Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Sonic Charmer is confused, but in a good way. About socialists & socialism.
This government-ownership-of-the-means-of-production definition of socialism is a popular one, a comfortable standby especially in online debates. I wonder why, because it’s meaningless.
:
There’s almost no such thing as a ‘mean of production’ today. Yes, there are still factories, but it is not there that the locus of industry resides (and arguably never was; from our vantage point the socialists’ obsession with ‘means of production’ almost seems like forest-for-the-trees, cargo-cult style thinking). Thus, applying the ownership-of-the-means-of-production definition of socialism literally, you can practically never conclude that anyone or anything is ‘socialist’.But of course, perhaps that’s exactly the point.
I’ve noticed this too.
If you’re going to discuss in detail how an established word does not apply to an established person or thing…seems to me the emphasis needs to be on the gap. What is required that is not being met. In other words…if Barack Obama wants to be a socialist, what else has He gotta do?
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I said something to this effect over there, but I think it bears repeating (even if this is the Blog Nobody Reads):
Socialism isn’t a political, let alone an economic, philosophy. It’s a pidgin — an artificially constructed language that certain types of people find useful for specific purposes. At the risk of sounding like Jeff Foxworthy: If you’re not happy with your life, but are convinced that none of it can possibly be your fault, then Marxism is for you. If you’re sure that successful people –or just people more successful than you– can’t have gotten there except by cheating, then Marxism is for you. Etc.
Take academics. Due largely to their complete lack of real-world experience, profs and grad students are still the biggest proponents of Marxism in America. They’re convinced that they’re super-duper smart and extremely hard-working, yet the sight of a 38-year-old PhD holding down three adjunct jobs and only getting $29K and no health insurance is common as ditchwater (the community college system would not exist without these folks). Marxism tells them why they’re so materially unsuccessful vis a vis their peers (the logical explanation — that their peers actually make things that people want, and work hard towards that end — is too rough on the ego).
More importantly, Marxism gives them a language with which to agitate for free stuff without sounding like they’re demanding free stuff. It’s not that I want a nice cushy job with the equivalent purchasing power of $75K, full health benefits, 6 months paid paternity leave (and 3 weeks vacation), etc. etc., I want “social justice.” They don’t give a hoot about “the people” — nobody who could be considered an authentic prole ever agitates for Marxism — but they sure do love being in the Vanguard of the Proletariat. They’re not being petty and envious, you see, they’re just “pointing out the worst excesses of industrial capitalism.”
[I deliberately avoided saying anything about socialist policies because there’s no such thing. In practice, any socialist leader does what all monarchs have always done — staff the bureaucracy with like-minded toadies, and then interfere with the subjects’ lives whenever he sees fit. Then as now, the only real crime is lese majeste, be it against the monarch or the Party].
- Severian | 02/15/2012 @ 06:02This makes good sense. I have picked up that we seem to be split not quite so much between genuine conservatism vs. liberalism, or some modern/evolved form of conservatism vs. mutated form of liberalism, or even between blue states and red states, but more like between Americans who produce goods and services valued by others, and Americans who produce nothing.
Perhaps things have been approaching a fevered pitch lately, post-Bush-vs.-Gore, because the standard of living commanded by Americans who produce nothing, is now very high, in many cases much higher than what is enjoyed by the Americans who produce things other people can actually use.
And perhaps there’s a desperation involved in all the arguing, because it’s understood this lofty life of privilege enjoyed by those who produce nothing, is just the high dome of a bubble that’s about to pop.
- mkfreeberg | 02/15/2012 @ 06:15Well said, especially this part: the standard of living commanded by Americans who produce nothing, is now very high, in many cases much higher than what is enjoyed by the Americans who produce things other people can actually use.
Liberals never get around to describing what a “socially just” world would look like, but if they ever did, I’d imagine it looks pretty much like…. the way liberals live their daily lives now. Trustafarian Marxists working at nonprofits would continue working at nonprofits, environmental lawyers would keep on being environmental lawyers, education bureaucrats would stay in the same chairs in the same buildings, etc.
In fact, their own theory guarantees it.
Liberals have internalized Marx’s dictum that one’s social being determines one’s consciousness. It’s a canon of the liberal faith, for instance, that if you dropped William F. Buckley into the ghetto he’d immediately turn into a tatted-out thug, because “poverty causes crime.” Well, if that’s the case, then advanced postindustrial capitalism causes iPads, Macs, triple-soy venti-latte-mochacinos, Priuses, the bumper stickers with which to festoon those Priuses, and all those humanities seminars where you learn to say “X is just a social construction” until they give you a PhD.
But hey, that’s just logic. Which, as we all know, is just a tool of the phallogocentric white Western imperialist hegemonic racist rape culture.
- Severian | 02/15/2012 @ 11:15Liberals never get around to describing what a “socially just” world would look like, but if they ever did, I’d imagine it looks pretty much like…
…the Soviet Union?
- cylarz | 02/16/2012 @ 23:55