The fatuity of the article and the concept it represents is so great I find it hard to believe that any women desire it to be extended to their kind.

Folktruther, October 20 at 9:57 pm

Damned with faint praise, huh? I , in turn, admire your seeming unconcern with your image.

Thank you, ardee.  I hyave always greatly admired your speling.

Folktruther, October 19 at 10:57 pm #

“Great women are all very well, NYcartist,”

Nitpicking, a game for the whole family

Its NYCartist..get it? For want of a nail the shoe was lost….I do believe that she makes a very valid point and those who believe sexism dead and buried are as wrong as those who believe racism the same.

Great women are all very well, NYcartist, along with Great men, but have you forgotten Great children?  Have you no respect for the baby Jesus?  Or, if you live in south Asia, the child-god Krisna with his michivious ways charms the mothers there.  Joan of Arc might qualify as an adolescent, even if a bit dingy.

And I resent the implication that we are all piggish.  I happen to have been an especially adorable child myself according to my grandmother, who use to go on and on about my childish exploits.  She always use to shake her head sadly to see what I had turned into.

Martha is quite right that political values and strategies should be taught to children in school, should we ever evolve a civlized society, instead of that bullshit called civics, history and social theory currently polluting the minds of the young.  But one can only change Education constructively by first changing the power system that sponsors and subsidizes it.

While you are ignoring the GREAT WOMEN of the world, who are cleaning up all the messes, while fighting to get equality.  Where women have run governments (with some exceptions), women have done well, viz Norway’s Labor gov’t in the 90s.
    OINK OINK OINK

bogi666, October 18 at 12:55pm,

bogi666: “scum rises to the top, even the top of cream.”

MarthaA’s answer:  That is very correct, if one doesn’t keep a close watch and protect the cream the scum will take over, which is exactly the same with our republic’s democratic government, if the people as a whole do not keep a close watch, the scum corrupts the government and a corrupt aristocracy takes over, which is what has happened.

But the corruption of the U.S. government has been a deceitful Right-Wing Conservative Republican Plan that went into full force in 1980, but seeds were being planted prior to 1980 setting up our school system against liberals—I can remember when I was a child in school hearing propaganda against Democrats, as if it was a disgrace to be a Democrat——and everyone in the school was a member of the Common Population.

I really feel the truth of politics should be taught in schools as required subjects before a child gets out of Grade School, by both Conservative Republican Party operatives and Liberal Democratic Party operatives in separate classes, Republican Party in 11th Grade and Democratic Party in the 12th Grade, so that the Common Majority will never ever again be so stupid about politics as to allow the Conservative Right to walk off with democracy.

Folktruther:
’... But I am pleasured by his intelligence, except about conspiracies.  think what he would be like if college hadn’t destroy much of his brain cells.’

Don’t make too many assumptions about my education.  I know Shenonymous insisted I had to have a doctorate to write a sentence containing a subjunctive, but in fact working-class Spanish-speakers with third-grade educations can do it standing on their heads.  As for conspiracies, I feel that their quality has gone down in recent years.  Look at the number and baroque profusion of theories about the assassinations of the Kennedys and compare that with what you get today.  I don’t see anyone bringing in the Mafia, the KGB, and the Knights Templar to 9/11.  Simultaneously.

Folktruther, October 19 at 12:09 am

Two points, if I may.

That you note yourself a post Marxist will require more definition, I will search the web for another claiming such distinction. If you , as a Marxists of any status or degree, have common ground with an anarchist then perhaps you are more post than Marxist.

Second, I applaud your very first post with no misspellings within it, a real pleasure and surprise. Have you found a spell checker?

Ardee, Anarcissie and I come from different traditions, he being an anarchist and I a post marxist.  but we seem to be heading in the same direction, although I for one don’t know what they would eventually be.  I can’t give his view exactly but he appears to emphasize that all authority is bad and I consider some worse than others.  Maybe he does too, but we both oppose class-based oppression which all states embody.

It’s a good question, our differences, but I don’t exactly know the answer.  But I am pleasured by his intelligence, except about conspiracies.  think what he would be like if college hadn’t destroy much of his brain cells.

I would prefer a government of by and for the people.

Does anyone really believe that’s what we have now?

How government functions really depends on where you are on the economic ladder, starting with a police state for those on the bottom, and moving up to a Monarchy at the top. 

The middle class pays for all of it.

Folktruther, scum rises to the top, even the top of cream. I offer Wall St., and Wash., DC as examples.

Folktruther, October 17 at 8:51 pm

Did you find that baby?

My comments were directed at those who wish to kill all governments, specifically Anarcissie. Never did I claim an innocence or give a pass to the corruption of our current system, only pointed out that much good is accomplished by, and much necessity exists for a continuation of governments, however in need of reformation they might be.

Do you yourself think, as does our resident anarchist, that government is unnecessary?

Ardee says:

  ‘“Every day, across this land of ours, and lands everywhere else in fact, decisions are made by governments, whether local, state or national, that help the citizenry. They pave roads, keep libraries , schools, fire depts., etc. all open and operating.”

And everyday, in this land or ours,  the government gives the tax payers’ money to the bankers to increase class inequality in the US.  And everyday,in this land of ours, the governement engages in wars and violence to divert attention from this inequality, and everyday sends out the police to maintain it.

and everyday, in this land of ours, the media established with the collusion of the governemt, lies about the inequality and violence, in both the Prog and Con media.  Deluding the American people that the state serves their intersts rather than those of the rich and pwoerful.  In this land owned by the rich which you claim is Ours.

“I suppose that’s why we’re not allowed to criticize the government and the ruling class in pulbic forums like this one.”

Actually, the operative word is allowed, and when you think about it, it means that the government has succeeded in convincing most people that their rights, are ones allowed by government, instead of inalienable rights as specified in the Constitution, remember that.

And yes, for the moment criticism is allowed because they know nothing will change by it, it’s when that same criticism becomes action, then it won’t be allowed anymore. That’s even the case now.

Even voting is allowed, because there is awareness that nothing will change except the words being spoken and who speaks them.

The slaughter of the innocent is a mere thread?

In the matter of the state, of government, it is true humans are often evil in the sense of doing harm to themselves and one another.  However, this in itself is not an argument for government because the very humans who want to do evil will be attracted to the machinery of government in order to amplify their powers for evil-doing.  This is not merely theory: it is what we observe.

Hanging by a thread must be uncomfortable, Ms. Anarcissie.

Every day, across this land of ours, and lands everywhere else in fact, decisions are made by governments, whether local, state or national, that help the citizenry. They pave roads, keep libraries , schools, fire depts., etc. all open and operating.

Let us certainly not speak of the myriad of those decisions…...only of the inherent evil of all govts. In fact you seem to be gravitating towards the inherent evil of all peoples. How then to protect one from the other without such govt? I simply cannot converse in such fashion, sorry. You have an inalienable right to your opinion, but not to a carefully chosen omission of much of the truth. You are smart, you are erudite and you are wrong.

I do still enjoy your replies and discourses by the by, disagreement with opinion is not dislike of the person holding those opinions. Well, sometimes, but not this time

G.Anderson:
‘Actually no, in the United States there is only an illusion of freedom, and an illusion of rights. An illusion of government by the people, and an illusion that someone’s votes really matter. An illusion that elected officials can do something about the ills of society.

Instead what we have in actual fact is a vast gulag of oppression in which there are no rights, and no recourse for people whose’s rights, exist in name only.  ...’

I suppose that’s why we’re not allowed to criticize the government and the ruling class in pulbic forums like this one.

Actually no, in the United States there is only an illusion of freedom, and an illusion of rights. An illusion of government by the people, and an illusion that someone’s votes really matter. An illusion that elected officials can do something about the ills of society. 

Instead what we have in actual fact is a vast gulag of oppression in which there are no rights, and no recourse for people whose’s rights, exist in name only.

Like an Orwellian nightmare, the gulag exists through the vast adminstrative law structure of the IRS, State Tax Departments, Department of Education, Family Law Courts, Child support enforcement, FDA, USDA, and on down the line.

Governmental agencies in which persectution of the individual is the goal, through intimidation. And where secrecy and deception are a daily course of action. Where legal rights are vague at best, and legal redress is practically non existant. Where arcane laws and regulations are formulated without oversight, and whose processes are unavailble and ill understood even by elected government officals.

Where lifetimes are spent, by citizens of this country, defending themselves against adminstrative persecution, and endless adminstration interrogation. 

Yet adminstrative orgainzations are the fastest growning apparatus of government, one that people are most likely to come in contact with, that have the most effect on their daily lives. 

We are a country that will never allow the birth of great people, only millions of Joseph K’s.

ardee—I am sorry the article proved tedious for you.  Often, when people use certain words, I don’t know what they’re talking about: the concepts the word represents seem amorphous and fluid, and sometimes self-contradictory.  So I try to find out what they mean by analyzing the word.  Nation is one of these.

In the matter of the state, of government, it is true humans are often evil in the sense of doing harm to themselves and one another.  However, this in itself is not an argument for government because the very humans who want to do evil will be attracted to the machinery of government in order to amplify their powers for evil-doing.  This is not merely theory: it is what we observe.

The classical liberals thought that they could set up a paradoxical version of the state in which the government operated against itself and limited its own power to do evil, so that on the one hand they could enjoy the advantages of a state (defense of their property, including slaves, acquisition of new territories, and so on) without greatly endangering their lives and freedom.  But the government has now burst the bonds which they set for it, and, sure enough, the people who run it are busy accomplishing the expanded evils which their expanded powers now permit.  The liberal, democratic United States has become an aggressive imperial power with monarchical domestic politics.  It maintains a worldwide system of hundreds of military bases and since World War 2 it has attacked more than 30 other states.  Most of the time the people are deluded (by deliberate fraud) into believing there is no alternative; when by chance they awaken and vote for change they get more of the same.

It seems to me your view is more utopian than mine.

I clicked on the link you provided, Anarcissie and actually waded through several paragraphs before slipping into a coma.

I thought the discussion involved the necessity ( or not) of a system of governance to make a state successful.

I abhor the canceling of this guys talk in Canada, for two reasons actually; first free speech of course and ,second, the audience might have had a quite refreshing nap.

To think all nations an evolutionary dead end leaves one with a puzzle as to how we govern ourselves, and heaven knows we need governance. I find it quite impractical to believe that we can live together,
U.S.
307,717,673
World
6,791,063,043

sans any form of govt. I guess you hold a more utopian view than do I.

ardee, October 16 at 10:06pm,

Blah.

ardee:
‘Anarcissie, October 16 at 2:06 pm

We certainly will have no meeting of the minds on this. Your referral to the cultural inequities of the time are not relevent, in my opinion, to the discussion of what our founders wrought. They lived when they did, their mores were what they were, and their interests were far from selfish, in my opinion.

I see no way to have a nation without having a government, unless you see some survival of the fittest scenario from a Hollywood science fiction epic as reality. Thus my words and thoughts run to how to make a government subservient to the needs of all the citizens of that nation.’

How can the cultural context of the writing of our civic scriptures not be relevant to our reading of them?

I don’t know what you mean by “nation” here—the idea of nation as the word is usually used seems to me like a rather maleficent transformation of the idea of race or tribe, yet another mythical entity in whose name we are allowed to kill people.  The 20th century showed how good it was at doing that.  Different people mean different things at different times, however.

Sort of à propos, there is an interesting article in Counterpunch (http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann10142009.html) involving the idea of the nation as it applies of Israel and Palestine.  The author may think of the idea of nation as I do; or not.  In any case, he doesn’t like it much.

I applaud the post of Thomas , not for its content of course, but for the simple fact that,  for once, it contains no bold, no italics, no caps…hooray!

Folktruther, October 16 at 4:34pm,

You are making observations that have no constructive element.

What is the purpose of observing that you have a thorn in your foot if all you can do is make the observation that there is a thorn in your foot, and cite a litany of others that talk about the reasons you have a thorn in your foot; all of this citation serves no purpose unless you or someone else takes the initiative to remove the thorn and eliminate the problem.

Congressman Alan Grayson is proposing and leading toward actions that will eliminate the thorn in the Democratic Party that is representation of narrow corporate interests at the expense of the masses of the Common Population of the United States.

Follow Congressman Alan Grayson’s lead and understand that posting long rambling reflective observations like Shenonymous that have no form and substance with regard to concrete action and solutions is counterproductive.

Congressman Alan Grayson has risen to the top as a leader in the Democratic Party, and he is proposing solutions with form and substance, rather than amorphous nonsense; this type of leadership is sorely needed in the Democratic Party and hopefully Congressman Alan Grayson is the first of legions that will arise and reform the Democratic Party.

Congressman Alan Grayson and PCCC Delivering Petition to Harry Reid
http://www.actblue.com/page/reidaccountable?refcode=f-bcn

“Like cream in milk, Great Men and Great Women rise to the top——you do not have to search for them.”

I fear, Martha, this puts you on the road to-dare I say it?- Great Person EXTREMISM.

The reason that governments have been coercive historically, Ardee, is because they are controlled by the rich and pwoerful.  The ruling class.  They establish power strutures that maintain class inequality.  this can only be done by violence.  And and the simple truth and rationality is the first victim of violence.  Untill classes are superceded, states will be the instrument of inequlity, violence and irrationality.

Anarcissie, October 16 at 2:06 pm

We certainly will have no meeting of the minds on this. Your referral to the cultural inequities of the time are not relevent, in my opinion, to the discussion of what our founders wrought. They lived when they did, their mores were what they were, and their interests were far from selfish, in my opinion.

I see no way to have a nation without having a government, unless you see some survival of the fittest scenario from a Hollywood science fiction epic as reality. Thus my words and thoughts run to how to make a government subservient to the needs of all the citizens of that nation.

The rest is not really applicable.

ardee:
‘You say that govt is subject to logic, I say look around. Is it logical to read the Constitution and the Federlaist Papers, understand the reasoning of our founders, and then note the self serving votes of our elected representatives?

It would only be logical to one who posits the uselessness of govt. in the first place, a belief I must reject as one who has read both items referenced above. My logic tells me we can change govt to better serve us all.’

The Constitution was written in a context of imperialism, racism, genocide and slavery.  Since these things were assumed, they didn’t have to be named.  If they were made explicit instead of implicit, you might not like it so much.

More generally, the basis of government is forcible coercion, of which the aforesaid imperialism and so forth are aspects or modes.  You can hope all you like, but you can’t get coercion out of government because that is its essential function.  And because coercion is its function, it must use the tools of coercion: murder, terror, torture, imprisonment, fraud and many other forms of harm.  I think many of the writers of the Constitution understood this, hence were supposedly convinced that government was a necessary evil which had to be used with great caution and circumspection.  Their view is now consigned to the fringes as wacko libertarianism.  There have been a number of articles and messages on this very supposedly leftist web site celebrating the intrinsic goodness of large, powerful government, even while that same government was busy slaughtering and terrorizing innocent people around the world.  The cautious illogicality of classical liberalism has been superseded by the headlong illogicality of modern liberalism.

The writers of the Constitution labored to construct a government they thought could be kept under control for the benefit at least of White men of property.  However, the inexorable degeneration of the United States, and many other republics, into monarchy, imperialism and habitual war is evidence for me that the evil cannot be contained and a better, more radical solution must be sought.

It also has a moral dimension, as do my other forms of activism: I could not look at the world around me and do nothing.

But Anarcissie, there are worse things than doing nothing. Sowing the seeds of hopelessness for example.

You say that govt is subject to logic, I say look around. Is it logical to read the Constitution and the Federlaist Papers, understand the reasoning of our founders, and then note the self serving votes of our elected representatives?

It would only be logical to one who posits the uselessness of govt. in the first place, a belief I must reject as one who has read both items referenced above. My logic tells me we can change govt to better serve us all.

Like cream in milk, Great Men and Great Women rise to the top——you do not have to search for them.

ok, this needs saying:

“In search of Great Men”??

How about Great women?

All it takes is enough people (men or women) to speak truth to power.

ardee:
’... I shudder at this view of the possible. Govt is made by men, it is not doomed to always be as dark and pessimistic as cited. That it is currently as noted is not to say it must perforce always be so, not if we the people stand up and force change.

I fail to see why such a belief would merit participation in a political forum? What is the use of such a dark view of the lack of change for the better?’

Government may be made by men, but it is still subject to logic.  At the base of the idea of government, the idea of the state, is the practice of coercion, of war and repression.  That is what the state is for.  Everything the government does rests on that basis, and is permeated by it, and that is why history is what it is—“little more than the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind”. as Gibbon put it, the “nightmare from which [we are] trying to awake.”

My purpose in participating in a political forum is primarily to put subversive thoughts into other people’s minds, although I also like arguing with people about them, since this is both entertaining and instructive.  And sharpens the aforesaid subversion.  It also has a moral dimension, as do my other forms of activism: I could not look at the world around me and do nothing.

Anarcissie, October 15 at 11:10 am #

Survival of the fittest is what you have now.

......Not at all. What you have is survival of the richest. Is that your definition of fit?

You can’t “take back” the government because of its intrinsically coercive nature.  It will always be the locus of a struggle for the power of some over others because that is its purpose.  If you could get a strong political movement going, though, you could weaken it to the point where it was not able to create traditional corporations and other instruments for the rich any more.  That might be something of an improvement.

I shudder at this view of the possible. Govt is made by men, it is not doomed to always be as dark and pessimistic as cited. That it is currently as noted is not to say it must perforce always be so, not if we the people stand up and force change.

I fail to see why such a belief would merit participation in a political forum? What is the use of such a dark view of the lack of change for the better?

Even if they could be recognized, as children every effort would be made to crush them, to “normalize them” to put them on psychoropic medications, until they were indistinguishable from the peers.

If that failed they would be locked up, so that society would be safe from them, they would be diagnosed as anti social.

Society would attempt to replace everything beautiful in them with what is ugly in us, our predjucide, and supersition, egotism and irrationality.

Isn’t that what we aleady to to children now to make them, “fit in”?

No, there is nothing more threatening to the ordinary world, than someone who really is extraordinary.

A nice summation Yours truly of the future for humanity. We could still get a Calvanist inspired fascist dictatorship here too. Won’t that be nice for a future?

It must be pointed out that“we the people” were all the nordic males who owned land and that was all. Everyone else was left out originally. But more liberal minds saw that needed to be rectified and it has after a fashion.

We’ll see if Obama is a man of peace or war then the peace of the mass dead. I think the latter myself just from his actions to this time.

We must all step up to the plate not just one “great man or woman” will do it. Many are doing it now on their own and damn any gov’t interference.

All corporations that are found not to be aiding in the public good need to be disbanded now. Their assets seized. But not in my lifetime if in 100 years.

I gree with anarcissie.  government and corporations are part of the same power system. The owners, or more procisely controllers of the corporations, control the government.  They are the ruling class and copperate with each other against the vast majority of the population.  they establish a power structure and this plutocarcy makes the crucial power decisions idsguse by the political theater of meaningless, constrained and rigged elections.

Survival of the fittest is what you have now.

As for my remark about corporations, which seems to have gotten a couple of people excited, I’m simply stating the facts.  Corporations do not exist in nature; they are set up by governments in order to service the political and business interests of those who own and operate them.  And why do you think governments are so eager to service those interests?

I felt was my duty to recite these obvious facts because it seemed that someone was under the impression that governments and corporations in some sort of opposition.  They are not in opposition: they are two parts of the same thing, the state, and they are under the control of the same kind of people, in fact, often the same identical people.

If what I point out was not the case, corporations would not be set up as they are and would not do what they do.  That someone sometime made up public-service pretexts for them is irrelevant.

You can’t “take back” the government because of its intrinsically coercive nature.  It will always be the locus of a struggle for the power of some over others because that is its purpose.  If you could get a strong political movement going, though, you could weaken it to the point where it was not able to create traditional corporations and other instruments for the rich any more.  That might be something of an improvement.

Without governments, there wouldn’t be any corporations.  Corporations are created by government.  Their power should give you an idea of who operates the government.

An obviously Libertarian pessimistic view of the all-encompassing evil of govt., any govt anywhere. Corporations are licensed and ,supposedly, regulated by govt. in order to protect the public and the shareholders. If the govt fails in this duty, and this one of ours absolutely does fail,one must, as a thinking member of the nation, analyze the reasons for that failure. A blanket condemnation of govt is simply far too silly and fails the test of credibility.

We can fix this mess, and that fixing certainly does not include a libertarian wish to return to a ‘survival of the fittest’ culture.

Re: unregistered commenter, Jean Gerard.

“An opportunity was missed, sad to say.”

YE of little faith.  Where there’s smoke, there’s FIRE.  You must know this.  Why do you give in so easily.

“Without governments, there wouldn’t be any corporations.  Corporations are created by government.  Their power should give you an idea of who operates the government.”

Certainly you know better.  Business interests CORRUPTED the idea of TERM LIMIT CORPORATIONS, who initially did in fact work in the interests of the public.  Whoa… that’s simply too blantant.

http://www.thecorporation.com/

A leveling of the playing field, a leveling of the playing field is in order.  Certainly corporations and theirs are “up to it”...... are they not?  They should feel ashamed to be slammin’ around grammas and using public servants as corporate goon squads.  Tsk, tsk…. certainly we are all made of flesh and blood, however why IS IT THEIR GOON SQUADS only fight at this level…  There’s a reason…. there’s a reason….

So hard to get good help these days…. ainna?

Re: G.Anderson

Your comment: “When he or she comes, it will be impossible for the world to recognize them. More than likely if they did they would want to kill them, rather than see themselves in his or her reflection.”

I disagree, in fact the awarding of the Peace Prize to President Obama not only recognizes that but VALIDATES that the people know….. the people know.  I don’t know about your “kill them” premise,  I see absolutely no reason that the people would want to “kill them”.

Am I misunderstanding you… it sounds to me as if you are claiming that if the people of the world (this includes all—the U.S. included) saw in a person a bond, or a connection… that they would want to “kill them”.

This makes no logical sense and frankly, sounds like a threat.  NO, the people do not “want to kill them”, that would certainly be the work of those OUTSIDE of the wishes of the people.

Not really, the world doesn’t seek any great men or women. It’s too busy looking at the present with the eyes of the past, the world will not be able to recognize any such person.

When he or she comes, it will be impossible for the world to recognize them. More than likely if they did they would want to kill them, rather than see themselves in his or her reflection.

Regression to the mean, that’s what herds always do.

Re: cmarcusparr

“His is a corporatist viewpoint.”

I agree, but of course he’s certainly not alone.  It seems to me that paid propagandists feel “alone time” is not all its cracked up to be.  They “have friends”.

cmarcusparr:
’...  It isn’t the government that you ought to fear, Mitchum22. Without your government, you wouldn’t have any freedoms except those deemed “commercially beneficial” by the trans-national corporations.’

Without governments, there wouldn’t be any corporations.  Corporations are created by government.  Their power should give you an idea of who operates the government.

An excellent take regarding the Nobel Prize and the President, Dr. Judith Rich @ Huffington Post, an excerpt:

“Let’s consider that President Obama is just the torch bearer, but we’re the ones who will do the heavy lifting of waging peace in the new paradigm. We’re being asked to learn how to actively wage peace, not just end wars. As Obama said, “Starting wars is easier than ending them”. And end them we must. But that’s not enough.

This is what President Obama is calling us to do. He’s talking not only to Americans. He’s speaking to the world. This is one reason why I think the world wanted to acknowledge him. It was their way of saying, “we hear you and we’re on board”.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-judith-rich/the-nobel-prize-a-tool-fo_b_316984.html

To envision a world with no leaders is fantasy.  No one complains when someone is a leader in say medicine or astronomy.  Suddenly though, if America actually gets a world leader of note…. we’re supposed to dash him to pieces…?  That’s stupidity.

For whatever reason (truthfully I can’t even begin to think how long that list might be), some seem to take everything to one extreme or the other.  Balance is the key, and we’re the ones who are going to have to make that happen.  It’s the only sane thing to do.  Justice, fairness, a level-playing field, at least “manageable” corruption…..etc.  Glaringly, the first place to start would be CONGRESS, specifically the senate.

Mitchum22 implies an anti-democratic (small “d”) bias by saying that we cannot trust “The People.” His is a corporatist viewpoint. He trusts in corporations, not the government by The People, to provide legitimacy of the individual, as though corporations have a positive track record in that regard.

Mitchum22 is expressing a view diametrically opposed to the U.S. Constitution.

The government is owned by the people. It is our last refuge of legitimacy. If there were no government of laws and regulations, U.S. citizens would become subjects to the marketplace, subjects to the financial, insurance, and manufacturing corporations.

Corporations have been legally declared to have the same Constitutional rights of individuals. Corporations are not people, and they shouldn’t have legal rights as individuals.

It isn’t the government that you ought to fear, Mitchum22. Without your government, you wouldn’t have any freedoms except those deemed “commercially beneficial” by the trans-national corporations.

Anyone who thinks we should trust “The People” to lead us out of our Big Dark should just read this thread.

It reminds me of Jimmy “The Barack Obama of the 1970s” Carter’s threat to create a government as “Kind and good and loving and honest as are the American people.”

EEEEEEEEEEEEKKKK!

“The world hungers for great men to liberate it from grief”…a fitting epitaph for a 19th century tombstone maybe, but in the here and now a hoary anachronism. Thomas Carlyle has long since fallen out of fashion despite the man’s undeniable personal merits. Yes, it’s true, so-called ‘great men’ “rarely arrive”, so there must be a little bit more to History than that, since it goes merrily on its way without them.  Heinous Henry Kissinger, in fact, was one of the last egomaniacs to believe in such ideas about himself, with disasterous results. Le Duc Tho, of course, was right to decline the award, since it wouldn’t even be appropriate to be in the same room with a war criminal like Kissinger. The Nobel is also a propaganda tool of western imperialism, as Tho must have known. “The Europeans know that they will soon be badly in need of a great man of their own”…it’s not clear which “Europeans” know this but presumably it’s the elites who generally tend to believe in their own greatness to begin with. No one knows what Geo. Washington would make of all this, so he’s perhaps better left to rest in peace, content in his own immortal place in the history books (at least as long as America is remembered). “Europe’s president will like to see himself, and be seen elsewhere, as the leader of Europe. But he will be seen by the European national presidents as their creature, elected to do their bidding”…which is exactly the point, to do the bidding of the powerful at the top of the food chain, and not only in Europe, since class interests stretch across national borders. So it’s perhaps redundant to state the obvious, that, “the great are hard to discern because the greatest of them do not act from ambition but from moral conviction, an infrequently encountered quality in political circles.” Grigory Yavlinsky’s claims, are a little more problematic, “…that both we and history must not forget that this one man, [Gorbachev] on his own initiative, asking no one’s permission or approval, freed some 400 million people from a system of oppression that had cast a shadow over the lives lived within this political system, and under its influence, for some 70 years.No one caused him to do this”….including himself. Gorbachev, as commendable as he may be, was originally intending to moderately reform the system, not overthrow it, and those modest reforms spun out of control because of agitation from below by many anonymous commoners.  “Many opposed him”…at the top… “fearing the consequences of what he was doing.” He may have done it “because of his conviction[s]”…but at the time, he had no idea of the eventual consequences. He could only serve as a catalyst for change, albeit an important one,  but ultimately it is the social context – and all the un-great little people – that must ratify it.

We don’t need to wait for a ‘great man or woman’ to lead us. Each of us can rise to occasion if put in the position.  I still have confidence in Americans ultimately doing the right thing.

From reading history, it’s not politicians, but statemen that step forward. Once America had a basket full of statemen, but now we only have politicians (both parties) who make a 4-decade career of not representing the people, but representing big government.

There is a perfect example in a recent book I just read (A Time To Stand by Oliver) where people, in a small Amerian town, stand up to government tyranny as the colonial Americans did. It’s a modern day version of what the colonists endured before decising to stand up.  It’s a good book to read.  There are 3 more years of more govt. domination over us.  The future is not pretty.  Just read it & see what makes great leaders from ‘insignificent Americans’.
http://www.booksbyoliver.com

Gibbon says of one of the Roman emperors:

  “Trajan was amibitious of fame, and as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.”

Of course in those days they didn’t have a Nobel Peace Prize to signify that war was peace.

TAO Walker, October 13 at 9:33 pm #

Great men will not save the U.S. The people that can
save the U.S. are not even aware they are the only ones
who can save the U.S. But then; it goes well beyond the
U.S. doesn’t it? It’s the very planet we’re speaking
of, yes? Of course.

One more!

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” (Psalm 146:3)

It’s well to remember what Lord Acton said—“Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.”

And Aldous Huxley said: “As long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, the Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable.”

To add to Ardee’s comment, “You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows” especially since “the pump don’t work cause the vandals took the handles” and now that the “men in the pig pen want 11 dollar bills and we only got 10”.

pikawicca:
‘Our president should pattern his behavior on that of Le Duc Tho?  You right wing maniacs are always good for a laugh.’

Le Duc Tho had the honesty to refuse the prize on the grounds that his work had not, in fact, brought peace to Vietnam, which at the time was only the truth.  What do you see as reprehensible in that?

“Dont follow leaders, watch the parking meters.”

Article comment:

“The Nobel Peace Prize given Barack Obama was a naive expression of that need for greatness.”

That comes across as extremely patronizing toward the Nobel Committee.  No, I don’t think they needed “direction” to figure it out. From the AP:

“In a rare public defense of a process normally shrouded in secrecy, four of the Nobel jury’s five judges spoke out Tuesday about a selection they said was both merited and unanimous.

To those who say a Nobel is too much too soon in Obama’s young presidency, “We simply disagree ... He got the prize for what he has done,” committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland”
*****

Article Quote: “The American president, actively engaged in perpetuating the great war against terror and the Taliban—Obama has naive dreams, too—should have had the insight to decline the award politely, as inappropriate,”

I disagree and say the shoe is on the other foot.  I think “others” should have politely shut up about it instead of spewing the mantra of the Taliban or whining that their choice didn’t win.

Pres. Obama is not so naive. He’s President of the U.S., isn’t he?  I understand that not everyone wants that job, but just the same not an easy position to attain.  He won the award for the reasons they said he won, and I agree with them.  Again, the AP:

“Jagland said that was never an issue for the Nobel committee, which followed the guidelines set forth by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite who established the prize in his 1895 will.

“I take note of it. My response is only the judgment of the committee, which was unanimous,” Jagland said.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5irLyPrFK_rtRwMOsfjRBFjGDVZCgD9BAFHMO0

I can’t believe the extent of the overraction, my god…  Gore won it, even before he did anything major which I guess is still forthcoming. I thought he was only medicore to win.  But hey, that’s the way it goes.

The United States has found a Great Man in President Barack Obama and the world through the Norwegians Nobel Peace Committee has recognized that fact.

The “hunger” for “great men” is in its essential nature exactly like a heroin addict’s craving for another ‘hit’ of his/her drug-of-choice.  It is an affliction exclusively specific to the half-lives of captive populations.  You won’t cath free wild Human Beings falling for that ages-old demi-divine schtick.

  William Pfaff’s argument here suffers from the common assumption that the unhappy ‘pass’ to which amerika (for just one example) has come today is reached somehow in-spite-of the actions of its “great men,” rather than precisely because of those actions.  That is a completely nonsensical proposition, on its face.

The self-destructive effects on the Living Arrangement of our Mother Earth, at the hands of six-plus billion “individuals” of the sub-species homo domesticus, are made orders-of-magnitude more virulent by the operations of the now “global” command-and-CONtrol apparatus. These can only become that much more “efficient” with the addition of an up-and-running-amok “U.S. of Europe” regime.

The terminal folly of the “civilized” peoples’ declared all-out war on the whole rest of the Living World is now revealing itself even to some of them.  Yet the only ‘remedy’ they can think of is more and more and more of the same institutionalized idiocy that served so perfectly to put them all into this toxic mess in-the-first-place.  Who’d o’ thunk “the crown of creation,” “the paragon of animals,” would be so close to coming to such an ignominious end….and seemingly so eager to get there?

Anyone for a truly viable alternative?

HokaHey!

Our president should pattern his behavior on that of Le Duc Tho?  You right wing maniacs are always good for a laugh.

I do not share FT’s opinion of Gorbachev but I do share the authors view that Obama would have been wiser to politely decline the Prize.

Though both came from humble backgrounds
(Gorbachev started out as an operator of farm equipment I believe) the one presided over the death of the USSR and the other over the increasing militancy of the USA and the continuation of the migration of the wealth to fewer and fewer.

I’m an idiot for reading this garbage.  Gorbachev was a WORSE political leader than Bush.  Bush merely led a regieme that severely damaged the US.  Gorbachev led a regime that destroyed the country.

It is true that the American powerful love him but he couldn’t be elected dogcatcher in Russia.