Sunday, February 21, 2010

Juxtaposition

“Progressivism is a cancer in America,” said Beck, “and it’s eating our Constitution — and it was meant to eat our Constitution.”

--Glenn Beck speech in in 2010

AND

"Only by destroying the old order, by rejecting liberal democracy in its Chilean variant, by purging the politicians and 'extirpating the Marxist cancer' could Chile be saved from the brink of disaster and create a new institutionality to guarantee political stability, economic recovery, and growth."

--Augusto Pinochet speech in 1979*

* from Brian Loveman, "Antipolitics in Chile, 1973-94."  In Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies, Jr. (eds.).  The Politics of Antipolitics, 3rd Edition (Lanham, MD: SR Books, 1997): 269.

6 comments:

Anonymous,  4:08 PM  

Censorship in Cuba. This has included, for example, delaying for several days the news of such major events as the 1979 USSR invasion of Afghanistan, the Cuban radio stations’ decades-long ban of Celia Cruz, imposing strict controls on Internet access, the attempt to almost ignore and distort the coverage of the Cuban intellectuals’ protest at the beginning of 2007, and the deliberate failure to translate into Spanish Noam Chomsky’s critique of the human rights situation in Cuba in an appearance on Cuban television during a recent visit to the island. Censorship reflects the state’s lack of trust in people being able to obtain unfiltered information and arrive at their own best judgment. That leads to the very thing that Rosa Luxemburg warned of in her critique of the Russian Revolution: “Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party—however numerous they may be—is no freedom at all.” She pointed out that serious consequences would follow from such repressive policies, namely that “with the repression of political life in the land as a whole, life in the Soviets must also become more crippled…life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep,” and that is the case in Cuba.

Anonymous,  4:18 PM  

The fault of many of our artists and intellectuals lies in their original sin: they are not true revolutionaries. We can try to graft the elm tree so that it will bear pears, but at the same time we must plant pear trees. New generations will come that will be free of original sin.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Justin Delacour 5:33 AM  

My own sense is that to compare Glenn Beck to Pinochet is to create all manner of confusion. To understand any political figure, one has to understand the nature of the social conflicts that has produced the politics of the figure in question. The nature of our political conflicts in the United States is so vastly distinct from that of Chile in 1973 that to try to compare these respective figures' statements is to lose the meaning of the words in the contexts within which they were spoken.

Defensores de Democracia 1:33 PM  

“Progressivism is a cancer in America,”

What Teddy Roosevelt said about Health Insurance, protection of the poor and the weak, Protection of the Immigrant, Taxation of the Rich - Presidential Campaing of 1912

Teddy Rooselvelt proposes Health Insurance for Americans and presents Germany and Bismark's legislation as a model. More Information on Germany and England, pioneers in these developments.

This is a speech of Theodore Roosevelt in August of 1912, during the Presidential Campaign.

Teaching American History Organization
Confession of Faith
Theodore Roosevelt
August 6, 1912

Confession of Faith

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=613

Some excerpts

It is abnormal for any industry to throw back upon the community the human wreckage due to its wear and tear, and the hazards of sickness, accident, invalidism, involuntary unemployment, and old age should be provided for through insurance. This should be made a charge in whole or in part upon the industries, the employer, the employee, and perhaps the people at large to contribute severally in some degree. Wherever such standards are not met by given establishments, by given industries, are unprovided for by a legislature, or are balked by unenlightened courts, the workers are in jeopardy, the progressive employer is penalized, and the community pays a heavy cost in lessened efficiency and in misery. What Germany has done in the way of old-age pensions or insurance should be studied by us, and the system adapted to our uses, with whatever modifications are rendered necessary by our different ways of life and habits of thought.

Working women have the same need to combine for protection that working men have; the ballot is as necessary for one class as for the other; we do not believe that with the two sexes there is identity of function; but we do believe that there should be equality of right; and therefore we favor woman suffrage. Surely, if women could vote, they would strengthen the hands of those who are endeavoring to deal in efficient fashion with evils such as the white-slave traffic; evils which can in part be dealt with nation-ally, but which in large part can be reached only by determined local action, such as insisting on the wide-spread publication of the names of the owners, the landlords, of houses used for immoral purposes.

*********************************************************

Bismark in Germany and Social Legislation in England

***********************************************************

As said in the previous paragraphs, Teddy was an admirer of the Social Legislation of Otto von Bismark ( The Iron Chancellor ) in Germany.

Here you find beautiful information about that :

The Huffington Post
By Paul A. London
November 3, 2008

Finally, Health Insurance 90 Years Late

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-a-london/finally-health-insurance_b_139666.html

Some excerpts :

The story starts in Germany in 1883. Count Otto von Bismarck, the "Iron Chancellor," championed government-sponsored social insurance including "sickness insurance" to win working class voters away from the Socialists. It was not a socialist program. It was an anti-socialist program. Bismarck rammed it through and enlarged it over the years, overriding opposition from his own conservative allies and from the Socialists who knew the program was aimed at weakening them.

Youth, Minorities, Politics :

Milenials.com

Vicente Duque

Defensores de Democracia 1:34 PM  
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