Letters to the Editor
DurianJoe
Published Letters: 1310 Editor's Choice: 69
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All hail communist, totalitarian China!
[Read the article: Desperately seeking a Mandarin-speaking nanny]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What we hoi polloi fail to understand is that money is far more important than trite concerns about human rights and democracy. So China tortures its dissidents, rules its people with an iron grip, is destroying Tibet, and is led by totalitarian monsters. What's that compared to making a profit?
Now Cuba -- that's a bad, bad country.
With all due respect: fuck the rich.
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Cheer up, LW
[Read the article: I'm obsessed with being a hipster]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of the benefits of getting older is that you allow yourself to shed the trappings of what you thought you ought to be, and just be yourself. You don't seem to really want to devote the time and energy into being a hipster, which after all is younger people in pursuit of fleeting fashion. Like you said, what is hip today is not hip tomorrow. The flip side of that is: there's nothing more ridiculous than an older person trying to be hip.
That said, you will also learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some of what is considered hip is also actually quality stuff, be it music or fashion or some other thing. Most stuff is crap, however, and that goes double for what is hip at any one time. Learn to appreciate what is truly good: it's stuff that was hip once upon a time but no longer is, like Charlie Parker's jazz or Mozart, or stuff that was never hip but was good anyway. Then you'll learn the truth: true hipness is knowing and appreciating the good things in life, whatever they are and whenever they came from.
I.e., my friend, 'tis time to grow up.
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Bravo, Bill! Mock away!
[Read the article: Say it loud: I'm elite and proud!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for the laffs. What makes it all the more galling is that it is this country's wealthiest and most powerful aristocrats who use the word "elite" to smear anyone who poses the slightest threat to their privileged status. They cry "elite," and the uneducated and religiously insane yahoos of this country rally in their defense. "Thank you Sir may I have another!?"
And Bill, please ignore the nicer people here. It's high time we turned the Vicious Ray back on the rightwing assholes. Pat Robertson and his ilk are religious nuts. The salt of the Earth who admire George Bush for his plain talkin' ways are, you know, morons. Rush Limbaugh's fans are bigoted rednecks. And anyone who ever used the term "Freedom Fries" in a non-ironic way is too dumb to be allowed to either vote or breed.
Truly, the GOP is the Stupid Party.
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My one hump frump
[Read the article: The lessons of "My Humps"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I find "My Humps" to be so completely ridiculous that it's hard to take seriously the assertion that it's anti-feminist. It's anti-brain cell, if anything, but at the same time it has a great beat. It's like the fluffernutter of songs: bad in every way, yet strangely compelling.
Alanis' slow singing of the lyrics makes a silly song even sillier, but I think she undermined her feminist message by singing about objectification while shaking her ass in skimpy clothes.
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Try life without Scully and Mulder, or Picard and Data
[Read the article: The end of the affair]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm still in mourning.
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Response to Amy LeeTee and other critiques of liberalism.
[Read the article: Say it loud: I'm elite and proud!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Amy LeeTee, to which "dialectic" do you refer? Is it the eternal class struggle, or something else? Regardless, assuming you self-identify as a leftist and not a liberal, do you and the other leftists here truly believe that there will ever not be elites in this world? People who, by virtue of innate ability, circumstance, and luck become elite athletes or artists or intellectuals or industrialists or political leaders? What of revolutionary elites, the kind of people who understand 10 cent jargon like "dialectics?" "Elite" is not necessarily a pejorative; often it is merely an acknowledgement of reality. My trainer is an elite martial artist. She can fight circles around me and always will. I'm not angry about that: that's just the way it is. My friend is an elite intellectual. He has a very big brain, far bigger than mine, and due to that and his elite education, he will always out-think me (even if I can best him in checkers from time to time). So it goes.
As long as there are elites -- and there always will be -- there will be classes. Liberalism is dedicated to using collective effort through government to maximize freedom and opportunity and justice in society, despite classes. What is wrong with that?
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Utopia & liberalism
[Read the article: Say it loud: I'm elite and proud!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But I do believe that everyone has the ability and the right to contribute and lead fulfilling lives in society. This is impossible in todays classist society, and one that will not be solved by "liberalism" (which in fact, has no sense of collectivity; it's an individualist political philosophy). It will only be possible with eliminating, as much as possible, monetary, racial, and sexual barriers.
Sean,
For a foundational philosophy, I prefer one which stresses the freedom of the individual, i.e., liberalism. From there one can move on to the public good.
Liberalism is conducive to your concerns. It can eliminate, to the exent possible, the barriers you wrote of. In fact, it is the liberal philosophy which produced the civil rights laws in the United States. (Don't misunderstand; the hard work of oppressed individuals was the civil rights movement, but the goal of that movement was a liberal goal). There is no reason that liberalism cannot narrow monetary barriers, too. A minimum and maximum wage, just taxation, and channeling of funds into the greater good can lead to a fair economy and society. What's missing, as always, is political will, a problem which is exacerbated by political corruption; those things, however, are part of the human condition and will unfortunately be found in any system, be it capitalist, communist, or socialist.
Lastly, call me naive, but I think that liberalism can accomodate the best ideas of capitalism and socialism and other helpful -isms, because liberalism is devoted to societal progress. If a thing works well, use it; if not, disregard it.
We should reach for the stars, as you say. I for one will never falter in my attempt to invent a truly good vegan brie cheese.