From: Michael Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Feb 21 2001 - 13:57:52 MST
Neal Blaikie wrote:
>
> Other than paying lip-service to such high-falutin' concepts as individual
> liberty and (aw shucks) just plain ole common sense, I am at a loss to understand
> why a speech by Heston could be important to extropians. As is typical of
> right-wing pundits, he is once more engaging in the type of empty (but, by gosh,
> emotionally stirring) rhetoric and most-extreme-example finger-pointing that is
> so typical of the status quo keepers. Sure, I'm for individual liberty like old
> Chuck. Sure, I think some people on the left sometimes react in extreme and
> ridiculous ways to imagined (or at least exaggerated) slights (as do people of
> all political persuasions).
The problem is that people on the left (and plenty on the right as well)
will try to turn their reactions into law, and they are the consummate
experts at demonizing their opponents and sowing mistrust of the
individual to sell people on the need for a new law that confiscates
somebody's civil rights.
> But do I really need to dissect his speech
> point-by-point in order to show where sincere concern ends and (rather lame)
> propagandizing begins? (Because I will.)
Go for it.
>
> C'mon, Max. I'm all for individual liberty and an end to ridiculousness, but
> Chuck Heston? Rush Limbaugh? They're reactionary gatekeepers in libertarian (I'm
> using the term generically here) clothing, exemplars of the old order who have
> appropriated tricks from their (sometimes imagined) opponents and turned them
> back on them (often badly). Just because Heston's speech is a good speech (and it
> is) doesn't make it important. (I mean, Clinton delivered some damn fine speeches
> and look where that ended up.)
"I feel your pain" doesn't cut it.
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