Wow, Zizek is willing to make explicit the Communism (in the historic sense of a totalitarian system of social, political and cultural control) that is implicit in his argument. He seems to think that bandying about the sort of abstract buzzword-infested bloviation that passes for analysis in the groves of academe while ignoring the details of history is sufficient to develop some original thought. But, really, his analysis of the legacy of '68 reflects the same failed categories that informed the New Left of '68. And although he complains that the French suburban riots were devoid of vision, what vision is …
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Eric L.
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I can agree with Kenbrociner that the Democrats are not Socialist, but I think we can all agree the party's full spectrum is left of center, and that of the two major parties, the Democratic Party contains the higher percentage of genuine socialists among its voters, so if we substitute "leftish" ("leftist" being a little loaded) for scorps "Socialist," his argument still stands and strikes me as historically accurate: Americans, and especially American working class members, don't vote for those they consider "leftish." And Obama's rush to the right, toward the center (at an unprecedented speed, in my perception) rather reinforces …
Posted to McGovern, Obama, and 'transformative' change
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For Gregory Wonderwheel, "the party's full spectrum is left of center" in my perception means that the professionals in the party (1) find resort to central government solutions to problems their first impulse; (2) believe that redistributing wealth is a legitimate purpose of tax policy; (3) esteem equality over liberty, when push comes to shove; and (4) see government and the wielding of the power as a career. A little simple-minded, granted, and with some thought, certainly there are Democrats, generally Southern, who don't fit that pattern and could legitimately be deigned right of center. But "socialist influence" is not the …
Posted to McGovern, Obama, and 'transformative' change
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GW-Sorry I missed your longer essay; I might have learned something. Your definition of a socialist idea posits socialism as a philosophy or ideology,an orientation, rather than having any sort of economic foundation. That positions your definition on a much different plane than mine, and makes it a little hard to compare socialism to capitalism, unless you think it, too, is non-economic. I will have to say that the notion that "capitalism has no inherent dynamism" strikes me as antihistorical. But perhaps you distinguish between capitalism and free markets, which is legitimate philosophically, if hard to find in the real world. …
Posted to McGovern, Obama, and 'transformative' change
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The fundamental problem with the author's critique is his notion that the job of the Supreme Court is to enforce fairness, when its role is to interpret law and the Constitution. Fairness is too subjective and vague a standard to allow tenured judges to wield when making decisions and interpretations. That vagueness appeals to those left of center when the judges share their values, because the left's primary project is to overthrow tradition sometimes directly and sometimes by undermining language and the common understanding of words. The left's new-found worship of precedent, of course, is only emerging when the precedent's being …
Posted to God--And Progressives--Save This Honorable Court!
- Joined July 11, 2007
- Last Visit November 6, 2008
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