<br><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>Passion and patronage are also what allowed Khomeinists to<br>out-organize Iranian leftists, elected Hamas, and propelled Hizballah
<br>into the leadership position in Lebanon, </blockquote><div><br><br>Ya don't think those 1400 years of religious teching had anything to do with it, do ya?<br><br>Jesus Christ! Get back to reality! Ayatollah Khomeini wasn't a cell leader. He was an established clergyman in the dominant church in Iran.
<br> </div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">except that their political<br>program -- populist and anti-imperialist -- radically differs from
<br>white American evangelicals' on economic and foreign policies.</blockquote><div><br>Yeah, there's no imperialist tradition in Islam. Nah. Nothing like that. <br><br>Wow.<br> </div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
We (except perhaps organized labor, in which we do not have positions<br>of power either) can't offer the same degree of politicized material<br>social programs even if we try to emulate them in service to the<br>masses. We can't help that.
</blockquote><div><br>Well, there's always, you know, science and truth and all that - but definitely, let's try to compete with religious people on the God thing - we'll do great<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
But I'd have to say that we, lacking in a new powerful world view<br>since the loss of the myth of inevitable dialectical progress, do not<br>have as much passion for social change as white evangelicals here and<br>Islamists abroad. We are not unlike George Herbert Walker Bush: we
<br>lack "the vision thing."<br><br>We can rectify _that_, can't we?</blockquote><div><br>Let's see : "We want you to own the companies you work for and they want you to eat shit and die!"<br><br>or how about "We have science. They have nonsense."
<br></div><br>No, when it comes to a mass movement obviously the people who appeal to people's superstitions are going to do well. But I would think that the people who have in mind a better economic program might also do well.
<br><br>It's the economy, Yoshie!<br><br>Maybe socialists should start talking about prosperity again. <br><br>Hmmm.....<br><br><br>boddi<br></div>