For veterans of the old Kerry website--this thread is intended as a continuation of the thread we had going there on Popper's notion of an open society, and the challenges we face here in trying to foster such openness. I have the old thread in html format, and once I canfigure out how to post it here, I will, for context.

But the upshot of our discussion has been about reason and power, and the antidemocratic dynamics at work in our society that threatens to derail reasonable discussion of the issues, tolerance and debate about different values systems, and the advancement of scientific inquiry. Nobody should mistaken our views as definitive answers on these vexing issues. It may be more important to raise the right questions than to rsuh in to answer them prematurely.

We easily cast the debate as one between scientitifc inquiry and religious fundamentalism. But is that right? Do we really get to the heart of the matters so quickly? I have been thinking that a better strategy would be to look at who is in power (really) and how do they control the agenda, prevent certain topics from being raised much less debated.

Bush is claiming he has a mandate. From whom? The half of the electorate that elected him? Correction--the half of the voting electorate that elected him. Still, even here, the election was quite close. Why on earth should he interpret this as a madate for anything except peacemaking with the other half?

But that is the problem. He has successfully ignored half the american people for four years, and paid no penalty for doing so. In fact, he has been rewarded with a bigger majority in the house and senate, and most ceratinly will have opportunity to select between one to three supreme court judges, and who knows how many lower court judges. He says he has built up political capital, and now lans to tackle social security. It is good that he is going to address social security. But since he does not debate (he now has a 'one question only' rule for the press! the voters gave him that power, he claims!), I think we are going to get, once again, Bush's no negotiation style of governing kick into overdrive. I expect he will pursue it with the same tenacity and relentlessness he pursued the war in Iraq. he got his war. He will no doubt get his 'reform'--but judging by his medicare 'reform' that is not necessarily good news.

Unless some of the republicans wake up to what Bush is doing. If they don't, and the results are bad enough people won't vote for them again.

Our only hope is for the republicans to wake up and not be party to his crimes.

From the dictionary: Tolerance

1. acceptance of different views: the acceptance of the differing views of other people, for example, in religious or political matters, and fairness toward the people who hold these different views

People who promote tolerance in this country are selectively tolerant. They are tolerant to the views the go along with their idealogy and values, but once you step outside that they are no longer so tolerant.

I have more of a conservative, traditional value system. I posted in the other forum a little bit, and I was called a bigot and untolerant because I am against gay marriage. This is not tolerant. You can't be selectively tolerant to one group and not listen to the other. Because of my views I am called a bigot and in reality I am more tolerant then the people putting me down. I understand their views and accept them as possibilities. I do not put them down. How can anyone really know anything about an issue if they selectively accept information?

Thanks for joining us, HDD.

You are right. Tolerance is not, and cannot mean anything goes. That is not tolerance, but something else--relativism or nihilism. To go that far is to give up the moral game.

I am of the view that tolerance has a moral basis, respect for persons, respect for autonomy. The point of tolerance is precisely to let people have the liberty to pursue happiness as they see fit. We are a liberal society, a society given to defense of personal liberty. It is in the declaration of independence; it is in the constitution. For me, those are the benchmarks.

The problem for a liberal society, as you are aware, is to work out the terms of our cooperation. No man is an island. While individual liberty is valued, it is not absolute. We need reasonable restraints on individual choice so that we do not suffer from the problems lack of coordination creates. Life together provides many benefits. Even Hobbes argued as much. But those benefits come with a price tag--we have to give some things up in order to get other things we want.

Self-restraint is preferred. But when self-restraint fails, there needs to be effective enforcement. Otherwise, there is anarchy and we all suffer.

Now where does gay marriage show up in this frawmework. You no doubt have moral reasons for your view. Furthermore, your morality is shaped by your religon. How do I know this. I don't. But having attended a fundamentalist seminary, and having been a conservative Christian for 20 of my 50 years, I am at least familar with versions of your view held by people I still consider freinds, even though I am now quite liberal.

By the way, I'll mention it but not dwell on it. There are Christians who are not convinced those against homosexuality are interpreting the Bible right. Letha Scanzoni has a book Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? that you ought to read over if you are interested in the arguments.

But what is the status of your firmly held views against homosexual marriage? What is the status of your religous based views? Should they become law because you can muster a majority of people who feel like you do? That is the issue here. Let's keep our focus there.

We are a pluralstic culture, and always have been. It is easy to miss that if one fails to notice that our history is primarily the history of one group of British subjects who wound up dominant. But the Spanish and French were here first among the Europeans, and Native Americans were here before that. Dutch, Germans and Swedes were all early settlers. Italians like Columbus and Cabot came in service of Spain and Britain. And through the nineteenth and twentieth century we have waves of immigration from western, northern, eastern europe, asia, africa (the slaves). The religions were various. Catholics came first, then protestants and jews. And for sheer inventiveness, we have probably invented more religions than any other people on earth. The Mormons, Seventh day Adventists, and jehovah's witnesses and pentecostalists--new religons, denominations or cults (depending on how you define these) have worldwide reach and are among the fastest growing religons on earth.

What is my point? Talk about this being a Christian nation is just plain sloppy and unhelpful. We have a great variety of Christianities here: many of which did not get along in Europe and killed each other there. We have a variety of cultural identities--mostly in large cities where many of the immigrants wound up. We are not a cultural monolith here. And since morality is pretty closely ties to culture, we have a variety of moralities here as well. The differences may not be big. But they may be big enough to affect the question at hand--gay marriage.

The issue is whether one person's moral views should determine the law for those who do not share that moral conviction. And it won't do to say the views of others should not be taken seriously because they are immoral. That is just begging the question: can people disagree on moral principles without one being morally wrong? I believe they can. I beleve a reasonable position here is the agnostic one: we may not know, as people in legislative office, whihc of two views is right (if either) and therefore may not make such differences the basis of law.

Is that a terrible position to hold? No. It is forced on us by our moral disagreements. Morality is the basis of law. Of course it is. But law is not, and cannot be simply morality given the force of law. Instead, law give the boundary of unacceptable behavior, and give the individual wide berth to work out the details of morality for themselves, or for their group (i.e., church, family, maybe community).

So tolerance is the respect we pay to those we believe are sincere, rational, well-intentioned and wrong. It is possible to respectfully agree to disagree. We cannot resolve all our differences. The point is not to use the law to force conformity of opinion. You may try to persuade others of your views. But the law must stay neutral. Separation of church and state is based on exprience of what happens when the state is not neutral: repression, persecution and civil war. We have largely avoided that here. But with the Bush bunch in control, the contract is being violated. If Bush shreds the social contract of imposed religious neutrality by the state, he may unleash a good deal more violence than he bargained for. I hope he has sense enoug to step back from that. We'll see.

So, you have the right to hold and express your views that strike some of us, including me, as intolerant. But you may not have the right to impose your views on others by force of law. I, for one, do not believe dire consequences will folow from allowing gay marriage. Many gay couples have been faithful to each other for decades. Many hereosexual couples have grave problems with fidelity. I don't believe aws should be on the books unless there are demonstrable harms. Speculative ones don't count. That something is dirty or disgusting doesn't count, for the most part. It may be a good reason to keep something, like pornography and excrement, in private places where others need not view them unwillingly. Some offensivess does support regulation short of outright ban ( for bodily functions, it should be obvious why!).

Victimless crimes, harmless wrong doing, in general should not be a matter of law, but of education. People will gamble or use drugs whether there are laws against it or not. Enforcement of such laws is expensive and generally ineffective. The behavior is not smart. I don't think it wise to mess up your brain chemistry with illegal drugs, or to gamble away paychecks. But I think the people are for the most part harming only themselves (drinking and driving in another matter, andcomes under the harm principle), and we get more effective leverage with education than laws. I'm proof of that. In the sixties, many of my freidns were using drugs. But I saw the movies they showed in health class, and they scared the hell out of me! I was never even tempted to experiment with drugs after learning about some of the nasty sideeffects of some drugs. I think sex education has the same impact on prevention of the spread of stds and reducing teen pregnancy.

I guess my overall point is that there are any number of things that are immoral (on one viewpoint) that should not be made a matter of law. One can say this without saying morality is unimportant. In fact, I just have argued that one can have good moral grounds for not making particular moral convictions a matter of law.

Thank you for your post, hdd.

rogerv, did you see the debate I had with HDD in the old Kerry forums?

HDD, do you still consider yourself a facist?

No, norm, I guess I missed that debate. I think the issue he raises is a good one.

norm, i'd also like to repsond to something you said on another thread here that seems worth commenting on. You asked whether we have a vested interest in seeing Bush fail, even in cases where we would be better off if he actually succeeded--like Iraq. Please correct me if my paraphrase is inaccurate.

I think it is a good question. I have disliked Bush since I first saw him. I have nursed anger and contempt for him for four years. Now he is returned to office for what I think are all the wrong reasons. There is a disconnect between what people say they want and what Bush actually gives them. And where there is a connection, it is often lowest common denominator stuff, like race and gay baiting. What can I do with his return to office?

The chief problem, as I see it, is that I want to be vindicated, want to be shown right, want to be able to say "I told you so." But you know what? For me to be able to say that, a lot of people are going to have to suffer. The question for me ought to be: am I willing to let go of my anger at Bush for the sake of helping my country do as well as possible?

Look. I could sit on my hands for four years and make my mantra "Don't blame me--I didn't vote for the guy." And perhaps he will blow himself up. Perhaps many will suffer. Or perhaps he will get some things right and we wll do ok. Or perhaps some mixture of the two.

If what I have been saying here is correct, the rational thing to do is to accept the new reality and make the best of a botched situation. We don't rollover and wallow in self-pity. We don't give up on our values. Rationality and fairness are important even if unappreciated at the moment. We don't give up on our issues. We need, for example, to fight hard for environmental protection befofe the damage gets severe. But we now have to fight for them in the new situation. We don't pretend the Bush group is nice, or forget what they have done. But praise or blame are small potatoes in the overall scheme of things. It is much more important to be safe, and healthy, and fair, and wise, and stubbornly defend our ideals than it is to figure out who gets credit for what. So whether Bush gets the praise or blame for anything at this point is irrelevant. The big idea is to save the country, to ensure that the country does well. and to work on moving us to be better neighbors in the world.

Thanks, norm, for making me take an attitude check.

My debate with HDD is on the old Kerry/Edwards site, which is still up, in the Other Issues section under :
Pinned: The Growing Trend toward Fascism in the U.S.

Try this, look for HDD'a first post there:
http://forum.johnkerry.com/index.php?showtopic=62697&st=45

Just checking in to say I made it and I'm glad you did, too.

I think starting with the enlightened distinction between morality and law seems a fruitful new beginning.

Thanks, Paul, and welcome.

Thanks for the reference, norm.

Your paraphrase is better than accurate. You improved the wording.



Part of that is political manipulation. Part of it is for the same reason Kerry is seen as a flip-flopper to Bush supporters. Rove taught Bush supporters to hate and distrust a man they never knew.

Do you really know George Bush? He's really like most politicians -- more like Kerry than he is like me.



I agree. But it's not entirely his fault, it's also this country and the political process. Rove was simply wise enough to see things as they are. He saw the homophobia, the bigotry and superstition that passed for "moral values" and crassly exploited American bigotry and fundamentalist religion. And our party didn't do enough to stop him. We stood on principles and lost because we weren't paying enough attention to Rove's many, many manipulations.

Not enough people stood up to say "this is wrong."

But as we were getting to in the other thread, it's not just Bush, it's the whole political election process which takes millions of dollars and lets politicians get away with lies and mere images.

We have to change that too.



Being super vindicated now would be a disaster. But we still might get minor vindications.

Will Bush continue to let Osama bin Laden live? Will people know what a horrible mistake that is? Iraq may have helped recruit some terrorists, but you can be sure leaving Osama bin Laden alive is doing more for that cause. As long as bin Laden lives, America looks weak where it counts most to look strong.

Problem is -- we don't know for sure Kerry could have got him either. But if Kerry did, we still wouldn't know whether Bush would have then.



I expect a mixture of the two. All the questions open now will remain open. No one will be vindicated... Unless Bush is caught in some major scam.



How could we. Being in the majority doesn't make anyone right or wrong.



You're welcome.

A disaster that's on the horizon apparently:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...id=540&ncid=716

Prominent Saudi religious scholars urged Iraqis to support militants waging holy war against the U.S.-led coalition forces as American troops prepared Saturday for a major assault on the insurgent hotbed of Fallujah.

The 26 Saudi scholars and preachers said in an open letter to the Iraqi people that their appeal was prompted by "the extraordinary situation through which the Iraqis are passing which calls for unity and exchange of views." The letter was posted on the Internet.

"At no time in history has a whole people been violated ... by propaganda that's been proved false," Sheik Awad al-Qarni, one of the scholars, told Al-Arabiya TV.

"The U.S. forces are still destroying towns on the heads of their people and killing women and children. What's going on in Iraq (news - web sites) is a result of the big crime of America's occupation of Iraq."

In their letter, the scholars stressed that armed attacks by militant Iraqi groups on U.S. troops and their allies in Iraq represent "legitimate" resistance.

The scholars were careful to direct their appeal to Iraqis only and stayed away from issuing a general, Muslim-wide call for holy war. They also identified the military as the target, one that is considered legitimate by many Arabs who view U.S. troops and their allies as occupiers.

The independent scholars — some of whom have been criticized in the past for their extremist views — apparently did not want to antagonize the Saudi government, a U.S. ally, or appear to be flouting its efforts to fight terrorism.

Saudi Arabia has sealed off its long border with Iraq and bars people from crossing into that country. Its most senior clerics issued a statement last year saying the call for jihad — or holy war — should only come from the ruler and should not be based on edicts issued by individual clergymen.

Saudi officials did not comment on the latest statement.

The clerics' appeal came as U.S. troops, backed by air and artillery power and Iraqi security forces, were gearing up for a major assault on Fallujah.

The clerics issued a fatwa, or religious edict, prohibiting Iraqis from offering any support for military operations carried out by U.S. forces against insurgent strongholds.

"Fighting the occupiers is a duty for all those who are able," the letter said. "It is a jihad to push back the assailants. Resistance is a legitimate right. A Muslim must not inflict harm on any resistance man or inform on them. Instead, they should be supported and protected."

Besides al-Qarni, the prominent scholars signing the letter included Sheik Safar al-Hawali, Sheik Nasser al-Omar, Sheik Salman al-Awdah and Sheik Sharif Hatem al-Aouni.

Al-Hawali, who was jailed in the 1990s for five years without trial because he criticized U.S. involvement in the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) against Iraq, once was close to Saudi-born al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites). He opposed the presence of U.S. troops in the kingdom.

His name appeared this month on a list issued by a group of Arab intellectuals seeking to prosecute prominent clerics for encouraging terrorism.

The scholars said inter-Iraqi fighting would cause "great damage to the Iraqis and give a free service to the Jews who are infiltrating into Iraq and to the coalition forces which exploit differences to consolidate their domination."

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and home to its two holiest cities, has launched a campaign against militants. The crackdown began after al-Qaida-affiliated operatives attacked three residential compounds in Riyadh in May 2003 and killed dozens of people, bringing terrorism to the kingdom for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Not good, norm, definitely not good. Staying the course is going to lead to a lot of bloodshed. I hope Colin Powell explains to Bush exactly how bad this can get.

hdd's notion of 'moderate fascism' is new to me. I'm wondering if he might find attractive 'communitarianism' as an alternative. It began as a protest by sociologists like Etrzioni, and social philosophers such as Charles Taylor, who thought liberalism was just too individualistic, too atomistic, and that community was the foundation of morality. A catholic Alisdair MacIntyre, at Notre Dame, and one time Hegel scholar, seems to think communitarianism is a useful antidote to the disintegration of the unity of moral discourse in society. The nice thing about the communitarians is that they offer this antidote without the requirement of a strong leader using force to enforce conformity--but it sounds (at times) as though those parts of fascism hdd really doesn't endorse or want to keep anyway. I'm not sure he is a fascist (although people can call themselves anything they want, I suppose). I think he might prefer the communitarian views of MacIntyre and Taylor.

I hope so, I hope that's true for other Republicans -- because there is no way the red states can get away with enforcing their morality on New York and Los Angeles. If they want it locally, fine.

my top ten impediments to rational discourse

10. Psychological disorders
9. The state of the education system
8. Role models
7. Self-rightousness
6. Self-consciousness
5. Self-love
4. Self-interest
3. Stigma
2. Apathy
1. Religion

fascism is idiocy, pure and simple. If you cant trust yourself how can you be sure that you cant trust yourself? So you trust some guy that may or may not be more rational than you? I suppose anyone that pops off yes twice like they were being drilled proves their postulation correct in one specific instance.

Social libertarianism + Democratic Socialism = #1 republican form of government. of course thats debatable...

Yo fellas. The duck just hooked up the caboose so he's going to need a little time to wabble up to the steamer.

Kind of makes me think about Crocodile Dundee in NYC.

Welcome back, picadilli.

Interesting list, climbingthegreatbluecliffs! I'll bet you have some interesting ideas on how to deal with each of these ten impediments?

my top ten list for dealing with impediments to rational discourse

10. The internet
9. Elected cabinets
8. Mescaline
7. Free, printed C-SPAN
6. Psilocybe species
5. Inflamitory speech
4. National proportional representation in the senate
3. Better education
2. Socialism
1. Genetic engineering

Perhaps you could fill us in on the details? As I say to my students: write complete sentences, please! (Paragraphs would be even better!)

Hi everybody! Um, climbing...I gotcha on the first list, but, you kinda lost me on the second one.

When you are discussing moral questions everyone is right. No one can be wrong because their statements are based on their values, and according to a persons values they are correct. For example, keeping with the gay marriage argument, liberals are completely right to say that gay people should marry because they come to that conclussion through their values of tolerance and equality. You can't truely argue questions of morality. Everything ends up as a question of values. Which values are most important? Family Values? Equality? Community Values?
All moral arguments must truely start with values and work up from their.



My morality is shaped by my religion, but when argueing something I never use religious reasons. I can argue everything I believe from a secular stand point, and everything I believe mostly corisponse with my religious values.



Marriage as it is right now has many demonstratable harms. A person has a 50-50 chance of actually making it work. This is a huge problem that harms our society in so many ways. For example, in many divorses the mother is usually stuck with the kids. This, and other factors, have created an almost fatherless society. This has many negative consiquences for the generation that is raised through this. The sad thing about it is no one is making a big movement to fix this. People just let it be for the most part. Why?

No one really knows for sure what will happen when society completely accepts homosexuality. There is some research out there both for and against homosexual marriage. Before blindly accepting homosexuality shouldn't we first study it more and try to figure out the effect it will have, and also try to fix heterosexual marriage? There are a lot of coorilations between the rise of our 50% divorse rate and the rise of the gay rights movement. They both began at about the same time and many of the same factors can be attributed to both. This is my major objection to gay marriage. To me it seems that by accepting gay marriage we are accepting a 50% divorse rate, and going further in the wrong direction.



I don't think I like to be labeled as one, because of all the negative conotations behind it. If you read about the actual ideology behind facism it is a lot different then what was actually developed many times. I favor the idealogy rather then the political reality. A lot of people really misunderstand what Fascism is. For example, fascism talks about Corporatism; however, Corporatism is different in fascism then it is in liberal captialist systems. Corporatism in the fascist form is a social harmony between business and labour. It is a "third way" between capitalism and socialism. It is based off a belief that business and labor are bound together in an organic and spiritually unified whole, and that social classes do not have to conflict with one another, but can work in harmony for the common good, and the national interest. Cororatism in the liberal sense is the tendancy in mature liberal democracies for organized interests to be granted priviledges and institutional access to policy formulation.

In my view, fascism is a noble idea that was brought about in the wrong way; although, I should probably come up with an alternative name for my beliefs.



It is very similar to what I believe, but I go a little bit further. I don't really want to get into what I believe though because that is a little bit off topic.

Is San Francisco having problems because it's a gay Mecca? Some of the wealthiest and most productive areas in the country outside those red states do virtually accept it. So, we've got a good idea.



How about the solution Kerry indeed favored -- let the states decide for themselves rather than deciding for the Nation? It's called Federalism -- I think.



Maybe because the theory behind facism is deeply flawed.



Maybe all ideologies are flawed and we have to use pragmatism.



Eat your heart out Mussolini
By William Bowles
Oct 24, 2004, 07:35
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/...cle_12907.shtml

"We control political forces, we control moral forces we control economic forces, therefore we are a full-blown Corporative state.” - Benito Mussolini

The database state

Six million video surveillance cameras, bioemetric ID cards, transnational data interception laws and ’joined up’ government. Add to this the privatisation of key state functions, all mediated by global IT corporations that are also the indispensable link in the weapons, media, pharmaceuticals and global financial networks and you have the corporate, security state 21st century style.

The privatisation project initiated in the 1970s under Reagan/Thatcher (so-called neo-liberalism) heralded the return to the days of Mussolini insofar as it reversed the gains of working people achieved through decades of struggle by once more fusing the primary objective of the state under capitalism with that of the corporations. All pretence of the ’liberal’ state representing different strata and interests of the whole of society were effectively abandoned. Greed and self-interest once more became the overriding ’philosophy’ of the capitalist state.

Central to the success of the ’neo-liberal’ agenda is the creation of an effectively disenfranchised electorate, whether through the fusing of the ideologies of the dominant political parties or the opting out of the electorate from the election process.

The fascism of Mussolini’s Italy was overt and by today’s ’standards’ crass, utilising brute force and direct attacks on the organised working class and the left by manipulating the organs of the state (parliament) into passing increasingly repressive laws.

However, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. The route to the creation of the corporate security state needn’t involve the formal abandonment of universal suffrage. There are more subtle and surreptitious ways and they don’t necessarily involve fraud, vote rigging, ballot stuffing, jerrymandering or even selective disenfranchisement aka Florida 2000, although these can be the routes the capitalist state takes when push comes to shove.

What fascism and the modern corporate security state share in common are the following:

The ’legal’ suppression of the organised working class such as trade unions and other political formations as well as increasing curbs on civil and political liberties.

But perhaps in the current context there are two aspects that are of concern:

1. The privatisation of the state and 2. The construction of the surveillance state except that now the ’enemy’ is not communism but ’terrorism’.

These two strands have come together in the current situation, facilitated by the new technologies that have made possible firstly, the construction of sophisticated tracking and ID systems that are implemented through an alliance between global IT corporations and the state that Mussolini could only dream about.

But for such a system to be effective under a so-called democracy it needs firstly an invisible enemy and secondly given the current situation, a global one.

The common theme that propels both sides of the equation is fear.

Fear on the part of the people of an enemy who can strike anywhere and effectively at random and the fear that state has of its own population, especially in the current post-Cold War period when, after decades of propaganda about the ’Red Menace’ (the same Red Menace that motivated Mussolini) whose defeat we were told, would bring peace and prosperity, only to find that on the ’other side of the veil’, lay an even greater menace, terrorism.

Under these circumstances, only an even greater fear could replace nuclear annihilation and/or loss of freedom under a ’totalitarian dictatorship’, a fear that has more in common with the movies ’Predator’ and ’Robocop’ than the world we actually live in.

To engineer such a fear and do it virtually overnight takes a lot of effort and resources that only a corporate security state could harness and most importantly, justify. But to do it, it has had to use the racist ideology that has been instilled in our collective psyche of the ’other’, that dehumanises those who aren’t ’like us’, who don’t we are told, subscribe to ’our’ values. In a phrase, these are people who are less than human, animals, things that don’t even think the way we do. People who are ruthless and fanatical, whose fanaticism can only be met with our own ’civilised’ fanaticism, that of the total state committed to total war without end.

Is the ’logic’ not totally compelling?

And this is a fear that is total in its scope, striking we are told, where we feel most vulnerable - on our way to work or in a restaurant. There can be no total victory over such an enemy, hence the ’war’ will last one, two or even more generations. This is endless war, the arms merchant’s wet dream. It’s the state bureaucracy’s license for total surveillance leading ultimately to incarceration 24/7. First they come for the ’alien’ and eventually for anyone else who dares step out of line.

And all of it done under a ’democracy’, there is no need for a Mussolini-style Fascism but effectively that’s what it will amount to but it will be done with our cooperation simply because we don’t think it’s us - you and me - who are the real enemies of the state.

Fanciful? Just look around you at the kind of society that is being constructed literally before our eyes by Blunkett and Ashcroft, all of it justified by an enemy that is in the first place the Frankenstein creation of the economic and political policies of ’neo-liberalism’ that has come back to haunt us just as Count Frankenstein’s creation did.

The corporate state calls it ’liberal imperialism’ but its real name cannot be spoken for to do so, would reveal the true nature of the beast. But occasionally we let the ’cat out of the bag’ and it’s not only instructive to carefully read their words, but to who and by whom the words are addressed

“Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle. [my emph. WB]” Robert Cooper, The new liberal imperialism. Cooper, formerly a senior Foreign Office advisor to Tony Blair

So confident is Cooper in his vision of this new world order that he actually spells out the rationale behind this ’new’ liberal imperialism. He tells us

“First there is the voluntary imperialism of the global economy. This is usually operated by an international consortium through International Financial Institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank - it is characteristic of the new imperialism that it is multilateral. These institutions provide help to states wishing to find their way back into the global economy and into the virtuous circle of investment and prosperity. In return they make demands which, they hope, address the political and economic failures that have contributed to the original need for assistance. Aid theology today increasingly emphasises governance. If states wish to benefit, they must open themselves up to the interference of international organisations and foreign states...”

Cooper tells us

“It is precisely because of the death of imperialism that we are seeing the emergence of the pre-modern world. Empire and imperialism are words that have become a form of abuse in the postmodern world. Today, there are no colonial powers willing to take on the job, though the opportunities, perhaps even the need for colonisation is as great as it ever was in the nineteenth century. [my emph. WB]”

Tell it like it really is Mr Cooper! All of the above was written between the invasion and re-colonisation of Afghanistan and that of Iraq. This then is the context of the de facto return to the days of Mussolini but we dare not call it by its real name, even Cooper phrases it in an ’acceptable’ form for us ’civilised’ folk

“What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values. [my emph. WB]”

The world Cooper refers to of course is not that of the ’other’, out there in the ’jungle’ but to ’ours’ but even as he articulates these views, it’s clear the jungle is within and always has been. The treatment meted out to the ’aliens’ incarcerated in Belmarsh or Guatanamo that literally drives men mad gives the lie to Cooper’s vision of an ’us’ and ’them’ view of the world. For underneath the language lies another reality that propels the ’logic’ of Cooper, that of the corporate state that in order to maintain the rule of capital must firstly create and then perpetuate a state of constant and increasing fear that requires ever greater control of our lives. Eat your heart out Mussolini, don’t you wish you’d had the kind of powers the new and improved version now has.

http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0278.html

They may be productive, I don't know that for sure, but lets say you are right. What is the life expectancy of a gay person in San Fransico? It is about 32 or equal to Canda's Life expectancy in 1890. Also, lets see some research if you are going to make the point that there are no problems in San Francisco.



You may be right here.

As for the rest of what you posted; I got my information about corporatism from Political Ideologies, Third Edition by Heywood. It is a text book. Also, Mussolini never really established corporatism. He didn't have the time. When I get back home I may be able to give you more information on that.

I don't know -- but after AIDS made a surprise hit on that community I don't think any measure of that is going to be fair. Besides, advocating gay marriage is the opposite of advocating promiscuity which is the problem that spreads the diseases.

You're advocating that gays shouldn't have a heathy committed life style.

norm,
the bowles article reminds me of something that has been bothering me for years. I suppose this goes back to my reading of Richard Hofstadter's books Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and The Paranoid Style of American Politics which I read in the early eighties when I was first reflecting on the McCarthy years. The watching Reagan, it looked like a replay, to some extent, of the same madness.

I came to the conclusion that our hold on civil rights has always been shaky in this country, and that anytime we get a problem serious enough to declare an emergency, or war on it (like communism, drugs, organized crime and terrorism), we get no-knock policies, suspension of the writ of habeus corpus, suppression of free speech and press and due process. The scary thing about the PATRIOT Act is its similarity to the Alien and Sedition Act of John Adams, and the McCarran Act of the 50's. There is something deep and dark and sinister here, that has been with us all along, like some Doppelganger, our evil twin.

What scares me also is that Hitler took over by means of the emergency powers clause of the German Constitution. He was elected chancellor, but made himself dictator through a clause in their constitution that made everything he did after that legal. It worries me that we have since William McKinnley dragged us into the first presidential war, the spanish american war, we have let slide, by gentleman's agreement, the accretion of power and centraliztion of authority that has occured gradually over the course of a century. What is worrisome about Bush is that much of what he does looks oh so familiar. I do not share hdd's enthusiasm for all this at all. Unchecked power is very destructive. Might for right is the dream of camelot. Might is right is the nightmare into which we have awakened. We need to do what we can to keep this power in check. We need to help those (congress, the courts) whose job it is to keep the game honest.

When I started this thread, over at the old Kerry website, I had just finished reading two books by George Soros-one on globablization and the other on the bubble of american supremacy. I had also read things on his website. His organization is impressive. His desire to spread democracy, sincere.

His model is to get money to where it will do the most good. He is inb favor of expanding special drawing rights at the world bank, to help poorer nations finance building infrastructure, and develop their economies. He is also in favor of much greater foreign aid--not loans, but gifts of money. He is aware how money is ineffective when dictators take it to fund their armies at the expense of their populations. But his idea on how to get around that is intriguing, and mark a contrast to the neocon way of democratizing the world at gun-point: send the money to NGO's that are already at work trying to democratize those countries.

I think we are fumbling the ball with Iran. There is a moderate group there that we could be aiding and strenthening. Instead, we threaten and bully, and make the people there think safety lies with the religious leaders. Or we aid repressive governments, like the one in Kuwait. Either way, we are feeding the extremist factions. There is no law of nature here. These are just poor policy choices. I think Soros has a better model. Even if his approach has flaws, it seems to me to have something going for it.

If we succeed in pushing Iran into the nuclear club, we will have Israel, Pakistan, India and Iran all with nuclear weapons in the region. That coupled with the world's dependence on that region for oil all sets the region up for disaster. If anyone has Bush's ear, I hope they talk to him about this. If he wants democracies in the regions, he needs a better sense of what processes lead to democracy and which lead to autocracy. He needs a better sense of cause and effect. I don't trust Bush's advisors to get this straight. It is probably going to fall to the democrats to tell him how things work.

Anti-Intellectualism and Paranoia do seem to be Bush traits, to some degree. I think I may have read Hofstadter before -- something about social Darwinism in America -- but I'm not familiar with those two books. Can you give me a recap or summary?



I have that sense too.



I have that sense also.



My sense is that we are moving into a very dark, dangerous and twisted theocracy of delusional men that certainly does have facist over tones.

I don't think even HDD would support Bush in this -- but maybe.

I must say that 'values' are not some unassailable, lofty concept. Christians might think that gays should not be able to marry because levicitus says that homosexuality is an abomination. However if you can successfully attack their perception that what is written in levicitus is fact their 'values' change, or at least their reasons, or facades for their values change. Case and point, people that believe in creation do so because the bible says (simon says: stone the harlot). However if faced with the reality of radio-carbon dating and geology they either come up with fanciful excuses and/or begin to doubt their belief(s). Than if you attacked the old testament directly, exposing it as nothing more than an incomplete compilation of a people's traditions, beliefs and myths they, if they had any inkling of reasonableness, would have to admit the fallacy of their statement.


morality is just a twisted form of group oriented self-interest/love/rightiousness.

my second list was supposed to be a quasi-joke. although the use of hallucinogens was originally a psychotherapeutic practice.

Alas, fundamentalism and creationism is growing in this country just as it is growing in Islamic countries -- it's not shrinking. It doesn't matter that the evidence for evolution continues to become more and more overwhelming. They don't need reality -- they can make their own reality... for example, the ID (intelligent design) movement.

It's not a matter of confronting them with data and facts or logic and reason. You have to believe that reason and evidence are more important than faith. For the rational man, faith is the first sin and you have to admit you know very little. You only have working models of the world.

We need a better model of how the human brain works and how it is religious.

Actually, there is some research that shows the married gay couples are just as unhealthy. Married couples practice more sodomy and the research I have found shows that is actually very unhealthy to do.

"Regarding physical health, there is increasing evidence that mortality and morbidity rates are substantially higher for those who engage in homosexual practices. For example, the risk of anal cancer soars by as much as 4,000% for men who engage in anal intercourse with other men. The host of medical consequences of those who practice anal intercourse is large, from the tearing of the rectal lining with all of its accompanying problems to the diseases associated with subsequent contact with fecal matter. "

Here is an article about the American Journal of public health and their research on homosexual activities in men.

http://www.narth.com/docs/risks.html

You have probably noticed a lot of my information on gay issues comes from narth. I have other places with information NARTH is just the most scientifically acceptable. Everything they have on their website is peer reviewed work that has acceptable citations. Also, it is not a religious organization.

About corporatism, norm you were right Mussollini did have practice it; however, it become something other then the original ideology behind it.

Quoteing my book I cited, "The "corporate state" reached its peak in 1939 when a chamber of Fasces and Corparations was created to replace the Italian parliament. Nevertheless, there was a clear divide between corporatist theory and the reality of the economic policy of Fascist Italy. The "corporate state" was little more than an ideological slogan, corporatism in practice amounting to little more than an instrument through whcih the Fascist state controlled major economic interests."

Sorry for the confusion.

So, what you're against is sodomy because it's an unhealthy sexual practice.



Not in my opinion. I read those NARTH articles you posted on the old Kerry/Edwards site. They were dreadful examples of twisted arguments.



It looked like one to me. The Intelligent Design movement isn't suppose to be religious either, but that's their motive.

Whatever you say, you're faced with the fact that NARTH is controversial:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_spit.htm

"Various professional organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, and the National Association of Social Workers have stated that a person's sexual orientation cannot be changed by reparative therapy."

According to Parul Varnell of the Chicago Free Press, "Spitzer admits that he had 'great difficulty' finding people who claimed to have changed their orientation from gay to straight. Ex-gay groups regularly claim to know of 'thousands' of people who have 'changed' or 'left homosexuality.' But after searching for nearly a year and a half, Spitzer could only find 274 possibilities."

Another article:
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html...s_changing.html

"Another problem in many published reports of "successful" conversion therapies is that the participants' initial sexual orientation was never adequately assessed. Many bisexuals have been mislabeled as homosexuals with the consequence that the "successes" reported for the conversions actually have occurred among bisexuals who were highly motivated to adopt a heterosexual behavior pattern."...
....only self reports of patients or therapists' subjective impressions have been available. More rigorous objective assessments (e.g., behavioral indicators over an extended period of time) have been lacking

After all this time, that lack is significant.

We can get past such primitive studies today and actually do brain scans of people as they're being sexually aroused. If you don't have data of that kind of change by now, you've got nothing. Why is this so?

To get back on topic to an open society -- the subject of reason over manipulated emotional reactions.

We need to teach people to distinguish between someone who makes emotional, knee-jerk appeals (and decisions) from those who make appeals (and decisions) based on reasoned principles.

What behaviors serve as epirical evidence of the difference?


1. Emotional decisions tend to come with a
lot of tribalism. Instead of "Socialism tends to fail
when it relies on a centralized bureaucracy" it's "you
socialist liberals need to get a clue!". Instead of
"Tax cuts are irresponsible in wartime" it's "You
fascist conservatives just want to pay back your
wealthy contributors." There is always an element of
us against them, with us assumed to be right most, if
not all the time, and them saddled with every evil
imaginable.

2. Emotional decisions are not subject to reality
testing. "Policies are judged by their consequences,
but crusades are judged by how they make the crusader
feel". Changing one's mind is impossible when one
feels it is a humiliation, as opposed to a correction
of course. Things like the marriage amendments may
make Bushies feel good and morally superior, but they
have little effect on preserving marriage. Laws based on
this kind of emotional reactionism are almost always bad.
Witness prohibition.

3. Epithets, name-calling, ad hominem attacks in
general indicate emotional rather than intellectual
reasoning. Often, both sides in a debate descend to
that level and honest discussion derailed.

4. The more one sacrifices for a position, the harder
it is to change, because not only does it involve
admitting one was wrong, it brings on painful,
shattering guilt. This is why "honor" is such a
popular concept with people who rely on an escalating
sacrifice to avoid feel guilt, insecurity, uncertainty
or self-analysis. Any suggestion that one's motives
aren't entirely pure is equated with paralyzing
self-doubt, "hand-wringing" or impotence. In some
cases, it is difficult to objectively prove whether a
group is acting on genuine courage in service of a
rational goal, or "playing chicken", pushing harder
and getting escalating negative returns, all the while
dismissing any criticism as treason.

5. In emotional discussions, there is no real weighing
of facts, and contexts are often slipped. Intellectual
discussions tend to be boring. They involve looking in
detail at large amounts of information, always holding
in mind the possibility that facts which seem
important may be less so, and facts which seem
unimportant may turn out to be crucial. Reality is
complex, and so is rational analysis of any big issue.
Emotion reduces all that complexity to a rallying cry,
and anyone who bores the group with complex issues is
considered irrelevant, lacking the charisma to unify
the group. Unfortunately, human groups tend to follow
charismatic leaders who make the group feel special,
give it a sense of purpose and direction, while those
who have the deepest comprehension of issues resign
themselves to being "policy wonks" on the sidelines.
As in high school, the chess team doesn't get nearly
the attention and funding the football team gets.

The information I posted about the health of gay sex was not done by NARTH, it was done by the American Journal of Public Health and just featured on their website.

In september of this year the APA held a confrence to discuss reorientation therapy. This link briefly discusses it, and it sugest the reorientation therapy does create results.
http://narth.com/docs/hostpanel.html

Also, I don't think you get the significants of peer reviewed publications. All non-fiction books are reviewed by people from the same educational back ground as the author. There are various journals that publish these reviews. If someone research is "off the wall," incorrect, or the author seems to have a bias then you will know by reading these reviews. The NARTH site shares reviews with you on many of their works, and cites research that they use to make their points.

The first link you posted is old news as far as the APA is concerned. Since they had another confrence a few months ago which updates what you posted. The second link is an article that is simply someones opinion. It has no citiations, reviews, or as far as I can see no listed author. It is simply someone opinon.

This is ALL that your link says:



Basically, two NARTH guys showed up an APA meeting, people listened and treated them cordially. That doesn't mean much of anything. If APA had changed their position on NARTH it would have been big news for a NARTH site. That didn't happen and NARTH is not doing the kind of research that could prove their own claims -- why not? They stick to primitive methods of ancedotal support.

If they believed in what they themselves say then why aren't they examining the homosexual brain as it begins to get aroused with modern brain scan technology and seeing if they can change that?

Also, it's irrelevant as to whether the gay life style is less healthy if gays have no other choice for emotionally gratifying sexual life. They're still, apparently stuck with who they are.

Constitutional amendments that forbid their unions don't do anything to change them or help heterosexual marriage. They're a chance for hetero voters to feel moral superiority and a farce.

The fact that APA hasn't changed it's position is up on their site:

http://www.apa.org/releases/gaymarriage.html

Hello rogerv, Paul Wilson and Group. Just wanted to tell you guys I'm listening in.
You're going so fast I can't get a word in at the moment. Will react later.

If you don't like that link try this one.

http://narth.com/docs/evidencefound.html

It is a study done by Dr. Spitzer in 2003, the man one of your links talked about, who was seen as a historic champion for gay rights. His study shows that reorientation therapy is effective.



As for the rest of what you said, I will restrain from commenting so we can get back on topic. I don't want to take over another thread with this debate.

Take it here:
target='_blank'>


http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...hp?showforum=34

You can debate with actual gay people who know more about this than I do.

My interest in developing the concept of Social Contracts( Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, UN Charter, etc.) is as an alternative to religious texts. I believe that such texts have become a stone around the neck of civilization. We won't be able to adapt them to the world of word processors.
I think we have a process going here that could make a significant contribution
to cleaning up some of the basic concepts civilization needs to continue developing.

For instance, Normdoering, is Pragmatism not an ideology? Is Democracy an
ideology? What do we mean by the term Morality? Is morality necessarily
related to religion? What is the difference between morality and ethics? What
are Values? Can all Values be hiearchially ordered? The value that I think is most lacking in today's world is Interpersonal Trust. What do you guys think?

I disagree. The Constitution is a very important idealogy in and of itself. It sets out the statement to all citizens that these are your rights and NO ONE has the right to take them away. The basic rights should never change nor need to be changed. They are supposed to be there for all time, not picked and chosen as a majority sees fit.

Morals are most simply defined as the conceptions of beneficial or positive and harmful or negative. Thus morality contains no pretext demanding it be attached to religious doctrine, nonetheless religious morals and ethic dominate our culture. These religious morals are, in fact, a millstone around the neck of man. They prevent, to varying degrees, him from rationally assessing his condition to the best of his ability. However in considering solutions the complexity of this self-sustaining problem is not to be overlooked. It is my opinion that when man, without the aid of 'filters' such as religion, views and interacts with the world he finds it to be a confusing and thought provoking place. Since we are gifted with an extroridinary intelligence, generally free of predisposition or instinct, and the balance needed, for an inexpirenced mind, between observation and analysis is difficult to achieve due to interactions with the world and in the mind, one begins to actively seek, if only unconsciously, filters to lessen the stress of one's condition. The challenge is steering young people towards groups and ideologies that encourage, rather than limit, their intellectual potential.

For this reason i think religion should be subjegated to reason. As many of our founding father's preferred it. For they understood their condition, and were, it seems, unopposed to self-analysis and rational discourse, as evidenced by the documents and ideas produced during that time. One may wonder if Ben Franklin, or John Adams would have abandoned the old testament in its entirety faced by the obvious realizations that anyone, given the information, should be able to observe.

Inanna,

Thank you for responding. I'm having difficulty knowing what it is that you disagree with. My main point is that the power of our Goverment derives from a social contracting process carried out by our forbearers and passed on to us
through our inherrited citizenship and recorded in our Constitution which limits the goverment's power and guarantees our individual rights. Therefore, it is incorrect to refer to our God Given Rights. They are rights derived from social contracting.
The Founding Fathers made provisions for changing the constitution but they designed a slow and deliberate process for doing so. I too see our constitutional democracy as a basic and very important ideology--or at least as providing the basic structure on which to build a comprehensive ideology. Actually this is what I would like to see the Democratic Party do.

Yes, Human Being means being thrust into an anxiety provoking existence that demands a decision to be or not to be. Continueing development towards socialization and self-actualization requires that each person create a system of meanings with which to comprehend and guide their own Self-in-situation adaptation. Some people are fortunate and find the support systems to do this
well and many people don't. Historically both religions and human services
have tended to focus on the infinite number of ways this process can go astray.
More recently the social and behavioral sciences and human services are
beginning to learn that there are relatively few ways the human developmental
process can go right. Fortunately it is becomming more possible to identify what concepts, skills and support systems are needed for persons to develope healthy
and happy lives in a given social system. All of this makes the notion of community very important--thus learning to do politics better is critical.

rla,
I'm not sure how useful it is to make everything an ideology. I think we should reserve the term ideology to basic frames or worldviews. Do some of these qualify? perhaps. But an element of ideology absent from perhaps pragmatism, it the taken-for -granted character of the beliefs. If one's attitude is that beluefs should all be tested by experience,as it is in pragmatism, then one has soemthing that is close to an anti-ideology--although certainly some claims (like the one that beluefs ought to be tested) as more impervious tot esting than others (not completely however--there are more sophisticated versions about when beliefs are worth testing and when they are not; and even standard pragmatism maintains one should only test beliefs when there is some doubt about them or some problem working with them).

climbingthegreatbluecliffs,

I'm not sure morality is simply group selfishness. It ceratinly articulates group norms, and those groups can be as large as you please (up to and including the whole human race, or beyond that, including all sentient beings ). And group norms need not endorse everything the group does--people in the group can be nmistaken and need correction. Indeed, groups can over time, as your post suggests, change their minds about the morality of certain things (like bear-baiting, public flogging, burning at the stake, and that sort of thing) Even major institutions can disappear-like slavery. So morality need not be a static matter--but you seem to agree with that point already.

The problem, it seems to me, is the frames we use to talk about the issues. Yhis is a point the George Lakoff has talked about recently. He has a book, Moral Politics, which focuses, in a scholarly way, on the differences between the worldviews of conservatives and liberals. He has a more recent popular book thta I just picked up yesterday, and perhaps we ought to read and discuss as a group: Don't Think of an Elephant. The title is, I think a pun (since the GOP uses the elephant as their symbol, no?) But the title point sot an experiment Lakoff performs in his cognitive science class on frames. he asks his students not to think of an elephant. And of course, they all fail. But his point is, that everything one uses the conservative frame for an issue ('tax relief' is his first example) we reinforce the conservative viewpoint. We can win if we let the conservativces control the terms of the debate. What do you think of that claim?

norm, to answer your earlier question--
Hofstadter's book on antiintellectualism in american life points out the impact of the particular form religioun took in America, the revivalist tradition, that deemphasized the intllect in favor of matters of the heart. There is more to the book than that, and that book is still in print, so if you get it and want to talk about it further we can. The paranoid style of american politics is just an essay of his. Here is the link:

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/conspiracy_th...noid_style.html

His point, in a nutshell, is that we have always been afraid that somebody from over there was going to come over here and mess up the good thing we had going. The somebody differed over hsitory: the french revolutionaries, the catholics, the immigrants from eastern and southern europe, and the asians from China and Japan, the communists during the red scare of the 1920s and again, in the 1950s, and now (after Hofstadter's essay) the terrorists. We probably shoudl throw in for good measure the fear of the native americans (the savages spoken of in the declaration of independence!), blacks (the constant fear of slave uprisings in the south, and evidenced in the narrative of fredrick douglass)--and now, the many third world people (including illegal mexican immigrants) who are threats to our jobs.

Well, I think we have enough to talk about here in these two paragraphs.

Not when I use the word. Has some duffus out there grabbed that world and used it to label an ideology I know nothing about? I'm just talking about being pragmatic. About whether some proposed government solution actually, pragmatically, solves the problem it's supposed to.



Depends on what you mean by Democracy and ideology. So.... What do you mean?
George W. Bush throws around the word "Democracy" as if it's some kind of ideology when he says he plans to bring it to Iraq.

Democracy seems like a way to keep revolutions from getting bloody. It lets people have the voice they'll eventually always have.



I'm not really sure what that word encompasses -- but I don't think it should encompass bigotry, as in the gay marriage amendments, or superstition as in claiming embryos are humans deserving of rights. We really cannot afford to give embryos rights -- they're too easy to make and too useful currently beyond just making kids.



Not for me. I'm not religious. It's just a guide for living in cooperative peace with other people. I can even live in peace with people who enshrine bigotry and superstition into our laws -- but it will cost many of us down the line to let them do this.



I value things like scientific knowledge and the methods used to gain it. The other side may say the same, but they don't really value the methods of science if they intend to restrict embryonic stem cell research.

But why are we struggling with defining words when the real problems are down to earth and pragmatic? Are my positions that unclear without dotting every i and giving every word an unambiguous meaning? We keep drifting off into these abstract realms when the solutions are about actions, not words.

For example, what actions can we take to put political debates into official online forums like I was talking about back on the Kerry/Edwards forum?