I have often fantasized about having a dinner party made up of people from the past. I would then set them an issue to debate. (I of course would be allowed to join in). I thought this could make an interested thread. You are restricted to inviting eight guests. Here is the list of my first dinner party.

Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Lenin, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ghandi and Martin Luther King.

The main subject of conservation would be:

Utopia: What is it and how do we get it?

How about Fidel Castro, Jack Kennedy, Santo Trafficante, Jr., Fulgencio Batista and Bernardo de Torres?

The subject, of course, would be the best Cuban cigars.

I too would like to have a free form discussion about a utopian experiment large or small

I would like to have Gandhi, Buddha, Leonardo Da Vinci, Plato, Mozart, Thomas Jefferson, Rousseau, Milan Kundera, and a Francis of Assisi

and Julius Caesar and Machiavelli there to keep everybody on their toes

and we would all have access to spellcheck!

The historians Gilbert Burnet and Thomas Macaulay, with Isaac Newton, Samuel Johnson and Rene Descartes, as well as Bob Dylan and Mark Twain, all of US seated opposite from George W. Bush and Imelda Marcos (as the source of OUR fine amusement).

Ooh, throw in Voltaire in my party before anyone else nabs him

William Morris, who might just have something to say about utopia and could also make improvements to the wallpaper

I would humbly offer myself, unless Imelda Marcos and George Bush were in attendance, in which case I would become an insufferable bore (hey! no side comments from the peanut gallery on that last part...) I loved JFK's own comment the night he honored so many cultural icons, with Pablo Casals finding the White House a sufficiently honorable gathering place for people of his ethical standards for the first time since the Teddy Roosevelt administration, when JFK said, there has not been so much talent gathered here at one time since Thomas Jefferson ate here alone.

Tim Carroll

Greetings All:

I would like to add Tom Paine, William And Mary Goodwin along with their daughter Mary Shelly and this might sound a little perverse , but,
I would like to see a one on one between Adolph Hitler and Charley Manson.

Happy Yule to All:

for me it would be an opportunity to listen to great humanitarians
Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa for instance

or what about visionaries - Darwin, Orwell, Asimov Arthur C Clarke etc...

By the way have you seen
http://www.ethologic.com/sasha/thinkers.html

I don't have heroes. I would probably have people who were fun to be with : Bill Hicks springs to mind and probably that is about it really. I imagine he would want to discuss the Kennedy assassination and so I think we would have to invite John too

I can always get a good political argument out of my Anarchist sons, and they all admire Bill Hicks too

This is something I have thought about so many times - putting all these people together!

James Dean, Lee Harvey Oswald, Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra, Einstein, Karl Marx, Hitler and George W Bush.


Coversation Topic: What is Democracy?


A controversial question for a constroversial dinner party!


Caroline Hall

I'd have most of the songwriters nominated on the other thread (Johnny Cash is definitely in despite being a bit dead, plus we need a few women so let's add Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams for a start) then after dinner they could whip out their guitars and we could have an unbelievably cool session with no political/philosophical argument whatsoever but very very groovy music.

I'm not going to get invited to this party again, am I??!!

And it would be nice to have some architects, artists and inventors to who could discuss with us their messages and visions of the future:
Nostradamus, Leonardo da Vinci, Jules Verne, Dali, Derrick de Kerchove, Mc Luhan, Christopher Alexander and maybe Budha.

I'd love to have Auguste Escoffier presiding over the kitchen :-)

How about Winston Churchill, Robert Oppenheimer, Cesear, Napoleon, Jesus, George Washington, Muhammed, and Woodrow Wilson.

No real topic but just to roam the room listening to the various conversations and, of course, interjecting upon occasion. Think of the conversations.

_________________________---

John Kennedy, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley (all died 11/22/63) discussing their views on life, death and the world, in general.

John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, John Coltrane, Phil Ochs

Ayn Rand, the Georges Bush (41 and 43), Jesus Christ, and Lee Oswald.

I think that would be one fascinating dinner conversation!!!

Dawn

Merry Christmas/ "Holidaze" to all.