OnPoint: How it would work
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I know I'll never hear another word from her without filtering it through her recent utterances. Better the racist/classist you know.
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WH,
The acknowledgement that some of our communities are disadvantaged presents an opportunity of a sort.
Sure, it's easy to be cynical about our newsmagnet Minister for Social Development when she tells the Salvation Army:
Give a man a kumara and you feed him for a day. Teach him how grow a garden full of kai and you feed him for a lifetime.
but I'm sure that she has a passion for social justice and that her heart is in the right place. I suppose that to some extent the state can't replace the rewarding relationships, the arohas if you will, that shape our lives in positive ways and help to give them meaning.
I hope that Craig will one day articulate his vision for social justice on these pages.
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I believe it is possible to articulate a position on social justice from a right perspective - that's what we miss when the voices of old-style conservatives are drowned out by the brash neo-lib extreme.
However, a bigot is a bigot. Fortunately, Bennett seems too decent to go down the same road.
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I believe it is possible to articulate a position on social justice from a right perspective - that's what we miss when the voices of old-style conservatives are drowned out by the brash neo-lib extreme.
Yes. It's unfortunate that Lord Denning fell off his perch before we could sort out the good cloning technology. He was far from perfect but his legal justice has had a positive and lasting influence on social justice.
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That I believe is more appropriately called "abandoning ship". The whole thing was hilarious, in fact, as his criticism of Bush amounted to him saying "He did exactly what my friends and I urged him to do, and look at the consequences! That man must be stopped!" It really was quite priceless.
The fact that Francis Fukayama can walk down the street without people sniggering as he passes is confusing enough for me, let alone the fact he's still taken seriously enough to be a commentating voice.
He wrote a book called 'the end of history' whose central thesis was that there wouldn't be any more great historical upheavals, and that 'steady-as-she-goes' growth would be the order of the day for the 21st Century and beyond.
Well, it seems to me that that's kind of like putting all your chips, plus your house, shirt, pants and family on red. And then it comes up black.
Talk about overdrawn at the credibility bank.
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WH,
I believe it is possible to articulate a position on social justice from a right perspective - that's what we miss when the voices of old-style conservatives are drowned out by the brash neo-lib extreme.
However, a bigot is a bigot. Fortunately, Bennett seems too decent to go down the same road.
Yeah, apparently "rising star" is a pretty broad term. Saying that makes me feel mean, I don't want to write her off as a basically indecent person, I just want her to learn and grow and stuff.
David Brooks is good at the moment?
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Well, it seems to me that that's kind of like putting all your chips, plus your house, shirt, pants and family on red. And then it comes up black.
Sounds like he was putting it all on 00.
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WH,
Fukuyama recently appeared on Newsnight with Polly Toynbee and Lord Lawson to discuss the relative historical importance of 1979 (the beginning of the Thatcher/Reagan period) and 1989 (the fall of communism). It would be fair to say that Fukuyama was the most knowledgeable, articulate and interesting guest.
The fact that education is a lifelong process encourages a certain humility about other people's mistakes. The social and political aspects of the exchange of ideas seems to get in the way of that sometimes.
Brooks recently wrote about closing achievement gaps in Harlem's schools.
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The fact that education is a lifelong process encourages a certain humility about other people's mistakes.
I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make.
If you're trying to say that everyone makes mistakes and that they shouldn't be expected to carry the weight of those mistakes around for a lifetime, especially if they sincerely change their views, then I would agree. But it depends on the mistake, or more specifically, how big a doozy it is.
Wikipedia sums up 'The End of History' as follows:
[Fukuyama argues that] the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is largely at an end
He was 40 at the time that was published in 1992. That kind of grandiose, absolutist full-speed-ahead-and-damn-the-torpedoes, no-shades-of-grey-round-here-no-siree type of argument is what I'd expect from a teenager, and not a middle-aged academic.
It was also laughably absurd even at the time. For those who had eyes to see, there were the stirrings of a whole bunch of potentially extremist ideologies before and around the time of publication - they were right in his face if he'd not been ideologically blinded.
The Yugoslavian/Balkan wars had broken out in 1991.
Here's a handy timeline of terroist attacks on Americans in 1979, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1988.
The first World Trade Centre bombing was in 1993 - afterwards, but the roots of that sort of extremism were clearly evident beforehand.
I could go on and talk about internal, Michigan Militia'-type internal dissent in the US - the McVeigh bombing was not that long afterwards.
I could also slightly stretch a point and talk about the battles between globalisation protestors and 'The Man' which reached something of a peak at the 'Battle of Seattle' in 1999, but which were certainly evident back in 1992.
I've given examples of three ideologies which were evident at the time, any one of which could have got very nasty. As it turns out, one of them did. He didn't take into account any of them.
I'd say when you drop that sort of a clanger, a couple of decades in the wilderness is the least you can expect.
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