A post like this -

Post #63,483 by Ashton 11/17/02 8:52:12 PM Reply	A post like this - makes up for 666 pieces of fluff. It may be the briefest utter rout of the Efficiency in EdjaKayshun crowd I've encountered. And I've read some pretty good ones. Bravo Jack. If that was extemporaneous too.. then it's a bit beyond my small Office to bestow even the, Brevity Award with 4 BS-snuffing Clusters. Amidst the above were the principles I lacked the wits - at age 12-14 - to employ countering the vicious fulminations of my Rt-wing wacko Gramma; she of "The Bricker Amendment" and other McCarthy demagoguery of those fearful Commy-pinko times: so exactly comparable to the Pavlovian alarums of the same set-in-concrete-forever wackos of 2002. ("Human Events" - that group still 'lives' - for example) It might be added that modern 'fiction' too has its proper place in the armaments against the terminally simplistic and lazy of mentation. Heinlein and the panoply of other writers of good fiction - not needing to be suffused into "Sci-Fi" genre - provide pithy examples of what we must counter.. to ever reach civilized-status. Sinclair Lewis even nailed (in '35) the scenario of the accession of our present Leader - more especially his AG mouths many of the platitudes of Lewis's evangelist for Know-Nothingism. But who under 40 has even heard of S. Lewis via today's near-bankrupt edjakayshuns? let alone the Masters. Believe you are quite correct re the utter necessity for actual experience of the above named forerunners of any Chance! for there to be an Open Society. And a bright 6th grader Can.. become fascinated - probably for life, if not terminally distracted by Bang-Bang electronic mesmerizers... (The Allegory of the Caves.. couldn't possibly be ingested w/o a firm base within these ideas - for it goes beyond the scale of 'particular societies') Thanks for the reminder, Ashton
Post #63,484 by jake123 11/17/02 8:56:20 PM Reply	Thanks for the compliment, Ash. --\r\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\r\n* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca \r\n [link\|http://consultron.ca\|http://consultron.ca] [link\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] \r\n Laval Qu\ufffdbec Canada [link\|news://news.consultron.ca\|news://news.consultron.ca] *\r\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
Post #63,489 by boxley 11/17/02 9:22:20 PM Reply	your gran would have loved dinner at our house when my da was alive, communists, wobblies and hardcore socialists all discussing how to make her sort pay a fair wage. UAW steward and well noed for it. had Marx and Engle with me pablum from Freind and Neighbor Eddie. A glasswegian with the common failing of all glasswegians. If it was so fscking good why did ya leave? thanx, bill will work for cash and other incentives [link\|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html\|skill set] "Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic." Correction: All that can be achieved with 51 percent of the voters!" Ilanna Mercer
Post #63,491 by Ashton 11/17/02 9:52:47 PM Reply	You're too smart to constantly imagine Opposites. Or for that matter, to imagine that -anyone remotely alert- confuses the fascist power-seizure in Russia (as the USSR began) with - the useful analyses of homo-sap behaviour by various of the folks mentioned. That's BS and you know it. You cannot dismiss the thoughts of Marx et al, for the bastard dictatorship which mouthed the words -- precisely as our current Resident mouths platitudes and works against the meaning of many of those. "Communism" never existed (nor was there much even 'Socialist' about USSR) and it's arguable that it never could: except in a civilization quite advanced from this one. We have no idea if we shall last long eneough to find out. Either. And if we do muddle through - whatever morph of the best ideas around [?] assuredly won't be a textbook copy of Anything Yet\ufffd D'Oh. It's even more BS if you want to impute this kind of digitalthink to me (or even to marlowe say, who, like another frequent poster: leaves little gems of contradiction or quoted-contradictions in preference to actually engaging the topic at hand). Maybe we need a War Against Boolean-think.. to add to the growing list of Warz on Warz? #%^&% computers have made it EZ to be irrelevant in spades, while brain is still in Sleep-mode. Ashton
Post #63,495 by boxley 11/17/02 10:24:56 PM Reply	hmm I missed something here I was discussing small childhood rememberences of dinner and meetings at my home with a fairly constant crew of DP's and others from the recent war in europe with the definately different view of the world than most americans could imagine. Having had "real world" experience I was not easily led by the platitudes and pap of parts of the 60's. It helped me make up my own mind about a lot of things. So now your post, I wouldnt thing of you as any kind of either or, I was just wondering what yer gran would have thot as seeing such a collection as was around our house. :-) thanx, bill will work for cash and other incentives [link\|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html\|skill set] "Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic." Correction: All that can be achieved with 51 percent of the voters!" Ilanna Mercer
Post #63,503 by Ashton 11/17/02 11:53:43 PM Reply	Ah.. clearer I was taking your rhetorical question to be (not so much personally directed as - a legitimate one to ask the politically dispossessed?) "So why did You leave ?? Ummm maybe you were talkin about that cottage-Marxist with the Porsche.. a preachin about his guilt, for not ever takin a Kulak to lunch - at his own lean-to? So back to the Real question then: crapped drawers, I'd guess. Natch there weren't actual "political discussions"; few adults will give the respect due young folks in such non-discussions - like say: The history instructor in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, who has the moxie to overlook the Bogus, Dude! patois of his marginally-failing student. The kid demonstrates enough of a grasp of the material: he passes him. Nice. Anyway, I never saw her in a group of adults - where custom would have forced her to be less Certain in her pronouncements (?) but she was housebroken so.. Now someone actually suggesting something Good & True in MARX! (whom I doubt she ever even skimmed, like legions of the Faithful) ... t'woulda been Fun fer me, anyway. She were an ~OK 'gramma' in other ways, but a Master Teacher about how to really fuck up your head. RIP. BTW Bill: she had been married -one of about 4?- to a descendant of the Seward who 'bought'/ arranged purchase of Alaska from the Russkies! [cackle] So she went by last-name Seward. Small 'world'. Ashton
Post #63,507 by a6l6e6x 11/18/02 12:11:29 AM Reply	Re: Small 'world'. On 2001/9/6, I stood at the site where the Alaska transaction took place in Sitka. That was some deal. Alex "Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these."\t-- Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18)
Post #63,870 by Ashton 11/19/02 6:03:02 PM Reply	My memory is fuzzy on the details now but IIR, Seward had to fight tooth, nail and platitude.. even to get the folks to see: Such A Deal! [you assholes] Le plus sa change, le plus ces la m\ufffdme chose (the nongrammatical version, I think). Ashton

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