AIDS, Gays, Politics, and Lewis Powell

Hmm. Found a link to a copy of this speech transcript on a friend’s blog. Significant, because today is World AIDS day. It is a speech by Larry Kramer who is a prominent advocate for gay issues (click his name for a full bio).

I found the whole text to be thought provoking. It certainly has some flaws (I say, at the risk of the statement’s potential status as effluvium from the ‘university’s asshole’), but on the whole I found it to be a good speech.

I particularly found the part which begins ‘This is the most important part of this speech’ particularly interesting. Keep reading through the discussion of Lewis Powell’s infamous memo to the US Chamber Of Commerce, in which he outlined specific suggestions to counter the ‘attack’ on the American ‘economic system’.

What is interesting to me is that in 1971 Powell complained that (what Americans would now call) Liberal and Communist forces had been increasing their influence through twenty years of work. Now, Kramer (citing Moyer) suggests that the Conservatives have been following Powell’s plan for thirty years; Kramer suggestts that the results of this plan are now coming to fruition: control over an American electorate, who themselves believe in a Conservative agenda that creates an elitist society that is actually counter to their (the electorate’s) own benefit.

Hmm, these articles are significantly more elaborate than my democracy one… Sigh, in another life I may study political science.

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