Dugger's emphasis on equality borders on exactly the sort of absolutism
that Ayres and Dewey warned against. Freedom, security, excellence,
abundance (and we should add community) are as important as equality.
Moreover Ayres seemed to think these values were additive or symbiotic
when correctly construed.

Further we should be very careful in writing off modern liberalism for
its inability to eliminate the inequalities of power & life chances. Now
I think is the time to rally round the modern liberals (e.g. Paul
Wellstone) and reconstruct the welfare state, albeit a corporate-welfare
state for the time being. Surely we can seek more international
cooperation in this reconstruction but to call for more radical change
at this juncture seems to be woefully out of touch with the anxieties
and sentiments of the age.

But of course Lenin noted that history is far richer than theory, so
maybe the windows of opportunity for fundamental change are soon to be
thrown open again.

Such is life on the "left wing of the possible" for OIE whose paradigm
is existentially open with all the angst therewith.
--
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[log in to unmask]     a.k.a.   James Ronald Stanfield
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