Platt, Drose and y'all:
Thanks to you both for your response. The impeachment trial is
notoriously polarizing, and I'm glad nothing worse that head pounding
has occured. :-)
'll keep the politics out of this as much as possible. I want to answer
a couple of points and then I"ll move to another example of the levels
in conflict.
To call myself a libertarian socialist only seems like a confused
contradiction. I may be wrong, but I'm not confused. The description I
used is borrowed from Noam Chomsky. He is a Professor of Linguistics at
Mass. Inst. of Technolgy and is considered one of the world's foremost
experts on language, propaganda and ideology. He is a very radical guy
and evokes alot of animosity, but even his critics will admit that he is
brilliant. Guess what he calls himself with respect to politics? Yes,
he's a libertarian socialist. I assure its a legitimate term.
Both of you objected to my assertion that there are racists in the
Republican party. I know its a very ugly thing, but it's true. This
isn't really the place so I won't get into a bunch of history. But
please believe that I don't say such things lightly. I don't make this
stuff up. We had a fascist party here in the U.S. when Hilter was first
coming to power. We recruited alot of Germans after the war, and not
just the rocket scientists either. In short, this strain of fascism and
older kinds of racism still exist in the country. I don't mean to
suggest that the Republicans have a monopoly on this, but it's ideology
makes it a much more likely candidate. It no accident that David Duke
quit the Klan, got a nose job and ran as a Republican. Racism and
fascism have had similar make-overs in an effort to look acceptable, but
the change is only superficial.
Oh, and I realize salon magazine isn't the most credible news source,
but Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the greatest literary figures alive
today. He is credible.
The most obvious example of privacy rights in the constitution would be
the fourth amendment. It provides for everyone to be free from
unreasonable seaches. The language they used, "to be secure in their
papers and effects" was a reference to a famous case in England. I
forget the particulars, but a public figure was involved in scandal
after his "papers and effects" were stolen from his home. He was having
an affair or was gay or something like that. Anyway the big debate in
the fallout of that 18th century sex scandal was a debate on the nature
of power and privacy. The founders had this event in mind at the time.
Don't you count privacy as one of those inalienable rights? I really
thought everybody did.
The amendment process itself is an example of the constitution's built
in dynamism. The proceedure of changing the constitution is built into
it's static structure. We could even use the amendment proceedure to
change the amendment proceedure! Without the amendment provision, we'd
still have slavery, women couldn't vote and we'd have no Bill of Rights.
Just one more point on the trial. Ken Starr did have to get the Attorney
General's permission to investigate Lewinsky. But Ken Starr's office is
presently under investigation for decieveing Janet Reno in order to get
that permission. The allegations are that his office was in contact with
the Jones Lawyers and already working on the case before permission was
granted. (Politically, it would have been very tough for Reno to deny
him permission.) He has been accused of other misdeeds too. He's been
accused of obstruction of justice in a suit against General Motors. It
seems that his respect for the rule of law vanishes with respect to his
own conduct. I'm fond of saying that Whitewater is alot like Watergate.
It both cases Republicans abused the institutions of government in an
attempt to destroy their political enemies.
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OK. HERE ARE SOME NEW THOUGHTS.
ISN'T HITLER EVERYBODY'S FAVORITE MONSTER ?
I read a book review in the Atlantic Monthly yesterday. A biographer
deconstructs Hitler and tries to explain his evil through the use of
great literary characters. I know it sounds strange. He compares Hitler
with fictional people as a form of analysis!
At first it seemed like a useless exercise. Like a project for some
flunky graduate student who'd tripped a few too many times. But the
biographer only uses figures from the major classics, like Paradise
Lost. And if you accept the "Masks of God" premise, the biographer's
approach starts to make more sense. Remember? Pirsig mentions the Joseph
Campbell book near the end, saying he only wanted to read it cause of
what he'd heard. Pirsig said that if you really wanted to understand a
culture you had to look at its gods, which reflect the values. The gods
will tell you what a culture values. Campbell's "masks of god" view
also says that myths, legends, folk tales, dreams and even great
literary characters also reflect these cultural values. So the
biographer's method could actually tell us alot about the values held by
Hitler? Is the biographer onto something that can help us sort out the
social and intellectual level values? Didn't Pirsig say history was
really biography?
Didn't he say that every individual is a culture of one. I'd really love
to hear some thoughts from you on this, especially if you're JC fan. I'm
just sort of stringing the ideas out there and letting you see the
connections. Am I making sense?
I was thinking about the words "Ceaser", "Kaiser" and "Czar". Obviously,
they are different inflections of the same word. There must be some kind
of underlying cultural value that supports such a figure. Even the U.S.
Presidency is a watered down version of this same warrior king
celebrated in ancient Rome. Isn't this an example of a particular social
level value persisting through time? The social level demands unity and
authority? The intellectual level exists on top of the more primary
underlying form and gives it shape and meaning. The various inflections
given to the underlying social values are what make one culture
different than another. It all just depends on a given society's other
values and their own context in place and time. The intellectual level
that is laid over top may even make the underlying form unrecognizable
to "others" who are not a part of that culture. But all intellectual
patterns of value do is supply the social level values with an "accent".
It's all a matter of style. A different set of clothes on the same
Ceaser.
David
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