Whether applied to a party or a nation or a person or an action, it seems
to me that this statement is instructive: how much of what we take for
progressive is really only a form of reaction? To define oneself (or
one's cause) solely in terms of opposition to another is to be a
reflection of that other, dependent for identity on that other (person
or cause or party, etc.). This is why the "two-party system" is a sham;
the apparent opponents are actually just two aspects of a single regime.
It's a little like Orwell's concept of the "falseness" of war in 1984.
Peshewegunzh raises Hitler's ghost by asking whether he or Himmler was
more enlightened. I remember a poem sometime back in the middle sixties -
- in the New Yorker mag -- that presented Hitler thinking as he dies: he
celebrates his victory, saying that the point is not that Germany has lost
the war, but that he has accomplished his mission, which was to "bloody
the world." Think about it, how much violence goes on in the aftermath
of that war and in the name of its "noble aims."
The opponent of one's enemy is not necessarily one's ally.
The image of the opponent may be a tar-baby (remember Uncle Remus?).
"To combat evil, make energetic progress in the good." (I Ching)
-- Peter d'Errico phone: 413-545-2003 Legal Studies Department fax: 413-545-1640 University of Massachusetts/Amherst 01003 dErrico@titan.ucc.umass.edu