[ezcol_2third]
As I’ve been immersing myself in Bolton Hall’s work lately, I’ve been finding that nearly half of the book-length works consist of parables of one sort or another. The parable form is fairly common among radical writers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Before he wandered off into anti-semitism and eugenic speculation, Morrison Isaac Swift, the anti-imperialist, wrote a collection of entertaining short fictions, nearly all of which amount to radical parables. A number of Mary Marcy’s books published by Charles H. Kerr took the form of socialist parables. Of course, these latter works were a bit more doctrinaire than those of Hall, who is nothing if not ecumenical. Someone like William Batchelder Greene would draw on a variety of discourses and rationales, from the Christian critique of usury to the theories of Proudhon and Beck, in his successive editions of Mutual Banking. But Hall is hard at work speaking all of these languages together, returning to the same issues again and again, mixing the elements in slightly different ways. The result may seem a bit naive to us – cynical lot that we are – but the point is clear enough, and clear without a lot of direct pleading. Equity and the Kingdom of Heaven are one, and neither is to be put off until later.
Cynical lot or not, it’s hard not to respond to that. . .
[/ezcol_2third] [ezcol_1third_end] [/ezcol_1third_end]
Shawn,
I know you will probably find many faults with my personal view but I thought you would find my musings a good coomedy routine in my answer to mr$ at deviantArt whare I am ~justblue (#162300255)
mr $ said this: $JasonLee (#162180584)
Date: Aug 17, 2005, 6:11:13 PM
Yes yes, because we all know that Russia was a socialist utopia before the rise of the evil capitalist Putin, or was it Yeltsin, ahh who the heck cares, bring back Gorby!!! Burn the churches! Re-open the Gulags!!! Arrest Solzhenitsyn immediantly!..
I think I forgot my tin-foil hat today…
Reply, Parent
Date: Aug 18, 2005 02:40:15
No, not all of your ideas were bad. I enjoyed the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra when they came to Toledo in 87 or 88 (something like that). They sounded incredible even in the dressing rooms where I had to stand guard during the actual performance. The downbeat was the most incredible thing I had ever heard. The guys with little lapel pins meaning they were KGB were not very friendly, (or unfriendly for that matter) and a bit creepy looking/ But the players were all kind and happy people and it seems as if they had a fairly valid and universally effective social contract despite the military industrial waste which was due to their fear of the United States. Their standard of living should have skyrocketed after perestroika had it not been for individuals which used fear to concentrate wealth under their control be they the official criminal element or crooks like Putin. Such a shame, such lost potential. I am only afraid that folks will extort money from the Nordic/Scandinavian countries in the name of the United States or China. “Protection” money to battle the war on terrorism we will call it. Protection? They’ve already been taking us for a ride the last couple years. This is a better enemy to scare our populations with. Unlike the Russians and Romanians, they can’t surrender even if they wanted to. But Bush declared the world to be with him, or against him! This is pretty much tantamount to declaring war against, or dominance over, the isolationist countries of the world. Does everyone forget that Zurich was put under lockdown for a good deal of time immediately after 9/11? Who knows though? Maybe that was the idea of the Swiss or the Rothschild’s. Tell me oh wise one! :clap:
—
Franz Kline Lives!
[link]
Let’s get $Spyed and Jark into marraige counseling.
Visit: [link] to see my artwork.
:burp: :banned: :bye:
:jarkinajar:… pray for
oh, my revultionto the reminder of gulags quickly fades as I think to remind him of the following:
http://jasonlee.deviantart.com/
Deviant: ~justblue (#162306043)
Date: Aug 18, 2005, 3:49:01 AM
Sorry that I am not familiar enough with your personal political ideals to know what was tongue-in-cheek within your comment to me at what was not so I just tried to spare you a political diatribe and just shared a personal experience. But as I think a bit more about it… My revulsion at the mention of gulags is intense and I instictly recoil despite my reverence of the Russian KTM riding World Champian Motocrossers of the late 70s along with the Czechs and other wonderful sportman ranging from gymnists to hocky players to wrestlers and the great positive freedoms so prevelant in the former communist block regardless of soical-economic class or official party positioning of one parents.
But… then it cannot help to come to mind that we here in the United States incarcerate a larger percentage of our population than any culture or nation that has ever existed in the world. Building and filling cages for humans is still big business in the United States and involvment in goverment contracts for such facilities is one of our greatest freedoms. The value of the slush-funds created and the coercive impetus it inculcates into our potential labor force’s work ethic is invaluble. How quickly it becomes clouded as to which was the lesser of two evils?
—
Franz Kline Lives!
[link]
Let’s get $Spyed and Jark into marraige counseling.
Visit: [link] to see my artwork.
:burp: :banned: :bye:
:jarkinajar:… p