On Sep 16, 2007, at 11:27 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> I've raised many questions and offered some suggestions. Here's
> another one. Let's say a Muslim man or woman happens to find this
> mailing list by chance while Googling the Net in search of information
> so he or she can better understand US economy. This hypothetical
> Muslim individual would have much to learn from you. He or she may
> even have much in common with you, already critical of the American
> power elite's handling of US economy, US foreign policy, and so forth,
> though not in possession of analytical tools and empirical data that
> you have. Would your suggesting that religion is essentially nothing
> but an organized superstition help him or her learn from you, or would
> it create an unnecessary cultural barrier?
I really don't see why I should regulate what I say to avoid offending a hypothetical googler from far away. My reaction to the role of religion in politics has been shaped by having lived my whole life in the U.S., where piety has done some really nasty work. I'm very happy that secularism is growing in the U.S. As with Iranian political arrangements, I've never gone out of my way to denounce Islam; to me, it's just one of many organized superstitions that I wish all would go away. I know they won't, and I don't spend very much of my time arguing the point, but I am for the ruthless criticism of all that exists.
> Liberalism is the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism, and we are
> all, Muslims or Leninists or whatever our professed belief, are deeply
> affected by it. The way I look at it, most leftists have come to
> unconsciously adopt liberalism one way or another without having
> examined it. Unconscious adoption is more of a problem than conscious
> adoption like Andie's. The thing to do is to examine liberalism
> closely and then think carefully about what we want to do with it.
I don't really get what you mean by "liberalism." Is is economic liberalism, Manchester style? That's certainly pretty big these days. Do you mean the Cold War liberalism of the ADA and Hubert Humphrey? Peter Beinart would like to see that revived, but it's not very strong now. Do you mean a mild social democracy, as in John Kenneth Galbraith? That's dead? Do you mean the reigning ideology of The Nation? That has little influence in American political life. So what is this allegedly dominant liberalism you keep talking about? Corporate multiculturalism? What?
A good friend who reads the archives regularly writes:
> Unbelievable. She has reinvented late SDS ideology all on her own.
> This was what people like Mark Rudd were saying just before they
> went off the deep end. The Weatherpeople tried to atone for their
> sins by emulating the Viet Cong, while Yoshie emulates the Iranian
> mullahs. Talk about farce after tragedy. Well, maybe farce after
> farce would be more accurate.
Doug