Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Vonnegut on Blind Faith in the Free Market

Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting.

They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they want standards, and it isn’t the gold standard. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard...

Industries should be allowed to do whatever they want to do: Bribe, wreck the environment just a little, fix prices, screw dumb customers, put a stop to competition and raid the Treasury in case they go broke.

That’s correct.

That’s free enterprise.

And that’s correct.

The poor have done something very wrong or they wouldn’t be poor, so their children should pay the consequences.

That’s correct.

The United States of America cannot be expected to look after its people.

That’s correct.

The free market will do that.

That’s correct.

The free market is an automatic system of justice.

That’s correct.

And so on.


"Your Guess is as Good as Mine," Kurt Vonnegut, In These Times, 12/12/05

Monday, April 09, 2007

Faulkner on freedom and equal rights

As certain people seek to deny civil rights and impose second-class citizenship on other people in our country, we should remember William Faulkner's words:

"We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it; our freedom must be buttressed by a homogeny equally and unchallengeably free, no matter what color they are, so that all the other inimical forces everywhere--systems political or religious or racial or national--will not just respect us because we practice freedom, they will fear us because we do."

"On Fear: The South in Labor," William Faulkner, Harper's Magazine, June 1956.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Invent Music

Dave Merrill, a friend, musical collaborator, and one of the smartest and nicest guys you'll ever meet, is pushing the envelope at MIT, using technology to create new sounds and methods of making music.

Check it out.