Non-Revisionist wrote:

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Here's an anonymous quote to think about:

"If the Arabs (Moslems) put down their weapons today there would be no more violence. If the Israelis put down their weapons today there would be no more Israel."

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Lest we forget wrote:

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... Personally, I find it ironic that modern civilization may ultimately be destroyed as a result of conflicts between fanatical people who disagree about supernatural beings concocted thousands of years ago by imaginative nomads in barren deserts.  Just to make sure that I offend absolutely everyone, I will make clear that I include fanatical Christians in this indictment (and religious fanatics of any sort, such as fanatical Hindus).   

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off the plantation wrote:

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 Back to school, Geo! The Palestinian Arabs were run off their own land by the Israelis when Israel was founded in the late 40's, and then again when Israel took the Golan Heights, the West Bank area and the Gaza strip in wars in the 7 Days War and the Yom Kippur War in 1967 and 1971. In other words, the land on which the State of Israel was founded was owned and worked by Palestinians, for the most part. These Arabs had been there since the Crusades, at least, probably longer. Some of the Palestine was owned by Jews who immigrated there from Europe under the aegis of the Zionist movement in the c-19th, but not much.  By and large, the Palestine was owned and worked by the ancestors of the folks whom the Israelis displaced and dispossessed by force of arms after WWII.     

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The Arabs lost to Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip during wars they either started or (in the case of 1967) were about to start when they were pre-empted by the Israelis.  Smart going, guys! 

The Israelis had some claim to the territory under the terms of the Balfour declaration and British mandates, and Israel was recognized by the UN (one of your favorite organizations). 

I am NOT uncritical in my attitudes toward Israel, but please answer the questions I've posed earlier:

(1) Does Israel have a right to exist?

(2) If it does, how can that right be protected against all the Arabs who think it HAS no right to exist?

 

Lest we forget wrote:

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Atheist wrote: Hmm, I don't feel offended one bit, Lest We Forget.  What about me?   

Okay, Atheist, I'll offend you, too: fanatical atheists have wracked up perhaps the highest body count of innocent victims in the twentieth century, particularly in the atheistic Soviet Union, atheistic communist China, and atheistic Cambodia.  (We won't know about atheistic North Korea and Cuba until those regimes finally collapse.)  Its fanatics of ALL sorts who worry me.

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Lest We Forget wrote:

What is your alternative to free trade?  Socialism?  We tried that in the twentieth century, and it never seemed to work, and millions of people lost their lives thanks to the experiment.

LWF:

I appreciate your willingness to reply in depth. But all you've done is trot out the tired trick rhetorical ponies by which a world capitalist system that has galloped the globe to the brink of social, economic and environmental collapse has tried to appear moral, sane and rational. It's too bad that your arguments are by and large accepted by an American public so thoroughly mystified by the blatherings of corporate-controlled media whores that they'l never know what hit them when what one Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, calls "the great unravelling" comes to awful fruition.

I'll try to offer rebuttal, piecemeal, over the next week or so. Webmaster might opt for a separate thread, although I suspect that we will dwindle into silence with the renewed onset of teaching duties on Monday.

For today though, let me offer a brief answer to your question about so-called "free trade." This is an answer that has been circulating in progressive circles for abour ten years: what is hyped as "free trade" should be called "unfair trade." Alfred Steiglitz's "Globalization and Its Discontents" (Steiglitz won the Nobel and was president of the World Bank) is useful in understanding the charade. The alternative, "free trade," is being theorized and advanced  by the so-called "anti-globalization" movement, which should really be called the "global economic justice movement", but isn't because the media's one great corporate shill.

Anyhow, what "free traders" really want is do away with any and all market and import protections of developing world nations, and this despite the fact that developed nations, especially the USA, would not have become developed if they had been forced to drop their own market and trade protections when world capitalism was in its ascendent phase. By holding the carrot and stick of IMF and World Bank development loans in front of the leadership caste in those developing nations, proponents of what Steiglitz calls "the Washington Consensus" have been able to force developing nations to do away with even the minimal social welfare programs they had in place, putting large percentages of their populations at risk of malnutrition, disease, ignorance and despair. A worderful example of this was in Bolivia recently, where a plan to privatize the water supply--it was sold to Haliburton--left the residents of the second largest city in the country, Cochabamba, with a choice between paying vastly inflated water bills and buying food, a most impalatable choice. The resulting civil unrest contributed greatly to the election of a leftist anti-globalization president who wants to tax foreign corporations and control Bolivia's natural gas and other resources for Bolivia's benefit. Programs such as municipal water works, the free traders contend, interfere with a country's ability to pay back development loans. Hence, "fiscal austerity" in the developing world has become a byword for improverishment and corruption, the last because the leadership caste has a disconcerting tendency to skim and bank the profits abroad. Eventually things'll get bad enough that campesinos and fellahin will either elect a populist who is hostile towards and suspicious of the Washington consensus, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Or they, the fellahin and campesinos, will take up the traditional weapons of the dispossessed: terror and guerilla war. Then, the USA will send troops, and things will get worse, a common pattern in Latin America.

"Free trade" agreements, such as, for instance, NAFTA, also force developing nations to open their domestic agricultural markets to foreign foodstuffs that are so much cheaper than domestic products that domestic farmers cannot compete and are forced out of existence. In the case of NAFTA, most of these dispossessed farmers go  . . . North and become part of what neo-cons dub, "the immigration crisis," but which is really folks migrating from areas impoverished by the world economic system to places where the wealth has crystallized. This movement from impoverished countryside to wealth-bloated metropolitan center has been going full blast, for instance, in Africa, Asia and Mexico, for 50 years, usually because of the destruction of traditional agriculture and foodways by global trade and market policies that enrich investors and corporations in the global north.

After "free trade" has destroyed the way of life of rural small farmers, it likes to take aim at the urban middle class in the same countires. It does this by forcing their governments to open the domestic stock and commodities exchanges and currencies of these countries to unrestricted international speculation. Again, the carrot and stick is applied: let us play with your stock and currency the IMF threatens, or we won't fund your attempts at "development" ("development" being a code word for opportunities for graft and profiteering by the leadership caste). Currency and market speculation schemes nearly destroyed the economies of Thailand and Argentina in the 90's. In Buenos Aires formerly well-off doctors, lawyers and teachers found themselves forced to rummage through municipal rubbish heaps to supplement salaries that whose earning power had been destroyed by hyper-inflation of 2000 percent. The economies LWF cited as success stories, notably Malaysia and Singapore, avoided the crash of the so-called "Asian Tigers" by actually refusing to play ball with IMF-dictated market, banking and currency "reforms." In other words, they were able to protect their economic wellbeing by saying "no" to supposed "free trade."

What I am proposing LWF ,ole buddy, is that it might actually be in our best interest in do more to control the golden egg-laying goose of global capitalism. Currently its crap is waist deep all over the barnyard of the developing world. Does a little bit of restraint mean we' ll need to dress in Mao suits and quote "The Chairman" before each and every public utterance? No, the only folks who'll raise the spectre of world Stalinism every time someone criticizes the golden goose are out of touch with reality and clinging ferociously to an economic system and an ideology, those of laissez faire capitalism, that have become bloated, corrupt, destructive, and inhumane.

Also, I'm sick and tired of hearing about the excesses of world socialism without any mention of the excesses of world capitalism. Capitalist policies in post-independence India killed as many, or more, people through starvation as Chairman Mao did in China, and the number of deaths in the twin founding moments of the capitalist order--the European enclosures and the Middle Passage--is every bit as mind boggling as anything Stalin did. Just because communist sh*t stinks to high heaven doesn't mean that capitalism's sh*t don't stink that high too.  What, you don't think capitalism is a bloody, destructive, violent "experiement" too? Geeeez . . . such arrogance boggles the mind, LWF, boggles it.

LVN wrote:

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1. Yes, please do start another thread if you intend to go on with this for another week.

2. Who elected you folks as "progressive" -- I see this more and more in the liberal media. Suddenly you all are progressive, which of course makes everyone who disagrees with you not progressive. Who gets to define "progress" when it comes to that?

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Voter wrote:

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 I had drafted an extensive rebuttal to another of Cossack's "straw man" pronouncements (after, and in addition to, the one above), and it was lost in the ether. Guess I'll have to start saving my lengthier posts in Word first--it's pretty tedious to reconstruct a good rant.

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If it's any consolation, the same thing happened to me yesterday: I was well into a lengthy reply when the power died!

I'm enjoying this thread because I always enjoy rational debate, and the debate here has been relatively rational and substantial.  Anyone who doesn't want to read doesn't have to.

My main purposes in continuing the debate are three: (1) to show that not all academics are leftists; (2) to show that leftist arguments are not invulnerable to intelligent criticism; and (3), most important, to show that not all opponents of SFT are leftists.  I suspect that the ONE thing every contributor to this thread agrees about is that SFT must go, and the sooner the better.

Maybe we could get SFT appointed as middle east peace negotiator.  I suspect we'd have Armaggedon in no time, and then all our other problems would seem miniscule by comparison.

I don't have time right now to even begin to reply to OTP's latest post, but I promise to reply later.  Meanwhile, OTP, can you point to ONE country in the world today (or in the past) that has/had an economic system you admire?  Knowing that fact will help me respond in something other than abstractions.

(BTW, LVN liberals shy away from that term because they know that the actual results of liberalism have left a very bad taste in the mouths of many.  "Progressive" is the current fall-back term; once it gets tainted, they will move on to something else.)

Lest we Forget wrote:

(BTW, LVN liberals shy away from that term because they know that the actual results of liberalism have left a very bad taste in the mouths of many.  "Progressive" is the current fall-back term; once it gets tainted, they will move on to something else)

Alright, look, progressivism is not the same thing as liberalism, and never has been.  Anyone who knows American political history knows that.  For example, progressivism first appears in the United States at the turn of the century, with Teddy Roosevelt and Taft, the trust busters, both of whom were influenced heavily by (get this) the Progressive Party .  All that progressivism really is is an attempt by leftist thinkers to reign in the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism, and to restore some balance to American economics.  Liberalism is a policy which is just left enough of center that it's noticeable, and is, in fact, more recent than progressivism, as it only begins at the late end of the 20th century.  So, my question is this: How can a group of people switch to a new name that is actually more than 50 years older than their current name, attempting to hide from the criticism it has attracted?  Hey, maybe leftists will start to identify themselves as Federalists soon after, to escape the meaning of progressivism.

Voter wrote:

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Whoa, LWF, you don't think that the actions of the current incarnation of self-proclaimed "conservatives" (I prefer the term "fascists") has left a really rancid taste in millions of people's mouths--here and abroad? Check out the polls. I don't shy from anything except letting my opponents define my position for me. You want to know what I think, continue reading--but don't label me anything (oh, well, vehemently anti-Bush is OK).

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The American people are understandably frustrated with the Bush administration's mistakes in pursuing its Iraq policy.  They were in favor of the policy itself (there was no broad opposition to the idea of going to war).  People are frustrated that the war has not been prosecuted well; they are not (as I suspect you ARE) anti-war (i.e., opposed to wars in which America prevails) in principle.

As for the reaction of the American people to conservatism vs. liberalism in general: since 1970, there have been 5 Republican presidents and only 2 Democrats, and both of the Democrats had to run as moderates in order to get elected.  Both houses of Congress are presently in Republican hands, have been for a decade, and may even remain so after November.  Fox News channel is the most popular among people who can choose a a news channel to watch.  Etc. etc, etc.

In order for Americans to see the failures of liberalism, they have only to look at their school systems, their prisons, their large cities, their borders, their bureaucracies, and (since it is April 15), their tax bills.  One reason that the rhetoric of "progressives" can afford to be so shrill is that they are really only talking to themselves and subconsciously realize that they have little hope of persuading many others. 

oldCBAer wrote:

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One difficulty in dealing with your ramblings is that you constantly remind us that the current system is far from perfect, which we can all agree on.  But when you occasionally venture to provide a specific policy recommendation, we get something like your conclusion that the U.S and Israel are in the same boat as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Belarus in needing to clean up abuse of domestic police power.  How can you possibly ask anyone to take you seriously when you make such pronouncements?

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OldCBAer,

I think you're right on target here.  Liberals, progressives, leftists (whatever they choose to call themselves) love to criticize capitalism, but they are rarely willing to point to a society or system THAT ACTUALLY EXISTS OR HAS EVER EXISTED that they think is better.  Instead, they compare capitalism to abstract ideals of perfection.  I am perfectly willing to compare the US to the Soviet Union and find the former superior (oops - can't do that any more because the Soviet Union collapsed).  I am perfectly willing to compare Great Britain to Communist China and find the former superior (oops - can't really do that any more, either, because the ChiComs are abandoning ChiCom economics).  In pursuit of Utopian schemes of perfection, leftists have given us the wonders of Lenin and Stalin, the splendors or Mao, the pleasures of the Khmer Rouge or Shining Path, etc. etc., etc.

Just imagine where Africa might be today if it had not bought into socialism back in the late 50s and early 60s.  Look at where India IS today once now that it is getting over its flirtation with socialism.  Imagine how the history of Russia might have been different if the Russians had not had a utopian system imposed on them.  Ditto the history of China.  Ditto the history of Mexico.  Socialism sounds good in theory, and it certainly makes socialist intellectuals feel virtuous, but when it is put into practice it usually brings misery to the very people it is supposed to benefit.  That's why they're often willing to get into little boats (or cross dangerous deserts) to flee to Grand Central Satan, the US.  It's also why very few socialist intellectuals actually ever emigrate to the lands of their dreams (all aboard to Havana!).

LVN wrote:

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Here is an interesting quotation from "my man" C.S. Lewis. Lest anyone think all we conservative Christians are lying awake at night planning how to install a theocracy: "I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber barron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme -- whose highest claim is to reasonable prudence -- the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication." This quotation has a cautionary purpose for us, as well as implications for dealing with Islamic fundamentalism (a belief system over which we will never "win" a victory -- their changes must come from inside their own walls.)

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Thanks, LVN.  I wish all religious people were as sane as you.  Many are; some are not; it's the latter I fear.  It wasn't too long ago that Catholics and Protestants were at each other's throats.  In fact, in a town near where I live, a handful of Protestants routinely picket outside the local Catholic church, and in the town in which I do live, anti-Catholic pamphlets are often distributed from house to house.  I do not claim that this kind of behavior is typical today, but there was a time not too long ago when Protestants and Catholics disliked each other almost as much as do Shiites and Sunnis.  I have had sincere discussions with very kind-hearted Protestant friends of mine who are convinced that Catholics are going to hell.  (For the record, I am not a Catholic.)  Some of them (the Calvinists) also think that most of their fellow Prostestants are going to hell.  (And, of course, it goes without saying that the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, and agnostics don't at all have a pleasant fate to look forward to.)

Meanwhile, how likely do you think it is that Islam will moderate "from within" anytime soon?  What forces are likely to lead to such moderation?  My guess is that if such moderation is ever to occur, it will occur as Islamic countries become prosperous and come into the modern age, just as Christianity became more tolerant and moderate in the wake of the enlightenment and the economic progress of the last two hundred years. 

In the meantime, I am distrustful of fanatics of all sorts.  And I think you'll have to admit that there are some fairly powerful Christians who might reasonably be described as fanatical (as is true of any sect).  They're the folks who make me nervous, not people like you or C.S. Lewis.

LVN wrote:

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 The mistake that my co-religionists make, and I see it made on the left as well as on the right, is to think that we can actually bring the kingdom of God to earth OURSELVES, by our actions.

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