Klinghoffer Komments

... getting caught up before we lose the light on 2014-
Here is something I posted elsewhere on Oct 24

Just saw `The Death of Klinghoffer’ interview on Charlie Rose (10/24)

“Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- On “Charlie Rose,” a discussion about "The Death of Klinghoffer." The opera opened on Monday night at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and is surrounded by controversy. We are joined by two First Amendment lawyers on opposite sides of this controversy: Martin Garbus and Floyd Abrams.” (Source: Bloomberg)

http://www.bloomberg.com/…/-the-death-of-klinghoffer-charli…

Floyd Abrams ‘accuses’ this opera of “Romanticizing” a Palestinian character, as if to dramatize a flawed human in a tragedy is to advocate or defend their point of view. He confuses understanding with sympathy.

Does he believe that productions of ‘Sweeney Todd’ encourage barbers to slit their clients’ throats? Does he believe that listening to the glorious music of Gounod’s ‘Faust’ will encourage members of the audience to make their own pacts with the devil? Does he think ‘MacBeath’ advocates violent usurpation? These are tragedies because humans are making the kind of horrible mistakes that humans make when we let our own anger, greed, lust or fear blind us (‘us’, not ‘them’) to the ultimate consequences of our own deeds. Passion can destroy compassion. This is the sorrow of the human condition.

Mr. Abrams is offended that a Palestinian murderer should be portrayed as human. But villains ARE human.

In the meantime those, who like Floyd Abrams let their own fears distort reason and rob them of compassion, argue that the only portrayal of villains that should be allowed is a kind of hostile caricature. This is the essence of censorship.

Justin Davidson says it better than I can:http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/trouble-with-klinghoffer.html

Democracy vs American Feudalists

The American Republican party is dedicated to exalting the power of owners at the expense of citizens. It advocates neo-Feudalism and calls it democracy.

Democracy elsewhere, including so far in Canada, instead defines the relationship between citizen and state. Rights and obligations fall to the individual in their role as citizen. I owe the wider community a share of whatever resources I momentarily control in order to sustain the environment that makes acquisition of those resources possible. Everyone benefits, me most of all, and I am free of control by any other individual, including my employer. The work I do is contractual and consensual, not coerced.

Taxes pay a pre-existing debt; They were never mine. Their delivery is just a matter of bookkeeping, not a choice I make to ‘give away’ anything that was ever ‘mine’. I know that everyone around me is also paying their share. The political system is just and open to anyone to participate.

Besides providing rule of law and freeing me from personal domination, the state also fulfills a larger public safety role. My food has been inspected. My roads are safe. I have access to good medical care. Universities are sustained.

Americans, on the other hand, seem to be recreating Feudalism. All rights belong to owners; None to the penniless. Medical care is a favour that an employer might or might not bestow on his powerless serfs. They have no alternative but to obey a master who has this power of life and death over them, for that is what medical care is.

People who can’t afford lawyers end up in jail on arbitrary charges. Conviction not only results in ridiculous lengths of incarceration, it also disenfranchises citizens of their vote.

The rich amplify their power election by election. The more the federal state is weakened the more the rights of Americans as citizens are weakened.

This is not a joke. It is the precursor to revolution. Republicans will inevitably discover that no one rides the populist beast and that Feudal control is not a sustainable system. Until the revolution that will sweep it away, Feudalism will progressively starve the commonweal of resources, impoverishing skills and opportunities, reducing the marketplace.

Feudalism is not Capitalism. It is at least as corrosive to markets as Socialism.