Re: Liberalism (was Molding the Ideal Islamic Citizen)
On Sep 19, 2007, at 9:25 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
In short, political liberalism tends to privatize, expanding the space for freedom (of the negative sort, freedom from government regulation, the only kind of freedom that Americans recognize as freedom) – sexual and religious, as well as political and economic, freedoms – in the private sector and contracting the scope of the public sector that provides citizens with goods and services as a matter of their rights. The American citizen has few social duties but also few social rights, the opposite of the Cuban or Iranian citizen who has many social duties but also many social rights.
This model does not have room for Scandinavian social democracy,
which allows a lot of scope for private freedoms and civil liberties.
It’s like you’ve taken Esping-Andersen’s famous three-part model -
liberal, corporatist, and social democratic - and lopped off the
social democratic taxon.
And “secular”? The U.S.? Is there any country in the Northern
hemisphere where religion is such a part of public life? We have a
president who takes direction from God, a porn strike force in the
Justice Department, and a populace that claims it’s more likely to
vote for a queer than an atheist. Look at the current absurd
controversy over John McCain’s religion. Where else could that happen?
Doug