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[larryc]

"The United States was based on Judeo-Christian values."

*puts on historian hat*

No!  The U.S. was based on Enlightenment values.  Most of the Founders subscribed at least vaguely to a Deist-influenced Christianity, but that was hardly the basis of their political thinking.  If you look at Madison's records of the Constitutional Convention you will find many discussions of ancient and modern political philosophy, but hardly any regarding religion.

[mrgrundy]

This is probably the most minor point of the whole list but I can't figure out what the problem is with giving people a choice between smoking and non-smoking sections. Was the stance better described as it should be illegal for people to smoke in restaurants rather than illegal to give people the choice?

[daurousseau]

I can't figure out what the problem is with giving people a choice between smoking and non-smoking sections.

The problem is that the choice is illusory. The smoking section converts the non-smoking into smoking. Smoke abhors a vacuum.

[iomhaigh]

Three points.

Point the first:

I have noticed that you have trouble accepting when people do not fit into your molds, and hence those people ruin your attempts to reduce humanity to a bunch of sweeping generalizations and broad judgments.  I seem to remember your inability to believe that someone who was raised working class could crack jokes about Monty Python and talk about Hack. 

You misremember.  I never said that.  Here's what I said:

(Y)ou're not exactly a hoodlum.  My evidence:

"I worship the god 'Dieneyesuds' with my lighter and my squeaky new pens while on a 'Search for Gudo.'"

In fact, what you probably don't know (and which I didn't until I was like 28) is that a lot of very well-off middle class people will think you are from a fabulously wealthy family precisely because you are articulate and quirky -- and make silly monty python references while playing Nethack.

Note the phrasing, which was particular to the discussion we were having: a lot of middle class people will think...

I said nothing about whether I believe you come from a particular background or not, and if you weren't so busy being defensive with regard to your own personal narrative of transcending economic and social stereotypes, you might have realized that.

Words mean things, even if you are a "non-linear" thinker. 

My apologies for not getting the words exactly right -- but the tone and subtext of that and later commentary on that thread and others still supports my interpretation.  Am I being argumentative?  Yes.  Unwilling to bend to your interpretation of the world?  Most definitely, because it is unnecessarily reductive, like much of your argumentation on the Payne thread and, I would still argue, like your approach on this thread.   

Regardless, this is largely beside the point. 

Point the second:

I know that you are talking about beliefs and not people.  The beliefs on your list are overwhelmingly divisive stereotypes and judgments about those two largely non-existent camps -- these camps are social constructs which are ultimately destructive because they do little to actually engender conversation which might make us realize that there is no "conservative" or "liberal" but rather a very messy non-linear spectrum of beliefs.  The sooner we get away from these asinine polarizing tendencies (or the bucket model), the sooner we'll be able to actually realize that the people who self-identify as one or the other are really not all that different from each other. 

That's nice and all, just not terribly useful when people are calling themselves liberal and conservative and one wishes to find out what they mean by those things.  As you say...

Here's where we part.  You like the bucket approach.  You want people to pick ideas from the various buckets and watch how the scales on which you hang those buckets tilt, right? 

I don't want buckets.  I want to dump it all in a big fat ocean (or pensieve, if you're a HP fan), and force people to see where they overlap with each other.  You can't get people to think that way if you keep giving them buckets.  Even if they have a tilted bucket, they are still seeing ideas as part of the two oppositional troughs of water that you gave them.   

Emphasizing artifical demarcations that are purely social constructs is not helpful. 

Whether or not it is "helpful" depends entirely on what it is you are trying to do.  I'm trying to explicate concepts that people are using on a day to day basis, and often, I think, in a messy and terribly inaccurate way.   People use buckets.  I want to explore what they are doing with those buckets, and make them as useful as possible.

There are very good arguments -- and I've made many myself -- for doing away with buckets. 

But that's really an entirely separate discussion, and not a very effective way to disagree with the way in which buckets are being defined.

I live in a very different world, and I've never much liked categories or buckets or seen their social usefulness beyond a certain limited point because they allow people to become shallow thinkers and to be manipulated by others who prey on their positioning and their fears of people who are not in the same bucket.  They allow us to make too many snap judgments based solely upon our own experiences and assumptions and not upon critical reflection about the commonalities we all share. 

...which might be true, except that people are using the buckets anyway.   They're already shallow thinkers.  If you want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good and just sit there pissing in the wind, hoping everyone will be treated as noble, whole, complex individuals... well, be my guest.  Such discussions make useful discussions at cocktail parties -- but there's a lot of bucket-using going on and a lot of it is really messy and causes even more harm because people aren't paying attention to the things which inform their buckets. 

Shouldn't we try to find out what they mean?  I mean, come on... Pyshnov a "liberal"?  Is a good liberal like you going to stand for that?

I know that wanting to upend the definitions and framework of an argument mid-stream is not true to the initial exercise and is outside its bounds.  I realized, however, between my first post on this thread and the last one that my issues were not only with your definitions (which are still reductive on their own) but with the entire experiment.  So I explained that. 

That's why I said, "I'm done . . . "   

I know that people are shallow.  I simply do not want to encourage them to be that way.  It is possible to be incredibly cynical and incredibly idealistic all at the same time.  Be patronizing and dismissive and call it a "cocktail party" conversation all you want, but there are plenty of people out here who disagree with your general approach to fixing the world's problems.  Belittling our views because we do not agree with you is not particularly productive.   

As for Pyshnov...
Personally, I really don't care if Pyshnov calls himself a liberal or not.  In his world, he might be liberal.  I do not define myself through some sort of ideological label in real life except when jokingly calling myself a "left-wing commie pinko."  Again, I see a limited use for such titles.   

 

As to what the buckets mean -- they will never "mean" the same thing to everyone.  I used to think that I was not particularly exterme in my viewpoints, until I moved to a small town in the Bible Belt.  Why?  Because I grew up with and went to college with a whole lot of people who were more openly and loudly liberal than I was.  CONTEXT matters -- at college, I was left of center but not radically so.  Outside of that context, I am, according to people who like to put people on scales, pretty damn far left. 



So, my challenge to your experiment which is not exterior to it (like my entire criticism of it, which I have explained above and below), is this:  how do you account for a person's individual ideological context?  Will a self-proclaimed "liberal" who attends Berkeley will not share the same viewpoints as one who attends Liberty University. 

 

Point the third.

Oh... and people's accomplishments never get disregarded because of their "discriminatory attitudes" unless the liberals are doing the discounting?  Let me show you millenia worth of women who have been rendered voiceless by history.  Who disagreed with their views and cast them aside?  Conservative men.  Recent example: militant feminists.  We're happy to put Wendy Wasserstein in anthologies because she's safe, but you'll never find the militant feminists of the 1970s in the anthologies.

Once again, you seem perfectly happy to ignore what I said and just make our discussion up from whole cloth.  I find it quite alarming; I don't mind you making stuff up about YOU -- but please try not to make stuff up about me.

I never said that liberals are the only ones who have ever disregarded opinions because of discriminatory attitudes.  In the first place, this is a discussion VERY explicitly about the terms "liberal" and "conservative" as they have been used in the last 25 years or so.  I believe I said something to that effect right off the bat.  In the second place, I particularly limited the discriminations to which I was referring to sexism, racism, and homophobia.

I did this because I was not trying to make some grand pronouncement about liberals in general -- but rather attempting to illustrate a very specific behavior difference between liberals and conservatives in modern American society.

Conservatives discount people all the time -- if you think you can craft a really good item for one of these lists that encapsulates the way in which that occurs, well, a big part of posting the list was to get suggestions.  I actually liked the one suggestion you (sort of) made, and would love to hear others.

I'd love to have a conversation about this stuff, but it seems like you enjoy the conversation you're having with Acrimone-in-your-head even more, which is a pity.

Perhaps you should get your own readings correct before calling others on the carpet and stop being defensive yourself?   I never suggested that you said that "liberals are the only ones who have ever disregarded opinions because of discriminatory attitudes." 

You, however, did say:

But I categorically assert that the phenomenon of writing off people's accomplishments completely because of their discriminatory attitudes and beliefs is, while not something done by all liberals, something done almost exclusively by liberals.

I am disagreeing with this statement.  I am providing evidence for my disagreement.

The people I cited, who did indeed work within the last 25 years, were written off "because of their discrimatory attitudes and beliefs."   Baraka - racism.  Feminsists - sexism. 

Some of Baraka's writings can be read as racist - against whites.  His accomplishments, in some circles, have been written off entirely because he is seen as a racist.

Many of the feminist playwrights from the 1970s have been written off entirely because they are seen as being sexist -- against men.  Their accomplishments, in even wider circles, have been written off entirely because their are seen as shrill sexist women who want to emasculate all men. 

This is NOT a very specific behavior difference between liberals and conservatives, in part because the initial argument is flawed in its utter reductivity, and in part because the conservatives also write off people who are racist and sexist because it is useful to find a way to demonize the left -- and when the left is doing something which is seen as counter to their beliefs (being inclusive of women and blacks, in the last 25 years, for example), then it is even better to use those liberals who are actually racists & sexists to undermine all liberals by pointing out the flaws in their rhetoric. 

You made a point.  I countered it with evidence which fits entirely within your framework.  You chose to focus on my comment that this has been happening for millenia without taking into account the whole argument.  Who is the one who is concocting some only-in-the-mind version of the other now?

last 25 years - yes
sexism, racism, homophobia - I have two of three here
people who have had an entire body of work and success written off by conservatives because those artists' works and personal viewpoints are discriminatory - yes

Indeed, the writing off was gleeful in some cases because the discrimination was seen as counter to the left-wing ideologies of the artists. 

What better way to dissect the opposition then to call them out for being something (discriminatory) that people think liberals are not supposed to be?   

[mdwlark]

I consider myself a liberal.   I agree with three items on the "liberal" list.  I disagree with the others or think they miss the point. 

Acrimone, you are not in a position to define what is liberal.  It is about an underlying set of values and we can disagree on specific issues. 

[acrimone]

My apologies for not getting the words exactly right -- but the tone and subtext of that and later commentary on that thread and others still supports my interpretation. 

Except it just doesn't -- you're just ass wrong.  I simply don't think that it's beyond people raised in the working/lower classes to crack Monty Python jokes.  I know because I'm one of them.

Be patronizing and dismissive and call it a "cocktail party" conversation all you want, but there are plenty of people out here who disagree with your general approach to fixing the world's problems.  Belittling our views because we do not agree with you is not particularly productive.   

Actually, I think I belittled your views explicitly because I view them as completely at odds with the idea of accomplishing something useful given human nature, and I explained exactly why I believed that to be the case.

I could be wrong about this, but to my knowledge I have never belittled someone's views because they don't agree with me.  At least not since I was five years old and called things "stupid" just because I didn't like them.

So, my challenge to your experiment which is not exterior to it (like my entire criticism of it, which I have explained above and below), is this:  how do you account for a person's individual ideological context?  Will a self-proclaimed "liberal" who attends Berkeley will not share the same viewpoints as one who attends Liberty University. 

My answer: make the context national, so that people can understand where they sit with respect to everyone else.  The provincialism you are describing is part of the problem I would like to see solved; I would love nothing more than for some self-proclaimed "free thinker" in the Bible Belt to understand that there are whole cities filled with millions of people who think he's a dinosaur, that it's not just the "liberal media elite" but tons and tons of people, and that he's NOT a centrist of any stripe, but really conservative when his viewpoints are looked at as a whole.

I never suggested that you said that "liberals are the only ones who have ever disregarded opinions because of discriminatory attitudes." 

I'm open to other suggestions as to how to read this, which was cast as a critique of what I allegedly asserted:

Oh... and people's accomplishments never get disregarded because of their "discriminatory attitudes" unless the liberals are doing the discounting?

But frankly I'm at a loss. 

But I categorically assert that the phenomenon of writing off people's accomplishments completely because of their discriminatory attitudes and beliefs is, while not something done by all liberals, something done almost exclusively by liberals.

I am disagreeing with this statement.  I am providing evidence for my disagreement.

Cool.

The people I cited, who did indeed work within the last 25 years, were written off "because of their discrimatory attitudes and beliefs."   Baraka - racism.  Feminsists - sexism. 

Some of Baraka's writings can be read as racist - against whites.  His accomplishments, in some circles, have been written off entirely because he is seen as a racist.

Many of the feminist playwrights from the 1970s have been written off entirely because they are seen as being sexist -- against men.  Their accomplishments, in even wider circles, have been written off entirely because their are seen as shrill sexist women who want to emasculate all men. 

This is NOT a very specific behavior difference between liberals and conservatives, in part because the initial argument is flawed in its utter reductivity, and in part because the conservatives also write off people who are racist and sexist because it is useful to find a way to demonize the left -- and when the left is doing something which is seen as counter to their beliefs (being inclusive of women and blacks, in the last 25 years, for example), then it is even better to use those liberals who are actually racists & sexists to undermine all liberals by pointing out the flaws in their rhetoric. 

You made a point.  I countered it with evidence which fits entirely within your framework.  You chose to focus on my comment that this has been happening for millenia without taking into account the whole argument.  Who is the one who is concocting some only-in-the-mind version of the other now?

last 25 years - yes
sexism, racism, homophobia - I have two of three here
people who have had an entire body of work and success written off by conservatives because those artists' works and personal viewpoints are discriminatory - yes

The problem you have, of course, is that you are making my point for me.  What you are describing is the discounting of a person's work because the work itself is discriminiatory, which is not at all what I've described.  I think I've been quite explicit about the fact that the phenomenon I'm attempting to describe is one of the entire person being written off -- something that, incidentally, happens primarily in day-to-day interactions and not in the construction of some academic canon -- simply because some of their views happen to be discriminatory in a particular way.

Now to something much more interesting:

I consider myself a liberal.   I agree with three items on the "liberal" list.  I disagree with the others or think they miss the point. 

Acrimone, you are not in a position to define what is liberal.  It is about an underlying set of values and we can disagree on specific issues. 

If you can tell me what the underlying set of values are, then we don't need these lists at all, do we?  Because then we actually DO have the 100% accurate overarching theory of what being a liberal is and we don't have to rely on tendencies.

So give over... what are those values?   Something like this isn't particularly helpful: http://www.elroy.net/politics/liberal.html

It doesn't do anyone any good, intellectually, to say "Liberal values are life, freedom, and liberty."

I've tried to put together a list of principles both necessary and sufficient to liberalism, and I get crucified every time I put it down, but no one else seems to be able or willing to give it a try.

For the record, here's my list of the "underlying values" that make one a liberal:

The Fortunate Should Help The Unfortunate: This is not socialism (which would change the word "should" to "must" and has all sorts of legal and property ramifications), but rather a moral imperative that it is good for those who have attained material prosperity -- be it by dint of hard work or accident of birth or simply luck -- to share their prosperity with those who have not attained that prosperity.

Prosperity is Relative: We should have as one of our aims the continual improvement of the human race's condition. Thus, it is not enough for us to say that every person has three hot nutritious meals a day and a blanket to keep warm. If the material prosperity of society is such that everyone could have three blankets and a sweater, then this becomes the new baseline. If it is within our power to provide health care to all, then we should do so.

Morality supersedes Loyalty: Personal loyalties, whether to friends, to one's religion, race, neighbors, country, or township, are secondary to moral imperatives. Indeed, loyalty is a virtue only so long as it supports and augments our ability to perform moral acts. If one backs up one's friends or family when they are acting in discordance with moral principles, one has sacrificed one's moral standing.

Consensus is more important than objectively better results: It is, at the end of the day, more important to have a widespread agreement as to how to accomplish something than it is to accomplish it in the most efficient way possible. This is not to say that we should not accomplish things if there is not agreement, only that it is better, all other things being equal, for a group to arrive at a decision regarding an issue than for one or two people to simply resolve the issue themselves without consulting others.

Names Hurt: The old schoolyard jingle about sticks and stones is wrong: psychological and emotional abuse is every bit as harmful and morally reprehensible as any sort of physical maltreatment or confinement.

Children are Autonomous: The Traditional model of a child's life being defined by their parents is deeply flawed. Each child is a gift to society, and to the world as a whole. No child should have to bear the burden of their parentage. As a result, it takes more than a "village" to raise a child. In accordance with the principle described above, it is better to get widespread agreement on how children should be raised in our society,in our country, or on our planet. Each child has his or her own rights, his or her own individual identity to develop, his or her own moral sense to apply to their life. They should not be inhibited by allowing the potentially suffocating authority of two people who simply happen to have produced the child.

Violence is inherently evil: While many conservatives believe that violence is a morally neutral expression of power that is informed of its morality by context, we liberals understand that, even in a just cause, violence against other human beings is always at least stained by evil. The scales of a utilitarian analysis may call for violence on occassion, but in no case can it ever be wholly justified.

Freedom is inherently good: Likewise, where violence cannot be completely robbed of its evil character, freedom cannot be completely robbed of its good character, even when it is used to commit acts which otherwise are evil.

I would love to hear about other views on this.  I find this stuff really fascinating, and I've gone over to the list-behavior-tendency model because the both-necessary-and-sufficient-value model wasn't getting me where I wanted to be.

[tenured_feminist]

Oh, fer crissake, do we really gotta trot out Louis Hartz to solve this one?

I hate the debate over "what is liberalism." Hate it, loathe it, despise it. It's been going on in political theory for more than 50 years, and all it has done is to demonstrate liberalism's plasticity and the fact that any garden variety well read graduate student ought to be able to play shell games with ideological categories.

A, nice job. You've provided your definition of liberalism. Iomhaigh has a plausible alternative. I could provide a third and historicized version. Pyshnov could no doubt provide a fourth complete with citations to Locke and Mill. But what does this gain us in the end? That's why I like thinking about it in Greenstone's sense as boundary conditions rather than having a pi$$ing match over owning or disowning it.

[allbutfoundajob]

I do not think those underlying values are very accurate.  For example number 1 can be said by both conservatives and liberals.  The biggest difference is that liberals are more willing to use the threat of government sanctioned violence to force the more well off to help the less well off.

I also disagree that liberals think of violence as evil.  Liberals are far more eager to bring the threat of government violence against people as liberals tend to be more eager for increase government which requires more taxation and increased restrictions on liberty (gun control, private property such as with the Kelo decision, limits on free speech with campaign finance censorship).

[acrimone]

Oh, fer crissake, do we really gotta trot out Louis Hartz to solve this one?

I hate the debate over "what is liberalism." Hate it, loathe it, despise it. It's been going on in political theory for more than 50 years, and all it has done is to demonstrate liberalism's plasticity and the fact that any garden variety well read graduate student ought to be able to play shell games with ideological categories.

A, nice job. You've provided your definition of liberalism. Iomhaigh has a plausible alternative. I could provide a third and historicized version. Pyshnov could no doubt provide a fourth complete with citations to Locke and Mill. But what does this gain us in the end? That's why I like thinking about it in Greenstone's sense as boundary conditions rather than having a pi$$ing match over owning or disowning it.

I am simply interested in clarifying, over time, the terms people use so that something resembling an intelligent discussion can be had.  It is impossible to come to any sort of rational conclusions about things when everyone is using the same words to mean different things.  This doesn't strike me as a particularly novel or controversial idea -- clarifying terms is almost always the first thing you should do in an argument situation.

Iomhaigh doesn't have a plausible alternative definition, she thinks we should just avoid the terms altogether and look at policy atomistically, issue by issue. 

That works great and is a fine idea, except when the discussion is about labels themselves.  Then it's important to know what the frell we're talking about.

I'm not interested in pushing "my" idea of liberalism... I'm interested in finding out what it is people are talking about when they say "liberal" and seeing if, somewhere in there, we can find something that we can actually latch on to and say, "Gee... here's what we mean." 

Lately I've been feeling discouraged, so I've been working at trying to define it as a gestalt of atomistic issues, which is what started this whole mess.

[acrimone]

I do not think those underlying values are very accurate.  For example number 1 can be said by both conservatives and liberals.  The biggest difference is that liberals are more willing to use the threat of government sanctioned violence to force the more well off to help the less well off.

I also disagree that liberals think of violence as evil.  Liberals are far more eager to bring the threat of government violence against people as liberals tend to be more eager for increase government which requires more taxation and increased restrictions on liberty (gun control, private property such as with the Kelo decision, limits on free speech with campaign finance censorship).

Those are excellent points, and will be incorporated into what I'm trying to put together.

[iomhaigh]

I am not making your point for you, Acrimone.  The people I cited - the PEOPLE, not just their works -- were written off for their beliefs.  
  

[acrimone]

I am not making your point for you, Acrimone.  The people I cited - the PEOPLE, not just their works -- were written off for their beliefs.  
  

OK, I can see what you're saying.

So who wrote these people off, exactly?

If he's just not invited to conferences and doesn't get his work published... I guess you could see that as sort of writing off the whole person -- or at least the whole body of their otherwise related work.

But I'm really not talking about the composition of academic canons here, as I said, I'm talking about the person who refuses to play a round of pool with Baraka because he happens to hold some racist ideas.

Also keep in mind that thinking that he's a s***ty poet isn't the same as refusing to accept his work because he happens to be racist.

[allbutfoundajob]

I do not think those underlying values are very accurate.  For example number 1 can be said by both conservatives and liberals.  The biggest difference is that liberals are more willing to use the threat of government sanctioned violence to force the more well off to help the less well off.

I also disagree that liberals think of violence as evil.  Liberals are far more eager to bring the threat of government violence against people as liberals tend to be more eager for increase government which requires more taxation and increased restrictions on liberty (gun control, private property such as with the Kelo decision, limits on free speech with campaign finance censorship).

Those are excellent points, and will be incorporated into what I'm trying to put together.

Also, don't forget liberals seem to be more interested in taking away liberties such as fireworks, smoking, or even restrict what foods you can eat such as Foies gras or trans fat.

[iomhaigh]

I am not making your point for you, Acrimone.  The people I cited - the PEOPLE, not just their works -- were written off for their beliefs.  
  

OK, I can see what you're saying.

So who wrote these people off, exactly?

If he's just not invited to conferences and doesn't get his work published... I guess you could see that as sort of writing off the whole person -- or at least the whole body of their otherwise related work.

But I'm really not talking about the composition of academic canons here, as I said, I'm talking about the person who refuses to play a round of pool with Baraka because he happens to hold some racist ideas.

Also keep in mind that thinking that he's a s***ty poet isn't the same as refusing to accept his work because he happens to be racist.

Wow?  Really?  You mean not liking someone's poetry is different from refusing to publish his political manifestoes and writing columns about the choice to refuse to do so because they contain what can be seen as racist material?  I had no idea.  Give it a rest, will you?  

Fine, you are into the composition of canons.  But, you asked for examples and I gave you some which only now, multiple posts later, are you willing to even begin to concede might disprove your theory.  I only offer examples that I can speak to without making things up -- which means I tend to speak about my field and the corollary cultural research that I do.    

Does anyone not play pool with Baraka because of his politics?  I would hazard to guess that being deposed as Poet Laureate because of his politics counts as being univited to the symbolic pool game, doesn't it?    

Baraka and the feminists are ostracized, discounted, left out of books, and generally made to look like buffoons by those who do not approve of their racist/sexist politics.  For a while, they did not exist in parts of the historical record -- as people or as artists.  Still, many of them do not -- at least not without being reduced to their racist/sexist political viewpoints.  It is literature's view of the asterisk.  Do we discount the home run record because of steriods?  Pete Rose because of gambling?      

Try teaching some of these people some day -- and try doing research on them -- and see how hard it is to find anything of substance.  Now, do the same for Jefferson, the man liberals supposedly discount because of his slave-owning status.  Fine, Jefferson was further back in history and more well-known, president, etc., but pick your sexist white guy playwright from the same period (Mamet anyone?) and see how easy it is to research him and his works.  Do people discuss how sexist he and Strindberg were?  Yes.  Do they discount him?  No.  So why do most people not recognize Megan Terry's name?    
  
If anything, these discounted folks get reduced to their works because it is easier to discount them as people if you can use their artistic output against them as people.  There is a long history of assuming that the author always speaks through the characters in plays, and that assumption gets used to discount playwrights who voice opinions that are not well-liked -- racist or sexist opinions or otherwise.    

By being discounted as people, I am talking about being left out of the written historical record altogether in some cases or being reduced to their racist stances in others -- which is worse than not being invited to play pool but is reflective of their supposed unworthiness to play pool, so to speak.  

So, and I know you're not interested in canons, but this is a thought that fits with the whole discussion:  The question becomes -- who is leaving these folks out of the canon?   Publishers?  Authors?  People who do not study them?  People who do not teach them?  How can you study what you do not know exists?  Are the more conservative factions in the field keeping them out of the canon?  Hence, is it the more conservative elements of the generally assumed to be liberal theatre profession keeping them out?  Is it fear of not selling the books?  Is it fear of teaching Dutchman to mostly white student bodies at schools in the middle range of this country to which books are marketed?  Is it fear of reinforcing stereotypes?  Is it fear of alienating students?  There is no easy answer.  Certainly, we teach Baraka now and he is in more books than Megan Terry will ever be, and she is by far the most well-known female playwright from the group I mention.  Why is that?  Are we less threatened by Baraka than Feminists?  Are we, as a society, convinced that his words cannot hurt us because they are so rhetorical?  Is it just easier to discount the feminists because they were not made Poet Laureate and were a fairly short-lived movement which morphed into some more socially acceptable?  (More palatable theatre like Wasserstein, for example.)  Is it easier to ignore Terry because her entire work has not been as radical as some of her earlier works?  

Are the more conservative elements less likely to teach the 1970s feminists?  Yes.  Why?  Who knows.  Maybe they don't even know they are out there.  Maybe they feel like it is better to teach the feminists of the 80s who made more of a broad public impact--an impact which was made in large part because they were not as offensive as their sisters in the 1970s.  Maybe they cannot get an in-print copy of the plays.  Maybe it is a personal political choice.  Maybe they feel that their students are not ready to handle Megan Terry and need to be eased in with some Wasserstein or Vogel.  Or, maybe when they teach the Open Theatre they follow the standard books on it which focus on the MEN in the group.  Maybe they never learned her works and do not feel that she is worthy.  Maybe they think you shouldn't teach anyone who is racist or sexist.  Maybe they personally do not feel comfortable teaching these two periods because they do not know enough about them.  There is no way to know.      

Welcome to my world.  The answers will never be fully reached, there are few if any absolutes, and rather than spending my days trying to figure out the likely non-existent one right answer to all of these inter-related issues, I present the plays and the history and the various sides of the issues to my students and let them use it as an exercise in critical thinking.  I let them like things, and then let them struggle with what happens when I tell them horrifying information about the author or the underlying meaning in a text.  Then I let them try to resolve their like for something which has an appalling side.  Good practice for later life.        


But, the State of New Jersey in 2003 discounted Baraka the man and all of his works while using his words against him.  It is too easy to write him off because of those words, and writing him off makes him less threatening to the public at large.  The feminists simply get ignored and written off as crazy man-hating women.  No one bothers to look deeper in why they said what they said and to whom they said it.  Same problem with Baraka's plays, except he had enough longevity that people finally started looking and realized how and why he was using his rhetorical devices.  

And then 9/11 happened and people discounted him again.  

It is all ever-morphing.  In 100 years, we will look at the past with new eyes and from new vantage points and with new contexts and we'll see it differently.  

[tenured_feminist]

I am simply interested in clarifying, over time, the terms people use so that something resembling an intelligent discussion can be had.  It is impossible to come to any sort of rational conclusions about things when everyone is using the same words to mean different things.  This doesn't strike me as a particularly novel or controversial idea -- clarifying terms is almost always the first thing you should do in an argument situation.

Yes. The problem is that we haven't got past the clarification of terms. The concept of clarifying terms is not controversial. The definition and content of "liberalism" are. That's why I suggested way back upthread that you try to explain what aspect of liberalism you want to discuss, perhaps by explaining the relationship between what you are identifying as liberal/conservative and partisanship.

To put it bluntly, are you trying to define liberalism and conservatism in the contemporary political moment, or are you trying to establish caricatures of each? Or something else? After six or so pages of posts, I remain unsure about what it is that you're trying to do here.