Carl Remick wrote:
>
> >From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
> >
> [clip]
> >Carl, is it actuallly your view that intelligent people cannot disagree
> >about fundamentals? That smart people cannot be right wing?
>
> Bingo, that is exactly my view. I think right-wing philosophies are
> inherently not only cruel but stupid -- ideas that will keep all humankind
> mired in needless misery so long as they are taken seriously.
Carl, while I tend to think that Justin overrates, perhaps vastly overrates, the importance of "intelligence," your view is far more hopeless of change than his. First of all, you imply a total (idealist) voluntarism: ideas rule the world. But if Marx was even _partly_ right in his offhand remark on the source of the ruling ideas of an epoch, then on your premise there is no escape. Where can alternative ideas come from??
But also your perspective, essentially a moralistic one, condemns out of hand the very people who, if change is to come, must bring about that change.
I don't know whether this proposition is true or not, but if it is false, we might as well give up: it makes sense for people to believe that what their leaders tell them is truth, is truth. In other words, the millions who vote for Bush or Gore or other fuckers from the Reps or Demsd are voting intelligently within the material framework in which they find themselves. You have to assume that in order to assume they are alive enough and intelligent enough to _stop_ believing in those leaders under some conditions.
Moralism aids the ruling class -- Plato knew that, which is why he strove so hard to give morality a metaphysical basis.
Carrol