Have you read Michel Omfray?

Classic Materialism has some problems

Yes Iknow. Michel Onfray is a contemporary French philosopher who adheres to hedonism which encourages the pursuit of enjoyment and indulgence without hesitation. Are you hedonist? I like him to some extent.

No I am not, neither am I an adherent to materialism, i should rather call myself a spiritual agnostic, if the mixture did exist

Agnosticism is a doctrine completely or partially denies the possibility of knowing the Universe. The agnostic separates substance from its appearance. The attitude of compromise adopted by agnosticism leads its supporters to idealism. Agnosticism emerged in the form of skepticism in Greek philosophy and was given its classic form in the philosophy of Hume and Kant. Agnosticism proceeds from the attempt to limit science, rejects logical thought, and cognition of the objective laws of nature and, especially of nature. I think it is possible to know the world but it needs generations time. If you think you can not cognise the world you may begin to depend on some religious beliefs which limit science. So finally you will be a idealist. Don't you?

Yes, Materialism has long history. The classic materialism goes back to Lao zi (China), the Lokayata (India), Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Epicurus (Greece). It was the merit of classical materialism (say ancient materialism) to create a hypothesis on the atomic structure of matter. Their principles in ancient materialism went side by side with the growth of mythological ideology. In the Middle ages, materialistic trends appeared in the form of nominal-ism and the teachings the nature and God are eternal. The materialism of 17th-18th centuries developed in conjunction with the then rapidly progressing mechanics and mathematics, as a result of which it was mechanistic. The most consistent form of materialism was dialectical materialism.

You are absolutely right classical materialism has some problems which are solved, in my opinion, by dialectical materialism Even my family problems, for instance, also solved by dialectical materialism (see relational dialectics in Wikipedia). So dialectical materialism is the philosophical basis of the social programs and social activities. I think it is a scientific approach.

Science is based around experiments. Communism has failed everywhere it has been tried. So good science would tell me that I should question its basis.

Yes, Science is based around experiments. There is no communism in the world. No communism in the history so far. So there is no question of failure or winning of "communism".

There has been no Communist country in the world's history.

RK: "There has been no Communist country in the world's history."

Well the ones which claimed to have been communist were such horrors that we should not want or need another example.

What we can say, is that everywhere the ideal of communism was put in place as a social control to keep the people in line, they eventually wised up to the fact that they were putting out more effort than they were receiving returns, and that another class of people had taken over a more feudal control and were benefiting if only because they had "Blue Buckets" on their cars and could speed without legal challenge.

On Materialism the real question becomes "What is Material" often there are effects that need to be explained that are not associated with physical elements, such as the propagation of light through a vaccuum, Materialism can only claim to explain them if it promotes insubstantial things into the Material Realm. Ancient philosophers can't be blamed because they noted that they stubbed their toes on Material things, and things that were not explainable by physical things, were mysterious to them so it made sense to separate the two into a small number of options, Material and Spiritual, Physical and Supernatural, whatever. Today we know there are things that are not physical that need explaining but we still call the science that tries to explain them physics.

Materialism is not necessarily communist, our kind of liberalism is founded on materialism too. Rorty seems very materialistic to me

Liberalism, in the history, came into being during the struggle against feudalism. In liberalism, the state needs to be made subordinate to the interests of the individual. Behind this demand lay the struggle of the ant-feudal forces against feudal political privileges.

Inherent in liberalism is also faith in progress and a demand for religious tolerance. During the 19th century the Christian Church as a whole opposed liberalism from a standpoint favoring the restoration of feudalism. As a reaction to the ideas of the Enlightenment there emerged in 19th century Protestantism, a liberal theology.

Later when the imperialist order was facing general crisis, liberal theology lost its influence. As its negation Crisis Theology emerged in the 1920s.

Liberalism originally was all about free-enterprise. Adam Smith was the poster-boy for liberalism. The term has, however, largely reversed meanings, so that most understand the term liberal as having a socialist connotation.

My point has nothing to do about socialism it's about Rorty and about the consequences of absolute utilitarianism which predominates in liberal thought nowadays

You may have a point in those places that have not been taken over by Neo-Liberalism.

Let me explain.

My Father thought the Liberals were the sentimental types, that gave away the farm to feed the poor, he was a die hard conservative, and practically died with a fork in his pocket supporting the campaign of Ralph Klein some called "King Ralph" because he refused to consider anyone else's opions.

However, what he didn't know was that Klein WAS a liberal, running a fascist leaning Conservative Party, in a sort of I can be more Conservative Than You Can type thing because the local Liberal Party had essentially gone bankrupt and could only make a token showing.

In fact in Quebec it has been admitted the Quebec Liberals are the same type of people we call Conservative here. One knows that they consider their conservatives to be separalists, so the Fascism is easily seen there as well. Once or twice Klein made a token showing of threatening to seccede but his heart wasn't in it. Some of our politicians would have meant it.

So who are all the other "Red" ridings that have given Edmonton the name of "Redminton" as the last holdout of Left leaning thought? They are the people who still think that Maxist techniques will improve the situation here.

You know the type, throw demonstrations and political forums, try to raise the consciousness of people who still vote fascist.

Because the greater portion of my Province is still rural voters, and what do they know about demonstrations, and who is actually raising THEIR consciousness. A good portion of their kids don't even go to school anymore because they might have to hear about evolution. Or learn enough about bullying to be able to defend against it, and that is not something the Neo-liberal idealogues want done.

I can't talk for Fory, but that is what liberalism looks like where I live.

Fascists are, of course, liberals. They differ from other socialists in details. Marxists believe in crushing large businesses and then taking on the small ones. Fascists believe in crushing small businesses and then taking on the large ones. Different approach... same horrible result.

Marxism and Fascism are two different ideologies. They are opposites.

Opposites can come to the same conclusion. I've visited Hitler's Vogelsang in Germany, the sculptures prove that nazism was based on a sort of mock pagan religion to hide the void of it's materialistic conception of the human being

Actually I have read enough to think that the hitler youth "Breeding Camps" were meant to create the Pseudo Pagan belief system and instill it in the Aryan youth that later became the opposition crushers, black shirts, and finally SS. Claims have been made of institutionalized rape, within these camps, but because the tradegies of the NAZI victims were so bad, nobody seems to remember the tradegies of the NAZI girls inducted into the breeding camps. I believe the writings of hitler and himler both had an effect on the indoctrination of the SS..

Thus while Hitler talked the socialist cant, Himler quietly created camps of "Hitler Youth" to enforce his later claims to chancellor. The parallels have been found in our backcountry, actual literal NAZI based "Aryan Nation Training Camps" for skinheads, and a new "Aryan Church" to feed them with pseudo religion. But someone miscalculated and published the hate literature too early, and got caught. You don't hear what happened to the camps, rumor is they are still there, but at least we don't have the Hate literature in open circulation right now.

I caught a sniff of it, of course, in a cub pack of all things, run by a so called lutheran church, but I think it had already been dealt with by the time I found out about it. Some elderly jewish woman had heard them singing an Aryan song, and called in the police. I half suspect that the missing hookers from our streets are being whisked off to these camps for breeding purposes, and then disappear without a trace. Since many of them are natives, their rights being trampled can be hidden under the usual predjudice and hate crime assumptions, and their children, need never know they weren't white.

RK: "Marxism and Fascism are two different ideologies. They are opposites."

That is what Marxists would like for us to believe. But they were both Socialist ideologies. And how does one explain the cooperation between Hitler and Stalin?

Now Bill, You know Hitler Attacked Russia, how can you call that cooperation?

How little you know of history!! Before Hitler had attacked Russia, he and Stalin had been allies.

http://www.thenagain.info/WebChron/World/HitlerStalin.html

Well yes, but that just illustrates my point, Do you attack your allies?

One wonders how much cooperation there was if he planned all along to conquer stalin.

After all Chamberlane (sp) cooperated with Hitler too. In fact there are a lot of people in Europe and America that thought that he was wonderful, until he attacked Poland.

Yes, people attack their allies. It happens often enough.

Good enough, but somehow they don't stay allies once you attack them.... ;)

GS: "After all Chamberlane (sp) cooperated with Hitler too. In fact there are a lot of people in Europe and America that thought that he was wonderful, until he attacked Poland."

I don't think Chamberlain really cooperated with Hitler. He chose to ignore the invasion of Czechoslovakia. But England didn't send reinforcements to help Germany.

You are right in saying that many supported Hitler. He was the ideal Social Darwinist. So people like Margaret Sanger supported him. The Chinese commies continue that legacy today with their forced abortions.

Ah a Right to life Advocate.

Frankly I don't envy china its population. If they hadn't tried to go to zero population growth the crisis over there would be significantly larger than it is. It is amazing to me just how difficult it must be to enforce since many men I know would not bow to the necessity of getting their tubes tied after one baby, and impressionable girls would not realize that they were being taken advantage of until they were forced to have an abortion.

GS: "Ah a Right to life Advocate."

I don't understand how that conclusion was derived or how it is relevant to the discussion. I was stating a fact. Do you disagree with my claim?

I was commenting on the attitude clearly indicated by the choice of words

Here's an attitude for you!!

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness... And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

~ Second Continental Congress; July 4, 1789

"Second Continental Congress"

Hmm, somehow I think that smacks of the American Constitution, not the Continental Congress.

No, it is called the ***Declaration of Independence.***

Remember... July 4, 1776?

It was written by the Second Continental Congress --- mostly by Thomas Jefferson...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Continental_Congress

Ah, but of course spanish america didn't need independence from Britain, and the Canada's didn't want it.... ;)

So it was hardly a full continent represented...

Call it what they wanted to.