Re: OT - Interview with the Great James Carroll("House of War")

mozark <swooning@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:1190039622.967411.187960
@y42g2000hsy.googlegroups.com:

Tomdispatch: I recently heard this joke: How many neocons does it take
to screw in a light bulb? The answer: Neocons don't believe in light
bulbs, they declare war on evil and set the house on fire.

(Carroll chuckles.)

TD: That's my introduction to a discussion of American fundamentalism.
Any comments?

James Carroll: Well, embedded in that joke is a central idea: that
what matters is not outcome, but purity of intent. A mark of a
fundamentalist mindset is that one's own personal virtue is the
ultimate value. The American fundamentalist ethos of the Cold War
prepared us to destroy the world. In other words, a world absolutely
devastated through nuclear war was acceptable as an outcome because it
reflected the virtue of our opposition to the evil of communism.
Better dead than red.

I love James Carroll. We get him every week in the Globe.

--
Crippled but free
I was blind all the time
I was learning to see.
.

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