Re: rioting


"John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ep358m$e7r$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


"g" gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:-
A friend whose daughter is a Fulbright professor in Greece informs that
there is rioting going on there, torching of motor vehicles, breaking of
windows and clashes between citizens and police... having something to do
with government plans to allow private universities there.

One of the very cradles of accumulation of advance learning...

Are private universities THAT loathsome?

JE:-
The rioting represents a typical Looney Left action against competition
and
not a product of the institutions themselves. They wish to maintain
university education as a government monopoly in that country only because
they fear losing their privileged place in education.

John, do you mean students? Faculty? Both?

By "Looney Left" do you imply non-students? Students? Former students?
Citizens in general?

The Looney Left and
the Fascist right agree on just one thing: group selective choices should
replace individual selective choices. What they disagree on is what group
selective choice should replace individual choices.

I guess what I am needing to know, to understand what is occurring, is who
are these people you would all throw into a single catch-all bag and call
"Looney Left" and "Fascists."

I sometimes get the impression you expect me to respect your education and
broad understanding of things; but at other times I get the impression you
expect to be respected when you just gather up what seem to me to be all
sorts of disparate things and cram them into some grossly inadequate
stereotype.

Personally, I have no identification with the rioters nor with those
instigating whatever the rioters are protesting against. I am against
rioting in most cases... repeat... most cases; but I also can envisage
instances in which something so egregious is being crammed down the throats
of the majority of a population (in statistical sense) that they must do
something or be terribly "wronged."

As you can see, I am not saying you are mistaken. I am saying that I have
serious doubts that the issues are so simple and clear as you seem to imply,
or that the rioters lack any reasonable (social, political or economic)
grounds to be agrieved, or that the rioters all are of one crisply definable
sub-population set which is
dead wrong and totally without cause to feel, or be offended.

I get the same feeling as I would if a person were to tell me he likes
chocolate, but that there are some people who, because they are ignorant,
dogmatic, vulgar, sweaty, unreasonable, and in many other ways so utterly
dispicable that they like vanilla.

Is there not far more to it than simplisticism and stereotyping?

Not saying there is. Just asking.

g

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx






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