tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post5392597895769631841..comments2024-03-30T00:09:27.602+13:00Comments on Not PC: Tuesday morning ramble [updated]Peter Cresswellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10699845031503699181noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-26261854918537874552009-02-25T11:44:00.000+13:002009-02-25T11:44:00.000+13:00Another good link to add to this post, Peter, whic...Another good link to add to this post, Peter, which I got from Mises Economic Blog.<BR/><BR/>How the TARP actually works: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/02/tarp-visualized.html<BR/><BR/>It's the sequence of the photos that is important :)Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07707604974739887751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-89665682774816089342009-02-25T10:27:00.000+13:002009-02-25T10:27:00.000+13:00Well, I was actually living in Berkeley through th...Well, I was actually living in Berkeley through the late sixties and have a good idea of the general mood and I heard several of those groups perform free in Sproul Plaza or in Golden Gate Park.<BR/>My wife played a female lead in Hair in Australia and the Female Head in Hair in New Zealand (Jenny Parkinson) so I take her word for the mood of the Hair Tribe.<BR/>The US movement of the first half of the 20th century was a Conservationist Movement. The Environmental movement which developed from the sixties is quite different. The early European Green movements were more similar to the modern Environmental movement but were nationalist rather than global.<BR/>If it suits you to say everything is the same then you can always do so. Fascism Socialism and Communism are "all the same" if you chose the right parameter, but the differences are what make them interesting.<BR/>I said Rousseau would be unhappy with the high tax regimes and the call for World Government. IF one focuses only on his admiration of nature and village life then of course he is the forerunner of the environmental movement. But modern environmentalism is not in love with village life unless it is an urban village near a railway station.<BR/>RE the optimism of the 60s Hippies, here is what I wrote:<BR/>"Many of these changes in lifestyle were designed to set people free – free of possessions, free from the pressures of corporate life, free from pressures from older generations who still wanted their children to live by the old standards, and freedom from the draft to an unpopular – and inconveniently deadly – war. The Hippies and others of similar mindset were not motivated by the view that they were a threat to nature. They just wanted to get closer to nature, enjoy its ambience, and hear its voice.<BR/>Rousseau and Thoreau would have approved.<BR/>These Hippies of the 1960s would have been horrified by the prospect of the interventions of the ‘Nanny State’ now routinely proposed as necessary to save the planet. <BR/>Many of these changes in lifestyle were designed to set people free – free of possessions, free from the pressures of corporate life, free from pressures from older generations who still wanted their children to live by the old standards, and freedom from the draft to an unpopular – and inconveniently deadly – war. The Hippies and others of similar mindset were not motivated by the view that they were a threat to nature. They just wanted to get closer to nature, enjoy its ambience, and hear its voice.<BR/>Rousseau and Thoreau would have approved.<BR/>These Hippies of the 1960s would have been horrified by the prospect of the interventions of the ‘Nanny State’ now routinely proposed as necessary to save the planet." <BR/>The hippies never got to run San Francisco or anywhere. Arnie may see himself as many things but "Hippie" would not be one of them.<BR/>Sorry, I lived through the sixties music revolution and it was uplifting and upbeat. But my 1970 the worm was turning along with the grim malthusiansim of seventies environmentalism.Owen McShanehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10130002581563595646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-54942933423553498292009-02-24T12:51:00.000+13:002009-02-24T12:51:00.000+13:001. The environmental movement did NOT begin in the...1. The environmental movement did NOT begin in the 1960s, as McShane himself seems to obliquely recognize when he mentions Thoreau - near the end of a 25 page article. It started in the 1860s and was in full flower by the boil-bursting years of Progressivism around the turn of the 20th century. Observe when TR was President, the establishment of the National Parks, the Sierra Club, etc. Has he never heard of John Muir? It certainly *accelerated* in the 1960s, as did every form of Progressivism in America, but he is talking about origins, not stages.<BR/><BR/>2. Hippies were NOT optimistic. That is the Left's (in particular the Leftist press's) view of the people and the period, then and now -- just a bunch of misguided idealists. *Nothing* could be further from reality, as any reader of Rand should know.<BR/><BR/>In particular, his claim that "These Hippies of the 1960s would have been horrified by the prospect of the interventions of the ‘Nanny State’ now routinely proposed as necessary to save the planet." is flat out false. Not only is total whim-worshiping subjectivism intellectually compatible with totalitarianism (in fact an outgrowth of it, as Hayek recognized in The Road to Serfdom), but those self-same hippies were at the *forefront *of pushing for exactly the kind of Fascist dictatorship which the U.S. is now moving rapidly toward. Sure, some hippies were too drugged out and dropped out to engage in any kind of political activism, but they were hardly the rule. Why does he think San Francisco is the cesspool of Leftism and political activism that it is and has been since the era McShane writes about?<BR/><BR/>3. He claims that Rousseau would be unhappy with his 20th/21st century progeny, which is completely unsupportable, if one has actually read Rousseau's ode's to nature and the 'natural life', not to mention if one is at all familiar with Rousseau's *actual life. *Rousseau was the first hippie whose intellectual works actually gained fame and influence. Ditto Thoreau in America later.<BR/><BR/>4. "Hair" a celebration? It is a work of pure subjectivist nihilism, the prototype of 'hippieism.' The nudity was NOT a celebration of the human form, but done for sheer shock value (and a cynical bit of opportunism, getting the middle class couple visiting New York to see a little nudity in a culturally acceptable form, as the producers themselves admitted).<BR/><BR/>More generally, the music of the period fun and hopeful, and as evidence two (albeit highly popular) groups out of thousands? How about Cream, the Grateful Dead, Iron Butterfly, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, and on and on. Optimism ain't what is projected by any of these or dozens more I could cite off the top of my head.<BR/><BR/>I could go on, but the whole essay reads as an apologia for the hippy mentality of the day.<BR/><BR/>Re-boot and try again.Jeffrey Perrenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11841019772535869442noreply@blogger.com