From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jan 9 05:24:18 EST 1996 Article: 6659 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Evidence FOR Racial Equality?? Date: 9 Jan 1996 04:58:27 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 48 Message-ID: <4cte83$fus@panix.com> References: <4codb8$6ig@panix.com> <4cm8kh$e3@panix.com><456239784wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <533465356wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <533465356wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes: >Trying to make [extended families and so on] general in the West would >require far more than a return to our traiditonal culture. Quite true, but history is not a series of returns to traditional culture. >the tendency has been for groups >or extended families with such standards to be eroded by exposure to >liberal values. The successful examples you give (Hasidim, Hutterites) >have developed _within_ a wider society and in antinomy to it; they >do not necessarily form a model for possible modules of a wider society >without their specific religious beliefs. Liberal values have indeed been extraordinarily powerful and pervasive, increasingly so as time goes on. The issue to my mind is whether they will lead us to the End of History, some stable final state from which no fundamental change in political and moral regime is possible, or whether their triumph will reveal internal contradictions that make a continuation of liberal society impossible. In the latter case the successor form of society will have to be based on structures capable of resisting liberal values. The values themselves, I think, will not go away but will exist as a perpetual possibility in any prosperous and technologically advanced world. So the successor structures will have to have special characteristics that make them capable of repelling seductive outside influences. Structures capable of developing within and in antinomy to some larger society ought to fit the bill. There have been a great many efforts to establish structures capable of resisting liberalism but most (for example the totalitarian state) have failed. Since a lot of possibilities have been tried, it seems a reasonable conjecture, at least more reasonable than other specific conjectures, that the future belongs to the structures that we can now see have succeeded, especially if they provide a satisfying life to those who participate in them and are growing steadily and other structures are tending to shrink. If that's right, then it doesn't much matter except as to timing whether the way the new structures will win is by serving as a model to some larger society or by multiplying, growing, and replacing what is left of that declining and shrinking society. The mammals, after all, didn't prevail by serving as a model to the dinosaurs. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Murder for a jar of red rum! From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jan 9 05:24:20 EST 1996 Article: 6661 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Evidence FOR Racial Equality?? Date: 9 Jan 1996 05:15:33 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 24 Message-ID: <4ctf85$gj4@panix.com> References: <4coe1n$78f@panix.com> <4cm8kh$e3@panix.com> <233331210wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <48222793wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <48222793wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes: > If the U.S. disappeared tomorrow would such technology no >> longer exist or no longer erode local cultural distinctions and promote >> a universal culture that emphasizes image, celebrity, sensation, and >> the rest of it? >I hate to tell you, but the answer is: in part, yes There would still >be celebrities, etc. but they would be national or local. Moreover >the universal drug of rock music might at last start to decline. Why would the celebrities be national or local? Why wouldn't the nature of the medium and the process of mass-marketing entertainment produce some other universal drug? After all, every 14-year-old in the world will still be able to turn on the tube and watch any performer anywhere. Promoters would still try to penetrate foreign markets, and those who are most successful would have the cash to put on the most dazzling presentation. I always thought the language of music and art was universal, or at least non-parochial. That's especially true if >from childhood people are exposed to foreign styles. How would the decline of U.S. imperialism stop that from happening? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Murder for a jar of red rum! From panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Tue Jan 9 22:56:30 EST 1996 Article: 67225 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: God and Slavery Date: 9 Jan 1996 01:53:47 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 86 Sender: hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4ct3dr$io2@farside.rutgers.edu> References: <4cqdkp$e2a@farside.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: farside.rutgers.edu In <4cqdkp$e2a@farside.rutgers.edu> bx962@freenet.carleton.ca (Brian RA Sterling) writes: >My first position on the issue of slavery in the Bible is >that some things that supposedly were the "word of God" >was in fact the word of Moses. Sort of, but not really. Paul told Onesimus to go back to Philemon, and he told Philemon to treat him like a brother but didn't tell him to free him. Elsewhere he tells slaves to obey their masters and doesn't tell masters to free their slaves. Quite apart from Paul's attitude toward the law of Moses his advice doesn't seem to be limited to those Christians who were Jews and thus could conceivably be considered subject to that law. My own first position is that the moral obligations Christians are subject to can have their source in social institutions that have nothing much to do with Christianity. We are obligated to pay taxes to Caesar even though the taxes are unfair and some things for Caesar uses the taxes are very bad. We are obligated to respect private property even when the property is that of an abortion clinic or the Nazi Party. At a time in which slavery was fundamental to the social order, in which so far as anyone knew it had always and everywhere existed, and in which there was in any case no one to free all the slaves, so there was no prospect of a world without slavery, it seems that slavery had to be recognized as something that was here to stay. If you can't do anything about it you have to live with it, so a slave would have been subject to a genuine obligation of obedience and his master would not have been obligated to free him because we are not in general obligated to free others from their legitimate obligations to ourselves. The alternative to recognizing slavery as legitimate would have been to reject and put oneself in a permanent state of war with society. I think the reason we are inclined to feel so strongly about slavery as such (that is, even in cases in which the master acts as Paul told Philemon to act) is that we as modern men are inclined to think it is always and everywhere wrong to bind A to obey B without his consent. That principle is the basis of modern political and moral theory. So far as I can tell, though, it is wrong; the world doesn't and can't work that way. Like Onesimus we are all stuck in a web of obligations we never choose and that could no doubt have been designed much, much better. Those obligations nonetheless in general bind us in conscience. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Murder for a jar of red rum! --- [Paul doesn't quite command Philemon to free Onesimus, but I think that's what he has in mind. He says he would have liked to keep Onesimus as a companion, but he doesn't want to do anything without Philemon's consent. So he's sending Onesimus back, in order to give Philemon the opportunity to do the right thing voluntarily. Philemon should treat Onesimus not as a slave but as a brother. And he's confident that Philemon will do even more than Paul has asked. Don't you think Paul expects Philemon to free Onesimus? What else could all those broad hints be hinting at? It's true that the early Christians weren't social or legal reformers. They were in no position to be, and they had higher priorities. Thus Paul advised people on how to live within the current system. However I think his principles would eventually have to lead to the abolition of slavery. In principle it's not contrary to the Gospel. As long as you treat your slave as a brother, spiritually equal to yourself, and as long as the slave can accept this arrangement with no resentment, you haven't violated anything in the Bible. With saints, it might work. But with real people, it's hard to see how it could. I think if Christians truly attempted to carry this out, and were honest in assessing the results, they would conclude that it is not spiritually safe for fallen people to have this degree of control over other people. And of course Christians have actually come to this conclusion. It seems clear that God did not intend to supply in the Bible direct answers to every possible question. I don't know why not. But for one reason or another it seems that God prefers to let us work some things out for ourselves. In my opinion slavery is one of those issues. I believe it is contrary to God's intention, and that he intended us to conclude that for ourselves, based on the principles present in the Bible. --clh] From panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!news2.acs.oakland.edu!nntp.coast.net!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Wed Jan 10 10:31:33 EST 1996 Article: 67330 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!news2.acs.oakland.edu!nntp.coast.net!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: God and Slavery Date: 10 Jan 1996 01:19:33 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 72 Sender: hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4cvlpl$nbp@farside.rutgers.edu> References: <4cqdkp$e2a@farside.rutgers.edu> <4ct3dr$io2@farside.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: farside.rutgers.edu In <4ct3dr$io2@farside.rutgers.edu> our esteemed moderator clh writes: >Don't >you think Paul expects Philemon to free Onesimus? What else could all >those broad hints be hinting at? I don't think that between the lines Paul was necessarily telling Philemon to free Onesimus. He was certainly asking him to forgive Onesimus for running away and any other misdeeds. He might have been hinting that Philemon should send him back with instructions to help Paul. >I think his principles would eventually have to lead to the >abolition of slavery. In principle it's not contrary to the Gospel. >As long as you treat your slave as a brother, spiritually equal to >yourself, and as long as the slave can accept this arrangement with no >resentment, you haven't violated anything in the Bible. With saints, >it might work. To say that Onesimus was Philemon's slave is simply to say that he owed Philemon an obligation of personal service. I'm not sure why treating him as a brother would have meant that the continued existence of that obligation couldn't be recognized. Family life is not necessarily egalitarian. Most people think that in general children should obey their parents and brothers should discharge legal obligations to brothers (if my brother borrows $20,000 from me for a down payment on his house he ought to repay it). Paul was quite comfortable with the notion that wives should obey their husbands. So why wouldn't Philemon have responded adequately to Paul if he had forgiven Onesimus and viewed him as previously as a permanent member of the household he ruled, as long as in ruling that household he put Onesimus's good on a par with that of the other members? Onesimus might have resented this or that, or for that matter the whole arrangement, but the same is true of all relationships. In its purest form slavery means that A feels free do anything he wants to B and treat him without limitation as a means to his own ends. I agree that from any Christian point of view that's an outrage, so Christianity naturally leads to changes in the legal forms that facilitate such conduct. There are many forms of slavery, inequality, and subordination, though, and I don't think that Christianity makes inequality of rights or requiring A to obey B an outrage. Those things are required by the necessities of social life among men as they are. I think the current view that slavery as such is an *absolute* evil results from the need modern men have to disguise inequalities and relations of subordination. That need results, I think, from the modern tendency to treat people's actual wills as the sole ultimate source of value. Having said that, I should add that I think the abolition of slavery was a very good thing that was a natural long-run consequence of Christianity. A question often asked as to slavery in the NT, though, is not whether it's better not to have slavery (it would also be better not to have armies and prisons) but whether the NT writers were right or wrong to recognize slavery as an institution that created obligations that slaves were bound in conscience to recognize and (apparently) masters could in good conscience avail themselves of. Do we or don't we know better on this point than Paul did? Mostly because at the time it was an institution that was basic to the actual organization of society and plainly there to stay I think they were right. Even if the leavening of Christianity meant that eventually it would be restricted and ultimately disappear, leaven of necessity works at its own pace. I'm not sure my view is very different from yours except for a greater reluctance to treat slavery as special in comparison with other social institutions. So excuse the long-windedness -- I took this as an occasion to develop my own thoughts. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Murder for a jar of red rum! From panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newsxfer2.itd.umich.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Thu Jan 11 15:01:29 EST 1996 Article: 67381 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newsxfer2.itd.umich.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: God and Slavery Date: 11 Jan 1996 05:59:30 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 56 Sender: hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4d2qii$e4n@farside.rutgers.edu> References: <4cqdkp$e2a@farside.rutgers.edu> <4ct3dr$io2@farside.rutgers.edu> <4cvlku$nb1@farside.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: farside.rutgers.edu mbarry@u.washington.edu (Matthew Barry) writes: [proposed analogy to slavery:] >"In so far as anyone knew, murder had always and everywhere existed. >There was no one to stop murder. So there was no prospect of a world >without murder. It seems that murder had to be recognized as something >that was here to stay. The alternative to recognizing murder as >legitimate would have been to reject and put oneself in a permanent >state of war with society." Don't see the comparison. For starters, murder is an act that in antiquity as today was universally subject to the strongest social condemnation, while slavery is an institution that in antiquity was, and so far as anyone knew always had been, fundamental to the social order. The comparison would have made more sense if instead of "murder" you had said "war", "armies", "legal compulsion", "punishment of crime", "social inequality", "relationships of superiority and subordination" or "private property". Someone might think that at some point all those things should and will disappear, and for all I know that's right, but it's not something that can be rushed and for the present you have to treat them as legitimate. I should add that not everything connected to slavery is approved by the NT. (The same of course is true of the OT but I haven't gone through it on the point.) For example in 1 Timothy 1 Paul puts those who kidnap others into slavery in the same class as people who kill their parents, murderers, adulterers, liars and perverts, and in Philemon Paul tells a master to receive back his runaway slave as a brother and forgive him what he owes or charge it to Paul himself. Can we be multicultural for a moment? The post-18th century Western attitude toward slavery hasn't been held in many other times and places. That may demonstrate that we're better than other people, but it also may simply manifest our idiosycrasies. It seems to me that what lies behind the current view that slavery as such (that is, without reference to how the slave is treated) is an *ultimate* horror is the modern view that the human will creates all value, so to subject a will to an authority to which it has not consented is to destroy utterly what gives value to the life of the person whose will it is, and is thus the moral equivalent of murder. The Christians of course taught that the life of a slave *in slavery* had value equal to that of the Emperor or the world's greatest philosopher. That is very different from the modern Western view that I think determines much of our attitude toward slavery, but it doesn't strike me as a worse view. Such a view is likely eventually to result in restrictions on the legal rights of masters against their slaves and perhaps ultimately in their abolition, but in the meantime it makes getting rid of those rights seem far from the most important thing to which one can devote oneself. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Murder for a jar of red rum! From panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Sat Jan 13 07:39:03 EST 1996 Article: 67484 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Physicist finds God in cosmos Date: 12 Jan 1996 01:36:45 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 49 Sender: hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4d4vht$jes@farside.rutgers.edu> References: <4d2qhj$e48@farside.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: farside.rutgers.edu erwin@math.human.nagoya-u.ac.jp (Erwin T. Morales) writes: >According to a newspaper column, a book entitled > _The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God > and the Resurrection of the Dead_ >written by Frank J. Tipler, a mathematical physicist, >has come out. According to the author, this book purports > "to show that the central claim of > Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that > these claims are straightforward deductions of the > laws of physics as we now understand them. I have > been forced into these conclusions by the > inexorable logic of my own special branch of > physics." > >I haven't read the book for the simple reason that I >do not know where to get it. If anybody knows where and >how to get it, I'll appreciate his/her sending me an >e-mail. Also, if somebody is familiar with the book, >could you comment on it? I read it. It's a speculation based on various themes in cosmology, computer science, artificial intelligence and so on. The translation of theological concepts into the concepts used in those sciences is at least thought-provoking. It does in fact seem to hang together as a scientific theory. I don't think it'll do anything for anyone's spiritual life, but you can't have everything. As an aside, he includes some extremely funny comments on "sex in the hereafter", I suppose provoked by questions from physics grad students, in which he argues that there will be such a thing, and since everyone in the Tipler scheme of things will get his own universe in which all his wishes will be realized every man will be able to have the most beautiful woman *logically conceivable*. He then mentions a principle that the intensity of a physiological reaction increases as the logarithm of its rarity, and uses it to demonstrate mathematically that one's response the most beautiful woman logically conceivable would be 10,000 times as intense as to a woman who was merely in the top 10%. Putting aside its validity in all details or even as a whole, it's an interesting effort. I got my copy from the Brooklyn public library, which doesn't help you much since you're in Japan. If you have web access there are a couple of booksellers with web sites you can visit, search databases of available books, and order what you find. Let me know by email if you're interested and I'll send you the https. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Murder for a jar of red rum! From panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Sat Jan 13 07:39:04 EST 1996 Article: 67485 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: The Political Christian Date: 12 Jan 1996 01:36:48 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 28 Sender: hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4d4vi0$jeu@farside.rutgers.edu> References: <4d2qif$e4m@farside.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: farside.rutgers.edu tpatters@gpu1.srv.ualberta.ca (Timothy Patterson) writes: >What would a chritian state look like? (setting aside the question of >its possibility - let's deal with that later). Christian politics like Christian anything else develops as Christianity grows within the life of a people. It can take different forms, so it's hard to specify in general just what a Christian state would look like. Nonetheless, some general comments: 1. A Christian state would foster or at least not undermine Christian life and practice. For example, a state with a legal system that in fact tended to make people uncontrolled, contentious, grasping, faithless, and self-seeking would not be a Christian state. The Christian Left and the Christian Right each claim that the other's favored system has that effect, which I suppose shows that both are Christian. 2. It seems to me that Christianity is something that should characterize first each of us individually, then the face-to-face associations and communities we belong to, and last of all large-scale formal organizations. If that's right, then a Christian state would tend toward decentralization -- it wouldn't drain life from the extremities to the center. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Murder for a jar of red rum! From panix!not-for-mail Sun Jan 14 09:06:19 EST 1996 Article: 6725 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Evidence FOR Racial Equality?? Date: 14 Jan 1996 09:02:03 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 48 Message-ID: <4db2cr$402@panix.com> References: <4ctf85$gj4@panix.com> <4coe1n$78f@panix.com> <4cm8kh$e3@panix.com> <233331210wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <48222793wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <726352393wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <726352393wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes: >But if the U.S. sank into civil war and Hollywood stopped producing, >the local producers would recapture their markets. A parallel > is the British capture of German markets for industrial goods >in World War I, which only massive inflation in Germany was able to reverse. It's an interesting issue. There's always a market for novelties in pop entertainment, and if American novelties disappeared why shouldn't others arise? The growth of unipop culture might slow down at least for a while and there'd be some regrouping, but I don't see why it wouldn't continue. Apart from fads for foreign performers that would leave their mark on popular taste, copying is always easier than invention. If Greek pop musicians for example wanted to add something different to their acts the easiest way to do it would be to mix in something that already exists abroad. Cultural influence tends to follow political power, but it's not one-way. The Romans spread their language to the uncivilized West, but Hellenistic culture and oriental religions spread everywhere. Even now we have the Italians contributing to unipop clothing styles, the Brits contributing to unipop music (not just the Beatles, but other groups as well, not to mention Tom Jones), the Japanese contributing to cartoons (not just the Power Rangers, Hello Kitty for example is very popular over here), the Chinese, Japanese, Italians and even the English (Arthur Treacher's) contributing to fast-food, and so on. Regional differences are declining within countries and within Europe as a whole. Why should that change stop and why shouldn't there be increasing uniformity on a larger scale as well? Once Greek pop music had washed out local styles in Greece and Hindi films and film music had done the same service for South Asia you'd have a smaller number of regional centers of pop culture, each less distinctive than what it had replaced. Why should those centers be eternal? If America disappeared people in (e.g.) Asia would probably imitate Europop instead of Ameripop because Europe would then become the model of having lots of money and being able to do whatever you feel like doing. Cultural anti-Americanism seems to me similar to the cultural anti-semitism of an earlier age. Like the Jews the Americans (or at least major American institutions) because of their situation have become leaders in social and cultural trends that a lot of people find destructive. Concern about the trends might be justified, but I think it's an error to think that they depend on particular groups of people with whom they are associated. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!hookup!solaris.cc.vt.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Mon Jan 15 14:37:08 EST 1996 Article: 67612 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!hookup!solaris.cc.vt.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Physicist finds God in cosmos Date: 15 Jan 1996 01:38:52 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 67 Sender: hedrick@heidelberg.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4dcsps$7k6@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> References: <4d2qhj$e48@farside.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: heidelberg.rutgers.edu In <4d2qhj$e48@farside.rutgers.edu> erwin@math.human.nagoya-u.ac.jp (Erwin T. Morales) writes: >According to a newspaper column, a book entitled > _The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God > and the Resurrection of the Dead_ >written by Frank J. Tipler, a mathematical physicist, >has come out. >Also, if somebody is familiar with the book, >could you comment on it? In my previous response the only specifics I gave had to do with a quirky theory about sex in the afterlife. You probably were looking for something less flippant, so here are some other things in the book: 1. As I recall, his theory is based on some sort of extreme mathematical Platonism or Pythagoreanism that holds that all that exists is numbers, or since this is the 1990s, computer programs. 2. Every possible computer program like every possible mathematical structure of any kind exists by logical necessity. For a computer program to correspond to a world that physically exists it is necessary for it to contain something that can be interpreted as consciousness observing the rest of the program. Somehow that's connected to the collapse of the Schroedinger wave equation when an observation is made. The science of artificial intelligence tells us what features of a computer program satisfy that condition. 3. The observation of an event is later than the event, so for the condition in 2. to be satisfied, for every time t in a physically existing universe (that is, a computer program that corresponds to and by virtue of 1. is identical with a universe that physically exists) conscious life must exist at time t+1. Thus, conscious life as a phenomenon must never end for the universe to exist. I think this is what he calls the Strong Anthropic Principle. 4. He then goes on to argue that as the universe collapses (in symmetry to the Big Bang) its computational power must increase without limit in magnitude and integration. He refers to the infinite unified computational power toward which the universe is tending as the Omega Point and identifies it with God. ("I will be what I will be.") 5. Since there will be all this computational power available just before the universe reaches its point of maximum density in the Big Crunch, it will become trivially easy to resurrect everyone (that is, to emulate everyone with a subprogram of the universal computer program) and give everyone lots of computing power to emulate the realization of all their wishes. Since that would be a nice thing to do it will be done, at least for people who have nice wishes that it would be good to realize. Note that while I say "emulate" for Tipler there is no distinction between an adequate computer emulation of a thing and the thing itself. Also note that while objectively this will all happen just before the Big Crunch the increasing computational power will make it possible to give the resurrected people an infinite number of experiences before then so subjectively they will experience eternal life. 6. One thing that makes the foregoing a physical theory is that predictions can be drawn from it, such as the prediction that the universe will in fact collapse and also that conscious life will spread throughout the universe before a particular point in its evolution. He says that one such prediction having to do with the mass of a particle has been borne out. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Murder for a jar of red rum! From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jan 16 07:55:03 EST 1996 Article: 6737 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Canada: Crowns & Sceptres Date: 16 Jan 1996 05:10:09 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 48 Message-ID: <4dfti1$g67@panix.com> References: <4ccnqf$vir@noc.tor.hookup.net> <4cpjaf$hp3@news.mainelink.net> <4cpria$65e@panix.com> <4dc628$abl@arther.castle.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Keywords: none drotov@castle.net (dimitri rotov) writes: > I have in my hands the massive catalog of an art show called "From > Gulag to Glasnost" and the striking thing about it is that even > given a Soviet repression of modernist art idioms, the variety of > these idioms, the practice evident in their execution, the > channeling of so much expression into and through these idioms, makes > it look as though we are dealing with an utterly irrepressible > world force. Modern art is so depressing. I went to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) here in New York recently, for the first time in several years. They have one of the great collections of 20th century art, but it's just not as good as what was done in the past. Most often it's a fragment of what art has been -- someone with talent discovers a new way to handle one aspect of what goes into a painting and then does some paintings and that's what they're about. So what? The 20th c. art galleries in the Metropolitan Museum are an embarassment. Huge canvases, not much content, I suppose the fact they're big means they're important. There are some talented painters today, Jennifer Bartlett, David Hockney and some bizarre German guy whose name I forget are some I've seen fairly recently, but so far as I can tell nothing remotely in the league of (say) Degas. > An aspect of that force seems to be the universal > pop idiom that expresses itself through products that overwhelm the > local and particular. How can Philip Roth or Salman Rushdie > (or that loathesome Canadian, Robertson Davies) be international best > sellers? In Germany (where I've seen their books), Japan, anywhere? > Mere marketing? I don't think it's just marketing. You could spin out lots of explanations based on civilizational cycles, the spiritual devolution of Western man, the hypertrophy of rationalized formal institutions in social life, the technological elimination of the human significance of locality, etc., etc., etc. I'm probably not the best person to talk about the particular subject though since I read almost no post-WWII fiction. (I thought _The Golden Notebook_ was a good book, and besides it had the virtue of making me happy I was American, male and right-wing, and I've liked a couple of Russian novels.) -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Wed Jan 17 05:46:58 EST 1996 Article: 67806 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Physicist finds God in cosmos Date: 17 Jan 1996 03:16:23 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 53 Sender: hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4dib8n$m92@farside.rutgers.edu> References: <4d2qhj$e48@farside.rutgers.edu> <4dcsps$7k6@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <4dfcg4$4s8@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: farside.rutgers.edu In <4dfcg4$4s8@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> jstott@poly.phys.cwru.edu (Jonathan Stott) writes: >>4. He then goes on to argue that as the universe collapses (in > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >This is not a given. I know several people who believe this will never >happen (\Omega = 1 for any cosmologists out there). As he mentions. Thus, we get one testable prediction from his theory, that the amount and distribution of mass in the universe and its other characteristics are such that it will collapse. In fact the theory demands more, that it won't start collapsing too soon for conscious life first to have spread throughout the universe from a single point (presumably earth). I think that demand is at least part of what led him to predict that a subatomic particle (don't remember which one) would have a mass in a certain range, a prediction he says was later borne out by experiments at CERN. It's a while since I read the book, though, and I'm no physicist, so I may be wrong about the line of thought that led him to the prediction. >>He >>says that one such prediction having to do with the mass of a particle >>has been borne out. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >A true physical theory needs TESTABLE predictions. "The Physics of >Immortality" is just speculation. Contrary to what is stated, the mass >of NO particle has ever been predicted from first principles (mass >itself may be something of an accident, hence the search for a Higgs >particle). Who said anything about first principles? He has a theory of what the universe is like some aspect of which doesn't work unless a particle has a mass in a certain range. He attempts to get an article making the prediction published, the article is turned down, and the mass comes out in the predicted range. How has he failed to act as a physicist? >I will add, though, that the >Schroedinger wave equation implies nothing about conciousness despite >what some writers would like to imply. Are you saying that a theory hypothesizing a relation between the two is necessarily invalid? How has that been demonstrated? >It may be interested reading, but physics (it seems) it is not. You may be right, but you haven't given me a reason to think so. I can see that it's extremely speculative, and I realize that most extremely speculative theories turn out to be false, but "not physics" seems a stronger claim. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From panix!news.cloud9.net!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!newsserver.jvnc.net!newsserver2.jvnc.net!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Sat Jan 20 20:45:35 EST 1996 Article: 67937 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!news.cloud9.net!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!newsserver.jvnc.net!newsserver2.jvnc.net!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: The Political Christian Date: 18 Jan 1996 01:04:35 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 41 Sender: hedrick@heidelberg.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4dkntj$3cu@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> References: <4d2qif$e4m@farside.rutgers.edu> <4dfccq$97j@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: heidelberg.rutgers.edu SUZANNE FORTIN writes: >Jesus did not bring us an ideology, but salvation. However, it is >clear that he favoured the poor and oppressed types. I feel therefore >that a Christian should above all try to serve the temporal needs of >all, but especially the poor and oppressed. If he wanted us above all to serve temporal needs, it seems he wouldn't have said to take no thought for the morrow. >A state should make it its business to make quite sure that the poor >have all they need. Does that apply to everyone who's short of money regardless of how he got to be that way, or only to the poor and oppressed? Paul seems to make a distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. (1 Timothy 5.) If he was right to do that, it seems that the state and other big bureaucratic organizations would have trouble making the distinction, so rather than treat assisting poor people as the business of the state Christians would do better to promote and live by an ethic in which people help those in need with whom they have some personal connection and so some way of knowing. Another point is that if the state makes quite sure that the poor have all they need then poor people won't be responsible for supporting themselves and their families. Regardless of what they do they'll have all they need. I'm not sure it's good to deprive people of practical responsibility for themselves and those close to them. It might solve immediate problems so but in politics the long-term effects of laws and institutions is more important. It seems to me a mistake to think of the state as a good vehicle for moral life. The state is necessarily ignorant, clumsy and unresponsive, and since it has more guns and money than anyone else and can tell people what to do it tends to displace other actors. Since Christian life has to do with our actions arrangements that reduce the importance of our actions at some point become troubling. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jan 25 10:27:26 EST 1996 Article: 40 of alt.thought.southern Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.thought.southern Subject: Re: Georgia Flag Lawsuit Dismissed Date: 25 Jan 1996 07:57:49 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 17 Message-ID: <4e7uod$bia@panix.com> References: <4cvhgv$8t0@news-e2a.gnn.com> <4d3n9i$k24@firehose.mindspring.com> <4d5fj7$jfl@huron.eel.ufl.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In anne t writes: >The people up north have prblems and challenges of their >own.....no offense Bud, but frankly we don't give a damn. Not true, really. The image of the ignorant and bigoted southerner is part of what defines northerners to themselves. For an example of northern views of the south you might look up the recent (fairly recent -- last 6 months or so) article in _New York_ magazine about Newt Gingrich's home district. True hate literature. For northern attitudes toward the Battle Flag you might look up some news stories on the southern girl who put one up at Harvard as well as some of the comments in this very newsgroup. (I assume that in this age of rampant CD-ROM vague references to articles are sufficient.) -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: A tin mug for a jar of gum, Nita. From panix!news.columbia.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!news.msfc.nasa.gov!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!nntp.coast.net!lll-winken.llnl.gov!venus.sun.com!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Thu Jan 25 10:27:30 EST 1996 Article: 68343 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!news.columbia.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!news.msfc.nasa.gov!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!nntp.coast.net!lll-winken.llnl.gov!venus.sun.com!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: The Political Christian Date: 23 Jan 1996 22:59:36 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 54 Sender: hedrick@heidelberg.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4e4ar8$g3e@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> References: <4d2qif$e4m@farside.rutgers.edu> <4d4vi0$jeu@farside.rutgers.edu> <4dvbls$d3d@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: heidelberg.rutgers.edu tpatters@gpu5.srv.ualberta.ca (A Walters) writes: >I suppose the Christian view of the soul would incorporate at least two >elements: (1) It's fallen nature and (2) some recognition of its >reflection of the image of God. Both of which I imagine will be >important in the construction of our pc (although I'm not sure how >yet). >To keep it simple, let's start with a community of only absolute >necessity. That is, one that takes care of only the base necessities of >our individual (food, shelter, clothing, etc.). Presumably, he would >get together with other individuals because it would be easier to meet >these needs as a group. So let's picture this community of perfect >harmony, where individuals have everything in common, and each >individual realizes that the good of the group is always the most >important consideration (I know the temptation is to say, oh, you mean >communism. No, I don't, if you mean some sort of Marxist-Leninist- >whateverist that we know of as communism. For the sake of the >examination I suggest we forget about modern political ideologies). So >what's right and what's wrong with the picture I painted of this pc? >Would it work? I think the picture fails to take into account the soul's fallen nature. Harmony can't be assumed (besides, people won't be satisfied with absolute necessities). Therefore there must be some way of assigning and enforcing rights and responsibilities. There's no perfect way of doing that. The two obvious methods are to define rights and responsibilities through someone's conscious decision or to accept the patterns of those things that arise and become conventional in the course of ordinary social life. The first method corresponds to a society ordered and controlled by an activist bureaucracy and the second to one based on a combination of tradition and the market. People can and do argue forever about which method is better; basically, the Left likes the first and the Right the second. You could try to base society on Divine Law known through revelation, but I don't think Christianity has any such law that's specific enough to do the job. People who do take that approach are usually called right-wingers because what they view as Divine Law other people tend to think of as a bunch of stuff that grew up over time. You could also have an activist bureaucracy controlling society for the sake of things other than the things the Left cares about. Nazi society and the internal governance of religious orders would be examples. Finally, you could have a traditional/free market society that in concept is based on religion but in which religious leaders do not have direct political power. Until recently American society could have been interpreted that way, and it's my own favorite form of society. To tie it to your scheme, it deals with man's fallen nature by decentralizing power while also recognizing in each man the image of God. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From panix!news.denver.eti.net!imci3!imci5!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Fri Jan 26 20:04:30 EST 1996 Article: 68493 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!news.denver.eti.net!imci3!imci5!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: women priests Date: 26 Jan 1996 02:47:39 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 35 Sender: hedrick@heidelberg.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4ea0ur$mln@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> References: <4aofqc$3uu@farside.rutgers.edu> <4blksn$h6j@farside.rutgers.edu> <4c7qfu$h1o@farside.rutgers.edu> <4cd8oj$8i0@farside.rutgers.edu> <4cfopp$dpq@farside.rutgers.edu> <4cqduj$e9b@farside.rutgers.edu> <4dcsrq$7d8@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <4dib88$m90@farside.rutgers.edu> <4e4avl$hgn@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: heidelberg.rutgers.edu In <4e4avl$hgn@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> Robert J Palmer writes: >the conditional acceptance of groups of people by the >'tradition of the church'. Not sure what this means, really. If 99.9% of all Christians are not priests, specifically 99.8% of all men and 100% of all women, does the 0.2% difference mean that men are unconditionally accepted and women are not? >Tell us exactly what Gospel amd Acts scriptures >are the basis for the church's claim that Christ taught the Apostles the >'tradition of the church'? If Christ taught the Apostles something he wanted passed on to others, then it seems he wanted to establish a tradition of the church. Do you disagree? Do you think the Epistles belong in the Bible or should the canon have stopped with the Gospels and Acts? If you *are* willing to turn a few more pages in the Bible you'll find that on several occasions (e.g. 2 Thessalonians 2:13) Paul told the churches to hold fast to the teachings that have been passed on to them. >the ascetic, celibate. and ugly minds of the early fathers and doctors of >the church ... My Christ taught acceptance of all people On at least one occasion Christ even taught that those who use abusive language are in danger of the hell fire. Your language suggests a readiness to distinguish your Christ from other people's Christ, though. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: A tin mug for a jar of gum, Nita. From panix!not-for-mail Sun Jan 28 05:03:29 EST 1996 Article: 48 of alt.thought.southern Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.thought.southern Subject: Re: Dave, You Bore Me! Date: 27 Jan 1996 17:16:20 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 15 Message-ID: <4ee87k$kpn@panix.com> References: <4dshcg$4cb@brickbat.mindspring.com> <4dt3qe$110@huron.eel.ufl.edu> <4ea3lq$chj@huron.eel.ufl.edu> <31096123.388533440@news.esinet.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <31096123.388533440@news.esinet.net> shack@esinet.net (Shack Toms) writes: >But I agree with you that public schools should be abolished as a >violation of the first amendment. We can have the funding, but >we shouldn't be imposing an ideology. We need vouchers that are >independent of government strings. Not to get off the ever-fascinating topic of "Dave, you bore me", but it seems that vouchers independent of govt. strings would be very hard to distinguish from a large (maybe $5000/kid) family allowance. Is that what you have in mind? Is that what John C. Calhoun and Jeff Davis would have wanted? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From jk Sat Jan 13 08:11:06 1996 Subject: Re: Let me try a re-entry To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 08:11:06 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199601130113.UAA03289@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Jan 12, 96 08:12:26 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1081 Status: RO > Regarding the use of the word "day," I think--though I am not >positive--that by Aquinas' time it was old hat for theologians to >assert that "day" didn't necessarily mean 24 hours. The >fundamentalists were by no means the first to think about this. In _City of God_, Bk. XI, Ch. 6, Augustine says "What kind of days these are is difficult or even impossible for us to imagine, to say nothing of describing them." For starters, there wasn't a sun at the time. In the next chapter he suggests that "day" might refer to a stage in the growing self-understanding of God's creation (i.e., the understanding of the angels of what God has made). >it was my impression that NO ECUSA seminary weathered the theological >storms of the past decades. I mean, they all have to give lip service >to female priests, don't they? Didn't Nashotah House hold the line? That's what people seemed to be saying on the ANGLICAN list when I used to subscribe. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Murder for a jar of red rum! From jk Sun Jan 21 05:46:45 1996 Subject: Neoconservatism (fwd) To: neocon-l@listserv.syr.edu Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 05:46:45 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1073 Status: RO > Reply-To: Chris Stamper Our esteemed listowner should tweak his listserv so that the messages it distributes give the list address in the reply-to line. That's unless he wants it this way, of course. In the meantime list members may want to make sure their replies go to the list address rather than simply using the reply function of their mail readers. > What is neoconservatism? The outlook of neoconservatives. Neocons (so say I) are ex-Democrats whose most fundamental intellectual loyalties have not changed. So they accept for example a technological attitude toward the human world, that is to say a belief that the notion of an elite of social scientists and other intellectuals deciding what the world should be like and manipulating institutions to bring about the chosen goal is a sensible notion. It's true that they've discovered that there are limits to social policy, but it remains their fundamental political conception. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From jk Sun Jan 21 15:33:21 1996 Subject: Re: Neoconservatism (fwd) To: neocon-l@listserv.syr.edu Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 15:33:21 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1445 Status: RO Francesca Murphy writes: > It is true that, here in Great Britain, the privatization programme > of the 1980s has ended with most of these industries being run by > unelected committees called QUANGOs. Is that what Kalb is getting > at? Actually, by "neoconservatives" I meant a specific group of writers called by that name in America, for example those associated with _Commentary_, _The Public Interest_, _First Things_, and _The New Criterion_. Your comments suggest that the trends with which I associate those writers are not only American. > How could it have been avoided? I dunno. I suppose if the govt. had actually let go they would have ended up being run by boards elected by shareholders, but I don't know enough about the situation to say. > The attempt to run the > National Health Serivice as a business has spawned an industry > of 'health care management'. Does this mean that every time > conservatives get together to eliminate some form of statism > it pops up elsewhere as (more efficient) corporatism, > and thus that the ineradicable evil is not leftism, which all > neocons dislike, but utilitarianism or managerialism? Centralized managerial utilitarianism, I would say. Centralized managerial utilitarians with tender souls become leftists, which is why all the mainstream churches are leftist. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From jk Sun Jan 21 18:20:42 1996 Subject: Re: Neoconservatism (fwd) To: neocon-l@listserv.syr.edu Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 18:20:42 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1263 Status: RO > 1) establishment buffers - patricians who want to run the Welfare > state. They despise people in trade, grocers, and their daughters. > > 2) Intellectual Constitutional monarchists, who want a strong > moral framework, created by voluntary associations, and very little > government. They are about nine people in the UK who share this > position. You don't have to be an egg-head but it helps. > > 3) A-moral individualists. No state interference in > anything, from coal-mining to pot smoking. > > Which of the three comes closest to American stye 'neo-conservatives'? They are closest to your 1). They tend to be people who started off accepting the welfare state and now as always want to be part of an elite running things. Many of them have been pushed by intellectual analysis showing that the managerial state and its social policies don't work in the direction of 2) or 3), but it's hard for them to put their hearts into it. Some of them have gone so far as to join the Republican Party, the place where people in trade, grocers and their daughters are mostly to be found in this country, but they don't feel socially happy there. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From jk Sun Jan 21 21:26:19 1996 Subject: What is a Neo-conservative (fwd) To: neocon-l@listserv.syr.edu Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 21:26:19 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 648 Status: RO > When we combine these > sentiments with the Grand Republic of Lincoln and Roosevelt, Reagan and Clinton > ,we have a force that can renew the American dream. Personal Responsibility, > vitalized local communities and openness to a transcendent power are the core > of the neo-conservative movement. Do you think the lists in your first and second sentences go together? Also, so far as I can tell all neocons are American nationalists or cosmopolitans and most of them think openness to a transcendent power is just great for other people. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From jk Mon Jan 22 17:30:16 1996 Subject: Re: New Whitewater language To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 17:30:16 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199601222209.RAA31150@mail-e1a.gnn.com> from "Thomas Darby" at Jan 22, 96 05:10:57 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 527 Status: RO > this book about the socialist concept of > using the whole of society to raise a child--she thinks it's *caring* She really doesn't see the difference between a village and a childcare bureaucracy as a setting for growing up. There's something about the combination of social science and current legal theory that numbs the brain. Who was the Frenchman who said that in the modern world stupidity had learned to think? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From jk Tue Jan 23 07:23:20 1996 Subject: Re: Paul's catching up notes To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 07:23:20 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199601230619.BAA22617@mail-e1a.gnn.com> from "Thomas Darby" at Jan 23, 96 01:20:19 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1191 Status: RO > PH>The Gospel was specifically designed > for the simple. Christian liturgy was never supposed to become like a pagan > mystery play. > The Gospel was > written in Koine for the very reason that whatever dialect you had, you also > spoke Koine. The intent, of course, was to reach as many people as possible > about Christ. The language was the ordinary language, but what was preached was foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews. Presumably the liturgy expressing that mystery was never anything that could blend in with daily life as understood by the average Greek or Jew. It really was something different -- otherwise, why have it? I suspect evangelism depends not on assimilating the Church as much as possible to ordinary mainstream life in America in 1996, but in showing dissatisfied people a better way of life of which the Church and its liturgy are part. If people are convinced it's a better way of life the fact that it includes things they don't immediately understand will I think make it more and not less likely they will take it seriously. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From jk Tue Jan 23 09:22:59 1996 Subject: Re: Hayek and the rise of neo-liberalism To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 09:22:59 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960122130701.25820b96@ucrac1.ucr.edu> from "GREG RANSOM" at Jan 22, 96 01:07:01 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 719 Status: RO > So we have a world-wide neo-liberal movement headed by Hayek, > and a domestic neo-conservative movement led by Kristol. Any thoughts > on what the relationship between these two movements might be? I dunno. The paleolibertarians are the domestic political (micro)movement that most emphasizes Hayek, and they hate, hate, *HATE* the neocons and all their works and ways. One possible explanation is that neoconservatism has a very large historical, sociological and personal component that makes it hard for it to be theoretically clear and consistent, and Hayek's long suit is clarity and consistency. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cain: A maniac! From jk Tue Jan 23 15:52:35 1996 Subject: Re: Paul's catching up notes To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 15:52:35 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960123200056_76752.3721_EHS110-1@CompuServe.COM> from "Paul K. Hubbard" at Jan 23, 96 03:00:56 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1627 Status: RO > I suspect that the Lord's Suppers that > St. Paul presided over - while profoundly reverent - had little of the "baroque" > trappings that have acquired over the centuries - in fact - it probably fit very > nicely into the everyday, marketplace landscape of metropolitan Corinth - it > probably involved common bread and comon wine - and probably a simple, common > meal too. I don't doubt it. Nonetheless something extraordinarily special was going on that had little to do with the marketplace as the marketplace was understood by the average Corinthian. The question today I think is how to make it easier to experience the Eucharist as special. In the end the Gospel is to penetrate and transform the world, but it starts off as foolishness, something so at odds with conventional ways of understanding and doing things as to be incomprehensible. > It is true that St. Paul speaks of the mystery nature of the Gospel, but it not > now a mystery - having been revealed. St. Paul was careful to contrast the > Gospel with hellenistic gnosticisms ( which maintains that only the initiates > can know). We see through a glass darkly, so it still has essential elements of mystery for all of us. It is true that there is no esoteric teaching, and ritual certainly shouldn't have the purpose of making it harder for the uninitiated to figure out what's going on. (As an historical matter, though, during Roman times didn't catechumens withdraw between the Liturgy of the Word and the Eucharist?) -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: A tin mug for a jar of gum, Nita. From jk Wed Jan 24 11:13:39 1996 Subject: My fave neocons To: neocon-l@listserv.syr.edu Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 11:13:39 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1403 Status: RO I thought I'd post a list of neocon people and publications I like: 1. _The Public Interest_. Social science is a dirty business, but someone's got to do it. Also, they have the self-confidence occasionally to publish pieces supporting points of view that really *aren't* respectable, such as "A Nation of Cowards" (a salute to the spirit of the 2nd Amendment). 2. _The New Criterion_. Conservatives often talk about the cultural war but not nearly so much about the specifics of culture. That looks bad -- it might even lead some people to suspect they don't really care much about tradition, culture, things that can't be reduced to economics and power politics, etc. _TNC_ makes a start toward filling the gap. 3. Charles Murray. He's good on the dialectical attack on the managerial welfare state: if you accept its goals and methods, after painstaking study you will find that the best way for it to further its announced ends would be for it to abolish itself. Also, there are indications in his writings that after the managerial welfare state has refuted itself a new higher theory consistent with paleo thought is possible. Although he can catch sight of that Promised Land from the mountaintop, as a social scientist he cannot himself enter it. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: A tin mug for a jar of gum, Nita. From jk Fri Jan 26 19:49:31 1996 Subject: Re: liberty and tradition To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 19:49:31 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960126144217.25830dab@ucrac1.ucr.edu> from "GREG RANSOM" at Jan 26, 96 02:42:17 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1139 Status: RO > I blame, in that > respect, the psychologists, the psychoanalysts, as much as anybody else. > They are really the source of this conception of a permissive education, of > a contemp for traditional rules and it is traditional rules which sucure > our freedom. Is that fair? Liberalism of any kind starts with rights and goes on to say people have a right to do what they want consistent with a rational system that preserves the same right for everyone else. Unfortunately, traditional rules usually aren't clearly defensible as necessary components of a rational system of freedom. They may be necessary presuppositions of the practical approximation of such a system, but that's something quite different. As a consequence, liberalism, which in theory gives the presumption of validity to the desire to do what you feel like doing but in practice depends on non-liberal rules that restrain such desires, ends by cutting its own throat. It doesn't need psychologists or psychoanalysts to do the job for it. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: A tin mug for a jar of gum, Nita. From jk Fri Jan 26 20:03:51 1996 Subject: Re: ACC/Liturgy To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 20:03:51 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199601270049.TAA02800@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Jan 26, 96 07:37:55 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 681 Status: RO > Everything points to something else--the > whole universe pulses with meaning. And because reality is > incarnational, we wear ashes on our foreheads, we sprinkle things > with holy water, we burn incense--knowing all the while that all > these things are meaningful only because they are haunted by > their Creator. Everything points to something else, but the statement that reality is incarnational sounds like it goes too far. There is a radical distinction between God and his creation. That's how it was possible for the Fall to take place. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: A tin mug for a jar of gum, Nita. From jk Sat Jan 27 05:23:31 1996 Subject: Re: liberty and tradition To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 05:23:31 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960126173630.2583452a@ucrac1.ucr.edu> from "GREG RANSOM" at Jan 26, 96 05:36:30 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3951 Status: RO > Hayek denies just what you suggest. Liberalism [in the sense > of the use of this work in political theory and in Europe] depends on > the following of negative rules of just conduct -- _liberal_ restraints > on behavior according to negative restrictions on conduct -- and this > is the very definition of liberal liberty provided by Locke, and Hayek, > and is found in different forms also in Kant and Madison, among others. > And both Locke and Hayek define liberal liberty as exactly _not_ the > presumption of the validity of the desire to do what you feel like doing. Liberalism (I think today's liberalism is a legitimate development of classical liberalism) does indeed recognize its dependence on negative rules of just conduct -- _liberal_ restraints. That's as true in Rawls as it is in Locke. We were talking however of traditional restraints rather than liberal restraints. The question to my mind is whether liberal restraints are sufficiently concrete and sufficiently rooted in human nature to support a social order. If they're not then it appears that liberalism depends on something (nonliberal traditional restraints) that it can't recognize as valid and therefore undermines. It seems to me that liberal restraints require fairly specific justification in accordance with liberal principles. Locke starts by saying that the goal of social order is preservation of property. Property, though, is stuff with which you can do anything you want so long as you don't interfere with other men's equal ability to do what they want with their property. Locke also thinks legitimate social rules are best understood by imagining men coming together and making a contract to secure their property. Contracts, especially hypothetical contracts, don't seem to impose obligations that aren't rather clearly required by their purpose. Hence my belief that liberalism naturally tends over time to undermine everything that it (taking Mills and Rawls as liberals) in fact has undermined. Liberalism demands that all social rules tend to maximize a man's ability to do what he wishes with his property (that's what protection of property means). In a later formulation that seems to me legitimate, it demands that rules maximize a person's ability to do what (s)he wishes within a maximal socially-defined sphere of autonomy. Social rules that don't clearly do that become hard to defend and therefore come to seem illegitimate. Part of Locke's purpose, I thought, was to provide a theory that by justifying certain forms of compulsion allows us to say that compulsion that doesn't fit that justification is illegitimate. > Liberalism in the sense understood by Locke, and 19th century liberals, > placed no such irrational and unmotivated demands of justification on the > negative rules of moral conduct -- whose role in the generation of a > great and good society were coming to be understood by Smith, Burke, Hume, > Menger and others -- and which have been most fully explained by Hayek > in the modern period. Should Burke be understood as a liberal? He spoke that language sometimes, but as a politician he naturally spoke the language people were used to hearing. His notion of the social contract was that it is a contract in all virtues, beneficial customs, etc., embracing all generations and part of the great chain of being created by God. He assimilates the social contract to the natural moral order. Liberals do the reverse. I should say, though, that I've never read Hayek. Does he point to paleoBurkean elements in Locke? Locke's discussion of the family doesn't seem to suggest an approach to traditional values that's at all Burkean. Also, the point of his theory was to establish politics on a clear rational basis which wasn't a purpose with which Burke had much sympathy. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: A tin mug for a jar of gum, Nita. From jk Sat Jan 27 14:43:23 1996 Subject: Re: Gendered communication To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 14:43:23 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199601271709.MAA04028@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Jan 27, 96 11:56:33 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1171 Status: RO > The older I > get, the more I think that the real problem that "ordinary" people have with > the gospel is not the language it's expressed in, but the fact that we don't > want to hear a message which we understand all too well. Could part of the problem be all the alternate ways of talking about things propagated through TV, newspapers, the educational system, etc., etc., etc.? The languages of consumerism, careerism, therapy, political resentment, humanitarian idealism, empirical social science, etc. can't easily express the Gospel but they're what we're all awash in. We jump from choice to choice and never stick with anything long enough to find a way of talking about things that touches what we care about most deeply. Certainly our environment doesn't teach us anything of the sort. So people hear and don't hear the Gospel because their training does not permit words to touch their hearts. They hear it, but as one possibility among others, and one that's been debunked because in an age of inclusiveness it claims exclusivity. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From jk Sat Jan 27 17:21:05 1996 Subject: Re: liberty and tradition To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 17:21:05 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960127132934.2583588a@ucrac1.ucr.edu> from "GREG RANSOM" at Jan 27, 96 01:29:34 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 319 Status: RO > the Americans who fought a war of independence based on > the liberal principles of the English Constitution. Doesn't the Declaration of Independence go beyond what's in the English constitution? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From jk Sat Jan 27 17:30:48 1996 Subject: Re: liberty and tradition To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 17:30:48 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960127133613.2583588a@ucrac1.ucr.edu> from "GREG RANSOM" at Jan 27, 96 01:36:13 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1353 Status: RO > I think we can identify Rawls as part of the false and > unteneble liberal tradition of the French Revolution and of > Mill, Hobhouse, and Keynes -- a constructivistic vision > of liberalism with a vision of justice based not on the justice > of individual conduct, but on a factually untenable vision > of social justice, premised on a God's eye view of the possibility > of watching the social process and controlling the results of > that process from the top-down, as opposed to the bottom-up vision > of a just and good great society envisioned by the true liberals > who founded the American nation, and such English Constitutional liberals > as Hume, Locke, and Burke. But Locke's social contract is a single event that produces clear principles valid for all societies. That doesn't seem consistent with a bottom-up approach. My view is based on my reading of Locke, Burke, and Rawls and also on mainstream modern American legal theory and Straussians like Walter Berns. All could of course be wrong, and it would be nice if they were because that would make me a lot happier with the constitutional tradition of my own country. What do you think I should look at to see the best presentation of the view you propose? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From jk Sun Jan 28 15:50:22 1996 Subject: Re: Gendered communication To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 15:50:22 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199601281609.LAA05591@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Jan 28, 96 10:55:58 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3884 Status: RO > It seems to me that the gospel message, as opposed to some other > parts of the Bible--wisdom literature, apocalypses, prophecy, etc.--is > straightforward and down to earth. Wouldn't you agree? Whether or not a > modern pagan will believe it, it is in the form of a story about something > that happened in the past and follows a direct and accessible chronological > sequence. Theoretically, at least, it should be susceptible to a plain > rendering in modern English, which in fact I believe it's gotten several times. When I used "language" to refer to things like the language of consumerism, careerism, social science, etc. I was using it in an expanded sense, of course. Perhaps it would have been clearer if I had stuck with "way of talking about things", which I used earlier. What I had in mind was a system of expressions and the assumptions they imply, especially evaluative expressions and assumptions, which claims to be able to deal with human life as a whole, or at least very large parts of it. For example, if someone thinks man's life is basically a struggle toward goals he sets himself, and the way one measures the validity of his goals and his success in achieving them is by reference to prestige and to the acquisition of things socially recognized as valuable (which in a society that recognizes no other common good will be limited to wealth and power), then it's likely that if you talked with him and wanted him to feel the force of what you were saying it would help if you spoke the language of careerism. It's hard, though, to translate the gospel message into that language because part of the message is that another language should be used in talking about our own lives and our relations to God and our fellow man. Maybe you don't like using the word "language" that way. If not that's OK. The usage is not I think idiosyncratic. If it's taken seriously it suggests that conflicting judgments of good and bad are not conflicting but incommensurate because they are simply statements in different languages that can not be translated into each other. As such I think it captures part of how people today tend to see the world. To the extent communicating with the world requires the ability to understand the world as it understands itself the usage would then be justified to some extent even though its ultimate implications can't be accepted. As to the gospel message itself, the sequence of chronological events is indeed straightforward and down to earth. Otherwise it would not be a message of the Incarnation. To discuss why the events are believable and world-transforming is not something that can be easily done in every "language" as I am using that term. For example it would be difficult in the language of modern natural science even though the sequence of chronological events could be described in that language. The conversation has wandered, and I suppose I should attempt to show the relation of the foregoing to other things that have been discussed in the thread. Paul I think suggested that high-churchery is part of a religious "language" foreign to most people today. What he may have meant is that people would get the message better through a different system of liturgical symbols, for example through using electric guitars, business suits and clapping instead of Anglican chant, traditional vestments and genuflecting, because when people want to celebrate or show respect for something today those are the things they use to convey that meaning. I used Paul's comment as a springboard for a more general point about the current spiritual situation that people can either pursue or not as they choose. The use of "language" language may have been confusing. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From jk Sun Jan 28 19:08:39 1996 Subject: Re: Electric guitars??? To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 19:08:39 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199601282235.RAA02383@mail-e1a.gnn.com> from "Thomas Darby" at Jan 28, 96 05:35:49 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1731 Status: RO > Paul I think suggested that high-churchery is part of a > >religious "language" foreign to most people today. What he may have > >meant is that people would get the message better through a different > >system of liturgical symbols, for example through using electric > >guitars, business suits and clapping instead of Anglican chant, > >traditional vestments and genuflecting, because when people want to > >celebrate or show respect for something today those are the things they > >use to convey that meaning. > I dare say, that is NOT what Paul meant. > > I think you all have made a grave mistake in assuming that Paul is a non > liturgical Christian. What he is, however, is a lower-end-of high liturgical > Christian. > Electric guitars, indeed!!! Let me rush to say I didn't mean to stick Paul with electric guitars and clapping or anything else he doesn't like. Possibly what I wrote above would have be better if instead of ", for example" were changed to ". Thus, some people today might be better reached". If I've still misinterpreted him he should tell me. Incidentally, I don't see why electric guitars, business suits and clapping and liturgy can't mix. The church I go to is an ECUSA parish that uses a piano, drums, the occasional guitar, overhead projectors with praise music, etc., and also the BCP. So far as I know none of the former are forbidden by the rubrics. I would prefer more bells, smells, and genuflecting (we have some, it's an uneven mixture and not everyone does the same thing) but my objections to other nearby churches are much more substantive than guitars. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From jk Sun Jan 28 21:48:55 1996 Subject: Re: neocons & communitarians To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 21:48:55 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960128174953.25829da4@ucrac1.ucr.edu> from "GREG RANSOM" at Jan 28, 96 05:49:53 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1019 Status: RO > What is the relation > between the Communitarian and the Neoconservative > movements. These seem like two movements of > former '50 &'60 'Institutional Liberals' [i.e. New > Deal Democrats and Welfare State intellectuals and leftists] > headed in very nearly the same direction. Or aren't > they? The Communitarian movement seems to sweep in the '69s soft left better. For example FLOTUS's book _It Takes a Village_ I am told has a lot of communitarian elements. You're going to have all these local communities that people organize their lives around, but of course they're all guaranteed to meet high standards of inclusivity and respect for personal autonomy, and if they have problems the feds will support them without however making them arms of the bureaucracy, and the feds will of course also arbitrate conflicts and do some overall planning that will not interfere with autonomy. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From jk Mon Jan 29 07:58:22 1996 Subject: Re: neocons & communitarians To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 07:58:22 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Jan 29, 96 12:13:09 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1430 Status: RO > But don't many conservatives believe that different goods are > capable of being put into practice by different communities? > Don't conservatives believe in a practical plurality of > effective values? A conservative position might be that there's only one Good but it can't be fully possessed by men at least under present conditions so it's legitimate for different communities to have different understandings of it and indeed the multiplicity of communities makes it possible for good to be more fully present in the human world as a whole. A communitarian position might be a more complex sort of liberalism in which there is no good, just differing conceptions of the good, and justice consists in ensuring equal treatment of all those conceptions. Since many conceptions of the good cannot be realized without embodiment in a community liberal justice thus requires that the existence of communities be permitted and fostered, subject to measures preventing domination of members by communities or one community by another. A major political difference between the two views is that the latter affirms and the former denies that the fundamental goal of politics (justice or the good) can be fully grasped by an elite of top-level theorists and civil servants and realized by administrative means. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From jk Mon Jan 29 13:24:37 1996 Subject: Re: neocons & communitarians To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 13:24:37 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Jeffrey W. Reed" at Jan 29, 96 10:10:35 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1875 Status: RO >I am a bit concerned by the idea of 'a good'. Is there one single good >that embraces every possible community. My feeling is that a community >itself has to define its own good. Liberty consists in being able to >judge a good for myself, within the context of the social, political >and economic traditions of the community in which I live. For anyone to >impose 'a good' on my community, regardless of the traditions and >customs of the community in which I live, is a violation of the >prudential principle of conservatism, and as much a danger as the civil >servant and bureaucrat. Certainly, the only common good we have is the >equality of the last judgment, when it comes. Otherwise, I have to >conform to the norms of my community, tradition and custom. I was proposing as a conservative view that there is one good toward which all men and all communities rightly orient themselves, that we will not fully comprehend or realize that good until the last judgment, that every man and community has to develop and realize its own conception of that good within the context of history, tradition, experience, thought and inspiration, and that liberty consists in a recognition that the need to do so is unavoidable because the good though real is transcendent and can't be identified unconditionally with any institution or community. I don't see how that view leads to a denial of liberty or destructive imposition of extraneous purported goods. It seems to me that to deny that the common good is an operative concept today makes it hard to avoid moral relativism, and if you accept moral relativism principled objections to imperialistic communities and bureaucracies become as hard to make as principled objections to anything else. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From jk Tue Jan 30 17:43:22 1996 Subject: Fish and First Things To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 17:43:22 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199601301808.NAA07687@mail-e1a.gnn.com> from "Thomas Darby" at Jan 30, 96 01:14:49 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3156 Status: RO A development with possibly some connection to the fate of deconstruction, communications theory and other aspects of postmodernism -- the current issue of _First Things_ includes an article by Stanley Fish with answer by Fr. Neuhaus and further response by Prof. Fish on the subject "We can/can't live together". It's interesting because Fish, who takes the "can't" position, is apparently having personal difficulties figuring out which "we" he belongs to. The analysis Fish presents is that the ostensible mission of liberalism has been to make common life possible in the absence of a common understanding of what the world is all about and therefore what the world *is*. However, it has now become obvious that such a mission is not at all neutral; to say as liberalism does that questions of ultimate good and evil are not matters of public concern is to say that ultimate good and evil are of no great importance and therefore to assert materialism. Liberals, like Satan in _Paradise Lost_, interpret the world by presuming materialism, while Christians, like Adam, interpret it by presuming the objective validity of categories such as purpose, good and evil. Both views are based on faith, since to arbitrate rationally between them would require adoption of a perspective free from interpretive presumptions, and there is no such perspective. Accordingly, the issue between them can be resolved only by war, although Fish doesn't use that word. He goes on to criticize writers such as Michael McConnell, Stephen Carter, and George Marsden, who have complained about the exclusion of religious perspectives from the liberal table, for inconsistency in accepting liberal rules of engagement which make sense only if the liberals are right (i.e., there is no ultimate good or evil). Neocon Fr. Neuhaus responds by suggesting possibilities of common ground among those who differ fundamentally, observing that since man is rational his choice of ultimate commitment isn't *his* unless he understands it as a rational choice, and praising some other kind of liberalism that's different from the degenerate kind we have today. In his final statement Fish adverts to the possibility McConnell, etc. were speaking politically rather than philosophically, and accepting for purposes of engagement rules that ultimately they would reject. He goes on to observe that while he is considered an "authority on Milton" it is not possible to raise certain questions within academic Milton scholarship, for example whether Milton was in fact inspired by God, and that a couple of years before he had felt his attitude toward his subject shifting from something academic to something far more personal, a shift that crystalized when he burst out in a class discussion that Milton "doesn't want your admiration, he wants your soul". He now feels the danger or hope of becoming something quite other than an authority, but what it all means, he says in his final line, "God only knows". I'd be interested in hearing what others think. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From panix!news.cloud9.net!news.sprintlink.net!malgudi.oar.net!imci4!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Thu Feb 1 08:21:39 EST 1996 Article: 68768 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!news.cloud9.net!news.sprintlink.net!malgudi.oar.net!imci4!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: women priests Date: 1 Feb 1996 01:13:40 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 23 Sender: hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4eplmk$h72@farside.rutgers.edu> References: <4aofqc$3uu@farside.rutgers.edu> <4blksn$h6j@farside.rutgers.edu> <4c7qfu$h1o@farside.rutgers.edu> <4cd8oj$8i0@farside.rutgers.edu> <4cfopp$dpq@farside.rutgers.edu> <4cqduj$e9b@farside.rutgers.edu> <4dcsrq$7d8@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <4dib88$m90@farside.rutgers.edu> <4e4avl$hgn@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <4ea0ur$mln@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <4eho9d$odj@farside.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: farside.rutgers.edu In <4eho9d$odj@farside.rutgers.edu> horsch@cs.ubc.ca (Michael Horsch) writes: >|> >the conditional acceptance of groups of people by the >|> >'tradition of the church'. >|> >|> If 99.9% of all Christians are not >|> priests, specifically 99.8% of all men and 100% of all women, does the >|> 0.2% difference mean that men are unconditionally accepted and women >|> are not? >If 100% of women are not priests, then 100% of priests are >not women. Robert's point stands. 100% of priests are an extremely small minority of members of the church. What sense does it make to identify qualifications for belonging to that small minority with unconditional acceptance by the traditions of the church? If one met all the qualifications for priesthood he would *be* a priest. Does that mean non-priests are only conditionally accepted? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Thu Feb 1 08:21:41 EST 1996 Article: 68780 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Defending the underdog (Re: Yeshua (Jesus) and Christianity) Date: 1 Feb 1996 01:16:54 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 22 Sender: hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4eplsm$h8u@farside.rutgers.edu> References: <4e4ase$hd3@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <4e9ujc$lgr@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <4e9uj5$ljf@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <4ehoc8$of5@farside.rutgers.edu> <4ekcou$kk@farside.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: farside.rutgers.edu In <4ekcou$kk@farside.rutgers.edu> gt7122b@prism.gatech.edu (Randal Lee Mandock) writes: >Because of >your response here, I suppose you were using "RCism" in the sense >of "Catholicism," and not in the pejorative sense that it normally >seems to carry on s.r.c. I guess I am just too sensitive about >the use of a term that slaps millions of Eastern Catholics in the >face. They are in full communion with the pope, yet rail at being >referred to as "Roman" Catholics. They are not Roman in any sense >of the word. They are Roman in the sense of being in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. I'm not sure there's an expression that would please everyone; quite possibly someone might feel that the millions who accept the Apostle's Creed but are not in full communion with the Pope are slapped in the face by the use of "Catholic" to refer specifically to those who are. I think C.S. Lewis once suggested "Papist" but not surprisingly it didn't fly. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From jk Tue Jan 23 15:28:42 1996 Subject: Re: Hayek and the neocons To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 15:28:42 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960123093536.25827a4c@ucrac1.ucr.edu> from "GREG RANSOM" at Jan 23, 96 09:35:36 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1230 Status: RO > The paleolibertarians really aren't so hot about Hayek -- > and there intellectual for-fathers, e.g. Rothbard and Rand, > basically were outright hostile to Hayek. Rand in her > new collection of letters even identifies Hayek as an enemy > of liberty (!). Its a complicated world. Too complicated for me, I agree. I am surprised by what you say about the relation between the paleolibs and Miss Rand, although I don't know specifically what any of them have said about her. Is there something I should look at on the point? On the relation between paleolibs and Hayek, the web page of paleolib Lew Rockwell's Ludwig von Mises Institute starts off: The Ludwig von Mises Institute On-Line The Ludwig von Mises Institute is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to the Austrian School of economics. In the tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), the Institute also defends private property, free markets, hard money, and less government. By itself that doesn't prove anything, of course, but it's consistent with my other impressions. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: A tin mug for a jar of gum, Nita. From jk Thu Jan 25 10:26:17 1996 Subject: Re: ACC/Liturgy To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 10:26:17 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199601251322.IAA14187@mail-e1a.gnn.com> from "Thomas Darby" at Jan 25, 96 08:22:40 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1099 Status: RO > I feel that what we have here is really (For the rest of you, I attend a > lower-end version of the same ACC to which Seth belongs) a denominational > difference. We seem to use the same Canons, the Affirmation of St. Louis and > we all attend the same conferences, but there are serious differences between > our two little churches that speak of more than taste differences. > THis is not a modest ACC you describe, SEth. It is, however, a modest RC you > describe. I think I am understanding the problems more and more. It seems that high-church ritual points in a direction you don't want to go, or maybe seems to manifest an understanding of Christianity that seems not quite right to you. Is that a fair statement? High-church types seem to think that the low church is missing something that should be there, while low churchers seem to think there's something implicit in the extra ritual they don't accept. Is anyone able to articulate what that thing is? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: A tin mug for a jar of gum, Nita. From jk Thu Feb 1 08:15:48 1996 Subject: Re: Fish and First Things To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 08:15:48 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199602010424.XAA08943@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Jan 31, 96 11:22:32 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2423 Status: RO >The first idea that popped into my head was that liberalism could only >succeed in eras when in fact people DID largely agree on questions of >what the world is all about, even though that agreement was on so >fundamental a level that it was obscured by contemporary arguments. I >think we're seeing the tail-end of liberalism precisely because that >underlying agreement about the world and man and why we're here is just >about exhausted. When you disagree about literally everything, then >liberalism is powerless to mediate between the factions. There are other respects in which liberalism is not self-sustaining. Taken as a personal commitment the view that there are no goods but only preferences naturally turns into love of power. We need to view our principles of action as somehow objectively valid, otherwise we cannot take them seriously, and if validity based on some transcendent principle is not available social validity will have to do. The only way reliably to give my preferences social validity, though, is to become a tyrant. That seems to me the explanation of the early Fish. Love of power refutes itself, however. Even if successful, tyranny is not satisfying because the more perfectly my preferences can be enforced the more clearly they are only my preferences and therefore things with no claim to objective validity. Coldly considered, pure power is worthless because it is power over things that don't matter. Therefore tyranny must forever expand in ways that astonish the tyrant. That's why Sade's writings and the lives of the great tyrants end up as something rather like science fiction. The solution, of course, is to accept that there are goods as well as preferences. A great deal follows from that solution. That is the point of the cultural war. It appears from Fish's second piece that he may be realizing that the side of the war that has been his can't be maintained when the issues are sufficiently clarified. On the other hand, his statement that Milton "doesn't want your admiration, he wants your soul" could also be interpreted as dissatisfaction with dominance of academic circles by brilliant rhetoric and ambition for a more profound kind of power. As he says, at this stage very likely only God knows. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Wonder if Sununu's fired now? From jk Thu Feb 1 19:57:14 1996 Subject: Re: Neocons & Empire To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 19:57:14 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Feb 1, 96 10:06:06 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1151 Status: RO > Do neo-cons think America should try to be World Policeman, > in addition to spreading Kentucky Fried throughout the globe? > > Or is Kentucky Fried enough? We need both! Until its spiritual essence is safe Kentucky Fried will never rest on a secure foundation. The spiritual essence of Kentucky Fried can never be safe until the political order that embodies that essence has become universal. > May be speak of an American Christendom? > > In that the only power worth having is subject to transcendent > norms? The only power people will accept and be willing to live and die for is subject to transcendent norms. Therefore we need a civil religion tailored to meet the needs of the political order and Kentucky Fried Chicken to which all particular religions will be relativized in all respects that matter publicly (that is, all material respects). The neocons will excogitate that religion and establish it through dominance of the media, the centralized educational bureaucracy, public symbols, etc. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Fri Feb 2 10:36:59 1996 Subject: Re: Neocons & Empire To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 10:36:59 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Feb 2, 96 01:48:35 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 797 Status: RO > Sounds like a top down sort of civil religion to me! The neocons believe in top down, for sure. Why else would they call their latest mag _The National Standard_? > Were the mystery religions in the Roman Empire run by an elite? Never seen anything suggesting they were. I always assumed they were bottom up, like Christianity. The Roman state of course had its own official religion and took a dim view of those who would not ritually affirm its authority. The future however belonged to those who rejected that religion altogether. > Who is Elba Kramer? One of these allegorical figures one > finds in Mithraism? Until you see her you'll never know. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Fri Feb 2 10:47:16 1996 Subject: Re: Right to Die To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 10:47:16 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Neill Callis" at Feb 2, 96 10:08:52 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 636 Status: RO > Anytime you introduce, into > an argument, or into a legal system, an ELEMENT OF TRUTH WHICH CANNOT BE > PROVEN, you're gonna have trouble. > You also cannot use science to "Prove" anything. Any scientist will tell > you that. Are these two statements consistent? The first seems to say that in public affairs we should rely only on things that can be proven, while the second seems to say that science (which you seem to regard as something we are justified in relying on) cannot prove anything. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From panix!not-for-mail Sun Feb 4 16:23:37 EST 1996 Article: 6849 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Southern Traditionalist Home Page Date: 4 Feb 1996 16:23:23 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 17 Message-ID: <4f384b$c82@panix.com> References: <4evd0b$2s5@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com le@put.com (Louis Epstein) writes: >: The present monarchy was >: established by the Glorious Revolution and indeed its supporters (such as >: Edmund Burke) gloried in calling it a revolution. So is it legitimate? > >You see the monarchy the way the supporters of the "Glorious Revolution" >saw it.I see them as having effected a change in the incumbency of an >institution whose nature they were powerless to alter. Didn't "revolution" mean something rather different before the French Revolution? I was under the impression that Burke for example thought the Glorious Revolution preserved English institutions and their spirit and traditions better than a continuation of James II's rule would have. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From panix!not-for-mail Mon Feb 5 05:56:02 EST 1996 Article: 6850 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Political Left/Right -- Opposites? Date: 4 Feb 1996 16:26:13 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 13 Message-ID: <4f389l$cp0@panix.com> References: <4d0q25$lc9@news.infobahnos.com> <4e588c$onb@newsbf02.news.aol.com> <4f0bvf$gt@skipper.netrail.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com thevoice@upx.net (El Voz) writes: >To be a leftist is -supposed- to mean one supports personal freedom of >choice, individualism, and to be a rightist is supposed to mean to >advocate a powerful central state. Most of those today who would make individual freedom of choice the foundation of political philosophy support a powerful central state that liberates us from traditional or majority prejudices, family and community authority and informal social standards. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From panix!not-for-mail Mon Feb 5 05:56:03 EST 1996 Article: 6859 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Monarchism: Threat or Menace? Date: 4 Feb 1996 19:18:45 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 18 Message-ID: <4f3id5$9bn@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <4f11ke$8ev@wagner.spc.videotron.ca> michelg@sorel.mtl.net writes: >Monarchy is best suited for homogenous countries, united in faith and >ethnic construction, and Republic has always crashed under it's own >errors: atheism, multi-culturalism resulting in decadence... I deeply >believe that the day will come when the "proofs" you asked for will >shine as sun... Any comments on the current monarchist scene in Europe? You hear nothing about it in the states. For that matter, what are the prospects even there for having homogenous countries united in faith and ethnicity? European-style monarchy seems to me historically unusually; despots ruling over multicultural multiethnic dynastic empires have I think been at least as common and perhaps would be more suitable for the kind of world that is growing up around us. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From panix!not-for-mail Mon Feb 5 05:56:09 EST 1996 Article: 39546 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,talk.politics.misc Subject: Re: Kalb dilemma [was} Conservatism Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Date: 4 Feb 1996 16:28:46 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 42 Message-ID: <4f38ee$d32@panix.com> References: <4eqmdi$rlp@panix.com> <4eus3g$c2b@skipper.netrail.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:39546 talk.politics.misc:423908 rjenkins@illuminet.net writes: >> People with a skill can't give a fully explicit account of their skill >> such that all someone needs to match the skill is to read the account. > >I don't seem to have the problem of articulation that Mr. Kalb does. >Nor do I have a problem demonstrating any skill that I have. In >point of fact, I can give a fully explicit account of skills I don't >have. Congrats! Why not write an account of how to write Nobel Prize-winning works of literature so that anyone who read it would know how to write things of that quality and post it to this newsgroup? It would improve the quality of the discussion here immeasurably. >> That's one reason practical knowledge can not be made fully explicit. > >Pray tell, Mr. Kalb, how can you call it knowledge if it can not be >expressed. Because it's something people learn as demonstrated through what they are able to do after learning it that they weren't able to do before. If it were possible to give fully explicit accounts of human skills it would be possible to program them into a computer. AI hasn't gotten very far, though, in spite of a great deal of effort. >> Cooking skill isn't attained by analysis. If it were, McDonald's >> hamburgers would be the best food in the world. > >McDonald's success has less to do with cooking skill than restraunt >management. They devote a great deal of analytical thought to just how to cook their burgers and explicitly set forth the results of that thought in manuals. I must say that I'd be more ready to pursue a discussion with you if I thought you had put any effort into thinking through your positions. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From panix!not-for-mail Mon Feb 5 05:56:10 EST 1996 Article: 39617 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism Subject: Why #, @ and ! ? Date: 5 Feb 1996 05:48:25 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 6 Message-ID: <4f4n9p$g80@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Upon looking into this newsgroup for the first time in a month, I notice that some of the subject lines start with a "#", "@" or "!". What's going on? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Sat Feb 3 03:01:40 1996 Subject: Re: Right to Die To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 03:01:40 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199602021800.NAA29522@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 2, 96 12:57:27 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 637 Status: RO > This is to say that faith is, by definition, unreasonable. I > believed this years ago. I came to believe it was bad reasoning itself. > There are facts, and there is meaning. We can't exist without both. The necessity is internal to knowing. We couldn't know a system of facts without moral commitments, views on their meaning, assumptions and interpretations that go far beyond the evidence, etc. Faith is not an add-on to knowledge as it might be if knowledge could exist without it. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Sun Feb 4 16:41:14 1996 Subject: Re: Irving Kristol: Censorship Is Good To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 16:41:15 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Feb 4, 96 03:42:52 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 494 Status: RO > Censorship could only be successfully reintroduced > in a bottom up way. This is of course right. It can't work unless its function is to reinforce ordinary distinctions between what is obscene and what is not, and the ordinary feeling that publication of the former is a vandalistic assault on the public culture through which we carry on our common life. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Sun Feb 4 17:15:55 1996 Subject: Re: Neocons & Empire To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 17:15:55 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960204054555_414104893@emout04.mail.aol.com> from "Bill Riggs" at Feb 4, 96 05:45:58 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1266 Status: RO > > We need both! Until its spiritual essence is safe Kentucky > > Fried will never rest on a secure foundation. The spiritual > > essence of Kentucky Fried can never be safe until the > > political order that embodies that essence has become > > universal. > > How very Hegelian of you, James. I do hope you enjoyed that outburst. I did. One of the most exciting books I ever read was Kojeve's book on Hegel. A dazzling depiction of what we have now as the end of history, the consummation of all human aspirations and struggles in a final universal and homogenous state. Leo Strauss comments somewhere "maybe so, but if that's what it's all about I'd rather have bloody anarchy". > Come to think of it, I haven't been seeing you very much on the ANGLICAN > mailing list these days, Jim... It's probably a year since I dropped out, after deciding it was my duty to participate in one of the discussions on homosexuality and feeling depressed about making people unhappy. Anyway, I had watched most of the things that are subjects there go around in circles often enough. > Good to hear from you again. Glad you're here. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Sun Feb 4 21:24:54 1996 Subject: Re: Neocons & Empire To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 21:24:54 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199602050113.UAA08636@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> from "Chris Stamper" at Feb 4, 96 08:13:12 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 818 Status: RO > > One of the most exciting books I ever read was Kojeve's book on > >Hegel. A dazzling depiction of what we have now as the end of history, > >the consummation of all human aspirations and struggles in a final > >universal and homogenous state. Leo Strauss comments somewhere "maybe > >so, but if that's what it's all about I'd rather have bloody anarchy". > > Don't you see? The "final universal and homogenous state" and "bloody > anarchy" are the same thing. There's something to that, but Kojeve didn't see it that way. If you're right, then the end of history would presumably only be the end of an historical cycle, and the bloody anarchy would give rise to a new one. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Mon Feb 5 09:49:47 1996 Subject: Re: Neocons & Empire To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 09:49:47 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Feb 5, 96 11:35:23 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 890 Status: RO Francesca exclaims: > I agree with Strauss! But does Empire have to be realise in an > Hegelian way - ie does it have to see itself as absolute value? Empire I think has to see itself as representing or embodying absolute value, so an empire that is modern and thus rejects transcendence would have to see itself as absolute value. > Don't you think it would be a good joke if American Christendom > came about in the same way? Christendom I suppose requires Christianity, and I'm inclined to think American Christianity is anti-imperial. It's protestant and secessionist. The trend toward centralization and empire in this country has I think gone together with a naturalization of Christianity that has been a rejection of most of its substance. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Mon Feb 5 09:53:42 1996 Subject: Re: Neocons & Empire To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 09:53:42 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960205082019_136174553@emout10.mail.aol.com> from "Bill Riggs" at Feb 5, 96 08:20:20 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 463 Status: RO Bill R. says: > Rather, I think Chris meant that any attempt to impose a universal world > order would result in bloody anarchy, not order. Suppose it evolves organically as Kojeve would have it instead of being imposed? It still seems to me that it would turn out to be the same as bloody anarchy unless man is less than man. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Mon Feb 5 10:05:10 1996 Subject: Re: Neocons & Empire To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 10:05:10 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960205082018_136174426@emout05.mail.aol.com> from "Bill Riggs" at Feb 5, 96 08:20:21 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 952 Status: RO Bill R. writes: > My sole contact with Kojeve was via Fukuyama's _End of History and the Last > Man_. As in the case of Strauss, the great man is greater than his disciples. > How is it that the Straussians have gone Hegelian ? Or perhaps they > always were, and just didn't reveal it, until the appropriate time ? Strauss I believe thought Kojeve's view the alternative to his own, so their intellectual worlds had certain affinities. Also, many Straussians are atheists who may think religion is just great for other people (that's the view they attribute to their master) but would like themselves to be able to explain things in a way that locates value, purpose, etc. wholly within the world and explains why now they are able to see why it is so while in earlier times great thinkers thought it was not so. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Mon Feb 5 16:51:08 1996 Subject: Re: Right to Die To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 16:51:08 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Neill Callis" at Feb 5, 96 01:59:36 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3433 Status: RO Neill Callis writes: >Science is not in the business of 'proving' anything; scientists, as I >am told, acknowledge the limits of human understanding to the point >that they know they are always in search of "the answer". Whether >that's the answer to life, or why tadpoles turn into frogs, etc, it >doesn't matter. Science acknowledges it's limitations. Through >reasoning alone, it acknowledges it's own weaknesses. > >But religion does not make that claim, oh no. Science has at least >basis in logic and reason for it's theories. But religion will not >submit itself to scruntiny...because it is "THE TRUTH". And that's >that. No discussion, no democratic way about it, it's the Way and the >Light and that's all there is to it. If you disagree YOU ARE >DISAGREEING WITH GOD. If we can't question religion, what can we >question? And furthermore, how can you introduce this into a >government of man? Both modern natural science and religion deal with a world that's hard to understand by making assumptions, living with them and thinking about experience in light of them. The same is true of other branches of knowledge, political knowledge for example. If the assumptions and their articulation through a tradition of thought and experience "work" in the sense that they help us understand the world and act in it better than anything else available our allegiance to them is reinforced and we grow in confidence that we can know what is good and true through them, at least to the extent such knowledge is available to us. Since we can't do without assumptions and traditions the assumptions and traditions we accept become part of what constitutes our world. That's as true for science as it is for religion. Science does not act through reasoning alone, and it has a body of results of which it is quite confident even though they can't be proved. Like any other human activity it requires prior commitment to things that are quite unprovable, and no-one would bother with it if he didn't think it led to results he could rely on. Science is certainly no more conscious of the limits of human understanding than religion; it is religion after all that recognizes human understanding as insufficient even to carry on ordinary life. That is why revelation is needed. If you think religion does not scrutinize itself you might take a look at Thomas Aquinas among others. Its history is in large part a history of discussion, and the discussion is far more democratic than that of natural science because it relates to a far wider range of human experience. You question the notion of introducing things other than science, such as religion, into a government of man. We can't even begin to engage in government without being able to deal with questions of good and evil. Modern natural science does not deal with those questions well. How do you propose to handle them? Religion is knowledge of the whole, at least insofar as the whole is relevant to man's life. Science is knowledge of aspects of the whole that can readily be isolated, quantified, and subjected to manipulation. The latter sort of knowledge has a great many advantages, but useability as a basis for government isn't one of them. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From alt.revolution.counter Wed Feb 7 20:47:53 1996 Path: panix!not-for-mail ~From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) ~Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter ~Subject: Re: Natural rights ~Date: 5 Feb 1996 10:46:56 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences ~Lines: 24 Message-ID: <4f58pg$qgr@panix.com> ~References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In Thomas Woods writes: >The libertarian responded that these unhappy events have been a result of >perversions and misunderstandings of natural rights, and cannot be blamed >on natural-rights philosophy itself. >There wasn't time for the exchange to continue, but Fleming characterized >Lockean political philosophy as "dangerous." It seems to me that one problem with Locke is that making the equal right to do as one chooses -- that is, every man's arbitrary will -- the *ultimate* standard in politics just isn't right. He thinks the way to protect and facilitate arbitrary will is to have property institutions that create for each man a well-defined zone within which he can do as he pleases without consulting others, but it seems perfectly legitimate for later thinkers like John Rawls to build on Locke's work and try to come up with some other institutional system that deals with men's preferences in an even more even-handed way. After all, the project of constructing political systems by reference to fundamental principles and implementing those systems is one of which Locke approves. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From panix!not-for-mail Sun Feb 11 05:56:09 EST 1996 Article: 9624 of alt.politics.equality Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.equality,alt.politics.correct,alt.discrimination,alt.society.conservatism,talk.politics.theory Subject: Draft FAQ re anti-inclusiveness (long) Date: 10 Feb 1996 09:34:46 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 494 Message-ID: <4fiae6$4i3@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Xref: panix alt.politics.equality:9624 alt.politics.correct:108845 alt.discrimination:60589 alt.society.conservatism:40652 talk.politics.theory:78379 Here's a revised version of a draft FAQ I posted on several of these newsgroups some time ago. Any comments would be welcome. ANTI-INCLUSIVENESS FAQ February 10, 1996 Draft Inclusiveness is a central moral issue for liberals today. It has long been a liberal principle that the benefits of society should be equally available to all, with "benefits" and "all" construed more and more broadly as liberalism has developed. In recent years this egalitarian principle has come to demand that persons of every race, ethnicity, religious background, sex, disability status and sexual orientation be able to participate equally in major social activities, with roughly equal receipt of status and rewards the test for equal ability to participate. Antidiscrimination laws and other social policies promoting inclusiveness enjoy powerful political support and carry enormous moral prestige; nonetheless, some people oppose them. The reasons for such opposition are not commonly understood, and the purpose of this FAQ is to answer common questions regarding them. Comments are welcome and should be directed to jk@panix.com. The current version of this FAQ is available at http://www.panix.com/~jk/inclus.faq. QUESTIONS 1. Isn't discrimination based on fear and hatred of "the other"? 2. Isn't discrimination based on overbroad stereotypes that it would be more intelligent to avoid? 3. What possible justification could there be for discrimination on grounds forbidden by civil rights measures? 4. What is the connection between community and forbidden grounds for discrimination, and why does it matter? 5. But what practical problems have been caused by antidiscrimination rules? 6. Shouldn't communities that define themselves by reference to ethnicity, religion, lifestyle and so on broaden themselves to reflect a fuller appreciation of the richness of humanity? 7. What happens to those excluded? 8. Weren't civil rights measures necessary to redress evils caused by discrimination? 9. If exclusion is morally OK, why are so many conscientious people so very troubled by it? 10. Whatever errors or excesses it may sometimes lead to, isn't the ideal of inclusiveness clearly a generous one? 11. Isn't it divisive to oppose measures designed to promote inclusiveness? 12. What about Bosnia, the Wars of Religion, and other communal conflicts? ANSWERS 1. Isn't discrimination based on fear and hatred of "the other"? Since discrimination is simply associating by preference with people of one sort rather than another, it need not be based on fear and hatred. People who hire their relatives or join clubs for graduates of their own colleges usually do not hate and fear non- relatives or alumni of other colleges. Liberal professionals who seek out other liberal professionals more than Republican used car salesmen may have no particular negative feelings regarding the latter. It is unclear why discrimination relating to ethnicity, religion, sex or lifestyle should be thought different. 2. Isn't discrimination based on overbroad stereotypes that it would be more intelligent to avoid? On the contrary, it is nondiscrimination that requires such stereotypes. Every society assigns rights and obligations to people based on expectations of what they are like, what has to be done, and how things will be organized. The rights, obligations and expectations with respect to a class of persons correspond to the "stereotype" for those persons. Thus, the stereotype for "U.S. citizen" is someone who obeys the law, follows the news, votes, works for a living, pays his taxes, believes in education, and so on, and the laws establishing the rights and obligations of U.S. citizens are based on that stereotype. The nondiscrimination principle is the principle that the same rights, obligations and expectations, and thus the same stereotype, should apply to everyone. It thus demands that society base its treatment of persons on the broadest possible stereotypes. Stereotypical thinking is unavoidable, but one might reasonably ask whether it would be more intelligent to have a single stereotype for "adult human being" or to have (for example) separate stereotypes for "man" and "woman". Our society has officially decided in favor of the former, but it's hard to make the decision stick in practice and its justification isn't clear to everyone. 3. What possible justification could there be for discrimination on grounds forbidden by civil rights measures? Similarities of habits, attitudes and standards make it easier for people to associate productively with those of similar background. The characteristics with which civil rights laws are concerned are important in that regard. To take ethnicity and employment discrimination as an example, an ethnic culture is in large part a collection of attitudes, habits and standards that has grown up among a group of people who have lived and worked together for a very long time. Since those who share such things tend to find it easier to work together, they tend to associate with each other for that purpose. That is why ethnic diversity is recognized as a major challenge for employers. An employer that wanted to limit the number of challenges with which it must deal might reasonably seek out a niche in the market for people to hire just as it might seek out a niche in the market for goods and services to provide. The civil rights laws, of course, forbid such a strategy. Other forbidden grounds include sex, which all societies always and everywhere have treated as socially important. Toleration for the views of nearly the entire human race, as well as consideration of the effects of increasingly ill-defined sex roles on family stability and the well-being of children, suggest caution in attempts to create a gender-blind society. Another forbidden ground is disability, which is obviously relevant to decisions regarding employment and other aspects of social position. Apart from purely functional issues relating to organizational success, some forbidden grounds of discrimination, such as ethnicity, religion and lifestyle, help define the communities to which people belong. Since community is important, things related to its definition are a reasonable basis for decisions as to affiliation. If a Mormon wants to earn his living working with other Mormons, the better to participate in a distinctively Mormon way of life, he is not acting unreasonably in choosing to do so. In current usage, "discriminate" also means "fail to be inclusive" or "fail to include in numbers roughly proportionate to presence in the relevant population." Since problems specific to affirmative action programs corresponding to that expanded definition have already been extensively discussed on the net and elsewhere this FAQ will deal with them only incidentally. 4. What is the connection between community and forbidden grounds for discrimination, and why does it matter? Objections to exclusionary conduct have to do with the demand that the benefits of human society be made equal for everyone. It is easier to make that demand than to meet it even approximately, since the benefits of human society arise within concrete ways of life carried on by specific communities rather in accordance with an abstract scheme that can be reconfigured at will to meet uniform standards. We all belong to networks of personal connections and groups of "people like us" by reference to whom we understand our lives and find them satisfying or the contrary, and with whom we prefer to deal because when we do so we are in a world we understand and trust. Families are the most obvious examples of such communities, but each of us belongs to a variety of others as well. It is our connections to such communities that enable us to form our goals, give them stability, and find them valuable. Many people want to be CEO, but very few would bother (if it were somehow possible) to do the things a CEO does in exchange for the material benefits of the position if they were permanently marooned on a desert island and not allowed to communicate with anyone about anything other that purely business matters. The communities within which we live are never fully inclusive as to lifestyle and religion because the ties by which they exist include beliefs about the world and the good life. They are very rarely fully inclusive as to ethnicity, region or class since communal ties usually include half-conscious attitudes and habits that people grow up with, and perhaps a sense of common history and destiny. It follows that to try to divorce the arrangements by which men come to enjoy the benefits of society from religion, lifestyle, ethnicity and class background, which is the goal of antidiscrimination and similar legislation, demonstrates a fundamental failure to understand how human life is carried on. To the extent the attempt is successful it divorces material success from personal loyalties and from any shared understanding of the use to be made of success, because those are things that find their home within particular communities. It thus makes position, money and power self-sufficient goals and the only ones given social recognition. 5. But what practical problems have been caused by antidiscrimination rules? It is difficult to separate the effects of antidiscrimination rules from those resulting from other changes since the early '60s in public policy and accepted public morality. Nonetheless, certain changes for the worse seem inevitably to follow from them. For example, if the relevance of membership in a particular community to social or economic well-being has been authoritatively declared an evil to be extirpated it is hard to see what room there can be for traditional systems of mutual assistance based on kinship, community and religion. The predictable result is an increase in the demand for public assistance, which has in fact occurred. Antidiscrimination rules also mean that private organizations will be oriented more single-mindedly toward private gain than in the past. Public spirit does not exist in a vacuum, but in a setting of shared understandings and expectations that grow up over time in particular communities. That is why public spirit varies by community: WASP organizations are public-spirited in a WASP style, Jewish organizations in a Jewish style, and so on. If the network of shared understandings and expectations weakens within private organizations, as it generally will if they do not choose their members more from some communities than others, trust will dwindle and public spirit dissipate. People who complain about the Decade of Greed and also favor energetic enforcement of "civil rights" haven't thought things through. The rejection of definite duties within the family implicit in rejecting stereotypical sex roles results in a weaker family and therefore greater difficulties in raising children. The difficulties are compounded by official rejection of the view that birth into a group with shared moral standards (typically, an ethnic or religious group) is fundamental to what one is and creates obligations to which one should submit. The schools and broader society today must teach children to throw off parental standards and authority, since those things are almost always based on ethnic or religious standards that under antidiscrimination ideology cannot be authoritative. Some people like that result, but whether it leads to a better life doubtful. 6. Shouldn't communities that define themselves by reference to ethnicity, religion, lifestyle and so on broaden themselves to reflect a fuller appreciation of the richness of humanity? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Unlimited breadth is impossible because we are finite creatures. Since no single person or society can express the full richness of humanity, the diversity and particularity of human life requires social diversity and particularity. It is that necessity that inclusiveness denies. One social shoe (the inclusive society) is to be designed that will fit everyone equally well. The Vikings, the Abbasid Caliphate and Heian Japan all achieved splendid things, but it is unlikely that mixing them together would have created something that manifested human capacities better than the three did separately. Each might have profited in its own way by learning from the others, but not by attempting to reconstruct its institutions and usages to make them equally accessible to the other two. In that regard the world is no different now and a thousand years ago. Also, in spite of its multiplicity mankind may have an essential nature to which some religions and lifestyles correspond better than others. To assert that each society is morally required to be equally open to all religions and lifestyles is to forbid social recognition of such a possibility, and therefore (among other things) to deny the possibility that society can progress morally. Without a notion of moral progress, however, it is hard to make sense of liberalism itself. 7. What happens to those excluded? That depends on the size and power of the group in which they have failed to find a home. Usually someone who doesn't get in one place will get in another. If I'm excluded by the Century Club I may be able to join the Shriners. If the excluding group is socially very dominant, so that another home is hard to find, those excluded may however suffer the same thing religious and social conservatives, and ethnics who consider their ethnicity important, suffer in an inclusive society: they may find themselves in a social order they don't like run by people who look down on them in which it is difficult to live as they prefer. In both inclusive and non-inclusive societies people on the outs may be able to practice the way of life they prefer in private, perhaps by establishing their own communities. Such a possibility can be more realistic in a non-inclusive society, since an inclusive society by definition tries to establish a single social order that applies equally to everyone. For example, ethnic minorities in a non-inclusive society may be able to thrive through some combination of adaptation and niche-finding, while in an inclusive society they will find themselves on the receiving end of public policies designed to make their (and every other) ethnic culture irrelevant to all matters of serious concern. 8. Weren't civil rights measures necessary to redress evils caused by discrimination? Many evils have been attributed to such practices, and it is difficult to discuss them all in a FAQ. Since the position of black people is usually thought to present the strongest case for state intervention, commenting on it may serve as a partial answer. Black people indeed have problems, but statistics suggest that discrimination and civil rights measures are not the key. In 1959 55.1 of blacks and 18.1 of whites were in poverty. By 1966 those percentages had fallen to 41.8 and 11.3 and by 1969 to 32.2 and 9.5. Since then they have not changed much; in 1992 they were 33.3 and 11.6. The ratio of the percentages has varied between 3 and 3- 1/2 to 1, with the lower ratios in 1959 and 1992. The gap doesn't seem to be closing, in spite of antidiscrimination legislation adopted in the middle to late 60s and strengthened and extended in the 70s through affirmative action requirements and the like. Figures for the population as a whole, rich and poor, suggest a similar conclusion. In 1970 the median income of all black households in constant 1992 dollars was $21,330; in 1992 it was $21,161. For white households the figures were $34,773 and $38,909. (Source of figures: _Statistical Abstract of the United States_.) Judging by these figures, 30 years of antidiscrimination measures and radical changes in public attitudes regarding race have done nothing substantial to reduce relative black economic disadvantage. Poverty dropped for both blacks and whites during the 60s (it had been dropping steadily since the Second World War), but proportionately somewhat more for whites, and since then has rebounded slightly as household income has stagnated. The relative economic status of whites and blacks has remained on the whole about the same. Economics is of course not everything. It appears, however, that civil rights laws and changes in racial attitudes have not on the whole benefitted other aspects of black people's lives. Between 1970 and 1993 the percentage of black children living with both parents declined from 59 to 36. [Extend figures to cover crime rates and other indicia of personal and social disorder, and add figures for 1960.] It appears that some of the deterioration can be attributed to the civil rights revolution. If blacks live in a prosperous country and are allowed ordinary freedom in economic, cultural and religious matters, most of what their lives are like will depend on the condition of black culture, which will in turn depend on the state of black communities. The effect of the civil rights revolution has been to undermine community generally by making human relations more abstract and ordered more predominantly by economics and government regulations, and to lead blacks to put their hopes in white "society" -- practically speaking, the government -- rather than in each other and their own communities and institutions. The deterioration of those communities and institutions is thus no surprise. 9. If exclusion is morally OK, why are so many conscientious people so very troubled by it? It is natural for people who take a technological view of human society to find exclusion a moral outrage. If "society" is a system that dispenses benefits and detriments by reference to a single overall scheme, then the design of the scheme becomes the fundamental moral issue. If society is the actor and men objects of action, with none having greater claims on the social machine than any other, the scheme should be designed to benefit all as much and as equally as possible. If some in fact fare worse than others (that is, are excluded from some benefits) then the existing scheme needs reform, and in a technological age it is assumed possible to redesign a system to achieve or at least progressively approximate specifications. On such a view, the only possible motives for opposition to antidiscrimination and pro-inclusiveness measures other than stupidity and inertia are greed, bigotry and love of domination. Many people today accept this view of society without much question. It is nonetheless false. "Society" can't be conceived as an actor following a single script because it is composed of men who are themselves irreducibly independent moral actors. Consequently, things happening within society can't be held to uniform standards as if they were the acts of a single responsible moral agent. To attempt to do so is to attempt to eliminate all moral agency except that of the government. While men do form communities that are unified enough to become collective moral actors, society as a whole is far less likely to act as such a community than a family, church or other particular group based on specific ties. In any case, such communities are never so tightly bound as to put an end to the independent agency of their members. Inclusiveness is also related to the ideal of universal love, interpreted as requiring our relations with others to be direct and all-accepting rather than mediated by roles and presumptions. However noble such an ideal may be, it is not possible for us to build a society on it here and now any more than it is possible for us to build a society on universal forgiveness or taking no thought for the morrow. The issue is what fosters the best in human life. As one exponent of universal love has said, "By their fruits shall ye know them." Are people more connected to each other now than they were before the civil rights revolution? Has the legal requirement that we ignore certain expectations and presumptions improved human relations, or by making them more artificial and abstract has it undermined the ways in which we actually achieve community, loyalty and intimacy? Finally, inclusiveness is related to the romantic tendency to resist categorization and external rules in favor of infinitely varying and willful subjectivity. If I am excluded then I have been categorized and subjected to someone else's rules, a terrible offense to the ego. However, neither that tendency nor the ideal of universal love seems as important as the technocratic side of inclusiveness ideology, since the demand for binding formal rules is so strong in that ideology. Unlike love or romanticism, inclusiveness tends to be moralistic and legally-minded. 10. Whatever errors or excesses it may sometimes lead to, isn't the ideal of inclusiveness clearly a generous one? Generosity is not the only possible explanation for the social power of the ideal of inclusiveness. For example, that ideal benefits some people directly, who might support it out of motives other than generosity and disinterested love of justice. It also serves powerful social interests that ostensibly are not intended beneficiaries at all. The issue of inclusiveness arises when society is thought of as a single actor with a single script, and to demand inclusiveness is to demand that the script be rewritten and a new one put into effect. Attempting to carry out such a demand requires an enormous grant of power to a small and cohesive group, a grant that is all the greater because up to now there has in fact been no script. On the design side, that group includes social theoreticians, legal experts and social scientists, and on the implementation side civil servants, jurists, lawyers and educators (including journalists and media people). Not surprisingly, the ideal of inclusiveness find most support among the people named, whose power it does so much to increase. Finally, inclusiveness liberates each of us from the particular demands of the parochial social groups he belongs to. Some may want such liberation because it will enable them to soar higher, others may have baser motives. 11. Isn't it divisive to oppose measures designed to promote inclusiveness? The issue of divisiveness can not be separated from the merits. People who believe certain principles should be fundamental to social order naturally view opposition as divisive. It is unclear why anyone who rejects the substantive demands of a movement should take its rhetoric about divisiveness seriously. One could argue at least as easily that measures and movements that favor inclusiveness are divisive. The first task of the movements that have provided the support for inclusiveness, after all, has been to raise consciousness -- that is, to use hate-filled rhetoric to create division, to violate the law to demonstrate contempt for established order and thereby undermine that order, and so on. In addition, measures to promote inclusiveness rely for their legitimacy on a permanent sense of grievance on the part of those they favor and are not likely in the long run to seem at all fair to those they burden. They thus perpetuate and exacerbate divisions. 12. What about Bosnia, the Wars of Religion, and other communal conflicts? It can be very messy when attempts to create an inclusive society such as Yugoslavia or medieval catholic Christendom unravel. These examples suggest that such attempts are better avoided. Proposals for social changes as radical as the eradication of sexism and ethnocentrism raise questions as to the degree of force needed to establish and maintain the proposed new form of society, and whether any amount of force can ultimately be successful. Attempts in this century to eradicate economic self-interest as a motive have repeatedly led to colossal oppression and suffering because such attempts go against nature. It is not clear that attempts to eradicate man's natural clannishness will turn out better. Related reading: Brimelow, Peter and Spencer, Leslie: "When Quotas Replace Merit, Everybody Suffers", _Forbes_, Feb. 15, 1993, p. 80. A brief survey of the almost nonexistent work by economists on aggregate economic costs of affirmative action programs, followed by an analysis and estimate of such costs. Epstein, Richard A.: _Forbidden Grounds: the Case against Employment Discrimination Laws_ (Harvard University Press, 1992). A discussion of antidiscrimination laws by a University of Chicago law professor that concludes that they are economically and socially destructive. Levin, Michael: _Feminism and Freedom_ (Transaction Books, 1987). A clearly-written and comprehensive discussion of the claims of feminism and their political implications by a New York City University philosophy professor. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From panix!not-for-mail Mon Feb 12 10:38:54 EST 1996 Article: 6938 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Does anyone write anything new on the group? Date: 10 Feb 1996 15:43:26 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 11 Message-ID: <4fj01e$6d@panix.com> References: <4fbb0o$cm4@pipe3.nyc.pipeline.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <4fbb0o$cm4@pipe3.nyc.pipeline.com> lmurdoc@nyc.pipeline.com (Larry Edward Murdock) writes: >I am tried of reading the same posting, and replies to it over and over and >over again. Will someone write something new, please! Why not comment on my inclusiveness FAQ? It's immensely long, so you can think of it as the equivalent of dozens of run-of-the-mill new posts. A bonanza for fans of new posts, you might say ... -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From panix!not-for-mail Mon Feb 12 10:38:55 EST 1996 Article: 6952 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Does anyone write anything new on the group? Date: 12 Feb 1996 06:31:38 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 20 Message-ID: <4fn8eq$s6n@panix.com> References: <4fbb0o$cm4@pipe3.nyc.pipeline.com> <4fgquo$o6l@arther.castle.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <4fgquo$o6l@arther.castle.net> drotov@mail.castle.net (dimitri rotov) writes: >p.s. Regarding your "natural rights" posting: why did Voegelin >accuse Strauss of historicism? (I'm not being a wise guy, I really >want to know.) Judging by comments on the LEO-STRAUSS mailing list V. wasn't alone in viewing L.S. that way. Perhaps because of Strauss's way of writing and his theories about reading between the lines there seems an unusual degree of dispute as to what his views were. Was he or was he not an atheist? Did he or did he not think it possible to return to the ancients, and if so in what sense? Some Straussians (Allan Bloom?) have apparently been atheists and historicists without feeling a need to distinguish their views on those points from those of the Master. It's all too deep for me. Any comments from those who know more? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!news.ece.uc.edu!babbage.ece.uc.edu!news.kei.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Wed Feb 14 07:52:29 EST 1996 Article: 69630 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!news.ece.uc.edu!babbage.ece.uc.edu!news.kei.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: What do you think about Presuppositionalism? Date: 13 Feb 1996 00:23:31 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 32 Sender: hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4fp78k$l6r@farside.rutgers.edu> References: <4fms3c$asj@farside.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: farside.rutgers.edu In <4fms3c$asj@farside.rutgers.edu> Philip quotes: >The issue between >believers and non-believers in Christian theism cannot be settled by a >direct appeal to "facts" or "laws" whose nature and >significance is already agreed upon by both parties to the debate. The >question is rather as to what is the final reference-point >required to make the "facts" and the "laws" intelligible. For an interesting exchange on the same issue, see the articles by Stanley Fish and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in the current issue of _First Things_ entitled "We Can't Live Together" (Fish) and "We Can Live Together" (Neuhaus). Fish is a secular Jew and a well-known professor of literature and law at Duke University generally identified with postmodernism and the academic Left, Neuhaus a neoconservative Roman Catholic priest who converted from Lutheranism. Fish gives an extremely clear and vigorous exposition of the presuppositionalist view (he doesn't call it that) to which Neuhaus responds with a mixture of classical liberalism and what I take to be standard Roman Catholic views on the role and capabilities of of human reason. An interesting feature of the exchange is that at the end Fish touches on personal matters and it appears that while he maintains his presuppositionalism he finds that he is not clear exactly what his presuppositions are. After years of scholarship it seems that John Milton and his concerns and commitments have gotten under his skin, so that he can no longer hold them at arm's length and is uncertain where they will lead him. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 15 09:15:43 EST 1996 Article: 6998 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Please Boycott Mr. E. and UNIFY! Date: 15 Feb 1996 09:15:23 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 9 Message-ID: <4fvf5r$hp0@panix.com> References: <4fnprd$pvt@wagner.spc.videotron.ca> <4fq7lb$f23@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >one of the two big mistakes my country has made - the other was not >joining the German side in WW1 How was that a mistake? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 15 23:32:08 EST 1996 Article: 6999 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: request: autonomous communities Date: 15 Feb 1996 09:16:34 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 45 Message-ID: <4fvf82$i28@panix.com> References: <4fp1fm$htq@news1.infinet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com On Tue, 13 Feb 1996, yomo wrote: > Could someone send me a list of autonomous communities/nations that > have or currently do exist. Any books directly related on the history > of these communities would also be greatly appreciated. Some references that you may find of interest: Tom Bethell, "Is the Kibbutz Kaput?", _Reason_, October 199O, pp. 33-37. Joseph Blasi, _The Communal Experience of the Kibbutz_, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, New Jersey (1986). David Crowe and John Kolsti, _The Gypsies of Eastern Europe_, M.E. Sharpe, Inc., Armonk (1991). H. Darin-Drabkin, _The Other Society_, Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., New York (1963). Angus Fraser, _The Gypsies_, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford (1992). Rena C. Gropper, _Gypsies in the City_, The Darwin Press, Princeton (1975). John A. Hostetler, _Amish Society_, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore (4th ed., 1993). David Landau, _Piety and Power: The World of Jewish Fundamentalism_, Hill and Wang, New York (1993). C.H. Lawrence, _Medieval Monasticism_, Longman, New York (1984). Shalom Lilker, _Kibbutz Judaism_, Cornwall Books, London (1982). Charles Nordhoff, _The Communistic Societies of the United States_, Schocken Books Inc., New York (1965). Yaacov Oved, _Two Hundred Years of American Communes_, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, New Jersey (1988). "The Kibbutz in Crisis", _World Press Review_, October 1992, p. 46. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Wed Feb 7 20:27:27 1996 Subject: Re: Right to die To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 20:27:27 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199602072342.SAA14146@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 7, 96 06:35:06 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 670 Status: RO > Scientists, of course, claim to have reduced their axioms > to the absolute minimum, and that the rest of us haven't. If you deal with a restricted range of questions no doubt it's possible to use fewer and clearer axioms. Also, if you keep doing the same thing the ambiguities and incompleteness of what you think are your axioms are less likely to become noticeable. > This really is an excellent putting of the case for common sense. You > ought to be teaching political science at Harvard. Flattery is always pleasing. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Wed Feb 14 07:49:56 1996 Subject: Re: Eating fried rats and roaches To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 07:49:56 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199602132346.SAA04743@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 13, 96 06:45:30 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 789 Status: RO > Then, when the predictable family horror stories hit > the papers, the liberal says, "See? We just can't trust families > to raise children! We need Big Brother on the job!" There don't have to be that many bad things happening, since for a liberal there's very little difference between recognition that something is bad and belief in the moral necessity of a government program that on paper at least will deal with the matter. For a liberal the primary vehicle of moral life *has* to be the government; otherwise, morality will place heavier burdens on some than on others and personal autonomy will not be equalized, contrary to liberal justice. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Thu Feb 15 09:56:02 1996 Subject: Re: First Amendment To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 09:56:02 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199602142307.SAA08427@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 14, 96 06:06:26 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1341 Status: RO > Americans simply > assumed that free and unfettered exercise of religion in public > life was what being free citizens in a democracy meant. There does seem to be a problem when it can no longer be assumed that "religion" means something specific, like "Protestant Christianity", and increasing numbers of the most respectable people adopt a wholly secular viewpoint. At some point free and democratic public life becomes impossible; public affairs come to be controlled by manipulative elites because the common moral life of the people has dwindled until popular deliberation has become impossible. The only tolerable solution that comes to mind is radical decentralization, which has its own problems. Or is that the wrong way to look at it? Maybe people have more in common than I suggest, so there really is a moral majority or could be one if the manipulative elites would get out of the way and let the people work things out themselves. A consensus on abortion or what have you would emerge from popular debate that would be responsible because it would have consequences. So abolish the Supreme Court and restore popular self-rule. Any ideas? Comments? Can this republic be saved? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Fri Feb 16 07:07:52 1996 Subject: Re: First Amendment To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 07:07:53 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199602160030.TAA13299@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 15, 96 07:28:35 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3055 Status: RO > > The only > >tolerable solution that comes to mind is radical decentralization, > >which has its own problems. > What's wrong with decentralization? It is, after > all, the Republic that was conceived by the Founders and the one that's > described in the Constitution. The kind of decentralization conceived by the Founding Fathers required common understandings that don't exist any more, for example acceptance of a common-law tradition that embodied principles like "law precedes politics", and belief that human conscience is important not because "conscience" is a clumsy premodern approximation of "autonomy rights" but because conscience is God speaking to us. I worry about a kind of decentralization like traditional middle-eastern society, in which there is no public life, only inward-turning religious and ethnic communities inhabiting the same territory, and a despotic government with no organic connection with society (there can't be, because there is no common society for it to have an organic connection to). Admittedly traditional middle-eastern society had certain advantages, for example despots who didn't try to do much. > Our elites have > succeeded in producing a generation of young people radically infected with > nihilism. Bloom was the first to direct a lot of attention to this point in > "The Closing of the American Mind." How alien are the elites? If the German thinkers Bloom worries about had all stayed in Europe would things have turned out any different? Obviously elites exaggerate certain tendencies but they don't invent them. Also, every society of any size and complexity has elites. Could we have had different elites with different interests and goals? > My suspicion is that there is more of a moral concensus on many > matters than the liberal elites will admit. I think one reason they keep > repeating their "diversity" mantra is because they're afraid that most > people do indeed share some remnant of a core of moral beliefs that they > wish wasn't there at all. True enough. > So much that is absolutely fundamental to the liberal state is > blatantly unconstitutional. It may be that we have passed some point of no > return. Recently some liberal writer in either the New Republic or Harper's > conceded that we abandoned the Constitution during FDR's reign. Amazing to > hear the liberals concede such a huge fact after decades of denying it. Another line some constitutional law professors have been promoting lately is that the New Deal constituted an informal adoption of a new constitution that has since been thoroughly ratified by popular as well as elite acceptance and therefore is the constitution the courts should enforce. The post-New Deal constitution has provisions like "the federal government should not accept existing social arrangements as just but should reform them in the interests of equality and autonomy." -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Fri Feb 16 13:08:13 1996 Subject: Re: Christendom or City of God To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 13:08:13 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960216145008_76752.3721_EHS144-1@CompuServe.COM> from "Paul" at Feb 16, 96 09:50:09 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 4109 Status: RO >But I would suggest that the only legitimate corporate morality issue >any religious person can address is the "denominational city" in which >he lives. To what extent must a Christian be a foreigner in this world? Suppose for example there are members of his family who are not Christians. Does that mean he can't view his family as something he is morally part of? Is it OK for a Christian to serve in the army, and kill or sacrifice his life for the sake of a non-Christian collectivity? Is it OK to vote, and so take part for example in determining the circumstances in which offenders will be judged guilty and punished by such a collectivity? Even within the denominational city there will be tares as well as wheat. What should a Christian do? He's told he shouldn't try to root all the tares out, so it seems his choices are purely private piety on the one hand and partnership with the pagan and perverse on the other. (Third choices must also alliterate.) >And this comes after a much closer, fundamental and abiding examination >of one's personal morality. "Clean up your own act first" is of course a good rule. If you wait until it's done before you do anything else, though, you will never do anything else. Also, evil communications corrupt good manners. We can't help but be concerned with the moral and spiritual well-being of any society of which we are part, for the sake of our own weakness as well as that of others. >Religious Toleration was built into the constitution as a default >mechanism. That's as far as we can go. Bad religion - like Liberal, New >Age, Pan-everythingism is as much protected as Christian, catholic >orthodoxy. The presupposition that man is a creature "somewhat less >than God" - or the philosophical equivalent - can live outside of the >Christian framework. The idea I think was that the federal government would have a limited role. The states weren't required to be religiously tolerant, and were expected in any event to respect rather than create or define the framework within which people lived. Maybe that idea isn't one that works in the long run -- maybe an institution with the right to define public enemies, demand loyalty unto death, and define and punish crimes is not one that can be religiously neutral in the way perhaps an institution that does nothing but clean the streets might be. People don't foresee all the consequences of their ideas, though. >We all know that the French Revolution is the half-brother of our own - >right down to the stinking humanistic philosophical presuppositions. A book I'm reading on the subject that I find interesting is M. Stanton Evans' _The Theme is Freedom_ in which he argues that the actual basis of our revolution was the common law, together with specifically Christian forms of doctrines such as human equality, the rights of conscience, and the non-sovereignty of the state. The argument seems persuasive to me. That doesn't mean the two revolutions are wholly unrelated, of course; they could correspond to different stages in the development of an overly individualistic understanding of life that in France had broken decisively with Christianity but in America had not. >We need to get out of the habit of looking at the USA as if it were our >Church. True enough. One problem is that the USA demands to be viewed as a church and its claims grow ever more comprehensive. Consider the sequence George Washington --> Abraham Lincoln --> Martin Luther King. At each stage the claims of transcendent spiritual importance become grander. Nonetheless, the USA is part of the world God made, and a part for which we have special responsibility because we belong to it in somewhat the way we belong to our natural families. >The cancer of unfaith must first be discovered in >the confessional before it can be moderated in the voting booth. First in order of importance rather than of time. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic. From jk Fri Feb 16 21:20:52 1996 Subject: Re: First Amendment To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 21:20:52 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199602170004.TAA17901@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 16, 96 07:01:21 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2576 Status: RO > >I worry about a kind of > >decentralization like traditional middle-eastern society, in which > >there is no public life, only inward-turning religious and ethnic > >communities inhabiting the same territory, and a despotic government > >with no organic connection with society (there can't be, because there > >is no common society for it to have an organic connection to). > This may be a well-founded fear. I just don't know. But it seems > to me that the practical result of liberal social policies and liberal > attitudes over the past three or four decades has been to utterly destroy > the possibility of community in the first place, as in the inner city > dystopias. True enough. We will get the middle-eastern solution only if it is the best possible for us under the circumstances. Certainly a traditional middle eastern-style society would be better than a John Rawls-style society, and I think something of the sort is the likely outcome of a determined attempt to build the latter. Maybe determined efforts aren't even necessary -- doing what seems easiest and most pragmatic may be enough. > I think there are > huge areas of America in which Americans can find enough in common to serve > as the basis of some tolerable coexistence. Maybe not as much as in 1820. > But enough. I think it's like grass, only the centralized mega-state is > blocking the sun. It needs to be able to grow without the "help" of people > like Hillary. This may be right. Maybe if the country could magically be broken up each part could find its own different way. Or maybe not. The article you posted a couple of weeks ago suggests some of the problems. Also, if mega-state is really the problem, why have the less populous Anglo-Saxon countries gone in the same direction we have? I understand there are bothersome trends even in Switzerland, not to mention the other small European states such as the ones in Scandanavia. > I guess it would suit the liberals perfectly, wouldn't it? Now > we have an +unwritten+ constitution, so they don't even have to pretend to > worry about violating it. Perfect. Even better, the combination of an unwritten constitution and a huge and incoherent body of law with overburdened judges who rely too much on law clerks would give enormous power to a body of law professors collectively able to come up with a theory explaining it all. So there's another conspiracy theory for you. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic. From panix!not-for-mail Mon Feb 19 22:40:20 EST 1996 Article: 9911 of alt.politics.equality Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.equality,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.theory,alt.society.conservatism Subject: Re: Revised anti-inclusiveness FAQ Part I (much too long) Date: 19 Feb 1996 22:35:31 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 160 Message-ID: <4gbfi3$e78@panix.com> References: <4gaep2$3tm@pipe11.nyc.pipeline.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Xref: panix alt.politics.equality:9911 alt.discrimination:61290 alt.society.conservatism:43010 white@nyc.pipeline.com (James White) writes: >Where can you show me that the objective of so called liberal ideology >is equal participation in major social activities and rewards for >example? Surely the Civil Rights Act and affirmative action programs are supported by liberal ideology. Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as it has been interpreted and applied for the past 25 years, if a protected group participates and gets rewarded in a covered activity at less than 80% of the rate for all groups the presumption is that the decisionmaker is discriminating. For example, if there are 1000 people available for a job, half black and half white, and an employer hires 100, 30 black and 70 white, he's got some explaining to do. I think the current standard is that he has to show that whatever the practices were that led to the disproportionately low number of blacks hired were "consistent with business necessity", whatever that means. That presumption is why people set up affirmative action programs to promote more equal participation and rewards and try to meet the 80% target. >This category whom you characterize as liberal contains who? What >group of people is included in this characterization? Like "conservative" it's primarily a tendency of thought rather than category of people. For a presentation of pure liberal theory you can read the academics who call themselves liberal theorists, John Rawls is an eminent example. For liberal views of law you can read the professors who call themselves liberals like Bruce Ackerman or Ronald Dworkin. Elsewhere, liberals include politicians like Ted Kennedy, judges like William Brennan, almost anybody who makes pronouncements on politics for a mainline religious group or the NEA, etc. >How is the demand for inclusiveness a demand for comprehensive social, >political and economic equality? I deal with the issue under question 3. You might reread the answer to that question with that in mind. >Other than your assertion, where can I find a statement by an >inclusioner (to coin a term) which says this. Where is the inclusioner >manifesto? There isn't one, at least none that I know of. Part of the purpose of the FAQ is to discuss the actual nature and tendencies of the demands and tendencies of thought going under the name of "inclusiveness" rather than rest content with their self-presentation, which as you suggest tends to be more limited. Again, comments on my answer to 3. would be helpful. >Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, sex and life style lumps >all people who belong to the group in question regardless of their >personal worth into a category and then discriminates against them. Is it your view that taking such things into account to any extent at all, which is what the civil rights laws prohibit (putting affirmative action aside for a moment), lumps everyone in a group into the same category? Is that also your view regarding taking whether somebody is a veteran or went to your college into account? >But what does social distance and differences in a variety of ways >mean? How are the magnitude of social distances to be determined and >by whom? Magnitudes and so on would be determined by people and reflected in how they act themselves. For example, people of Sicilian ancestry might feel they have something in common that distinguishes them from other people. Very likely they would feel more different from some than others; possibly they might tend to feel more at home with Catholic Irishmen than with WASP Methodists, or with Jews than with blacks. In the normal course their patterns of association in all spheres of life would reflect those differences. They would normally go to church with other Catholics, maybe preferring Sicilian or Italian parishes to some degree. Many would marry people who aren't Sicilians, but mixed matches of some kinds would be much more common than others. In business they would tend to feel more comfortable dealing with some groups than others; how much it mattered would depend on the group, the relationship, and specific circumstances. Presumably they wouldn't mind selling things to anyone. They might be happier hiring or going to work for someone they thought they understood -- ideally a family member or old acquaintance, or failing that someone with a similar background who would be more likely to have compatible attitudes and expectations. They might of course hire or go to work for someone completely different if other indications were right, but that would be less common. >To my way of thinking there is no mandated social inclusiveness right >now in the US. What are affirmative action programs then? >Discrimination is clearly based on stereotyping, of assigning a role >based not on personal worth but on membership in a certain group. Equality is also assigning a role based not on personal worth but on membership in whatever group the members of which are to be treated as equal. >> one might reasonably ask >> whether it would be more intelligent to have a single stereotype >> for "adult human being" or to have (for example) separate >> stereotypes for "man" and "woman". Our society has officially >> decided in favor of the former, but it's hard to make the decision >> stick in practice and its justification isn't clear to everyone. > >What do you mean it's hard to make the decision stick in practice? The same thing feminists mean when they complain about how deep-rooted sexism is. >What do you mean its justification is not clear to everyone? Theses >are distortions of fact. Its justification is not clear to me, and therefore not to everyone. >In some parts of the country you would have all Italian employees, in >other parts you would have all Hispanic employees etc. New Jersey >would become Italian, Texas and California would become Hispanic, >Georgia would become all black. Why? Even assuming the employers who talk about the benefits of diversity are all lying, so that all employers would like to have monoethnic workforces, why couldn't different employers hire from different groups? If everyone in New Jersey who wasn't Italian was unemployed, why wouldn't that be a great opportunity for a prospective employer who wasn't thrilled with Italians to find the workforce of his dreams? >In a multi cultural society like the USA which was created by US >immigration laws, except for blacks and Native Americans, any other >strategy would cause the disintegration of the nation. Was the USA closer to disintegration in 1963 than it is today? >The creation of a single American Nation on the other hand, which was >the vision of the founding fathers, requires that all people have equal >political rights and that you promote those ideas which aim at creating >a single nation. The Founding Fathers weren't that keen on a single American Nation. "Consolidation" was a dirty word in the debates over the Constitution. I can't say that the slogan "Ein Volk, Ein Reich" pleases me that much either. I haven't suggested depriving anyone of equal political rights, by the way. As to Balkanization, see my answer to question 16. Also, why "Balkanization"? Why not "Switzerlandization"? >If you do not allow women equal access to the means of livelihood you >in effect make women the wards of men. I'm not proposing forbidding the hiring of women or female entrepreneurship. To make women have the same relationship to earning a livelihood as men do, though, is to end the family as a significant social institution. Are you so confident that is the way to build a better world? Do early indications from the present effort suggest that it is? Your further comments seem repetitive or in the nature of "I don't see the point of this", so I will not comment on them. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic. From panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Mon Feb 19 22:40:45 EST 1996 Article: 69855 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Does Jesus support Christian activism ? Date: 19 Feb 1996 00:06:16 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 73 Sender: hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4g90g8$h5k@farside.rutgers.edu> References: <4frvem$290@farside.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: farside.rutgers.edu you@somehost.somedomain (anon) writes: >For many years I've tried to reconcile the following verses with the >stated positions of the tele-evangelists and other members of the >christian right-wing, such as the Moral Majority and the Pro-Life >movement. There are lots of televangelists and Christian right-wingers and they say and do different things. In general, though, I don't see that the texts you cite cause special problems for them. > Matt 7: 1 - 27 Unless Christians withdraw wholly from public affairs, including the internal government of their own churches, "judge not" can't mean "don't support social rules and standards based on your best understanding of goods to be promoted and evils to be avoided". Christian rightists support rules and standards that are different from those supported by mainliners and leftists, but that's a different matter that has no specific connection to "judging". The Sermon on the Mount of course requires that whatever principles we want to establish we apply to ourselves first, and that they be principles we would want others to apply to us. It doesn't seem to me there's anything about Christian right positions that causes right- wingers to fail on that point more than other people do. On other matters, Christian rightists often pray for things, and they are at least as concerned as other people with entering in at the strait gate, avoiding false prophets, bringing forth good fruits, and building their houses on a rock. > Matt 13: 24 - 30 Is utopian thinking and petty inquisition and meddling more characteristic of the Christian right or of liberalism and the left, including the Christian left? As an example, compare the attitudes toward sexual misconduct, "sexism" in the case of the left and more traditional sexual sins in the case of the Christian right. Which movement favors a more elaborate apparatus of compulsion to eradicate the attitudes and conduct it dislikes? The question how much can or should be done politically when people do bad things or have bad habits and attitudes is of course an important one. In America in 1996, though, it doesn't seem to me a question that mostly pertains to the Right. Otherwise it would be hard to understand why most fans of the minimal state are to be found there. > Matt 19: 23 - 35 The Christian right often shares in the tendency to overvalue prosperity and position. That doesn't distinguish them from other political groupings. To judge by the disciples' response to Jesus' saying it doesn't distinguish them from much of anyone. Christian rightists certainly aren't more prosperous, more concerned with worldly ties and success, or more respected by those who are most respected in this world (i.e., political, social and cultural elites) than people associated with the liberal wing of mainline denominations. To say that the goal of politics is to promote, equalize and secure prosperity and position for everyone, as the Left does, doesn't avoid the problem. To the extent the religious Left treats politics as the point of religion it compounds it. The Christian right is involved in politics, but I think it has less tendency than mainline liberals and the Christian left to reduce religion to material and social goals. (It's of course possible my views on all these things would be different if my Bible included Matt 19: 31 - 35 depending on what those verses say.) -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Unremarkable was I ere I saw Elba Kramer, nu? From jk Sat Feb 17 18:36:03 1996 Subject: Re: Christendom or City of God To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 18:36:03 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960217172616_76752.3721_EHS66-1@CompuServe.COM> from "Paul" at Feb 17, 96 12:26:16 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3048 Status: RO Paul says: >But I would allege that the fatal flaw of Americanism is the slow >motion version of the French. Is the problem really one of our original political constitution? The USA has remained more religious than the European countries, even those that did not become republics and retained their established churches. What constitution could we have had that would have changed things for the better? >> Is it OK for a Christian to serve in the army, and kill or >>sacrifice his life for the sake of a non-Christian collectivity? > >For me Romans 13 addresses this directly. Rom:13:1: Let every soul be subject >unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are >ordained of God. and by Rom:13:7: Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to >whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom >honour. > >Indirectly, it is addressed by John the Baptist: Lk:3:14:" And the soldiers >likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, >Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your >wages." Thus not condemning the profession. I assume John was speaking to men who had already signed up. None of this tells us that we should join the army, or otherwise voluntarily participate in public life for example by voting. Voting goes beyond obedience to higher powers ordained by God, it involves a moral partnership with your fellow-citizens involving matters of good and evil and life and death that doesn't seem consistent with viewing yourself as altogether a stranger and pilgrim on the earth. >St. Paul's legal dichotomy is clear: 1Cor. 6: 1-4 Dare any of you, >having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not >before the saints? So would Paul have us avoid jury duty, in which we join with the unjust in applying their law, and voting, in which we participate with the unjust in making that law? >But a concern for the moral and spiritual well-being of my nation is >way down on the list. The nation is so intrusive these days, though. Should Christians form separate communities, work only in their own businesses, not read secular periodicals, only watch Christian TV shows, turn off NPR (sorry Seth!), avoid the public schools and secular colleges, stay out of politics and public office as much as possible, etc.? If we did we'd reproduce for ourselves something like traditional middle eastern society, and it would be much more like the society Paul was used to than what we have today. Unless we do something of the sort it will be hard for any but the strongest and most mature to avoid being profoundly influenced by the nation's moral and spiritual well-being. >My objection is that we have the caboose of poltiical activism right >after the coal car of individual piety. I agree that a lot has to be built up in between. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic. From jk Sun Feb 18 18:28:26 1996 Subject: Re: Christendom or City of God To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 18:28:26 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960218192959_76752.3721_EHS141-1@CompuServe.COM> from "Paul" at Feb 18, 96 02:29:59 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2877 Status: RO Paul says: > (This is where a healthy concern for decentralization could fit in). I detect a > hint of scorn for the "traditional middle eastern society". I prefer the kind of society traditional in Europe in which the state exists within a public sphere that has enough moral content to make non-despotic government possible. Even a decentralized society in the European mold has to have common binding conceptions of freedom, law, right, etc. Maybe such societies are no longer possible in a world that instant communication and easy transportation is making everywhere as multicultural, multiethnic and multireligious as the middle east has always been. If so I think it's an immense loss. The position of the Christian Right I take it is that such a society is still possible, that the only possible source of the necessary common moral content at least in America is Christianity, and in any case it's intolerable for them (and also objectively wrong) for the common moral content to be anti-Christian. > But we don't enter a moral > partnership with the world by voting, jury duty, paying taxes, and serving in > the military. But if an individual feels he personally is entering into a moral > partnership rather than rendering to Ceasar the things that are his - then he > should conscientiously object to such duties - as the Amish did in Wisconsin v. > Yoder (forcing Amish kids to go to public highschool). Voting and other responsible public service (jury duty, public office) seem plainly a form of moral partnership with the world. They are acts of citizenship -- becoming part of Caesar rather than rendering unto him. How could they be construed otherwise? Jury duty for example is deliberating as to right and wrong in accordance with the world's standards. Voting and responsible public office involve deliberating with others what the world's standards should be in accordance with the principles of deliberation that the world accepts. Suppose we all accept that the world is the world and this Christian America stuff is ridiculous, and the Constitution of the United States is whatever body of principles the responsible authorities declare it to be because they're the responsible authorities and besides current constitutional law was really implicit in it all the time. At what point does an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies public and private become impossible in conscience? > Should they work only in their own businesses? > > No, this is a key feature of being +in+ the world. St. Paul was a tentmaker. He didn't have a management position in a big tentmaking company. If he had it would have been another case of moral partnership with the world. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic. From jk Mon Feb 19 07:22:27 1996 Subject: Re: Christendom or City of God To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 07:22:27 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960219013506_76752.3721_EHS107-1@CompuServe.COM> from "Paul" at Feb 18, 96 08:35:07 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2592 Status: RO Paul says: > Jury duty is deliberating with > unbelievers as to what is right or wrong??? If I'm ever called, my mission will > to be to evaluate evidence and make a scientific judgement about whether the > defendent actually committed the act for which he is accused. A lot of what juries do is morally-laden and can't be reduced to what is today called science. Was what somebody did unreasonable, negligent or reckless? Did it violate a duty of care he owed others? Was his conduct so outrageous that punitive damages are called for? Was it so excusable that the case shouldn't even have been brought? Juries are routinely called upon to decide such things. > If my brother is a big exec in a tent making > corporation, far be it from me to judge whether he loves mammon/Caeser more than > God or that he has compromised his conscience. > Far be it from me > also to accuse my brother of forming a moral partnership with Caeser simply > because he votes. You might nonetheless form a view of the situation. My own view is that both involve participation in making decisions in accordance with shared standards and understandings regarding the unlimited variety of things that come up when people live and work together. If we're going to do those things the nature of the standards and understandings has to be important to us. > How about paying taxes? You left that one out. Does this make > me an accomplice as well? Christ payed taxes and his father obediently > registered for them too. Paying taxes is not common deliberation and action, it's following orders. > And > never once did I think for a minute that the Constitution or the U.S. Flag or > the Constitution of Virginia were anything more than transitory political bands > which - as a consequence of "being in the world" - have connected me with my > fellow human being in an attempt to secure rights of peace and some amount of > liberty. This is hardly a moral partnership. How can these bands be anything > more than this? Suppose the responsible authorities under the U.S. Constitution tell you that the Constitution has a moral content and people in the government act that way? It seems to me they do and can't possibly do otherwise. So the nature of that moral content is relevant to a decision to take an oath supporting the Constitution or otherwise go beyond simply following the laws in supporting and participating in the government the Constitution establishes. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic. From jk Mon Feb 19 13:46:31 1996 Subject: Re: Copy of: Re: Christendom or City of God To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 13:46:31 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <960219165736_76752.3721_EHS72-1@CompuServe.COM> from "Paul" at Feb 19, 96 11:57:36 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 4683 Status: RO Paul writes: >Many of >the ancillary parameters you mention are subsumed in the definition of the >crime; i.e. the difference between 1st and 2nd degree murder. But that means that to attempt to answer the question "does the definition of the crime apply to what he did" is to participate with your fellow jurors in difficult moral reasoning based on understandings of human nature, good and evil shared by the authorities and the people. To decide the defendant is guilty and should be publicly condemned and punished is certainly a collective moral act that makes sense only on the basis of such understandings. >In civil cases, I meet with an entirely different body of jurisprudence - much >of which is moral nonsense. In this case, my fellow jurors will see me as a >whacky intransigent. I'll just have to apologize for my "city of God" >Christianity and let them ridicule me. By agreeing to become a juror why aren't you agreeing to accept and act on the moral nonsense? "Sure I'll take my oath as a juror but you gotta realize I don't see things the way the law does and I intend intransigently to act on my own views instead of those of the law" seems wrong. >This "shared standards" thing is the problem, I think. If you want to dwell on >this word "shared" - which leads illogically to 'moral' partnership simply >because my moral world-view is congruent at many points with my fellow Liberal, >Moslem, Mormon or Bourgeois citizens, then I am guilty. For the "Christendom" >types there is no way out (al la Hotel California) and for the Amish - well,... >I shouldn't have gone in the first place. There is of course no perfect solution. In America the accommodation was to limit the functions of government, so that the moral partnership of citizenship extended only to things as to which moral world-views were tolerably congruent, and publicly to recognize a religious and identifiably Christian basis of the American order. That way out no longer exists, and not surprisingly citizenship isn't in such great shape either. The Christian Right wants a restoration. That may be impossible, but if so I don't think much content can be given to the notion of "citizenship", and in the absence of a substantive conception of citizenship institutions like juries, elections and the control of power by law (e.g., civilian control of the armed forces) will I think wither and die. >When the authorities wanted to try St. Paul at Jerusalem and he appealed to >Caeser's court, was he thereby entering into a moral partnership with Caesar? He was claiming a right with which he was born under Roman law. If he had been born a slave he wouldn't have contested his slavery; similarly for citizenship. He wasn't deliberating with Caesar and the Senate what Roman law should be or accepting the responsibility of deciding as a representative of Rome how the principles of Roman law should be applied in a particular case. Our activity as voters and jurors is more like those latter situations than merely claiming a right. >Or we are simply being obedient to >God and we mean no moral endorsement by paying taxes. We certainly aren't saying we think the money will be used only for good purposes or that the sort of reasoning that determines how it will be used is something that in good conscience we could participate in. We are saying that almost any government is better than no government and that we are neither capable nor authorized to create a new one. >We can live as a citizen in extremely >wicked societies without coming close to entering into a moral partnership with >any of the worldly powers that be. Being in the world and not of the world is >possible even in hideously wicked societies. The early Christian community >demonstrated this. By affirming his Roman citizenship when he was jailed, St. >Paul did not send any message to me that he was authenticating any implicit >moral partnership he had with Caesar. Many Christians were martyred for refusing to demonstrate that they spiritually bought into the Roman state. The Romans treated their conduct as a sort of treason. It seems to me that our present society is spiritually no less intrusive than Roman society. What is "inclusiveness", the loftiest moral ideal of the society growing up around us and against which the Christian Right is fighting, but a demand that we recognize the gods of others as equally valid? Christians don't get thrown to the lions for rejecting it, just excluded from the public realm. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic. From jk Mon Feb 19 22:27:47 1996 Subject: Re: Copy of: Re: Christendom or City of God To: newman@listserv.vt.edu Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 22:27:47 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3063 Status: RO Paul writes: >Likewise, my conscience would probably not condemn me if I accepted a >Supreme Court Judgeship. However much I was ridiculed for >"intransigently acting on my own views" I would still base my decisions >on the laws of Christain revelation and not on "natural law" or >sociological law (what 51% of the people think is right). And my >dissenting opinions would clearly show that no such moral partnership >exists. To me this suggests that you believe that the laws of the United States are consistent with Christian principles, even though a great many people in authority erroneously believe otherwise. If not, how could you both take the oath of office in good faith and also decide in accordance with Christian revelation? >Your generalizations are too difficult for me to unravel. Sorry. I sometimes refer in shorthand to my private theories of the world and expect other people to follow. >>We >>are saying that almost any government is better than no government and >>that we are neither capable nor authorized to create a new one. > >I guess you would not have participated in the Revolution either. By the way, >who is this "we"? "We" means "Christians paying the tax". I might very well have participated in the Revolution, by the way. I don't think we always have to pay every tax. >>It seems to me that our present society >>is spiritually no less intrusive than Roman society. > >But in terms of persecution - there is simply no comparison here. True, but persecution is not the only form of intrusiveness. >For the record, if you judge me as forming a moral partnership with the USA >powers that be by voting, jury duty and serving in the military (but not, >thankfully, by paying taxes) then I can only object that I mean nothing by it - >except my poor attempt to obey Romans 13. My point really wasn't that we should all drop out, it was that if we don't drop out quite radically the spiritual and moral well-being of the USA has to be important to us. This discussion has been helpful to me. On reflection, it seems to me that when I said "voting and jury duty involve a moral partnership with the political society" what I meant was "elections and juries make sense as institutions only if the political society is a moral partnership among its members". Someone who is alienated from the political society might vote and serve as a juror without moral partnership, simply to advance his own understanding of things regardless of how adverse that understanding was to the political society, but if so he would be exercising his authority as a voter or juror in a way inconsistent with the principles underlying the grant of authority to him. Maybe Kant or somebody would object to that, but the question's too deep for me and I'm ready to drop it for now. (And if that's another tangled generalization I apologize. No-one is forced to be always coherent on the net.) -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic. From panix!not-for-mail Tue Feb 20 15:13:20 EST 1996 Article: 9927 of alt.politics.equality Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.equality,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.theory,alt.society.conservatism Subject: Re: Revised anti-inclusiveness FAQ Part I (much too long) Date: 20 Feb 1996 08:45:31 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 119 Message-ID: <4gcj9r$5m9@panix.com> References: <4gaep2$3tm@pipe11.nyc.pipeline.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Xref: panix alt.politics.equality:9927 alt.discrimination:61319 alt.society.conservatism:43094 [some additional thoughts] white@nyc.pipeline.com (James White) writes: >Where can you show me that the objective of so called liberal ideology >is equal participation in major social activities and rewards for >example? Other than your assertion, show me where it says that. You should also consider the constant references to underrepresentation of blacks, women or whatever in various things as a problem to be corrected. So far as I can tell that's the standard way of talking about such situations in public discussions today. >How is the demand for inclusiveness a demand for comprehensive social, >political and economic equality? How could a society harbor substantial continuing inequalities without violating inclusiveness? If such inequalities existed people with some qualities ("low class status", for example) would be excluded from substantial social benefits. Strikes me as a clear violation of inclusiveness. >What has more often destroyed civil society in the history of the west >has been gross distortions in distribution of the wealth of society. >Two relatively recent examples of this were the French Revolution and >the Russian Revolution. Civil society -- the array of institutions not created or controlled by the state -- was in better shape in 19th century England than England today although the distribution of wealth is more even today. So far as I can tell the same is true of the West generally. In Russia and France the development of civil society had of course been suppressed by royal autocracy. A natural consequence of centralization of power is that discontent leads to thoughts of revolution and the establishment of a new and even more tyrannical government as the most obvious way of curing large problems. The civil rights laws result in centralization of power that was once dispersed throughout civil society because they place some of the most important decisions and policies organizations have under government supervision and second-guessing. In the coming years I think our politics will be nastier and more divisive because of them. >Socialism is far from being dead as you suggest, the present >governments of Sweden and Germany are examples of socialism at work. >Yet both countries are very prosperous and have not the situation you >have in the USA where there are upwards of 50 million people without >health insurance. Sweden has its problems, such as very high unemployment and very large deficits to pay for their social programs, far larger than anything we've seen here. Like other Western European countries they're also accumulating social problems, for example huge increases in crime and illegitimacy and growing problems of ethnic relations due to relaxation of their immigration policy. Germany has some of the same problems, although I think they are doing better in controlling their deficit. Only time will tell whether welfare state consumer societies have the resources to turn these problems around or whether they'll just keep getting worse. For my own part I'm pessimistic. >You have missed the whole modern trend, do you want to turn the clock >back to a time of segregation? If all civil rights laws were repealed you wouldn't go to something like the situation in Alabama in 1940. For one thing that situation depended on government enforcement. For another it depended on popular attitudes which have changed; otherwise you wouldn't have people watching Bill Cosby and majorities in Congress voting for civil rights legislation. For yet another the economy has changed to make it far harder to exclude any group of workers from participation; that's why American workers are so worried about competition from workers in Hong Kong. There are possibilities other than thoroughgoing segregation and thoroughgoing integration. For example, people could do what they find most productive or feel most comfortable with. I would expect that to result in something somewhere in between. In the long run in a competitive economy I would expect efficiency to win out over comfort when the two clash, by the way. >Any other strategy [that does not include civil rights laws] would >Balkanize America. Was Balkanization more or less of a problem before the sixties, when the civil rights laws were enacted and the old national origins system of immigration quotas abolished? The civil rights laws as applied confer very valuable legal rights on ethnic and other groups and thus have made a major contribution to the Balkanization of America. Relaxed immigration policies have no doubt contributed to the problem. >The creation of a single American Nation on the other hand, which was >the vision of the founding fathers, requires that all people have equal >political rights and that you promote those ideas which aim at creating >a single nation. The Founding Fathers had a vision of self-government and limited government power that doesn't seem to mix very well with giving the feds authority over the personnel policies of every significant institution in the country. >It is a fact that one could use these same numbers [on continuing >economic difficulties of black people] to argue for stronger >antidiscrimination laws rather than their elimination. If you have faith that discrimination *must* be the problem you could certainly do so. My point was that the numbers don't seem to support the faith. If someone says the problem with the soup is not enough salt, and I add salt and it doesn't help, I'm inclined to think lack of salt is not the problem. Someone else might think the solution is always to keep on adding salt until the soup tastes good. >First you said that the objective of inclusiveness was the elimination >of social, economic and other discrimination and now you are arguing >not only that they have not worked but that they have created a whole >host of social ills. So what's the contradiction? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic. From panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!news.sojourn.com!condor.ic.net!news2.acs.oakland.edu!news.tacom.army.mil!ulowell.uml.edu!wang!news.kei.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Wed Feb 21 18:37:19 EST 1996 Article: 70010 of soc.religion.christian Path: panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!news.sojourn.com!condor.ic.net!news2.acs.oakland.edu!news.tacom.army.mil!ulowell.uml.edu!wang!news.kei.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Why do you believe? Date: 18 Feb 1996 23:59:03 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 18 Sender: hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <4g902n$h1l@farside.rutgers.edu> References: <4frvm0$2aa@farside.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: farside.rutgers.edu Brigid writes: >In 100 words or less, why are you Christian, instead of something else? I can't think or act without some understanding of the world and my place in it. Because I am a social animal, the understanding must be one that I share with other people and reflects more than my own insights, perceptions and feelings. It also has to explain why the world is as it is, composed of intellectual and moral as well as physical realities, and why I am the in-between sort of being I am. It must cohere internally and guide action in a way that seems to make sense. Christianity does better on such things than other views. [Exactly 100 words!] -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic.
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