On 9/18/07, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
> We got Babeland though.
>
> How To Please Your Woman
> Sunday, October 21, 07:30PM, $30
On 9/18/07, John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Were it not for
> the interference of the religious we in the U.S would have not only BDSM
> clubs but free condoms and probably free abortion on demand through
> Medicaid for those in need.
On 9/18/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 18, 2007, at 6:50 PM, John Thornton wrote:
>
> > we in the U.S would have not only BDSM
> > clubs but free condoms
>
> We have them in New York City!
>
> <http://72.32.200.206/flash/>
The United States government, independent of which party is in power, is more substantially based on the principles of political liberalism than governments of continental Europe, to say nothing of Iran or Cuba. Generally speaking, English-speaking countries like the USA, the UK, and Canada tend to have governments closer to ideal-typical political liberalism -- and therefore more freedom in civil society and less generous welfare states -- than others in the global North. The level of adherence to political liberalism in the USA is such that even many benefits and services that some Third-World governments that are more populist than socialist -- such as the Iranian government -- provide as citizens' entitlements are not provided by the government here. You have to shop for them on your own instead.
It's the same strong adherence to the principles of political liberalism that has created a polity in the USA that lets you freely open BDSM clubs or KKK chapters or sex toy stores or other businesses and associations in the private sector; allows governments, corporations, medical professions, and so on to freely provide -- and _freely withhold_ -- an extremely wide range of goods and services; and also helps religious institutions, exempt from many laws and regulations, flourish in the USA.
In short, political liberalism tends to privatize, expanding the space for freedom (of the negative sort, freedom from government regulation, the only kind of freedom that Americans recognize as freedom) -- sexual and religious, as well as political and economic, freedoms -- in the private sector and contracting the scope of the public sector that provides citizens with goods and services as a matter of their rights. The American citizen has few social duties but also few social rights, the opposite of the Cuban or Iranian citizen who has many social duties but also many social rights. In the USA, the main obstacle to social rights is the strength of political liberalism that lets everyone in civil society -- individuals, corporations, religious institutions, and so on -- have a great deal of freedom of choice . . . if they can afford it.
On 9/18/07, John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> > On 9/17/07, wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
> >
> >>> Tariq Ali is wrong. For socialists Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc.
> >>> should rightly be considered modalities of repression to be opposed.
> >>> They are superstitions which have nothing to offer in guiding modern
> >>> society. The only question is how opposition to such superstitions is to
> >>> be incorporated into strategy. In many cases it should play a very minor
> >>> role but in other instances a much more prominent role could be favored.
> >>>
> >> No doubt, Yoshie will respond to this, but I thought I would toss in
> >> my slightly less articulate two cents. To me, this kinda reads like
> >> Chris Hitchens lite. Fundamentally, Ali's point is that attacks on
> >> Muslims (and Islam) within Europe and the United States are
> >> fundamentally racist and xenophobic and these need to be responded to
> >> as such. I think that it is a fairly serious mistake embattled
> >> subaltern religious groups (for example a Muslim Student Union on a
> >> university campus) with a highly funded and powerful Christian
> >> religious right.
> >
> > John's comments remind me of not Hitchens Lite but a joke from the 50s
> > that Carrol sometimes mentions: "What's the height of arrogance?
> > Answer: a flea approaching an elephant with intentions of rape." Even
> > embattled Muslim communities are far larger than "communities" (or
> > rather mostly a collection of minuscule sects and loose cannons) of
> > socialists in the USA, let alone the balance of forces on the
> > international level.
>
> Sometimes I wonder why readers seem to project their own prejudices into
> others writings rather than taking them at face value.
> I don't give a shit about the size of socialist, christian, muslim, etc.
> communities.
In politics, numbers and levels of organization, in both of which US socialists are lacking, matter a great deal.
In any case, opposition to religion as such makes no political sense in the USA. In the USA, no one is compelled by the government to observe any religious customs, unlike in Iran and many other countries in the predominantly Islamic world, and no one is compelled by the government to refrain from any religious customs, unlike in Turkey, France, and so forth. You are free to practice or not to practice any religion.
> > I rather think that liberalism and secularism, particular forms which
> > commodity fetishism has assumed in the West, are the most powerful
> > mystification, more insidious than any transcendental mystification,
> > and it's that mundane mystification that needs to be criticized first
> > and foremost, as far as those of us who live in the West are
> > concerned.
>
> Commodity fetishism is not intrinsically tied to secularism in any way.
> I can easily be a secularist and ruthlessly criticize commodity fetishism.
> And if you believe that liberalism is in any way responsible for the
> level of death, despair, and destruction that religion has wrought
> you're daft.
Commodity fetishism could assume other forms, but liberalism and secularism of the American variety are more in keeping with commodity fetishism than other ideologies, for they together depoliticize the market like no other and make Americans think they are freer than all other peoples (and they are indeed freer from state regulation than many), especially since nowadays the empire's secular liberal government doesn't even conscript its citizens for its endless wars. It's a voluntary empire defended by a voluntary military, whose destructive powers, political and economic as well as military, are out of sight, out of mind. -- Yoshie