From jk Sat May 29 12:52:34 1999 Subject: Re: War Crime and Punishment To: ra Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 12:52:34 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1532 Status: RO > sooner or later this "court" is going to start indicting Americans. > Perhaps in other military ops. This court is official mob rule. Not mob rule, really; it represents an international managerial class. Even if the American branch of that class gives up a little it gets a lot more. > This "international law/court" thing is going to be used to remove > any de-facto rights that Americans are still allowed to exercise. I agree that the intent is to do an end run around the need to get the locals to agree to whatever it is that the i.m.c. agrees ought to be done. > Precedent is the only thing that is protecting American rights. And > as time goes by precedents contrary to 1776 are being established. There's an obvious campaign to debunk precedent. What kind of common-law or for that matter self-governing system is it, in which saying something is an "ingrained social stereotype" counts *against* that thing? When did being "resistant to change" become a sign of mental illness? > > In other words, they're ours, we pay for them, they can't exist > > without us, so *obviously* it's our opponents who are going to get > > indicted. By "we" I meant not Americans as such but NATO, a transnational managerial organization. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th-century idea, and we're trying to transition into the 21st century, and we're going to do it with multi-ethnic states." (General Wesley K. Clark) From jk Sat May 29 13:04:14 1999 Subject: Re: Berlin Wall falls, Dems lose Congress, and... To: He Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 13:04:14 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 808 Status: RO Anything is better than nothing, I suppose, but these people sound like such unbelievable lightweights. To act on any intention whatever is to act on values. If you think you've avoided the issue you just aren't thinking very much. Presumably what's going on is that you've identified so thoroughly with the interests and outlook of a class and you've given up so totally on independent thought that you can't see yourself as having a particular outlook -- how things look to you is simply and undeniably how they are. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th-century idea, and we're trying to transition into the 21st century, and we're going to do it with multi-ethnic states." (General Wesley K. Clark) From jk Sat May 29 22:57:49 1999 Subject: Re: Re: Berlin Wall falls, Dems lose Congress, and... To: He Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 22:57:49 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 578 Status: RO > It may not like a big deal for Brown to admit that, but believe me, > even that's a step forward for them. Oh, you're right of course. It's just so bizarre that people whose claim to special consideration is that they're thought things through more than most of us should be so mindless. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th-century idea, and we're trying to transition into the 21st century, and we're going to do it with multi-ethnic states." (General Wesley K. Clark) From jk Sat May 29 23:04:38 1999 Subject: Re: Brown addendum To: He Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 23:04:38 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 889 Status: RO > Time will tell. I agree. It's interesting. A basic problem is that any actual system of morals must be particularistic -- can't be based on universal perspicuous demonstrable reason but must have obscurities and mysteries and fundamentally involve loyalty to a particular group of people and its ways. Liberalism can't admit that though which causes impossible contradictions. Especially since liberalism claims to welcome endless questioning and criticism. So will Brown's new departure be the start of something or is it only one step back after 20 forward, to be followed by more "progress"? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th-century idea, and we're trying to transition into the 21st century, and we're going to do it with multi-ethnic states." (General Wesley K. Clark) From jk Sun May 30 08:28:25 1999 Subject: Re: Re: Brown addendum To: He Date: Sun, 30 May 1999 08:28:25 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3074 Status: RO > I'm hoping Brown, politically-concerned people of all stripes, and > the world in general will move toward a sort of two-tiered approach > (not that I'm naively suggesting any tidy, clear-cut division), > believing that (1) there are some transcultural, common themes we all > have to agree on to survive--like not killing each other, not > completely hamstringing the economy, etc. (the sort of broad topics > that I think a diverse group like Brown can safely discuss)--and (2) > there are also more detailed, rich approaches to the good life that > are better left to the tight-knit groups you speak of. It's an interesting issue and one that deserves extensive treatment. Some thoughts: 1. My own prejudice is to say that an altogether non-particularist morality would be too weak to tell you much that is concretely useful, and unlikely to have enough grip on men's sense of what they are to motivate sacrifice. Since a social order can't exist if no-one's willing to die for it that's a problem. 2. Past systems of international order and order among free equals have been based on something rather substantive -- the Greek leagues had religious, ethnic and cultural unity, the Roman Empire had a common religious understanding intertwined with an authoritative culture and a quasi ethnicity (Roman citizenship), "Europe" had Latin Christianity and, since the movements of peoples were long over, few ethnic issues, medieval Iceland had religious and ethnic unity -- the Irish were slaves, and the introduction of Christianity brought them close to civil war so they chose an arbitrator to decide which religion they would all adhere to. 3. The content of the common cultural and religious understanding can to some extent sink out of sight, since after all it's common and what people notice are differences. That only lasts until it's questioned, and it's not always easy to isolate and silence questioners. 4. People will always want to pack their own stuff into the upper tier. Social justice is an obvious example -- everyone except a few libertarians seems convinced it belongs in the upper tier but the concept is obviously radically centralizing and a goverment authorized to define and enforce social justice necessarily has plenary authority over all social relations. How do you get people to be contented with having just a little in the upper tier? It's not so obvious what the limits of purely rational morality are, and there will always be a strong class interest in putting more there since whoever the international managers are who look after the upper tier will always want to increase their jurisdiction and they'll always have lots of hangers-on, who will find it easier than their opponents to unify and manipulate things to their advantage. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th-century idea, and we're trying to transition into the 21st century, and we're going to do it with multi-ethnic states." (General Wesley K. Clark) From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Jun 7 08:35:46 EDT 1999 Article: 13772 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Call to all counterrevolutionaries Date: 6 Jun 1999 14:59:06 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 39 Message-ID: <7jegdq$s57$1@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 928695547 23002 166.84.0.226 (6 Jun 1999 18:59:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Jun 1999 18:59:07 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13772 Last month I added a pep talk about preparation of counterrevolutionary etexts to the introduction to the a.r.c. resource lists. Do think about it. It's hard to get most of the materials, and many of them are either out of copyright or hopelessly out of print. Web pages are free. Scanners are cheap and OCR software constantly getting better. The one I use (Visioneer OneTouch 7600) cost $140 and on an unmarked text makes very few errors. The NWO is intended to be a self-contained social reality. It follows that not just specifically counterrevolutionary texts but *any* old book that appeals to moral realities outside contemporary liberalism is a blow against the Empire. To scan one and put it on the net is to strike the blow repeatedly, and to keep striking with every download until the Empire falls. It is our equivalent to a NATO bombing campaign, only with smarter bombs that detonate again and again wherever they find a weakness. If you're going to be reading something closely anyway it doesn't add that much time or detract that much from comprehension to scan it and then read it in the form of raw scanned text, cleaning it up as you go. I've put up two books myself so far, a collection of Paul Elmer More's essays and Newman's _Grammar of Assent_. See http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2125/p_e_more http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2125/newman_grammar A thousand more are needed. Get a scanner and launch cruise missiles, laser bombs and B-52s of the spirit that can't be shot down and never wear out. The Evil Hegemons to the scrapheap of history, and long live the victory of people's war! -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th-century idea, and we're trying to transition into the 21st century, and we're going to do it with multi-ethnic states." (General Wesley K. Clark) From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jun 8 07:00:23 EDT 1999 Article: 13775 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Call to all counterrevolutionaries Date: 8 Jun 1999 06:58:32 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 31 Message-ID: <7jit0o$m01$1@panix.com> References: <7jegdq$s57$1@panix.com> <1dt0o4w.1welel6ya21cwN@pmdeco1-28.rconnect.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 928839513 1674 166.84.0.226 (8 Jun 1999 10:58:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Jun 1999 10:58:33 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13775 In <1dt0o4w.1welel6ya21cwN@pmdeco1-28.rconnect.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes: >When I first heard of the World Wide Web I presumed it would be a >collection of etexts, the contents of all the great libraries online, >with optional annotations and commentary by scholars. It hasn't worked >out that way The sociology of scholarly recognition isn't set up that way. The scholars already have all the texts they want and no special professional interest in making them available to others. When they produce etexts they usually put them on CDs and sell them for thousands of dollars a copy, at least that's been true in the cases I know about. The presumption is that the purchasers will all be institutional. >Life would be simpler if we could ignore copyright laws. I hear >contradictory information regarding the law: is it true that any >edition older than 75 years is in the public domain? Yes, at least in America. And even if the edition is newer you can use it if you strip out new material (footnotes, introductions) or if some doctrine of "fair use" applies. For my own part I wouldn't much worry about the law if the material seems hopelessly out of print. There wouldn't be any damages, no one would be interested in enforcement, and fair use might even apply. For more info see http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/index.html -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th-century idea, and we're trying to transition into the 21st century, and we're going to do it with multi-ethnic states." (General Wesley K. Clark) From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jun 8 19:34:05 EDT 1999 Article: 13777 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Call to all counterrevolutionaries Date: 8 Jun 1999 15:40:20 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 17 Message-ID: <7jjrj4$s5e$1@panix.com> References: <7jegdq$s57$1@panix.com> <1dt2poe.1kaasu318wocbjN@pmdeco1-38.rconnect.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 928870821 22041 166.84.0.226 (8 Jun 1999 19:40:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Jun 1999 19:40:21 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13777 In <1dt2poe.1kaasu318wocbjN@pmdeco1-38.rconnect.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes: >> The Evil Hegemons to the scrapheap of history, and long live the >> victory of people's war! >"It is idle to talk about preventing the wreck of Western civilization. >It is already a wreck from within. If all institutions have fallen to the Evil Empire then people's war is what's left. Still, history is a very long time. I just establish general policy, other people can work out administrative details like timetables. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th-century idea, and we're trying to transition into the 21st century, and we're going to do it with multi-ethnic states." (General Wesley K. Clark) From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jun 8 19:34:07 EDT 1999 Article: 13779 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Call to all counterrevolutionaries Date: 8 Jun 1999 19:33:02 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 27 Message-ID: <7jk97e$nn3$1@panix.com> References: <7jegdq$s57$1@panix.com> <1dt0o4w.1welel6ya21cwN@pmdeco1-28.rconnect.com> <7jit0o$m01$1@panix.com> <928877033snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 928884782 698 166.84.0.226 (8 Jun 1999 23:33:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Jun 1999 23:33:02 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13779 In <928877033snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes: >It is of course commercial publishers, not scholars, who put the texts >on CDs and charge thousands of dollars a copy. Scholars presumably >share the public interest in keeping them as cheap as possible. The ones I've run into are university presses. Actually it makes sense if you're basically a branch of a university doing something that you see as of interest only to other universities to try to recover your costs from the others. >For free etexts you might have a look at Project Gutenberg ... Oxford >Text Archive There are a great number available from various sources and of various qualities, for some authors more than others. Any is better than none. It would be nice to have much more. I recently finished writing something on Emerson that would have been much more difficult if most of his better-known works weren't freely available on the web as etexts. Emerson would be very little affected if everything he wrote were reshuffled randomly, sentence by sentence. As a result the only way to find anything is by electronic search. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th-century idea, and we're trying to transition into the 21st century, and we're going to do it with multi-ethnic states." (General Wesley K. Clark) From jk Fri Jun 18 04:26:47 1999 Subject: Re: Hi To: t Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 04:26:47 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 53230 Status: RO > What I'm really interested in is less the transition from > color-blindness to equal results than in the way a free and healthy > society functions and how antidiscrimination law destroys it--the That's the right focus of course. The color-blind=>equal-results stuff as I see it is subsidiary to that. The point is that there is no reasonable moderate or conservative interpretation of the equal opportunity laws. The laws are necessarily at odds with intelligent action and therefore necessarily make a mess of things. Since ethnicity is mainly a historical and cultural construction -- biological race may matter, but it's far from the whole picture -- to forbid ethnic discrimination is necessarily to forbid discrimination on the things that make up ethnicity, including habits and attitudes, and thus to require people who are unequal in relevant ways to be treated as equals and so given preferences. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From paleo-return-315-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Tue Jun 22 01:12:55 1999 Received: from ml.egroups.com (ml.egroups.com [207.138.41.146]) by mail2.panix.com (8.8.8/8.8.8/PanixM1.3) with SMTP id BAA22650 for; Tue, 22 Jun 1999 01:12:54 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [10.1.1.21] by ml.egroups.com with NNFMP; 22 Jun 1999 06:12:53 -0000 Mailing-List: contact paleo-owner@egroups.com X-Mailing-List: paleo@egroups.com X-URL: http://www.egroups.com/list/paleo/ Reply-To: paleo@egroups.com Delivered-To: listsaver-egroups-paleo@egroups.com Received: (qmail 659 invoked by uid 7770); 21 Jun 1999 19:24:47 -0000 Received: from panix.com (166.84.1.66) by vault.egroups.com with SMTP; 21 Jun 1999 19:24:47 -0000 Received: (from jk@localhost) by panix.com (8.8.5/8.8.8/PanixU1.4) id PAA01263 for paleo@egroups.com; Mon, 21 Jun 1999 15:24:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199906211924.PAA01263@panix.com> To: paleo@egroups.com Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 15:24:42 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <376E4295.6FD2EB72@salamander.com> from "Bill McClain" at Jun 21, 99 08:48:05 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: [Paleo] Re: Race and antiracism Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: RO Bill McClain writes: > (1) What happens when black children want to pray in public school? > Couldn't one present the church as integral with black culture and > insist they be allowed to express it? Neat idea, to the extent one wants to play games with existing weird attitudes. You actually might get some mileage out of this one. The prohibition on prayer ought to take precedence though if I am right about the ultimate basis of antiracism as denial of transcendence (hence of universals). > (2) The notion that some groups are over quota is a clever one. Ought > we to insist that affirmitive action specifically requires the > numbers of Asians and Jews to be reduced in certain occupations? Buchanan floated the idea, as a _reductio_ of AA, and was roundly denounced as a racist. Logic chopping in favor of whites gets nowhere. It's just another proof of racism. > (3) Why do the Japanese get a free ride on having no immigration in > their country? Japanese racism is a local issue. Worldwide, whites are on top and abolition of white hegemony is therefore the main current concern in the project of abolishing all racial dominance everywhere. > (5) Conscience, as choice which is not freely made, is also an > individual attribute, but not one that can be respected by the new > regime. It can't really count for more than any other preference. Actually, it's now antisocial since it suggests binding standards of universal applicablility and is thus less tolerant, more resistant to change, etc. than other preferences. > (6) The tie to realist metaphysics is very good. You would think that > this must be a winner, because it is compatible with untutored common > sense and also with the scientific world-view. That's the point of the essay, really, to understand how antiracism is integral to something much vaster, and why opposition to it seems so incomprehensible and monstrous, when it has so many irrational aspects and within living memory no-one much cared about it. It must somehow be a direct consequence of something very fundamental in how people look at things now and it ought to be possible to show that antiracism and other recent transformations are all of a piece. A problem with writing about racism is that there's so much trash on the subject and one must somehow plow through it to get to any interesting issues. The superficial reasons for antiracism are very bad, which means the interesting questions are things like why now, and what deep down makes any reasoning or factual claims whatever appealing as long as they have antiracist consequences. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SIGN UP NOW FOR FREE HOME IMPROVEMENT HOW-TO'S Receive seasonal how-to's and climate-specific advice via e-mail. http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/131 eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleo http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jun 22 14:27:56 EDT 1999 Article: 13787 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 20 Jun 1999 09:21:18 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 76 Message-ID: <7kipse$gc5$1@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 929884878 15284 166.84.0.226 (20 Jun 1999 13:21:18 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 20 Jun 1999 13:21:18 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13787 By absolute chance I noted the following article (my news software automatically displays new newsgroups until I unsubscribe, and this was at the top the first time nl.misc came up). It appears that Maarten has been arrested for racism and antisemitism, and is going to get fined 10,000 guilders. >From nl.misc Sun Jun 20 09:14:19 1999 Path: news.panix.com!panix!howland.erols.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!bullseye.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.nl!demon!sjoske.demon.nl!not-for-mail From: "Zsjoske" Newsgroups: nl.politiek,soc.culture.netherlands,nl.misc,be.politics Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1999 12:59:35 +0200 Message-ID: <929882477.27366.2.pluto.d4ee2930@news.demon.nl> References: <3765be86.8018415@news.iae.nl> <3764557a.2099086@news.brabant.chello.nl> <376a94c7.337188@news.brabant.chello.nl> <37a7e7a0.40101316@news.ping.be> <376bba08.1238674@news.brabant.chello.nl> <377460c9.46108629@news.ping.be> <377104f6.9424151@news.brabant.chello.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: sjoske.demon.nl X-NNTP-Posting-Host: sjoske.demon.nl:212.238.41.48 X-Trace: news.demon.nl 929882477 pluto:27366 NO-IDENT sjoske.demon.nl:212.238.41.48 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Lines: 50 Xref: news.panix.com nl.politiek:19 soc.culture.netherlands:197318 nl.misc:3 Jackal ) heeft geschreven in bericht <377104f6.9424151@news.brabant.chello.nl>... >On Sat, 19 Jun 1999 15:10:30 GMT, fustigator@guindaille.com >(Fustigator (I.C.O.N.E.)) wrote: > > >>>Bovendien is dit gewoon struktureel geweld jegens de joden. >>>Dat dit aangepakt wordt is alleen maar toe te juichen. >> >>Mar daar ben ik niet tegen, hoor. Een straf is wel op zijn plaats! >>Ik vind een arrestatie niet juist: laat liever die vent 10.000 gulden >>aan een Joodse caritatieve instelling storten als smartegeld. > >OK hier ga ik in mee, wellicht is arrestatie een te zwaar middel. >10.000 gulden boete lijkt me een mooi bedrag om van z'n uitkering in >te houden voor een joodse instelling. Prima maar dan ook elke onterechte beschuldiging van racisme en anti semitisme beboeten met 10.000 gulden ! En te storten in een fonds voor slachtoffers van deze praktijken die m i net zo vaak voorkomen. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ & Mvg. Zsjoske. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ > >>Fusti >>Member of the Official Kees van den Doel Fanclub. >>http://132.181.210.220/keesclub >>join it U2! > > > > >--------------------------------------------- > >Franc > >Lid van de Officiele Kees van den Doel Fanclub. >http://132.181.210.220/keesclub > >Reply: dhrroula@hotmail.com >ICQ: 37249679 > >http://www.whitetrash.com/mo/mcbmw/r1100r.html >http://www.ashlandbmw.com/Bmws/r1100r/r1100r.htm -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jun 27 21:06:57 EDT 1999 Article: 13795 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 27 Jun 1999 06:59:11 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 20 Message-ID: <7l505v$5g5$1@panix.com> References: <7kipse$gc5$1@panix.com> <3775312C.EC5E5DAF@zap.A2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930481152 26725 166.84.0.226 (27 Jun 1999 10:59:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 27 Jun 1999 10:59:12 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13795 This all seems quite bizarre. I suppose though that one aspect of antiracism is the abolition of common sense (a.k.a. "deeply rooted social stereotypes"), which can't easily exist apart from the network of implicit attitudes, beliefs, dispositions etc. that constitutes the specific (ethnic) cultures that antiracism is to deprive of public authority and therefore abolish. On a different but related matter -- I understand the German law Le Pen was convicted of violating forbids downplaying the importance of the Holocaust. Does anyone know what that means? It seems that saying something else is more important would violate the law, so apparently Germany has a new established religion, that is to say a new enforceable doctrine as to the things that are most important. Anyway, good luck, Maarten. Do let us know what happens. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jun 27 21:06:58 EDT 1999 Article: 13799 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 27 Jun 1999 20:50:38 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 59 Message-ID: <7l6gsu$6n5$1@panix.com> References: <7kipse$gc5$1@panix.com> <3775312C.EC5E5DAF@zap.A2000.nl> <7l505v$5g5$1@panix.com> <37765de9.1388757@news.3web.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930531039 6291 166.84.0.226 (28 Jun 1999 00:50:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Jun 1999 00:50:39 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13799 In <37765de9.1388757@news.3web.net> 731591054@3web.com (T.J.) writes: >As Locke noted, there is a difference between tolerance and >intolerance (to put simply, intolerance does not mean the opposite of >tolerance--but it represents hatred and resentment). Ergo, it has >been a basic doctrine in liberal theory that one cannot tolerate >intolerance Just as Lockean negative freedom has been replaced by positive freedom, even so has negative tolerance -- live and let live -- been replaced by positive tolerance -- the demand for a social order that insists that to the extent possible all modes of life have equal status. Antiracism is not nonracism, the absence of racial hatred. It's not even opposition to racial hatred, although it tries to pass itself off as such by distorting other views. Rather, it's either the demand that the significance of ethnicity be forcibly abolished (what in the US is called the conservative view of civil rights) or that social relations be centrally controlled so that even the most informal of ethnic hierarchies are abolished. Both demands are quite at odds with how people tend to organize their lives, so both are intolerant as tolerance was conceived until quite recently. >if a group of people are living in fear, are they not justified in >trying to limit the impact that their persecutors and spreaders of >intolerance have? Such abstractions can be applied to almost anything. The great majority of innocents murdered for political reasons in living memory were murdered by left-wing regimes, and the extreme left has lots more public respectability and historical prestige than the extreme right, so presumably right-wingers, fundies, racists, what have you have most reason to live in fear. Public opinion and the legal order plainly don't like them. Nazis are no doubt living in fear in Holland, so very likely they would think themselves justified in seizing power by force, if it were possible, and throwing all their opponents in concentration camps, because that would limit the impact of those who attempt to silence them, publicly denigrate them, throw them in the slammer for their political views, and otherwise make life difficult for them. (I assume such things happen to Nazis in Holland because they happen to non-Nazis like Maarten there.) >But one of its more unique aspects is that it places the sanctity of >each individual as being foremost in the law What does that have to do with treating calling the gas chambers an historical footnote as criminal? It's a literally true statement -- presumably the broad sweep and lessons of history would be the same if it had been all firing squads and planned starvation rather than gas chambers. The murders committed by communist regimes don't get much play. Suppose someone said the Holocaust should only get 6% as much play as that, because that's the relative proportion of corpses? Should that be a crime? It would basically mean that the Holocaust would never be mentioned at all. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Jun 28 14:12:00 EDT 1999 Article: 13802 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 28 Jun 1999 14:10:30 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 40 Message-ID: <7l8dqm$58j$1@panix.com> References: <7kipse$gc5$1@panix.com> <3775312C.EC5E5DAF@zap.A2000.nl> <7l505v$5g5$1@panix.com> <37765de9.1388757@news.3web.net> <7l6gsu$6n5$1@panix.com> <37777B81.CC64A2@zap.A2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930593431 21301 166.84.0.226 (28 Jun 1999 18:10:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Jun 1999 18:10:31 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13802 In <37777B81.CC64A2@zap.A2000.nl> vtnet writes: >I think that what Tom means is that there's a triangular relationship >between on the one hand tolerance and intolerance with regard to >rational opinions that are in the realm of human thought and therefore >potentially open to rational debate. And on the other hand there's >intolerance with regard to (negative) feelings that are not open to >rational debate: and as one cannot deal with irrational intolerance by >(direct) rational discourse, some other mode of confronting it has to >be found. Can the test really be irrationality? I wouldn't think there's much danger from actual lunatic ravings. It seems to me the usual test is "wrong and dangerous to the established order," with the accent on the second part. What's odd is that liberalism preens itself on tolerance, while (at least in its current advanced form) applying the same test as others for what it will tolerate. PC is real, and it's no more tolerant than say communism or radical Puritanism because like them it is an attempt to reconstruct human nature against the grain. Locke himself wanted to suppress infidelity and Popery, as I recall. The Dutch police, it appears from what you say, suppress the view that homosexual conduct is wrong and much else besides. Maybe Locke or the Dutch cops or both are right, but I don't see why it's *rationality* that's the issue. Popery seems more rational to me than Locke's religious outlook, and the view that homosexuality is bad than its contrary. It's always seemed to me for that matter that the purely rational argument for Naziism is about as good and shares a great deal with the argument for liberalism -- e.g., reduction of the good to what I will, the consequent tendency to make the _infimum malum_ (the absolute thwarting of the will, slavery, torture, extermination etc.) politically pivotal, a tendency toward social constructivism, a tendency to collapse individual into society or the reverse, etc. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Jun 28 19:46:50 EDT 1999 Article: 13806 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Notes of a Disinformation Analyst: You, Hypocrite! Date: 28 Jun 1999 19:31:49 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 20 Message-ID: <7l90l5$gqe$1@panix.com> References: <7l8eu5$qc9$1@sunnews.cern.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930612710 25557 166.84.0.226 (28 Jun 1999 23:31:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Jun 1999 23:31:50 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13806 In <7l8eu5$qc9$1@sunnews.cern.ch> kly@rsplus01.cern.ch (Gregory Kozlovsky) writes: > Ethnic cleansing and forced migration are not exactly unknowns to > Russians. ... And Nikita Khrushchev forcibly moved so many > Russians to Kazakhstan that by 1959 native Kazakhs made up less > than a third of the population. From Stalin on, Soviet policy was > to dilute the Soviet Union's 80-odd ethnic groups by moving > Russian citizens onto their territories, evicting them from > homelands and drawing borders so as to split large ethnic groups > in two. Interesting that Mr. Wines writing in the _New York Times_ treats dilution of ethnic dominance and forced diversity as bad things when talking about Russia. I wonder if he or they have ever reflected on whether the point could be generalized? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Jun 28 19:46:50 EDT 1999 Article: 13807 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Notes of a Disinformation Analyst: You, Hypocrite! Date: 28 Jun 1999 19:39:16 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 16 Message-ID: <7l9134$i32$1@panix.com> References: <7l8eu5$qc9$1@sunnews.cern.ch> <3777C7AF.3DB6F19C@innocent.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930613159 25655 166.84.0.226 (28 Jun 1999 23:39:18 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Jun 1999 23:39:18 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13807 In <3777C7AF.3DB6F19C@innocent.com> Kevin Alfred Strom writes: >The current elite care nothing for "human rights" or "human life," >except as propaganda-totems to fool the boobs I think they really believe in it. Their theory of things may not stand up when you think it through but they really do hold it. One of the more intelligent things Hitler said, it was in his area of expertise, was that violence requires a firm spiritual foundation. Our rulers have that. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Jun 28 19:46:51 EDT 1999 Article: 13808 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 28 Jun 1999 19:45:10 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 19 Message-ID: <7l91e6$ib8$1@panix.com> References: <7kipse$gc5$1@panix.com> <3775312C.EC5E5DAF@zap.A2000.nl> <7l505v$5g5$1@panix.com> <37765de9.1388757@news.3web.net> <7l6gsu$6n5$1@panix.com> <37777B81.CC64A2@zap.A2000.nl> <7l8dqm$58j$1@panix.com> <3777D166.D291B7CD@zap.A2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930613511 25737 166.84.0.226 (28 Jun 1999 23:45:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 28 Jun 1999 23:45:11 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13808 In <3777D166.D291B7CD@zap.A2000.nl> vtnet writes: >the liberal state can't prosecute the utterances of its critics since >that would constitute a breach of liberal principle The current tendency seems to be to blur the boundaries of speech and action. Saying "homosexuality is a bad thing" constructs a social environment in which homosexuals are at a disadvantage, therefore it's an act of aggresion against them and can be prosecuted. I agree that turning speech into conduct destroys liberalism but it respects the deeper impulse behind liberalism, the equal liberation of desire, and so can be viewed as a legitimate development in which liberalism transcends itself. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Sat Jun 26 17:45:07 1999 Subject: Re: Advice To: hd Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 17:45:07 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2599 Status: RO How to make a living and what to do generally depends partly on tastes and talents. You haven't said what you like to do, so I can't be very concrete. If there is something you love, would it be best first to pursue it and then decide how to support your pursuit? You could start by thinking about the life you want to lead as a reactionary Catholic, live that way, and then think how to support yourself. For example, you might have some idea of a contribution you could make to the cause, it could be anything at all, it's not as if everything is already taken care of. Start making it, treat it seriously as your life's work, and then worry about how to pay for the groceries. Or if you aren't sure what you can do then talk to people, there must be traditionalist Catholic priests and others who have ideas about what the laity can add, think about what's lacking, try things, and see where they lead. Or you no doubt want to live among other reactionary Catholics. You may also have family and friends you want to live near. So go where you want to be and then see how to keep a roof over your head. I think it would be difficult for you to work for a large organization, except perhaps in an utterly subordinate or purely technical capacity. Large organizations today demand, and as a practical matter are legally required to demand, a personal committment to "diversity" that is inconsistent with moral integrity unless your outlook is the established one or unless you are someone whose views don't matter. There are always ways to make a living of some sort, though, and if you stick with things and have courage and faith one thing eventually leads to another. That's true even if things look bad at the moment. One possibility for the long term would be a portable skill you could exercise without reliance on a large organization. That could be anything from medicine to auto repair or word processing, the specifics depend on individual talents and circumstances. I don't know if anything I've said helps at all. Uninformed advice often seems to miss one's particular circumstances. I suppose my suggestion is to start with what you love and pursue it, treat what pays as secondary, and have courage and faith that the world will not prevail. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Sun Jun 27 20:10:44 1999 Subject: Re: Thank you for advice To: hd Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 20:10:44 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3255 Status: RO > However, a have laso been contemplating studying medicine. You are > absolutely right that some skills or professions allow one greater > freedom from the growing totalitarian system. Medicine too is becoming more centrally organized and more controlled by government. Also, it deals with basic moral issues, and those who control and fund it are going to want to be able to determine how those issues come out. So there could be problems. Suppose you work for an HMO that believes in euthenasia, does abortions, advises teenagers about safe sex, etc. What then? Maybe the practical difficulties depend on specialty. Podiatry for example seems to avoid the big issues. > So, having said all this, I am literally agonizing whether it makes > sense at all in this age to be in academia out of a love for humane > letters. It may depend on the specific department and program. In general there seem to be big problems but you know more than I. Humane letters can exist outside academia though. > I have come to adopt, by force, a more pragmatic approach. If I do > go to law school (any advice on particulars would be welcome--I'm > thinking about Columbia and Tulane universities, since they offer > joint degrees with Latin American and Iberian studies)--I will view > as a certication process, which is what higher education in this age > has become. American law is of course permeated with the ideological outlook of our rulers. A lot of it's hard to take. Remember that all respectable authorities agree that abortion at will is fundamental to the American public order. That's just an example. In general law has a great deal of interest from the standpoint of understanding how things work. If things have gone awry it shows that too. >From a practical standpoint, the more prestigious a school you can go to the better. Certification is the word. Think about what you want to do with a degree though. If you don't have concrete goals that are realistic it's easy to lose yourself in the process. > You are absolutely right about following one's longing for an > integral existence. But, as I'm sure you know, it is an increasingly > heroic thing to do. At your age you should be thinking about how to arrange your life so it's not quite so heroic. You'll be happier if you set up your life so you think the things you do are pointed in the right direction. I think you would be better off choosing a place to live that has a strong traditionalist Catholic community that you can hook up with. The world is becoming more grossly antiChristian and to live a tolerable life I think people more and more will end up separating themselves from it. Most of us aren't hermits and mutual support is important. Also I think it is important to have a clear idea of what one wants other than worldly success. Otherwise one becomes raw material for a very efficient machine that turns everything including human character into money. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jun 29 14:30:49 EDT 1999 Article: 13810 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 29 Jun 1999 06:10:20 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 27 Message-ID: <7la62c$dgg$1@panix.com> References: <7kipse$gc5$1@panix.com> <3775312C.EC5E5DAF@zap.A2000.nl> <7l505v$5g5$1@panix.com> <37765de9.1388757@news.3web.net> <7l6gsu$6n5$1@panix.com> <37777B81.CC64A2@zap.A2000.nl> <7l8dqm$58j$1@panix.com> <3777D166.D291B7CD@zap.A2000.nl> <7l91e6$ib8$1@panix.com> <3778958B.68BFD970@zap.A2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930651021 3760 166.84.0.226 (29 Jun 1999 10:10:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 29 Jun 1999 10:10:21 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13810 In <3778958B.68BFD970@zap.A2000.nl> vtnet writes: >> I agree that turning speech into conduct destroys liberalism but it >> respects the deeper impulse behind liberalism, the equal liberation of >> desire, and so can be viewed as a legitimate development in which >> liberalism transcends itself. >It is the unchecked liberation of desire in which each man becomes a >law onto himself that gives way to superior force only, that turns the >liberal state (or any state for that matter) into tyranny under the >banner of liberty. As definitively set forth in _Republic_ viii-ix, and today made possible in perfection through the development of technology. "Legitimate development" and "transcends itself" were intentionally somewhat provocative, but I think justified. In a mathematical _reductio ad absurdum_ one takes the proposition under investigation and legitimately derives A=~A or something of the sort from it. History I think is doing the same with liberalism. The sticky part of course is that liberalism has become the moral content of our civilization and in fact of world civilization. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jun 30 04:00:22 EDT 1999 Article: 13815 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 29 Jun 1999 15:11:36 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 47 Message-ID: <7lb5p8$lq6$1@panix.com> References: <7l8dqm$58j$1@panix.com> <3777D166.D291B7CD@zap.A2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930683496 10475 166.84.0.226 (29 Jun 1999 19:11:36 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 29 Jun 1999 19:11:36 GMT X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13815 "Tony W. Frye" writes: > >> It's always seemed to me for that matter that the purely rational > >> argument for Naziism is about as good and shares a great deal with > >> the argument for liberalism -- e.g., reduction of the good to what > >> I will, the consequent tendency to make the _infimum malum_ (the > >> absolute thwarting of the will, slavery, torture, extermination > >> etc.) politically pivotal, a tendency toward social > >> constructivism, a tendency to collapse individual into society or > >> the reverse, etc. > So, the tendency of a liberal state to thwart the will (a rather > Nietzschean term for a rational based argument) is comparable to > Nazism (an organic, power-of-the-will-based ideology) in that you > both consider this will-debasing a basic tenet of liberalism and > Nazism? No. To make something politically pivotal is not necessarily to favor it, and to share a great deal is not necessarily to be identical. 5 shares a great deal with -5 (compared with what either shares with say the smell of rosewater) but the two aren't the same. The point is that the moral universe of Naziism and that of liberalism overlap a great deal. Therefore the understanding of things that makes one a Nazi has a lot in common with the understanding that makes one a liberal. That does not mean the two are identical. It is why many liberals tend to identify a huge variety of non-liberal views -- those held by Pat Buchanan or set forth in _The Bell Curve_ say -- with Naziism. If someone rejects liberalism they think Naziism is the other possibility. Above I list specific points in common. One is that both Naziism and liberalism tell us that the good is the same as the triumph of the will, and another is that both consequently give an important role in their understanding of things to the absolute thwarting of the will. That doesn't mean thwarting the will plays the same role in both. It does however distinguish both from political philosophies that base themselves on totally different issues. I should add that I find the phrase "organic, power-of-the-will-based ideology" paradoxical. The willed and the organic seem to me rather at opposite poles. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jun 30 05:08:34 EDT 1999 Article: 13821 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 30 Jun 1999 05:08:29 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 34 Message-ID: <7lcmqd$5p7$1@panix.com> References: <7lb5p8$lq6$1@panix.com> <37798D87.F6E59E0@infinet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930733709 25950 166.84.0.226 (30 Jun 1999 09:08:29 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Jun 1999 09:08:29 GMT X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13821 "Tony W. Frye" writes: > I've always seen liberalism, in its European sense of the word > (parliamentary, scientific, modern, and laissez faire in the economic > sphere) was more of an inverted form of Marxism 1. Contemporary American liberalism strikes me as a legitimate development of classical liberalism. So when I say "liberalism" I sometimes mean the current American form and sometimes the tradition as a whole, from Locke to Rawls and beyond. I hope the context usually makes it clear which I have in mind. 2. The various modern ideologies clearly have a great deal in common. My point was that liberalism is related to Naziism (how else explain the liberal obsession with Naziism?), not that it's related to nothing else. > organic in the sense that it rejects a rational based society and > government. I agree that the "organic" is not rational through and through, at least not in any clear apparent way. However, the irrational is not necessarily "organic", which is what your usage seems to suggest. Militarism, the mysticism of violence, and absolutizing the will of a single man don't strike me as things that typically have analogues in living systems. To me they seem like byproducts of a failed attempt to rationalize society through and through. They also appear in Marxist systems. Rhetorical appeals to the organic shouldn't be mistaken for reality. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jun 30 06:24:41 EDT 1999 Article: 13821 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 30 Jun 1999 05:08:29 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 34 Message-ID: <7lcmqd$5p7$1@panix.com> References: <7lb5p8$lq6$1@panix.com> <37798D87.F6E59E0@infinet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930733709 25950 166.84.0.226 (30 Jun 1999 09:08:29 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Jun 1999 09:08:29 GMT X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13821 "Tony W. Frye" writes: > I've always seen liberalism, in its European sense of the word > (parliamentary, scientific, modern, and laissez faire in the economic > sphere) was more of an inverted form of Marxism 1. Contemporary American liberalism strikes me as a legitimate development of classical liberalism. So when I say "liberalism" I sometimes mean the current American form and sometimes the tradition as a whole, from Locke to Rawls and beyond. I hope the context usually makes it clear which I have in mind. 2. The various modern ideologies clearly have a great deal in common. My point was that liberalism is related to Naziism (how else explain the liberal obsession with Naziism?), not that it's related to nothing else. > organic in the sense that it rejects a rational based society and > government. I agree that the "organic" is not rational through and through, at least not in any clear apparent way. However, the irrational is not necessarily "organic", which is what your usage seems to suggest. Militarism, the mysticism of violence, and absolutizing the will of a single man don't strike me as things that typically have analogues in living systems. To me they seem like byproducts of a failed attempt to rationalize society through and through. They also appear in Marxist systems. Rhetorical appeals to the organic shouldn't be mistaken for reality. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jun 30 06:24:42 EDT 1999 Article: 13822 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: all men are NOT created equal Date: 30 Jun 1999 05:17:09 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 26 Message-ID: <7lcnal$611$1@panix.com> References: <3775b780.1772134@news.3web.net> <7lbmhh$vb2$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <37799213.FC601914@innocent.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930734230 26087 166.84.0.226 (30 Jun 1999 09:17:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Jun 1999 09:17:10 GMT X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13822 Kevin Alfred Strom writes: > The idea of human "equality" is a religious delusion. Some ideas of equality are false and delusional. Why think they all are? A pebble and a boulder equally qualify as rocks, so there is equality even there. Why not among men? For example, all men (not grossly defective) are capable of prudence and moral choice. All men therefore qualify as moral agents. So whatever follows from the simple fact of being a moral agent, for example the obligation of obeying just laws or the right not to be treated merely as raw material for the goals of another, belongs to all men. That is a sort of equality, if only the formal equality of common possession of a important quality. It doesn't imply nearly as much as egalitarians would like, but it's not trivial either. The important point here is that it is modern egalitarianism, not its rejection, that is extremist. You can have a definite role for equality, freedom, tolerance, what have you without coming anywhere near what many people today think those things demand. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jun 30 15:21:14 EDT 1999 Article: 13826 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 30 Jun 1999 07:33:41 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 71 Message-ID: <7lcval$gmc$1@panix.com> References: <37798D87.F6E59E0@infinet.com> <7lcmqd$5p7$1@panix.com> <_Ple3.459$04.28491@news.oh.voyager.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 930742421 28102 166.84.0.226 (30 Jun 1999 11:33:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Jun 1999 11:33:41 GMT X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13826 "Tony W. Frye" writes: > >1. Contemporary American liberalism strikes me as a legitimate > >development of classical liberalism. > > American liberalism is the more grown-up version of the anachronism > of classical liberalism We are in total agreement! > Being obsessed with something hardly makes it related or alike, > particularly in governance. What makes for obsession? I'm constantly talking about liberalism, for all I know it's an obsession. Certainly it's always seemed to me that if I were a better person with a finer mind and sensibility I wouldn't pay much attention to it, I'd talk about the Divine Perfections or Southern Sung landscapes instead. It seems to me the reasons for my (obsession?) are that: 1. All roads lead to liberalism. It's inescapable. It's impossible to carry on public discussion in other than liberal terms. Liberalism has become the moral substance of Western Civilization, which is becoming World Civilization. 2. Man is a social animal and can't easily separate himself from what his upbringing and surroundings make him. I grew up subject to the same influences as other people. My formal education is the same as the Clintons', except for Oxford. I live in New York City, belong to the professional class, look at the _New York Times_ every morning, drive a Volvo, know all about dim sum, etc. 3. Liberalism seems to me patently incoherent and personally and socially destructive. So my own case suggests to me that people become obsessed with things that have to do with some conflict at the heart of what they are. They don't become obsessed with things that are truly alien. > American conservatives were pretty obsessed with communism during the > Cold War, much more so than pre-WWII liberals were with the Nazis. > That doesn't make Reagan a Bolshevik, or related to Lenin. I had the present situation in mind, when there are no Nazis and haven't been any for 50 years, just antinazis. Antifascism was pretty strong pre-WWII. There were antifascist leagues, antifascist demonstrations, antifascist writers and artists, "fascist" was a curse word, etc. It seems to me on a par with Cold War anti-communism -- there was a real threat but the role it played in political symbolism and people's emotional lives often went beyond what the situation demanded. Reagan doesn't strike me as an obsessive, by the way, any more than FDR. > The Enlightenment was hardly a bastion of the romantic racism popular > with Volk-minded protofascists like de Lagarde, but it did sprout the > French Revolution, which incited nationalism that, after its brief > liberal period in the mid 19th century, became increasingly racialist > by the 20th. Identifying Naziism with "racism," which covers a huge variety of things, obscures the close resemblance to communist regimes. It seems to me more sensible to view it as a racist version of something more fundamental, a combination of immoderate rationalism and patent insanity, that is characteristically modern. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Wed Jun 30 19:57:13 1999 Subject: Re: Equality and liberty To: na Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 19:57:13 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1899 Status: RO > Didn't those Enlightenment philsophers advocate equality and liberty? > Is the state of our society today an inevitable outcome of such > philosophy? Can we reasonably expect any principle to remain > unaltered through the generations? That was the tendency of their thought. It's developed over the years since principles don't remain altogether unaltered and today's society corresponds to the way it's developed. I think the best discussion of how political principles develop as society evolves is in books viii-ix of Plato's _Republic_. My own theory is in "PC and the Crisis of Liberalism" to which there's a link on my publications page, linked on the page referenced below. > I am 24 years old and recently graduated from college with a degree > in political science. It is now my belief that 95% of what I learned > is garbage. Counterrevolutionary ideas have no hope of > developing--let alone winning--in courses like "Civil Rights/Civil > Liberties." So thanks for all the informatin you have posted on the > Net. I hope to re-educate myself with some of it. Thanks for your note. It seems to me a lot of the problem is that with the development of academia thought has become bureaucratized and therefore mechanized, which makes it easier for it to remain altogether out of conduct with reality. It all becomes self-referential, so truth can't possibly leak in. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Fri Jul 2 07:08:15 1999 Subject: Re: exaggerated Kosovo numbers To: gh Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1999 07:08:15 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 723 Status: RO Such an outrage. It's silly to say the purpose of Nato aggression was to prevent things that happened as a result of the aggression. Why do people put up with it? And I wonder if the view that the world ought to declare war on the north when the south is trying to secede and northern armies are engaging in war crimes like marching around burning houses will find its way into the next revision of the U.S. history standards. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Fri Jul 2 13:09:26 1999 Subject: Re: July 1 issue of NYC Right To: lr Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1999 13:09:26 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1123 Status: RO > Have a happy 4th! Actually at my son's graduation during the Yugoslav war I found I could not say the pledge of allegiance or sing the SPB. It seemed odd listening to the song. After all it has to do with the resistance of a brave and free people to an imperial aggressor and the failure of an air raid to break their spirit. Something has gone wrong somewhere. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jul 6 07:17:24 EDT 1999 Article: 13836 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 5 Jul 1999 23:10:05 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 24 Message-ID: <7lrs2d$hgf$1@panix.com> References: <7kipse$gc5$1@panix.com> <3775312C.EC5E5DAF@zap.A2000.nl> <7l505v$5g5$1@panix.com> <37765de9.1388757@news.3web.net> <7l6gsu$6n5$1@panix.com> <37777B81.CC64A2@zap.A2000.nl> <377d71ed.3977870@news.3web.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 931230606 15902 166.84.0.226 (6 Jul 1999 03:10:06 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Jul 1999 03:10:06 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13836 731591054@3web.com (T.Asquith) writes: > >one cannot deal with irrational intolerance by (direct) rational > >discourse, some other mode of confronting it has to be found. > Thank-you Maarten. You've hit the nail right on the head. > In essence, then, the question is whether people's actions pose a > disturbance to the community All this seems to me to to settle very little. Suppose A goes about persuading people using inflammatory language that multiculturalism, feminism and homosexuality are utter outrages not legitimately part of any acceptable social order, and B does the same with respect to racism, sexism and homophobia. Which poses a disturbance to the community can not it seems to me be separated from substantive questions of public morality -- whether the cultural Left or the cultural Right has the better grip on how people should in general live. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jul 6 07:17:26 EDT 1999 Article: 13839 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 6 Jul 1999 07:14:32 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 68 Message-ID: <7lsoeo$kom$1@panix.com> References: <7kipse$gc5$1@panix.com> <3775312C.EC5E5DAF@zap.A2000.nl> <7l505v$5g5$1@panix.com> <37765de9.1388757@news.3web.net> <7l6gsu$6n5$1@panix.com> <37777B81.CC64A2@zap.A2000.nl> <377d71ed.3977870@news.3web.net> <7lrs2d$hgf$1@panix.com> <3781866B.EF2D0ED@infinet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 931259673 21831 166.84.0.226 (6 Jul 1999 11:14:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Jul 1999 11:14:33 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13839 "Tony W. Frye" writes: > And which society is going to be more apt to tolerate the other to > express themselves and live freely, even in an environment where > their opponents want to silence them? The Left is stronger on social constructivism as state policy, and on social justice (uniform universal enforcement of comprehensive abstract norms), so in general I would expect large-scale comprehensive intolerance of thought and action to be stronger there. Communist societies are the model example. Right wingers are more likely to try to maintain an existing system, which is normally a less obtrusive undertaking, and besides maintenance of the system is a necessary function in every society. Naturally, one can find particular rightists who are more intolerant than particular leftists. > It seems rather odd to hear traditional folk sticking up for cultural > homogeneity and tradition, and then criticize liberals as closet > totalitarians because some of them want to silence David Irving when > every one of their past societies that paleocons glorify were much > more authoritarian than present. There are lots of people and lots of criticisms. Neocons and libertarians often maintain traditional liberal positions on free speech and therefore criticize PC etc. on traditional liberal grounds. Others, who relativize freedom to other more fundamental concerns, complain that contemporary liberals do so as well while claiming freedom as an absolute that supports their position. Many who protest that inconsistency also complain that the particular fundamental concerns to which contemporary liberals subordinate freedom (abstract universal equality, say) are not the proper fundamental concerns of politics and lead to tyranny mixed with chaos when pursued in the single-minded way toward which contemporary liberalism tends. My comments of course had to do with internal problems of a particular kind of liberalism. My claim was that if liberalism gives up free speech absolutism then in order to decide which speech to suppress it has to make substantive decisions as to the good life and so stop being liberalism. Which is OK with me, but it's good to be clear what's going on and to think about whether the substantive decisions are good ones. Traditional folk don't really stick up for cultural homogeneity, by the way. The coherence needed for function is not the same as homogeneity. That's especially true if you oppose bureaucratic centralization and allow ethnic distinctions and regional and class differences, which traditionalists do. Also, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "authoritarian." > I think I would take my chances distributing pro-Confederate > literature on the streets of Skokie over being a public supporter of > John Brown in South Carolina in 1857. You might try distributing white supremicist literature in Harlem. > Culturally speaking, I oppose any group forcing me to live their way. Since man is a social animal, how you can live depends on how other people live. Do you see a radical difference between economics and other aspects of culture, such that strict libertarianism is bad in economics and good everywhere else? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jul 6 19:22:15 EDT 1999 Article: 13842 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 6 Jul 1999 16:42:52 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 39 Message-ID: <7ltpoc$fkg$1@panix.com> References: <7kipse$gc5$1@panix.com> <3775312C.EC5E5DAF@zap.A2000.nl> <7l505v$5g5$1@panix.com> <37765de9.1388757@news.3web.net> <7l6gsu$6n5$1@panix.com> <37777B81.CC64A2@zap.A2000.nl> <377d71ed.3977870@news.3web.net> <7lrs2d$hgf$1@panix.com> <3781866B.EF2D0ED@infinet.com> <7lsoeo$kom$1@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 931293773 29042 166.84.0.226 (6 Jul 1999 20:42:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Jul 1999 20:42:53 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13842 "Tony W. Frye" writes: > The Left is by far the weakest in the US than in any industrialized > country on earth. So what, if true? For all I know in 1968 the Left might have been by far the weakest in Canton than in any city in China but that doesn't mean I should be happy with the 1968 Canton situation. I do think though that we're somewhat in advance of the Europeans in some aspects of cultural leftism, for example enforcement of inclusiveness ideology. > What do you think sodomy laws are? Hardly rugged individualism. They don't have much to do with cultural homogeneity. Major cultures -- European, Hindu, Muslim, Chinese, classical -- have usually had a problem with sodomy, and few have scrupled at illegalizing things they have thought bad. For cultural homogeneity you should consult the civil rights laws, which require all significant public institutions to be equally hospitable to members of all cultures and thus demand that no particular culture have authority anywhere. The necessary consequence of the practical public abolition of all particular cultures is cultural homogeneity. > My watching someone's cleavage on a beach without fear of having > Andrea Dworkin castrate me is a lot different than a 19th century > coal mine operator slave-driving illiterate 10 year olds 60 hours a > week to get blown up while using their little fingers to jimmy the > sticks of dynamite through the cracks and crevices of the mine. Your point is that one could conceive of economic regulations that seem more reasonable than social regulations one could also conceive. Very true, and it's the kind of point you make. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jul 7 05:53:17 EDT 1999 Article: 13848 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 6 Jul 1999 19:32:31 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 16 Message-ID: <7lu3mf$6kj$1@panix.com> References: <7kipse$gc5$1@panix.com> <3775312C.EC5E5DAF@zap.A2000.nl> <7l505v$5g5$1@panix.com> <37765de9.1388757@news.3web.net> <7l6gsu$6n5$1@panix.com> <37777B81.CC64A2@zap.A2000.nl> <377d71ed.3977870@news.3web.net> <7lrs2d$hgf$1@panix.com> <3781866B.EF2D0ED@infinet.com> <3781DC22.62203DC6@zap.a2000.nl> <37827B27.B2BA19F3@zap.a2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 931303952 2074 166.84.0.226 (6 Jul 1999 23:32:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Jul 1999 23:32:32 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13848 In <37827B27.B2BA19F3@zap.a2000.nl> vtnet writes: >> People who are political fascists that admire Hitler and Mussolini >> who try to wrap themselves around the flag of free speech look like >> hypocrites. >Right. I'm not sure why this need be so. What's wrong with holding the existing regime to its own theory, even if you don't believe the theory? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jul 7 05:53:18 EDT 1999 Article: 13849 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 6 Jul 1999 19:58:02 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 36 Message-ID: <7lu56a$8sd$1@panix.com> References: <7lsoeo$kom$1@panix.com> <931300666snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 931305482 2407 166.84.0.226 (6 Jul 1999 23:58:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Jul 1999 23:58:02 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13849 In <931300666snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes: >A counter-revolutionary rightist is going to seek the implementation >of some abstract idealization of the past (since the past cannot be >known in full any proposal to restore it must necessarily be based on >some degree of abstraction). I don't think this need be so. If the revolution has already established the universal bureaucracy to enforce the theoretically correct order as a substitute for the historically evolved order, then a CR might want to abolish the instrumentalities of planning and enforcement not to substitute new instrumentalities that would implement his own theory but to let a new evolved order arise out of human nature, experience, traditional survivals, what have you. He might make various efforts to promote evolution in one direction or another but that need not be the same as an administered order of things based on abstract principle. >But why should it be good in economics and bad everywhere else? Surely >both kinds of inconsistency are questionable. I don't consider strict libertarianism good in economics. I'm inclined to favor tariffs, restrictions on migration of labor, and probably lots of other things if the discussion ever got that fine-tuned. I haven't had to worry about it much because that's not where the issues are. I don't approve of central bureaucratic administration of economic life any more than other aspects of cultural life, and vice versa. So far as I know no right wingers want a National Culture Board, Federal Sex Adminstration, what have you, establishing detailed regulations, setting standards and goals and so on in the manner of one of the government economic regulatory agencies. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jul 7 05:53:18 EDT 1999 Article: 13850 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 6 Jul 1999 20:04:14 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 15 Message-ID: <7lu5hu$940$1@panix.com> References: <931302473snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 931305854 2488 166.84.0.226 (7 Jul 1999 00:04:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Jul 1999 00:04:14 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13850 In <931302473snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes: >I've never fully understood the desire of the neo-Nazis to deny the >Holocaust Presumably it has to do with the quasi-religious significance of the Holocaust in liberal thought and public discourse. It's annoying to play an opponent who has all the trumps. It's worth noting though that the Left has not been eager to admit the reality and scale of Communist atrocities either, so denial is not an idiosyncrasy of neo-Nazis. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jul 7 12:23:05 EDT 1999 Article: 13861 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd ! Date: 7 Jul 1999 12:19:46 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 29 Message-ID: <7lvun2$533$1@panix.com> References: <7kipse$gc5$1@panix.com> <3775312C.EC5E5DAF@zap.A2000.nl> <7l505v$5g5$1@panix.com> <37765de9.1388757@news.3web.net> <7l6gsu$6n5$1@panix.com> <37777B81.CC64A2@zap.A2000.nl> <377d71ed.3977870@news.3web.net> <7lrs2d$hgf$1@panix.com> <3781866B.EF2D0ED@infinet.com> <7lsoeo$kom$1@panix.com> <7ltpoc$fkg$1@panix.com> <3782ACF0.1FC33782@infinet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 931364386 14916 166.84.0.226 (7 Jul 1999 16:19:46 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Jul 1999 16:19:46 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13861 In <3782ACF0.1FC33782@infinet.com> "Tony W. Frye" writes: >Imposing a cultural norm (sodomy laws to prosecute people for >committing an act society may deem sinful) is a form of cultural >homogeneity That makes sense if the norm is idiosyncratic. A norm against (for example) discrimination on the basis of sexual conduct, race, what have you seems a great deal more idiosyncratic than a norm against sodomy. The latter is far more widespread historically and geographically. >Affirmative action does many things, but it does not abolish cultures. >If anything, it delineates by culture. Culture is a system of shared habits, understandings etc., and so is by nature public. It exists as a collection of common standards and the like or not at all. To deprive a culture of public authority is to abolish it, although bits and pieces may hang on as personal quirks. The point of multiculturalism is to deprive all particular cultures of public authority. That is to abolish them, and of necessity to replace them with a new authoritative public culture fabricated by dominant elites -- bureaucrats, advertisers, pop entertainers, media people, "experts," and so on. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From upstream-list-request@cycad.com Thu Jul 8 06:04:01 1999 Return-Path: Received: from onn.pair.com (onn.pair.com [209.68.1.67]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 665424FD for ; Thu, 8 Jul 1999 06:04:01 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from slist@localhost) by onn.pair.com (8.9.1/8.6.12) id GAA13988; Thu, 8 Jul 1999 06:01:08 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 06:01:08 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: jk@panix.com Old-X-Envelope-To: From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199907080959.FAA16015@panix.com> Subject: Re: [Upstream] More on discrimination against blacks in lending To: upstream-list@cycad.com Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 05:59:31 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <002b01bec8e1$13f0d660$030f8ad1@sba.oakland.edu> from "Howard Schwartz" at Jul 7, 99 09:27:44 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Resent-Message-ID: Resent-From: upstream-list@cycad.com Reply-To: upstream-list@cycad.com X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/2215 X-Loop: upstream-list@cycad.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: upstream-list-request@cycad.com Status: RO Howard Schwarz writes: > I have an idea that, just beneath the PC radar, a tremendous amount > of resentment is being built up. It's hard to know. Our rulers know what they're doing. Or maybe it's not that they're smart personally but some sort of implicit intelligence in the current system of things. What's successful gets preserved and refined and liberalism is on a roll. The current system attacks the principles of cohesion that make a people a people capable of acting as such. It multiplies those who depend on affirmative action and other government programs, or otherwise feel threated by their fellow citizens. Feminism is helpful because it tends to divide sentiment in every household. At the same time the increasing importance of "expertise" and the mass-media centralization of public life make it impossible to dissent seriously from PC without sounding insane. So build-up of resentment doesn't become a problem because it remains a matter of scattered inarticulate individuals. So it seems to me the current line of development will continue for much longer than you'd think if you let thoughts of common sense enter your head. In fact it already has. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" --- This is a message from the Upstream mailing list. Visit the Upstream Website at http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/ Visit the Upstream Mailing List archives at http://cycad.com/upstream-list-archive To subscribe to this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject subscribe To unsubscribe from this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject unsubscribe From upstream-list-request@cycad.com Thu Jul 8 10:39:30 1999 Return-Path: Received: from onn.pair.com (onn.pair.com [209.68.1.67]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6B84454F for ; Thu, 8 Jul 1999 10:39:29 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from slist@localhost) by onn.pair.com (8.9.1/8.6.12) id KAA07983; Thu, 8 Jul 1999 10:38:19 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 10:38:19 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: jk@panix.com Old-X-Envelope-To: From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199907081437.KAA10141@panix.com> Subject: Re: [Upstream] More on discrimination against blacks in lending To: gbracey@erols.com Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 10:37:04 -0400 (EDT) Cc: upstream-list@cycad.com In-Reply-To: <007c01bec933$64f5d4a0$1f76accf@oemcomputer> from "Gerald W. Bracey" at Jul 8, 99 07:16:57 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Resent-Message-ID: Resent-From: upstream-list@cycad.com Reply-To: upstream-list@cycad.com X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/2219 X-Loop: upstream-list@cycad.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: upstream-list-request@cycad.com Status: RO > > "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in > > the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why > > can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally > > ill or felons possess assault rifles?" > Because you weren't ELECTED, hence, designated, to play with such > toys. True enough, but then the question becomes the distribution of control over instruments of deadly force. Should they all be put in the hands of one guy who (it seems) we all trust, or is it safer to introduce some checks and balances and allow the possibility of effective resistance in extreme cases? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" --- This is a message from the Upstream mailing list. Visit the Upstream Website at http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/ Visit the Upstream Mailing List archives at http://cycad.com/upstream-list-archive To subscribe to this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject subscribe To unsubscribe from this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject unsubscribe From upstream-list-request@cycad.com Tue Jul 6 18:11:50 1999 Received: from onn.pair.com (onn.pair.com [209.68.1.67]) by mail1.panix.com (8.8.8/8.8.8/PanixM1.3) with ESMTP id SAA04911 for ; Tue, 6 Jul 1999 18:11:50 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from slist@localhost) by onn.pair.com (8.9.1/8.6.12) id SAA16307; Tue, 6 Jul 1999 18:08:53 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 18:08:53 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: jk@panix.com Old-X-Envelope-To: Message-ID: <37827F34.EACA4D0A@cycad.com> Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1999 18:12:04 -0400 From: Kalb X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: upstream-list@cycad.com Subject: Re: [Upstream] A legitimate question? Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------A45062958359F21997C0AA85" Resent-Message-ID: Resent-From: upstream-list@cycad.com Reply-To: upstream-list@cycad.com X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/2200 X-Loop: upstream-list@cycad.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: upstream-list-request@cycad.com Status: RO > My trouble with both the article [in the NY Times about lagging > middle-class black achievement] and the Murray/Seligman discussion > [from The Underclass Revisited] is that they both make an assumption > which I do not accept, namely, that there is a clear and sharp > dichotomy between who is "black" and who is "white". > > Is there any succinct reply to this objection that does not get into > differing allele frequencies, etc? One could have similar trouble with discussions of "nutrition," "world hunger," "restaurants," "school lunches" etc. -- they seem to assume a clear and sharp dichotomy between "food" and "nonfood." In fact, of course, what consitutes "food," "a meal," etc. varies enormously by class, culture, time, place and personal idiosyncrasy. In the 19th c. tomatoes, which now are thought to constitute "food," were considered "decorative plants" with "poisonous berries." The Russians and French refer to hunks of flesh cut from the bodies of dead horses as "food," the Americans and Hindus do not. Beer isn't called "food," bread is. There are products (saccharine, imitation fat) designed to function as "food" socially but not biologically. Others ("salt", "sugar") are often considered helpful or necessary parts of food but can be harmful when ingested. The confusion might lead some to give up on the whole business. Others find expressions like "food" and for that matter "race" helpful in organizing information, even though not razor-sharp, and so keep on using them. Is there some special problem with "race" that makes it a necessarily vacant conception, so that for example when skeletal remains are said to be "caucasoid" or discrimination is said to exist against "blacks" literally nothing is being said? If so, what's the problem? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Fri Jul 9 07:06:24 1999 Subject: Re: Thank you for advice To: hd Date: Fri, 9 Jul 1999 07:06:24 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1227 Status: RO > I wanted to ask you if there are any particular publications or > groups you suggest that can offer a reactionary Christian worldview. I don't have anything to recommend. Go to some of the traditionalist Catholic sites linked on my traditionalism page and see if you can get on some email discussion lists, and then ask. > Pope John Paul II seems bent on apologizing for the very existence of > Western Civilization and filling the Church hierarchy with Thirld > World clerics. The Pope tries as hard as he can to agree with everyone in sight, at least everyone who seems to represent the likely future of events. It's partly because he's an intellectual and it takes more time and effort than a man who after all is responsible for running a huge organization can spare to be an intellectual without buying on the whole into the purposes and attitudes implicit in the existing organization of intellectual and cultural life. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Fri Jul 9 14:14:01 1999 Subject: Re: Simone Weil To: ol Date: Fri, 9 Jul 1999 14:14:01 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 808 Status: RO > I've been reading George Grant, the Canandian nationalist, and, > through his books got interested in Simone Weil. What do you think of > her personally? I admire her very much. She's an extremely penetrating thinker. She has an excellent logical mind -- her brother Andre, who died just recently, was one of the world's great mathematicians -- and everything she wrote and did was honest and absolutely heartfelt. I've read most of her things that have been put into English. Her name is pronouced "vay". -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Jul 10 08:53:23 EDT 1999 Article: 13882 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: French Revolution Date: 9 Jul 1999 17:55:08 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 24 Message-ID: <7m5r3s$em3$1@panix.com> References: <378544C9.CE983C15@student.kuleuven.ac.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 931557309 26605 166.84.0.226 (9 Jul 1999 21:55:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 9 Jul 1999 21:55:09 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13882 Stijn Calle writes: > I've recently joined this newsgroup. Im very interested in > revolutions and so called counter-revolutions. One question: is the > French Revolution (1789) the mother of all evils in modern days? To me it seems there is no isolable mother of modern evils. They're the outcome of the process described in _Republic_ books viii-ix. You can't pick a stage of the process and call that the problem, except maybe the initial turn away from the Good. A problem with mother-of-all-evils theories is that they all differ. A European might say the French Revolution, a Catholic might say John Calvin, and an American might say the 60s, Franklin Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln depending on when he thinks things should have stopped. (A few have even been driven to doubts about the American Revolution, although that puts them in a rather awkward position given the nature of American national feeling.) Then there are those who think it was late medieval nominalism, or for that matter Christianity. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From upstream-list-request@cycad.com Sat Jul 10 16:56:19 1999 Return-Path: Received: from onn.pair.com (onn.pair.com [209.68.1.67]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BB50149C for ; Sat, 10 Jul 1999 16:56:18 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from slist@localhost) by onn.pair.com (8.9.1/8.6.12) id QAA18690; Sat, 10 Jul 1999 16:55:36 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 16:55:36 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: jk@panix.com Old-X-Envelope-To: From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199907102054.QAA14388@panix.com> Subject: Re: [Upstream] Race and computer use To: upstream-list@cycad.com Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 16:54:29 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <3787A4A6.AE6ADF1F@cycad.com> from "Gavan Tredoux" at Jul 10, 99 03:53:10 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Resent-Message-ID: Resent-From: upstream-list@cycad.com Reply-To: upstream-list@cycad.com X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/2242 X-Loop: upstream-list@cycad.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: upstream-list-request@cycad.com Status: RO > *access* to the internet What is the point of describing a situation in which blacks use the internet less than whites as one in which blacks have less "access" than whites? My internet connection costs me $165/year and since it's non-graphical any computer will do the job. I use an old 386 that I could replace for less than $50. So that is what access costs in NYC. Is the point that blacks typically don't have that much money and whites do? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" --- This is a message from the Upstream mailing list. Visit the Upstream Website at http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/ Visit the Upstream Mailing List archives at http://cycad.com/upstream-list-archive To subscribe to this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject subscribe To unsubscribe from this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject unsubscribe From jk@panix.com Sat Jul 10 21:10:53 1999 Received: (from jk@localhost) by panix.com (8.8.5/8.8.8/PanixU1.4) id VAA05061 for jk; Sat, 10 Jul 1999 21:10:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199907110110.VAA05061@panix.com> Subject: Re: [Upstream] Profiling and Affirmative Action the same? To: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 21:10:52 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <199907102214.SAA13355@enterprise.fuse.net> from "Timothy Smith" at Jul 10, 99 06:21:36 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: RO > http://www.slate.com/Features/profile/profile.asp I don't see why the problem can't be solved easily. The New York Times and the author of the article say "racial profiling" means stopping drivers or whatever "solely" or "simply" because they're black. So apparently little old ladies with their little hats on are getting stopped Sunday morning on their way to church, since blackness is the only consideration taken into account. That is surely indefensible. Why not make race only one of a number of considerations, and add other things (e.g., youth, maleness, car model, route, whatever) to the profile? Brent Staples hasn't said anything that suggests he thinks that would be a problem, and I'm sure the cops would be happy with it too. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jul 11 19:59:27 EDT 1999 Article: 13886 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: French Revolution Date: 11 Jul 1999 08:56:27 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 31 Message-ID: <7ma49r$p8j$1@panix.com> References: <378544C9.CE983C15@student.kuleuven.ac.be> <7m5r3s$em3$1@panix.com> <7m9ve1$1rm$1@cfs2.kis.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 931697788 24246 166.84.0.226 (11 Jul 1999 12:56:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 11 Jul 1999 12:56:28 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13886 In <7m9ve1$1rm$1@cfs2.kis.keele.ac.uk> Andy Fear writes: >doesn't Plato's view that mankind is a tabula rasa on which to write >also part of the problem. It's hardly a CR viewpoint. There is some >modification of the position in the Laws, but it's the Republic that >has been remembered and acted upon... It's true he invented the notion of the tabula rasa. Also, he seemed to think, and it was important for him, that the Republic could actually exist. Otherwise I suppose it would just have been a fantasy rather than a real standard of justice. He says (499d): If then, in the countless ages of the past, or at the present hour in some foreign clime which is far away and beyond our ken, the perfected philosopher is or has been or hereafter shall be compelled by a superior power to have the charge of the State, we are ready to assert to the death, that this our constitution has been, and is -- yea, and will be whenever the Muse of Philosophy is queen. There is no impossibility in all this; that there is a difficulty, we acknowledge ourselves. He didn't underestimate the difficulties of setting up the Republic, though, and it's hard for me to imagine the work giving serious support to an actual utopian movement. Naturally it could be used by such a movement in the same way such a movement uses other things. None of that makes the Republic less helpful as political analysis. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Mon Jul 12 04:19:33 1999 Subject: Re: Kvetch and Retreat, Stupid Party, or What You Will To: la Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 04:19:33 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2092 Status: RO > "the last 6 1/2 years" of Clinton-Gore using the military for > sociological experimentation, pushing women in combat, and now > proposing putting women in the crews of nuclear submarines. Under a > Bauer presidency, he said, this nonsense will stop. > The syndrome we've discussed so often--of yielding everything to the > left that it's already won and only opposing the latest leftist > advance How does politics work, though? The leftists didn't get their way by running candidates articulating and demanding a clear PC vision. It's mostly been one step at a time, and direction is everything. The right has a lot of disadvantages today. One advantage that we should use is the essential fanaticism of the Left. The "civil rights" point of view is that traditional distinctions between men and women, various ethnicities, alternative developments of human sexuality, etc. are wholly illegitimate and must be extirpated. Under present circumstances clear public acceptance of the view that men and women are different and have different appropriate roles in *any* setting would be a huge victory. I agree that it's helpful if somewhere there are people articulating a clear vision and its implication. Also people proposing a bastardized version that doesn't violate existing expectations as much. Also people working on fundamental principles with specific practical consequences pretty much up in the air. It takes all kinds. Bauer can't do everything but from what you say he's doing something that needs to be done. Or so it seems to me. If circumstances are such that what he starts can't develop I don't think it would help if he started by demanding the world. It's no doubt true that *someone* should demand the world and explain why, but it doesn't have to be Bauer. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Mon Jul 12 15:40:53 1999 Subject: Re: Kvetch and Retreat, Stupid Party, or What You Will To: la Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 15:40:53 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 4339 Status: RO > I don't think you have appreciated the core of my argument--the lack > of intellectual seriousness, the illusoriness, and (in my view) the > ultimate impotence of Bauer's and other conservatives' opposition to > the feminization of the military in particular and the Revolution in > general. It's hard for a presidential candidate to be intellectually serious. He has too many other things to do. In order to function he has to take almost all theoretical points for granted, as presented to him by other people, and to get anywhere at all the views he accepts have to be already supported by substantial networks of respectable people and acceptable to the mainstream at least if the mainstream can be brought to view things slightly differently on one or two points. People after all don't understand things or even hear them unless they almost believe them already. The result of course is that if established intellectual life is in bad shape a presidential candidate isn't going to be able to do much about it. The most he can do is make certain lines of public thought somewhat more possible and perhaps moderate intolerant excesses a little. That can be a contribution. If the world starts to shift a little he can further the shift. Most likely what he does will do no good but that's probably true of what anyone does when conditions are catastrophically bad. > Do you really think that a successful Revolution, which has taken > over and distorted the whole of our social and spiritual reality, can > be stopped or turned back in the absence of any principled opposition > to it? No. Much more has to be done though before principled opposition can make a figure in national politics. No one can even articulate opposition to the Revolution. So first thing people who think they're smart should go ahead and articulate it. Those who oppose the Revolution should give their opposition concrete reality in their own lives. Nothing can be forced. If they're on to something real it can catch on. What Bauer does isn't the most important thing to do just now. All I would say is that it seems to me beneficial nonetheless. *Someone* should do it. > Solzhenitsyn didn't oppose the latest Five Year Plan. He opposed the > Revolution itself. Agreed. He opposed it by thinking through things until he touched reality and then presented the reality to others through his writings. I think it helped his writings have effect that there were people who weren't deep thinkers but on some level were doubtful of the Five Year Plans and so on, felt obscurely there was something fundamentally amiss with them but could only come up with minor modifications, who made complaints that missed the mark but nonetheless raised issues, etc. > You say it's ok if Bauer doesn't raise first principles, so long as > other people do. But can you name _any_ major American conservative > figure who opposes the Revolution itself? Or who even opposes the > feminization of the military in itself? Someone who fundamentally opposes the Revolution or radical feminism (there is no other kind) can not at present play a major role in our public life. From the standpoint of our public life he would be a hatefilled bigot no-one should listen to who can and should be abused and misrepresented. Still, men are not consistent and the Revolution and radical feminism are by nature incoherent. To the extent there comes to be public concern with things essentially inconsistent with them it's a plus even though everyone naturally continues to pay lip service. Those who promote that concern do a service and maybe it's the only service anyone in national public life can perform at this time. I'm not sure what the discussion is about. Would things be better if there were no Gary Bauers, just Bill Clintons or maybe at most Bob Doles? Suppose Bauer tomorrow announced he thought the Revolution was an outrage root and branch and gave details as to what that included. Would his sudden disappearance from public life be a plus? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Mon Jul 12 15:55:00 1999 Subject: Re: more on kvetch and retreat etc. To: la Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 15:55:00 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1519 Status: RO > Because deep inside all of them is a fear to question whatever > leftist dogma motivated the original reform. In this case it is the > absolute equality of the sexes. > By doing what he does Bauer leaves the dogma undebated and just > claims that its latest manifestation is "too much". A tactic, > logically, doomed to failure. The left simply asks, "why is it too > much?" and the right, so-called, has no answer. OK, but the dogma is insane. If circumstances are such that it can't be questioned directly by those allowed to play a role in public life it seems to me good that some of them raise concerns with its applications. The objections will be incoherent, but incoherent thought that includes some truth is better than incoherent thought (feminism) that excludes truth in a more organized way. If that's the most that can be introduced into the discussion I'd rather someone introduced it. Eventually with shifts in ways of thinking such things weaken the dogma itself. Nothing is forever in politics. Again, what's being said? The mainstream right can't make its case with integrity, assuming its representatives have a case that can be made with integrity. So is it better that no case at all be made? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Mon Jul 12 21:29:15 1999 Subject: Re: Kvetch and Retreat, Stupid Party, or What You Will To: la Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 21:29:15 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3373 Status: RO > Now according to your reasoning, if Bauer, a minor candidate running > for president, were to suggest even retrenching some of the actual > policies in this area--e.g., getting women out of navy ships, getting > them out of quasi combat positions, dropping the military's massive > encouragement and subsidization of illegitimate births caused by > integration of men and women--that even that relatively modest > position would be seen as so extreme that he would never be heard > from again, that C-SPAN wouldn't broadcast his speeches, and so on. A good example that I think gets to the heart of the matter. It's no accident that prominent conservatives don't say such things. Men who are successful in risky and competitive situations usually know their business. If Bauer said such a thing there would be an uproar. He'd be unable to talk about anything else in connection with his campaign. The press wouldn't drop the issue and wouldn't let him change the subject. Established thought can tolerate some foot-dragging, but not opposition on fundamentals. Foot-dragging doesn't really need to be explained because it's just an ordinary human weakness and a necessary aspect of social change. But if Bauer wanted to get the women off the ships and out of harm's way, if simply because of gender he wanted to cut short the careers of all those woman warriors who'd suddenly appear on the screen, he'd have to explain why, and that would lead to more questions, rebuttals from experts, denunciations from opponents and moralists, head-shaking from former allies and commentators, etc., and very shortly he'd either have to retract his views or reject the Revolution and for that matter the whole political culture categorically. To do the latter *would* I think get you dropped from C-SPAN. You'd be the new David Duke, and your views would get about as much play as _The Bell Curve_ did in the recent front-page article in the New York Times on the baffling differences between black and white academic performance. The Republican Party would denounce you, funding sources would dry up, and you'd drop out of sight. You'd be a total fizzle as a candidate, so C-SPAN would be *right* to drop you. Or so it seems to me, and I gather to those for whom the matter is a live issue. If you disagree with the dominant view in principle, people notice it, and at least if your principles are right-wing and so identified with the enemy they want to know just what they imply. You can't stick with them unless you want to alienate all respectable institutions. I don't think the problem is the flawed character of the particular men who happen to be prominent conservatives. If the problem is not that but general American moral cowardice then it seems to me those aspiring to a career in public life are, as a pragmatic matter, right to be cowards as well. A democratic leader can not get too far ahead of his followers. I could as always be wrong. But if so I would expect chance if nothing else to throw up examples showing I'm wrong. Where are the examples? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Tue Jul 13 06:41:35 1999 Subject: Re: Kvetch and Retreat, Stupid Party, or What You Will To: la Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 06:41:35 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 5334 Status: RO > First of all, I want to thank you for such a strong statement, which > knocked me over when I first read it. I'm glad you didn't object to the style. Haranguing seems to be a family trait. My older daughter is much worse, actually. I usually end up hiding under the table. > First, I don't think the response to a second-tier conservative > candidate saying such things would so extreme and killing as you > suggest. If it's unimaginable that the second-tier guy could become a first-tier guy is he even believable as a second-tier guy? I suppose the issue is what a protest candidacy can do. A candidacy can advance a perspective because it makes it concrete by putting forward someone who supports it and can be imagined holding the office. If it's obvious someone couldn't conceivably be president, if he just wouldn't fit in at all because what he says is comprehensively at odds with everything you see on TV, everything your kids learn in school, everything experts say, everything praised by reputable people, if he rejects the public vocabulary of praise and blame for one of his own, if he favors what everyone agrees is the devil, then I'm not sure how much sense his candidacy makes. > How can one build a movement without taking any principled positions > opposed to the established orthodoxy? Such things are necessary. It seems to me presidential politics is not the place to start defining and propagating them. Look at the enormous institutional and cultural backing the Left has. The serious Right has nothing or close to it. Without that kind of backing it's very hard for someone in active public life to articulate positions and make them seem even comprehensible let alone plausible. Are there many periodicals that take principled positions opposed to established orthodoxy? Many scholars, historians, critics and so on? Journalists, even second-tier journalists? How large and intelligent is the audience for such things? Those who are somewhat critical and count as conservatives are almost always moderate liberals who want to preserve democratic capitalism, the social gains of the post-1945 period, or whatever by avoiding excess. So a more principled Bauer couldn't even rely on the recognized keepers of conservative thought. > No one can say anything in public challenging any aspect of the > established orthodoxy (once that aspect has become established) or he > will be destroyed. Part of the problem is that the mass media flatten out public life so that intelligent discussion becomes harder and fewer things can be said. I think that if you seriously challenge established orthodoxy you will be excluded from what for most people constitutes public discussion -- the mainstream press, TV, and so on. You will be on the fringes because what you say is not only wrong but beside the point and incomprehensible to boot, and if you become prominent enough to notice you will find yourself turned into the devil. On the other hand, things that seem quite rigid over short periods shift as time goes on. Even dissent that's non-principled enough to remain in the mainstream can help that process. So if you have better ideas I do think it's worthwhile developing them and communicating with others. Better days may come and you should prepare for them. In the meantime everything you do can have some effect on the correlation of forces. > Why would a Gary Bauer or someone like him, if he were seriously > opposed to women in the military or a host of other established > horrors, want to run as a candidate if he knew he couldn't even talk > about the very things he cares about most? Practical men are usually more interested in tendencies than absolutes. Their concerns tend to be concrete. If marginal defeminization looks like a possible point of resistance that's what they'll talk about. > (I'm leaving out the strategy of a rightist candidate concealing his > true agenda, getting elected, and then working a counterrevolution, > an approach favored by some people.) That one just seems silly to me. It's not politics. > Conservatives have never made a principled case opposing the existing > cultural leftist order, or even any small aspect of that order such > as women on navy ships, and proposing how to get out of it. Actually, I agree that conservatives tend to be short-sighted. It goes with the aversion to ideology and utopianism and the appreciation of the actual. I agree that under present circumstances we have to struggle against the tendency. > It is my way--the way of principled opposition--that has never been > tried. It just seems to me that principled opposition has to start as an intellectual movement. There has to be a lot of intelligent discussion of the principles, their application, why they are good and necessary, etc. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Tue Jul 13 14:16:59 1999 Subject: Re: Kvetch and Retreat, Stupid Party, or What You Will To: la Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 14:16:59 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 8114 Status: RO > We _were_ talking about Bauer or someone like him, i.e., someone with > no prospect of becoming a first tier guy. But if the miscasting is too gross a candidacy seems pointless. What the guy does has to make public sense. It has to be treated as "running for president" by people who aren't his sympathizers. If it isn't, because it's either ignored or grossly misrepresented and reprobated and in any case thought wholly to lack reality because it's too thoroughly at odds with established politics, why call going around and giving speeches etc. "running for president?" I have no objection to the former. It seems though that to present itself as the latter conditions of dramatic verisimilitude have to be met. > I feel that you keep missing the essential position that any serious > conservatives would be coming from: we know we are a "moral > minority," as Weyrich has called it. We are speaking to and building > up that minority part of the country that does not accept the > established things. We are alternatively a counter voice to the > dominant culture or a separationist voice. I suppose the issue is how big and how aware the moral minority is, and the extent to which the unaware or partially sympathetic can be drawn in and the committed made more committed by the dramatization of possibilities a presidential candidacy would provide. The more self- aware the movement, the more able to present its concerns in language to which hearers are accustomed, the more its concerns can be shown in soundbites or maybe something a little more extended to be consistent with widespread concerns recognized as legitimate, the better. It seems to me traditionalists are rather undeveloped on those points. The rank and file say "it says so in the Bible" and leaders tend to be concerned with showing that it's really all consistent with feminism or Martin Luther King or whatever with a few modifications. Under such circumstances a principled candidacy seems to lack necessary support. A dramatic run for president could also set things back, by the way. The spectators would include left/liberals as well as rightists. They might be the more energized. Stealth and Fabian tactics can pay. Leftists have successfully used moderates and moderate rhetoric as a front, and principled Leftists have generally been dissatisfied with actual politicians. A basic problem I have is that it seems to me that principled traditionalism has to demand very big changes. For example, it has to view repeal of the equal opportunity laws as a basic necessity. Tradition after all has a strong ethnic component, and if the law says that in most important social relations you have to deprive ethnicity and for that matter sex of any effect then tradition isn't going to play much of a role in ordering society. I don't think though that there was an opportunity missed when Buchanan failed to demand repeal of the '64 Act, assuming he would favor such a thing. The groundwork had not been laid to make such demand even comprehensible. > Your way of thinking precludes any strong and principled and daring > statement by any conservative ever. I don't think so. It just seems to me that for a candidate to make sense as such he should speak from a platform that a great many people already support and that could accommodate a great many more. People can make strong, principled and daring statements who aren't candidates for president. What you want I suppose is a position from which such statements can be made and be attended to by the world at large. That seems to me a long process that is hard to short circuit. It's very hard to force people to listen. > Imagine speeches by Buchanan after the 96 New Hampshire primary > laying out a radical conservative program. One issue I come back to is that people who campaign with any success normally aren't theoreticians. They have tendencies but the specifics are determined by circumstances. They respond vividly to people and to concrete situations, and the ideology is mostly implicit. Also, they can't do much of their own thinking so they can't lay out much of anything unless there's a well-defined and widely-respected body of thought to draw on. > The worst problem from my point of view is not the power and evil of > the existing orthodoxy, it's the lack of any real opposition to it on > our part. What you are doing through this correspondence, it seems > to me, is justifying that lack of opposition, finding one reason > after another why it's impossible for conservatives not only to do > anything, but even to say anything. I think all I've said is that at present all you can expect from those running for president and otherwise attempting to engage in mainstream public life at the national level is marginal help -- complaining about excesses, making certain lines of argument somewhat more possible etc. To me that shows that a lot has to be done. There are no obvious shortcuts to make bad things go away. > Yes, one does contact people and put forward ideas. Usually one gets > nowhere because of the lack of seriousness, as I see it, of > conservatives. But if conservatives don't even support anything serious why expect a political campaign to be able to put on a showing that impresses people by attempting to do so? How can you get converts when your own people don't much care? > You keep acting as though the conservative leaders I'm criticizing > are following some wise, prudent course. I'm telling you that they > have simply surrendered to the left in every way that counts, > including the feminization of the military. So now they're leftists whose hearts aren't in it and complain. All to the good. There should be such people, and at present it's hard to expect much more in respectable public life. > The aversion to utopianism only makes sense when you're living in a > traditional order, or at least an order that has not lost all > connection with tradition, and you are threatened by some utopian > scheme. Not quite. The threat of utopia makes comprehensive rational thought necessary to show the limits of comprehensive rational thought. That's not the same as utopianism even though it aims at a social order radically different from the existing one. Utopia, the notion that social order is constructed, remainst the enemy. > Thus you argue in effect that it would be "utopian" for someone to > call for ending the policy of women on navy ships. Why call for that rather than any of a hundred other things? The women on ships policy seems an odd one to make a special issue of in a presidential campaign. Dragging your feet (kvetch and retreat) is comprehensible. It lends itself to one-liners. Picking a live issue that affects a lot of people and undercuts PC, and pushing that issue, is comprehensible. I suppose that's something worth thinking about. This one seems harder to understand though except as part of a more general attack on radical sexual equality. From the standpoint of a presidential campaign it seems a somewhat abstract complaint. That's why I thought that if raised in a campaign anyone was paying attention to it would soon either be dropped or develop into a full-scale rejection of the Revolution. > You say that nothing can be done or even said about it until an > entire intellectual counter-establishment has been put in place. It > is a philosophy of complete defeatism. I just said it's not the issue to raise in a presidential campaign. If you're writing on public affairs you can talk about it. If you're a congressman on a relevant committee you can pursue the issue. However I do think it's of the utmost importance to build up intellectual backing for the radical right. There's a huge amount that has to be done. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Tue Jul 13 18:24:17 1999 Subject: Re: Kvetch and Retreat, Stupid Party, or What You Will To: la Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 18:24:17 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3065 Status: RO I'm really not sure how much our views differ as opposed to our mode of expressing them. Anyway: > There is no possibility in the foreseeable future of a genuinely > conservative movement winning in the mainstream. The existing > conservatives have all more or less surrendered to the left even when > they don't realize it. I would put it a bit more strongly and say there is no possibility at present of a genuinely conservative movement existing as part of the mainstream, taking part in what is recognized as the national political discussion, or getting the kind of somewhat assured sometimes somewhat neutral attention that a major party candidate can look for. So your idea of new party based on a coherent platform makes far more sense to me than the idea of a principled conservative going for the Republican nomination, which is what Bauer would be doing if he were principled. A one-man campaign like Bauer's has to accept what goes with what he's campaigning for (the status of representing one of the two major parties). A separate party wouldn't have that baggage. It could write on a clean slate and maintain the clarity of view and long-term continuity needed to coordinate thought and action and start bringing people around to its view of things. > women in the military (I don't know why you dislike that example It's great as an example of how bad radical sexual equality is but a bad defining issue for a national presidential campaign that's trying to make sense in a mainstream institution like the Republican party. If you're a presidential candidate talking about grand national policy it would make sense to raise it as part of a much larger attack on feminism and beyond that egalitarian ideology generally but not otherwise. And the larger attack would make a campaign for a mainstream nomination a bad way of dramatizing what you want to do. > And this counterestablishment would not have to proceed in the > cowardly and incoherent way that you seem to think is the only > rational and mature way for a public conservative to conduct himself > in contemporary America, because it would be stating its principles > clearly right from the beginning. It would have nothing to lose. "Nothing to lose" would include no recognized position in public life. So it could do things someone (a "public conservative") couldn't do who desired to maintain such a position. I never asserted having such a desire and acting on it was "rational and mature," only that only so much can be expected from people who do so and that it's better for there to be "public conservative" footdraggers than not. In time of course the new party might acquire a recognized position. Thanks for the exchange, by the way. It has been very helpful to me. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From upstream-list-request@cycad.com Mon Jul 12 03:57:03 1999 Return-Path: Received: from onn.pair.com (onn.pair.com [209.68.1.67]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 072125EC for ; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 03:57:03 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from slist@localhost) by onn.pair.com (8.9.1/8.6.12) id DAA24236; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 03:55:30 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 03:55:30 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: jk@panix.com Old-X-Envelope-To: From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199907120754.DAA29345@panix.com> Subject: Re: [Upstream] A legitimate question? To: upstream-list@cycad.com Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 03:54:09 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <378985F6.5909@earthlink.net> from "thumber@earthlink.net" at Jul 11, 99 11:06:46 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Resent-Message-ID: Resent-From: upstream-list@cycad.com Reply-To: upstream-list@cycad.com X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/2254 X-Loop: upstream-list@cycad.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: upstream-list-request@cycad.com Status: RO > Kalb's comparison about food is just silly, in my estimation. Food > is like race? Ridiculous! The point was not that food is like race but that the arguments that "race" is an imaginary category could just as well be used for food. > The whole discussion of genes assumes that people who self-identify > as "black" have purely African genes. I've never seen anything that assumes this. It seems to me all that's needed is that those who self-identify as "black" have a different average genetic heritage than those who self-identify as white. Then the difference in average genetic heritage would become available as a conceivable explanation for differences in average other things. Your friend's point seems to be not that all such explanations are false, but that they aren't even comprehensible, a point that seems to me quite clearly wrong. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" --- This is a message from the Upstream mailing list. Visit the Upstream Website at http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/ Visit the Upstream Mailing List archives at http://cycad.com/upstream-list-archive To subscribe to this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject subscribe To unsubscribe from this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject unsubscribe From upstream-list-request@cycad.com Mon Jul 12 04:31:34 1999 Received: from onn.pair.com (onn.pair.com [209.68.1.67]) by mail1.panix.com (8.8.8/8.8.8/PanixM1.3) with ESMTP id EAA07897 for ; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 04:31:34 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from slist@localhost) by onn.pair.com (8.9.1/8.6.12) id EAA26269; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 04:30:24 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 04:30:24 -0400 (EDT) X-Envelope-To: jk@panix.com Old-X-Envelope-To: From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199907120829.EAA01620@panix.com> Subject: Re: [Upstream] A legitimate question? To: upstream-list@cycad.com Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 04:29:11 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <199907120754.DAA29345@panix.com> from "Jim Kalb" at Jul 12, 99 03:54:09 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Resent-Message-ID: Resent-From: upstream-list@cycad.com Reply-To: upstream-list@cycad.com X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/2255 X-Loop: upstream-list@cycad.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: upstream-list-request@cycad.com Status: RO > Your friend's point seems to be not that all such explanations are > false, but that they aren't even comprehensible, a point that seems > to me quite clearly wrong. I should add -- I've never gone to the trouble of learning much about genetics and racial differences, mostly because other things interest me more. I accept that the link is there and is important, though. What clinches the matter for me is the prominence given arguments like your friend's. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" --- This is a message from the Upstream mailing list. Visit the Upstream Website at http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/ Visit the Upstream Mailing List archives at http://cycad.com/upstream-list-archive To subscribe to this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject subscribe To unsubscribe from this list send email to the address upstream-list-request@cycad.com with just the subject unsubscribe From paleo-return-337-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Wed Jul 14 13:03:44 1999 Return-Path: Received: from ml.egroups.com (ml.egroups.com [207.138.41.146]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 6DDB618CDF for ; Wed, 14 Jul 1999 13:03:43 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [10.1.2.36] by ml.egroups.com with NNFMP; 14 Jul 1999 18:03:42 -0000 Mailing-List: contact paleo-owner@egroups.com X-Mailing-List: paleo@egroups.com X-URL: http://www.egroups.com/list/paleo/ Reply-To: paleo@egroups.com Delivered-To: listsaver-egroups-paleo@egroups.com Received: (qmail 27182 invoked by uid 7770); 14 Jul 1999 12:19:27 -0000 Received: from qh.egroups.com (HELO qh.findmail.com) (10.1.2.28) by ivault.egroups.com with SMTP; 14 Jul 1999 12:19:27 -0000 Received: (qmail 17906 invoked from network); 14 Jul 1999 12:19:27 -0000 Received: from panix.com (166.84.1.66) by qh.egroups.com with SMTP; 14 Jul 1999 12:19:27 -0000 Received: (from jk@localhost) by panix.com (8.8.5/8.8.8/PanixU1.4) id IAA20580 for paleo@egroups.com; Wed, 14 Jul 1999 08:19:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199907141219.IAA20580@panix.com> To: paleo@egroups.com Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 08:19:22 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <716376ba.24bcd705@aol.com> from "CraigPreus@aol.com" at Jul 13, 99 01:53:09 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: [Paleo] Re: Is Paleo Dead? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: paleo-return-337-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Status: RO > Wither the paleocon movement? There are few recent books, no new > periodicals or organizations and only a sprinking of web sites. Was "paleocon" a movement or a general description, in contrast to "neocon"? I suppose the word suggests awareness of neocons as different and in some ways inimical. Also "paleo" seems to refer to an alliance between non-libertine libertarians and conservatives who reject MLK, FDR and probably Lincoln and so aren't neocons, who admire all three. I'm not sure any of that is enough to constitute a movement. The views and those who hold them remain. How much they prosper is anyone's guess. The fall of communism and growing triumph of the NWO is turning a lot of people toward particularism which has to help. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't let the next virus knock you out! Special Offer to eGroups members Install @Backup by June 30th and win a $100 Gift Certificate from Amazon .com and @Backup free for a year! http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/363 eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleo http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications From jk Wed Jul 14 07:29:37 1999 Subject: Re: Kvetch and Retreat, Stupid Party, or What You Will To: la Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 07:29:37 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1952 Status: RO It's a good question what sorts of organizations might be useful. New publications? Discussion societies? Think tanks? Clearing houses? World congresses? Political parties? Websites? I've tried constructing websites, discussion groups etc. with mixed success. All very small scale. One could consider precedents -- committees of correspondence, socialist and libertarian parties in America, the Communist International, the Fabian Society. I admit I usually take an evolutionary/invisible hand approach -- people are always trying all sorts of things, and those that turn out to be useful grow. Maybe more thought is called for. You of course propose a political party. An issue is formulating the right set of principles. It seems to me questions like interpretation of the American Founding might turn out to be important. Also the connection between the American future and white protestant origins. Also figures like Abraham Lincoln and FDR. It's easier for a socialist or libertarian party to ignore all that stuff or not take it seriously because they believe that it is present human will that creates society. Or maybe the need for a radical break from utopian radicalism means tossing recent history (since 1960? 1932? 1860? 1775? the Middle Ages?) which is the history of the Revolution on the scrapheap. What would the party say it *favors* though? Possibly it could set an abstract goal of a general state of social relationships and then say that there's no preordained royal road but what clearly has to be done right now is XYZ. Other questions are leadership and support from existing groups. How would one get started? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Wed Jul 14 18:02:56 1999 Subject: Re: Kvetch and Retreat, Stupid Party, or What You Will To: la Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 18:02:56 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2161 Status: RO > A political party appeals because it's active, it takes stands and > puts them before the public, and it is an organization that people > can join. To me it is desperately obvious that what the right in > America needs is a political party to organize and express itself. It needs something, that's for sure. Maybe a party could provide a focus, if it had a compelling vision. I think it has to be strong on the vision thing. If you present a complex of very radical and mostly destructive proposals I think there has to be an understanding of what good is going to come out of it. There has to be a great hope to keep people going. Socialist parties had a vision of what human relations should be like and a general sense of the institutional arrangements that would promote them, as well as specific practical policies. I think radical minor parties who aren't going to deliver anything tomorrow or next year need that. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Jul 15 20:25:59 EDT 1999 Article: 13904 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: French Revolution Date: 15 Jul 1999 20:19:35 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 51 Message-ID: <7mltqn$k2k$1@panix.com> References: <7m9ve1$1rm$1@cfs2.kis.keele.ac.uk> <7ma49r$p8j$1@panix.com> <378c043c.17309487@news.3web.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 932084375 20734 166.84.0.226 (16 Jul 1999 00:19:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Jul 1999 00:19:35 GMT X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13904 731591054@3web.com (T.Asquith) writes: >>doesn't Plato's view that mankind is a tabula rasa on which to write >It's true he invented the notion of the tabula rasa. > My word, Jim--are we now confusing Descartes' invention with the > Master's paideia? (Hint: 'tabula rasa' is Latin, and the Master's > educational system suggested in his Politeia bears no real > resemblance to the meaning denoted by this phrase). Thanks for the hint, and for the classical learning. "Tabula rasa" was Andy Fear's phrase, and since it has passed into English it seems strange to quarrel about it. To me it seemed to the point; at 501a Plato describes the philosophers' way of proceeding: "'They would take the city and the dispositions of human beings, as though they were a tablet,' I said, 'which in the first place they would wipe clean...'" (Bloom trans.) > Might I also add that this is truly a unique translation? I'm sure Jowett would take that as a compliment. > I cannot recall the Greek ever mentioning "asserting to the death" or > the mention of a "constitution" (a closer translation would be > "debate" and "argument" respectively). The Bloom translation, which I understand is intended to stick close to the literal sense, says "do battle for the argument" and "regime." I assume that as usual in Bloom the latter translates _politeia_. I'm not sure why you think "constitution" is a bad translation. Perhaps you can debate the issue with Jowett via ouija board. > Also, the foreign place is more accurately described as a "less > civilized" or "barbaric" place (the Athenians were a bit snobby :-) ). It seems reasonable to me to think that in context the point is distance rather than inferiority. > The "compelled by a superior power" is also inaccurate--guided by a > superior purpose perhaps ("the Muse"), but the translation is a bit > odd to say the least. Bloom's "there has been some necessity," which I presume is close to the literal sense, seems strangely vague in English. I'm not sure there's a difference in meaning. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Jul 15 20:26:01 EDT 1999 Article: 13905 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Countering Revolutions (was Re: Maarten van 't net (vnet) gearresteerd !) Date: 15 Jul 1999 20:24:04 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 31 Message-ID: <7mlu34$kut$1@panix.com> References: <931300666snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <7lu56a$8sd$1@panix.com> <378c1437.21401115@news.3web.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 932084647 20811 166.84.0.226 (16 Jul 1999 00:24:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Jul 1999 00:24:07 GMT X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13905 731591054@3web.com (T.Asquith) writes: > Of course, this begs the question as to whether there can be a > counter-revolutionary leftist. Not unless the rightist/leftist distinction has become incoherent. My discussion depends by the way on a rather grandiose conception of "the Revolution" as the political process working toward a self-contained world order constructed by man for the satisfaction of desire. > we tend to forget that the idea of the counter-revolution must rely > on an idealized version of the past.) Why? Does all action rely on an idealized goal? If so, what's the point of raising the issue specially in connection with counterrevolution? If not, what's special about counterrevolution that it requires idealization when other things don't? > many right-wingers, with the exception of the utopian libertarians, > do tend to favour: censorship; some public funding of operatic > companies and symphonies; the introduction of morality and/or > religion and/or high culture into educational curricula; and so on. Such things don't normally require detailed administration of religious and cultural life in the way government regulates industry. Consider the relative number of administrators and volume of regulations. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Jul 16 16:59:55 EDT 1999 Article: 13908 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: American conservatives Date: 16 Jul 1999 16:58:19 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 32 Message-ID: <7mo6db$pob$1@panix.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 932158700 7064 166.84.0.226 (16 Jul 1999 20:58:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Jul 1999 20:58:20 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13908 In kly@angara.olsen.ch (Gregory Kozlovsky) writes: >Please, Mr. Kalb, explain us what is the connection of American >"conservatives" with counter-revolutionaries. I don't see any. The connection between "conservatives" and CRs is that both side -- in context -- with traditionalism, the view that society is not a human construction for human ends. For the American situation read my "Traditionalism and the American Order" at http://freenet.buffalo.edu/~cd431/american_tradition.html. The basic idea of the essay is that traditionalism is a necessary feature of any society. In a liberal society like America the necessary implicit traditionalism is in tension with public liberalism. The former is unable to make its case explicitly so the balance can only be maintained by a certain general blinkered obstinacy. That can only last so long, and it has now broken down, creating a very severe crisis for not only American conservatism but the American public order generally. Which brings us to a second connection between American conservatism and CR thought. Since foot-dragging, idealization of previous stages in the development of liberalism, refusal to think etc. can no longer preserve the conditions of a tolerable way of life something more radical is called for. So in order to be true to its reason for being American conservatism will therefore have to become counterrevolutionary. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jul 18 17:46:40 EDT 1999 Article: 13910 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: American conservatives Date: 18 Jul 1999 06:48:08 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 25 Message-ID: <7msbd8$4k1$1@panix.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 932294889 3629 166.84.0.226 (18 Jul 1999 10:48:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 18 Jul 1999 10:48:09 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13910 > Even a "conservative" is a liberal in America, for what he seeks > to conserve is merely the liberalism of the past. That's not really so silly. Conserving the liberalism of the past is not liberalism, it seems to me, because liberalism is a line of development toward a goal. The chief difference between the liberalism of the past and that of the present is that the latter applies to more of social life and corresponds to a more thorough transformation of inherited conceptions and practices. To reject it in favor of that of the past is therefore in context conservative. American conservatism has I think suffered from a certain incoherence of doctrine but coherent doctrine isn't everything. Very little political doctrine is coherent and actual contemporary liberalism is incoherent as well. I don't see anything more conservative or traditionalist for example about the centralized state than state's rights. It seems much less so, actually, since its origin and tendency is more rationalizing and antiparticularist. And in any event conservatism by nature adopts and makes use of things that began for quite different purposes. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Jul 19 08:41:39 EDT 1999 Article: 13918 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: American conservatives Date: 19 Jul 1999 07:15:48 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 37 Message-ID: <7mv1d4$s4k$1@panix.com> References: <7mt6bi$7l9$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3792AE9A.9CEEF9FD@infinet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 932382948 22035 166.84.0.226 (19 Jul 1999 11:15:48 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 19 Jul 1999 11:15:48 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13918 In <3792AE9A.9CEEF9FD@infinet.com> "Tony W. Frye" writes: >American conservatives love Burke for one reason and one reason only: >he was the only real political figure in Europe who favored the >American Revolution while opposing the French Revolution, which gives >American conservatives the leeway they need to pimp the fiction that >somehow these revolutions were fundamentally different. Mr. Frye's language and tone display his usual qualities of mind and spirit. Nonetheless, Burke's attitude toward the American War of Independence and the French Revolution does raise interesting issues. One is the long-term prospects of Burkean conservatism. When and to what extent can it play a critical role with regard to established long-term tendencies? Things may be clear enough when literary types and provincial lawyers announce they want to abolish the established order of things and then proceed to invent a new form of government, a new religion, a new calendar, chop the heads off the previous governing class, etc., but what if there's far more continuity than that, so that there's no violent break in ruling class, no extreme upheavals in property, considerable continuity of political forms, little change in a religious establishment that mostly supported the changes are, etc.? The issue is very much a live one today. Neocons like Irving Kristol are made very nervous by fundamental complaints about the political regime that actually exists in the United States in 1999 for Burkean reasons -- the regime grew up step-by-step with the support of established institutions and ways of thinking, it's supported by most people and settled authorities, so it becomes difficult to argue with it on Burkean lines even though it is destructive of so much that Burke and conservatives generally value. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Jul 19 20:46:11 EDT 1999 Article: 13924 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: American conservatives Date: 19 Jul 1999 14:54:57 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 49 Message-ID: <7mvsa1$rie$1@panix.com> References: <3792AE9A.9CEEF9FD@infinet.com> <7mv1d4$s4k$1@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 932410498 28518 166.84.0.226 (19 Jul 1999 18:54:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 19 Jul 1999 18:54:58 GMT X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13924 > If you want counter-revolution, I would think Calhoun or de Maistre > would be much better models to follow than Burke, whose conservatism > did not seek to roll back society, just slow down change. I don't see anything specially counterrevolutionary about Calhoun. And I don't think Burke can be reduced to "slowing down change." His interest isn't specifically change or no change, but good government and the good life and how those things are practically approximated. I think it follows that his fundamental concerns lead to a counterrevolutionary approach when the times require. Burke's basic point against the French revolutionaries is that it's a big complicated world, with a lot of very different people in it, each with gifts and weaknesses, and the good to which their actions should tend is itself enormously complex, at least as a practical matter. It can't be captured in a formula or administered into existence. Knowledge of the good life and its conditions and means of attainment is only in part conceptual or quantifiable. Such things depend on largely inarticulate habits, attitudes and understandings that grow up socially. It follows that there are severe limits on the role of abstract theory in politics. Since a very large part of the knowledge and habits necessary for the good life are those of ordinary men in the ordinary relations of life, the institutions and practices that provide the stability that permits knowledge and skill to accumulate are mostly small in scale. Hence Burke's "little platoons," his opposition to imperial oppression, and the modern concern with "family values," states' rights, particularism, opposition to rule by bureaucrats and experts, etc. Burke is more concerned with how to preserve a social order he thought good than reform one that had become radically misdirected. He therefore proposes to accept the genius of major institutions and when needed pursue a policy of moderate reform. In a time in which major institutions by tendency and even design destroy the importance and stability of small-scale local social order it seems to me a misapplication of Burke's thought to say that you should accept the political process society generates and the outcomes the process generates without fundamental criticism. That would be to give up his best insights for the sake of a part of his thought that depended more on particular circumstances. To base action on theory is risky but if it were always illegitimate there would be no point to a book of political theory like Burke's _Reflections_. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jul 21 08:14:35 EDT 1999 Article: 13939 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: American conservatives Date: 21 Jul 1999 06:48:43 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 20 Message-ID: <7n48ib$pg1$1@panix.com> References: <7mt6bi$7l9$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3792AE9A.9CEEF9FD@infinet.com> <7mv1d4$s4k$1@panix.com> <37952364.3375@interlog.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 932554123 5796 166.84.0.226 (21 Jul 1999 10:48:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 21 Jul 1999 10:48:43 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13939 In <37952364.3375@interlog.com> Alan Stewart writes: >The adherence that North American conservatives give to Burke is >ironic in view of the fact that he was not professedly a Conservative >at all but a Whig--i.e., a liberal. The reason he's read of course is that his importance -- his understanding of how social life and politics works -- is not exhausted by his party. What Burke supplies to modern American conservatives I think is an articulation of a side of political life that American political rhetoric and official American belief have always tended to obscure. It's certainly possible that the same understanding could support different parties, different positions on the political spectrum etc. at different times. Take for example the view that you shouldn't push abstract principles too far. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jul 21 19:55:12 EDT 1999 Article: 13944 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: American conservatives Date: 21 Jul 1999 17:11:51 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 20 Message-ID: <7n5d2n$c6v$1@panix.com> References: <3792AE9A.9CEEF9FD@infinet.com> <7mv1d4$s4k$1@panix.com> <7mvsa1$rie$1@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 932591511 13595 166.84.0.226 (21 Jul 1999 21:11:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 21 Jul 1999 21:11:51 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13944 In "Tony W. Frye" writes: >>I don't see anything specially counterrevolutionary about Calhoun. >He's probably the only real counter revolutionary this country ever >produced. You seem to think of a counterrevolutionary as Marx with the sign reversed rather than someone who opposes the Revolution because it destroys what it doesn't understand in the name of a utopia based on a grossly inadequate conception of human life. To me it seems that the Revolution is more a matter of the categories in which human life is conceived than the direction those categories are given. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Sun Jul 18 17:23:09 1999 Subject: Re: Medieval Iceland To: bo Date: Sun, 18 Jul 1999 17:23:09 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1491 Status: RO > Did this equality extend to women as well? Was there sexual > egalitarianism? In short, was Medieval Iceland a feminist utopia? Not really. Without a state it's hard to go against nature. In line with Germanic custom women had high status and a great deal of freedom but public life was for warriors which left women out. There are a few incidents in the sagas in which women assault men. It would have been disgraceful to retaliate directly but it could get their menfolk into trouble. Women also participated in affairs indirectly, by advice or goading their men into action. Women managed the household and were admired for skill in such things and for spiritedness, presence of mind etc. They could divorce their husbands. There was one woman among the founders of Iceland, Aud the deep-minded, a noblewoman who left Sweden with her retainers after her husband died and took lands in Iceland, who was generally admired for being able to bring it off in such difficult circumstances. A woman could be married for the first time against her will, although it was usually a bad idea -- the plot of a couple of sagas revolves around that happening to a beautiful and spirited woman. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Wed Jul 21 14:57:53 1999 Subject: Re: Traditionalism and the American Order To: ka Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 14:57:53 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2324 Status: RO > First of all, you should keep Reagan's record distinct from his > epigones' and second, you should compare these years to what came > before. My comment was not about Reagan but about overall trends. If you want you can read what I said as "even the wonderful Reagan wasn't nearly enough." Someone might be the greatest doctor in the world in the middle of a plague and do a lot of good but the situation might still be very bad and getting worse. > The Reagan presidency turned us around, economically and > strategically, and even to some extent in pop culture--for example, > the '80s were the glory days of Right-wing action movies. The move away from state socialism and the destruction of the Soviet Union were I agree unmatched achievements. I have no special fondness though for Right-wing action movies except by comparisons that have to do with the general trend of things, which is what I'm complaining about. I say that the: Reagan, Bush and Gingrich years [were in fact] marked by large-scale third-world immigration, the strengthening of "affirmative action" and spread of political correctness, continued degradation of popular culture and sexual standards, growth in welfare expenditures and regulatory intrusiveness, reaffirmation by all respectable authorities that abortion is integral to the American regime, and aggressive construction of the New World Order. Do you disagree with that? Under such circumstances is the Right overall gaining ground? > Thanks to Reagan, we won the Cold War abroad. Sure, we haven't won > the Cold War at home; but do you really expect one administration to > solve all our problems at once? We have to do our own bit. The essay wasn't a complaint about Reagan, it was an attempt to describe how enormous our problems really are. It seems to me the Cold War at home is now and always has been the basic problem. What kind of country are we? How shall we live together? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From paleo-return-362-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Fri Jul 23 14:14:55 1999 Received: from ml.egroups.com (ml.egroups.com [207.138.41.146]) by mail1.panix.com (8.8.8/8.8.8/PanixM1.5) with SMTP id OAA01874 for ; Fri, 23 Jul 1999 14:14:54 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [10.1.2.36] by ml.egroups.com with NNFMP; 23 Jul 1999 19:14:53 -0000 Mailing-List: contact paleo-owner@egroups.com X-Mailing-List: paleo@egroups.com X-URL: http://www.egroups.com/list/paleo/ Reply-To: paleo@egroups.com Delivered-To: listsaver-egroups-paleo@egroups.com Received: (qmail 12668 invoked by uid 7770); 23 Jul 1999 13:40:55 -0000 Received: from qg.egroups.com (HELO qg.findmail.com) (10.1.2.27) by ivault.egroups.com with SMTP; 23 Jul 1999 13:40:55 -0000 Received: (qmail 7593 invoked from network); 23 Jul 1999 13:40:54 -0000 Received: from panix.com (166.84.1.66) by qg.egroups.com with SMTP; 23 Jul 1999 13:40:54 -0000 Received: (from jk@localhost) by panix.com (8.8.5/8.8.8/PanixU1.4) id JAA15828 for paleo@egroups.com; Fri, 23 Jul 1999 09:40:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199907231340.JAA15828@panix.com> To: paleo@egroups.com Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 09:40:52 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <3796ED5D.59D0A3B@ix.netcom.com> from "Justin Raimondo" at Jul 22, 99 03:07:25 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: [Paleo] Re: Is Paleo Dead? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: RO Justin Raimondo writes: > Well, it seems to me that the main theoretical questions have been > solved: the paleos have pretty much defined themselves in relation to > the rest of the Right I defer to your expertise on what constitutes the paleo movement and what it needs to realize its purposes. Overall though the Right has been losing for quite some time. There have no doubt been lots of reasons for that. One I think is that as Mr. Wilder suggests the Left has benefited from a more coherent fundamental understanding of things. As a result cooperation has come more naturally, strategy and tactics have meshed better, and it has been easier to present a vision people could find inspirational. The view that rightwingers are basically "againsters" has I think been mostly true. By "theory" I mean dealing with such issues. You can't beat something with nothing. What, in the end, are we trying to do and why? The answer to that question has to be something that can ground a social order that makes sense to people generally. It seems to me the current situation, in which the Left is thoroughly institutionalized, makes such issues unavoidable by making necessary a radical break with the current state of affairs. > In the hierarchy of paleo principles, anti-imperialism, I would > argue, rates pretty high, and is furthermore increasingly relevant. I admire the work that's been done at antiwar.com. I wonder though whether anti-imperialism is an example of a American rightwing tendency to build a coalition among incompatibles based on common opposition to something overseas. Such coalitions are good and necessary, they deserve praise and support, my only point is that they're not sufficient. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Click Here to apply for a NextCard Internet Visa and start earning FREE travel in HALF the time with the NextCard Rew@rds Program. http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/449 eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleo http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications From jk Thu Jul 22 16:04:33 1999 Subject: Re: Antiracism article To: la Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 16:04:33 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 899 Status: RO > It's not rational to insist that race is both irrelevant to and > definitive of the human individual. Or maybe it *is* a rational system. If race is constitutive of who a man is then "all men are equal" implies "all races are equal." And if my experience is that race makes me what I am, but my aspiration is for my own choice to make me what I am, then a resolution would be to make race irrelevant to my ability to make choices -- that is, to make all choices and social positions equally open to persons of all races and thus to persons with qualities that characterize blacks, whites, Chinamen, whatever. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Fri Jul 23 09:27:52 1999 Subject: Re: [Re: Traditionalism and the American Order] To: ka Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 09:27:52 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1423 Status: RO > 1964 was a milestone; 1980 was a milestone; 1994 was a milestone; > they bring us closer to the goal. I just don't see that they've brought us closer. The most basic issue is what kind of people we are, how we live together, and I think at each of those milestones things on the whole have been worse on that point than at the previous one. The point I suppose is that it takes time to reverse the course of an oil tanker and for quite a while it will still be going in the same direction. I agree that much has been done, and that the positive should not be forgotten. My emphasis in the article was on how very much more needs to be done, how radical the necessary changes would be, which I think is also necessary to bear in mind. It seems to me the forces transforming the world on liberal lines are still extremely powerful and the battle is quite unequal. I agree that it's not over until it's over, and in the long run liberalism will lose if only because it is essentially parasitic and ends up killing its host. Anyway thanks for your comments. I'm glad you liked the essay on the whole and hope you found it useful. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From jk Fri Jul 23 09:47:57 1999 Subject: Re: Antiracism article To: la Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 09:47:57 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2181 Status: RO > >And if my experience is that race makes me what I am, but my > >aspiration is for my own choice to make me what I am, then a > >resolution would be to make race irrelevant to my ability to make > >choices -- that is, to make all choices and social positions equally > >open to persons of all races and thus to persons with qualities that > >characterize blacks, whites, Chinamen, whatever. > I'm sorry but don't understand what you're trying to say here. I was afraid you would say that. It's good to be called to account on these things though. The background thought was that the Left aspires for man to create himself and also has a wholly this-worldly conception of man. The two are in conflict. If man is wholly contained in the general pattern of events in this world, a pattern which is predictable enough to manipulate, then how can he create himself? The conflict is found everywhere in the thought of the Left, for example in the Bolshevik combination of historical determinism and the myth of the Revolution, and gives it an inner irrationality. In different branches of the Left the conflict takes different form and is resolved in different ways. In the civil rights movement the conflict takes the form of the conflict between race as something to be abolished, because it limits the individual will, and race as something that constitutes the individual by giving him social reality, a particular point of view, whatever. The resolution is to accept that race constitutes the individual but eliminate it as a limitation on the will by arranging the world so that everything one might choose can be chosen equally easily by anyone of any race. A quota system is intended to bring about that result. It's possible that the foregoing makes no sense as an isolated point apart from a larger theory about the Left which I haven't presented or for that matter developed. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From paleo-return-354-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Thu Jul 22 14:24:09 1999 Received: from ml.egroups.com (ml.egroups.com [207.138.41.146]) by mail1.panix.com (8.8.8/8.8.8/PanixM1.5) with SMTP id OAA21837 for ; Thu, 22 Jul 1999 14:24:07 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [10.1.2.36] by ml.egroups.com with NNFMP; 22 Jul 1999 19:24:06 -0000 Mailing-List: contact paleo-owner@egroups.com X-Mailing-List: paleo@egroups.com X-URL: http://www.egroups.com/list/paleo/ Reply-To: paleo@egroups.com Delivered-To: listsaver-egroups-paleo@egroups.com Received: (qmail 13772 invoked by uid 7770); 22 Jul 1999 14:19:44 -0000 Received: from qh.egroups.com (HELO qh.findmail.com) (10.1.2.28) by ivault.egroups.com with SMTP; 22 Jul 1999 14:19:44 -0000 Received: (qmail 28966 invoked from network); 22 Jul 1999 14:19:43 -0000 Received: from panix.com (166.84.1.66) by qh.egroups.com with SMTP; 22 Jul 1999 14:19:43 -0000 Received: (from jk@localhost) by panix.com (8.8.5/8.8.8/PanixU1.4) id KAA17478 for paleo@egroups.com; Thu, 22 Jul 1999 10:19:38 -0400 (EDT) From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199907221419.KAA17478@panix.com> To: paleo@egroups.com Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 10:19:38 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <74547532.24c7ca13@aol.com> from "CraigPreus@aol.com" at Jul 21, 99 09:12:51 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: [Paleo] Re: Is Paleo Dead? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: RO Some thoughts: 1. The paleo tendency is too intellectual to be a mass movement. It's more a source of analyses and ideas that can be picked up by politicians and popularizers. I suppose on particular issues like anti-imperialism and immigration reform and in discussions among people who think of themselves as conservatives or libertarians it could play a practical role. Regarding the latter it does seem that strategy should be useful, to choose the points on which the Left, neoconservative deviationalists or whoever are weakest and the best methods for pressing those points. 2. There's plenty of room for different people to do different things. Theory is necessary for example. Overgrown means/ends rationality is a basic problem with the modern world is so if you don't like the direction of things the first thing needed may be to cultivate a more comprehensive perspective not immediately connected with stategies for success. Americans on the whole haven't been great theoreticians and the most prominent American thinkers (Emerson, John Dewey, whoever) haven't been right-wingers so there's a definite place for grand reactionary speculations. 3. Part of the problem is that there aren't enough paleo-minded people scattered around to keep paleo ideas in view. So purely intellectual persuasion is I think important. Also, I sometimes get the impression paleos are antisocial by nature. I suppose the Left was always prone to schism, though, and maybe contentiousness is good for generating and testing ideas. 4. The web *ought* to be useful, but I think it's more useful for reaching the few than the many. There are obvious problems with the latter. The more messages bombard people the more they deal with them by shutting out everything uncertified and everything they aren't already used to. Hence the success of the "extremism" strategy for dealing with everyone to the right of Bob Dole and also the unreflective nature of a lot of net conservatism and libertarianism. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't know which one to buy? Productopia does. http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/554 eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleo http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jul 27 13:08:36 EDT 1999 Article: 13954 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Dead Kennedys Date: 27 Jul 1999 08:21:56 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 26 Message-ID: <7nk894$5ft$1@panix.com> References: <19990726210345.25206.00002464@ng-cr1.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 933078116 3959 166.84.0.226 (27 Jul 1999 12:21:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 27 Jul 1999 12:21:56 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13954 In <19990726210345.25206.00002464@ng-cr1.aol.com> ddavis8570@aol.com (DDavis8570) writes: >doesnt anyone think that they really missed with JFKjr? They should >have emabalmed him in a shrine like Lenin so the boobs could come to >pray and worship. They then could create and order of nobility where >the worthy could be made honorary Kennedys and be allowed to assume >the sacred surname. doesnt this show how easily a demagogic dictator >could whip up a frenzy to lead him to power. For electronic ectoplasm embalming and orders of nobility seem too institutional. Maybe sightings and mailorder relics? Seems doubtful to me but who knows. Does anyone think JFKjr will have the staying power of Elvis or even Diana? It seems less demagoguery than froth that occupies the people while the real work of reconstructing society goes forward semiautomatically. Public life is being deconstructed by breaking symbolic and functional aspects apart. Modern tyranny like modern everything else is more impersonal than in antiquity. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Jul 30 04:41:35 EDT 1999 Article: 13959 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Democracy v. Republic Date: 30 Jul 1999 04:40:28 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 30 Message-ID: <7nrods$lck$1@panix.com> References: <379DF5EE.3FA21E69@deleteme.my-deja.com> <933286044snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 933324029 2811 166.84.0.226 (30 Jul 1999 08:40:29 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Jul 1999 08:40:29 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13959 In <933286044snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes: >The growth of the rate of growth of the rate of growth of economic >inequality (no, the duplication is not a typo: I mean the second >derivative) suggests that we are in for the global rule of one family >within a generation or so. Of course they will be new tycoons, not old >royals, and their rule will be indirect. The media flummery about >'celebrities' is part of the preparation that is needed for people to >accept it. Seems unlikely we'll have one-man or one-family rule. Universal empires are hard to maintain without a reliable principle of moral cohesion in the ruling class and it's not clear what that would be in this case. Mutual rivalries supply the missing principle of cohesion, so corrupt empires tend to break up into several pieces. Think of the Hellenisic period, or periods of warlordism in China. Military rivalry as a basic principle of political order means that control of the army becomes a source of wealth at least as much as the reverse. So I really don't see the New Order as constituted on neoliberal principles. That's quite apart from the general significance of the separation of ownership from control and the dematerialization of property rights in recent times, both of which tend to transfer power and therefore wealth >from owners to managers and manipulators. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Jul 31 08:04:54 EDT 1999 Article: 13964 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Democracy v. Republic Date: 31 Jul 1999 07:57:11 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 27 Message-ID: <7nuoan$jo$1@panix.com> References: <379DF5EE.3FA21E69@deleteme.my-deja.com> <933391272.132037@iris.nyx.net> <37A2A146.A64A1938@infinet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 933422231 23689 166.84.0.226 (31 Jul 1999 11:57:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 31 Jul 1999 11:57:11 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13964 >I guess a true monarchy would then be an absolute monarchy More likely one in which the king plays a serious role in governing as well as serving as head of state. Traditional European monarchies were not absolute; other persons, classes, corporations etc. had rights that did not depend on the king's will. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a follower of Murray Rothbard and I think an anarchocapitalist, wrote an interesting article on the advantages of monarchy in comparison with election for short periods. Monarchy seems to be his second-best system. His main point is that long-term possession -- ownership -- gives an interest in the well-being of the possession that short-term does not. A man does not normally loot his own property as a temporary occupant often would. I seem to recall that Tocqueville also commented on the tendency of democratic governments to become tyrannical because they have the moral force of "vox populi vox dei" on their side. There's no one of sufficient stature to stand against them. Hoppe develops the point. There seem to be a few other libertarian monarchists around. The evangelist R.C. Sproul I am told is one. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Jul 31 08:04:55 EDT 1999 Article: 13965 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: New From Nyquist Date: 31 Jul 1999 08:00:19 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 14 Message-ID: <7nuogj$17c$1@panix.com> References: <933279293.25566@www.remarq.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 933422421 23718 166.84.0.226 (31 Jul 1999 12:00:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 31 Jul 1999 12:00:21 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13965 In kly@angara.olsen.ch (Gregory Kozlovsky) writes: >>May I suggest you view the current (July 29, 1999) column of John >>Nyquist in the current edition of WorldNetDaily. >Can you please provide URL? I was unable to find it immediately using >a search engine. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_nyquist/19990729_xcjny_why_left_w.shtml -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From owner-class-69@Dartmouth.EDU Fri Jul 30 04:20:20 1999 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.dartmouth.edu (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B8F8118D38 for ; Fri, 30 Jul 1999 04:20:19 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from mj@localhost) by mailhub.dartmouth.edu (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) id EAA06654 for class-69-outgoing; Fri, 30 Jul 1999 04:12:43 -0400 (EDT) Received: from panix.com (IDENT:wWQW02oNI23lKPNDl31EgYN9AOb5TNWk@panix.com [166.84.1.66]) by mailhub.dartmouth.edu (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id EAA31089 for ; Fri, 30 Jul 1999 04:12:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from jk@localhost) by panix.com (8.8.5/8.8.8/PanixU1.4) id EAA18388; Fri, 30 Jul 1999 04:12:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199907300812.EAA18388@panix.com> Subject: Re: AIDS: The Epidemic Continues To: tmcwhorter@earthlink.net (Tom McWhorter) Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 04:12:32 -0400 (EDT) Cc: GunnardJ@carp.vno.osf.lt, class-69@Dartmouth.EDU In-Reply-To: <37A0CAAE.EF7D462D@earthlink.net> from "Tom McWhorter" at Jul 29, 99 05:42:06 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-class-69@Dartmouth.EDU Precedence: bulk Status: RO Tom McWorter writes: > I don't have the answer, but here is a radical thought. Would it be > possible to encourage low-risk sexual outlets for young people rather > than try to swim against the tide of hormones? I suppose there have been times and places when prostitution was allowed as a relatively harmless outlet. That was an indulgence withing a generally repressive system though. It seems to me that if sex is *overall* a matter of prudence instead of tabu then people aren't going to be prudent either. The motives aren't of the same force. Reminds me of when Kemeny wondered aloud why people couldn't be sensible about sex ... To unsubscribe send email to majordomo@dartmouth.edu with unsubscribe class-69 as the body of the message. From owner-class-69@Dartmouth.EDU Sat Jul 31 09:39:49 1999 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.dartmouth.edu (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A2837619 for ; Sat, 31 Jul 1999 09:39:48 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from mj@localhost) by mailhub.dartmouth.edu (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) id JAA18716 for class-69-outgoing; Sat, 31 Jul 1999 09:37:52 -0400 (EDT) Received: from panix.com (IDENT:YuLbGTjAzwHFpt/p+A5+G4nDbLmujrLL@panix.com [166.84.1.66]) by mailhub.dartmouth.edu (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA07843 for ; Sat, 31 Jul 1999 09:37:50 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from jk@localhost) by panix.com (8.8.5/8.8.8/PanixU1.4) id JAA08934; Sat, 31 Jul 1999 09:37:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199907311337.JAA08934@panix.com> Subject: Re: AIDS: The Epidemic Continues To: tmcwhorter@earthlink.net (Tom McWhorter) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 09:37:40 -0400 (EDT) Cc: GunnardJ@carp.vno.osf.lt, class-69@Dartmouth.EDU In-Reply-To: <37A1E4D0.87C83037@earthlink.net> from "Tom McWhorter" at Jul 30, 99 01:45:52 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-class-69@Dartmouth.EDU Precedence: bulk Status: RO Tom McWhorter writes: > I am appalled at [Gunnard's] call for "parental, social, and > governmental policy to discourage in the strongest terms premarital > and extramarital sexual relations." Look at the damage caused by that > approach to America's war on drugs. And look at the success or lack > thereof. There are lots of possible analogies. Think of lying -- people think it's a bad thing and say so, parents tell their kids not to lie and punish them when they are caught, people don't like or trust liars, they look down on them socially, it's extremely insulting to be called a liar, some lies (fraud, perjury) can get you put in jail, others can get you fired etc. The effect I think is that people lie less than they would if lying were thought of as a wholly individual thing, a strategy for dealing with life that is immune from criticism or comment by third parties. We think of honesty as part of what it is to be a good person, so we feel our own lying as a violation of what we truly are. If there's someone who thinks otherwise, who truly sees no problem with lying, we think there's something wrong with him. Until quite recently sexual morality was like that. The issue I think is whether it should be like that, whether sexual rectitude more or less as traditionally conceived should be understood as part of what it is to be a good person. One possible reason for understanding it that way is that sex is so closely tied to fundamental and irreplaceable family relations that have to be stable and reliable if life is to be at all tolerable. If sex is what you make of it, a matter of individual choice, then the same tends to be true of sexual ties like that between man and wife. > banning or regulating sex has never worked and never will? (It has > been tried often enough). Why has it been universally attempted then? Has everyone been stupid up till now? If we're all so smart how come we're not all happy? Also, do you think the sexual regime that existed when you were in high school had no effect at all on sexual conduct? Illegitimacy rates are a crude measure but they must show something. In England they had been around 5% for centuries. Then about 1960 they began to shoot up and now are somewhere between 30 - 40% and climbing. That's with abortion and contraception freely available. I can't help but think that changing attitudes toward sexual morality had something to do with the situation. > Wouldn't it make sense to encourage our kids to enter a "trial > marriage" with effective birth control? Sounds rational, which is what's wrong with it. Life, especially things like sex that touch us closely, isn't a matter of correct technical arrangements. It's a matter of fundamental orientations and understandings that precede all the particular things we do. Those are the things that have to do with morality -- with shall I be a liar? etc. "Trial marriage" etc. means that there's nothing special about living and sleeping with a woman. What it amounts to depends on the parties' intentions. Those can change of course. So it's not surprising divorce rates are substantially higher among those who do trial marriage than those who don't. Bad for the kids. Not so good for their elders either. > I suspected that in this abstenance campaign (as with most morally > driven campaigns) there is a hidden agenda for reshaping the world > and all its people into the behavior that God personally told you is > correct. AIDS has certainly been used opportunistically by the sexual Left and Right, more successfully by the former. To that extent there are hidden agendas. I don't understand the "God personally told you" comment though. It's not as if traditional sexual morality is some private fantasy Jerry Falwell made up in 1977. American traditional sexual morality has a lot more in common with traditional sexual morality elsewhere -- in China or wherever -- than current progressive morality has with anything. If one complains about attempts to reshape the world based on new revelations from unknown and uncheckable sources I think it's the Left and not the Right that should be the target of the complaint. > I am used by, or a user of, hundreds of people weekly with whom there > is no serious commitment for a lasting relationship. So far it has > not led to emptiness, alienation, and hopelessness. Unfortunately, > none of this use is of a sexual nature. True. This of course is the question, whether there is something about sexual relations that makes them different from buying a newspaper. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" To unsubscribe send email to majordomo@dartmouth.edu with unsubscribe class-69 as the body of the message. From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Jul 31 21:42:21 EDT 1999 Article: 13967 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Democracy v. Republic Date: 31 Jul 1999 14:25:23 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 28 Message-ID: <7nvf2j$2cv$1@panix.com> References: <379DF5EE.3FA21E69@deleteme.my-deja.com> <933286044snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <37A2FD9F.F374E619@zap.a2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 933445524 28025 166.84.0.226 (31 Jul 1999 18:25:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 31 Jul 1999 18:25:24 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13967 In <37A2FD9F.F374E619@zap.a2000.nl> vtnet writes: >The popular demand for (alleged and/or trivial) information about >celebrities might well have found its prime source in the popular >demand for the demystification of these people; that is, to bridge the >societal empty space that tends to surround the rich and famous that >are no longer respected. But celebrity has been separated from function. It seems to have less connection with actual power than in the past. And the demand for information doesn't seem to suggest demystification any more than the demand for relics of the saints, their hair or shoes or whatever, does. Is the separation a sign of illegitimate government, of a political order that has no special connection with what people feel is right or good or important? Partial precedents include Nils' long-haired Merovings, displayed to the people once a year while government was carried on by the Mayor of the Palace, and Lord Shang's policy of punishing the people for praising the government (what the government did, whether it was good or bad, was none of their business). It seems to me the function of celebrity is to keep people's mind of what is none of their business and they can't affect anyway. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Jul 31 21:42:22 EDT 1999 Article: 13971 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Monarchy - true and false Date: 31 Jul 1999 18:57:02 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 23 Message-ID: <7nvuvu$mc9$1@panix.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 933461822 1397 166.84.0.226 (31 Jul 1999 22:57:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 31 Jul 1999 22:57:02 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13971 In kly@angara.olsen.ch (Gregory Kozlovsky) writes: >According to both Hebrew and Hindu teachings, the best form of >government is a theocracy, the rule of hereditary cast of priests, >Levites and Brahmins, respectively. The second best form is monarchy, >the rule of warriors, Kshatriyas. The lowest form of government is the >rule of Vaishas, the businessmen, the form which has become dominant >today under the fraudulent name of "democracy." This of course is rather like the Platonic scheme in _Republic_ viii-ix, except in that scheme rule by philosophers and timocracy are not followed simply by oligarchy (rule by businessmen) but by democracy (rule by Sudras) and then tyranny. Would it be forcing things to say that tyranny is rule by chandalas? The tyrant, after all, is the man who wholly lacks a principle of moral order, which I suppose would put him outside the caste system if the caste system is the embodiment of moral order. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Aug 1 15:23:36 EDT 1999 Article: 13974 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Democracy v. Republic Date: 1 Aug 1999 07:43:49 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 31 Message-ID: <7o1btl$gkv$1@panix.com> References: <379DF5EE.3FA21E69@deleteme.my-deja.com> <933286044snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <37A2FD9F.F374E619@zap.a2000.nl> <7nvf2j$2cv$1@panix.com> <37A42180.CC15F8EB@zap.a2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 933507830 14747 166.84.0.226 (1 Aug 1999 11:43:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 1 Aug 1999 11:43:50 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13974 In <37A42180.CC15F8EB@zap.a2000.nl> vtnet writes: >Therefore it seems reasonable to assume that celebrity is only the >second line of defense in the protection of weakened power-structures, >and that institutionalized religion and the like is the first. But the current equivalent of institutionalized religion doesn't touch people deeply or comprehensively enough. That's why people have visions of Elvis not of Martin Luther King. To my mind there's something self-consciously virtuous about pilgrimages to the National Holocaust Museum. I suppose that's why there was the fuss when JFK jr killed himself -- he had offered hope that the world of sex and money and glitz could be combined with that of bureaucratic egalitarian hedonism into a more appealing overall package. It's not going to happen, so I think we'll stick with celebrity. >controlled by the people of the power and not by celebrities, we may >assume a gradual increase in the demand for privacy as there is a >gradual strengthening of oligarchic or plutocratic structures -- as in >turn is reflected by increasing income-differentials. But rich people are already able to avoid celebrity. If George Soros walked down the street no one would notice. Why wouldn't he prefer having Madonna to satisfy the mob's craving for excitement? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?" From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Aug 1 15:23:37 EDT 1999 Article: 13981 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Democracy v. Republic Date: 1 Aug 1999 15:11:17 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 50 Message-ID: <7o264l$ke1$1@panix.com> References: <379DF5EE.3FA21E69@deleteme.my-deja.com> <933286044snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <37A2FD9F.F374E619@zap.a2000.nl> <7nvf2j$2cv$1@panix.com> <37A42180.CC15F8EB@zap.a2000.nl> <7o1btl$gkv$1@panix.com> <37A44A45.99DE1FBC@zap.a2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net X-Trace: news.panix.com 933534678 20687 166.84.0.226 (1 Aug 1999 19:11:18 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 1 Aug 1999 19:11:18 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:13981 In <37A44A45.99DE1FBC@zap.a2000.nl> vtnet writes: >> To my mind there's something self-consciously virtuous about >> pilgrimages to the National Holocaust Museum. >For those that identify themselves as Jews, of course. The reason we have the museum on the Washington Mall is that the Holocaust is a fundamental symbol of our established religion. It is understood, not just by Jews, as a revelation of ultimate reality, as an utterly incomparable event that at the same time has overwhelming significance for all political, social and moral life. The "self-consciously virtuous" comment means that it seems to me equality, which is what the Holocaust in the end has to do with as a symbol, can't really function adequately as a religion. It's too vacant and formal. Hence the need for the cult of celebrity. >I understand that the man was well outside of the power-structure and >was just another convenient celebrity when he died of reckless >behavior. It doesn't matter that he had no special personal power. He was a symbol of bureaucratic egalitarianism made sexy and adventurous. >I feel that hedonistic tendencies are found in all of US popular >politics; but that they are mostly little more than a thin veil to >conceal the hook from the fish in the democratic pond. The justification presented for US popular politics is giving everyone what he wants, as much and as equally as possible. What people do, the effect of policies etc., naturally varies from the justification presented. That's especially true when the justification, like egalitarian hedonism, is incapable of arousing personal devotion and sacrifice. Still, what people think is the proper goal of politics is important. >Because Madonna might conceivably cause serious controversy that rubs >of in the power structure itself. And worse, she might use her >celebrity to actively oppose vested interests -- like Michael Jackson >did with his "Earth Song". Seems unlikely. Madonna wants the people to be self-indulgent and easily manipulated and so does the power structure. Where's the clash of interests that could make Madonna a steady opposition force? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous (hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?"
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