Here's what makes for left thought and action:
1. something is wrong with the world (call it injustice, inequality, oppression, exploitation - doesn't matter right now although I do agree with carrol that how you diagnose what's wrong and name it may actually reveal something about attitudes toward what follows ... Not sure what yet.)
2. what is wrong with the world is autonomous from, but not independent of, our thoughts about, our attitude toward, and our actions in the world
3. only people have the power to assess what's wrong with the world, diagnose the problem, and create and act projects to change the world
4. most people either do not see anything wrong with the world (these are our hard cases :) or, if they do, they misdiagnose the problem. this problem is generated by the mechanisms in #2 (i want to say, "and nothing else" which is too extreme.)
5. In order to change the world, only people can create accurate diagnoses of what's wrong with the world and convince the majority of people that these diagnoses adequately explain what's wrong with the world
of course, conservatives think something is wrong with the world too. i don't think they think of it as a problem generated by the system itself - though I suppose they see it as a problem generated by the polity. hence he love of the state. so maybe thisis allwashed up.
still.
for religious folks, conservative or progressive, none of this can alone be explained by people. forces such as god, the devil, the cosmos, karma, etc. also play a part. maybe a claim biased and infected by a westernized view of religion.
2. is bound to freak out two groups. poststructuralists who may see them as utterly separate. i don't know any of them, but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. will also freak out the inividualist activistists and radical ID politics adherents - e.g., radical feminism a la catherine mackinnon and andrea dworkin
3. may also freak out extreme poststructs b/c of the implied humanism in the language. don't know.
4 = the veil of ideology problem. it's crucial here that this veil is produced by the system. a religious person would say the veil is created by god to test ur or by our lack of faith, etc.
5. put this way so that we don't take diagnoses from god.. also likely to freak folks out because of its simplistic sounding empiricism. Ooo très Enlightenment Liberal!
anything else wrong with it?