"The World Changed, But the Left Stayed the Same": Cristovam Buarque has an insightful conversation with Fernando Henrique Cardoso (president of Brazil from 1995-2003). In it, they discuss the limits and possibilities of the Left – from a Brazilian perspective. What can be accomplished today? Today, the ones who suffer the most at “those human beings who don’t even serve to be exploited; they are the ‘marginalized’. They are not even an army of reserve.”
Fernando Henrique feels the Bush administration presents democracy in a "missionary" way, while in democracy you have to have a predisposition to accept the other: “When the value is that sort of fundamentalism, [you] have no path that leads to saying, ‘Let’s build a road so that I can advance more than he. Let’s build a common road.’”
Malcolm Bull
ponders the causes of genocide in this disturbing book review from the London Review of Books. Prosecuting individuals for genocide has proved extremely difficult: Evil may not have a "face”. The origins of genocide have been endlessly debated. Perhaps the problem is “the related concept of citizenship?” Bull asks. Where there are no rights without duties, and no duties without rights, it is axiomatic that those who do not perform duties relinquish their rights. “Jews, the handicapped, and others who supposedly did no productive work, were the victims of this particular equation in Nazi Germany.” The question that arises from such a shocking theory is: Was it the human “egalitarian revolution” that created the possibility of both altruism and genocide? Bull writes: “One sentence rarely found in the annals of human history is: ‘And then they killed all their servants.’”
"Civilization, Society and Religions" - In the open exchanges of letters between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud from 1932 the psychological causes of war are discussed in full. Freud admits his “Utopia” is a community of men who had subordinated their instinctual life to the dictatorship of reason. This would create a unity of men, even if there were no emotional ties between them. Today, in 2006, this is still the only hope for world unity and peace - unless you are religious.
