From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Dec 06 2003 - 04:18:25 GMT
Drose and all:
Drose asked:
Please explain to me how neo-con equals Victorian and, given the explanation
of Victorian values by Pirsig, how does one become a "Victorian thug?"
dmb replies:
Two things spring to mind. The first is detailed in chapter 17 of Lila,
where Pirsig describes "the Giant". He writes,...
"When societies and cultures and cities are seen not as inventions of 'man'
but as higher organisms thatn biological man, the phenomenea of war and
genocide and all the other forms of human exploitationbecome more
intelligible. 'Mankind' has never been interested in getting itself killed.
But the super orgnaism, the Giant, who is a pattern of values superimposed
on tip of biological human bodies, doesn't mind losing a few bodies to
protect his greater interests."
And at the end of chapter 21 he gets even more specific....
"If one realizes that the essence of the Victorian value pattern was an
elevation of society above everything else, the all sorts of things fall
into place. ...It explains why the Victorians were so vehement in their
loathing of Indians. The statement, 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian',
was a Victorian statement. The idea of extermination of all Indians was not
common before the 19th century. Victorians wanted to destroy 'inferior'
societies because inferior socities were a form of evil. Colonialism, which
before that time was an economic opportunity, vecame with Victorians a moral
course, a 'white man's burden' to spread their social patterns and thus
virtue throughout the world."
If you don't already see where I'm going with this, then further explanation
might require more time than I'm willing to spend. I don't mean to suggest
that its obvious. Its not. It takes lots of reading between the lines and
connecting the dots. It takes an awareness of the many, many statements and
actions made by the current administration. But briefly, as I see it, the
neo-cons of today think they are waging a war against 'evil' and 'inferior
cultures' in much the same way as the Victorians did. Like the Victorians,
they also fail to see that their 'morality' is really just a set of social
values, which they assert above all else. In many of them and their
supporters sincerely believe they are doing "God's" will.
Drose quotes Lobe:
"As neo-con godfather, Irving Kristol once remarked, a neo-conservative is a
"liberal who was mugged by reality". True to that description,
neo-conservatives generally originated on the left side of the political
spectrum and some times from the far left. Many neo-cons, such as Kristol
himself, have Trotskyite roots that are still reflected in their polemical
and organizational skills and ideological zeal." - Jim Lobe, writing in Asia
Times
dmb replies:
Yea, I know. Its a bizzare and fascinating thing. I think it takes a
psychologist, rather than a political scientist or metaphysician, to explain
how and why this happens. But it certainly does happen all the time. David
Horowitz and Benito Mussolini spring to mind. Both were major lefties before
their conversions to right-wingedness. This issue came up several times when
I was in college studying the history of ideas. The simplest and perhaps the
best explantion I've heard came from the head of the history department, who
was himself a conservative and was teaching a course in conservatism. He
said, "Well, once a zealot, always a zealot. Once a fanatic, always a
fanatic." In other words, the content of one's beliefs may change, but the
style and vehemence does not change. This notion is supported by the fact
that many of the most rabid anti-communist cold warriors were also former
communists. Go figure.
And by the way, one of the things that I find most disturbing about Irving
Kristol's comment, beside the fact that it demonstrates a profoundly
unprincipled stance, is that the entire nation was, in effect, mugged on
September 11th. I fear that most Americans moved to the right that day.
Tanks,
dmb
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