Building the Barricade
We were afraid as we built the barricade /Under fire. / The tavern-keeper, the jeweler’s mistress, the barber, /All of us cowards. / The servant-girl fell to the ground /As she lugged a paving stone, we were terribly afraid /All of us cowards-- / The janitor, the market-woman, the pensioner. / The pharmacist fell to the ground /as he dragged the door of a toilet, /we were even more afraid, the smuggler-woman, / the dressmaker, the streetcar driver, / all of us cowards. / A kid from reform school fell / As he dragged a sandbag, / You see we were really / Afraid. / Through no one forced us, / We did build the barricade /Under fire.
Anna Swirszczynska
OPPOSING THE SYSTEM~A NEW MAP OF REALITY
Charles A. Reich In Chapter 5, “A New Map Of Reality,” in Opposing The System (1995), Charles A. Reich writes, “Professor Edward P. Morgan has summarized the sixties democratic vision. . . .”
1. Equality, or the full inclusion of society’s dispossessed;2. Personal empowerment, or the liberation of each person from psychological constraints as well as social oppression—a shift from masculinist “power over” to the feminist “power to”;3. A moral politics grounded on belief in individual growth, compassion for one’s fellow human beings—indeed for all life—and intolerance of injustice; and4. The central importance of community as a locus for meaningful engagement in life and politics.In 2010 Professor Edward P. Morgan expanded and fleshed out his ideas further and published them in What Really Happened to the 1960s: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy (2010).
Edward P. Morgan
A critic’s review of What Really Happened to the 1960s writes that Morgan’s in-depth study of sixties social movements and their depiction in corporate America’s print media, film, and television helps to explain why the past still provokes deep emotions—even antagonism—half a century later. He blends history, sociology, political science, media and cultural studies, and critical theory to explain why the 1960s have been so virulently targeted, particularly by critics on the right who blame today’s self-indulgent culture on baby boomers and “sixties permissiveness” instead of the real culprits: consumer-driven capitalism and neoliberal politics.
NOSTALGIA FOR GOOD OLD AMERICAN DAYS
Patrick Buchanan: "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?"
(William Sorenson)
Conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan asks whether America will survive to 2025.
Patrick Buchanan is no stranger to controversy. At the 1992 Republican national convention, he described the nation as engaged in “a religious war … a cultural war …for the soul of America.” A decade later, he wrote a book predicting the U.S. would be a Third World nation by 2050. Another ten years, two wars, a recession and a debt crisis later, he says America could now be on the verge of national suicide. He offers a plan to turn the country around, including cutting the military, freezing federal salary and benefits and a moratorium on immigration. Pat Buchanan offers his opinions about the fate of the country.
Guests
syndicated columnist, former adviser to three American presidents, Reform Party's presidential candidate in 2000.
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Read an Excerpt
From "Suicide of a Superpower" by Patrick Buchanan. Copyright 2011 by Patrick Buchanan. All rights reserved. Reprinted here by permission of Thomas Dunne Books.
PROTESTS AND CORE VALUES
Reich posits that in protest in the nineties [and in Occupy Wall Street] that Morgan’s core values will be retained, but there will be a new emphasis on correcting the destructiveness of the economic system, healing the conflicts that are tearing America apart, plus structural and institutional change to accompany personal change. Protest in the nineties will avoid the mistake of appearing to be opposed to reason; instead, the chaos and irrationality of the System will be emphasized. And nineties protest will avoid the mistake of appearing to be anti-American, and instead will seek to reclaim the original idea of America from its usurpation by the System.
For the nineties as well as for the sixties, the most difficult challenge concerns the means of change. Professor Barbara Epstein, a historian of the sixties, concludes that the greatest weakness of that period’s protest movements was lack of strategic thinking about how to accomplish its goals.
The System has effectively blocked the normal channels, such as elections, by forcing voters to choose between candidates who offer equally unpalatable programs and outlooks. Offered only a choice between evils, the voter is helpless. Likewise the whole constitutional system of checks, balances, and government under law has been largely superseded by the System. But this does not mean that change is impossible or that we are truly powerless. It means only that we need a new theory of change.
Cities Vary Widely In Response To Occupy Camps
by Margot Adler
October 27, 2011
Cities around the U.S. have been responding differently to the Occupy Wall Street protests. The violent street clashes in Oakland, Calif., have not been typical.
Reich writes that although the System possesses all the means of social control in the arsenal of a modern state, including a monopoly of force, the System has come to rely more and more on a unique means of rule that it has developed: the control of “reality.”
EXPERT OPINIONS FROM IOWA
-
Wednesday October 26, 2011Politics Day- Special Event
Political analysts you hear regularly on The Exchange join host Ben Kieffer in a live event taped October 25 at Shambaugh Auditorium on the University of Iowa campus. The discussion examines President Obama's first term in office, the Republican candidates seeking the 2012 nomination and Iowa's role in the election process. Ben's guests are Tim Hagle and Caroline Tolbert from the University of Iowa, Donna Hoffman from the University of Northern Iowa and Bruce Nesmith from Coe College.
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IDEAS AND THE POWER OF IDEOLOGY
Reich believes that ideas are vitally important, but a simple battle over ideas will not succeed. The System has been able to transform ideas into something far more powerful—pictures or models of reality. The “free market” is not merely an idea but a picture. The “private sector” is another picture. The “private sector” is another picture. The “welfare mother,” the “predatory criminal,” and the “big government bureaucrat” are also ideas transformed into pictures.
Using this method an entire ideology can be rendered as a series of pictures making up a comprehensive map of reality. Constantly repeated without rebuttal or dissent, these pictures and the map they form set the parameters of debate and imagination. Even dedicated liberals and reformers fall into the trap of seeing reality in the way the System portrays it.
If we are menaced by predators or paranoids, then it follows that we must defend ourselves by abandoning constitutional safeguards and building still more prisons. On the other hand, if we were shown instead a picture of damaged and desperate people, a very different remedy would be call for. (151-4)
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