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<DIV>Justin wrote:</DIV>
<DIV>> For the Lukes and Brads of this world, the wind the backs of the
roadworkers is insvisible </DIV>
<DIV>> and cannot be felt; the bankas that hem in the roaring river are
simply the way things are. </DIV>
<DIV>> Luke's vaunted utilitarianism does not extend to assessing the costs
of accepting as a baseline > the existing conditions, only to critiquing
departures from those conditions or assessing various > ways of maintaining
them (unilateral war versus slow strangulation). The possibility that people
> might become actors in their own lives, that the roadworkers might become a
roaring river, is > dismissed as absurd, naive, or unrealistric, except when
it threatens to happen, when it evokes > a horror that calls for violent
repression.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I'm not sure this is the sort of post that's meant
to elicit a response, but I'll do so anyway. I must confess that I do look
to the way things are and have been to guide me as to what we can realistically
aspire to. That's why I'm not an authoritarian socialist (has never
worked, although it can bring about rapid industrialization) or
a libertarian (again, has never worked). I agree with Wojtek, who I
believe once wrote about how proud he was of Western European social
democracy, the best political order the world has ever seen. That's what
we should aspire to, and then we can look torwards shaping something even
better. And I think our international prospects aren't nearly as
bleak as many take them to be: if it's possible to rally the public around
the cause of humanitarian militaristic intervention (and admittedly it's
not clear that anyone ever has), which requires vast
sacrifices, surely we can inspire the sort of solidarity necessary
to alleviate (to take just one example) the AIDs crisis in
Africa.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>-- Luke
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