Mindspring censorship; abortion

[Charles Brown]

This is why , analogously, Marxists' certainty about certain issues is NOT invidious authoritarianism, totalitarianism, dogmatism, rigidity or "Stalinism". We cannot get anything accomplished, PRACTICE, unless we are and act sure  and definite about somethings , sometime.  How are millions of people going to listen to us if we say we "THINK' this is the way to go ? Radical change is the most authoritative thing there is. You ask people to turn society upside down. How can that be done based on iffy discourse ? If we don't know for sure, there is no chance that our ideas will grip the masses and become a material force. 

Sure we expect to make mistakes. This is trial and error. That's life.

Charles Brown


>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> 02/08 3:17 PM >>>
Alex LoCascio insists on being backward:
>>Leftists should stop falling for this trap and start taking the need for
>>and legitimacy of abortion _for granted_.
>
>Yes, why have a reason for something as long as there's a secular
>priesthood to enforce correct thinking with a bludgeon?
>
>I once thought, perhaps naively,  that the Left was free of religious
>taint...

That's hardly a reply. I'm saying that one of the Right's tactics has been
to (re)set the terms of political debates by, for instance, calling our
already existing legal right to abortion into question. And I say we on the
left should take the need for and legitimacy of abortion for granted
amongst ourselves, so as _not_ to play the Right's game and in order to
discuss _more important questions_ of how to expand access to abortion
while fighting off the Right. Any reason to object to this assessment of
our political history and the present conjuncture beyond calling your
opponents 'religious' (a meaningless statement)?

You see, Alex, what the Right does is try not to allow us to rest on what
we have won and to chip away our gains whenever and wherever they can. Not
allowing us to take the legitimacy of abortion for granted is one of their
tactics in this area. In this regard, the left has already ceded too much
ground to them and can't afford more losses.

Yoshie