The spring of 2011 opens an instructive window to reflect on the question of courage in policy-making. For some months now we have witnessed "the Arab Spring," when millions of people filled streets across the Middle East in defiance of oppressive regimes and in the face of violent state repression.
These images resonate with familiar lexicons of courage as a quality that enables a person to confront difficulty, danger, or pain instead of withdrawing from it. All of us at one point in our lives or another are challenged to confront threatening obstacles, but these private and daily acts of courage, by definition, defy a common yardstick. How, then, are we to think about courage in the collective enterprise of policy-making?
The opposite of courage in such circumstances, Rollo May argues, is not cowardice but, instead, conformity: our willingness to bend our thinking and behaviour to fit with the status quo however unacceptable it may be.
In The Death of the Liberal Class, Christopher Hedges makes a compelling argument that progressive policy networks in the United States, what he calls the "liberal class," have betrayed this legacy of calling political power into account. Hedges argues that in recent decades the liberal class was seduced by the utopian promises of globalization and the dubious dictum that markets should be the arbiter of all human, economic and political activity. Political science and economics departments and business and law schools parroted the ideology of free markets, refusing to recognize, let alone address, the mounting social and economic disparities that it has left in its path.
Hedges argues that the liberal class abrogated its historic role as social critic. It succumbed to opportunism and then to fear and, in so doing, betrayed the working and middle classes. It also silenced the critics within its ranks, and, when the emperor of an unregulated market was revealed as having no clothes, the liberal class was bereft of alternative visions.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/progressive-economics-forum/2011/09/liberal-math
To the many right wing partisan hacks that populate DA the American Democratic Party qualifies as "Socialist" and even "Pro-Marxist", this despite the fact that it's rather common knowledge that in comparison to the rest of the world Obama and his party are really closer to being centre right than on the fringe left. This idea is further buttressed by the fact that while Obama has attempted some changes he has kept a lot of the same policies as the Bush administration. Personally I find that that when it comes to foreign policy be it Democrat or Republican there are very few differences.
A lot of what this article discusses really strikes a chord with me. It echoes my sentiments that Obama has to a certain degree caved and compromised too much.
What are your impressions? Do you think the political spectrum within the US is too narrowly defined by the two major parties?
These images resonate with familiar lexicons of courage as a quality that enables a person to confront difficulty, danger, or pain instead of withdrawing from it. All of us at one point in our lives or another are challenged to confront threatening obstacles, but these private and daily acts of courage, by definition, defy a common yardstick. How, then, are we to think about courage in the collective enterprise of policy-making?
The opposite of courage in such circumstances, Rollo May argues, is not cowardice but, instead, conformity: our willingness to bend our thinking and behaviour to fit with the status quo however unacceptable it may be.
In The Death of the Liberal Class, Christopher Hedges makes a compelling argument that progressive policy networks in the United States, what he calls the "liberal class," have betrayed this legacy of calling political power into account. Hedges argues that in recent decades the liberal class was seduced by the utopian promises of globalization and the dubious dictum that markets should be the arbiter of all human, economic and political activity. Political science and economics departments and business and law schools parroted the ideology of free markets, refusing to recognize, let alone address, the mounting social and economic disparities that it has left in its path.
Hedges argues that the liberal class abrogated its historic role as social critic. It succumbed to opportunism and then to fear and, in so doing, betrayed the working and middle classes. It also silenced the critics within its ranks, and, when the emperor of an unregulated market was revealed as having no clothes, the liberal class was bereft of alternative visions.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/progressive-economics-forum/2011/09/liberal-math
To the many right wing partisan hacks that populate DA the American Democratic Party qualifies as "Socialist" and even "Pro-Marxist", this despite the fact that it's rather common knowledge that in comparison to the rest of the world Obama and his party are really closer to being centre right than on the fringe left. This idea is further buttressed by the fact that while Obama has attempted some changes he has kept a lot of the same policies as the Bush administration. Personally I find that that when it comes to foreign policy be it Democrat or Republican there are very few differences.
A lot of what this article discusses really strikes a chord with me. It echoes my sentiments that Obama has to a certain degree caved and compromised too much.
What are your impressions? Do you think the political spectrum within the US is too narrowly defined by the two major parties?