"The first priority of the state is to make sure its citizens are alive and safe." Amitai EtzioniWhich "state" is the Communitarian guru describing?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. " U.S. Declaration of Independence, 1776
The U.S. legal system:
http://library.findlaw.com/1999/Jan/1/241487.html
"The first priority of the state is to make sure its citizens are alive and safe."
ReplyDeleteDidn't Etzioni say in his interview that the first priority of the state isn’t “meal, bread and house.” I was wondering how you can be "alive and safe" without those things.
You asked "Which "state" is the Communitarian guru describing?"
I figured this was a trick question. How about the state of meandering mindlessness. It sure doesn’t sound like he’s talking about the American system I was taught in school. Anyone that really listens to what Etzioni is saying has to wonder how he was considered one of the top one hundred intellectuals in 2001. Then again, Gore won an Oscar for a propaganda film in the documentary category. Who votes for these people should be the bigger concern.
Notice how Etzioni is pushing collectivism, while comparing the communitarian movement to the environmental movement, which is part of the same movement. He also uses the Hegelian dialectic in claiming the economic crisis was related to individualism and can only be solved with communitarian thinking, telling us the world is more integrated than it used to be. We should be more integrated. That’s been the plan all along. I also noticed how they never discussed the differences in government systems when talking about countries, only the differences in leadership and that there is never enough communitarian thinking.
I keep thinking of Kissinger whenever I hear Etzioni speak. I think they are interchangable.
Is there a date for this interview?
Etzioni is over-simplifying history here. Margaret Thatcher was not about 'greed is good'. That is a lefty lie! She was a conservative (small 'c') who believed in the power of the individual and not in the power of the collective which takes away power from individuals. These days it is the state which is the most ultimately greedy entity: when they take from us, they do not first calculate what they need - no, they calculate how much they can squeeze out of the average citizen. If that is not greed by this ridiculous collectivist definition, then God only knows what is?
ReplyDeleteThatcher's social policies were not about casting every individual as out on his own, but rather emphasised the role of the family, and of the community (in the old fashioned, pre-Communitarian sense – friends , neighbours) in helping one-another rather than the state.
Etzioni’s misleading description of the Reagan/Thatcher era running into the Bush era as openly celebrating greed, and his statement that the ethos of this era was, “self-interest is good and does not have to balanced with anything,” gives totally the wrong impression. He knows it too!
Thatcher won the election by a landslide against the Labour Party, and then won 2 more consecutive elections, partly due to people’s FEAR of the dangerously out-of-touch Labour Party. People, who had never voted Conservative before, voted for the Tories in the 80’s to keep Labour out! The Labour Party throughout the 70’s was popularly labelled ‘the loony lefties,’ by many and disgraced itself by its, apparently, total apathy in the face of the widespread Marxist infiltration of the British Trade Union movement whilst actually being in collusion with it! This all culminating in the ‘Winter of Discontent.’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7598647.stm
ReplyDeleteAsked in this interview if individualism is to blame for the current economic crisis, Etzioni has the barefaced cheek to say, “Yes.” These links show the reality, I am old and I remember it all so well!
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1324710/After-winter-discontent-Patios-solve-1979-gloom-suggests-adviser.html
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~davewalton/archive/local/winterofdiscontent.html or search under ‘davewalton archive local winterofdiscontent’
www.historyextra.com/feature/winter-discontent-what-can-we-learn-history