ambivalent comment

I'd missed this post the first time around so I'm glad you recently linked to it again. Although I've spent far too much time bemoaning the failures and blind spots of Yubbledew, et al., I'd never really thought about the whole Republican philosophy in these terms. It seems in many ways the 20th century took sort of a hammer to that traditional belief in human and social progress and our ability to make our own world better as we instead saw demonstrations of our ability to destroy the world forever (via world wars, the halocaust, nuclear weapons, etc.). Such apocolyptic power feeds right into the Republican “end times” thing that says something like “Hey, god made the whole deal and he's going come back and end it soon so let's just sort of keep the status quo 'til he gets here, ok?” The thing is, they're right that there *are* limits to what we can do with design in terms of improving life for the majority of the people on this planet, but I agree that we really haven't even come close to finding what those limits are. I do babble about things about which I really know nothing, don't I? Alas, law school has made me stupid.