From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Oct 14 2005 - 18:00:41 BST
> Platt Holden stated October 13th:
>
> >Yes, and in the revolution Marx promises to abolish private property.
>
> Ant McWatt asks:
>
> Did he? In which specific text was that?
The Communist Manifesto. "In this sense the theory of the Communists can
be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property." As a
card-carrying socialist your ought to be familiar with the seminal
writings of your party's founding father.
> Platt Holden continues:
>
> >All power is granted to the "Giant, unforgettably described by Pirsig:
> >
> >"Later he saw there was: this Giant. People look upon the social patterns
> >of the Giant in the same way cows and horses look upon a farmer; different
> >from themselves, incomprehensible, but benevolent and appealing. Yet the
> >social pattern of the city devours their lives for its own purposes just
> >as surely as farmers devour the flesh of farm animals. A higher organism
> >is feeding upon a lower one and accomplishing more by doing so than the
> >lower organism can accomplish alone." (Lila, 17)
> >
> >Maybe Arlo finds the social patterns of the Giant appealing, but to me
> >they mean one thing -- you guessed it -- gulags, as was demonstrated when
> >intellect put the Giant's patterns into practice on a grand scale.
>
> Ant McWatt comments:
>
> Considering the above quote was referring to New York, I have to say Platt
> has an odd notion of a Marxist society.
New York was used by Pirsig as an example to show how social patterns
can harm individuals. Just a sampling of quotes proves this, all within
the context of Chap. 17 of Lila. (Caps used to emphasize the point):
"People look upon the SOCIAL patterns of the Giant in the same way cows
and horses look upon a farmer; different from themselves, comprehensible,
but benevolent and appealing."
"If 'man' invented SOCIETIES and cities, why are all SOCIETIES and cities
so repressive of 'man'?"
"Why would 'man' want to invent internally contradictory standards and
arbitrary SOCIAL institutions for the purpose of giving himself a bad
time?"
"It makes us think that cities and SOCIETIES and thought structures are
all subordinate creations of this physical body of man."
Obviously Pirsig had something more in mind than just NYC.
> And talking of Gulags, what about
> the increase of a private prison system both in the US and UK over ten last
> years? The UK now has the largest prison population in Europe and because
> there is little done in the way of rehabilitation, there’s now literally no
> more room for any more prisoners.
Gulags were filled with political prisoners who for the most part, died
there. To compare them to the British and American penal system is another
example of liberal moral equivalency wherein being given three square
meals a day and medical treatment when needed is considered morally the
same as a starvation diet and left to die in the snow.
> Moreover, what about that illegal
> Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba which is holding an unknown number of
> children between the ages of 13 and 18?
Guantanamo Bay is a country club compared to Siberian gulags. That you
don't see the distinction is amazing.
> Serious concerns have been voiced by Amnesty International (sorry Platt,
> Amnesty is relatively a non-partisan CREDIBLE, high quality information
> source), that child prisoners at Guantánamo Bay may be being subjected to
> conditions that approach torture.
Amnesty International is far from credible. "A human rights group that
can't distinguish between Stalin's death camps and detention centers for
terrorists who kill civilians can't be taken seriously." Wall St. Journal.
> They have been repeatedly interrogated
> and held in restricted isolation over very long periods.
Poor babies.
> Among those still
> detained is Omar al-Khadr, a Canadian national, now 18, who was a minor
> when he first arrived there at the age of 15. If any of these children did
> participate in fighting in Afghanistan or elsewhere, they have already been
> victimized as child soldiers. Now they are being victimized by adults again
> by being held in the same legal limbo and difficult conditions as the other
> so-called "illegal combatants" being held there.
Et tu, Ant, hopping on the victimization bandwagon with Arlo?
> More than 650 detainees from over 40 countries are being held without
> charge or trial in Guantánamo Bay. Although most were captured during
> military operations in Afghanistan, they have been arbitrarily denied
> prisoner of war status. None of the detainees have been granted access to
> lawyers or relatives, nor have they had the opportunity to challenge the
> lawfulness of their detention in a court of law. They face the prospect of
> indefinite detention in small cells for up to 24 hours a day and the
> possibility of trials by military commissions with the power to hand down
> death sentences with no right of appeal. Neither Omar, nor any other
> detainee, knows when, or even if, they will be released.
These murderers don't come under Geneva Convention protections.
Coddling criminals is one of the identifying marks of liberalism, along
with hysterical concerns about purported global warming and endangered
species, the latter including, I presume, the one-of-us walrus. :-).
Platt
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