[Peace-discuss] Liberal culture wars

[C. G. Estabrook]

And it comes from the Sunday Opinion section of today's NYT (which surprisingly 
enough is still publishing a hard copy), where Rich is the resident Bien-Pensant 
Columnist.

The academic form of the evisceration of radical social critique was called 
"post-modernism."  It's now primarily of archaeological interest, because any 
real criticism has been successfully purged from American universities -- in 
obvious violation of trumpeted principles in cases like those of Norman 
Finkelstein and Joel Kovel, but successfully if subtly thorough the entire 
academy.

That's why, for the first time in more than forty years, there is no left 
critique of the US government, coming from academics.  (There never was much -- 
they always over-advertised themselves -- but there was much effort to suppress 
what did appear more than a generation ago.)

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the 
spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that 
spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives 
people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the 
presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the 
range of the debate."

David's absolutely right.  --CGE


David Green wrote:
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion>
> 
> It's important to understand how misguided Frank Rich's column is regarding
> the so-called culture wars, which are really fake wars conducted between
> so-called liberals and conservatives in order to distract us from their
> unifed economic-military agenda. Predictably, it's posted on Common Dreams,
> the credulous end of the internet left.
> 
> DG