[lbo-talk] Re: Welcome to Weimar

Curtiss Leung curtiss_leung at ibi.com
Fri Jan 30 11:26:14 PST 2004


Sure Bush claims the terrorists hate us because of our freedom. At the same time, the admin (I recall Ashcroft saying this is so many words) and its boosters make the claim that be opposed to their program is to be with the terrorists. What does that make of the content of our freedom? Freedom *to* sign on to the Bush program? Isn't that notion of freedom pretty much the one put forward in Heidegger's speech to the students?

As far as rhetoric in general goes, Bush also said he'd be a uniter, not a divider; after all, he lost the popular vote. But he uses his office as if he had a huge landslide.

Curtiss

Doug:
> Our gang still uses rhetoric of freedom, pluralism, and individualism
> to describe what we're defending in Our Way of Life - that's what the
> Terrorists hate about us after all. The Nazis, though, were very
> explicitly anti-democratic, anti-pluralistic, and
> anti-individualistic. To the Bush gang, the state is supposed to
> reflect or subordinate itself to free individuals; to the Nazis, the
> individual was supposed to subordinate him- or herself to the state.
> Of course the Bushies are full of unfreedom and schemes to
> circumscribe individual freedom of thought and action, but still
> that's a big rhetorical difference. How does that fit in with the
> Weimar/Strauss/Shickelgruber analogy?



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