On Sun, Sep 14, 2003 at 10:16:59PM +0200, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> It is nice in French, too, and it carries the memory of many important
> historical events ("La Commune" was the name of the first elected
> public body in Paris during the French Revolution).
But in the U.S., the term is associated with the activities of "dirty
hippies".
Do not underestimate the amount of knee-jerk hysteria associated with
anything that smacks of socialism or communism in the United States.
(For that matter, never underestimate the amount of knee-jerk hysteria
in the U.S. generally.)
In U.S. culture, I think one will always make more headway with the
"freedom" meme than with the "communitarian" meme. Furthermore, we[1]
vastly prefer the illegitimate exercise of corporate power to the
illegitimate exercise of state power. I suspect, though I am not sure,
that this results from a confusion of the so-called "Protestant work
ethic" with the pecuniary successes of captialist tycoons. That every
wealthy person in America has "earned" his money though personal merit
and hard work is a myth that you challenge at your peril.[2]
We're getting off-topic for -legal...
[1] speaking for the ignorant masses that watch Fox News, not for myself
nor, most likely, a majority of Debian developers in the U.S.[3]
[2] Which is, of course, perfectly consistent with the Bush
administration's and its "neo-conservative" puppet masters' efforts
to completely repeal state taxes, and both Democratic and Republican
support for perpetual copyrights. It's awfully hard work opening the
envelopes from the bank reporting the deposit of royalties earned by
one's ancestors.
[3] though it is known that Ben Collins claims to have voted for George
W. Bush -- tee hee
--
G. Branden Robinson | Imagination was given man to
Debian GNU/Linux | compensate for what he is not, and
branden@debian.org | a sense of humor to console him for
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | what he is.
Attachment:
pgpMqt3eFZVPA.pgp
Description: PGP signature