I cannot believe that in the 21st Century we have people advocating "culling", "sterilisation" of people who receive welfare benefits. I shook my head with disbelief as people typed this right wing tory/bnp rubbish into a chatroom.
Why the hell did our forefathers give their lives to rid us of the evils of nazism, they wasted their time, it is alive and well in Great Britain, spurred on by the press.
The targets - people on benefits, particularly single mothers, but also the sick and disabled.
One bright spark announced - cut their benefits they'll soon get better, this from a supposedly educated person. Illnesses like epilepsy, diabetes, arthritis, cancer and many other illnesses don't disappear overnight - taking away the benefits of people with conditions like this will mean they won't get treatment. We would just revert to pre welfare system. Those with any savings or any income would live, those without, tough.
Then we have cull them and sterilise them brigade - it is very easy to target women, single mothers, and whilst I agree that some do have babies for benefits, what about those who are single through divorce or widowhood. No one knows what is going to happen to them, I didn't know when I got married that in less than ten years I would be widowed with a small child. You could have an accident, be ill, lose your job - it doesn't make you less of a person, it doesn't warrant being culled or sterilised either.
And why only target the women - I always thought it took a man and a woman to make a baby - yet only the women are targetted - and why should the children suffer. This government pledged to end child poverty. Yet the very groups that are impoverished are yet again targetted.
It seems this hysteria against people on benefits, spurred on by the vermin press, and brainwashing people to despise those who, through no fault of their own in the majority of cases, are less fortunate. The breakdown of christian (and other religious values) and the selfish attitude which came into the fore during the Thatcher years, have all played a part in the situation we see today.
Have we learnt nothing from the 40's? Blaming groups of people for the misfortunes of all societies - let's make these people second class citizens, better still they are sub human, inferior. Let's not let them have any human rights. Then what follows? A return to the gas chambers?
You can't work therefore you die - I could envisage some of the chatroom participants stood there pointing the way.
I am not assured that the right groups i.e. those who are workshy and abusing the system will be targetted, as in the past, great mistakes have been made against sick and disabled people - the genuine always suffer.
At a time of recession, when more people are losing their jobs, and more pressure is put on the few, again spurred on by the press, those who may need help may not get it. There will be people in such despair who will see no way out.
"Blessed are the poor for they shall see the Kingdom of God" - a bit sooner than they should if these far right thinking twonkos, with their superiority, have their way.
Linda
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Resistance struggles
Jun 26th 2008From The Economist
Wage-earners may not prove as meek as the government wants them to be
AS INFLATION makes an unwelcome return, just how workers respond to it has become overwhelmingly important. Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, exhorts wage restraint, and with reason. The last thing he wants—or Britain needs—is a pay-price spiral that would turn a temporary surge in inflation, driven by higher global food and energy costs, into a more persistent and general national affliction. Yet the soaring bill for essentials is bound to make Britons worse off, and workers are not slow to spot it.
Until recently, fear of an inflationary wage-price spiral seemed misplaced. Inflation, measured by the retail-prices index, moved up sharply in the second half of 2006 and has generally remained above 4.0% since then (see chart). Despite this, average-earnings growth has stayed remarkably docile, thanks partly to a flexible labour market and partly to confidence that any upsurge in inflation would peter out.
Until recently, fear of an inflationary wage-price spiral seemed misplaced. Inflation, measured by the retail-prices index, moved up sharply in the second half of 2006 and has generally remained above 4.0% since then (see chart). Despite this, average-earnings growth has stayed remarkably docile, thanks partly to a flexible labour market and partly to confidence that any upsurge in inflation would peter out.
That now looks set to change. A recent strike by tanker-drivers resulted in a bumper two-year 14% pay rise. This has encouraged militant talk from public-sector unions, who feel aggrieved that the government has insisted on very low pay deals (around 2%) this year and threaten to strike. Some point to big bonuses and pay rises for even conspicuously unsuccessful company bosses as one reason why they should refuse stingy deals themselves.
Wage awards have already begun to move up, according to Incomes Data Services (IDS), which monitors them. For most of the past year or so, the median pay settlement was typically 3.5%, but in the three months to April it rose to 3.8%. And total earnings, which include bonuses and overtime, tend to increase faster than basic pay. Ken Mulkearn of IDS says that many firms which had secured lower increases in 2007 in the expectation that inflation would fall have had to agree to higher rises this year to restore purchasing power.
Whether workers succeed in resisting a fall in their living standards will depend mainly on the balance of power in the labour market. This seems to be tilting towards employers, as unemployment starts to rise. But the big influx of workers from eastern Europe since 2004, which helped to keep a handle on pay pressures, is slowing as new arrivals dwindle and some longer-established workers return home.
Political will also has a role to play. Unions are strongest in the public sector, and garbage left to rot in the summer sun is already promised. Mr Darling may find that too much for even his sangfroid.
Wage awards have already begun to move up, according to Incomes Data Services (IDS), which monitors them. For most of the past year or so, the median pay settlement was typically 3.5%, but in the three months to April it rose to 3.8%. And total earnings, which include bonuses and overtime, tend to increase faster than basic pay. Ken Mulkearn of IDS says that many firms which had secured lower increases in 2007 in the expectation that inflation would fall have had to agree to higher rises this year to restore purchasing power.
Whether workers succeed in resisting a fall in their living standards will depend mainly on the balance of power in the labour market. This seems to be tilting towards employers, as unemployment starts to rise. But the big influx of workers from eastern Europe since 2004, which helped to keep a handle on pay pressures, is slowing as new arrivals dwindle and some longer-established workers return home.
Political will also has a role to play. Unions are strongest in the public sector, and garbage left to rot in the summer sun is already promised. Mr Darling may find that too much for even his sangfroid.
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Was Jesus Christ a revolutionary?
Terry Eagleton sifts through the texts of the Gospels and comes up with some ambiguous answers
Jesus certainly kept some shady political company. One of his inner circle was known as Simon the Zealot, the Zealots being an underground anti-imperialist movement dedicated to driving the Romans out of Palestine. The Roman presence in the province was not in fact particularly oppressive. No Roman institutions, legal, educational or religious, were imposed on the people. In Jesus’s own home territory of Galilee there was no official Roman presence at all, so it is unlikely that he would have grown up at the knee of smoulderingly anti-imperialist parents. Any Roman soldiers he saw as a child would have been on holiday.
Even so, there were religious reasons why even hands-off rule by a pagan state was objectionable to God’s chosen people. The Zealots wanted a purified, traditionalist, theocratic Jewish state, and promoted a theology not unlike that of al-Qaeda today. In addition to the militant Simon, two other of Jesus’s disciples, James and John, are given a nickname (Sons of Thunder) which some New Testament scholars suspect may link them, too, to the insurrectionists. Perhaps Judas sold Jesus because he had expected him to be Lenin, and became bitterly disenchanted when he realized that he was not going to lead the people against the colonial power.
Daggers drawn
It is, however, unlikely that Jesus was part of the anti-imperial resistance. For one thing, he seems to have believed in paying taxes (‘Render unto Caesar...’), while the Zealots did not. For another thing, he was at daggers drawn with the Pharisees, who were in some ways the theological wing of the Zealots. In fact, they are the only sect whom he curses to hell.
Another reason why Jesus is unlikely to have been a Zealot is that his disciples were not arrested after his execution. Had they been known insurrectionists, the occupying Roman forces would almost certainly have moved in to mop them up. There may have been a sprinkling of anti-imperialist militants among the disciples, but the Roman authorities seem to have been clear that the Jesus movement was not out to overthrow the state. This is not why he was crucified.
Indeed, why he was crucified is something of a mystery. It was certainly not because he claimed to be the Son of God. Jesus makes no such claim in the Gospels, except once, implausibly, in the Markian trial scene; and Mark had his own axe to grind. Taken in a literal sense, the title ‘Son of God’ would almost certainly have resulted in Jesus’s being stoned to death on the spot for blasphemy, which was presumably one excellent reason why he did not make claim to it. In any case, Jesus cannot have believed that he was literally the Son of God. Yahweh does not have testicles.
Only the Romans had power of execution, and they took no interest in the theological squabblings of their colonial subjects. Or rather, they took an interest only if they threatened to breed political consequences. They would certainly have been put on the alert if Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah, since the Messiah was seen for the most part as a militant political leader who would put Israel on its feet again. But Jesus does not claim to be the Messiah either, except on two occasions, both of which are historically dubious.
It is likely that Jesus ended massive as the evangelists make out. Even so, there was a general expectation that God was about to do something dramatic. For Christian theology, he did – but it turned out to be a resurrection, not a revolution.
It may be that Jesus’s violent act of trying to clear the temple of moneychangers, which sailed preciously close to blasphemy, was enough for his antagonists to nail him. A reverence for the temple was an essential feature of Judaism, and a strike against it was a strike against Israel itself. The temple rulers controlled Israel’s currency and economy, so that the place was among other things perceived as a bastion of the ruling class.up on Calvary because of his enormous popularity with some of the poor, who had swarmed into Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and who no doubt looked to him for some vague sort of salvation from the Roman occupation. His popular support was probably by no means as
Not ‘anti-capitalist’
Running out the moneychangers was not, however, intended as an ‘anti-capitalist’ gesture. Jesus would have understood well enough that pilgrims would not have brought their sacrificial animals with them from home, for fear that they might be found blemished by the priests who inspected them on arrival. They would consequently buy a dove or pigeon in the temple itself, and would need to change currencies to do so. Jesus was probably signifying the destruction of the temple in a symbolic way, rather than expressing his distaste for its commercial sleaze. The paraphernalia of organized religion was to be replaced by an alternative temple, namely his own murdered and transfigured body.
Quite what the charges against Jesus were is not entirely clear. The accounts of the Gospels on this score are mutually inconsistent. The general impression is that the whole of the Jewish governing caste were against Jesus, but that they could not find common ground among themselves on why they were. He was certainly accused of blasphemy. But the Romans would not have cared about that, and in any case executing someone as a pseudo-teacher or pseudo-prophet was remarkably rare in Jesus’s day.
The High Priest, Caiaphas, had therefore to concoct some charge which legitimated Jesus’s execution in the eyes of the Jews while sounding sufficiently alarming to the Romans to spur them to dispose of him. Protesting that he claimed to be king of the Jews, even though we have no evidence that he did, would fill the bill nicely. Suitably spun, it might sound like blasphemy to the Jews and sedition to the Romans. But it might also have been enough to get Jesus crucified to advise the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, that this unruly vagabond represented a threat to law and order in such politically volatile conditions.
Brutal Pilate
Pilate seems to have had a particular penchant for stringing people up. He is presented in the Gospels as a vacillating liberal of a metaphysical turn of mind, but we know enough about his historical record to be sure that he was nothing of the sort. He was, in fact, a notoriously brutal viceroy, an official who was accused of bribery, cruelty and executions without trial and who was eventually dishonourably dismissed from office. Had Jesus come up against a more liberal regime, he might well have got off.
Was Jesus, then, a ‘spiritual’ rather than a political leader? This, to be sure, is the customary reading of his exhortation to render unto Caesar what was owed to him, while at the same time granting God his due. But it is unlikely that this is how his words would have been understood in first-century Palestine. It projects back upon them a modern distinction between religion and politics which is decidedly non-scriptural. Those who heard Jesus’s words would have understood that ‘the things that are God’s’ included mercy, justice, feeding the hungry, welcoming the immigrant, sheltering the destitute and protecting the poor from the oppression of the powerful. There is little opiate delusion in Jesus’s grim warning to his comrades that if they were true to his Gospel of love and justice, they would meet the same sticky end as him.
The motif of a close link between the deepest suffering and the highest exaltation is a traditional one in Judaism, as it is in the Western lineage of tragedy. True power flows from powerlessness, a doctrine which Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection is meant to exemplify.
In the so-called Beatitudes, the poor, hungry and sorrowful are declared blessed, but not the virtuous. Unlike the virtuous, they are signs of the coming kingdom because they exemplify the emptiness and deprivation which the New Jerusalem is destined to repair. The point of prophecy is not to foresee the future, but to warn those in the present that unless they change their ways, the future is likely to be extremely unpleasant.
Bathos
The kingdom did not, of course, arrive shortly after Jesus’s death, as the first Christians (and certainly St Paul) seem to have believed it would. The Christian movement begins in bathos. Its origins lie in a hideously embarrassing anti-climax, one which follows hard on the heels of the shameful scandal that the Son of God has actually been butchered.
One reason why Jesus and his followers expected the kingdom to arrive very soon is that they had no notion that human activity might have any role in helping to establish it. For the early Christians, the kingdom was a gift of God, not the work of history. History was now effectively at an end. There was no point in seeking to overthrow the Romans when God was about to transform the whole world. Jesus’s disciples could no more bring about the kingdom of God by their own efforts than socialism for deterministic Marxists can be achieved by intensified agitation.
Some aspects of the way Jesus is portrayed in these texts have an obvious radical resonance. He is presented as homeless, propertyless, peripatetic, socially marginal, disdainful of kinfolk, without a trade or occupation, a friend of outcasts and pariahs, averse to material possessions, without fear for his own safety, a thorn in the side of the Establishment and a scourge of the rich and powerful. The problem of much modern Christianity has been how to practise this lifestyle with two children, a car and a mortgage.
Jesus has most of the characteristic features of the revolutionary activist, including celibacy. Marriage belongs to a regime which is already passing away, and there will be no marrying in New Jerusalem. This is not an anti-sexual motif. Celibacy is seen by Christianity as a sacrifice, and sacrifice means giving up what is regarded as precious. St Paul, an enemy of the flesh in popular mythology, regards the sexual union of two bodies, not celibacy, as a sign of the coming kingdom. Actually working for the kingdom, however, involves surrendering or suspending some of the goods which will characterize it. The same is true of working for socialism.
‘He expected it to be soon swept away by a form of existence more perfected in its justice, peace, comradeship and exuberance of spirit than even Lenin and Trotsky could have imagined’
Even so, Jesus is not presented as an ascetic, in the manner of the ferociously anti-social John the Baptist. He and his comrades enjoy food, drink and general festivity, and he enjoins men and women to unburden themselves of anxiety and live in the present. What one might call Jesus’s ethical extravagance – giving over and above the measure, turning the other cheek, rejoicing in being persecuted, loving one’s enemies, refusing to judge, non-resistance to evil, laying oneself open to the violence of others – is similarly motivated by a sense that history is now at an end.
In his crucifixion and descent into hell, Jesus in St Paul’s view is ‘made sin’, identifying with the scum and refuse of the earth, enduring a solidarity with suffering, evil and despair in order to transfigure it through his resurrection. Like the classical tragic protagonist, he succeeds only through failure. If he lay down confidently expecting to spring up again, he would not have been raised from the dead.
Effervescent hopes
This, then, is what all the effervescent hopes of Jesus and his entourage have come to. The crucifixion proclaims that the truth of human history is a tortured political criminal. It is a message profoundly unacceptable to those sunk in a dewy-eyed delusion (idealists, progressivists, liberals, reformers, Yea-sayers, modernizers, socialist humanists and the like), though one which was perfectly understood by a Jew like Walter Benjamin. Only if you can gaze on this frightful image without being turned to stone, accepting it as absolutely the last word, is there a slim chance that it might not be.
Christianity is thus considerably more pessimistic than secular humanism, as well as immeasurably more optimistic. On the one hand, it is grimly realistic about the recalcitrance of the human condition. On the other hand, it holds out not only that the redemption of this dire condition is possible, but that, astonishingly, it has in some sense already happened. Not even the most mechanistic of Marxists would claim these days that socialism is inevitable, let alone that it has already come about without our noticing. For Christian faith, however, the advent of the kingdom is assured, since Jesus’s rising from the dead has already founded it.
Was Jesus, then, a revolutionary? Not in any sense that Lenin or Trotsky would have recognized. But is this because he was less of a revolutionary than they were, or more so? Less, certainly, in that he did not advocate the overthrow of the power-structure that he confronted. But this was, among other things, because he expected it to be soon swept away by a form of existence more perfected in its justice, peace, comradeship and exuberance of spirit than even Lenin and Trotsky could have imagined. Perhaps the answer, then, is not that Jesus was more or less a revolutionary, but that he was both more and less.
Terry Eagleton is Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester. This is an edited extract of his introduction to The Gospels, published as part of its ‘Revolutions’ series by Verso, London and New York, 2007, www.versobooks.com
Jesus certainly kept some shady political company. One of his inner circle was known as Simon the Zealot, the Zealots being an underground anti-imperialist movement dedicated to driving the Romans out of Palestine. The Roman presence in the province was not in fact particularly oppressive. No Roman institutions, legal, educational or religious, were imposed on the people. In Jesus’s own home territory of Galilee there was no official Roman presence at all, so it is unlikely that he would have grown up at the knee of smoulderingly anti-imperialist parents. Any Roman soldiers he saw as a child would have been on holiday.
Even so, there were religious reasons why even hands-off rule by a pagan state was objectionable to God’s chosen people. The Zealots wanted a purified, traditionalist, theocratic Jewish state, and promoted a theology not unlike that of al-Qaeda today. In addition to the militant Simon, two other of Jesus’s disciples, James and John, are given a nickname (Sons of Thunder) which some New Testament scholars suspect may link them, too, to the insurrectionists. Perhaps Judas sold Jesus because he had expected him to be Lenin, and became bitterly disenchanted when he realized that he was not going to lead the people against the colonial power.
Daggers drawn
It is, however, unlikely that Jesus was part of the anti-imperial resistance. For one thing, he seems to have believed in paying taxes (‘Render unto Caesar...’), while the Zealots did not. For another thing, he was at daggers drawn with the Pharisees, who were in some ways the theological wing of the Zealots. In fact, they are the only sect whom he curses to hell.
Another reason why Jesus is unlikely to have been a Zealot is that his disciples were not arrested after his execution. Had they been known insurrectionists, the occupying Roman forces would almost certainly have moved in to mop them up. There may have been a sprinkling of anti-imperialist militants among the disciples, but the Roman authorities seem to have been clear that the Jesus movement was not out to overthrow the state. This is not why he was crucified.
Indeed, why he was crucified is something of a mystery. It was certainly not because he claimed to be the Son of God. Jesus makes no such claim in the Gospels, except once, implausibly, in the Markian trial scene; and Mark had his own axe to grind. Taken in a literal sense, the title ‘Son of God’ would almost certainly have resulted in Jesus’s being stoned to death on the spot for blasphemy, which was presumably one excellent reason why he did not make claim to it. In any case, Jesus cannot have believed that he was literally the Son of God. Yahweh does not have testicles.
Only the Romans had power of execution, and they took no interest in the theological squabblings of their colonial subjects. Or rather, they took an interest only if they threatened to breed political consequences. They would certainly have been put on the alert if Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah, since the Messiah was seen for the most part as a militant political leader who would put Israel on its feet again. But Jesus does not claim to be the Messiah either, except on two occasions, both of which are historically dubious.
It is likely that Jesus ended massive as the evangelists make out. Even so, there was a general expectation that God was about to do something dramatic. For Christian theology, he did – but it turned out to be a resurrection, not a revolution.
It may be that Jesus’s violent act of trying to clear the temple of moneychangers, which sailed preciously close to blasphemy, was enough for his antagonists to nail him. A reverence for the temple was an essential feature of Judaism, and a strike against it was a strike against Israel itself. The temple rulers controlled Israel’s currency and economy, so that the place was among other things perceived as a bastion of the ruling class.up on Calvary because of his enormous popularity with some of the poor, who had swarmed into Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and who no doubt looked to him for some vague sort of salvation from the Roman occupation. His popular support was probably by no means as
Not ‘anti-capitalist’
Running out the moneychangers was not, however, intended as an ‘anti-capitalist’ gesture. Jesus would have understood well enough that pilgrims would not have brought their sacrificial animals with them from home, for fear that they might be found blemished by the priests who inspected them on arrival. They would consequently buy a dove or pigeon in the temple itself, and would need to change currencies to do so. Jesus was probably signifying the destruction of the temple in a symbolic way, rather than expressing his distaste for its commercial sleaze. The paraphernalia of organized religion was to be replaced by an alternative temple, namely his own murdered and transfigured body.
Quite what the charges against Jesus were is not entirely clear. The accounts of the Gospels on this score are mutually inconsistent. The general impression is that the whole of the Jewish governing caste were against Jesus, but that they could not find common ground among themselves on why they were. He was certainly accused of blasphemy. But the Romans would not have cared about that, and in any case executing someone as a pseudo-teacher or pseudo-prophet was remarkably rare in Jesus’s day.
The High Priest, Caiaphas, had therefore to concoct some charge which legitimated Jesus’s execution in the eyes of the Jews while sounding sufficiently alarming to the Romans to spur them to dispose of him. Protesting that he claimed to be king of the Jews, even though we have no evidence that he did, would fill the bill nicely. Suitably spun, it might sound like blasphemy to the Jews and sedition to the Romans. But it might also have been enough to get Jesus crucified to advise the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, that this unruly vagabond represented a threat to law and order in such politically volatile conditions.
Brutal Pilate
Pilate seems to have had a particular penchant for stringing people up. He is presented in the Gospels as a vacillating liberal of a metaphysical turn of mind, but we know enough about his historical record to be sure that he was nothing of the sort. He was, in fact, a notoriously brutal viceroy, an official who was accused of bribery, cruelty and executions without trial and who was eventually dishonourably dismissed from office. Had Jesus come up against a more liberal regime, he might well have got off.
Was Jesus, then, a ‘spiritual’ rather than a political leader? This, to be sure, is the customary reading of his exhortation to render unto Caesar what was owed to him, while at the same time granting God his due. But it is unlikely that this is how his words would have been understood in first-century Palestine. It projects back upon them a modern distinction between religion and politics which is decidedly non-scriptural. Those who heard Jesus’s words would have understood that ‘the things that are God’s’ included mercy, justice, feeding the hungry, welcoming the immigrant, sheltering the destitute and protecting the poor from the oppression of the powerful. There is little opiate delusion in Jesus’s grim warning to his comrades that if they were true to his Gospel of love and justice, they would meet the same sticky end as him.
The motif of a close link between the deepest suffering and the highest exaltation is a traditional one in Judaism, as it is in the Western lineage of tragedy. True power flows from powerlessness, a doctrine which Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection is meant to exemplify.
In the so-called Beatitudes, the poor, hungry and sorrowful are declared blessed, but not the virtuous. Unlike the virtuous, they are signs of the coming kingdom because they exemplify the emptiness and deprivation which the New Jerusalem is destined to repair. The point of prophecy is not to foresee the future, but to warn those in the present that unless they change their ways, the future is likely to be extremely unpleasant.
Bathos
The kingdom did not, of course, arrive shortly after Jesus’s death, as the first Christians (and certainly St Paul) seem to have believed it would. The Christian movement begins in bathos. Its origins lie in a hideously embarrassing anti-climax, one which follows hard on the heels of the shameful scandal that the Son of God has actually been butchered.
One reason why Jesus and his followers expected the kingdom to arrive very soon is that they had no notion that human activity might have any role in helping to establish it. For the early Christians, the kingdom was a gift of God, not the work of history. History was now effectively at an end. There was no point in seeking to overthrow the Romans when God was about to transform the whole world. Jesus’s disciples could no more bring about the kingdom of God by their own efforts than socialism for deterministic Marxists can be achieved by intensified agitation.
Some aspects of the way Jesus is portrayed in these texts have an obvious radical resonance. He is presented as homeless, propertyless, peripatetic, socially marginal, disdainful of kinfolk, without a trade or occupation, a friend of outcasts and pariahs, averse to material possessions, without fear for his own safety, a thorn in the side of the Establishment and a scourge of the rich and powerful. The problem of much modern Christianity has been how to practise this lifestyle with two children, a car and a mortgage.
Jesus has most of the characteristic features of the revolutionary activist, including celibacy. Marriage belongs to a regime which is already passing away, and there will be no marrying in New Jerusalem. This is not an anti-sexual motif. Celibacy is seen by Christianity as a sacrifice, and sacrifice means giving up what is regarded as precious. St Paul, an enemy of the flesh in popular mythology, regards the sexual union of two bodies, not celibacy, as a sign of the coming kingdom. Actually working for the kingdom, however, involves surrendering or suspending some of the goods which will characterize it. The same is true of working for socialism.
‘He expected it to be soon swept away by a form of existence more perfected in its justice, peace, comradeship and exuberance of spirit than even Lenin and Trotsky could have imagined’
Even so, Jesus is not presented as an ascetic, in the manner of the ferociously anti-social John the Baptist. He and his comrades enjoy food, drink and general festivity, and he enjoins men and women to unburden themselves of anxiety and live in the present. What one might call Jesus’s ethical extravagance – giving over and above the measure, turning the other cheek, rejoicing in being persecuted, loving one’s enemies, refusing to judge, non-resistance to evil, laying oneself open to the violence of others – is similarly motivated by a sense that history is now at an end.
In his crucifixion and descent into hell, Jesus in St Paul’s view is ‘made sin’, identifying with the scum and refuse of the earth, enduring a solidarity with suffering, evil and despair in order to transfigure it through his resurrection. Like the classical tragic protagonist, he succeeds only through failure. If he lay down confidently expecting to spring up again, he would not have been raised from the dead.
Effervescent hopes
This, then, is what all the effervescent hopes of Jesus and his entourage have come to. The crucifixion proclaims that the truth of human history is a tortured political criminal. It is a message profoundly unacceptable to those sunk in a dewy-eyed delusion (idealists, progressivists, liberals, reformers, Yea-sayers, modernizers, socialist humanists and the like), though one which was perfectly understood by a Jew like Walter Benjamin. Only if you can gaze on this frightful image without being turned to stone, accepting it as absolutely the last word, is there a slim chance that it might not be.
Christianity is thus considerably more pessimistic than secular humanism, as well as immeasurably more optimistic. On the one hand, it is grimly realistic about the recalcitrance of the human condition. On the other hand, it holds out not only that the redemption of this dire condition is possible, but that, astonishingly, it has in some sense already happened. Not even the most mechanistic of Marxists would claim these days that socialism is inevitable, let alone that it has already come about without our noticing. For Christian faith, however, the advent of the kingdom is assured, since Jesus’s rising from the dead has already founded it.
Was Jesus, then, a revolutionary? Not in any sense that Lenin or Trotsky would have recognized. But is this because he was less of a revolutionary than they were, or more so? Less, certainly, in that he did not advocate the overthrow of the power-structure that he confronted. But this was, among other things, because he expected it to be soon swept away by a form of existence more perfected in its justice, peace, comradeship and exuberance of spirit than even Lenin and Trotsky could have imagined. Perhaps the answer, then, is not that Jesus was more or less a revolutionary, but that he was both more and less.
Terry Eagleton is Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester. This is an edited extract of his introduction to The Gospels, published as part of its ‘Revolutions’ series by Verso, London and New York, 2007, www.versobooks.com
For those who want to abolish Human Rights, please read
Human rights - the facts
Civil and political rights
At the last count, in 2006: 1Torture and terror
There were cases of torture and ill-treatment by security forces, police and other state authorities in 102 countries
400 detainees from more than 30 nationalities were held at Guantánamo Bay; 200 had staged hunger strikes since the camp opened; 40 had attempted suicide; 3 died in June 2006 after apparent suicides
An unknown number of detainees were being held in secret detention centres or ‘black sites’ around the world The death penalty
20,000 people were on death row worldwide
3,861 people were sentenced to death in 55 countries; 1,591 prisoners were executed in 25 countries – down from 2,184 in 2005 (figures include only judicial executions)
91% of all known executions took place in 6 countries: China, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan and the US
69 countries still use the death penalty Violence against women
At least 1 in 3 of the world’s women had been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused
70% of the casualties in conflicts were non-combatants, most of them women and children Firearms
85% of killings worldwide involved the use of small arms and light weapons
60% of the world’s firearms were in the hands of private individuals
Economic and social rights 2
In 2000 the member states of the UN committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals. These set out what are, in effect, the most basic economic and social rights. 1990 was taken as the starting point; minimum ‘targets’ were to be achieved by 2015. Just 7 years now remain to achieve them.
At present rates of progress, it will be 30 years before South Asia gets there – at least 100 years before sub-Saharan Africa does so. Apart from Europe and North America, no region will reach the base level before 2020. Extreme poverty
Target: halve the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day.
Comment: the target may almost be hit by ‘developing regions’ as a whole – but it will be missed spectacularly by sub-Saharan Africa.
Child mortality
Target: Reduce the rate by two thirds.
Comment: Painfully slow progress. To meet the target the rate should fall by roughly 50 points in the 10 years between 2005 and 2015. It fell by just 23 points in the 15 years between 1990 and 2005.
Hunger
Target: halve the number of people who suffer from hunger.
Comment: progress is far too slow. Every 5 seconds a child still dies from hunger-related causes. In Bangladesh, India and Nepal nearly half of all children under 5 suffer from malnutrition.AIDS
Target: Halt or reverse spread.
By the end of 2006 the number of people living with HIV was up to 39.5 million from 31.9 million in 2001. The rate of increase is slowing, but in 2006 just 28% of people in need of treatment were receiving it in developing regions. Water
Target: Halve the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
Comment: The target will be missed by 600 million people. An estimated 1.6 billion people will need access to ‘improved sanitation’ – not the same as safe drinking water - by 2015. Access to safe drinking water is likely to be even more restricted.
Maternal Mortality
Target: Reduce by three quarters. There are no reliable figures. An estimated 500,000 women die each year from treatable or preventable complications of pregnancy or childbirth. In sub-Saharan Africa a woman’s risk of dying from such complications over the course of her lifetime is 1 in 16, compared with 1 in 3,800 in the rich world. Education
Target: Ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary education.
Comment: In sub-Saharan Africa 30% of primary school age children are still out of school. Worldwide, 77 million children do not go to school; 781 million adults cannot read or write, of whom two-thirds are women.
Environment
Goal: Reverse loss of environmental resources.
Comment: Forests are still being lost rather than renewed.
Comment: Emissions continue a relentless rise. Counter measures have been ineffective. Projections suggest that unless the rise is not just halted but reversed by 2015, then changes to the climate will be both uncontrollable and catastrophic.
Amnesty International Annual Report 2007.
The statistical tables are taken from the UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, available online at http://mdgs.un.org Other data and comment are taken from Social Watch Report, also available online at www.socialwatch.org
Civil and political rights
At the last count, in 2006: 1Torture and terror
There were cases of torture and ill-treatment by security forces, police and other state authorities in 102 countries
400 detainees from more than 30 nationalities were held at Guantánamo Bay; 200 had staged hunger strikes since the camp opened; 40 had attempted suicide; 3 died in June 2006 after apparent suicides
An unknown number of detainees were being held in secret detention centres or ‘black sites’ around the world The death penalty
20,000 people were on death row worldwide
3,861 people were sentenced to death in 55 countries; 1,591 prisoners were executed in 25 countries – down from 2,184 in 2005 (figures include only judicial executions)
91% of all known executions took place in 6 countries: China, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan and the US
69 countries still use the death penalty Violence against women
At least 1 in 3 of the world’s women had been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused
70% of the casualties in conflicts were non-combatants, most of them women and children Firearms
85% of killings worldwide involved the use of small arms and light weapons
60% of the world’s firearms were in the hands of private individuals
Economic and social rights 2
In 2000 the member states of the UN committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals. These set out what are, in effect, the most basic economic and social rights. 1990 was taken as the starting point; minimum ‘targets’ were to be achieved by 2015. Just 7 years now remain to achieve them.
At present rates of progress, it will be 30 years before South Asia gets there – at least 100 years before sub-Saharan Africa does so. Apart from Europe and North America, no region will reach the base level before 2020. Extreme poverty
Target: halve the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day.
Comment: the target may almost be hit by ‘developing regions’ as a whole – but it will be missed spectacularly by sub-Saharan Africa.
Child mortality
Target: Reduce the rate by two thirds.
Comment: Painfully slow progress. To meet the target the rate should fall by roughly 50 points in the 10 years between 2005 and 2015. It fell by just 23 points in the 15 years between 1990 and 2005.
Hunger
Target: halve the number of people who suffer from hunger.
Comment: progress is far too slow. Every 5 seconds a child still dies from hunger-related causes. In Bangladesh, India and Nepal nearly half of all children under 5 suffer from malnutrition.AIDS
Target: Halt or reverse spread.
By the end of 2006 the number of people living with HIV was up to 39.5 million from 31.9 million in 2001. The rate of increase is slowing, but in 2006 just 28% of people in need of treatment were receiving it in developing regions. Water
Target: Halve the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
Comment: The target will be missed by 600 million people. An estimated 1.6 billion people will need access to ‘improved sanitation’ – not the same as safe drinking water - by 2015. Access to safe drinking water is likely to be even more restricted.
Maternal Mortality
Target: Reduce by three quarters. There are no reliable figures. An estimated 500,000 women die each year from treatable or preventable complications of pregnancy or childbirth. In sub-Saharan Africa a woman’s risk of dying from such complications over the course of her lifetime is 1 in 16, compared with 1 in 3,800 in the rich world. Education
Target: Ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary education.
Comment: In sub-Saharan Africa 30% of primary school age children are still out of school. Worldwide, 77 million children do not go to school; 781 million adults cannot read or write, of whom two-thirds are women.
Environment
Goal: Reverse loss of environmental resources.
Comment: Forests are still being lost rather than renewed.
Comment: Emissions continue a relentless rise. Counter measures have been ineffective. Projections suggest that unless the rise is not just halted but reversed by 2015, then changes to the climate will be both uncontrollable and catastrophic.
Amnesty International Annual Report 2007.
The statistical tables are taken from the UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, available online at http://mdgs.un.org Other data and comment are taken from Social Watch Report, also available online at www.socialwatch.org
US loves democracy
As the US presidential election motor shifts into gear, Jeremy Seabrook, reflects on the United States' professed love of democracy.
Everyone knows of the love the United States bears for democracy. This passionate attachment is, however, something less than a concern that all the peoples of the world should enjoy the privileges America claims for itself. If the US is so keen on democracy, this is because it has candidates for high office in most countries of the world. This gives it a proprietary interest in the fate of its chosen, wherever elections take place; and it visits its wrath upon those dark places where its preferences are blocked.
If President Bush rushed to congratulate Mwai Kibaki on his 'victory' in Kenya, this was because he had been expected to fulfill the responsibilities which go with pre-selection by Washington. When Kibaki visited the US three years ago, he was hailed by George Bush as 'building a modern, prosperous and peaceful future', and congratulated for his 'economic reforms' and 'rooting out corruption.' The dispatch of Benazir Bhutto to her homeland as the bearer of democratic values was crafted in secret conclaves over many months between Washington, Dubai and Islamabad. Her function – an affirmation of secular democratic values – to embellish the threadbare dictatorship of Musharraf, was brutally abridged. A martyr to democracy, perhaps, but whose democracy?
In Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai wears his Western urbanity with the same assurance he wears his authentic regalia of cloak and karakul hat, made from the skin of aborted lamb-foetuses. In November, the largest US-based investment business conference focussed on Afghanistan reviewed opportunities in construction and materials, mining, energy and infrastructure, agribusiness and food processing, IT and telecommunications. The US Geological Survey mineral resources assessment of Afghanistan is expected imminently. In Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki manages the exhausted post-surge calm. In November he signed a deal for a 'long-term US presence' in Iraq, while the US re-affirmed its support for 'a democratic regime in Iraq against domestic and external dangers.'
Yulia Timoshenko, the 'fiery heroine' of the Orange revolution in Ukraine, returned by the narrowest of margins as Prime Minister in December 2007. Described as a 'Prime Minister we can dealwith' by the officials of the Bush administration, she wants Ukraine to join NATO and the European Union. In an article in Foreign Affairs, she urged the West to oppose Moscow's efforts to restore its grip on its 'lost empire.' President Mikhail Saakashvili, victor of the rose revolution in Georgia was re-elected in January 2008. His 'pro-Western' government also had on the ballot-paper a referendum on joining NATO. Georgia also has 2,000 soldiers in Iraq – the third largest contingent after the US and Britain. A graduate of Columbia University, Saakashvili worked in a New York law firm before becoming candidate to the presidency.
In Bangladesh, the chief of the Caretaker government, Fakhruddin Ahmed, is a former World Bank official. India is led by economist Manmohan Singh, whose liberalizing credentials were won during his apprenticeship in globalization in the USA. In Algeria, the army which has created a precarious stability by crushing Islamists who were on the verge of winning a democratic election in 1991, is reported to be 'stepping up' its relations with the USA, and is 'on board' with Washington's aspirations. Gloria Arroyo, economist president of the Philippines was, in the 1960s, a classmate of Bill Clinton, who has been quick to praise her handling of the economy.
America's love affair with universal democracy is not quite as it seems; it is, rather a narcissistic infatuation with its own destiny and its desire to project this onto the rest of the world.
Of course the 'spread' of such democracy appeals to the US. Its benevolent oversight of winning candidates ensures that US interests are going to be properly safeguarded, and will take priority over the fate of the people who have voted, sometimes unwittingly, for this noble ideal.
This is a continuation of the Reagan doctrine, for which the National Endowment for Democracy was set up in 1983. This was itself a reaction against the savage dictatorships which had sustained US priorities in the 1960s and 70s with such repression and violence.
There remain, of course, places the US cannot reach, undemocratic governments, 'fragile' or 'failing' states. Putin's Russia has shown signs of reverting from the tutelage of Western democracy to an older authoritarianism. China remains, despite its economic power, unfree, since it does not have the institutions that ornamentdemocracy. (There is a contradiction here. The US routinely advocates democracy as the surest way to economic success: China is the most glaring disconfirmation of this doctrine). Iran's Ahmedinajad, although voted for, was not 'properly' elected.
According to the US narrative, Hugo Chávez maintains his power over the poor of Venezuela by bribery and by intimidating powerless media moguls and innocent oil interests. Of course democracy can also produce the wrong result – Hamas in the Palestinian territories for example. Such entities have to be disqualified in other ways, in this case by virtue of its being a 'terrorist organization'. Clearly the will of the people is less sacrosanct than is sometimes claimed; it needs nurture and guidance, so that it does not appoint those which the US and its allies feel constrained subsequently to disappoint.
'A candidate in every country' is the ambition of the USA, so that it can count on the loyalty of its elect; preferably, the Opposition should be on-side also, so that no awkward flaws appear in the seamless garment of political freedom and economic necessity. Of course, in civilized – that is, rich – countries, there is no longer any need for the supervision of democracy, since all electable politicians have learned that it is their highest duty not to disturb the natural processes of global accumulation. In any case, the people can be trusted not to vote away their enjoyment of the modest privilege that have attained. It was not always so – after the Second World War, the USA used economic aid, support to non-Communist parties and covert actions to prevent Communist parties from coming to power in France and Italy. But those days are long gone.
With the experience of democracy in Kenya, Pakistan and Iraq in recent months, there has been a modification of the democratic rhetoric. The shallow electoralism preached by Bush for the past eight years as the sure sign of the 'democratic process' is no longer good enough. Clearly, all countries need 'democratic institutions', modelled on those of the USA or Europe. In other words, a more far-reaching transformation must take place than anything hitherto advocated. Every country must be re-shaped to this end; their customs, society and structures must all be moulded to create an easy transition between administrations, and the economy may run smoothly, unhindered by political interference, which, as everyone knows, is inimical to the wellbeing and prosperity of humanity.
If only it were so simple. There is another, serious obstacle to the realization of the US dream of universal democracy. Democracy in the West was established as a ritual to determine who gets what – that is to say, it was about the interaction between social forces and their relationship to the economy. In other words, it was based on class interests. The friction between social classes has been largely resolved in the West, and this is a further reason why distinctions between potential governing parties are marginal, and people see little difference between them.
When this model of democratic give-and-take is transferred to other parts of the world, particularly since the extinction of Socialism, it is no longer a question of temperate arguments between different strata in a clearly defined nation-state. Older, existential identities fill the vacuum left by the lapse of any other overriding ideological project – the establishment of socialism, for instance, or liberation from colonial rule. The main determinant becomes ethnic, tribal or religious affiliation. The struggle for justice between rich and poor mutates into more bitter rivalries for dominance, and takes on more ominous contours. These no longer set haves against have-nots within a national entity, but open up faults and fissures that are not defined by the boundaries of countries, but by ancient enmities. The elevation of sectarian or ethnic majorities into oppressors is sanctified by the mathematics of democracy; and majorities rarely exercise the theoretical forbearance towards their opponents which the theory of democracy advocates, since there is little danger that their captive minorities will ever outvote them.
The preachings of 'democrats' in Washington become empty slogans as they travel between the orderly arrangement of affairs in Washington or London and the shaky nation-states drawn by colonial pencils on trackless maps, or carved out of ancient crumbling empires, which have assigned this or that group to one country and their close kin to another, along with all their ancient jealousies, no longer submerged in wider social and economic visions.
America's love affair with universal democracy is not quite as it seems; it is, rather a narcissistic infatuation with its own destiny and its desire to project this onto the rest of the world. lpoliticalanimal at 09:55:00 o'clock BST
This entry has 1 comments:
Comment from dannyjmu 16/05/08 14:04
Isnt it hilarious that a country which is such a supposed bastion of democracy does itself not even have true democracy. As proven by the 2000 election, the popular vote counts for nothing when electing the President. Al Gore received half a million more votes than his rival and still got beat into office. What a shining example of how democracy can be circumvented.I also look at how democratically elected governments in the 1970's and 80's were brought down by armed right-wing movements backed by the US governments. I look at the Contras in Central America and Salvador Allende in Chile as prime examples. Just because the people of these countries sought fit to democratically elect left-wing governments, the US decided in its infinite wisdom that these people obviously didnt understand democracy and decided to support their friends who did. What love for democracy.Dont get me wrong, I'm not anti-American. I love alot of things about America, but sadly foreign policy and hypocrisy arent on that list. Hopefully things will change and the American Administrations and governments can once again foster respect and admiration from others, but I think that will take alot of time and alot of effort.
Everyone knows of the love the United States bears for democracy. This passionate attachment is, however, something less than a concern that all the peoples of the world should enjoy the privileges America claims for itself. If the US is so keen on democracy, this is because it has candidates for high office in most countries of the world. This gives it a proprietary interest in the fate of its chosen, wherever elections take place; and it visits its wrath upon those dark places where its preferences are blocked.
If President Bush rushed to congratulate Mwai Kibaki on his 'victory' in Kenya, this was because he had been expected to fulfill the responsibilities which go with pre-selection by Washington. When Kibaki visited the US three years ago, he was hailed by George Bush as 'building a modern, prosperous and peaceful future', and congratulated for his 'economic reforms' and 'rooting out corruption.' The dispatch of Benazir Bhutto to her homeland as the bearer of democratic values was crafted in secret conclaves over many months between Washington, Dubai and Islamabad. Her function – an affirmation of secular democratic values – to embellish the threadbare dictatorship of Musharraf, was brutally abridged. A martyr to democracy, perhaps, but whose democracy?
In Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai wears his Western urbanity with the same assurance he wears his authentic regalia of cloak and karakul hat, made from the skin of aborted lamb-foetuses. In November, the largest US-based investment business conference focussed on Afghanistan reviewed opportunities in construction and materials, mining, energy and infrastructure, agribusiness and food processing, IT and telecommunications. The US Geological Survey mineral resources assessment of Afghanistan is expected imminently. In Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki manages the exhausted post-surge calm. In November he signed a deal for a 'long-term US presence' in Iraq, while the US re-affirmed its support for 'a democratic regime in Iraq against domestic and external dangers.'
Yulia Timoshenko, the 'fiery heroine' of the Orange revolution in Ukraine, returned by the narrowest of margins as Prime Minister in December 2007. Described as a 'Prime Minister we can dealwith' by the officials of the Bush administration, she wants Ukraine to join NATO and the European Union. In an article in Foreign Affairs, she urged the West to oppose Moscow's efforts to restore its grip on its 'lost empire.' President Mikhail Saakashvili, victor of the rose revolution in Georgia was re-elected in January 2008. His 'pro-Western' government also had on the ballot-paper a referendum on joining NATO. Georgia also has 2,000 soldiers in Iraq – the third largest contingent after the US and Britain. A graduate of Columbia University, Saakashvili worked in a New York law firm before becoming candidate to the presidency.
In Bangladesh, the chief of the Caretaker government, Fakhruddin Ahmed, is a former World Bank official. India is led by economist Manmohan Singh, whose liberalizing credentials were won during his apprenticeship in globalization in the USA. In Algeria, the army which has created a precarious stability by crushing Islamists who were on the verge of winning a democratic election in 1991, is reported to be 'stepping up' its relations with the USA, and is 'on board' with Washington's aspirations. Gloria Arroyo, economist president of the Philippines was, in the 1960s, a classmate of Bill Clinton, who has been quick to praise her handling of the economy.
America's love affair with universal democracy is not quite as it seems; it is, rather a narcissistic infatuation with its own destiny and its desire to project this onto the rest of the world.
Of course the 'spread' of such democracy appeals to the US. Its benevolent oversight of winning candidates ensures that US interests are going to be properly safeguarded, and will take priority over the fate of the people who have voted, sometimes unwittingly, for this noble ideal.
This is a continuation of the Reagan doctrine, for which the National Endowment for Democracy was set up in 1983. This was itself a reaction against the savage dictatorships which had sustained US priorities in the 1960s and 70s with such repression and violence.
There remain, of course, places the US cannot reach, undemocratic governments, 'fragile' or 'failing' states. Putin's Russia has shown signs of reverting from the tutelage of Western democracy to an older authoritarianism. China remains, despite its economic power, unfree, since it does not have the institutions that ornamentdemocracy. (There is a contradiction here. The US routinely advocates democracy as the surest way to economic success: China is the most glaring disconfirmation of this doctrine). Iran's Ahmedinajad, although voted for, was not 'properly' elected.
According to the US narrative, Hugo Chávez maintains his power over the poor of Venezuela by bribery and by intimidating powerless media moguls and innocent oil interests. Of course democracy can also produce the wrong result – Hamas in the Palestinian territories for example. Such entities have to be disqualified in other ways, in this case by virtue of its being a 'terrorist organization'. Clearly the will of the people is less sacrosanct than is sometimes claimed; it needs nurture and guidance, so that it does not appoint those which the US and its allies feel constrained subsequently to disappoint.
'A candidate in every country' is the ambition of the USA, so that it can count on the loyalty of its elect; preferably, the Opposition should be on-side also, so that no awkward flaws appear in the seamless garment of political freedom and economic necessity. Of course, in civilized – that is, rich – countries, there is no longer any need for the supervision of democracy, since all electable politicians have learned that it is their highest duty not to disturb the natural processes of global accumulation. In any case, the people can be trusted not to vote away their enjoyment of the modest privilege that have attained. It was not always so – after the Second World War, the USA used economic aid, support to non-Communist parties and covert actions to prevent Communist parties from coming to power in France and Italy. But those days are long gone.
With the experience of democracy in Kenya, Pakistan and Iraq in recent months, there has been a modification of the democratic rhetoric. The shallow electoralism preached by Bush for the past eight years as the sure sign of the 'democratic process' is no longer good enough. Clearly, all countries need 'democratic institutions', modelled on those of the USA or Europe. In other words, a more far-reaching transformation must take place than anything hitherto advocated. Every country must be re-shaped to this end; their customs, society and structures must all be moulded to create an easy transition between administrations, and the economy may run smoothly, unhindered by political interference, which, as everyone knows, is inimical to the wellbeing and prosperity of humanity.
If only it were so simple. There is another, serious obstacle to the realization of the US dream of universal democracy. Democracy in the West was established as a ritual to determine who gets what – that is to say, it was about the interaction between social forces and their relationship to the economy. In other words, it was based on class interests. The friction between social classes has been largely resolved in the West, and this is a further reason why distinctions between potential governing parties are marginal, and people see little difference between them.
When this model of democratic give-and-take is transferred to other parts of the world, particularly since the extinction of Socialism, it is no longer a question of temperate arguments between different strata in a clearly defined nation-state. Older, existential identities fill the vacuum left by the lapse of any other overriding ideological project – the establishment of socialism, for instance, or liberation from colonial rule. The main determinant becomes ethnic, tribal or religious affiliation. The struggle for justice between rich and poor mutates into more bitter rivalries for dominance, and takes on more ominous contours. These no longer set haves against have-nots within a national entity, but open up faults and fissures that are not defined by the boundaries of countries, but by ancient enmities. The elevation of sectarian or ethnic majorities into oppressors is sanctified by the mathematics of democracy; and majorities rarely exercise the theoretical forbearance towards their opponents which the theory of democracy advocates, since there is little danger that their captive minorities will ever outvote them.
The preachings of 'democrats' in Washington become empty slogans as they travel between the orderly arrangement of affairs in Washington or London and the shaky nation-states drawn by colonial pencils on trackless maps, or carved out of ancient crumbling empires, which have assigned this or that group to one country and their close kin to another, along with all their ancient jealousies, no longer submerged in wider social and economic visions.
America's love affair with universal democracy is not quite as it seems; it is, rather a narcissistic infatuation with its own destiny and its desire to project this onto the rest of the world. lpoliticalanimal at 09:55:00 o'clock BST
This entry has 1 comments:
Comment from dannyjmu 16/05/08 14:04
Isnt it hilarious that a country which is such a supposed bastion of democracy does itself not even have true democracy. As proven by the 2000 election, the popular vote counts for nothing when electing the President. Al Gore received half a million more votes than his rival and still got beat into office. What a shining example of how democracy can be circumvented.I also look at how democratically elected governments in the 1970's and 80's were brought down by armed right-wing movements backed by the US governments. I look at the Contras in Central America and Salvador Allende in Chile as prime examples. Just because the people of these countries sought fit to democratically elect left-wing governments, the US decided in its infinite wisdom that these people obviously didnt understand democracy and decided to support their friends who did. What love for democracy.Dont get me wrong, I'm not anti-American. I love alot of things about America, but sadly foreign policy and hypocrisy arent on that list. Hopefully things will change and the American Administrations and governments can once again foster respect and admiration from others, but I think that will take alot of time and alot of effort.
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