[ssf] Blair's pledges

[@mparo]

Rather like insurance company offer. and yes it can get  more
individualistic than family, country, community.
They are all made up of more than one.:)
One has to be careful, what with freedom and doing away with it for the
sake of justice (stalin),
what with one's own lot , one's own backyard before the universal, the
world or the 3/4 of the non British world being "insured" and having
their debts "cancelled" so kindly.
It was with a bit of that stuff that dictators came to power...
:-)


Dan wrote:

> Labour reveals election pledges
> 
> The pledges so far:
> 
> 1. Your family better off 2. Your family treated better and faster 3.
> Your child achieving more 4. Your country's borders protected 5. Your
> community safer
> 
> Wow.  Couldn't get very much more individualistic than that, huh?
> Let's compare that to:
> 
> "I entirely agree that people should have the greatest freedom 
> compatible with the freedom of others. There was a time when
> employers were free to work little children for sixteen hours a day.
> I remember when employers were free to employ sweated women workers
> on finishing trousers at a penny halfpenny a pair. There was a time
> when people were free to neglect sanitation so that thousands died of
> preventable diseases. For years every attempt to remedy these crying
> evils was blocked by the same plea of freedom for the individual. It
> was in fact freedom for the rich and slavery for the poor."
> 
> [Clement Attlee, election broadcast 1945.] (And of course all of
> these things still go on - but apparently, none of these issues are 
> vote-winners!)
> 
> "This generation has grown up ignorant of the fact that socialism is
> as old as the human race. When civilization dawned upon the world, 
> primitive man was living his rude Communistic life, sharing all
> things in common with every member of the tribe. Later when the race
> lived in villages, man, the communist, moved about among the communal
> flocks and herds on communal land. The peoples who have carved their
> names most deeply on the tables of human story all set out on their
> conquering career as communists, and their downward path begins with
> the day when they finally turned away from it and began to gather
> personal possessions. When the old civilizations were putrefying, the
> still small voice of Jesus the Communist stole over the earth like a
> soft refreshing breeze carrying healing wherever it went."
> 
> [Keir Hardie, From Serfdom to Socialism 1907]
> 
>