From: hjkhjkhd@hhhh.com
"Martha Bridegam" wrote in message
news:Tc63h.1575$r12.769@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...
> ROBBIE wrote:
>
>> As a committed socialist you will know that the never-seen utopian state
>> can only be reached by some form of coercion
>
> First, believing in equality doesn't mean buying any off-the-rack program
> that you or anyone else get to define.
Having read for many years Guardian society and some of the publications
that inform it, and having observed modern left-wing 'social democrats' in
action on a local level I can assure you that I have a fair idea of how you
think thing's should be.
>
> Second, I do not believe in any utopian state.
>
Well at the start of this argument you were giving a big sloppy gay pride
style thumbs up to John Lennon's Imagine, which you recommended earnestly,
so it's not really cricket to start bleating now.
> Third, for the six or seven years we have been arguing, I have said
> consistently that political change in a society happens peacefully and
> voluntarily if it happens genuinely at all. Ballot initiatives, for
> example. Elections. Public debate. Negotiation. The exercise of the right
> to peaceable public assembly. If you claim these are "coercion," then you
> must be equally opposed to all possible forms of civic participation, and
> not only all forms of government but all forms of human association
> whatever.
More counterintuitive nonense. No wonder Allport the Omniscient gets
impatient with you. I am up for all those things (don't know what a ballot
initiative is, mind you) - and, in terms of public debate and negotiation,
done in a far freer and more robust way that you would ever countenance. The
coercion part of what I said comes in, say, public debate. Your idea of a
public debate is a debate where you have moral hegemony - as we've seen
here, anyone who steps out of it will be ignored as a fascist and what he
says becomes inadmissable evidence. Yes, we are talking about PC (Cultural
Marxism) which is a form of hard-core coercion that you have been signed up
to since the 80s. The thing I notice again and again with most type of
contemporary lefty is their rage and contempt for one type of morality but
their absolute belief in their new morality, which empowers them to denounce
and coerce at will. The issue of homosexuality is a good example. In England
recently a first class piece of contemporary leftist coercion occurred:
firemen (sorry firefighters) refused to hand out leaflets at a Gay Pride
event. They were all discipline, sent on 'intensive diversity training' and
their crew manager was demoted with a loss in his earnings of 5000 quid.
This is an upsot of the politicising of the emergency services under our
democratic socialist govt - they call themselves that and so I will.
It is coercion of ordinary people to a political and moral cause. There are
plenty of stories about the even more high-handed coercion surrounding that
evergreen bleat 'racism'. You must realise that you don;t beleive in
freedom, you believe in reorganising the world to your prescription. Look at
Affirmative Action - an abdication of reason and a highly coercive measure -
you think it's dandy.
You don;t believe in truth either because if it was discovered that women or
black people had smaller brains or IQs or something you would prefer to have
that information suppressed. All highly reminiscent of the collective
self-delusion of organised religion - and you hate that, but only I suspect
because the rules were unfair. God knows what you'd have turned out like if
the wooden guy up there on the cross was a gal.
>
> , and that coercion begins in the
>> minds of the intellectuals - people for whom ideas are more impotant than
>> people
>
> Why does a man like you who is so obviously proud of his own erudition
This is classic Bridegam. What we in England call a backhanded compliment.
Why didn't you just say: you like the sound of your own voice? Fact is, is
that unlike you, I like to go to some length to make sure I'm understood so
I don't get some puffed up wanker from Berkelely pop with his poverty
wristband and accuse me of being Mussolini.
> turn around and repeat -- in the midst of a carefully drafted argument, no
> less -- the myth that a willed refusal to form and follow principles is
> the hallmark of all genuinely valuable human beings? Is this your own
> version of the "hope lies in the proles" fallacy?
My god you are nothing if not a lawyer. I never said that. I repeated Paul
Johnson's definition of an intellectual. It's pretty useful. Your 'idea' is
more important to you than any evidence reality provides and it's clear that
you'd rather be loudly wrong and, therefore, see yourself as being quixotic,
than change your mind. Your 'idea' is more important than what anyone else
wants to do.
>
> You and I know far too well that lack of education does not ennoble any
> more than suffering ennobles. Actually, it's when people *don't* think in
> terms of rules, principles and precedents -- that is, when they don't
> respect the value of ideas
Christ this lecture's patronizing. This lecture is a way of avoiding the
fact that we're talking here about which ideas, whose ideas and how they
develop. If I wanted Bridegam's General Theory of Principle I would have
asked for it.
-- that they do nasty, short-sighted things
> to each other.
>
> Just for example, think about the mutual mistreatment that happens in
> unhappy families where people allow the specifics of long-familiar
> relationships to override their general sense of decent behavior
Family arguments are a deep and complex thing that will not be solved by
nissen hut lectures from the latest moralist on the block.
.
>
> To take an overlapping example, maybe you've noticed the way a woman who
> has lived in a prolonged abusive relationship will often have trouble
> asserting a right in a government office or arranging some business
> commitment like a storage locker rental. Being conditioned to think
> anything she can get depends on the mood of the person who has the upper
> hand, she just isn't used to the idea of achieving anything on an
> impersonal basis -- either in an arm's-length standard-fee-schedule
> business transaction, or in an appeal to an official to act according to
> consistent rules in a rule book. A woman with this survivor mentality can
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
