Re: Heston Speech

From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Fri Feb 23 2001 - 09:01:16 MST


On Thursday, February 22, 2001 7:48 AM Steve Nichols steve@multisell.com
wrote:
> >You got that right. However, the particular hodge podge here is the
result
> >of a certain package-dealing typical in the United States. American
> >conservatives like Heston tend to have a particular mix of positions --
> some
> >tenable, others not -- that are peculiar to American culture. Their
> >official rivals, American Liberals (welfare statist for those in other
> >countries, as "liberal" here means someone who is for ever more
> government),
> >tend to hold an opposing mix and neither side looks for a dialectical
> >resolution of these differences.
>
> >Nor do they try to rationally reconstruct their views. Instead, both
tend
> >to just refine stuff that will support their prejudices and slug it out
> with
> >the other side, as if, to paraphrase Camille Paglia, 2300 years of
Western
> >Civilization only gave us two options in everything. Round and round we
> >go...
>
> Are there no "third way" politics in the USA, like Canada's PM and Tony
> Blair in the UK?

I do not see these guys as third ways -- unless by "third way" you mean a
halfway house between the other two.

> I tend to look down on political theory ... and prefer to judge issues on
> a case-by-case, situationalist (posthuman aesthetic) way.

I don't look down on political philosophy, though I look down on certain
wrong political philosophies.

By what means does one "to judge issues on a case-by-case, situationalist
(posthuman aesthetic) way?" That would seem to mean to me an implicit,
tacit political philosophy as opposed to an explicit one. The latter is
easier to examine. (Also, I think such "case-by-case" thinking is just how
the average person and politician approaches matters. This is how we get
people who say they are for freedom of expression, but against expression
they or well established find offensive, such as people who against anyone
making anti-Christian art.)

I think also there is a difference between having a rule in this area and
having principles. The latter are contextual and open-ended, the former are
neither. Most people I know don't think of the latter as an alternative to
the former. They are suspicious of any systematic thinking. I'm not.:)

Cheers!

Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/



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