[MD] "just right-wing politics"

[david buchanan]

Arlo, Platt, Khaled and y'all:

Arlo said:
The memo stated ""the American economic system" of business and free markets 
was "under broad attack" by "Communists, New Leftists and other 
revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system". The rise of Heritage 
Foundation, and other conservative funding agencies forming a core of four 
funding agencies, can be traced to the "research" used to villify and 
condemn the Academy (and "subversive professors" like Pirsig).

dmb says:
Pirsig describes this same reactionary attitude during the Roosevelt 
era..."In the U.S. the economic and social upheavel was not so great as in 
Europe, but Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, nevertheless, became the 
center of a lesser storm between social and intellectual forces. The New 
Deal was many things, but at the center of it all was the belief that 
intellectual planning by the government was necessary for society to regain 
its health. The New Deal was described as a program for farmers, laborers 
and poor people everywhere, but it was also a new deal for the intellectuals 
of America. Suddenly, for the first time, they were at the center of the 
planning process - these were people from a class that in the past could 
normally be hired for little more than laborers' wages. Now intellectuals 
were in a position to give order to America's finest and oldest and 
wealthiest social groups. 'That man', as the old aristocrats sometimes 
called Roosevelt, was turning the whole USA over to foreign radicals, 
'eggheads', 'Commies' and the like. He was a 'traitor to his class'. 
Suddenly, before the old Victorians' eyes, a whole new social caste, a caste 
of intellectual Brahmins, was being created ABOVE their own military and 
economic castes."

And, as Pirsig explains, this was part of a larger struggle in the Western 
world, one that was more deadly in Europe. These continuing 
anti-intellectual attacks are part of an evolutionary struggle. As Pirsig 
puts it, this conflict was "the theme song of the 20th century". And I don't 
see it ending any time soon..."Phaedrus thought that no other historical or 
political analysis explains the enormity of these forces as clearly as does 
the MOQ. The gigantic power of socialism and fascism, which have overwhelmed 
this century, is explained by a conflict of levels of evolution. This 
conflict explains the driving force behind Hitler not as an insane search 
for power but as an all-consuming glorification of social authority and 
hatred of intellectualism."

"That was entirely within one code - the social code. Phaedrus thought that 
code was good enough as far as it went, but it really didn't go  anywhere. 
It didn't know its origins and it didn't know its own destinations, and not 
knowing them it had to be exactly what it was: hopelessly static, hopelessly 
stupid, a form of evil in itself. Evil.  ..If he'd called it that 150 years 
ago he might have gotten himself  into some real trouble. People got mad 
back then when you challenged their social institutions, and they tended to 
take reprisals. He might have gotten himself ostracized as some kind of a 
social menace. But today it's hardly a risk. Its more of a cheap shot. 
Everybody thinks those Victorian moral codes are stupid and evil, or 
old-fashioned at least, except maybe a few religious fundamentalists and 
ultra-right-wingers and ignorant uneducated people like that. That's why 
Rigel's sermon this morning seemed so peculiar. Usually people like Rigel do 
their sermonizing in favor of what ever is popular. That way they're safe. 
Didn't he know all that stuff went out years ago? Where was he dutring the 
revolution of the sixties? Where had he been during this whole century? 
That's what this whole century's been about, this struggle between 
intellectual and social patterns. That's the theme song of the twentieth 
century. Is society going to dominate the intellect or is intellect going to 
dominate society? ... That was the thing this evolutionary morality brought 
out clearer than anything else. Intellect is not an extension of society any 
more than society is an extension of biology. Intellect is going its own 
way, and in doing so is at war with society, seeking to subjugate society, 
to put society under lock and key. An evolutionary morality says it is moral 
for intellect to do so, but it also contains a warning: Just as a society 
that weakens its people's physical health endangers its own stability, so 
does an intellectual pattern that weakens and destroys the health of its 
social base also endanger its own stability. Better to say "has endangered." 
It's already happened. This has been a century of fantastic intellectual 
growth and fantastic social destruction. The only question is how long this 
process can keep on."

Sure, its only a generalization, but I think that this evolutionary struggle 
is reflected in the differences between liberals and conservatives. 
Socialists and fascists are an exaggerated form of that same conflict. 
Secularist and the faithful basically line up that way too. There are lots 
of exceptions and most everybody is a mixture of some sort, but for the sake 
of getting generally oriented to what this conflict looks like in our 
practical reality. I mean, when one gets a sense of the cultural and 
political landscape, it only makes sense that John Birchers (who are really 
just Klansman in suits) would be in league with the McCarthyites in putting 
a muzzle on liberal intellectual professors. And this spirit lives on in Ann 
Coulter and David Horowitz right up to this very moment. You see what I'm 
getting at? The details are virually infinite, but this same battle has been 
going on for a hundred years and it just keeps getting uglier and uglier.

But, if you listen to Platt, Joe McCarthy and Adolf Hiltler were righteous 
dudes because they hated those egghead commies too.

As I see it, the problem is that theism and materialism both suck and yet 
they are the only apparent options within SOM. See, its not that capitalism 
will save us simply because the free market is dynamic. Within SOM's 
materialism, this is devoid of morality and quality and it leads to empty 
things like greed and sensuality and superficiality. As Pirsig points out, 
both socialist and capitalist are operating on the same materialist 
assumptions. The cold war was a conflict between rival forms of materialism.

Ooops. Gotta go.

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