More Timely Than Ever!

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Splitting Hairs

If you teach people that government is indispensable to security, don't be surprised if they also believe that government is indispensable to social security. Good luck trying to explain the difference. (Calling the latter, but not the former, socialism does not work.)

5 comments:

polgfred said...

You mean "does *not* work"?

Sheldon Richman said...

Indeed. Thanks.

Kevin Eggers said...

Sheldon,

Our public education system prepares us to function inside the corporate box, and our media is designed to keep us thinking inside the box. While we are kept thinking inside the box, outside the box the privileged corporations, the wealthy families behind them, and their government accomplices get away with nearly anything they want.

Like institutionalized prisoners that need prison bureaucracy to decide every action of their life, so do Americans need to be told how to function inside the box. Inside the box the corporations have convinced Americans their socialism is their freedom, and, like a comfortable La-Z-Boy Recliner, Americans will do anything they can to remain thinking inside the box, including ignoring truths that conflict with their corporate reality.

Trying to explain the difference between freedom and socialism to someone that has been trained to function inside the corporate box will get you nearly the same result as talking to the wall.

AGSCalabrese said...

ha I saw Atlas shrugged last nite and proved once again I am not an unbiased observer. I was rooting for Dagny and hank , boo hiss for Mouch, boo hiss for the union rep , wow when the train crossed the bridge ....
I am going to see it again...Hmmm maybe tonite.

Sorry about hi-jacking your topic.
99gus gusNWdenver

dennis said...

I guess I'll go full on Foucault with this but there are so many "rituals of submission" that are inscribed in every aspect of our lives under the state that people can't wrap their mind around not needing the state. One way we can drive our point home is to refer not to the public and private sectors, but to the consensual and non-consensual sectors, lumping the state in with murderers, robbers, rapists, and kidnappers, where it belongs, where indeed it is Sauron to the regular serial murderer or rapist's Saruman (for those of you who aren't nerds, I am saying that criminals are just state impersonators.) We must be honest about what the state is.