>>It ain't about "personal responsibility"; it's about government budgets!
>>The question is, which do you want your tax dollars to get spent on --
>>cops, prisons, & armed forces _or_ schools, health care, unemployment
>>benefits, social security, etc.? This gotta be a no-brainer even in a
>>post-Foucauldian world!
>
>What's Foucault have to do with this?
Foucault & Co. have helped to produce young "leftist" intellectuals who make comments like the following:
>so why the hell aren't cops also
>potentially on the side of the working class, eh? what makes them
>different? that they police for the state? almost anyone who works in any
>sort of service job polices for the state anymore!!!!
&
>I fail to see how you can make a fast and clear distinction between
>security guards and cops with guns and DAs, PDs, parole officers,
>counselors, physicians, psychiatrists, Drug treatment programs operators
>and the like who also work for the state and perform the very same
>policing functions as the state and in far more insidious, hidden ways.>>>
In other words, Foucault & Co. have made popular either an inability or a refusal to make a distinction between prisons & schools, for instance, _just because_ the latter also "police" people's behaviors.
Unpostmodern as it may sound, I'd rather argue for spending on schools, health care, drug treatment programs, etc. than cops, prisons, & armed forces. It's in the interest of the ruling class to turn the former into the latter, for instance, through initiatives like Prop 187, which would have required teachers, health care providers, etc. to report undocumented immigrant residents to the federal government. We should politically insisnt on the distinction, instead of blurring it theoretically.
Yoshie