Re: Boycott CBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 12:01:05 -0600, "Rich Wellner"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 17:23:21 +0000, William Cook wrote:
>
>> Liberals are not open minded.  Neither are your breed of conservatives.
>> Both are about equally closed minded, and equally dishonest.
>
>Liberals are, by definition, open minded.
>
>>From the OED:
>
>4. a. Free from narrow prejudice; open-minded, candid.
>
>Just because Rush is illiterate and uses the wrong word when he means
>leftist doesn't mean the rest of us must.
>
>rw2
-----------------------------------------------

A definition I once heard involved a tree with a rotten limb. The
conservative wants to wait and see if the tree will heal itself. The
liberal wants to saw off the limb. The radical wants to chop down the
tree and plant a new one." 

And Im sure you are well aware that the OED definition is only
applicable to Classical Liberalism..which by definition, far more
closely matches todays Conservatism. Im sure you can use google for a
definiton of Classical Liberalism.

"MODERN LIBERALISM: A term used to describe a political philosophy
with progressive cultural and political viewpoints. Modern liberals
are not always hostile to the free market, but they do think that if
left to itself the random nature of the market will produce poverty
and inequality. They argue that state action is necessary in all areas
where human welfare is at risk, including direct government
assistance, pensions, unemployment insurance, and health care.
Liberals actively lobby for social change through political and
legislative means. Their motivation for proposing radical reforms
usually stem from a perceived violation of justice, fairness, or a
sense of social equality. Today's usage is often associated with such
terms and concepts as legal activism, government regulation of the
economy, and the redistribution of wealth. Key thinkers include John
Kenneth Galbraith, Upton Sinclair*, John Rawls, Reinhold Niebuhr*, and
Walter Rauschenbusch"

Odd how this paralles the core belief in Marxism..From each according
to his abilitites, to those according to their needs...

But Leftist is  only so so correct, when refering to Liberals. Modern
American Liberals are actually Fascists for the most part. Shall we
take a look??

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Philosophic_Roots_Ideology.html
FASCISM
p237

... the liberal democratic tradition saw people existing as
individuals prior to the establishment of political institutions.
Further, they possessed certain rights-as individuals-granted to them
by God or nature. Because of certain inconveniences of this presocial,
prepolitical situation (recall the state of nature), individuals
banded together and gave up certain of their natural rights to a
collectivity so that they could, as individuals, live a more
comfortable existence. State and society are thus established for
specific purposes, have limited powers and functions, and may be
abolished if they exceed their granted powers. The state and society
are, in short, artificial creations of sovereign individuals. 

Democratic representative institutions (parliaments, congresses, and
so forth) are generally designed to translate the desires of
individuals in the society, normally on a majority rule basis, into
public policy. Representative institutions are, by their very nature,
intended to express the particular wills of individuals within the
society. The preferences of a majority of individuals on any issue are
simply that-a summation of individual preferences totaling more than
50 percent. Finally, liberal democratic thought is quite clear about
the locus of sovereignty in the society: Ultimately it lies with each
individual, and the actions of the state must be with the consent of
those individuals.

To the fascist this is all simply absurd. The mainstream liberal
tradition defines freedom as an absence of restraint on individual
action, yet it requires humans to give up some freedom (for example,
relinquish natural rights) in order to attain freedom. How, fascism
asks, does one become free by giving up freedom? Indeed, a fascist
would argue, in talking about giving up natural rights so as to
achieve a more convenient situation, the individualistic liberal
exposed the fallacy of the entire enterprise. As fascists view it,
liberal democrats are saying that freedom cannot exist without a
stable body of laws and political institutions, and the only way true
freedom can exist is through obedience to those laws It is law and a
framework of order that ensures freedom. The myth of the isolated
sovereign individual is thus destroyed and we come to understand that
the individual can exist only in and through the state As Mussolini
stated:

Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the
importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his
interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the
conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity. It is
opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to
absolutism and exhausted its historical functions when the State
became the expression of the conscience and will of the people.
Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism
reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of
the Individual. And if Liberty is to be the attribute of living men
and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism,
then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth
having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the
State.

Any rights that individuals may possess are granted and may be removed
by the state; similarly, the private interests of individuals must be
subordinated to the general interests of the collectivity. Insofar as
representative institutions, political parties, and all of the other
trappings of parliamentary democracy are designed to reflect the
interests of individuals (particular wills), they must be discarded
and replaced by institutions that will determine the general will of
the nation. The properly constituted state thus becomes the
articulator of the general will of the nation.

One of the more commonly used modern attempts to describe the function
of political institutions refers to them as authoritative allocators
of value for the society as a whole, meaning that states can, within
certain limits, control what is done by other institutions and
individuals within the society. Fascist ideology takes this type of
descriptive statement, expands it, and adds an ethical dimension. The
nation is the source of ultimate values for all members of the
community and the political arm of the nation-the state-gives
articulation to those values. There is, simply, no higher ethical
authority. If this is the case, individual human beings fulfill
themselves by assuring that the goals of the collectivity are
achieved. Indeed, the terms individual and state are incorrect
abstractions insofar as they indicate separate entities-in fascism
they are but two sides of the same coin. The nation is struggling to
achieve actuality, to fulfill its potential; individuals are human
when they contribute to that quest.

 Given this, it is obvious why fascism was opposed to liberal
democratic thought: The latter's assumption is that the state is
ultimately the creation of and subservient to the individual. Fascism
contended that such thinking had led to conflict, disunity, even chaos
in society and afforded no notion of national cohesiveness. Liberal
democratic thought was in the end predicated upon assumptions of
selfishness and conflict and as such prevented human beings from
living in moral association with one another. As Mussolini declared in
1929, "When the conception of the State declines, and disunifying and
centrifugal tendencies prevail, whether of individuals or particular
groups, the nations where such phenomena appear are in their decline."

"The British attitude is to treat society like a game preserve where a
certain percentage of the 'antelope' are expected to be eaten by the
"lions".
Christopher Morton