"leftists are dangerous.. they believe they can create a perfect world"

http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2005/04/08/news.new.1112936688.sto



So according to Horowitz - people should NOT believe in or try to make the world better. Presumably we should all just try to make as money as we can for ourselves and say "screw the planet" for the next generation - be as corrupt as we want to be and let others fend for themselves. Then we would be safe :eyes: and (presumably) loving? :crazy:

Of course - he obviously misses that Hitler was NOT trying to make the world a better place...at least for any but a small group of Aryan people. And as if leftists are out there trying to start wars and are writing memos condoning torture... And yet he got a standing ovation by the College Republicans who love to eat this kind of tripe up and pretend that they are the good guys...


And some people wonder why others throw pies. :)

are higher.

If your goal is to make the world worse, your chances of success are higher the more conservatively you think. :)

That sounds more like the theocrats in charge now.

You can tell how deep the delusion is by how hard the 'followers' who reflect the 'goodness' scapegoat others. The scapegoating is done almost exclusively by the right wingers. They also do the coercion, the targeting of democratic leaders, they create the tribalism (to undo the democracy & the empathy).

Apparently we are not supposed to have the meme of right wing patriotic corporate fascism led by a cabal sociopaths in our minds. I guess.. we were not supposed to have talked to our grandparents or something.

They truly think we are stupid.

They veiw the world as a battle between good and evil and only they know how other people should live in order to make the world perfect.

Conservatives love projection.

yes

dangerous - to right wing assholes. (In a perfect world)

Left and Right aren't working at all. We need to get past it and look at things like adults instead of children. Only then can we solve our problems.

Then again, what antion would babysit the fundies?

The entire fucking system is the problem. Got any ideas how to fix it?

Put the fundies back under that rock. Ban political parties and let each candidate make thier own platform on thier own, and actually use data instead of philosophy to solve our problems.

Political parties tend to separate people from the solutions. Washingotn warned of that.

A worthy goal to work toward, but highly unlikely now that Corps have purchased so much power via our CPOs (Corrupt Public Officials).


Arghhhhh!!! :banghead:

oust the corpoations from power that way.

SCOTUS has never, as I understand it, ever actually deliberated and ruled on this question. In fact, by my reading of the actual case, it appears they simply assumed corporations were already 'artificial persons' and thus entitled to protection and rights under law as such.

It was, in effect, a decree.

:think:

Let's tie that to the idea of judicial activism. Corporate personhood is the root of a poisonous tree.

It would seem to be a most effective counter, a poison pill to the entire issue.

If you want to smash racism, sexism, classism, ageism, and the majority of the evils in the world, you have to destabilize patriarchy.

Patiarchy is taken for granted as the only way to organize society, as it's the status quo. Among other things, it's a hierarchal system where you are allowed to dominate and control whoever or whatever's below you in the hierarchy -- which is basically this:

God
Men
Women
Children
Animals
Earth

People also strive to be more like those above them on the hierarchy to gain more power. Black and white/dichotomous thinking is the norm. And competition is a constant, especially between men, which is why it is dangerous and unhealthy for them in so many ways. A pecking order is always trying to be established, and overturned. A lot could be added to this definition, but I'll leave it there and post a passage from one of my favorite books on the subject.

From The Gender Knot: Unraveling our Patriarchal Legacy by Allan G. Johnson:

If feminism is invisible, patriarchy is invisible. And if feminism is distorted and discredited, patriarchy is safe from scrutiny, for feminism is the only critical perspective on patriarchy that we've got. Without feminism we're left to understand gender oppression in patriarchal terms that invariably ignore it or justify it by turning reality upside down and calling it something else. Without feminism, it's easy not to see male dominance at all, or if we do, to explain it away as human nature of "what every woman wants deep down." Without feminism, it's easy to see feminists who call men's violence against women as just troublemakers with private axes to grind; and it's easy to hop on the bandwagon in the mythical "postfeminist" Oz in which inequality is no longer a problem for *real* women. But once we accept the reailty that patriarchy exists, we open a door that swings just one way; and once we pass through it to the other side, feminism is our best hope for figuring out where we are and what to do next.

Since anyone can walk through the door of feminist awareness, feminism needn't be for women only. As members of the dominant group, men are limited in how deeply they can understand and engage with feminism, and there is always a danger that men will try to coopt feminism for their own purposes. If we think of feminism as a way for women to understand their own experience, then there is little that men can bring to it, and would be presumptuous for any man, including me, to try to explain what it's about. But a large chunk of feminism is about patriarchy as a system and how it works and shapes social life. This involves men just as deeply as it involves women, although in dramatically different ways. While women are in the best position to speak about their own experience of oppression, men have a lot to contribute ot understanding patriarchy as a whole, and particularly men's role in it.

Any full understanding of patriarchy must begin with women's experience, but this isn't enough, unless we believe that women's experience encompasses the entire reality of patriarchy. To the extent that feminism is about patriarchy as a whole and how we all participate in it, then change requires that both men and women understand it, since each brings distinct points of view to the work. Undoubtedly, feminism speaks to women in unique and powerful ways that men can understand only indirectly, but we can all use feminism to understand what patriarchy is about.

The word "feminism" is an umbrella that covers many approaches to gender and patriarchy. In the most general sense, feminism is a way of thinking critically about gender and its place in social life, but from here it ranges in many directions. All forms of feminism take gender to be problematic in some way, but just what this means -- how prominent the concept of patriarchy is, for example -- varies from one branch of feminism to another. As such, feminism lends itself to many different purposes. We can use it as an intellectual framework for analyzing how social life works, from love and sex to family violence to work to the meaning of art, literature, and spirituality to the conduct of science to the dynamics of ecology and global capitalism. Feminism also provides an ideological basis for change on every level of human existence, from how we behave to transforming patriarchy and its core values of dominance and control. By focusing on how we participate in the gender order, feminism challenges us to live in new ways, to question assumptions about gender and human nature, and to confront the everyday realities of women's oppression and the price men pay in return for gender privilege.

*******
The book ends with a chapter on ways to challenge patriarchy, too long to post here, but educating oneself on how it works is the biggest step.

I flipped through his "Don't Think of an Elephant" book - and I think he speaks of this - might even have:

God
Men
Women
Children
Animals
Earth


http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/bookstore/elephant

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1931498717/104-9126832-7841514?v=glance


The Patriarchal idea is what Lakoff refers to as the "Strict Father Model" (Conservatives) as opposed to the "Nurturing Parent Model" (Liberals).

It's possible that framing it the way he does is more palatable for some people. I think there are a lot liberal men who are not Patriarchal in their thinking - but might feel like they get grouped with that by virtue of being a man. Nevertheless, I think anyone in the society can get caught with it esp. when they are not thinking about it. Nearly all of TV reflects it in some way or another - FSTV (etc.) mostly excepted.

There is this essay online:

http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html

Metaphor, Morality, and Politics,

Or,

Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust

by George Lakoff

IN THIS DOCUMENT...
• Keeping the Moral Books
• The Moral Accounting Schemes
• Experiential Morality
• Conservatism
? Conservative Metaphors for Morality
? The Strict Father Model
? The Nation-as-Family Metaphor
• Liberalism
? The Nurturant Parent Model
? Liberal Metaphors for Morality
? The Nation-as-Family Metaphor
• Filling in Some Details
• Moral Pathologies
• Consequences
• Coda: Deep and Superficial Metaphor

Right and left created this new found theocracy since fundies can easliy convince people that the other side is evil. If there was no other side just different views, we could avoid this problem.

is that some people (on the left) want to improve life on earth - whereas those who do not presumably are those who either:


1. Have it made already ( and don't care about anyone else and want to protect what they have)

or

2. Are looking to heaven for the paradise that they wouldn't expect to find on earth anyway.


I think there really are pretty different world views. Here is someone else on "leftists..."

From:

Howard Zinn's Courage
Thomas C. Reeves
University of Wisconsin-Parkside

"Green is obviously of one mind with Zinn. Both endorse the usual litany of leftist assumptions, including the innocence and goodness of minorities, the evil of nearly all war, the wickedness of capitalism, and the corruption inherent in virtually every American institution. Christopher Columbus and Ronald Reagan are villains; socialists and pacifists are heroes. You get the picture. It's a tidy, always predictable, little world that liberals and leftist radicals inhabit. American history is largely a story of oppression and exploitation."

http://www.nas.org/forum_blogger/forum_archives/2003_06_15_nasof_arch.htm

------------

Are worn out ideas. It leaves out 3rd parties. It separates people too easily (see last election). Both major parties are outdated. Both couldn't let go of gay marriage while bankruptcies were at an all-time high and more people entered poverty as they lost thier jobs. We need to get away from it and create an area for a variety of views like Green, Libertarian, Consitution Party, and let them battle it out.

to have lots of parties and more direct access - voting directly on issues, etc.


I don't know that we would get away from having one dominant party - the Republicans - controlling so many people and institutions like we have now. The rules are set up to favor them.

It's not how I want it.

parties such as no flow on policy issues and difficulties knowing how to compare the parties. Minority governments are not that great.

with our system right now is how effective the Republicans are at intimidating people into going along with them.

Unless that were fixed - it probably wouldn't matter if there were supposedly other minority parties or not.

And there is the propaganda that pretends it's news - so people don't know much about issues/players anyway.

There is also the problem - where enough of a majority has to be concerned about minority rights, anyway...

The Democratic Party is not terribly leftist at all. John Kerry's economic policies are right-of-center. I mean, this is a guy who advocates NAFTA. George W. Bush's economic policies are far-right almost to the point of advocating total law-of-the-jungle capitalism.

If we were to examine the political discourse found on all of planet earth and simply examined views on economic policy, the spectrum would range not just from center to far-right but from far-left, center, and then far-right. Discourse in the US is extremely limited, and that's done on purpose.

This is just addressing economic policies. We have not even touched the issue of whether a person advocates authoritarian or libertarian methods or any shade in between to achieve the end.

You can go to the political compass and find out for yourself:

if it isn't "Left" and "Right" it would be "blue" and "red" or "a" and "b".

But why only 2 options? Why not more see we can break out of this mold that helped aid the theocrats?

Three choices add complications most people are not able to deal with. If you look around effective politicians use the "Them against us" way of thinking effectively. Hitler did this extremely effectively and over sixty years later it still works.

-- polarity is overwhelmingly a Far Right construction.

The Left has traditionally argued for the nobility of the grey middle grounds and not relied on class-war propaganda to divide citizens from each other.

Shame on this asshole for stating otherwise.

"“They are living in an alternate reality, a melodrama in which there is good and evil and they are good,” he said."

Uhh, that sounds a lot more like Shrub and his Evil Doer speech to me.

Gee, Mr. Horowitz, project much?

Oddly Horowitz is right in that progressives do want to change the World for the better. So do NeoCons, TheoCons, Fascists, Communists, ect..

But there's a diffrence when we do it.

1. We don't require countless deaths to reach our better world. Unlike CONs.

and 2. Our better world wil be better even for the people we don't like. Unliek CONS. yes, even Joe Six Pack will benefit from less pollution and more control over his own government. Even if he doesnt' think Homos should marry. even if he would never work to help others not liek himself.

NOT trying/believing in making the world better.

Like he knows that Republicans have been squashing social programs, squashing EPA regulations that would benefit everyones health, that Republicans are trying to squash the UN with the John Bolton nomination, that Republicans defend torture and exempt the US from International Law....

I think he knows all that - so what else is he going to argue - except that that "liberals are bad".

thinks PNAC is all about? Creating democracies at the point of a gun aren't what us lefties are about.

Mz Pip
:dem:

It would depend on how much Joe Six Pac valued less pollution. What if he lost his job or had to take a worse job because the place he worked shut down? There are costs to things such as removing pollution and you won’t please everyone. (If you could, politics would not be that important or interesting)

so people don't see that crazy is what they are all about.

are killing people with pies.

What an idiot - to equate the current PRogressive movement with Stalin's murderous regime is just nuts. I have yet to hear of one living Progressive who advocates widespread violence to further their cause.

Take a good look at your RW cronies, Mr. Horowitz. Your words apply much more to them.

Mz Pip
:dem:

Every preposterous attack he makes on the left is clearly just a pitiable expression of his loathing of his former self. And it's probably justified- he's an utter, putrid to the core asshole now, so he probably was when he was a leftist. Luckily, most leftists in my experience are far better people than Horowitz; deep down, he probably jumped ship because he realised that, as a poisonous snake of a man, he would fit in much better on the right. That chocolate custard pie was way too good to waste on this vicious sack of shit.

Or so they claim, with fevered fantasies of using US military power to spread global democracy? I guess the difference is, the left is generally sincere in its efforts to create a better world, for the right these "efforts" are simply a fig leaf with which to dress up their warmongering polciies. Not dissimilar from... hey, the Nazis! Wow, Horowitz is almost doing our work for us. Pity he's such a ****.

Horowitz always makes the classic extremist-radical mistake: he confuses his tiny subset with the whole. Whittaker Chambers did the exact same thing and was wrong as hell. Horowitz, an extremist no matter which side he's on, never understood that conservativism was not the natural enemy of 20th century communism. Conservatism was far too easily discredited by communists like Stalin or Mao because conservatives didn't understand that their policies actually made communism attractive.

Liberalism was the enemy of communism and the communists knew it. They always reserved their worst epithets for liberals. I recall a statement from Mao to the effect that he preferred enemies who were on the political right because they were predictable.

This guy doesn't believe in anything but running out to the very edge of the spectrum and yelling, "Look at me! Look at me!"

but this lefty would be satisfied to just preserve the pre-bushie world. I cannot think of WHAT could possible be done to make this world perfect. I just want to make the best of what we have.

I think without B**h there would have been a need to be working on alternative energy sources and such - of course Gore was more in tuned to various environmental things to be working on.

I also think the US could be working on more of a model like the Scandinavians that seem to blow us away these days on livability factors....

The world could not have just stayed the same but the way B**H is driving the train is crazy.

DON'T regard the world as good vs. evil, with themselves firmly in the camp of the LAWD? Talk about projection!

Now he's a rightwing crackpot. He's on the other side of the barricades, but he's never progressed beyond a stalinist mindset.

a right wing nut ball :freak: and horowitz is the proof

:silly:

fought to end totalitarianism. We are all Liberal Democracies in the world. Liberals... is who we are. And Liberals have all types in their Democratic Party. Some think we are still as rich as we were for the last 70 years. Most do not.

Fact is the Middle Class and Working Poor have lost most of the jobs and done most of the risk so far as the economies go Global. Nothing wrong with asking what the rich are doing for the cause?

These poor little neocons are getting beaten on every board. They sign in and whine that fascism is only a leftist thing (actually mostly a right wing thing in the 20th century). They cannot deal with the truth. Neocons cannot handle the truth. Utopian ideals are bullshit. No idealogue should ever be allowed in power - anywhere.

Poor, poor neocons. When they put the boots on the ground to implement their grand scheme.. it didn't go according to plan. Always someone else has to be blamed.

Why don't you try looking at your own shit!

Else what's a heaven for?