Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - Re: [permaculture] The conservative/liberal story

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Healing Hawk" <healinghawk@earthlink.net>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] The conservative/liberal story
  • Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 12:39:35 -0600



-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Primal Parent
Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2007 10:59 PM
To: permaculture
Subject: [permaculture] The conservative/liberal story

My own core belief is that all divisions are human inventions. If they are
useful for understanding where we are at any given time, and understood as
human inventions rather than natural reality, they can be helpful.
Otherwise, they remove us from the natural reality that grounds us in
ecological felicity, or sustainable lifestyles, the current trope. Nature,
I believe, creates difference but not division.

The three stories are three versions of the same story, but the gist of all
of it is a drift to conservatism. Neo-liberal practice in the world amounts
to economic oppression. The neo-cons claim Leo Strauss as their
intellectual guru. Many of them were Strauss's students. Strauss's
political philosophy contains the idea of the Noble Lie. Here's a fairly
decent background article:
http://www.alternet.org/story/15935

The conservative/liberal story is the only one of this trio that holds
together. There are liberal and moderate Republicans and conservative and
neo-con Democrats. Neither Democrats nor Republicans actively oppose
corporatism, the combination of corporate and governmental power that
currently drives the global agenda after so many US soldiers died in WWII
defeating it. Neo-cons and neo-liberals are conservative in that they
believe in the essential truth that human nature is basically evil and
requires external constraint.

i am just hoping someone could explain how the conservative/liberal story
became the republican/democrat story and how that became the
neo-con/neo-liberal story...

I think this "complexity" is an intended result of the philosophy of social
control advanced by the advertising industry which has sought for almost a
century in the US to install corporate rule, since the industry is dependent
upon corporate funding. One has to make a giant effort to become educated
in anything but this story. It starts while we're in the womb and hear ad
jingles. Stuart Ewen's _Captains of Consciousness_, especially Chapter 5,
tells how this occurred/occurs.

i feel that the beliefs of individuals are too complex to assign to an
"either-or" camp (that is unless they assign themselves as those who declare
"just vote straight ticket")

Yes. Hobbes was the mathematics tutor to King Charles II when he was in
exile. He knew nothing about any other life.

on a side note: hobbes declared savage life (pre-civilized) as "nasty,
brutish, and short" it should be pointed out that he never lived or spent
any time with any hunter-gatherers.

Liberals want government which supports the people in attaining their full
humanity. This support is not in any way to be coercive or damaging, but no
social program emerged from Congress like this, thus they have all failed
(except possibly Social Security, which the rich have been targeting for
destruction since the New Deal).

Another aspect is in protection from the unbridled economic interests of
conservatives. The only possibility of protecting the people from
continuing to be treated like they/we have been treated since being forced
off the land is in government intervention in our behalf. A landless people
lives on its knees before conservatives. Thus conservatives seek to
dismantle government by preventing its funding.

Most Republican voters hear Republican spin as truth. In the south, this is
largely due to Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy appeal to racist bias.
This is where Carl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, among others, cut
their political teeth.

why is it that most liberals i know favor a larger federal government? and
most republicans i know favor a smaller one?

Hobbes believed that people left to themselves would always make war. Locke
believed that people had rights which emanated from nature (life, liberty,
and estate) and were inalienable. To Hobbes, people required the iron hand
of rule by Church or State. To Locke, people created ways to live out their
rights which led to actualizing themselves.

how do you think this evolved out of the Hobbes/Locke story?

Yes. Political consciousness (the actualizing human volitional potential)
is a process, not an event, I think. How do you want to live? I see
conservative/liberal not as a division, but a continuum, and, when we
actualize our volitional potential, we get to choose where we live on that
continuum if we happen to live in a political milieu that supports us in
actualizing.

just to play the devil's advocate isn't it just as fair to state:
The idea that we are capable of self-governing is a liberal
conviction and nothing more. Believing it makes it true. Except it isn't
true. It's simply the liberal worldview. If we hold this worldview,
it may be time for a revisit.

As people holding as truth the need for social control, neo-cons are
conservative. Dubya has not made a single mis-step in protecting and
advancing the corporatist agenda. His family formed Wall Street. Their
bank was Hitler's bank until Congress acted to stop it. They owned Cuban
sugar plantations before Castro took over and they want them back. Who
benefits from the Iraq War?

most republicans i know dont see bush as a republican or conservative, but
as a neo-con.

Someone, perhaps a poet, said those who don't learn from history are doomed
to repeat it. Mistaking the liberal project for social control is one of
those errors I see Republicans making today. If we buy into social control
for "them," we are controlled. If we dismantle the governmental measures
that made life livable for most people (such as habeas corpus), we return to
what Hobbes witnessed in a period of great upheaval. Who benefits from
this?

as far as where i live most of the individuals concerned with peak-oil are
republicans. they believe in and they are fighting more for things many in
the permaculture movement would agree with (raw milk, local farms, choice
for immunizing children, state's rights (i.e. self-governing), individual
responsability, etc.)

Thanks for a wonderful post.

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page