[lit-ideas] Re: Five Years Ago
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 14:50:18 -0700
Judy,
The fact that Mike's use of "root causes" was clear to you is irrelevant.
You are not a standard here. The sentence was not self-authenticating. It
possessed ambiguity. That is a demonstrable fact. Go back and observe what
happened. I read Mike's statement about root causes and assumed he meant a
particular set of causes. He was outraged -- sort of. How could I so
misread his ambiguous statement as to apply the root causes I applied?
Well, gosh and gee whiz. If you expect someone to understand you thoroughly
then you had better do your best to write that way and not hold someone to a
peculiar interpretation of an ambiguous term. Don't plunk down an ambiguous
word or two and then be outraged if someone doesn't read it your way.
I notice that you abandon the fact that his phrase was ambiguous and rush to
the assumptions I made about it. That is more interesting to you because
you side with Mike. (Do you share the party line?) You know exactly what
he meant and that means something to you. You then make some
pronouncements and declare my reading of Mikes ambiguous phrase
"cartoonish." But how many times have I read just this phrase, employed by
a leftist to mean just that cartoonish thing? Perhaps dozens. It is
virtually a Leftist party line. Forget the quibbles. It is said in
different ways, but it is said over and over again. The US is responsible
for 9/11. It went out and did bad things in the Middle East. Look at what
it did in Iran. Look at what it did here and there. Look at all the greed,
all the business underhandedness. Yes, that is what caused 9/11; the U.S.
itself is the Root Cause of 9/11. What we have is the Wretched of the
Middle East crying out under the burden of this abuse, of this oppression.
They have no armies and no weapons to speak of. All they have is their
pitiable lives; and so these poor ones board planes and fly their protests
into the World Trade Center. But will the US understand this message? No,
not at all. They don't take the blame. They don't see that it is their
guilt that is the root cause of 9/11, but it is, and unless they wake up and
take responsibility for their outrageous behavior, nay, unless they change
their outrageous behavior, it will happen over and over and over.
The "party line" has always had significance in Leftist and Marxist circles.
I'm not playing the logic game of all or none or some. This has been the
predominant situation in the U.S. Of course it isn't just peculiar to
sayings of the Left: look at the way that guy is mincing along. Look at his
lisping talk. Five dollars to a donut he's gay.
We have a Democratic-Party contingent that wants the U.S. to leave Iraq
immediately. Notice the ambiguity in that. It doesn't explain why they
want the U.S. to leave. Conservatives don't understand this contingent.
Don't they realize that if we pull out immediately, the Sunni insurgents
will have an all out war with the Shiites? Don't they realize that the
fragile Iraqi government won't be able to stand if we pull out too soon?
Don't they understand that Iraqi democracy is at risk? I submit that the
Democrats don't look at Iraq the way Conservatives do. Democracy is a
Western Idea and who are we to impose that on an Islamic nation? Who do we
think we are? If they want democracy then they'll figure that out on their
own.
Well sure, but the immediate effect is that those things the Conservatives
fear if we pull out too soon will probably happen.
Big deal. You don't get your way over there. Tough.
Fortunately this view is a minority one. We could recast it to say that the
US & Britain must not leave Iraq before they have a stable government, a
stable military and a stable police force. We Conservatives think it would
be a good thing if Iraq were to have a stable democratic government that had
no Rogue-type aggressive inclinations. We do not see Liberal-Democracy as
an evil thing. We think it the best form of government that has ever been
developed. Sure you can find bad and ugly things in America & Britain but
where can you go in the world where you can't? Look on the positive things
that we have and are. There is nothing that exists today that is any
better, and there is much that is much much worse.
If you want something better then you want something that doesn't exist, and
it is okay to advocate improvements or changes. It is not okay to recommend
the elimination of Liberal Democracy and the substitution of Islamism -- or
even the moral equivalency between the two ideologies.
Lawrence
_____
From: Judith Evans
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 1:40 PM
LH>No, I haven't changed my mind in regard to what I originally
LH>said. I used the term "root cause" in the sense that I assumed
LH>Mike Geary to be using it.
Mike's use of "root causes" was clear to me. Your misunderstanding
of him relates not to the meaning of "root causes" but to what
he considers the root causes to be. He didn't say, of course; you assumed
that by "causes" he meant "cause" and that he thought the cause
-- well actually, it's a bit difficult to work out what you thought he
thought the cause was, so I'll quote you
LH>let's look at how Mike intended the term "root cause."
LH> He didn't specify, but I took him to be using the old
LH>Leftist idea that Capitalism causes proletarian revolutions,
LH> and the "so-called" Islamist unrest is at root just such an one.
LH>The U.S. was out in the world plying its greedy Capitalistic
LH>trade and on 9/11, the chickens came home to roost.
and you assumed this because Mike is on the left and people
you'd call Leftists have -- you think -- said something like this.
Let me, as someone who once called herself a Marxist and
who studied Marxism at university and followed (that is,
observed) trends on the Left pretty closely, object on behalf
of the Left to your cartoon-like comments
1. It is not and never was as simple as "Capitalism causes
proletarian revolutions"
2. Marxists had analysed nationalist and other non-
proletarian movements for some decades by the time of
the rise of Islamic fundamentalism
3. Yes there are some Marxist-Leninists who want to see
class as the main motive force
4. And yes there remain some Marxists who see the economy as
determinant "in the last instance" (note: I've checked Barnett
out; he does seem to be rather like them in that).
5. But not all of these, by any means, said of 9/11 anything
like "the chickens have come home to roost".
LH> Although you can see from the MG note I just
LH>responded to that he denies that I correctly understood
LH> his vague term -- sort of.
No, I don't
Judy
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