Time for the Left to Give Up
When I hear someone asking what a politician has done or proposes to do, I am always tempted to throw out JFK's line: "Ask not what has my country done for me, but what I have done for my country.
I am afraid of politicians who "do" things. I much prefer politicians, like Reagan, who take naps and let me be.
A politician can only engage the coercive powers of government; can only reconfigure the Police. To ask what a politician has done is to ask what he's done with the Police. But it has always seemed to me that if there is any such thing as progress in politics, that the goal is to eliminate the Police as much as possible, realizing of course that human nature may require some minimum of force to corral the perennial miscreants, both blue and white collar.
As for the acts of the politicians, I realize that a man of letters is apt to see communication itself as an act and to value highly those politicians gifted with speech, but the ultimate goal of a free people really ought to mean, in Marx's words, a "withering away of the state". As eloquent as Pericles and Cicero were, their very existence was a flaw in their bodies politic, as they might very well concur.
On a different jag:
The people's ownership of the means of production--another Marxist goal--is being met. But the Marxists cannot acknowledge this, because they must fetishize their dialectical method and preserve their tired analyses of "surplus value".
However, do 401ks not accomplish popular ownership of the means of production? Do the people not thereby own the stocks of the very companies they work for, and then some? Is not stock ownership now open to all? It is indeed as anyone who's been paying any attention will realize.
Seems to me the Left's work is done. Time for it to go home and stop its yapping. Back to the REAL contest between East and West.
I am afraid of politicians who "do" things. I much prefer politicians, like Reagan, who take naps and let me be.
A politician can only engage the coercive powers of government; can only reconfigure the Police. To ask what a politician has done is to ask what he's done with the Police. But it has always seemed to me that if there is any such thing as progress in politics, that the goal is to eliminate the Police as much as possible, realizing of course that human nature may require some minimum of force to corral the perennial miscreants, both blue and white collar.
As for the acts of the politicians, I realize that a man of letters is apt to see communication itself as an act and to value highly those politicians gifted with speech, but the ultimate goal of a free people really ought to mean, in Marx's words, a "withering away of the state". As eloquent as Pericles and Cicero were, their very existence was a flaw in their bodies politic, as they might very well concur.
On a different jag:
The people's ownership of the means of production--another Marxist goal--is being met. But the Marxists cannot acknowledge this, because they must fetishize their dialectical method and preserve their tired analyses of "surplus value".
However, do 401ks not accomplish popular ownership of the means of production? Do the people not thereby own the stocks of the very companies they work for, and then some? Is not stock ownership now open to all? It is indeed as anyone who's been paying any attention will realize.
Seems to me the Left's work is done. Time for it to go home and stop its yapping. Back to the REAL contest between East and West.
posted by Spleen Board | 3:10 PM
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