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...
The Left Needs More Socialism
Regular readers of this blog, which nobody really reads anyway, have come to notice something about it: It’s dedicated to critically inspecting the inability, or rather the incompetence, of prevailing viewpoints to think logically. Now, don’t ask me why that is, but that dedication has a tedency over time to create two distinctly different kinds of entries: posts that have something to do with girls in skimpy outfits, which is extremely “light” and whimsical (once you are no longer discussing the excoriating reaction to same), and posts that have something to do with the War on Terror, terrorists trying to kill innocent people to make half-cocked political statements, people in New York City and Washington, DC suffering agonizing deaths in pools of burning jet fuel, for the “crime” of showing up to work before nine o’clock. That’s not whimsical, that’s the opposite.
Girls in bikinis, people burning to death. Well, perhaps it’s time to put up something kind of in-between those two extremes, just to shake things up a little.
Writing for The Nation, Ronald Aronson says the Left needs a major change in philosophy: It needs some socialism. Hey, go to town, I say. It worked great in 1932, and I’m always in favor of liberals when they’re candid about what they really want.
The Left Needs More Socialism
Ronald AronsonIt’s time to break a taboo and place the word “socialism” across the top of the page in a major American progressive magazine. Time for the left to stop repressing the side of ourselves that the right finds most objectionable. Until we thumb our noses at the Democratic pols who have been calling the shots and reassert the very ideas they say are unthinkable, we will keep stumbling around in the dark corners of American politics, wondering how we lost our souls–and how to find them again.
I can hear tongues clucking the conventional wisdom that the “S” word is the kiss of death for any American political initiative. Since the collapse of Communism, hasn’t “socialism”–even the democratic kind–reeked of everything obsolete and discredited? Isn’t it sheer absurdity to ask today’s mainstream to pay attention to this nineteenth-century idea? Didn’t Tony Blair reshape “New Labour” into a force capable of winning an unprecedented string of victories in Britain only by first defeating socialism and socialists in his party? And for a generation haven’t we on the American left declared socialist ideology irrelevant time and again in the process of shaping our feminist, antiwar, progay, antiracist, multicultural, ecological and community-oriented identities?
Go for it. Honesty is the best policy.
Why would anyone, anywhere, not like a little socialism? I mean, aside from gems like this…
Still, the newest significant formation…calls itself the World Social Forum. The name reminds those who believe “another world is possible” that it can come about only if it is global, only if it is guided by a loosely organized “forum” rather than a top-down party–and only if its character is social.
There ya go. Even if you want to make socialism look good, you can’t discuss it without tacitly acknowledging, as Aronson has to, that if this economic model is practiced anywhere then it must be practiced everywhere. If there’s any choice involved in socialism, people will invariably choose to distance themselves from it — provided they are ready, willing, and able to contribute more than they can consume. If they consume more than they contribute, well then that deficit makes the choice on their behalf…so this supposedly “free” will, ends up placing a necklace of consumers, like a dead albatross, around the neck of any society practicing socialism.
And while this is going on, the contributors get the hell out of there. IF it’s up to them to leave. Why shouldn’t they? You and I are in a commune, I contribute nine rubles for every ten I consume, while you contribute three rubles for every two you consume. Together, we make things work, sure; by why do you want to keep hanging around? You wouldn’t. So to have socialism, we have to stop you from leaving when you want to. Socialism means force. It is inevitable.
But those are my musings, and I’m not an advocate for socialism. Let those who favor socialism, debate how to implement it…while keeping completely silent, somehow, on how socialism ultimately has to inflict assault on choice in order to stay alive. Let them do this. And by all means, run the issue up the flagpole for 2006.
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