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i think i made my point clearly enough.
i delimited what i was referring to as a rhetoric that turns up over and over in the thread.
the attempt to invert the argument above is not interesting. that's all i have to say about it.
i didn't pick out individuals who use the rhetoric because i assume there is considerable variability in what folk understand it to mean or entail insofar as they are concerned---my point is that the rhetoric itself is problematic.
and i outlined why i think it is problematic.
do some research for yourself if you don't believe the claims i am making. it's easy enough.
if you find the argument discomforting, good. the position that legitimates that usage is a problem.
that's not to say that it isn't possible to be libertarian in outlook and not indulge this moralizing language--i just haven't seen any examples of it.
so sun tzu, your post above doesn't surprise me in that i assumed that variability up front---but i'm not sure i made this clear. in a sense, i didn't want to as the idea was to shake folk a bit into thinking about the words they use.
the bigger argument---which is an explanation of why it is that folk who operate from a more social-democratic perspective (as this is the extent of the "left" political spectrum that fits into this context, and which is potentially operative in the american context, even though it's well to the left of what obama is about, so far as i can tell)--and more conservative to anarcho-conservative (sorry) types can't seem to talk about the same thing.
move a bit outside your comfortable frame of reference if you want to discuss this--i'm up for it---but i'm less up for going around and around because there's no common ground to start from.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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