alabama, pick up a copy of The New Crusades; Constructing the Muslim Enemy “A collection of first-rate essays that offer much-needed critiques of parochial, xenophobic, or merely simplistic Western approaches to Islam, Muslims, and the Muslim-majority world. These writings offer acute analyses of, and responses to, those writers who ought to know better (e.g., Bernard Lewis), those who don’t want to know better (e.g., V.S. Naipaul), and those who need to know better (e.g., Robert Kaplan). Collectively, they expose the faults of the “clash of civilizations” approach to the contemporary world and remind us how much it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy recently. This volume needs to be on the reading list of every thoughtful American before it is too late.”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 18 2004 21:46 utc | 3

uncle$cam
the vile v s naipul who hates the world in general & muslim & any third world people in particular. for naipul this hatred is not simply a silly cloak to hide his own security but is a real representation of his hatred of people & his deep & abiding love for elites, any elites – even those who mock him & his work
naipul is the victory of style over content – when the enterprise of style was finished off once a for all by jimmy joyce in finnegans wake – the nabakovs, the v s naipul’s will not let Literature die naturally – they drag its dead body through the academies where we all piss on it from a great height knowing it is contaminated
ô give me katzanzakis any day of the week while listening to the songs of markos vamvakaris & drinking a strong café looking out at an aegean sea – ô let the love & hatesongs of the rembetika expose this fraudelent literature for what it is – the empty hatred of caricatures of flaubert or balzac & even they were far from perfect men – or even perfect writers. that Literature lost what was essential almost a century ago – it lost the capacity to listen
read the great leonard sciassi – & you can hear the rays of the sun in palermo – you can hear what is happenign behind the door but we cannot make sense of what we hear – & what we hear is both demonic & beautiful & sadly real
beckett in mercier et camier – listens – listens until we break our heart laughing at what we hear
read the poets of latin america, the greeks ritsos, elytis, cavafy, seferis & the arabs who this century have given us some of our strongest voices who sing the song of the multiple the elliptic people
pier paolo pasolini in petrolio snag his song to us & he listened so deeply to the street he became one
the bernard lewis’s, the v s naipuls even the nabakovs are the literature & thinking of the second & even the third rank – full of poison but without any truth
christ stopped at eboli

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 18 2004 22:58 utc | 5

christ stopped at eboli – carlo levi – in one page what the nobel prizewinner cannot write in a long career

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 18 2004 23:01 utc | 7

jj
Your disgusting bigotry is showing again. Perhaps if you read a little more instead of relying upon the unsubstantiated claims made by exile groups based in the USA whose output of ‘atrocity stories’ seems to be remarkably well synchronized with American saber-rattling against Tehran you might, just might, be able to shed some of your ignorance and prejudice.

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Dec 18 2004 23:24 utc | 9

slothrop
do you need any indices for a larger collection of these songs – they are extraordinary – gramscian before the hour – proudhounian before the pause – there is george dalares – who is the principal interpreter & who does not stray far from the real roots of rembetika
also some theodrakis orchestral work heavily influenced by it – to axion esti – adapted from odysseas elytis, epitafios from yannis ritsos, romosimni – many many
there deep & painful love of the people – not abstraction – but substantial & not without critique
i’m a bumm sounds like vamvakaris but could be a whole number of the old ones or the more recent – i remember seeing a young but enormous man who would make michael moore seem thin & refined – who sang like he had two tennis balls stuck in his throat – who as he prepared to play – walked from stage right to stage left – completely stoned – but when – sitting sang so beautifully i spent the night in tears
the wests construction of both the arab world & also of islam – a complete corruption but also a profound ignorance – but when the west is not capable of rendering its proper subtelty how can it realistically be expected to understand the subtlety of a world that gave birth to its own

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 19 2004 0:06 utc | 11

JJ
are you saying that since the Iranian government is horrible, those that has fled from it deserve to have their liberties curtailed?
Or are your anger only directed at the MaleMuslim (and could someone please explain, is this a just male muslim or is something more?) and not for example at male persons of arabic origin who happens to be ateists? And how is the government (even if it wanted to) able to seperate these groups?
Or where your first sentence “Screw the MaleMuslims” not directed at the curtailment of liberties that Bernhards post was about?
And to the main content of your post: Do you know if Amnesty or any other HR-organization has started some letter campaign?
I realise that there are many questions here, but none of them are retoric, I really do want to understand what you meant.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Dec 19 2004 3:09 utc | 13

i actually live down the street from some muslims, have known them for years, the kids play together. another friend, researcher @ the university, over for thanksgiving, seem like regular guys. gets pretty scary when we start making generalizations.
jj, consider rethinking your position.

Posted by: annie | Dec 19 2004 3:28 utc | 15

There are many muslims in Dearborn, MI. I believe it’s one of the larger populations in the US.
The elite in the US need an enemy to keep the sheeple in line. The muslims are the new communist. It’s a way to get the people worshipping the military and excepting curbs on civil libertys. The last thing needed is monitering of the internet.
It is coming though. That good ol metal of freedom winner George Tenet called for curbing the internet where only “responsible” people use it. That means the toy of the internet must be taken away from the sheeple. Our society in the US is geting increasingly stratified and the elite are continuing to consolidate information, money and national power at the top.
We really need another progressive movement to spread the wealth again. But with the media concentrated in so few hands the progressives aren’t going to get a chance to get the correct info out.

Posted by: jdp | Dec 19 2004 4:07 utc | 17

@jj patriarchal abuse is kind of like STDs — every culture likes to think it’s the other culture’s problem. the British called syphilis the French Pox and the French called it something unflattering with “Anglais” in the title, iirc.
I hear your rage loud and clear re the abuse of women in the fundie Islamic cultures. I was writing futile letters to various media and authority outlets about the plight of Afghani women in Taliban-land during the years when the Taliban were our buddies and the US media and Gummint had no interest in the suffering of those women — it was only after the Unocal deal collapsed that suddenly, the female mouthpieces of the US ruling class were oh, so shocked to discover what was going on in Afghanistan.
but I also remember the statistic that the US only recently ceded its memorable position among wealthy nations — the highest reported rate of rape per annum — to S Africa, about a year ago. battery, rape, murder of women are not uncommon in the US. not epidemic — unless you count the prostitution industry as an epidemic of rape and battery, and an argument can be made that we should — but steady, ever-present. rapes and murders of women are not currently orchestrated as public spectacles — but give the Reality Showmeisters a few more years, in concert with the Fundie Moralists, and we may see that day too. misogyny is alive and well in the US. it’s not exactly absent from the “only democracy in the ME” either — there are neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, I am told, where a woman had better not walk down the street wearing sleeves short enough to show her elbows, lest the men and boys throw stones and shout insults at her for her “indecency”.
a culture of “backwards”, primitive patriarchalism can exist within an allegedly more enlightened modern state. there are families in the US where the father or eldest brother wields the kind of terror-based authority you describe in your Muslim friend’s family — where women and kids are beaten if they dare to associate with the “wrong kind of people,” where a wife cannot bring her friends home to socialise for fear of brutal reprisals, where children are taught their prayers at the end of a belt or switch. these things still happen. and there are those who would like to make them the law of the land — as the saying goes, “Dear Lord, protect us from those who claim to speak for You.” Muslims are not the sole source of patriarchal stupidity, virulent misogyny, on the planet.
when people immigrate to a new country — often fleeing some kind of danger or oppression at home — they are supposed to comply with the laws of their new country. many don’t want to, and there’s a genuine conflict there. the UK press reports every now and then on another “dowry murder” or “honour killing” among its duskier immigrants. please note however, that when a White man kills his girlfriend or wife for her supposed infidelity, it’s not neatly labelled “an honour killing” because White people are supposed to be civilised, not barbaric — we are supposed to be above all that sort of thing. so it is called an aberration, a “crime of passion,” etc. (when we do an “honour killing” we do it on a grand scale with bombs and stuff.)
these crimes are sorted taxonomically, semantically, in the press and in public perception so that when a White man murders his wife or daughter, his murdering is seen as something wrong with him, with his personality, with his individual self — but when an Indian or Arab or Black man murders his wife or daughter, his crime is seen as something wrong with his culture, with his “people,” with Them.
never mind that the White man’s culture — from grand opera to popular film — celebrates and reinforces the same swaggering masculinity and misogyny that drives the atrocities against women in Afghanistan… no, we are supposed to have “put all that behind us”. we aren’t sexists, we aren’t patriarchal, They are! and Our Women had better remember that, and toe the line, because We are all that protects them from Those Men — the really, really bad ones. the misogyny of sharia law and the ugly excesses it encourages, are perhaps the single greatest propaganda tool that Islam hands to the West; much as the Occupation of Palestine is the single greatest propaganda tool the West hands to radical Islam.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this except to say that I’m not comfortable with the metaphor of the “teeming millions” of fanatical Others ready to swarm over our precious civilisation and bring back stoning and dowry killing and all the rest. I’m not sure that stoning and dowry killings, loathesome as they are, are in some objective way worse than simply slaughtering people wholesale in order to steal the natural resources from under them — land, oil, timber, spices, gold — the West’s longstanding practise. I’m pretty sure that the grotesque suppression of women’s rights flourishes in poverty and insecurity, and that the West’s long kleptocracy has set back the timeline for women’s emancipation all over the world. in many cultures, Christian missionaries imposed harsher restrictions on women than native people originally practised… btw veiling, that “archetypically Muslim” thing, I have read was not originally a Muslim tradition and is not mentioned inthe Koran, but was a style copied from early Christians. in some other cases, the West bitterly fought Soviet expansionism or local Communist revolutionary movements when those were the only avenues (at the time) for any emancipation of women. Afghanistan under Soviet rule was not a happy place, but for many women it was a helluva lot happier than the status quo ante or the next chapter. the Amis betrayed RAWA and other women’s groups who opposed both Islamist prick-ocracy and Soviet totalitarianism, delivering them back into the hands of the Taliban and barely-distinguishable warlords.
I agree that life with our own fundies is hard enough. but I find it hard to support the claim that we should deny the women of Islamist families a chance to emigrate to the West, whatever we think of the men and their attitudes. I have a feeling that you and I share the same instinctive shudder when we see photos from various Islamic countries and in a crowded street scene — the marketplace, the seaside, the civic centre — there is not a single visible woman, only a sea of men. the Apartheid is so blatant and sends a chill down the spine. but sometimes I look at street scenes in America and I see a sea of White faces in privileged neighbourhoods, not a person of colour to be seen for a square mile except perhaps one pushing a broom, and I know that Apartheid is practised in many ways… (hell, I’ve just been watching the last of the recent film adaptation of Tolkien’s trilogy, and whatever other liberties they have taken, the old man’s racism comes through loud and clear…) I’m not sure that we in the US have any kind of innocence or purity to be protected from some kind of “foreign infection”. our better (“Fairness”) values are under siege every day and always have been. sorry this is very rambling, I’m tired and am not sure of my own feelings/thoughts on the problem of fundamentalism and the Third World in general.

Posted by: DeAnander | Dec 19 2004 5:37 utc | 19

Perhaps if you read a little more instead of relying upon the unsubstantiated claims made by exile groups based in the USA whose output of ‘atrocity stories’ seems to be remarkably well synchronized with American saber-rattling against Tehran…
Bravo, Sic transit gloria USA! I’m so pleased when someone, anyone see’s behind the curtain…thank-you oh and lest ye forget: Islamic terrorist websites based in Texas

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 19 2004 6:28 utc | 21

From DeAnander
these crimes are sorted taxonomically, semantically, in the press and in public perception so that when a White man murders his wife or daughter, his murdering is seen as something wrong with him, with his personality, with his individual self — but when an Indian or Arab or Black man murders his wife or daughter, his crime is seen as something wrong with his culture, with his “people,” with Them.
Excllent observation DA, the problem in part is, that Culture is, as Culture does — Culture is never a glass half full or half empty — it just IS. As you point out it may be part of our Culture to play this ethnic (discrimination) game as an intrinsic part of our Cultural legacy, as a means of preserving the traditional power mechanisms, in the context of such large immigrant populations. I’m just saying that the contradictions and inconsistancys are part of the culture, and not an object view of it. And I would add, that these are also in direct violation of the only mediating function we have, the constitution and the bill of rights.

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 19 2004 10:37 utc | 23

woa.. a story. when my boy was about 6 , i don’t remember how the conversation came up but he said he didn’t know any black people. i said, what about isis, my best friends daughter who had rescued him from the pool and saved his life , along w/ numerous other close encounters like sharing the bed at sleep overs. well, she didn’t count . and what about charles who had spent the weekend a couple days ago. well , he didn’t connect that he was black. so i ask what he thought the difference was. and apparently the difference was some large generalization that did not include any of the blacks he actually knew. and in fact , as most children are, he was color blind. black people were some large group on tv or in music or some group. separate from his reality. while remodeling a few decades ago the finish carpenter didn’t show up and after inquiring i found out that the big story and headline for the pacific sun magazine(in marin) was about child molestation and pedophilia. which at the time was just unheard of . this carpenter, a quiet gentle man was the subject of the story, he had been raping his step son for years. the point is we are individuals. we form opinions based on our own realities and fears. the greatest threats to us are in our own minds and homes and neighborhoods. our conceptions of enemies are not our enemies. it will not serve you in your evolution to catorgorize individuals in a past mindset. there are at least as many sicko christians as there are muslims. go read up on the dominionsts. people who come to this country are looking to enhance their lives. sometimes it takes generations. think in simple terms. the concept of ‘like us’ is what?? i probably have much more in common w/ my muslim neighbors than i do w/ half the population of many red states. the reason muslims are demonized in the media is because it serves our economic purpose or right wing agenda at this time, the same way we grew up fearing russians were going to crawl out under our beds at night in the 50’s. jeez, the practice of female genatilia mutilation is much freakier to me than anything and we aren’t reading about that constantly. we are brutalizing thousands in falluja and demonizing those that cut off a few heads. what’s the difference?? charred bodies would be hanging off the ballard bridge if we were invaded. jj, you need to chill and realize you are buying into the fear factor. sure, every culture has freaks and bummers etc etc and life goes on. but there are millions of muslims. and most of them just want to live in peace. californis is supposed to be over 1/2 hispanic in the next 10 years. miami is miami. the great white reality is a thing of the past, if not now , very shortly, embrace it. trust in the human spirit. i got inspired to read some iraqi poets from a thread at speakeasy, my heart soured. expand. good luck.

Posted by: annie | Dec 19 2004 11:20 utc | 25

Comparing societies:
What do you think of a society where the number one reason for maternity death is homocide?
WaPo: Many New or Expectant Mothers Die Violent Deaths
Researchers Stunned By Scope of Slayings

One of the most comprehensive studies came from Maryland, where researchers used an array of case-spotting methods, expecting to find more medical deaths than the state knew about. Instead they discovered that homicide was the leading cause of death, a finding published in 2001 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In 2002, Massachusetts weighed in with a study that also showed homicide as the top cause of maternal death, followed by cancer. Two of three homicides involved domestic violence. “This is clearly a major health problem for women,” said Angela Nannini, who led the study.

Posted by: b | Dec 19 2004 11:55 utc | 27

Pat
“individual rights” are frustratingly axiomatic in “liberal” society. Reconciling subjective freedom(s) with capitalism should be essential to the discourses of liberalism, even from neoconservatives and libertarians, but like your interesting post above, is a need often ignored by sensitive thinkers.
In fact, rights talk mostly is used to vindicate the unfreedoms caused by economic inequality. If we were free, we wouldn’t need rights. The anodyne of the need for rights is “collectivism.”

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 19 2004 15:47 utc | 29

does anybody here know the site – the truthseeker.co.uk – it seems to be a wild & woolly – with consistent messages of imminent catastrophe’s – & a heavy dose of anti semitisim – i’ve read it a couple of times in the last few months & it appears provocative – in the worse sense of that word – perhaps i’m wrong – but its conspiracy laden articles – heavy & hurtful
i want to say to jj & others that the islamic world has many, many colours & the arab world even more so – to not do the historical work in this instance not only breeds prejudice but hurts you in the long term
it is in the time of crisis that we need to read – to go wider than out usual paths – to seek out & research things that we don have to have anything in common
i have read the work of the three prinicpal ideologues of islamic fundamentalism – though it gives me no pleasure to do do – we already live with enough absolutism – to shit out of our overextended stomachs but it is necessary. absolutely necessary. i’ve tried to begin an exercise at lespeakeasy to speak of the arab philosophers of antiquité – but i’ve been both too sick & busy to fulfill the task – but a reading of the early philosophers of the arab world & even islamic philosophy has much to teach
i read brother tareq ramadan – who for me is an inverse version of the neo-cons – whose reduction & vulgarisation of islam under the guise of ‘reasonable’ scholarship does islam a great wrong but one does not have to enter into a mccarthyite fear of even the most partisan scholarship – bad ideas break – finally & utterly before human breath – even if they do great harm before they collapse
& i want to say again what i have sd before that forms of islamic fundamentalism especially in the west have a symbiotic relationship with the most genocidal of the neoconservatives. they serve a common goal
the works of a nasser, of a dr habbash, of a barghouti are all very far from a simplified version of the world; so too edward said – & i would like to see the transcript of the said interview on pacifica – it sound so unlike him as to appear completely false. his is not a ‘throw all the jews into the sea ‘ form of thinker – i don’t even think at the end of the day even a yassin seriouslly believed that – but for said to utter a completely rejectionist position would surprise me – his was an approach that was rigorous but was also one of searching common ground
i can imagine at the end of said’s life the common ground was getting smaller & smaller & the tone so hysteric on each side that through melancholy he might have fallen from his previous positions but i doubt it
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 19 2004 15:57 utc | 31

rgiap
well…I seem to be among the few here who attemnpt to engage the tradition of left political theory. Of course, there is a certain vocabulary of this politics that is unavoidable and is owed to german idealism and western marxism. So, sometimes I must sound rigid, and my language hackneyed. But, I do not know how to talk about the left without using the language of the left.
So, if my MoA comrades are nonplussed or silent then either a) they do not know about the political-social theories of the left; or, b) are not leftists; or, c) speak in a code of solidarity that presently excludes me.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 19 2004 16:11 utc | 33

@ Uncle $cam
JJ, last time I checked Iranians are not muslims…
Sure they are, at least most of them. Shia muslims that is. Most of the iranians are not arabic, if that was what you meant.
Goth help me…lol I was thinking Iranians are not arabic but wrote “muslims” what a way to look like a dumbass…lol geez.. carry on.
Seriously, I get into so many debates with people whom have no Ideal about the world out side of their own little world space, be it state, city, local, that I’m just bowled over that people in American have no conception about culture outside their mind frame. The thing that freightens me though is most don’t wanna know about the rest of the world.
Mea Culpa on the above, JJ mine was not intended to be an attack, just a comment, I guess one should lay of the rum before driving on the superhwy…lol

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 19 2004 18:20 utc | 35

In fact, rights talk mostly is used to vindicate the unfreedoms caused by economic inequality. If we were free, we wouldn’t need rights. The anodyne of the need for rights is “collectivism.”
Posted by: slothrop | December 19, 2004 10:47 AM
What is an unfreedom?
How does economic inequality cause unfreedoms?

Posted by: Pat | Dec 20 2004 10:43 utc | 37

Conversly perhaps, the same tactic can be at work in Iraq, in that to demote the political and national interests (of Iraqis) into religious strife, forwards the economic domination by the occupation.

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 20 2004 11:06 utc | 39

Harrow, thank you for that reply to JJ. It saves me trying to write something much less coherently outraged.

Posted by: Colman | Dec 20 2004 13:23 utc | 41

Yes, but I don’t think you need the qualifier really. Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist. Doesn’t matter.

Posted by: Colman | Dec 20 2004 14:15 utc | 43

such effects

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 20 2004 16:33 utc | 45

not entirely sure why I was steered to ‘lsf.’
Anyways, it is my attempt to understand the MoA audience which motivates me to require of others here just what the fuck ‘left’ means.
Like I said: not orthodoxy, but clarity.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 20 2004 17:58 utc | 47

@slothrop in the US, alas, “Left” means anything a bit more humanist than Attila the Hun 🙂 since there is no Left/Labour party or power bloc to self-define, the definition of “Left” is in the hands of the Right (now firmly in control of the media), who apply it to just about anyone they want to smear, belittle, or mock this week. when John Kerry can be described — as he was in various venues — as a representative of the radical left wing of the Democratic Party, we know that we’re suffering a serious devaluation of our semantic currency. hence people can call themselves Leftists and be thought of as such, and perhaps even experience some risk by being identified as such, without ever having read any of what, 40 years ago, would have been considered the leftist canon.
furthermore the language of the canon — the jargon of the classical leftist — has made its cultural journey from Shocking and Forbidden (McCarthy Era), the Language of the Great Satan… to Laughable and Quaint, the Language of Comic Minor Characters in Clever Movies — or of Pathetic Losers, Ha Ha Ha. of the two, I think the latter devaluation is the more effective, as it makes the average reader/listener reflexively unable to take seriously any utterance written or spoken in the technical jargon of the Left. combined with a general cultural Kapu on earnestness and sincerity themselves (so unCool), except on the Right where cloying sentimentality and religous fervour are very much in style, this weakens and narrows political discourse to the point where a classic Left narrative becomes just about unspeakable and un-hearable.
which (seems to me) leaves people with genuine Left sentiments and convictions gasping for air, trying to describe class and power relations while scrupulously avoiding the language and intellectual resources crafted over a century specifically for the description of class and power relations…
speaking of semantic currency, I’m reading Paxton in an attempt to get a firmer grip on the F-word that one is very tempted to throw around these days (cf the latest Bush The Infallible legal opinion noted on the main page). Paxton claims that fascism is not possible — that whatever may look like it is not fascism really — in the absence of an organised and pugnacious Left which scares middle class and wealthy citizens into the arms of the populist Right (and a Left established enough, therefore politically compromised enough, that some of its more radical elements become frustrated and disaffected and also head for the bellicose populist hills). I’m not more than a fifth of a way through the book yet, so am not sure whether he will be able to convince me. but it’s a fascinating read. if anyone else has read it I’d be interested in some discussion.

Posted by: DeAnander | Dec 20 2004 18:31 utc | 49

@slothrop
Berlin, Rawls, Raz, Dworkin, Sunstein, …, Habermas, Giddens, Rand, Hayek, Friedman, Pat
I did read a little Habermas, some more Hayek and a bit of Rand – and of course everything Pat wrote at MoA. So I guess Colman’s point is not totally without merit.
I would love to follow and take part in a discussion about freedom and economic equality but some fruits are obviously hanging to high for this small mind.
Now if anybody wants to discuss Lovelace, Eckart, Turing, Zuse, v.Neuman, Backus, Iverson, McCarthy, Wirth and Richie those fruits are within my reach.
And I really would like to know what ‘left’ means for you.

Posted by: b | Dec 20 2004 18:52 utc | 51

slothrop/deanander
i’ll be brief. i believe in the virtues of being a fanatic. of attaching oneself to our ideas or to our art, with fanaticism
when i was born – the world was a mess. that same world remains a mess. moreso than i would have even imagined 20 years ago
for me the difference between being open to multiplicities & being a dilletante even a militant dilletante, is enormous
i have, i do & i will use anthing i read. i can say simply to deanander that without marxism leninism – i would have died at 20. marxism-leninism gave me the means paradoxically to succeed in this world – without it i would have been placed with the rest of my class in the rubbish bin. marxism leninism mao tste tung thought gave me the means to pass the stupid fucking tests at school & at the university. i have been in debt to that form of thinking & i am not close to throw it away.
i believe as althusser did that to know marx is to know fundamentally we are not alone. if you like terms of reference – benjamin was a fanatic, georgy lukacks was a fanatic, tran duc thao was a fanatic, louis althusser was a fanatic – at a pinch even derrida was a fanatic – certainly foucault & obvioussly baudrillard & virillio. heidegger was a fool. he was neither thinker nor fanatic no matter what dear hannah arendt says
raul hilberg was a fanatic or his work would have never been done
i live in a world that is increasingly aggressive, that takes parts of people as a standard operating procedure. these societies destroy what is beautiful in people. & what is beautiful in people is found mostly in the oppressed, the marginalised, the disinherited. that is not new – any philosophy worthy of that name whether it was greek, persian, arabic, german, japanese or french have understood that the truth – the sacred truth is found in the people & found in people who have been placed or who have placed themselves on the margins
hobbes hated people. therefor for me he is not a philosopher. simple. all this people hating – became in the 18th, 19th, 20th & 21st century the dominant ideology. perhaps hobbes was a thinker. perhaps not. the heritiers of that tradition are a joke – & it is not a paradox whether it is a strauss, a teller or a friedman that they live very close to power. power might give them ‘authenticity’ but it does not give them ‘authority’
fanaticism as che guevara & jose marti suggested is created by a profound form of love. but it can also be created from a profound sense of being perplexed & in this butchershop we call a world – it would be odd even abstract to be not perplexed
the knowledge that the left has given us is not heirarchical – it is as the buddhist suggest – a form that allow for endless transformation – it is living – it is in the end about hope or at least an understanding of our melancholy, our pessimism
still schtetl

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 20 2004 19:11 utc | 53

@slothrop
Thanks, that’s more my level and my understanding was different.
I would have put the equity further away. Not in access to productive resources, but equity in access to the fruits productive resources produce or even further equal share to the fruits gained by productivity increases which in the long term should converge to the model before.

Posted by: b | Dec 20 2004 19:28 utc | 55

the knowledge that the left has given us is not heirarchical…
This is so much to the point. The right is all about vindication of hierarchy.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 20 2004 19:43 utc | 57

“the popular working class culture, the adherence to a margin that was damned & despised but at the same time immensely tender, the struggle of a misfit – an uncomprimising expeasant- to survive in the industrial centre, in the world of the nascent lumpenproletariat, and above all the desire to keep intact the dignity & authenticity of the popular psyche & in particular the poetic recreation of this world, all this is what Markos stands for. love is the catalyst in the struggle against marginalisation & scorn” yorgos pantagias on markos vamvakaris
my double stringed bouzouki
my humble bouzouki
only yo soothe the pain
in people’s hearts
you know the sorrow in my heart
& you say you’re sorry
do you remember who
i was before you burnt me out
& if i’m a drifter & a wretch
it’s not my fault
it is for two treachorous eyes
i cry day & night
it’s only you, bouzouki, my faithful companion
who sweetens this so called life of mine
markos vamvakaris

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 20 2004 20:30 utc | 59

the collection I have is “Rébétiko Tsardi-Chansons des fumeries et des prisons”
the 1st song is “Toujours Avec Du Bon Haschisch”

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 20 2004 21:14 utc | 61

pat
I already answered the question up there. you didn’t read it yet.
Rand: there you go. Great quote. What better expression of ‘objective idealism’ could there be? Also, as if there was such a unity of ‘political freedom’ and ‘economic freedom’ in capitalism. This is why Rand is such a terrifying joke. Bourgeois culture conquers by the very division of the political from the economic, hand from head, labor from capital. Example: our First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech…But governmental coercion pales against private coercion. If we were really serious about uniting the political and economic, we would straightaway eliminate the idealism by rewriting the cornerstone of our law: No one shall abridge the right to speak…

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 20 2004 21:32 utc | 63

oh….and the savage division of culture and society, which Raymond Williams wrote so beautifully about in his early books.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 20 2004 21:42 utc | 65

That would be the same Ancient Greece whose economy was built on slavery and indentured peonage, and where the vast majority of respectable women left their homes only twice, as the saying goes: to be married and to be buried? wow, a fat lot of freedom going around there for anyone who wasn’t a propertied male…
Let’s face it, there’s no mystical linkage between mercantile success and democratic freedom. We can have a perfectly robust, thriving, commercially successful human culture in which only the Herrenvolk have democratic freedoms. In fact it might be axiomatic that maximum profit-extraction requires the suppression of autonomy and creativity for the majority: profit can only be maximised by making sure someone doesn’t get their fair wage or their fair share, and only suppression ensures that they don’t get uppity about it.
Such cultures have nothing going against them, except of course this brutal stifling of the masses of labouring nonPersons required to provide the upper classes with plenty of free time, so that they can be all leisured and cultured and sit around discussing Democracy and admiring their own civic virtues 🙂 What most romanticisers of such cultures tend to forget is that there wasn’t much room at the top. Statistically speaking, most of us if transported back to “the Glory that was Greece” would find ourselves cast as extras, not lead characters: expendable helots and slaves. I don’t know what Rand imagined her life might have been in Glorious Ancient Greece, but it certainly would have been far less free than the one she actually enjoyed in her own time…

Posted by: DeAnander | Dec 20 2004 22:09 utc | 67

Rand is funny, but somehow I doubt that pharaonic Egypt or Babylon had much political freedom, and they succeeded quite well. Compare that to many native tribes, notably in N America, where they were crushed by colonists from European monarchies. And of course China is right now showing to which extent Rand was wrong, or not. But I have doubts about any real link between success, prosperity, and political freedom. That’s one of the variables, but there are many others. And that’s a complex system, meaning prosperity can help bringing political freedom just as much as rights and freedom can help prosperity – Phoenicia was crushed by the Persians and Alexander, and those weren’t much more democratic; same with Athens and Sparta.
That said, I’ll have to comment on DeAnander, who’s right for Greece, but it’s been my impression since a long time that the average human wasn’t worse off under the early Roman Empire than he would be right now. With half the people earning 2$ a day for slaving 10 hours a day or more, I don’t think that most slaves were worse off back then; we just called it under another name nowadays. Of course, that excludes some specific slave jobs who were notoriously awful, like mining, but if you focus on what was the matter with 80% or more slaves of old time, farming, the overall situation of a big size of the world’s population hasn’t changed that much – they’re dirt poor and will remain so, and so will their kids and grandkids, until mankind dies off or some revolution casts down the regime. The situation is better for the 10/15% of happy few living in advanced countries, but the same was true for the 15% Romans and local elites.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Dec 20 2004 23:56 utc | 69

DeA
I agree. I usually read history with “what would I do in that situation” and most often the answer is: run for my life. Because many historians seem to be interested in interesting, blood-soaked times.
One way to measure the succes of a culture in terms of how well of those living in it were would be to measure the length of the sceletons. Average length being a good measurement of nurishment, health and all that. Of course to end up with a cruelty-index you would have to measure the lengths of the whole impact area of the civilization, and correct for genetics.
So the answer to: How much has the worlds average length changed the last 500 years?
Should imply the answer to: How good (or bad) has the western civilization been for the world?

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Dec 21 2004 3:56 utc | 71

“They lived and they died;
They prayed to their gods,
But the stone-gods did not make a sound
Till their Empire crumbled,
And all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found.”
Sting’s “All This Time”, which is somehow stuck in my head today.
“History – we’ll all be dead,” as some knowledgeable historian said. Let’s be good sheep and do and think what is expected of us.

Posted by: teuton | Dec 21 2004 11:00 utc | 73

I’m pretty sure that quotes from Rand around here count as acts of wanton provocation: I’m sure that satellite imagery would show steam issuing from ears at several points around the planet if carefully examined.
Now, I’m afraid that, like b, I’m happier discussing the fine points of computer science rather than the jargon of political science, but I can probably make a few points without looking too stupid. However, the points will probably have been made above in language too difficult for me to penetrate
The degree of political freedom is certainly very often correlated with the degree of economic progress as conventionally measured. It is arguable whether it is a cause of economic progress rather than a result. It seems fair to ask how Singapore, Saudi Arabia and China fit into your thesis.
I also wonder what you mean by “socialism in all its forms”. Do you include anything except laissez-faire capitalism? I assume not, since by now it should be clear that unrestrained capitalism tends inevitably to the concentration of riches and power in the hands of a small number of people.
As for objectivism, as a hard-core rationalist and mathematician I should, of course, be immediately convinced by its arguments. Except that to believe what they say, you must already want to believe it. It is not rational, scientific or logical despite their protestations. Any philosophy that assumes that humans are a blank slate at birth needs to go stand in the corner.

Posted by: Colman | Dec 21 2004 14:44 utc | 75

It is socialism (in all its forms), not capitalism, that divorces economic activity from political freedom.
Was my example of the abstractness of freedom in the First Amendment too ambiguous an example of this division of political and economic? Christ, what could be clearer?
Look it, pat, I’m a reluctant redneck and there is much about von Mises rightwing libertarianism that is appealing to me. The mind your own business part. But the idealism of freedom abstracted away from real social relations that really constrain agency (so many examples: the end of the ‘death tax’–you can hear Locke roll in his grave) is so obvious.
The only way to defend capitalism honestly is via neoplatonism of strauss, buckley, old kristol: the poor suck and democracy works only up to the moment elite power is challenged.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 21 2004 16:35 utc | 77

Colman
Any philosophy that assumes that humans are a blank slate at birth needs to go stand in the corner.
yes. the other abominable conceit of bourgeois culture: everyone begins the race of life in the same position.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 21 2004 16:38 utc | 79

Sorry, forgot the sources for the helots. “Penguins atlas of world history” vol 2, pages 52-53, 1978 and “A history of world societies” ed4, pages 126-128, 1996.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Dec 21 2004 16:43 utc | 81

Locke, also in the Second Treatise:

Thus the grass my horse has bit, the turf my servant has cut, and the ore I have digged in any place where I have a right to them in common with others, become my property without the assignation or consent of anybody.

There you go, pat. Rightwing libertarianism in all its coruscating absurdity: my servants…

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 21 2004 17:09 utc | 83

Ah, but r’giap, who is on the left? Am I? I don’t believe that Marx is right, or that collectivism is workable in real life with real people: I’m for exploiting ad taming capitalism as appropriate to make a good life for everyone without expecting perfect equality. Am I allowed sing?

Posted by: Colman | Dec 21 2004 17:19 utc | 85

collectivism is workable in real life with real people
We are utterly ‘collective’ beings (‘species-being’ Marx said). Nowhere is this more obvious than in the use of language.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 21 2004 17:26 utc | 87

colman
you are singing & you are where christy moore & others sing in voices that still give me chills – i once had a tape with brendan behan singing the old triangle
i’m not an evangalist, colman & even in the darkest moments of my maoism i understood that ideas had to be shared at a material level – skin to skin – my first readings of both – lin piao & louis althusser – were sensual readings – perhaps even erotic
i understood – than as now – that we arrive at ideas by our own paths – the debating business – in the sense of convincing someone either by brute force or seduction does not interest me
for myself, it has made this life of mine – something i cherish – & without it i do not know what man i would have become
i am as aware of the sins of the development of marxism on a practical level – i have suffered for it – but never for a moment have i even come close to a disavowal. on the contrary i feel in my early dotage – a confirmation. & i’ve been around the block with both ideas & their reality
for me, marxism in almost all its forms speaks to my heart in a way hobbes locke smith the good bishop berkeley never could – as a young fellow – vico & bruno – yess yes yes – galileo copernicus – yes yes yes a guarded yes – but the politics of death – the politics that was invented in the academy of the 18th century – that still stinks to me of death of putrefaction – never touched me
i live in a country where as my mother would say that it can’t be all bad because they killed their king – though i think my mother had a passing infatuation with st just
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 21 2004 17:40 utc | 89

(somehow cut off)
…would survive bankruptcy without the nearly seamless net of coercion that lets them use their workers “freely” (read-cheaply), I would accept your position, but is such a defense possible?

Posted by: Citizen | Dec 21 2004 17:48 utc | 91

Yikes,
just re-read my post and it is dry, dry dry.Let me re-phrase….
I read once of a factory where a worker had gotten caught in the wheels that ran the conveyer belt. It was a loud factory, and so his screams went unheard and he was not discovered until the next shift when a large portion of his frame had already been ground away by the machine. The man got caught because an executive (who likely got his 30 pieces of silver as a good servant) forbade production lines to be stopped for repair, so the worker was repairing the line as it ran.
Strangely, the executive was not charged with murder.
He was not charged because his fellow workers and citizens are coercively prevented from defending each other: capitalism is greased by coercion, despite what any sadistic ‘philo’-sopher might say.

Posted by: Citizen | Dec 21 2004 18:14 utc | 93

citizen
It’s a damn good trade. slothrop needs to be revived by a more direct, less recondite, more allegorical prose style. So far, s/he is “full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse.”
Also, you’d become one of the chosen; as Pynchon would say, you’d be among the preterite.
Who’d not want to be that?

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 21 2004 18:39 utc | 95

I’m gonna read cauldwell one of these days.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 21 2004 19:10 utc | 97

@slothrop, I protest — I read your s**t with the greatest of interest, always.
there is much about von Mises rightwing libertarianism that is appealing to me. The mind your own business part really hit home for me — with a grin and an Ouch — the libertarian and socialist impulses struggle daily in my brain/heart. believing that power corrupts, one must believe that government both corrupts its practitioners and attracts the already corrupt. limiting the power of government sounds good from that perspective. the “ism” that I most object to is Control-ism, intrusive micromanagement, the confiscation of personal autonomy — and it comes in both Left and Right flavours. by all means let us keep the State out of our bedrooms, bathrooms, and bookshelves.
but being a pragmatist, not a sheltered idealist (of either flavour) I feel strongly that there is no such thing as the absence of government. take away the “government”, and you get government by Mafia, or warlordism.
someone will “run things,” as soon as the density of human beings per square mile reaches a certain threshold. gatherer-hunters were probably the last people on Earth to have any real freedom of the kind that libertarians idly fantasize; all other notions of “perfect individual freedom” are merely the fantasies of fit young men who dream of lording it over everyone weaker than themselves — the old, women, children, the ‘inferior races’ — Herrenvolk notions “freedom”.
if the strong are not to cannibalise the weak, if we are to be anything a bit better than piranhas, then we need that mysterious paradoxical thing called ‘participatory democracy,’ or any other system of rules which can check the unbridled exercise of our personal skills and abilities (be they the skills of violence or of cunning) in order that the personal skills and abilities of others be allowed to breathe and flourish — the use of (moderate, we hope) force in order to prevent the abuse of force.
when we grant mercantilists unbridled “freedom,” they promptly use it to become governments — laying down laws, controlling the lives of their employees and their customers, restricting the freedoms of everyone not in the inner circle of management power. there are two phrases, “company town” and “captive market”, that should be all the refutation we should ever need for the soppy Norman Rockwell fantasies of benign capitalism…
the old quip about no famines occurring in countries that permit free speech is, I think, complete post hoc/propter hoc nonsense. the elimination of famine is largely a matter of climate, agricultural methodologies, and transport. famine became “obsolete” in nations where crop rotation was diligently practised to increase yields and soil health, and where high speed transport networks permitted the quick relocation of food supplies to even out regional variations in productivity, meteorological disasters and the like. today when we read that there is a severe drought in Wyoming or flooding in Florida, we feel sorry for the people there, but we don’t assume they will starve. before railroads, they might well have starved, because we couldn’t move enough food fast enough to save them. it’s about technology and resources, not about who can publish what.
Cubans did not experience famine — hard times, but not famine — even when the collapse of the USSR undermined their petro-depdendent industrial agriculture. they did far better at managing that transition, imho, than the US or any other First World nation would do if the same sudden cold-turkey withdrawal of petro resources happened to us. however, they do not count as a nation with “free speech” on the official lists. they had technology and social organisation, and they prevented famine when it was a distinct possibility.
it should also be noted that the preconditions leading to famine — it doesn’t happen overnight — do not encourage libertarian social forms. when major national crisis looms and then strikes — as we have seen grimly illustrated in the US over the last couple of years — civil liberties are promptly jettisoned and “emergency measures” of the most repressive and antidemocratic nature are likely to prevail. this means that a country experiencing famine or on the verge of it, is the least likely place to find an open, civil-democratic political milieu. we might rather — imho more accurately — say that “free speech as a political principle is most commonly found among peoples who are not starving.”
it should lastly be noted that famine in the modern age is largely related to maldistribution, i.e. most modern famines are engineered by market forces, which dictate that essential food supplies shall be relocated from hungry countries to well-fed countries, a net transfer of nutrition from South to North; that stockpiles of food must be sold at a profit and will not be released to feed hungry people unless someone will pay the market price; that food surpluses must be destroyed rather than be released “for free”; that subsistence farmers shall be displaced from their land by consolidated industrial ag, thus creating vast food insecurity for millions of ex-peasants. most famines from mid C19 forward are a result of mismanagement or, in some cases, are the externalised cost of a food production system focussed on glutting the markets of the G8 by looting the resources of the Southern Hemisphere.
I think Pat has the whole relationship backwards: prosperity is a precondition for democracy, not vice versa. fascists and totalitarians are most easily accepted during times of crisis, when disorder, chaos and disruption threaten the body politic. people don’t worry too much about their “rights” when their kids are eating dirt to quell the hunger pangs. niceties like freedom of speech, constitutional law, and the rest are the hobby of those who know where their next meal is coming from. in the hierarchy of needs, “democracy” comes several layers above the basics like food, shelter, and freedom from random daily violence.

Posted by: DeAnander | Dec 21 2004 19:15 utc | 99