Individual interests now trump any consideration of the good of society just as all problems are ultimately laid at the door of the solitary individual, whose fate is shaped by forces far beyond his or her capacity for personal responsibility.
Henry GirouxThe future doesn't have to mimic the worst parts of the present. There are new ways of sharing information, and as long as they don't give up on the importance of politics, the future is certainly open.
Henry GirouxThe market-driven spectacle of war demands a culture of conformity, quiet intellectuals and a largely passive republic of consumers.
Henry GirouxBut we need more than a broader understanding of what is a good society or a moral and political critique of the existing market fundamentalism engulfing American society, we also need to create new forms of solidarity, new and broad based social movements that move beyond the isolated and fractured politics of the current historical moment.
Henry GirouxI think we're in a very distinctively different historical moment. I mean, I think that you had two things that were operating in the 1930s that seem to be, in many ways, to have been weakened or disappeared. And of course the beginning of the 21st century, I mean, you have - at one level you had massive social movements.
Henry GirouxWhether we're talking about the New Deal or the Great Society: they didn't come about because they wanted to buy people off with "hush money." They were the outcomes of struggles. They were the outcomes, in the 1930s, of a viable socialist-communist movement. They were the outcomes of a viable workers' movement. FDR didn't give in because he wanted to shut people up, he gave in because he was under pressure. He had no choice.
Henry Giroux