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talkpoliticsForgive me if you have heard this from me before, but I suspect it can use some more attention. The topic of corrupting consciousness is as appropriate today as it ever was. It is one of those mistakes that is made generation after generation. It happens in ways that are both accidental and deliberate. For example, when fundamentalists speak of "sodomy" and chant the slogan "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," they deliberately corrupt consciousness to promote their own despotic agenda of defrauding people of their rights. An example of accidental corruption comes from the fact that the same word means different things in different times and places.
One of the techniques that fundamentalists employ to corrupt consciousness is to refrain from studying the milieu in which ancient literature was written and received. A small number of fundamentalists study classical literature so that they can do battle with religious liberals. They fail to apply what they learn from those studies in order to criticize fundamentalist tenets. For example, fundamentalists use the classical definition of "logos" in order to criticize the Scary Green Dragon, but they do not use it to address fundamentalist opposition to reason.
David Barton has recently made a name for himself in the campaign to corrupt the meaning of constitutional constructs by revising the history of the document. There is a movement to reshape America into a "Christian" nation where the word "Christian" means something very different in the mind of a fundamentalist than it does in the mind of an Episcopalian. The latter group are guilty of the sins of rational thought and failure to corrupt consciousness. They do not use the sacred buzz word "sodomite," for example.
Another word that varies in meaning over space and time is "democracy." Americans, for the most part, are very comfortable with a semantic that involves the populace voting for one of two candidates who represent the interests of either Wall Street or the Cayman Islands. Lenin once observed that the American political system is one where people have a choice of candidates for office, none of which will represent the interests of the voters. When Americans travel overseas to bring "democracy" to foreign lands with the barrel of a bazooka, they "liberate" the locals into the hegemony of either Wall Street or the Cayman Islands.
One militant bumper sticker puts it quite well: "Freedom isn't Free." It is actually subservience to plutocratic despotism. Who was it that said the power of governments to rule unjustly derives from the acquiescence of the people they rule?
Can you see any other corruptions of consciousness at work on the political landscape?
Links: David Barton's influence on the Republican platform. The bumper sticker in full glory.
One of the techniques that fundamentalists employ to corrupt consciousness is to refrain from studying the milieu in which ancient literature was written and received. A small number of fundamentalists study classical literature so that they can do battle with religious liberals. They fail to apply what they learn from those studies in order to criticize fundamentalist tenets. For example, fundamentalists use the classical definition of "logos" in order to criticize the Scary Green Dragon, but they do not use it to address fundamentalist opposition to reason.
David Barton has recently made a name for himself in the campaign to corrupt the meaning of constitutional constructs by revising the history of the document. There is a movement to reshape America into a "Christian" nation where the word "Christian" means something very different in the mind of a fundamentalist than it does in the mind of an Episcopalian. The latter group are guilty of the sins of rational thought and failure to corrupt consciousness. They do not use the sacred buzz word "sodomite," for example.
Another word that varies in meaning over space and time is "democracy." Americans, for the most part, are very comfortable with a semantic that involves the populace voting for one of two candidates who represent the interests of either Wall Street or the Cayman Islands. Lenin once observed that the American political system is one where people have a choice of candidates for office, none of which will represent the interests of the voters. When Americans travel overseas to bring "democracy" to foreign lands with the barrel of a bazooka, they "liberate" the locals into the hegemony of either Wall Street or the Cayman Islands.
One militant bumper sticker puts it quite well: "Freedom isn't Free." It is actually subservience to plutocratic despotism. Who was it that said the power of governments to rule unjustly derives from the acquiescence of the people they rule?
Can you see any other corruptions of consciousness at work on the political landscape?
Links: David Barton's influence on the Republican platform. The bumper sticker in full glory.
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Date: 18/9/12 15:23 (UTC)I liked that. :-)
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Date: 18/9/12 15:46 (UTC)Historical revisionism is the vilest sort of propaganda and Barton's actions are no different from the Japanese writing off Nanking, Russia writing off gulags, and pro-Confederates writing off the reasons for the American Civil War and probably content to write off Jim Crow in the future.
I was trying to channel underlankers there, but I lack the ability to link the topic tangentially to historical atrocities.
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Date: 18/9/12 23:10 (UTC)"In an article titled "Unconfirmed Quotations", Barton conceded that he has not located primary sources for eleven alleged quotes from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions (hence, the title of the article), but maintained that the quotes were "completely consistent" with the views of the Founders"
Not sourced but it sounds good!
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