Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 14:51:49 EDT
Subject: Re: [HAB:] An answer to "No ask-No answer"


 
In a message dated 7/10/2004 2:54:20 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
rarodriguez-AT-unvm.edu.ar writes:

it is  not authoritarian and fascism the racism, like politics,
against the black  until the sixteen, the repression against the workers (by
example, Sacco  and Vanzetti), the strike in 1887 and the shooting of the
workers in  Chicago, the law of MacCarthy against "red" people, Guantanamo,
to day, the  torture in Irak, and etc.?



With the term authoritarian, I think of a personality type; with the term  
fascist, I think of a type of government.  As for personality, there is a  
definite tendency in our society for males to act authoritarian in response  to 
females and envious of other males; there is a definite tendency for whites  to 
react to blacks by excluding and rejecting them. But there is also reverse  
discrimination by blacks against whites and by females against males when the  
power dimension is in their favor.  Without going any further in the  
description of the basic problem, there are moral thinkers and moral actors and  there 
is a law forbidding discirminatory behavior.  There is also  inconsistency 
which I attribute to the structuring by the leadership at the many  levels of 
government and within local situations.  We must hold the  leadership accountable 
as this is really the only mechanism of change.   Therefore, I do not 
attribute fascism to the government but to those leaders who  acted inappropriately 
either by omission or by commission.  The nature of  our government is that the 
leaders are accountable to the people, so without  including myself in a 
hypocriticism (variation on performative contradiction),  the idea of our 
government to which all acts must be referred is not  fascist.  When I think of this 
idea - the constitution - then that is what  I fight for: freedom and equality, 
social justice, and the elimination of  crime.
 
Fred Welfare


--- StripMime Warning --  MIME attachments removed --- 
This message may have contained attachments which were removed.

Sorry, we do not allow attachments on this list.

--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- 
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
---


     --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---