Anticommunism Web Site (re: anticommunism

[Rob Schaap]

Thomas Sowell has made a fat career out of saying just this stuff.  It
ain't content that counts; it's giving the busy punters what they want.  To
avoid the hard work of substantiation is, happily, to afford the reader the
chance to avoid the hard work of weighing evidence and argument.  The way
that works here is to blame the phobic other on the 'grounds' that they
harbour something for which they should be blamed.  Neatly circular - and
rhetorically powerful if your audience is busy (and Americans have become
the world's greatest boondogglers, for mine - that's what happens if you
combine the protestant work-ethic with an 'information economy' based on
the exchange relation - everyone ends up busily doing useless shit, for
which they pay each other using value nicked from elsewhere); hence our
alleged 'fundamental belief in human nature and the role of institutions in
shaping human attitudes and behaviors'.

This is risky though, and only the most experienced writers should dare
employ the method, for to elaborate upon that argument would be to risk
explicating the implicit: that Sowell has, and assumes his readers have, a
'fundamental belief in human nature and the role of institutions in shaping
human attitudes and behaviors': Self-making selfish monads busily
constructing and perpetuating things called institutions to stop them doing
what humans always really (ie. naturally) want to do: rape, pillage and,
ultimately, kill all those other self-making selfish monads.

Which is risky on two counts: daily experience renders it unbelievable; and
only psychpaths would want to believe it.

Cheers,
Rob.


>JESUS.  did you read this bit of absolutely positively nothing?  check it out:
>
>
>"If you have ever wondered why the Left (including American Liberals) are
>slow to condemn Communism's atrocities, it is because they share a
>fundamental belief in human nature and the role of institutions in shaping
>human attitudes and behaviors. "
>
>i'm sorry, but i don't believe this says anything does it?  what exactly
>are these beliefs and institutions?
>
>
>jesus. it's amazing to me that anyone would write this shit and expect it
>to pass for something serious.  it's enough for the opening line to say
>utterly NOTHING  and trust that it will be interpreted as a meaningful
>statement.  and it will, it will just be assumed by the reader that
>whatever it is, it's not good.