Those of us who stay for Torts with Professor Rapaczynski immediately after Prof. Moglen’s class were yesterday treated to apparently diametrically opposed visions of freedom and autonomy. After Moglen’s passionate lecture on the libertarian impulse’s responsibility for the national predicament, we were treated to a reasoned and logical explanation as to why, in order to promote freedom and autonomy, we must not punish someone who shrugs his shoulders while watching a child drown at his feet.

What is going on here? Rapaczynski is not a heartless man, and while Moglen is at odds with the university, he is not at war with it.

I think as we examine our status as winners of a global lottery we should not ignore the contours of the various different lotteries we have won. If you grow up in Warsaw in the 50s (privileged though you may be) you will be more skeptical of communal solutions, because you will have seen communal failure. Growing up in the US, a rebellious mind will turn on capitalism. Both views are "right," (something can be done with each) because both are essentially negations – both states are oppressive, because it is in the nature of states to oppress.

Our own backgrounds compel us to create our own myths, many of them born of a critical view of where we were raised. Theodor’s family history in the DDR compels him to write that the Stasi are the progeny of the Gestapo, when in fact Nazi officers were prosecuted far more vigorously in the East than in the West (the Stasi were no saints but were in fact modeled on the MGB). I, meanwhile, can’t read about the 323 executions (more than half of which took place in one year, and 60 of which were executions of Nazi officers) and the writers who lost their jobs when they refused to conform to party ideals without thinking that the US has executed more than three times that many since 1976, and that as a nation we are no stranger to silencing writers for their political views.

We should, I think, try to be aware of our personal myths, born of personal backgrounds, as we proceed. We have an opportunity (maybe even a responsibility) to overthrow the old myths, but as we do so I worry that we will replace them with myths and folklore of our own.

-- AndrewCase - 11 Feb 2009