My fundamental view of individuals and the importance of the choices they make actually comes from Einstein, via one of my great teachers, Larry McMillin, and his Individual Humanities class at the Webb School of California. Einstein, who thought a great deal on education, wrote that the aim of education should be the creation of "independently acting and thinking individuals who see service to their community as their highest life crisis." Humans are capable of acting individually and making choices; therefore humans should be encouraged to act individually and make choices, and also taught that choosing to make a positive difference in the world through their own actions is a critical thing.
Butler's aliens are not suggesting that community is bad. In fact, they place a high emphasis on family and clan. But they also believe that deferring to a socially-defined leader even when the individual's intellect points in another direction, that is a fatal flaw. I'd be curious to see how current Republicans think about that idea. All the evidence tells us that George Bush is not following conservative principles: nation building, deficit spending, systemic incompetency in carrying out law and order. Thus the individuals who believe in conservative principles should be vehemently against George Bush. Or do they value hierarchy over intelligence?
2 comments:
Many conservatives constantly harp on Bush's lack of conservative bona fides vis-a-vis his entry into the Iraq war. William Buckley recently pronounced Iraq a failure, for instance, and he represents the paleo-con isolationist-unless-absolutely-necessary view. Many others bash the prez for his failure to veto any of the many pork-laden spending bills that have crossed his desk. I agree that Bush is not anything like a classical conservative, and many classical conservatives believe the same thing. Assuming that cons - paleo or neo - are some monolithic block is simply incorrect. I'm a classic libertarian, and I'm forced to vote republican for lack of any viable alternative among the democrats, for example.
Today's "liberals" are not liberal in the classic sense either, by the way. If they were, I'd vote for some of them.
There may be some conservative non-politicians who criticize Bush*, but Republicans as elected officials have been quite monolithic in attitude. There has been no oversight by Congress investigating the war, the illegal wiretapping, etc.
*Most importantly, conservatives were quite careful to not criticize Bush until after the 2004 election. Right after that his approval ratings started to slip, allowing the pundits to feel safe in criticizing him.
Post a Comment