From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 08 2005 - 20:25:28 BST
Greetings Ham,
Just want to clarity upfront that my points were not about your (or
anyone's) acceptance or disagreement with Chomsky (or any other single
person) per se. If, after thoughtful review, you find yourself in
disagreement, that is something you'd have to (and seem to be) "battle out"
with someone else familiar with his writings.
My caution, echoing MSH, was that criticism of power (whether "republican"
or "democrat") does not make one "unpatriotic". Often, commentators are
disparaged in this country for being "unpatriotic" because they dare to
challenge status quo power decisions. As Thomas Jefferson much more
eloquently states it, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." We must
not let allegience to any political party blind us to the abuses that ANY
power structure can (or does) inflict upon its constituents.
I do agree, patriotism can be, and should be, a good thing. But when it is
given without criticality to any "group" claiming to represent an ideology,
it can and does often promote blindness to abuses, or the inability to
pinpoint causes and offer solutions. This was my gripe with the Hannity
dialogue. Because of his absolute "patriotism" to "republicans", the only
solution he was able to offer was a (woefully misguided) demonization of
"liberals". But as I've said, party demonization runs both ways in this
country. Just last night on the Daily Show Howard Dean said "We won't let
them (conservatives) destroy America". Whether Hannity or Dean, this type
of ridiculous demonizing only prevents true dialogue.
As for your comments on "ideology", I personally have no inner-hatred of
the word. And yet, I do agree with the Marxist tradition (while rejecting
the economic determinism of Marx) of being critical of ideologies that ask
you to subservient yourself to dominant power interests. That is, why do
people internalize ideologies that are disadvantageous to them. This is not
merely a question we ask of capitalist ideologies, but also of religious
ones. Consider, for example, the internalization process of the ideology
that supports suicide bombing. People, though in this case seeing immediate
and obvious disadvantageous results, nonetheless internalize an ideology
that manipulates fear and promises rewards (in this case, postmortem).
So while I have no problem with "ideology", I find one still needs to
critically examine aspects of all ideologies. The problem is, as I've
stated to Platt, cultural blindness prevents us from seeing our own
ideologically-driven disadvantages. That is, they become so "normal" as to
be invisible. It is not until one encounters a differing ideology, with
differing advantages and disadvantages, that one is often able to
critically consider what one has sacrificed in the name of adopting any
given ideology.
As to my being an idealist... quite possibly so. :-)
Thanks for your reply,
Arlo
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Jul 08 2005 - 22:34:51 BST