On Fri, 19 Oct 2001, Miles Jackson wrote:
> Note: by Doug's logic here, an Abolitionist living in the South in the
> early 1800s would be "evading reality". We can't judge the ultimate
> success of a political viewpoint or strategy by how popular it is
> today.
I'm not sure I follow you here. Abolition in the North is a great example of an initially small, passionate minority eventually pushing their project through on a national scale (although the seemingly indispensible means of that success, we might ironically note in passing, was an astonishingly bloody war which they backed to the hilt). But from the beginning they had a broad resonance in New England culture (and I mean from the very beginning, in the constitutional debates). Abolition in the South, on the other hand, which had almost no resonance in the early 1800s (when the cotton gin first got going) had even less resonance on the eve of the civil war. It seems like the model of a completely impotent, tiny minority that barely rates a footnote in the historical record. They were certainly right in moral terms. But their complete separation from their countrymen meant they had absolutely no effect on the course of events. So yeah, they would have been evading reality if they thought that by advocating such ideas to their neighbors they were pushing things along in the right direction. Do you have a different take? Is there new research that modifies this picture?
Looked at this way, your example seems to suggest that resonance -- building on truths that your audience considers self-evident -- actually matters quite a lot for political movements.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com