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To: Tailgunner Joe
Lots of blood on a lot of hands in the matter. Post-colonialism was, according to European academics, the clear and ineluctable progress of history - if that sounds Marxist, it most certainly is. Class theory maps rather poorly to the actual tribal structure of African society in everything but the violence. Racism serves only to muddy the waters.

This mess happens consistently when social and political theory insist that the only way to progress to an imaginary future is to kill the occupants of the present. In theory farmers may be replaced easily, in practice they may not. In theory the rich may be plundered and their wealth redistributed and the economy will improve, in practice it does not. In theory justice may be obtained by tearing down oppressive class structures, in practice it merely transfers that oppression into the hands of a new elite and intensifies it. In theory the state withers away once the power is taken from the hands controlling it, in practice it grows under new management.

It is the stubborn refusal of social and political theorists on the Left to admit that the predicted outcomes have not taken place and that the fault is within their theories, that has produced this factory of misery. By their works do ye know them, and their propensity for deflecting blame is wearing a little thin.

16 posted on 08/08/2007 10:31:56 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Billthedrill
I congratulate you on a most insightful post. I found myself mulling over the lines:

It is the stubborn refusal of social and political theorists on the Left to admit that the predicted outcomes have not taken place and that the fault is within their theories, that has produced this factory of misery. By their works do ye know them, and their propensity for deflecting blame is wearing a little thin.

I believe this can be traced back to the fact that to those who follow it socialism/communism is a religion. (The word being defined as "A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.") And one of the hardest things for the human spirit, and ego,to do -- if not the hardest -- is to admit that what was so passionately believed is, in fact, wrong.

IMHO this is why far and away most leftists still "push" the socialist agenda. Do do otherwise would be to admit their god has feet of clay, and they, themselves, very likely have played the fool.

A most bitter Rx indeed for the human spirit.

22 posted on 08/08/2007 12:21:05 PM PDT by yankeedame ("Oh, I can take it but I'd much rather dish it out.")
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