[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: Readers' Responses & Reactions

Sun Nov 7 11:21:19 PST 2004

>
>
>Readers' Responses & Reactions
>
>1) Re: "The Day the Enlightenment Went Out"
>2) Re: Four More  Years
>3) Re: Jacques Derrida / Judith Butler
>4) Re: Cynthia McKinney Victory Speech
>
>(1)
>
>Re: "The Day the Enlightenment Went Out"
>
>It is always interesting to read what Garry Wills has
>to say.  However, in this piece he elides a crucial
>piece of the political history of evangelical
>fundamentalists.  He writes that "disillusionment"
>following the discrediting of fundamentalist attacks on
>the idea of evolution (though at not actually the trial
>decision, which Scopes & evolution lost) "led many
>evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in
>politics.  But they came roaring back into the arena
>out of anger at other court decisions - on prayer in
>school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay
>marriage."
>
>The missing piece here is the Civil Rights Movement.
>Black Christian evangelicals, both clergy and laity of
>course played a crucial role in that movement,
>motivating people with both Christian egalitarianism
>and powerful biblical rhetoric about justice drawn from
>the Hebrew prophets.  They rejected accusations from
>conservative southern white evangelical leaders that
>such activism abused religious authority, undermined
>(allegedly) proper social order, and distracted people
>from the primary business of salvation by sullying
>religion with worldly affairs.  Among such conservative
>proponents of political quietism as the proper stance
>for ministers and religious black people were the
>Rev'd. Jerry Falwell and other later leaders of the
>religious right.
>
>Falwell and his co-thinkers lost their struggles to
>preserve legally-enforced segregation and state-
>required racial discrimination. From that loss they
>took lessons taught by the black struggle, and applied
>them to the issues Wills identifies.   Moral ideals of
>right and wrong, justice and injustice, could be
>brought into the realm of politics.  The organizational
>and communicative resources of churches could be used
>to mobilize politically and give moral authority to
>desired aims.  To these elements the religious right
>added another, the development of an alternative
>network of mass media, especially broadcast media, a
>self-feeding process allowing increasingly effective
>fundraising to buy more outlets.
>
>As for "the Enlightenment," both sides of the so-called
>culture wars are a mixed bag.  Those who have pointed
>out Catholic social justice teachings in response to
>Wills have grasped only part of a larger truth, which
>is that left-wing egalitarianism and orientations to
>solidarity, mutual assistance, cooperation,
>sustainability, ecological respect and so on draw on
>pre-enlightenment, pre-capitalist social values, those
>of peasants and artisan workers, which capitalism
>destroys.  Conversely, religious right embrace of "free
>market" ideologies is an embrace of Enlightenment
>economics, with its morally and ethically bankrupt
>reduction of human psychology and motivations to greed.
>Since unregulated market forces destroy communities and
>families, ultimately such economic ideology conflicts
>with "family values" ideology in practice.  But the
>alliance of conservative secular and religious leaders
>manage to cover that general conflict up with focus on
>specific issues involving gender and sexuality, the
>most patriarchal and authoritarian elements of the
>precapitalist popular ideological heritage.
>
>The purest "Enlightenment" politics are to be found
>among libertarians. They are the direct heritors of
>the early 19th century British liberals whom Marx and
>Engels opposed when criticizing the horrendous
>conditions that unregulated markets produced in
>emergent industrial production and the dispossession
>brought about by capitalist expropriation of common
>property.  Those are all being extended through the
>relocation of production to high-exploitation regions
>of the world, and in "takings" doctrines and in the
>realm of intellectual property and mass
>telecommunications.
>
>We ought to oppose the anti-reason, patriarchal
>authoritarianism of conservative religion, and reject
>both neotraditionalist and so-called postmodern
>demonization of "the Enlightenment."  But we should not
>simply embrace the self-regarding claims of "the
>Enlightenment" either, which are reflected in the very
>hubris and arrogance of that term.  A truly reasoned
>approach to human affairs cannot deny the reality of
>unreason in human actions and motivations, but must
>find other ways to deal with them.  It should embrace
>and not deny the realities and best qualities of human
>emotions, out of which sentiments of fairness and
>solidarity arise.  And it should recognize the limits
>of human competence and knowledge and thus the
>partiality of human reason. Failure to recognize those
>limits is reflected in all totalitarian ideals,
>including that of anti-Enlightenment "postmodern" total
>narrative, and that the totally encompassing,
>unregulated market.
>
>Chris Lowe Portland, Oregon
>
>(2)
>
>Dear Portside Moderator:
>
>I wrote this as part of a dialogue in response to Ted
>Glicks posted reflections on the election and his
>conversations with conversations with Dave Dillenger
>after the 1972 elections.
>
>Heather Baum: St. Paul
>
>Its all good and well to quote what Dillenger said in
>1972 about the power of the independent movement...and
>of course he was right..it is the people who make
>history and it is our organizations that force change
>
>But the foundations that built that  movement were laid
>more than 40 years ago....when you could still buy a
>can of tuna fish for 15 cents, a ream of paper cost
>less than 50 cents, tuition was under three thousand a
>year, and you could still find a job at the Ford Plant.
>
>Four more years under this administration puts the
>survival of the  independent movement at extreme risk.
>Today Richard Vigory said something like.."if this is
>not the time for a Christian Revolution I don't know
>when it will come." There are 60 Republican suits
>pending against non-profits...including the
>NAACP...which challenge their right to do business. We
>can now expect unprecedented attacks on Peace, Justice
>and Labor organizations. So what does this mean?
>
>Now that they have stolen the right to vote, we are
>going to have to learn what it is like to live without
>a lot. Without over time pay...and without a minimum
>wage, without affordable health care...and without
>Social Security, without affordable tuition...and
>without a public education system....for starters. And,
>when they complete their revolution, we will be without
>the labor and social justice organizations that fight
>to protect us.  I am actually afraid to imagine what
>daily life will be like.
>
>Today, you can not run 5 days over due on your energy
>bill without getting a phone call from the
>company...and our President is actually stuffing the
>profits we provide from paying those bills into his own
>pockets. Two weeks ago the banks won approval for new
>banking rules that shorten the "float time" on checks.
>
>So now, when the mortgage company gets your payment, it
>can be instantly taken electronically from your bank
>account. Those 5 days of float time gave a lot of
>people enough time to get the next payroll check in the
>bank to cover the rent or mortgage.
>
>Many Americans have leveraged their homes to pay for
>catastrophic health care expenses and for living
>expenses during prolonged periods of unemployment.
>Millions more Americans are on the verge of loosing
>their homes...And  for the first time we are facing the
>probable dumping of Federal bankruptcy protection laws.
>
>While Kerry was not my first choice for President, I
>knew that at least we would have someone in the White
>House who cared about ordinary people...who would give
>some thought to the enviornment and who would not send
>my Grandsons off to war without thinking twice about
>it...With democrats in office we would at least have a
>snowballs chance in hell of maintaining some kind of
>respect for ordinary working people.  Now we face real
>war at home...we are going to have to look for a new
>way to fight....
>
>But take heart.... Notice how quite it has been outside
>since Tuesday night?  I don't believe for one minute
>that Bush won. And I don't believe for one minute that
>people are going to just take this.
>
>(3)
>
>Subject: Re: Jacques Derrida / Judith Butler
>
>I don't know how I got on this list, but I thank you
>for the Judith Butler essay on Derrida. Excellent!
>
>(4)
>
>Re: Cynthia McKinney Victory Speech
>
>You go girl! 
>
>Georgia in Dallas
>
>_______________________________________________________
>
>portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a news,
>discussion and debate service of the Committees of
>Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It aims to
>provide varied material of interest to people on the
>left.
>
>For answers to frequently asked questions:
><http://www.portside.org/faq>
>
>To subscribe, unsubscribe or change settings:
><http://lists.portside.org/mailman/listinfo/portside>
>
>To submit material, paste into an email and send to:
><moderator at portside.org> (postings are moderated)
>
>For assistance with your account:
><support at portside.org>
>
>To search the portside archive:
><http://people-link5.inch.com/pipermail/portside/>


-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand