From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 28 2005 - 22:53:05 BST
Hola Platt,
I'm with you all the way on your outrage about this, but I find it odd you
place the blame on "liberals" (almost as slick a trick as GM blaming the
workers' healthcare for sagging profits) Indeed, this move was specifically
designed to provide power (or increase the power) to large capitalist
corporations, something that has absolutely nothing to do with liberal
ideology, but has everything to do with seeing what power is behind the
"democracy" we claim to have. I've recently encountered the terms
"capistocracy" and "syndicalism", and think they describe America quite nicely.
Placing corporate profit over individual rights is something both
"conservatives" and "liberals" alike should deplore. But wealth acquisition
in this country is an unassailable, unquestionable goal (as you yourself
have evidenced). Who cares about some peon's house if it means someone can
earn more money and get richer. Sound familiar? Once, long, long ago I
tried to talk to you about changing the dialogue, so that people have a
framework by which to criticize "wealth ueber alles", our governing
philosophy. You ridiculed this, said that I was going to come take
everyone's freedoms away. You feared a world in which anyone's "right" to
accumulate wealth was challenged in any way, shape or form.
Well, who's taking away the freedoms, Platt? Some Marxist "liberal" who
advocates being able to say there are more important things than rampant
wealth acquisition? Or the wealth-at-any-cost corporations who have now
petitioned for the right to take your property so that they can increase
their revenue?
I'd laugh at the irony, were I not so otherwise appalled.
Arlo
At 03:41 PM 6/28/2005, you wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>I don't know what the law is in other countries, but here in the U.S. we
>enjoyed a legal right to own property. I say "enjoyed" because last week
>our Supreme Court in a 5-4 split decision struck down property rights by
>ruling that government can bulldoze your home if it stands in the way of a
>corporate entity who wants to use your property to build a facility that
>will increase the government's tax base. In other words, you can be forced
>from your home to make room for a hotel or shopping mall.
>
>Heretofore, the government could condemn and take property under the laws
>of eminent domain for obvious public uses such as roads, bridges, military
>installations and the like. Now the Court has broadened the eminent domain
>concept to include the taking of private property for the purpose of
>increasing tax receipts and fattening the pocketbooks of corporations.
>
>Anti-capitalist liberals should be outraged. But, they're largely silent.
>Why? Because once the liberal principle of redistribution of income
>through government taxation was sanctioned in the name of the "public
>good," then any property produced by intellect (which accounts for all
>human goods and services) belongs not to the producer, but to any social
>entity who wields the power of government to claim it.
>
>Pirsig described this moral conflict involved when he wrote:
>
>"That's what this whole century's been about, this struggle between
>intellectual and social patterns. That's the theme song of the twentieth
>century. Is society going to dominate intellect or is intellect going to
>dominate society?" (Lila, 13)
>
>And the social patterns are winning. As Pirsig pointed out, intellect,
>being objective-dominated, cannot observe or measure moral values and is
>thus impotent against the social moral claim of "the public interest." As
>a result, with this latest Court decision immorality triumphs again,
>individual freedom is further compromised, and the road to serfdom grows
>ever wider.
>
>Best,
>Platt
>
>
>
>
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