It is only a very superficial "contradiction" in any case. Of course leftists take advantage when useful of capitalist laws & institutions which they want to destroy.
Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Dennis Claxton Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2012 1:57 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Obama Speaks Out on Trayvon Martin Killing
On 3/23/2012 6:55 PM, martin schiller wrote:
>
> On Mar 23, 2012, at 6:42 PM, Joseph Catron wrote:
>
>> If one's resistance to the social order includes opposition to police
>> forces, criminal courts, and prison systems - not the presently-existing
>> ones, but the ideas themselves - complaining that they "missed one"
betrays
>> an obvious inconsistency of thought.
>
> Why 'betrays' and not 'reveals'?
What's inherently wrong with inconsistency of thought?
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) -- Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
http://jig.joelpomerantz.com/otherwriters/ginsberg.html
[excerpt from "The Puritan and The Profligate," an interview with Allen Ginsberg in the December issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture , published in Rockford, Illinois. The interview was conducted by John Lofton, a former columnist for The Washington Times.]
[...]
GINSBERG: Have you read Whitman?
LOFTON: Some.
GINSBERG. Do you remember the name of the poem you read?
LOFTON: Yes, one that says something like: "So I make mistakes. I contradict myself. So what? I contain all things," This is absurd. Talk about arrogance.
GINSBERG: Dig this.
LOFTON: I'm diggin' it.
GINSBERG: He says: "Do I contradict myself? Very well. I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes," Do you know what he meant by that?
LOFTON: Probably nothing good. And I doubt if he knew what he meant.
GINSBERG: Yeah, he did. I know what he meant.
LOFTON: How do you know what he meant?
GINSBERG: [laughs] Because I am large. I contain multitudes.
LOFTON. But you might contradict yourself.
GINSBERG: Yes. And I certainly will contradict myself.
LOFTON: This will be one of your multitudes the ability to contradict yourself.
GINSBERG: That's what Whitman is saying.
LOFTON: It's gibberish.
GINSBERG: That our own minds are so vast that we can wind up contradicting ourselves without having to freak out about it. It's very similar to what the poet John Keats said about negative capability. He said the quality of a very great poet like Shakespeare was his ability to contain opposite ideas in the mind without an irritable reaching out after fact and reason. Meaning that that part of the mind which judges, and irritably insists on either black or white, is only a small part of the mind. The larger mind observes the contradiction, and contains those contradictions. The mind that notices that it contradicts itself is bigger than the smaller mind that is taking one side or the other.
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