Forgive the log quotes that end this. But I think they are extremely relevant to the moment.
The Berkeley black bloc action served to show that they will not allow free speech to be a cover for stupid jackboots that wish to undermine the roots that free speech come from. You should thank them.
And it was shut up AND read. Then comment on the ideas being presented. The idea of utopia in Camus work is well known and clearly not what either for you reacted to. His work in the Rebel, and in Combat, and his eesays on Germany and Algeria are dated in places but remain first of all rooted against the Revolution with a capital R for abstraction and against exactly the concept of Utopia you both trumped up. It is hard to keep up with every thread of reading on here. Too much to ask for sure. But it is not too much to ask for someone to get a modest gist of the argument before jumping in on one of the extremes.
The extremes we are facing today are not helped come into focus with with talk about the Terror or over-simplified ideas about 1918 (yours or mine.) The only tumbrels rolling into the square are the one of the status quo, of which Trump is clearly just the unspoken-of groping Uncle. The extremes of the resistance I am aligning with are about an extreme application of human rights and the rule of law, extremes of care for the earth and each other, the radical idea that for once we get on to the work of actually extending our so-called principles over more than just the privileged and recognized subsets of peoples and species. The structure of this status quo threatens all life as we know it with its weaponry, its consumption, and its suicidal single species focus. More than windows are going to break if we keep playing footsy with what we have become.
I agree with Andrew F. that we have to hear from all people and hear where they are coming from. Freedom of speech is not just about silence William. "Falsehoods are just as much the opposite of dialogue as silence." Which is why I repeat to you my interest in hearing where my claims about Charlie's ideas and their logical conclusions lead to are "lies". It does no good to say look here "I am no xxxxist, I have seven xxxx in my own living room right if your art, your party, and your theology all uphold something quite different.
Again Camus (though I beg Emitt's pardon for his rather foolish use of the term dog as a pejorative.):
"What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today. The grouping we need is a grouping of voices resolved to speak out clearly and to pay up personally. When a Spanish bishop blesses political executions, he ceases to be a bishop or a Christian or even a man; he is a dog just like one who, backed by an ideology, orders that execution without doing the dirty work himself. We are still waiting, and I am waiting, for a grouping of all those who refuse to be dogs and are resolved to pay the price that must be paid so that man can be something more than a dog."
And he finishes
That, I believe, is all I had to say. We are faced with evil. And, as for me, I feel rather as Augustine did before becoming a Christian when he said: “I tried to find the source of evil and I got nowhere.” But it is also true that I, and a few others, know what must be done, if not to reduce evil, at least not to add to it. Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don’t help us, who else in the world can help us do this?
Between the forces of terror and the forces of dialogue, a great unequal battle has begun. I have nothing but reasonable illusions as to the outcome of that battle. But I believe it must be fought, and I know that certain men at least have resolved to do so. I merely fear that they will occasionally feel somewhat alone, that they are in fact alone, and that after an interval of two thousand years we may see a sacrifice of Socrates repeated several times. The program for the future is either a permanent dialogue or the solemn and significant putting to death of any who have experienced dialogue. After having contributed my reply, the question that I ask Christians is this: “Will Socrates still be alone and is there nothing in him and in your doctrine that urges you to join us?”
"It may be, I am well aware, that Christianity will answer negatively. Oh, not by your mouths, I am convinced. But it may be, and this is even more probable, that Christianity will insist on maintaining a compromise or else on giving its condemnations the obscure form of the encyclical. Possibly it will insist on losing once and for all the virtue of revolt and indignation that belonged to it long ago. In that case Christians will live and Christianity will die. In that case the others will in fact pay for the sacrifice. In any case such a future is not within my province to decide, despite all the hope and anguish it awakens in me. And what I know – which sometimes creates a deep longing in me – is that if Christians made up their minds to it, millions of voices – millions, I say – throughout the world would be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals who, without any sort of affiliation, today intercede almost everywhere and ceaselessly for children and for all peoples".
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