FW: Europe and the Americas (fwd)

Bosley_J (BosleyJ@ORE.PSB.BLS.GOV)
Thu, 22 Feb 1996 10:52:00 EST

>>>Among other things, others responded to in private, Dwight READ
<Read@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU> commented:

<snip>
> the assumption (which I see as
> underlying the Ayn Rand quote) that one can rank cultures according to
> some scale of ADVANCEMENT (not complexity!) and then say that those
> cultures that are more advanced are justified in replacing those cultures
> that are less advanced?<<<

TKavanaugh replies, cogently IMHO:

>>It is like calling building 6000 new houses in and around Bloomington
"development"! What you mean is that it although couched in a rhetoric of
"objectivity" (in quotes), it is through and through a
culturally/economically defined value judgement.

Now, how are we going to pursuade THEM?<<

I've been following this thread with a good deal of interest, having seen
the ugly effects of "objectivism" on American youth up close and personal on
a number of college campuses. It strikes me though that using these
"glittering generalities," vague, "good-sounding" words is what passes for a
lot of so-called "discussion of ideas" throughout the political sphere
today. Specifically, I'm getting a bit tired of the talking heads
praising-through-reporting (in my perception) that hyena Buchanan as
"willing to discuss ideas" or "standing up for what he believes," when what
comes out of his lying mouth is nothing more than an elaborate code for some
of the most hideous conceptions ever invented in human history--as one
commentator said, "The heat in his campaign comes from burning books and
crosses." But he gets away with it by using these good-sounding labels for
his so-called ideas, most of which were first articulated by the
intellectual forbears of Attila to justify hatred and violence way back when
they were first "developing" their areas along the lines that I think the
Randians would approve. I'm not sure who the "THEM" is above, except in the
Walt Kelly sense, but it would be nice to convince SOMEBODY. Every time I
drive out through what used to be the lovely countryside near my house I see
more and more beautiful farmland being scraped bare and populated with ugly
houses, all in the name of "development" and "progress," and if that idiot
County Executive who got my vote because as a candidate he didn't seem too
gung-ho on "development" thinks I'd ever vote for him again, I've got some
ocean-front property in Arizona I'd like to sell the dumb sumbitch.

As RH says though, Peacefully

John Bosley
Bosley_J@bls.gov
PS--Off topic, but does anybody else hate Windows 95 as much as I do? What a
piece of junk!