So what do you want to call it?
Last time I checked you called yourself a socialist. Lots of 20th century socialists believed in one-party dictatorship, cults of personality, mass murder, secret political police and torture of "enemies of the people," huge concentration camp systems, forced labor, guilt by association, preposterous paranoid charges and show trials, widespread censorship, and other unsavories. Do you think we should give up that term -- socialism -- and find an expression that no one has sullied -- until _it_ gets dirty?
I think attack on liberalism ought to have gone out of style around the time of forced collectivization, the Moscow Purge trials at the latest.
Btw, I like Isaiah Berlin.
--- Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> >>
> >On Jul 3, 2007, at 12:28 PM, andie nachgeborenen
> wrote:
> >
> > > What's your alternative? Which of:
> > >
> > > competitive elections
> > > universal suffrage
> > > extensive civil and political liberties
> > > democratic decisionmaking (as opposed to
> imposition of
> > > someone's idea of the good life will-we-nil-we)
> >
> >You keep listing these as attributes of liberalism,
> but 19th century
> >liberals weren't terribly interested in lots of
> them ...
>
> Not to mention 20th and 21st century liberals
> haven't been interested in
> lots of them. AFAIC, the practice of singing
> hosannas to liberalism should
> have expired with Isaiah Berlin.
>
> Carl
>
>
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