Re: python.el changes in emacs-24

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:

> I didn't say it was (nice try at invoking Godwin's Law, by the way).

I think that summarizes nicely why we are talking past each other.  It
is not necessary to look in the past for fascism, the ideology mixing an
overimportance of nationality, partially racially/religiously incited
superiority complexes, an appeal to fear and national security
interests, putting individual freedoms and civil rights behind
government interests creating an atmosphere of police and secret police
brutality and general unaccountability to the public.

You tend to identify things via their labels and rallying cries.  When
the CIA tortures a dark-skinned person of the wrong religious
affiliation to death for fun (the parts of the reports that surfaced
already state clearly that the information they were interested in was
generally already proferred before they dived in), I am pretty sure that
they will not shout "Heil Hitler".

But the lack of that particular rallying cry does not change what they
are doing and its fundamental incompatibility with what their
grandparents fought for in WWII, and the values their ancestors chose to
defend and explicate as their own in the 18th century.

The Free Software movement is not focused on providing the catchiest
rallying cry.  That's what the Open Source Movement considers important.
And if you want to argue that they got the better one, that might or
might not be the case.  But if you sell your horse in order to prettify
your cart, ultimately you will not be going anywhere but downhill.

-- 
David Kastrup