Wojtek
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > So my question is, what circumstances or personality traits make
> these
> > > intellectual "gardener's dogs" fervently protecting what they will not
> eat
> > > themselves? That is, how does one become a dogmatic theologian or an
> > > economist manufacturing legitimacy for the rich and powerful without
> > > sharing
> > > the spoils their wealth and power?
> > >
> > > Any thoughts?
> > >
> >
> >[clip]
> > I think the answer is that at the end of the day, they believe in the
> > importance of ideas more than they believe in the *usefulness* of the
> ideas
> > they espouse/defend/attack/decry/whatever. We don't want a whole society
> > made up of such people, but I guess I think they're good to have around.
> >
> > that's kind of off the cuff, so probably needs adjustment or I might even
> > abandon it altogether, but it's what occurs to me.
>
> Twentieth-century "Conservatives" are a pretty sad lot, and t hey seem
> unable to formulate the actual foundations of conservatism -- or if they
> do, not many leftists pick up on it.
>
> The Greks had a proverb: "Best is not to be born; next best is to go
> hence quickly." If that (or something like it) is a person's fundamental
> conviction about what human society necessarily is, regardless of
> what kind of state, then the political possiton which most fits it has
> two parts: (1) The World isn't fair (I'm cheating here a bit by quoting
> Jimmy Carter) and (2) as unfair and horrible as the present political
> arrangements are, any channge would be unimaginably worse. As Eliot put
> it, "We fight not in the hope of victory but only in the hope ofkeeping
> something alive" (paraphrased from memory.
>
> Of course if an intellectual is him/herself caught up in the Bourgeois
> Myth of Progress, this argument becomes hard to formulate. But I suspect
> even when not argued it's in the conservative's mind.
>
> Note: I am arguing here that ad hominem arguments are a serious barrier
> to clear though even when applied to the defenders of an oppressive
> system. It sets leftists off on wild-goose chases after hidden motives.
> In fact regular or frequent use of ad hominems becomes a sor t of
> conspiracy theory of history. Assume conservatives really believe what
> they argue, and meet the arguments. Or beteter, ignore them and go to
> work organizing the part of the population that, at a given time, can be
> mobilized by leftists. That's what the abolitionists did -- and they so
> disrupted the political system and so freaked out the slavedrivers, that
> (a) LIncoln was elected and (b) the slaedrivers lost their heads and
> rebelled, forcing the North to put them down.
>
> Carrol
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>