I've been doing some research on Janice Rogers Brown and in a speech she gave, she quoted this passage from John McGinnis:
There is simply a mismatch between collectivism on any large and enduring scale and our evolved nature. As Edward O. Wilson, the world's foremost expert on ants, remarked about Marxism, "Wonderful theory; wrong species."
That quote from Wilson is almost too perfect to be true. Anyone know if it is? I suppose it shouldn't matter. If he didn't say it, he should have.
By the way, you should read this speech. If anything, it makes me much more likely to support Brown's nomination. We frankly need people of her passion and intellect in that position.
Intellect I will buy as a desired characteristic for an appeals court justice [though intellect itself is not enough without good judgement to guide its application. I can think, as I am sure you can, of very intelligent people who would make (and have made) very poor judges.] But passion? I think not. If anything, quite the reverse, in fact. From liberal, conservative or liberterian justices, I want dispassionte decisions and calmly reasoned finding.
Here's one place where he says:
"What I like to say is that Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species."
http://www.froes.dds.nl/WILSON.htm
http://www.google.com/search?&q=Wilson+Marx+%22wrong+species%22
I hadn't seen this speech before -- it's got some great stuff in it.
I'm troubled, though, by her citation of Kozinski. I had read the speech she cites years ago. She quotes him saying, "What we have learned from the experience of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union ... is that you need capitalism to make socialism work."
I can't find that quotation in the versions of that speech to which I have access. If it is there, I suspect the context. Here's the gist of Kozinsky's message:
"The problem lay not with the implementation of collectivism, but with its central premise. Quite simply, the state cannot take on the job of making all, or even a substantial number, of the important decisions in a society. The government can make and enforce laws, it can police, it can adjudicate, but it cannot decide what is in everybody's best interests. People's talents, needs, aspirations, goals, and limitations are too diverse and conflicting for any central authority to take into account."
He's certainly not endorsing capitalism in support of socialism.
Read his whole speech and decide for yourself.
Found it!
Here's the complete Kozinski quote:
"Are we to learn anything at all from the disaster that befell hundreds of millions of people (in Eastern Europe) for so many decades? I posed this question to a friend of mine, a committed statist. Her answer was simple and not particularly encouraging: 'What we have learned from the experience of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is that you need capitalism to make socialism work.'"
He then goes on to explain why this is wrong.
simply a mismatch between collectivism on any large and enduring scale and our evolved nature. As Edward O. Wilson, the world's foremost expert on ants, remarked about Marxism, "Wonderful theory; wrong species."
Marxism is more about how the capitalist class supposedly exploits the working class in our present socity than how the future socialist paradise will be organised.
It should also be noted that even among ants there is conflict. The worker usually can lay eggs that develops into males. If they lay these eggs the eggs are often consumed by the gueen or the other workers.
I am still deeply troubled by Brown's restating of her religious beliefs within several of her solo dissenting opinions. Given the assumption of her intellect and her dogged claim for the support of liberty, why is she continually unable to separate her religious creed from the ajudication of law in this nation. While there is great joy in arguing the arcana of the First Amendment, linguists seem to have little issue with defining the constructs, contexts, and semiotic intent of the grammar and syntax.