once more on firefly
So, in addition to the passionate defence from "J" in the comments page, a bunch of libertarians (both left and right) have picked up my review of firefly. I'm going to watch the rest of the series (and the film), especially to see if my fears about the "indian question" are unfounded. By looking at the lib's posts, plus doing some more reading on fan discussion lists, I stand by what I said: it's a libertarian show, and it is an analogy to the Civil War, whatever noises Whedon makes. He may have also been thinking about Vietnam or any other conflict- but the show takes place right after a civil war between a centralized, evel "Federal" government and independent localists. That's creepy. To hear many southerners tell the story of the American Civil War, that's what it was about, too. By all mens, let's oppose oppressive, centralized, bureaucratic despotic regimes. But let's not, even faintly, praise the Confederacy for supposedly doing so.
Still, neat ships.
Update I'm continuing to follow and enjoy the flames in response to my critique on firefly fan lists. Luckily, everyone who has posted to this page has been civil and interesting, but man, out in the 'sphere, I'm getting accused of everything from being an ugly nerd to hating freedom to having a small penis, to being...a girl! Sweet. Not very serious stuff as Fredrik points out in comments, but this is fun. Politics and sci fi are two great loves.
posted by daraka kenric at 1:53 p.m.
9 Comments:
I've never seen Firefly. What I'm intrested in are the Hoverbike view on Bernie Sanders running for the Senate http://www.bernie.org/ and Kinky Friedman running for Governor of Texas http://www.kinkyfriedman.com/
lørdag, august 20, 2005 9:41:00 a.m.
Aha, so you've only seen the first disk, so you've missed various references and plot lines that point to the evil of one person owning another. We can forgive you for now, but if you're still misguided after seeing the whole series -- well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
The Confederacy/Civil War analogy only works to the point where the war was about the right to secede from the Union. It's clear from the overall context that the Alliance is the defender of slavery and that the Independents were fighting slavery.
The Rievers/injuns analogy never occurred to me in several viewings of the series, and I suspect it tells us more about your attitudes than Whedon's. When did you begin to believe Native Americans are over-the-top, barbaric savages?
søndag, august 21, 2005 8:44:00 a.m.
I don't- I believe that that is how they are portrayed in the Western genre.
-daraka
mandag, august 22, 2005 10:07:00 a.m.
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mandag, august 22, 2005 5:23:00 p.m.
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mandag, august 22, 2005 5:25:00 p.m.
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mandag, august 22, 2005 5:27:00 p.m.
...a bunch of libertarians (both left and right) have picked up my review of firefly...
I get really tired of people that have no idea of what they're talking about.
Libertarianism are not on the left or the right. “Left” and “right” artificial constructs created by the Democrats and Republicans to limit the choices of voters.
authoritarian
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"liberal" +------------+------------+ conservative
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individualism
This chart is based on the Nolan chart. A current version of the
Nolan chart is located at http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html
Individualism is defined as "a doctrine in which the state exists for the individual and not the individual for the state.
The reason that liberal is in quotes is that the US is the only civilized country that calls progressives "liberals". All other countries consider what Americans call libertarians to be "liberals".
An even better charting of political tendencies is "The Political Comapass" at http://www.politicalcompass.org/, because it has the testee answer a wider range of questions which can more accurately assess your political tendencies.
I might add that the US is one of the few countries that have only a two party system. The only system that is more limiting is in countries that allow "voters" only to "vote" for one person. The Dems and Reps have conspired to make "third" parties marginal by enforcing rules on other parties that do not apply to themselves.
mandag, august 22, 2005 5:27:00 p.m.
Thanks! I thought that my BA in Political Science from the University of Chicago was actually worth something!
In fact, the terms "Left" and "Right" have their origins in the seating arrangement of the post-Revolutionary French Parliament. They were not invented by conspiratorial Republicans and Democrats.
It's funny, too, because even the Nolan chart has a "Left" and a "Right" which must be useful for describing some sort of difference in political outlook.
You are right about one thing- political discourse in the United States is a strange thing, our use of the term "liberal" being chief among our peculiarities. However, chosing "authoritarianism" vs. "individualism" as axes is a philosophical manoever itself, privledging some abstract notion of negative liberty which is itself a very complicated construct.
All I was trying to get at in using the term "...libertarians (both right and left)" was to point out that both anti-capitalist anarcho-libertarians and pro-capitalist market-oriented libertarians were mad at me.
Rest assured, I did not mean to oversimplify the libertarian worldview, simplistic as it is to begin with.
-daraka
tirsdag, august 23, 2005 1:27:00 a.m.
Hey. I hope that from now on, our government sees the light and becomes perfectly anti-authoritarian. In other words, if there's ever -- god forbid -- a serious earthquake in California, I'd prefer that the government not come bring me food and water. I should be able to go out and forage for it myself. And if I can't pull myself up by my bootstraps after a major catastrophe, well, I guess the fate of the taw-taw suits me right.
Oh, and I really wish the government would stop building roads and making sure my car meets "safety standards." Throws a complete wrench in my quest to be a real individual. I'd prefer to check my car myself and drive it over roads that I plow myself. Thank you very much.
Here's to the day we can finally be free of all this rampant authoritarianism in America.
onsdag, september 07, 2005 11:36:00 p.m.
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