Honky, the institutions you mention have been called to question as a result of social change. This comes about through technological change, which always follows some form of social shift - usually the result of crisis. These things always influence each other.

The printing press, for example, saw in the reformation, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, but these would not have happened without the need for Bibles.

The pill precipitated a huge shift in social values: marriage, the sexual revolution, two child families, and feminism. But the pill would not have been marketed (and probably invented) without the need for workers during WWII and the subsequent participation of women in the workforce in the post-war boom.

Your enemy is a straw man. He exists, but only in response to change itself. Conservatism as a philosophy also has responses to change. This is what social and political ideas are: responses to change.

The current two streams, liberalism and conservatism, came about with the Whigs and Tories after a revolution, a Restoration, and an industrial revolution.

Does it really matter what brand of reaction you attach yourself to? The fruits of Fascism and Stalinism were eirily similar. Both, as we know, borrowed heavily from each other. If Hitler had won the war, he would have seen a similar shift in power to the fall of the Iron Curtain in the 1980s/90s.

This is because power responds to the way information is distributed. The medium is the message. The Soviets could not supress the fundamental technological - but also ontological - shifts that occurred in the global economy.

And neither could many in the so-called free world. This is why you're complaining about "progressives". You find social change, and the collapse of social norms that has occurred since the 1970s, difficult to come to terms with. You blame the erosion of the institutions you mention on "progressives." The Stalinists would have blamed it on "counter-revolutionaries".

Take your pick.

Social change is complicated. It is never the result of one thing, but involves many interdependant factors: knowledge, power, and the way these are distributed in an economy.

I'm not sure if I've given you the response you were after. I can't defend "progressives" or "leftists" or whatever you call them because I don't really know who they are. I certainly wouldn't fight against the way things are - what would be the point of that?

Things are what they are. You can fight or surf. The real fight, Honky, is within.

Take it or leave it.

The direction of change is not an accident, or a naturally occurring phenomenon.

... wrote on Feb 10^th, 2012 at 3:07pm:


Yes, I'm sure Corporate Whitey would agree with you.

I'm saying the direction of change is entirely an accident.

If Hitler had won the war, we'd be Nazis. Or else.

Seeing we got liberal democracy, we're Whigs and Tories.

I'm wrong. Hitler didn't lose the war at all.

Quote:


http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?action=viewprofile;username=745E4D515E533...

... wrote on Feb 10^th, 2012 at 3:55pm:

If western culture is in decline - its solely because of bigoted political/corporate parasites like you and the rest of the social engineering political class and their genius economic theories..