economic expansion in the history of
mankind, spanning more social strata than any other expansion, employing
more people than any other, creating more general and specific wealth than
any other-- without any downturn stronger than the recession of '78 to '83.
It was so powerful, even Rand's protege Ronald Reagan used it (though he did
modify it a bit by concentrating his spending of the deficit-raised money in
wrong places: with defense contractors; a solution Japan has apparently
adopted with the same poor results). The Keynes plan, however, required
that tax levels stay the same and when employment levels came up, the
additional revenues coming in would be applied to the deficits to pay them
down, so government would have this method available again in the event of a
fiscal downturn. But, if people were to read more than Rand they'd
understand how this all is supposed to work. They'd understand liberalism
is NOT socialism, though a few programs may resemble it. And they'd realize
the United States has had a mixed economy since the mid-1930's, when the
bust of the old, sort-of "free market" economy sent Say's Law into the abyss
(until, that is, a new generation of conservatively inspired romantic
Americans, who had not lived in the old days, decided to build a religion
around ideas so thoroughly deflated).
> revolution.
TRVTH
fancies himself the modern Plato (how's that for an oxymoron: modern Plato),
regarded as an authoritative source. I'd love to see him engage in a debate
with Foucault or Derrida, wouldn't you? ;o)
Gilgamesh <nos...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:38e433c0...@news.santafe.edu...
> Here are some tidbits I excerpted out of a much larger paper I
> recently wrote:
>
> By the way, I have been currently studying evolutionary psychology and
> sociobiology. They seem to postuate the idea that essentially,
> selfishness for social creatures is a bad thing (shall I use the word
> in a Neibhurian sense? Sin). Can't spell his name, but you get the
> idea.
>
Neibur. (Richard? Gustav? Reinhold?
> I.e., tit for tat theory, tragedy of the commons, and so
> forth.
>
>
> The goal of a good society exists as an ideal goal whose
> implementation will always be imperfect. The imperfect society exists
> due to the conflict between our social nature and essential
> selfishness. Due to our social nature, government is a logical
> outcome, and due to our selfish nature, a necessity. Aristotle
> observed that humans are social and political creatures and Plato
> pondered the nature of the just society, believing that no person is a
> good citizen alone.
Exactly right about Plato: the best society is the virtuous society. The
best man is the virtuous man. We can know the virtuous from the
non-virtuous by those who practice: wisdom, temperance, courage, justice,
and piety. The Christians built on this, adding: faith, hope, and charity.
Those who don't practice them commit the deadly sins: sloth, gluttony,
lust, pride, avarice, jealousy, anger. These play themselves out in every
society, from the highest institution to the lowest person. The Republic
sought to institutionalize the virtues through ascribed roles, thus creating
the virtuous state: the highest articulation of man.
To put it in the parlance of Gilligan's Island, this is how each character
works in their morality plays (and I know this sounds strange, but if you've
seen even this piece-of-refuse of a show, each character is a type):
Character Deadly Sin Cardinal Virtue
--------- ---------- ---------------
Gilligan Sloth Courage
The Skipper Gluttony Justice
Ginger Lust Hope
The Professor Pride Wisdom
Mr. Howell Avarice Temperance
Mrs. Howell Jealousy Charity
Mary Anne Anger Faith
For Aristotle, in his Politics, though man is the political animal, each is
born to a specific station or talent. The citizen is born for political
life. The woman to be a wife. The slave to support both.
Plato and Aristotle were the first known idealists. It would be fun to see
how they'd handle the po-mo debate.
Gilgamesh
>Nice paper, btw. It is unsettling to see Bill Bennett mentioned, who
>fancies himself the modern Plato (how's that for an oxymoron: modern Plato),
>regarded as an authoritative source. I'd love to see him engage in a debate
>with Foucault or Derrida, wouldn't you? ;o)
>Reinhold? Yes!
>
Amazing. Where did you get this? Did you develop it? It would be a
great teaching device (in fact, perhaps I will use it!).
jddescr...@my-deja.com
"TRVTH" <no...@urbiz.com> wrote:
>
-------------------excerpted, see original----------------------
> I am of the opinion that all opinions are ultimately appeals to
authority.
> Indeed to offer a "rule" of logic, including that which decries the
appeal
> to authority, is itself an appeal to authority.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is an example of an easy confusion that I have handled in a
particular way in the models based on the Ayn Rand theories. The
problem is that there are two polar uses of the word authority by
the free people and the king's men. One means a knowledgable expert
and the other means the authoritarian command of the dictator. Once
the distinction is clearly drawn explicitly as I have to in doing
the counting in the simulations ,then there is no serious problem.
We can appeal to the learning/understanding/logic history of free
people with particular representatives like you mention Locke and
Ayn Rand would quote Thomas Jefferson and the DECLARATION. [She
called it not only the greatest political document but the greatest
work of literature in human history - that means she liked it!] In
the history of thought this conflict in meaning is ever present
because the king's men use the messages to fraud/command/seduce
the average people. Socialists keep changing the names but it used
to be called propagnda until the hitler socialist you like to quote
was exposed in his role as propogandist. Now days they mostly call
it rhetoric but one way or the other it's used to manipulate people
by the authman = authoritarian manipulator.
Good seeing. JD
---------------------------------------------------------------------
murt...@my-deja.com
nos...@hotmail.com (Gilgamesh) wrote:
> Here are some tidbits I excerpted out of a much larger paper I
> recently wrote:
>
> By the way, I have been currently studying evolutionary psychology and
> sociobiology. They seem to postuate the idea that essentially,
> selfishness for social creatures is a bad thing (shall I use the word
> in a Neibhurian sense? Sin). Can't spell his name, but you get the
> idea.
A much ignored and underestimated 19th/early 20th cen. thinker was the
paleontologist/sociologist Lester F. Ward. The following quote
is from a speech he gave to the International Congress of Sociology:
[Collectivism and individualism] are not opposites but concomitants.
Spencer lost sight of the first law of evolution which is that it must take
place in the direction of the advantage of the organism, and in the social
organism this is the opposite of what it is in animals, and consists in
securing the interests of the parts- i.e.,individual -instead of the whole.
Every step in the direction of a true collectivism has been and must be a
step in the direction of true individualism."
Gilgamesh
>
> A much ignored and underestimated 19th/early 20th cen. thinker was the
> paleontologist/sociologist Lester F. Ward. The following quote
> is from a speech he gave to the International Congress of Sociology:
>
> [Collectivism and individualism] are not opposites but concomitants.
>Spencer lost sight of the first law of evolution which is that it must take
>place in the direction of the advantage of the organism, and in the social
>organism this is the opposite of what it is in animals, and consists in
>securing the interests of the parts- i.e.,individual -instead of the whole.
>Every step in the direction of a true collectivism has been and must be a
>step in the direction of true individualism."
Cool quote, I had to cut and print that one out.
Somehow, I am really interested in this stuff. However, my research
for a Phd right now is examining the norm of reciprocity and how it
relates to social capital (individually held) and leadership
effectiveness.
If I could only somehow use this other stuff! Thanks
plaw...@arcbs.redcross.org.au
"TRVTH" <no...@urbiz.com> wrote:
>
This is a common misunderstanding. Of course US hegemony is
preferable to Hitler. But freedom is NOT relative. The point
I was getting at was that "making the world safe for democracy"
turned out to be a recipe for US hegemony, not freedom for the
rest of the world. We are worse off, in relative terms, than we
were before the Second World War, and worse off than we would
have been if we could have headed it off or if we could have won
without falling into dependency on one or another of the big
players. But it is absurd to make Hitler the counterfactual.
>
> >
> > All of this made us suspicious of
> > > how Europeans saw the world and acted out their vision.
> >
> > Well, it's the outcome - a world made safe for democracy as
> > interpreted by the USA - that made us suspicious "of how [you]
> > saw the world and acted out [your] vision". We certainly noticed
> > what we lost from the old world order, and what we never got
> > from the new one in later years.
>
> What did you lose? What was this order? Perhaps this is the source of
our
> inability to "get it".
Probably. It's worth recalling that most of the current enemies
of world peace and stability were nurtured by the US (acting on
a basis of misunderstanding), and that US undercutting independent
actions has left "learned helplessness" - the US role as global
policeman only exists because nobody else can realistically expect
to be allowed to carry through an independent initiative.
If the US hadn't thwarted Suez the Middle East would have been a lot
better off today. That has nothing to do with British or American
motives, only with their levels of street wisdom.
What we know of Britain in the 19th century is
> summed up in the romantic novels, and Marx and Dickens tales of
nightmare.
Not too reliable.
> How about the wars that came every 20 to 30 years, just like the
predictible
> cycles of economic boom and bust?
Er... what wars were these? Small colonial wars, except for the
Crimea and a few small scale wars in Europe. ALL of these were
contained and had few repercussions on people outside their scope.
See, I'm concerned that people
> over-romanticize the past, making of it something that never was,
seeking to
> return to a fantasy. So please tell us what it was like, what was
lost.
Each country under its own vine and its own fig tree, as much as
anything. Think "don't step on me". Again, an ideal rather than a
reality, but more nearly attained under Pax Britannica than under
US hegemony. You might like to compare the Persian Gulf situation
today with what it was under the British "Perpetual Maritime Peace".
>
> >
> > In passing, it's worth noting that "tyranny" must have developed a
> > special meaning to the American mind. In Europe, even in Britain,
> > it still has the significance of a false claim to authority,
> > where authority is a claim or basis of force and rule which allows
> > them to be exercised.
>
> Not according to your Mr. Locke, from whom the founders of the U.S.
drew
> inspiration.
Locke was somewhat prescriptive, and I am merely referring to the
fact that current European usage still partly corresponds to the
original Greek usage. Locke is not an authority on current European
usage.
Perhaps the differences can be summed up this way (and I'm not
> the first to do this). In America, our liberty is based on "freedoms
of."
Whichn immediately destroys true freedom, as it creates a notion
of freedom as something supplied and resourced rather than an
omission or absence. It implies an authorised supplier.
.
.
.
> I am of the opinion that all opinions are ultimately appeals to
authority.
You must be aware that your reflexive formulation invites me to
request your authority for this opinion.
> Indeed to offer a "rule" of logic, including that which decries the
appeal
> to authority, is itself an appeal to authority.
Actually, observations may be backed by insight, authority or
experience. Take it from me (on my authority) because of my
experience.
>
> First, in your assumption appears to be the claim that the only way to
> ultimately govern is by the use of force.
No. You imagined this. Rather, when authority is disputed, then
and only then it must be backed up by resources of some sort.
Perceived legitimacy may mean this never has to be done at all,
and makes it easier when it has to. But that may not be in the
sphere of actual force.
If so, the burden of proof is on
> you to demonstrate this.
My formulation reverses the burden of proof, as it starts with the
idea that "IF force is called on..." It then becomes necessary to
show that once force is going on, legitimate authority is immaterial.
That is NOT my view.
.
.
.
> > It's just a matter of righteousness. Once you take on board the
> > underpinnings of modern democracy a lot of talk about tyranny is
> > tautologous, but when they started on about it in the 18th century
> > they were actually challenging the basis of authority so they could
> > substitute a new one.
>
> And here you thrust a cogent argument into the realm of ad hominem
attack.
No. What "hominem" is being attacked? I am not referring to the
motives of anybody around at the time, or at what they thought
they were actally doing. I am pointing out that democracy and
freedom didn't have the talismanic quality that legitimate
authority had in that day and age. When they did all that they
weren't actually appealing to any basis of authority - they couldn't
be. But, observably by the results and what it did for them, it
did indeed produce a new basis and substitute that. Pretty much
the same thing happened in England in 1688, downgrading the
"Divine Right of Kings" as a basis of legitimacy.
.
.
.
> > One result is a confusion caused by the "tyranny of the majority".
> > If you go with the tautology you read that as undemocratic. That
> > can make it harder to recognise real life examples if they sneak up
> > on you. Actually, the tyranny of the majority is 100% democratic,
> > by any consistent use of the term. It's merely the case where two
> > different things clash that are usually symbiotic, democracy and
> > liberty. That in turn obscures the fact that some liberties are
> > undemocratic, and the fact that the two concepts should NOT be
> > treated as identical equivalents. (You can slip into this if you
> > only acknowledge majority-respecting-minority as true democracy
> > and true liberty.)
>
> It is a tauthology, indeed. Yet, that doesn't negate democracy as a
> government capable of holding tyranny at bay.
It does, precisely because it imposes a tunnel vision - certain
forms of tyranny slip right through. It's a sort of Ptolemaic
rather than a Copernican approach, finding odd orbits rather than
realising there is in fact a combination of different motions.
Everything else you say is 100% accurate as a way of heading off
one single form of tyranny. It is hopeless as a way of classifying
tyranny, because it rules out consistent use of concepts when
working with the idea of democracy. PML.
jddescr...@my-deja.com
"TRVTH" <no...@urbiz.com> wrote:
----------excerpted, see original----------------------------------
> Exactly right about Plato: the best society is the virtuous society.
The
> best man is the virtuous man. We can know the virtuous from the
> non-virtuous by those who practice: wisdom, temperance, courage,
justice,
> and piety. The Christians built on this, adding: faith, hope, and
charity.
> Those who don't practice them commit the deadly sins: sloth, gluttony,
> lust, pride, avarice, jealousy, anger. These play themselves out in
every
> society, from the highest institution to the lowest person. The
Republic
> sought to institutionalize the virtues through ascribed roles, thus
creating
> the virtuous state: the highest articulation of man.
>
> To put it in the parlance of Gilligan's Island, this is how each
character
> works in their morality plays (and I know this sounds strange, but if
you've
> seen even this piece-of-refuse of a show, each character is a type):
>
> Character Deadly Sin Cardinal Virtue
> --------- ---------- ---------------
> Gilligan Sloth Courage
> The Skipper Gluttony Justice
> Ginger Lust Hope
> The Professor Pride Wisdom
> Mr. Howell Avarice Temperance
> Mrs. Howell Jealousy Charity
> Mary Anne Anger Faith
>
> For Aristotle, in his Politics, though man is the political animal,
each is
> born to a specific station or talent. The citizen is born for
political
> life. The woman to be a wife. The slave to support both.
>
> Plato and Aristotle were the first known idealists. It would be fun
to see
> how they'd handle the po-mo debate.
>
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Good, compact cataloging of the sins and virtues. It shows, as
reflercted in this thread, that you have studied the philosophic
teachings of the king's men like plato and kant but not the free
people philosophers [as extensively] like Aristotle and Ayn Rand.
Would you call the assigning extremes of good and bad to the
Gilligan Island characters a story telling technique? Note that in
your goods and bads the king's men always slipped in a few hookers
to be sure that the human who decides is the king's men = the authman
[authoritarian manipulator]. It is similar with the ten (10) commands
of moses since about 3 or 4 are about honoring the king's men and
giving over to the king's men and obeying the king's men commands and
such. In your case I guess you have peity and faith as the hidden
hookers when one asks; how do we decide? Note that there is no room
for love of life, for love of freedom of free people or other free
people distinctions from the king's men, in your virtue list.
In my modeling, based on the Ayn Rand theories [ART] I include all
these characteristics but the human excesses or lusts I call king's
greed of one form or the other. A sharp contrast with your view is
in the treatment of pride as a vice. In the Ayn Rand theory [ART] WE
achieve the pride form of happiness from good accomplishments in our
work product. Of course as with everything else there is a king's
greed excessive lust aspect that is possible and is here called hubris.
You can see why the king's men don't want the average people to have
pride because then they wouldn't be dependent on the king's men phony
balony awards and recognitions = king's credit. This is also where you
are mistaken on your evaluation of American democracy/republic as
suceptible to a tyranny of individuals or the majority. This type of
attack on property rights is always implemented by some aggitator or
king's lawyer or maybe you know them as ambulance chasing lawyers.
Ayn Rand said that civilization is measured by exactly how well the
democratic/republic balance of free people government is understood
and realized and maintained and strengthened without becoming tyranny.
Good seeing. JD
TRVTH
Simmel, may I suggest that you do. I guess one could call him an originator
of exchange theory as it relates to sociology. Even through Jonathan
Turner's horrible textbook, one could see he had plenty to say of substance
on the theory.
Gilgamesh <nos...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:38e7fc1a...@news.santafe.edu...
TRVTH
stereotypes I see throughout the Internet tell me Europeans don't have a
clue concerning who we are and what we believe. This dialog is a good
example. That a xenophobe like yourself could allege that U.S. policy is
somehow akin to that of the Axis borders on insane. Perhaps is insane. The
United States never marched its troops unwanted through Paris. The United
States never blitzed Britain. The United States never killed millions of
Russians, even during the Cold War. The United States never established
death camps anywhere.. not even in the United States with the Indians.
Hitler, his holocost, and the wonders of xenophobic totalitarianism was a
European manifestation, and now you attempt some false transferrance of
guilt to us. And now with the apparent rise of fascism again in certain
parts of Europe, from Austria to Bosnia to who knows where else, it is
deliciously ironic that you charge us with this.
There is nothing so powerful as a bad idea whose time has come, especially
when imbued with the fervor of hatred.
Perhaps it is akin to penis envy, only on an international scale.
You have alleged U.S. hegemony in Europe, and that it was comparable to
libensraum. Okay. Prove it. Perhaps with the proper dose of
hallucinogenics it will be possible.
That said, I'll bet your in your early twenties. I'll bet you have some
romantic notion in your head about how things were during WWII and the Cold
War. You and your comrades must sit for hours in coffee houses discussing
the United States like it was the "Big Bad Wolf" in the children's story,
ready to blow in the houses of the three little pigs. The wolves of Europe
came from Germany and the U.S.S.R. sir. And had we not spent a fortune in
material and time to defend you, with YOUR GOVERNMENTS' CONSENT, the final
battle there would have been between Hitler and Stalin. Would you even have
been born had this happened?
As much as the French and Americans dislike each other, go ask a member of
the Underground, if they're still alive, how they felt about the Allies
recapturing Paris. It is likely to be the polar opposite of your fantasy.
<plaw...@arcbs.redcross.org.au> wrote in message
news:8c8vla$kgc$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
TRVTH
yet had an original thought, and may never have one as long as you follow
like a sheep. Objectivists are an oxymoron: a group of individuals acting
together to create an individualist utopia.
I have read both Aristotle and Rand. Tell me what the Nichomachaen (sp)
Ethics are all about? Give me a synposis. Then draw compare and contrast
it with St. Augustine and John Locke. I'll bet you can't.
As I wrote, the objectivist will follow an actual pattern of debate, and a
major precept is to challenge one's depth of knowledge. When one
demonstrates they know MORE about the subject matter than the objectivist,
the objectivist deals with his (and it's almost always a "his") cognitive
dissonance by blathering some arcana or shifting the ad hominem to something
else. The truth is, the whole basis of objectivist argument is the ad
hominem since there is very little to prove the objectivist argument. They
don't understand there is nothing objective about the argument, and thus is
so difficult to proove.
Next assignment: prove objectively Rand's most basic assertion: that the
individual has superior station to the collective. And then explain why
this is necessarily so. Have fun.
<jddescr...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8c975b$sob$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
plaw...@arcbs.redcross.org.au
on board other people's views and the benefits of their
experiences. To wit...
In article <GvaG4.18636$9m6.7...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
"TRVTH" <no...@urbiz.com> wrote:
> It is of course fashionable for Europeans to bash the United States.
The
> stereotypes I see throughout the Internet tell me Europeans don't
have a
> clue concerning who we are and what we believe. This dialog is a good
> example.
No it isn't. I am currently in Australia, and I have a very
varied background.
That a xenophobe like yourself
You made that up. I'm not a xenophobe. I do, however, have serious
areas of disagreement with the received wisdom about American
benefits to the rest of the world. Does that qualify one as a
xenophobe by US standards? If so, that tells me something more.
could allege that U.S. policy is
> somehow akin to that of the Axis borders on insane.
True. Why do you persist in supposing I mean any more than the
limited parallels I drew?
Perhaps is insane. The
> United States never marched its troops unwanted through Paris. The
United
> States never blitzed Britain. The United States never killed millions
of
> Russians, even during the Cold War. The United States never
established
> death camps anywhere.. not even in the United States with the Indians.
> Hitler, his holocost, and the wonders of xenophobic totalitarianism
was a
> European manifestation,
What has that to do with what I put? These are ravings, certainly,
but not mine.
and now you attempt some false transferrance of
> guilt to us.
I do no such thing. I merely remind you that American hegemony
in no sense "saved" Britain and its allies, for the simple and
sufficient reason that while it certainly prevented worse, it
didn't even restore to them what they had before. The gains are
all yours, and since you have received your reward already
you certainly deserve no gratitude. There's something in the
Bible that resembles that, about the Pharisee receiving his
reward for prayers on Earth rather than in Heaven.
Do you recall Churchill's statement that he hadn't become PM
to "preside over the dissolution of the British Empire"?
That is what came about, over the next ten or twenty years.
And now with the apparent rise of fascism again in certain
> parts of Europe, from Austria to Bosnia to who knows where else, it is
> deliciously ironic that you charge us with this.
>
> There is nothing so powerful as a bad idea whose time has come,
especially
> when imbued with the fervor of hatred.
>
> Perhaps it is akin to penis envy, only on an international scale.
You continue to impute motives, and not to address the issues.
This is akin to an ad hominem argument. I don't hate the US, though
I certainly feel it should be feared on a "with friends like that..."
basis.
>
> You have alleged U.S. hegemony in Europe, and that it was comparable
to
> libensraum.
You are wandering.
Okay. Prove it.
Prove that, when you are seeking to cast me in the role of advocating
twaddle like that? It IS nonsense, and has been since the moment
you made it up.
I have said before, and no doubt you will forget again, that
US hegemony is not to the advantage of anyone else, not in
comparison with what might have been but in comparison with what
WAS. Therefore, and quite conclusively, it does NOT amount to
restoring something effectively equivalent to what once was.
You have not, so far, gone the road of the Delian League - but
the historical parallel is clear.
And that is all I have claimed against you - that your preening
assumption of the US working for the wider good is not altogether
the self-evident truth you may suppose.
Perhaps with the proper dose of
> hallucinogenics it will be possible.
>
> That said, I'll bet your in your early twenties. I'll bet you have
some
> romantic notion in your head about how things were during WWII and
the Cold
> War. You and your comrades must sit for hours in coffee houses
discussing
> the United States like it was the "Big Bad Wolf" in the children's
story,
> ready to blow in the houses of the three little pigs.
You are wandering again. (And wrong in just about every particular,
BTW.)
The wolves of Europe
> came from Germany and the U.S.S.R. sir. And had we not spent a
fortune in
> material and time to defend you,
The point I made was that this was no true defence - merely the
substitution of US hegemony for something worse. In the scale of
things, we are worse off than if WWII had never been.
with YOUR GOVERNMENTS' CONSENT, the final
> battle there would have been between Hitler and Stalin. Would you
even have
> been born had this happened?
Which, as I pointed out, is not the measure of YOU.
>
> As much as the French and Americans dislike each other, go ask a
member of
> the Underground, if they're still alive, how they felt about the
Allies
> recapturing Paris. It is likely to be the polar opposite of your
fantasy.
Funny you should say that. I recall my uncle's account of that
(he was there). No Americans feature in it.
Now look, if you want to dispute what I actually said, quote my
position accurately and bring on any arguments and evidence the
other way. DON'T substitute your reflex recollections of
the reactions of no-doubt genuine xenophobes, and impute
motives to me in lieu of analysis of my position - as I said,
it verges on ad hominem. PML.
jddescr...@my-deja.com
"TRVTH" <no...@urbiz.com> wrote:
> <jddde...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:8c1cpu$nf7$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > In article <38E12CE4...@tds.net>,
> > This is
> > another area where I don't believe your original analysis is
> > adequate to properly understand what is happening the world
> > is about the aggressive coercion parts of socialism. Ayn Rand
> > told us that the socialist attempts to take over the world,
> > particularly in the twentieth century,
>
> Any extremist group in power can do this. Any. Because it served her
> political sensibilities, Rand chose socialists and communists as her
focus.
> That was rather a bit of a tautology, wouldn't you say? One could
lump into
> that equation fascists of every stripe, including the Nazis.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I assume you know something about the history of Italian facism
as it was organized by the power brokers to be an explicit branch
of Italian socialism. It was supported by a deal with the current
king also but you probably missed that little detail. Similarly,
hitler national socialism was socialism through and through. This
is why I have been talking about the right and left socialists and
their various attempts to take over the world in the last century.
You seem to have a liberal social writer perspective that is unable
to see these broad patterns that Ayn Rand explained so well in her
writings. You claim to think for yourself but maybe a little study
of the experts would help reduce your confusion. Ayn Rand dedicated
40 years of writing effort to her works and she had the best
analytic brain I have ever seen. I expect she will be recognized as
the greatest philosopher of human history in this century.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I think one
> could also lump in any society that must perpetually and perfectly
submit to
> the wills of individuals. What a miserable place that would be, where
> anyone could dump nuclear waste on his property, regardless of the
effects
> on others.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Obviously you don't understand American privacy and private property
rights as defined in the Constitution [both by inclusion and
exclusion]. If you dump waste fumes on my property I will bring you
to justice for violating my property rights. Your so called tryanny
of the majority is always when the privacy rights are violated by
some collectivist aggitator or king's men lawyer using king's laws
and it means that the republican rights protections have broken down
and haven't been restored and strengthened by good free people
leadership. In American society there is no law, unless explicitly by
contract that, for example, you can decide what color my house should
be to please you. Like the New Hampshire patriots told the nosey king's
man of Britain [the subject of this thread] DON'T TREAD ON ME and LIVE
FREE OR DIE. Ayn Rand wasn't the only American who believed in the Love
Of Life and the Love of Liberty. It's our heritage as Americans.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is an amazing revelation. I said before that you were confused
philosophically because you said you couldn't understand post modernism
and the meaning of socialism but now I must say you have a total
inversion of free people values. Here I thought, after learning from
Ayn Rand, that there were four(4) waves of socialist take over of
America in the last century strongly influenced by the BS [British
socialists] of marx and fabians and...as discussed in this thread.
These waves ran from 1900-1920, 1927-1952, 1960-1980, and 1985-NOW.
Suddenly I find out from you that instead of hoover, roosevelt and
keynes being the socman agents causing the great depression, in the
second of these waves, they really were busy saving American
capitalism. You very quickly king's justify stealing form one person
to manipulate in favor of another as "a role to play economically".
If you can spin that liberal pile of horse manure on the naive
economically while the current socialist take over destroys family
business you are as smart as hitler and your goebbels were at
convinciing the german people that their only choice was the liberal
side of socialism = [the left socialism of stalin] or the
royal/military side of socialism = [the right socialists of hitler]
so that not only did they democratically elect him to power but they
overwhelmingly (95%) endorsed his socialist totalitarian dictatorship
take over after the election. No! liberals aren't full out socialist
always and cancer isn't always immediately fatal but my models based
on the Ayn Rand theories [ART] says to try to avoid any association
with either. Safe distance is important for happiness.
Good seeing. JD
----------------------------------------------------------------------
TRVTH
more exquisite and precise than I'm capable of ever understanding. I am an
absolute fetching bigot for thinking an Australian, who is still a subject
of the crown, might share European sensibilities. Maybe the United States
made a huge mistake joining the allies in WWII? Perhaps we should simply
have developed the atomic bomb and stayed out of the war altogether, and
then held the survivors (Japan, Germany) off through a MAD policy, just as
we did the Soviets? That way we need not have this conversation on a thing
called the Internet (invented by United States scientists and literally
given to the world).
Not.
The real irony for those keeping score here is I'm being attacked from both
sides for a moderate position. This tells me I may be on to something (or
maybe not).
<plaw...@arcbs.redcross.org.au> wrote in message
news:8cbqd1$oll$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
TRVTH
to be in because they have chosen to attack me rather than defend their
positions and answer my questions and charges. If only he knew my B.A. was
in political science, and I spent quite a bit of time studying the
Constitution and, as I've said before, arguments made in the U.S. founding
documents were essentially summaries of positions taken over time by various
philosophers, and ultimately arguments in favor of the philosophies of Locke
and Montesque. He doesn't realize that the argument for private property is
the same argument in favor of the natural law right to liberty. First, we
own ourselves. Nature gives us that right, or so Locke via Augustine
argues. All other things exist in nature. In order for any of us to make
use of these things, we must take posession of them. Locke uses the example
of "the apple", certainly an allusion to the Garden of Eden. To eat an
apple, one removes it from the garden of nature (he actually uses the
metaphor of garden for nature) and, thus takes posession [I would argue we
never own an apple, but merely rent it, if you catch my meaning ;o)].
Consequently, ownership of private property is necessary to human survival
itself. It is a condition of nature, and thus we have a natural law right
to own property (or else we literally die).
And I'll bet you he doesn't know this little tidbit of philosophy that he
continues to allege is some special wisdom of St. Ayn of Rand.
Ya gotta love those sycophants of charismatic leaders. The only thing that
would have further solidified Randianism as a religion would for her to have
been martyred.
I love extremists.
"An American who can make money, invoke God, and be no better than
his neighbor has nothing to fear but the truth itself."
- Marya Mannes.
<jddescr...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8cc8lv$88s$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <2hcF4.10795$9m6.4...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
> "TRVTH" <no...@urbiz.com> wrote:
>
>
> > <jddde...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> > news:8c1cpu$nf7$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > > In article <38E12CE4...@tds.net>,
>
Peter Lawrence
>
> You win. You're better than us. You're hermeneutic use of language is far
> more exquisite and precise than I'm capable of ever understanding. I am an
> absolute fetching bigot for thinking an Australian,
You are an absolute bigot for thinking that is simply what I am.
who is still a subject
> of the crown, might share European sensibilities. Maybe the United States
> made a huge mistake joining the allies in WWII? Perhaps we should simply
> have developed the atomic bomb
You wouldn't have had that option, without the flight of European expertise.
and stayed out of the war altogether,
You wouldn't have had that option either. Japan attacked you and Hitler
declared war on you, remember?
and
> then held the survivors (Japan, Germany) off through a MAD policy, just as
> we did the Soviets?
That only works when they don't have a kamikaze attitude or a locked in
feeling of superiority.
That way we need not have this conversation on a thing
> called the Internet (invented by United States scientists and literally
> given to the world).
Remind me - who invented html? It's always more mixed than you imply.
Much of it true but not the point. I am glad you helped in the war, but only
considering the alternatives, and until a generation ago I did think you were
an unmitigated good but a matter of taste. Then I realised you had your
downside and that you had NOT helped us back up but only to a locked in
position of inferiority - Delian League stuff, though not so far along.
>
> Not.
>
> The real irony for those keeping score here is I'm being attacked from both
> sides for a moderate position.
That's an irony, right enough. I'm not simply criticising your attitudes, but
it's definitely prejudice when you set up a position I do NOT hold and attack
that - which is how you've been irritating me recently. You started by
something you took for granted and that I drew to your attention ISN'T
self-evident (and isn't even true, in many cases), about the US making the
world "better and freer for all". It might help your friends if they had
their self-congratulatory tendencies shown how it looks from this side.
And go easy on the heavy sarcasm. Resorting to ad hominem and making
parallels with nazism are frequently associated with the old rhetorical trick
of "when argument fails resort to abuse". PML.
jddde...@my-deja.com
"TRVTH" <no...@urbiz.com> wrote:
--------------excerpted, see original-----------------------------
>
> The real irony for those keeping score here is I'm being attacked
from both
> sides for a moderate position. This tells me I may be on to
something (or
> maybe not).
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
One thing you liberals tend to forget in your MODERATE pursuit
of the truth is that everything you said is recorded in
the thread. Any of the score keepers you speak to can review
these postings and see, in my case anyway, who was attacking
Ayn Rand and her theories [ART] and anyone, like myself, who
finds her works of great value. My responses to you were in
defense of ART as well as myself.
Good seeing. JD
-------------------------------------------------------------------
TRVTH
Peter Lawrence <pet...@netlink.com.au> wrote in message
news:38EB4A...@netlink.com.au...
> TRVTH wrote:
What is really funny is you expect my country to be perfect, somehow, and
that I don't have criticisms for my country. It isn't perfect, and I have
plenty of problems with who we are, how we got here, and what we do. But I
also follow realpolitik (a word not used too often since the USSR fell).
One discovers, as the ideologies of youth yield to the daily, hourly pains
of a life lived, this is a ponderous, dangerous world, and sometimes the
alternative choices for action are between what is bad and what is worse,
and that it is not possible to know which. Sometimes we discover that an
action we think is best has created a disaster. One also discovers that in
order to gain anything, one must give up something: when walking, to advance
one kilometer, one must surrender the last kilometer to the past-- step by
step-- and many times advancing that kilometer is a far more complex task,
requiring negotiation, diversion, and detours, and regression before one can
advance. This applies to individuals as much as it does for communities and
nation-states.
plaw...@arcbs.redcross.org.au
"TRVTH" <no...@urbiz.com> wrote:
>
> Peter Lawrence <pet...@netlink.com.au> wrote in message
> news:38EB4A...@netlink.com.au...
> > TRVTH wrote:
>
> What is really funny is you expect my country to be perfect, somehow,
and
> that I don't have criticisms for my country.
Oh, I don't feel that way - and I didn't think you did, either,
which is why I didn't expect to start a flame war by letting you know
that some comments you made didn't match up too well with other
people's experiences and interpretations. I'll leave a recap at
the end of this reply, but I was only trying to show that you were
reaching a bit too far. I don't think you were claiming any
ultimate perfection and I wasn't criticising what actually happened,
but I often see US misunderstandings of what we actually got given.
Nowhere near what was implied by your post.
Well, the only dispute I'd have with that philosophy is the built-in
pessimism. I'm a pessimist myself by inclination, but hey, sometimes
Murphy's Law acts reflexively (Murphy's Law can go wrong, so sometimes
other things go right). When things do go right - like 1989 - we
shouldn't reject the windfall gains on general principles. PML.
Recap of where we came in:-
YOU: We were able to watch from a distance, at first, and then
chose to share in the misery to create a better, freer future
for all.
ME: I can't answer for people's motives at the time, but the actual
outcome - measured from our point of view - doesn't feel like
"a better, freer future for all".
YOU: All of this made us suspicious of how Europeans saw the world
and acted out their vision.
ME: Well, it's the outcome - a world made safe for democracy as
interpreted by the USA - that made us suspicious "of how [you] saw the
world and acted out [your] vision". We certainly noticed what we lost
from the old world order, and what we never got from the new one in
later years.
TRVTH
<plaw...@arcbs.redcross.org.au> wrote in message
news:8cgr0v$c2a$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Recap of where we came in:-
>
> chose to share in the misery to create a better, freer future
> for all.
>
> outcome - measured from our point of view - doesn't feel like
> "a better, freer future for all".
>
Fair enough. Since we are dealing with ideal types, which as an American I
tend to loathe (we tend to be empiricists, whereas it is said continental
Europeans and their descendants tend to be idealists), it becomes necessary
to define terms. How would you define the following: better, freer? To
what do you compare them, since they are relative? I am saying that Europe
was left freer, better in comparison to the USSR, Nazi Germany, Fascist
Italy, and China under Maoist and now (and I know this is an oxymoron, but
it appears accurate) totalitarian capitalism? To my thinking Europeans were
freer and more better off because they remained self-sovereignty and any
pacts they made with the United States were of their own free accord. This,
of course, is after Yalta. What happened at Yalta was a huge human rights
violation in my opinion. Would Europe and the rest of the world have been
freer under the Warsaw Pact or the Axis? If so, how would they have been
more better off and freer? If there are other options other than
self-sovereignty and imposed tyranny, what are they?
> YOU: All of this made us suspicious of how Europeans saw the world
> and acted out their vision.
>
> ME: Well, it's the outcome - a world made safe for democracy as
> interpreted by the USA - that made us suspicious "of how [you] saw the
> world and acted out [your] vision". We certainly noticed what we lost
> from the old world order, and what we never got from the new one in
> later years.
One must posess something before losing it. What did Europe posess? What
did it lose? Was this the "fault" of the United States, and if so, why?
How would fascism and Naziism have benefited Europe more than a system of
democratic republics?
The things I look are the availability of self-sovereignty, and thus the
rights of personal choice and right to criticize the government without fear
of punishment, of the individual, and the number, duration, frequency, and
reasons for war. I suggest that prior to WWII, self-sovereignty was
fleeting, there was a concerted effort by certain conservative intellectual
elites, like Herbert Spencer, to kill the enlightenment values that insisted
on individual autonomy, people were persecuted and, in the holocost,
incarcerated and exterminated by virtue of their lineage (as was the case
with the Jews, going back forever historically), and Europeans have been at
war with each other since at least the time of the Barbarians. I also take
into account the works of literature of various periods, especially the 19th
century in England, attempting a bit of deconstruction to gain an insight
into the context for those works. Dickens is a good source for this, as are
the romantic novelists (strangely, they weave a wonderful picture of class
distinctions, envy, and warfare, chronicling the dissolution of the feudal
system in favor of the new capitalism, and the conflict between town and
country of which Marx wrote). It's not like we examine Europe in a vacuum
here in America. We have some clues from a wide range of sources.
Now as far as the rest of the world goes, it is more difficult for me to
make a comment since westerners tend to be rather Eurocentric. I don't know
if you are the Australian fellow from before, but I would include Australia
within that rubric of Eurocentrism, since it was and remains under the U.K.
It was a colony, just as the original 13 United States and Canada. An
indigenous population was subdued and forced into labor, just as in the
United States and Canada. It came to the support of Britain since at least
the Boer War in South Africa, as far as I'm aware (and perhaps in other
conflicts). Further, I've done a bit of study for my undergraduate thesis
on Development theory. I studied the League of Nations' "Mandate", which
extended European colonization into Africa and the Middle East on the
pretense of bringing "civilization" to these ancient cultures, when what
they really sought was to taking primary resources from these people at
gunpoint, like oil from Iraq, transferring them to Europe to prime the
domestic industrial machines. This was after WWI and before WWII. Indeed
the whole geographic and political subdivision of the Middle East, with the
exception of Israel and, in political terms, Iraq and Iran, are the product
of European intervention. And when Israel sought to establish itself in
1948, the European powers had a stroke about it because it shook up the
order they instituted.
So if I have missed things about Europe, it is not for a lack of effort. I
can't know everything, which is one of the sad limitations of the social
sciences (which in my mind are not sciences at all-- more "pre-scientific"--
and more like a highly technical study of humanities). Even if I were to
live in the Provence, I could still miss things (or, I may become more aware
of cultural practices than the French themselves, perhaps because my ability
to "see" may not been obscured by familiarity-- although I'm sure the French
would likely tell me a few of the elephants I see are not actually there).
In the technical humanities there are qualitative lapses in awareness. I
hate them as much as anybody, but I'll be darned if I know how to defeat
them any better than anyone else.
And here's something more interesting to discuss: the human genome is now
fully mapped. How does that affect society in the short- and long-run?
Filip De Vos
: It is of course fashionable for Europeans to bash the United States. The
: stereotypes I see throughout the Internet tell me Europeans don't have a
: clue concerning who we are and what we believe. This dialog is a good
: example. That a xenophobe like yourself could allege that U.S. policy is
: somehow akin to that of the Axis borders on insane. Perhaps is insane. The
: United States never marched its troops unwanted through Paris. The United
The US attacked Spain, then waged war against Phillipino natives who had
ideas about independence. The inhabitants of The Dominican Republic,
Nicaragua, Guatemala and other Carribean and Central-American countries
may also have other ideas about the wantedness of American troops or their
proxies.
WWII was precipitated when the U.S. refused to sell oil to Japan.
: States never blitzed Britain. The United States never killed millions of
The US warred with Mexico, taking half of its (then) territory.
: Russians, even during the Cold War. The United States never established
Well, _some Russians were killed during the intervention following WWI.
: death camps anywhere.. not even in the United States with the Indians.
No, the Indians died of natural causes during peaceful marches escorted
and protected from bandits by the U.S.Army.
: Hitler, his holocost, and the wonders of xenophobic totalitarianism was a
: European manifestation, and now you attempt some false transferrance of
Hitler and WWII were a direct result of Versailles, and therefore a
product of the American intervention in 1917. Without the US? Germany
would have won, like in 1870.
: guilt to us. And now with the apparent rise of fascism again in certain
: parts of Europe, from Austria to Bosnia to who knows where else, it is
: deliciously ironic that you charge us with this.
Yes, bombing bridges over the Donau is delicious, I suppose. The day is
near when American (or other NATO) troops will be shot at by those Kosovo
thugs you helped to power.
--
"Who needs credibility around | Filip De Vos
here?" -- T. L. Elifritz | FilipP...@rug.ac.be
murt...@my-deja.com
growing backlash in Europe against the United States' aggressive and
unthinking attitudes and policies:
"America is a worrisome society these days. It has
a record number of armed citizens. It embraces
the death penalty, turns the poor away when
they need medical care, and its legislators have
failed to approve a nuclear test ban. Yet, argues
Mr. Mamère, the United States throws its weight
around and would have the entire world follow
in its steps.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/040900europe-us.html
TRVTH
to see the bigger issue: the potential for an oligarcic, global economic
machine that completely crushes the human spirit in the quest for filthy
lucre. It appears that most Americans are willing to keep electing to
office those who support this evolutionary path-- and it will not matter
whether Gore or Bush is elected president. Both are supporters of MNCs, and
both are supported in their elections by MNCs. And if anyone thinks it is
an easy thing to disconnect a country from the global economic community,
think again. Don't be surprised if you hear one day; "We are the IMF; You
will be assimilated".
But don't misunderstand me. I don't think there is anything wrong with a
global community. If it is based on humanism rather than profit, I just
might come along. But it's not. It is built to be predatory. It must
subdue to win. This makes it dangerous for those who opt out.
Strangely, Marx predicted that as the economy globalized, the workers would
be able to communicate with each other about their common experiences of
alienation. It's so prophetic, it is spooky-- what with the ability to do
that on the Internet. Ironically, the Internet is so well supported by
governments because the MNCs see the potential for incalculable profits
coming from it, yet it may be building the very mechanism needed to bring it
down. But I don't think it ever will. The reason it won't is because
rather than use it to discuss common alienation, we bear out teeth, and
snarl at each other like rabid wolves. We make cyber war rather than
discover our common humanity. There is a reason why we do that, of course.
Marx would say that these practices are institutionalized in the
substructure's of each country, used to support the existing arrangement of
ownership of the means of production. You get angry with me for what my
government did to support domestic businesses throughout the 19th and 20th
century. I get angry with you because Hitler chose extermination as the
principle method for reducing the supply of workers relative to demand (and
killing 6 million people will sure as hell do that), strengthening the
economy while eliminating the inflation and depression that brought him into
power in the first place.
So let's keep bashing each other over memories of things neither of us
experienced directly, rather than build an understanding of each other and
creating the basis for a better future for all people on earth. That's what
the MNCs would want us to do, until they have no further need for
nation-states, that is. Then they will build utopia with the Euro (or some
other currency) as the focal point of all human endeavors, each of us
working at our own specialty, making each further dependent on the other for
his or her livelihood rather than on each other for humanistic support.
"Civilization is not inherited. It has to be learned and earned by each
generation anew. If the transmission is interrupted for one century,
civilization
would die, and we should be savages again."
- Will and Ariel Durant, historians
"Tend your own garden." -- Candide, by Voltaire.
"Intellectuals make two errors: They mistake reading for experience, and
thinking for action." -- Me.
Filip De Vos <fid...@eduserv1.rug.ac.be> wrote in message ..
...lots of jingoistic blather that avoids the issue of man's inhumanity to
man in favor of getting a few blows in rather than
Peter Lawrence
>
> The New York Times had an article in today's sunday paper on the
> growing backlash in Europe against the United States' aggressive and
.
.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/040900europe-us.html
Ah... no. It's NOT what it's purported to be, a link to the text of the
article. This is yet another of those links that only works if you're
registered. While no doubt this might eventually lead to the information,
bitter experience has taught me to stay clear of paper chases like this. PML.
--
GST+NPT=JOBS
I.e., a Goods and Services Tax (or almost any other broad based production
tax), with a Negative Payroll Tax, promotes employment.
See http://users.netlink.com.au/~peterl/publicns.html#AFRLET2 and the other
items on that page for some reasons why.
jddescr...@my-deja.com
plaw...@arcbs.redcross.org.au wrote:
-----------excerpted, see original-------------------------------------
On these global issues I think you would do better if you
identified the causes of the authoritarian world wars and
conflicts rather than tying to isolate a specific country
[the yanks]. It is said that money or wealth is the root
of all evil but the Ayn Rand theories [ART] {the only
philosophy to solve these cause and effect issues} teach
us that is really the theft of money or life by the king's
men or socman[social manipulator]. Once this is understood
then much can be done to see them and stay at a safe distance.
Maybe the biggest development in seeing the socman has
occurred in Britain with the continuing exposure of the BS
[British Socialists]. This has occurred since the collapse
of their comrades in socialist russia by a factor of 1000.
Ayn Rand is the only economic analyst that I know who
predicted this collapse of the socialist bubble and
illustrates the predictive powers of ART. We could argue, as
you tend to, that the BS aren't as bad as their KGB comrades
but the point is that now they stand exposed when their
socialist comrades have collapsed. One could similarly argue
that the stalin socialists weren't as bad as the hitler
socialists in their partnership to socialize a takeover of
the world but after hitler socialism were beaten in WW II then
the full evil of russian socialism stood exposed.
A recent book has revealed more about the BS beyond the
exposures of Spychatcher. The book is the "Sword and the
Sheild" by Andrew Mitrokhin. He is a former KGB colnel who
defected to freedom and exposed many of the stalin -British
Socialist connections. These are detailed reports of the
BS spying help for the russian/stalin socialists with the
names exposed.
Now that the worst dictators of socialism like china and
castro have been isolated we should see and understand how
they destroy and steal freedom so we can unite in stopping
them. The British Socialism lessons can be very helpful.
Churchill knew about free people so all the British are not
of that socialist cast although the present regime so appears.
Good seeing. JD
----------------------------------------------------------------------