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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (10167)	10/1/2003 11:37:57 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 793640

"I don't know of any country in History where the Intellectuals disliked their own Society so much. " In other countries the intellectuals dislike their own societies so much they start revolutions...hello...Russian intellectuals and communism...Mao and the Chinese intellectuals...the French Revolution...Fidel Castro and his intellectual Cubans...Gosh...the list just goes on and on...Your statement is just wrong. Smart people want things to be better. Unfortunately they often overestimate the good in people, and their utopias end up as dystopias- but you aren't going to stop smart people from imagining things. But to say American intellectuals are somehow worse is just silly, if you know anything about history, and intellectuals- and what they've done elsewhere.

To: LindyBill who wrote (10167)	10/1/2003 12:01:18 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 793640

Bill, It's clear you have very, very set ways on these issues. To say, for instance that a vote against invading Iraq is a demonstration that the voters "disliked their own Society," is, well, I'm not yet ready to blast away, but the seriously negative adjectives come leaping to mind. Let's just call it "wrong." You might argue that, based on that evidence, the following: 1. Faculty members were more likely to vote for Gore than Bush and opposed the invasion because of that. Not particularly admirable but certainly not what you are talking about. 2. Faculty members were more likely to consider the need for a multilateral force and to be suspicious of the evidence justifying the invasion. Many were. That hardly says they dislike their country. This is simply the usual business. No more. Take a dichotomy. Support Bush; love the country. Oppose Bush; dislike the country. That may be good short term political strategy but we don't have to swallow such shallow nonsense whole. And it's terribly destructive to political conversation. Hanson's article is simply nothing more than one more of a very long term attempt by the right and the far right to discredit their political opponents. The term "discredit" is the mildest I can find to describe it. They don't wish to argue with their opponents, to debate the issues, they wish to do something much worse. You did not use the unAmerican term in your post and that's good, but the larger mission of which Hanson is a part is to do just that. It has a long and very unillustrious history.