[lbo-talk] Once Upon a time

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Aug 24 07:13:43 PDT 2006


Yoshie writes:


> The rest of the world tend to prefer illiberal democracy, and if you
> don't like that, you have to live with dictatorship -- which makes
> space for some personal freedoms at the expense of political freedoms
> -- that suppresses democracy.

Dictatorships like firing squads - do we have to learn to live with them too? Some decades ago, white Southern USers "preferred" segregation - should "we" have adapted to that? The Nazis were popular for a while, too. Should we just give up on all struggles that draw on the values of the European enlightenment and try to broaden them beyond a privileged elite? Was the ANC wrong to fight apartheid using rhetoric of political freedom and human equality? Should we applaud when hacks like Buthelezi appealed to African values, and Mahathir to Asian values, against the claims of their political opponents? Is this the kind of argument that should go out over a MRZine URL?

Doug



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