Java, I expect such impetuousness from some, but not from you.

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You don't have to pretend to like someone just because you are voting for him.

The problem is that people are ignorant and do not even try to learn from the past.

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Theodore Lamar Heiks
BA, History/Political Science, Western State College of Colorado, 1984
MBA, Entrepreneurship/Marketing, City University of Seattle, 1993

Most promoters of utopias do not have the common sense to know how to make their utopias succeed. If you want something to succeed, you get other people's "buy in," make them feel that it was "their idea." Utopia promoters live in a dream world where they, being naturally superior to everyone else, have done everyone else's thinking for them and so their utopias become like as unto gold-plated cages for the great unwashed masses to live in.

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Theodore Lamar Heiks
BA, History/Political Science, Western State College of Colorado, 1984
MBA, Entrepreneurship/Marketing, City University of Seattle, 1993

You're still the only one talking about 'utopia promoters'. Spanky and I are talking about optimistic pragmatism, not the search for utopia.

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it is a mistake to throw out the language of equal worth because of its contingent historical association with Western power.

Um, this thread is about utopias. Utopias fail because the visionaries try to force utopia down everybody's throats on a silver platter, thereby creating a gold-plated prison, which is a dystopia. I point out that, if one really wants their utopia or better society or whatever you want to call it to succeed, one needs to get the "buy-in" of the people who will actually have to live in such a society, and you argue against that. Now who is arguing with the air?

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Theodore Lamar Heiks
BA, History/Political Science, Western State College of Colorado, 1984
MBA, Entrepreneurship/Marketing, City University of Seattle, 1993

Well, my arguments involve a slight modification in the definition of "utopia."

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You don't have to pretend to like someone just because you are voting for him.

Your utilization of metaphor inspires us all.

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You don't have to pretend to like someone just because you are voting for him.

Thank you! I thought my post was some of the finest rhetoric ever!

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Theodore Lamar Heiks
BA, History/Political Science, Western State College of Colorado, 1984
MBA, Entrepreneurship/Marketing, City University of Seattle, 1993

I would have gone with "cross of gold" rather than "gold-plated prison."
When it comes to political rhetoric, you can't go wrong with Bryan.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Alright, Spanky, I didn't know you were arguing for a slight modification in the definition of 'utopia'. How would you define it then?

I agree with you heik. That's my point. I agree with everything that you said, and I don't think anyone on this topic has disagreed with you when you say that you need the consent of the people in order to create a better society. You started off by saying that optimism and pragmatism were a contradiction in terms. I contested that, since I don't think it's true. You then went on to say that people are inherently corrupt, and anyone who can't see that is naive. I also contested that. Then you kind of went off the rails and started implying that we were proposing 'shoving utopia down the people's throats' or whatever. I didn't come into this topic to talk about utopianism, or at least not in the definition you hold of it. I realise that the topic may have begun that way, seven pages ago, but topic creep happens.

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it is a mistake to throw out the language of equal worth because of its contingent historical association with Western power.