Himmelfarb contra progress

[Paul Henry Rosenberg]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> Wall Street Journal - May 5, 1999
> 
> Two Cheers (or Maybe
> Just One) for Progress
> 
> By Gertrude Himmelfarb, professor emeritus of history at the City
> University of New York. Her book "One Nation, Two Cultures" will be
> published by Knopf later this year.
>
> ...<SNIP>...
>
> This may be the lesson of the millennium. Progress, yes, but a modest,
> cautious, amelioratory progress, chastened by the experiences of history
> and guided by a sense of human limits as well as possibilities.

OTOH:

"The Path of Excess Leads To The Palace Of Wisdom"

  -- William Blake

"A modest, cautious, amelioratory progress" would never have freed the
slaves.  This is what many of the Founders hoped when they accepted it
into the framework of the Constitution. They forsaw a withering away of
slavery, which of course did not happen.  

Thus, the belief in gradual change can be every bit as irrational as the
belief in radical change.  In either case, one should ask the simple
question, "Who REALLY benefits from this perscription?"  Not to mention,
"Is this just?"  

-- 
Paul Rosenberg
Reason and Democracy
rad at gte.net

 
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"