I listened to Edgar (i think) on NPR last night. This guy has it all over people on the left.
Last year, on the anniversary of 9-11, I was reading the one minute of silence posts from people on a list serv that has nothing to do with politics and is composed of a lot of people who consider themselves christians and many more who are quick to reject even any identification with Phil Donahue or CNN!
One person wrote to say we should all pray for folks who died or suffered from 9-11. that post was quickly downed out by the chorus of voices rejecting this myopic little view. a chorus of people who rejected the notion "America is the world, America is the people" Instead, to them, far more people suffer and die every day around the world and 9-11 was a day to commemorate all of them. yadda.
My prediction: if any one group comes out on "top" in this dog fight some of y'all feel you must have, it'll be the Rev. Edgar. Because Edgar doesn't begin from the notion that people are alienated, angry, misguided, stupid, ignorant, ill-informed, apathetic, uninterested--or anything like that. Nor does he guilt trip them.
Rather, he begins from a claim that USers are capable of doing better, that we are all human and, thus, suffer. Justice has to do with mitigating that suffering. See also Sean Mage's comments to Dennis where he tries to point out the difference between a metaphysics of innocence (as apparently supported by dennis) vs. a leftist social ontology (perhaps a deweyian or buchlerian metaphysics..?) where values are socially constituted, where recognizing this doesn't lead to the charge of relativism (see Stanley Fish for popularized understanding; see Richard Bernstein for scholarly treatment)
Not sure if I make sense to anyone--particularly since most folks are going to dwell on the problematic nature of this type of peace movement and its seeming incompatibilities with left thought. That is, where lefties wring their hands over how backward everyone else is because, in the end, everyone wants to advance the consciousness to serve their own agenda. yes, even movement of movement folks do from what i've observed here.
since i usually quote Marx's Letter to Arnold Rouge and get ignored by those most certain that we need to build a movement based on theoretical premises as to where to find the most advanced consciousness, i'll just quote this one, recently posted elsewhere:
"It is far more important that the movement should proceed harmoniously, take root, and embrace as much as possible the whole American proletariat, than that it should start and proceed from the beginning on theoretically perfectly correct lines. There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than to learn by one's own mistakes... A million or two of workingmen's votes next November for a bona fide workingmen's party is worth infinitely more at present than a hundred thousand votes for a doctrinaly pure platform"
--Engels, letter to Florence Kelley Wischnewetsky, 1886
kelley
boring lefty thread: I've got a can of shit; can you open it!