Mystfying quote of the day....

"Preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action." -Obamessiah, inauguration address to the nation-

Collective action. Hmmm. What does that mean? Lets have a look at the Freedom House, founded by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1941 to provide philosophical support to the United States in its struggle to counter the atrocities of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. The thinking goes, I suppose, was that the world has to resist these totalitarian states and it most effective if it is done across the globe together. Collective action against these states what was argued for or in other words the world resistance to these states. Despite the admirable goals of the Freedom House, the wording is a little unfortunate given the context of the word collective and its association with Marxism that had been violently ripping the world apart in the preceding 3 decades. But more worrisome, Collective Action as we find in the current lexicon is one that is tied to 'New Marxism' as we see defined and discussed in this paper....

The ‘new Marxism of collective action' is a term Lash and Urry have recently used to describe a new intellectual current in Marxism which seeks to apply rational choice theory, and particularly game theory, to key Marxian concepts like collective action, class, revolution and exploitation.

Yikes. Not really too hidden here and what is this New Marxism all about? Well first, to be a neo-Marxist, one has to accept that capitalism in not an environment where there is freedom and as these neo-Marxists argue, it is a false freedom since it creates false demand. False demand comes from the folks that really think that they need certain things and that capitalism tricks them into desiring. So neo-Marxists do not think that this is legitimate desires since they have been created through the trickery of capitalists....

It may be suggested, for example, that what passes for freedom under capitalism is a covert form of oppression because of the manipulation of tastes, the promulgation of false needs, or the generally illusory character of the choices on offer. The heavy artillery of ideology is often wheeled on at this point to depict a realm of mystified surface appearance radically at odds with the deeper and grimmer reality of capitalist class relations.

So you see, from here, that what you want is not really what you want since you have been tricked by greedy capitalists into wanting it. I suppose you would also have to overlook things like the housing debacle in the US, where it wasn't really some greedy capitalist that got you to desire something but the US government that was the primary actor in creating greater demand through subsides and the bully pulpit of government support of the industry sector.

But I get lost in the weeds if I get so detailed, since the whole premise of Marxism is that Capitalism is not fair. Fairness is a creed of neo-Liberal Democrats as higher taxes have less to do with economic reality than it has to do what is fair. OK, fairness is subjective, but one would never hear the modern press question this nebulous and necessarily obsequious argument. The Obamessiah continuously repeats the mantra of 'fairness' that Bill Clinton also used so effectively.

But what is he talking about here? Collective actions and freedom in the same sentence, in the Freedom House sense of fighting totalitarians? Seems to me like one could argue that the fight against Islamist extremists as this kind of fight. But unfortunately, I think not. A fundamental tenant of Marxism is that the due to capitalist manipulation that we are manipulated into desiring their produce and way of approach and that this is a loss of freedom. That due to the existence of capitalism that somehow (I am not sure what freedom that they are talking about) we are losing our freedom. Neo-Marxism, through collective action is a counter to this loss of freedom and through fairness and compression of the social class structure that we gain freedoms that we have supposedly lost to capitalism. However, we also have to toss away the concept of free choice that we are individual thinkers and have the option to participate or not. Neo-Marxists are very dismissive of this and have created a nebulous world of capitalist manipulation to explain that what we want and desire is not really ours.

So, presumably through collective actions (Marxism), the central government can protect our freedoms that have been taken by the evil capitalists. Of course, this is a chimera since governments are the ones that through history have been complicit in the destruction of individual freedoms. Ergo, the foundation that the united States was to be an experiment in individual liberty. But now we have what seems to be more like collective liberty. Satan could not have chosen a better actor to destroy the United States and all the good that it does in the world for centuries by internally weakening the very fabric of what made this nation great, specifically, individualism, the benefits of hard work and thrift. Responsibility for ourselves, our families and our localities with God at the center of our being. Now we have the leviathan of government at the center of our lives and we will all be very sorry when this becomes unraveled.