I love the Cantos, every word of the poem. And _within_ the poem Pound's conception of Usury and the political principles that make sense of that conception are of immense power in giving coherence to the "poem containing history" (his definition of epic). But do not confuse the world of the poem with the world we live in. The attempt to control the political economy of a nation through the devices of social credit necessarily leads to a conception of the state as all-powerful. Pound's fascism was not a foible; it flowed from his premises, his conception of the dynamic of human history. And the phrase "ideas into action" is itself not an innocent phrase. It suggests that ideas have a history of their own, prior to and independently of human activity: the best gloss on the phrase is perhaps to be found in Plato's _Republic_. Carrol P.S. I also subscribe to the Milton-L list, to which I just submitted the following post, which perhaps is relevant here. ****** Beth Bradburn wrote: But Satan isn't "trying to examine the consistency between underlying principles and instances of their application." He's trying to persuade someone to do something that she already believes to be illegal [clip] jfleming wrote: Is there really anything "poisoned" or "Satanic" about the logic of "your fear itself of death removes the fear"? Granted, "bad logic" is the sort of thing that we think we are supposed to say about the sorts of things that Satan says [clip] ----- The problem lies in the habit of so many Milton critics (especially in the 1960s, 1970s and into the '80s) to confuse _Paradise Lost_ with the universe, and to argue on the (sometimes explicit) premise that Milton's God was God, his Satan Satan, his Adam & Eve Adam & Eve (etc), and that hence in speaking of PL we were speaking of Reality Naked as it were. But if we see PL as having no more (and no less) relation to an external reality than the _Iliad_ or the _Cantos_, then we can treat Satan as satanic, eve as deceived, just as we can treat Achilles as a man of deep moral and political insight and Mussolini, Sisgismundo & Andrew Jackson as exemplars of humanity at its best in those poems. And of course in all three poems we can find a significance that goes far beyond the explicit intentions or beliefs of their makers. For example, the 'defenses' of Milton against the charge of male supremacy are utterly unconvincing as applied to Milton and his intentions, but they certainly are profoundly true as exhibiting the significance which we can see in the poem (reading over Milton's shoulder as it were). ******* It is best to read over Pound's shoulder, and not confuse his vision of human history with that history itself. Such a vision of history need not be true to be of great interest and illuminating.