permissiveness

[Forstater, Mathew]

salon has a pretty negative review of the West book, co-written with a
white female economist named Sylvia Ann Hewlett. I only breezed through
it, but it seems that the reviewer (Joan Walsh) is sympathetic to the
basic purpose of the book and the politics of the authors (she calls
them "left leaning liberals"), but thinks they give way too much to the
conservatives and make some misguided criticisms of feminism. also, the
whole first part has each of the authors telling their 'personal
stories' and then there's a dialogue section that has worked in the past
for West but in this case is forced and doesn't work so well.  see
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/1998/04/cov_23feature.html

I understand your aversion, Max, my basic tendency would be to just
ignore and dismiss these zingers from the right whackos, except I now am
getting the feeling--as you also seemed to imply in an earlier
post--that these messages are getting out there and the sources of the
views and their ulterior political motives are buried beneath the
platitudes.  I'm feeling like we have to have a response to this and so
I'm wondering if there aren't good people doing serious work that can
refute the madness and not concede authority in these areas to the
conservative agenda.  Aren't there any people who are taking on the
Bennetts and these folks from a left perspective?

Mat

From: Max Sawicky


>cornel west and somebody else wrote something on this.
>I haven't read it.  I have an aversion to this sort of book.
>--mbs