From panix!not-for-mail Sat Feb 24 08:50:21 EST 1996
Article: 10019 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 II (much, much too long)
Date: 23 Feb 1996 09:10:26 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix alt.politics.equality:10019 alt.discrimination:61570 alt.society.conservatism:43646
white@nyc.pipeline.com (James White) writes:
>Bosnia shows where the failure to create a cohesive society can lead.
Does social cohesion arise top-down or bottom-up? By extirpating or in
some way accommodating basic human impulses? Bosnia represents a
failed top-down strategy, Switzerland a successful bottom-up strategy.
The civil rights laws adopt the former sort of strategy and I see no
prospect they will lead to a cohesive society. Do they appear to be
having that effect?
>Like it or not in the USA you have a collection of every ethnic group
>in the world and you have to make that collage work or you are doomed
>as a nation.
To the extent that's true, a certain looseness of organization that lets
the groups follow and develop their own ways seems the best bet. In
time I would imagine the different groups would tend to converge in many
respects or at least work out arrangements that enable them to live
together peacefully and productively while maintaining whatever aspects
of their parochial ways seem important to them. I agree that an omni-
ethnic society faces special difficulties; probably the most important
things a government can do in such a situation is to maintain an
impartial common code of law and to restrict immigration.
>The original American notion was as a melting pot of cultures, it is
>too late to try to change than now. You have traveled too far down a
>road to try to stop and back up.
The original American notion was a decentralized self-governing society.
I have no idea why increased ethnic diversity would not increase the
value of that notion.
>In America you tried segregation and it failed. What is different now
>that would justify a return to a policy which failed in the past.
I don't suggest state-imposed segregation. The point of my proposal is
radically to reduce government involvement in intergroup relations.
--
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 Sat Feb 24 08:50:29 EST 1996
Article: 7108 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Paleopapist mailing list
Date: 23 Feb 1996 08:23:12 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
The following, seen elsewhere, might be of interest to some
counterrevolutionaries:
From: "Richard E. Freeman"
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic,alt.books.chesterton
Subject: Catholic Tradition, Action & Counter-Revolution Mailing List
Subscription requests for the Catholic Tradition, Action and
Counter-Revolution Mailing list should go to me at:
rfreeman@interaccess.com
C.T.A.C. is a forum for traditionalists actively involved in the
struggle to defeat the prevailing heresy and reclaim the Church for
authentic tradition.
Rich Freeman
rfreeman@interaccess.com
--
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 Wed Feb 21 06:13:19 1996
Subject: Re: We MUST beat Clinton!
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 06:13:19 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <960221063628_76032.3101_JHC62-1@CompuServe.COM> from "Patrick E. Iachetta" at Feb 21, 96 01:36:29 am
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> Free trade is a vital issue that Mr. Buchanan is just plain wrong on, as it the
> idea of a wall along our border with Mexico
> In politics, perception is everything, and the
> perception in the general populace is that Buchanan is a far-rightist. I think
> it is an apt moniker, based on the two issues I listed above.
As extremism goes, these positions define a rather mild form of
extremism.
If the perception of a candidate as extremist is everything then
defining what counts as extremism must be more than everything. To me
that suggests that if a candidate raising important issues is perceived
as extremist you should support him all the more. You might lose the
particular election, but if you can affect what is perceived as the
range of discussible issues and positions you'll have done something
far more important.
> I'm all in favor of getting and keeping the Feds off my back and out of my
> wallet, but I am not in favor of doing so at the expense of tolerance of
> racial/religious/gender differences.
What counts as intolerance? Official public standards on the point
seem rather demanding to me. Do school prayer, recognition of the
two-parent heterosexual family as the norm, or acceptance of some
differences in the roles of the sexes constitute intolerance?
--
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 Sat Feb 24 03:50:25 1996
Subject: Re: Important Announcement
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 03:50:25 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199602240522.AAA04504@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> from "Chris Stamper" at Feb 24, 96 00:22:01 am
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> "The failure of [Burkean] Counter-Revolution, put simply, was that it
> wanted the form of godliness but not the power thereof, the name of God but
> not God Himself. Men are not governed by echoes, however lovely their sound
> and Counter-Revolution was an echo." -R.J.R.
Not a bad quote, I admit. It's a new conception, though -- Edmund
Burke as the first neoconservative.
Incidentally, does the fact that someone wants to talk about
neoconservatism really mean that when he sees "R.J.R." he will think of
Rousas J. Rushdoony?
--
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 Sat Feb 24 04:02:45 1996
Subject: Re: Important Anouncement
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 04:02:45 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <960223221040_430272650@emout07.mail.aol.com> from "John Lofton." at Feb 23, 96 10:10:41 pm
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> No, only Jesus Christ --- King of kings and Lord of Lords --- has risen,
> friend. And a conservatism, "neo" or otherwise, that ignores Him is already
> dead.
A thought for further thought -- the most durable conservative
tradition I know of is Confucianism, and it developed a strong
atheistic streak. I wonder if political conservatism as such has that
tendency, because it emphasizes the known and tried and concrete, and
therefore the this-worldly? Maybe it depends on setting and
circumstances, so that the case of Confucianism shows only what happens
to ideologically triumphant conservatism in alliance with an absolute
state.
--
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 Sat Feb 24 10:44:24 1996
Subject: Re: Important Anouncement
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 10:44:24 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Feb 24, 96 02:18:01 pm
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Also sprach Francesca:
> Maybe it depends on setting and
> > circumstances, so that the case of Confucianism shows only what happens
> > to ideologically triumphant conservatism in alliance with an absolute
> > state.
> > The Chinese were Ch'an Buddhists in the eighth century. When did
> Confucianism take over?
Confucianism became the official state ideology during the Han dynasty,
I think in the 100s B.C. It retained that position until after the
establishment of the Republic -- I don't think China ever became a
Buddhist state, at least not for any length of time.
Did the fact of the Chinese having absorbed
> an anti-rational and anti-ritualistic form of religion (Ch'an =
> Zen) help in the development of this type of conservativism? If
> yes, we are lost!
I think the two are related. Ch'an as I understand it is similar to
philosophical Taoism. Both as I understand them undermine the
connection between ordinary social and political life and the
transcendent by single-minded emphasis on the latter. They are thus
symmetrical with Legalism, the original philosophical basis of the
Chinese Empire, which also undermined the connection through its
single-minded emphasis on absolute state power. Confucianism
originally tried to reunite the two through an appeal to the moral
content of tradition, ritual and ordinary social relations, but was
always a ruling-class viewpoint and so was affected when the ruling
class became the Imperial ruling class.
> 1) Roger Scruton, who says that God is a necessary fiction, the
> self is a necessary fiction etc. etc.
This sort of thing can be carried too far. If they are necessary to us
and if knowledge is a human institution how can there be knowledge that
regards them as false?
> 2) David Levy, a follower of Eric Voegelin, who says that the
> desire to implement any sort of just law is "gnostic".
I like a man who can take the ball and run with it!
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Sat Feb 24 15:29:01 1996
Subject: Re: your mail
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 15:29:01 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199602241550.KAA09612@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> from "Chris Stamper" at Feb 24, 96 10:50:00 am
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> Roman Catholic social thought emphasizes the known and tried.
Is there a coherent tradition of RC social thought, or have there been
radically different tendencies from time to time? My impression is
that in the earlier middle ages it was reformist and centralizing,
after the French Revolution it was as you say, and since Vatican II it
has tended to be leftish like all mainstream religious social thought,
with maybe a little backtracking by the current Pope. I will accept
instruction and references, though.
> Reformed/Puritan thought empasizes the concrete.
People used to attribute the development of capitalism and secularism
to R/P thought. Has that all been debunked?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Sat Feb 24 15:47:45 1996
Subject: Re: Important Anouncement
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 15:47:45 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <960224131817_230232660@emout07.mail.aol.com> from "Bill Riggs" at Feb 24, 96 01:18:18 pm
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> we are faced with the need to "go
> on to perfection" - to use Wesleyan terminology - as individuals and as a
> society. I do not consider this to be the task of governments in a free
> society, but of individuals and of private institutions.
The government can't stay out of moral and spiritual issues when the
issues arise naturally in the course of something the government is
doing otherwise. That's why the government provides chaplains for
soldiers, congressmen and prisoners. That's also why until the early
'60s there was prayer or bible reading in American public schools.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Sat Feb 24 22:07:10 1996
Subject: Re: Important Anouncement
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 22:07:10 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Feb 24, 96 07:40:10 pm
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> What wouldn't be triumphant in alliance with an absolute state?
Views like those of Confucius himself that weren't consistent with
absolutism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Sat Feb 24 22:14:21 1996
Subject: Re: your mail
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 22:14:21 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Feb 24, 96 07:44:40 pm
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> More recently, Jeffrey Stout argues that it was "the
> manifest failure of religious institutions of various sorts to establish
> agreement on their competing detailed visions of the good", which made the
> creation of liberal institutions absolutely necessary. The problem is that
> "people recognized that putting an end to religious warfare and
> intolerance" was a moral good in itself; that it was "rationally
> preferable to the continued attempts at imposing a more nearly complete
> vision of the good by force".
That's all very well as long as the detailed versions of the good that
are being privatized have enough in common so that the public
institutions that abstract from them have enough substantive moral
content remaining to make common political life possible. Recently the
moral good of tolerance has been absolutized, which I think is a
mistake.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Feb 25 06:36:09 EST 1996
Article: 7134 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Enough Already!!!!!
Date: 25 Feb 1996 06:24:35 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 11
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References: <00002fcb+000009a1@msn.com>
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In <00002fcb+000009a1@msn.com> BJMc@msn.com (Bryan McGill) writes:
>this Middle American state would
>dismantle a large portion of the existing state, but keep and expand
>those parts benifitial to Middle Americans.
What are those beneficial parts? What do Francis or Buchanan say on
the point?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Feb 25 18:17:07 EST 1996
Article: 7136 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.anarchism,alt.philosophy.debate,alt.philosophy.objectivism,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.radical-left,alt.revolution.counter,alt.society.anarchy,alt.society.revolution
Subject: Re: Political Left/Right -- Opposites?
Date: 25 Feb 1996 08:10:21 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 13
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References:
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On Sun, 25 Feb 1996, Randall Cooper wrote:
> Not true. The fact of taxation already establishes that we take some
> of what people earn away from them.
Not true. It establishes that the government takes some of what people
earn away from them. I'm not suggesting that it is necessarily wrong
for the government to do that, just that it's an obvious error with
very important consequences to identify the government with the people
or with society at large.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Sun Feb 25 18:12:14 1996
Subject: Re: your mail
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 18:12:14 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Feb 25, 96 12:05:51 pm
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>OK, then can we say provisionally, that one of the moral
>values underpinning neoconservatism is something other than absolute
>tolerance? Now ,- where to draw the line?
As neoconservatism recognizes, absolute tolerance is an oxymoron. In
practice it means a new intolerance that will not recognize itself. The
question is always what should be tolerated and to what degree; the
answer like everything else in politics depends on the good for man and
the practicalities of realizing that good.
No society can exist without a dominant understanding of the good. The
appropriate degree of tolerance for that society will then depend on:
1. The practicalities of dealing with those living within the society
who reject the dominant understanding. For example, the dominant
understanding in post-midcentury America implicit in statements and
actions of the Supreme Court and other responsible public authorities is
that the good for man is to choose and promote his own self-defined
goals. It follows that there is no God who must be taken into account
in human affairs. Many people of course believe otherwise and some of
them would be willing to stake a great deal on their beliefs; the
solution has been to forbid public recognition of the validity of such
beliefs and informally but effectively to exclude them from public
political discussion, but to allow people privately to think, speak and
do as they please.
2. The degree of uncertainty within the dominant understanding. For
example, in general the dominant understanding of gender and ethnicity
among public authorities in post-60s America is that they have no
legitimate connection with social position; unlike the market (i.e.,
money) and the government bureaucracy (i.e., physical force guided by
political theory and rationally organized social preference) they are
not things that can legitimately enter into creating social order.
Since our good is autonomously to create our good, it can have no
connection with things like race and sex that we have not ourselves
chosen. If we compare gender and ethnicity, however, we see that
certain forms of sex discrimination (e.g., single-sex schools and the
combat exclusion for women) are tolerated that would not be tolerated in
the case of ethnicity. The apparent reason for greater tolerance in the
case of sex is lesser certainty that it should have no social
implications.
3. The degree of tolerance internal to the dominant understanding.
For example, many religious groups believe that certain requirements
apply only to those specifically called to them or that their value is
lost if they are not recognized and undertaken freely, that since truth
is transcendent human authorities can err in understanding and applying
it, or that divine law includes certain limitations on social power
(e.g., recognition of parental authority, a.k.a. family autonomy). Even
if absolutely dominant such groups would tend toward tolerance at least
in some respects. That is why, for example, Christian theorists have
felt less inclined than contemporary liberal theorists to propose that
children be taken by public authority and educated regardless of
parental wishes in the authoritatively recognized version of the good.
It is a matter of judgment what the foregoing considerations imply in a
concrete situation. As in other political situations requiring weighing
imponderables, the practical solution is normally determined by
reference to the political tradition of the particular society as
modified by experience and current tendencies of thought and feeling.
Now that I've given a snappy solution to that problem, any other
questions?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Sun Feb 25 20:07:38 1996
Subject: Re: Podhoretz piece
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 20:07:38 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199602252229.RAA30561@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 25, 96 05:24:56 pm
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>I don't see a practical way simultaneously to a) avoid frightening the
>swing vote in the electorate and b) maintain a principled commitment to
>shrink and decentralize government in this country over a period of
>years, as Podhoretz suggests. If anybody has any suggestions along
>these lines, I'd like to hear them.
One way to do it is to be a middle-of-the-roader. The only way you can
be a middle-of-the-roader and do b) is by having people on your right
who are vigorously making their case.
If your opponents are dominant it's fatal to let the range of
legitimate political positions be defined by inertia. Even if you're
viewed as legitimate you'll be at the extreme and you'll always lose.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Mon Feb 26 04:44:14 1996
Subject: Re: your mail
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 04:44:14 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Feb 25, 96 08:28:08 pm
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> some of us outside of the American millieux find the American
> preoccupation with something called "liberty" combined with the American
> hatred of something called "liberalism" somewhat oxymoronic in itself)
"Liberty" emphasizes negative freedom, the absence of external control,
while "liberalism" emphasizes (1) positive freedom, the provision by
the government of the means of realizing personal goals, and (2) social
liberation, the reduction or elimination of traditional social
inequalities. "Liberalism" of course requires restrictions on
"liberty", so those who like one don't like the other. In addition,
the relation between the American people and American national elites
is a troubled one for reasons that go back to the settlement of
dissenters in America and the American Revolution. "Liberty" is
associated with freedom from such elites and "liberalism" with the
increase in their power and authority necessary to the achievement of
liberal goals.
> what, _according to neoconservatism_, is the "appropriate degree of
> tolerance for [American] society", i.e how to distinguish the moral
> underpinnings of neoconservatism from those of the other "isms", - because
> this of course, determines the content of your "matter of judgment".
I suggested that the appropriate degree of tolerance depends on the
good and the practicalities of achieving it. Neoconservatism is an
in-between sort of thing so it's hard to be definite. I think, though,
that neocons tend to sympathethize with a moderated form of the liberal
view of the good, that it consists in the realization of people's
actual goals. However, they believe that a stable system that
maximizes that good will will have to give more public recognition to
traditional values relating to things like patriotism, self-discipline
and family life, all of which require subordination of personal goals
to something else, than liberals are willing to accept. Therefore,
neocons are less likely than liberals to tolerate flag-burning and open
sexual nonconformity and more likely than liberals to tolerate official
expressions of support for religion since religion gives a reason for
relativizing personal goals to something else.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Mon Feb 26 07:33:34 1996
Subject: Re: More Buchanan
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 07:33:34 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Feb 26, 96 09:52:14 am
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> Of course Christianitas is universal, folks.
No political society can be identified with Christianitas. Even if
there were some overarching society that could be so identified smaller
parochial societies with a real claim to the loyalties of their members
and the right to define themselves (i.e., distinguish insiders from
outsiders) would be legitimate. Families are a reasonably
noncontroversial example.
> Of course PB would be better off allowing any amount of
> immigration if he also abolished quite a lot of the
> welfare entitlement system.
In order to have self-government you need a people with enough cultural
and moral coherence to be capable of deliberating and managing its own
affairs, and enough of a sense of common history and destiny to feel
inclined voluntarily to sacrifice individual opinion and interest to
the common good. I'm not sure unlimited immigration is consistent with
the existence of such a people. Libertarians and liberals don't care,
because they think politics can be done away with in favor of markets
(libertarians) or some combination of markets and the managerial state
(liberals). Those who believe that man is by nature a political animal
disagree.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Mon Feb 26 21:30:59 1996
Subject: Re: Podhoretz piece
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 21:30:59 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199602262337.SAA03026@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 26, 96 06:32:19 pm
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>SW> I don't see a practical way simultaneously to a) avoid
>SW> frightening the swing vote in the electorate and b) maintain
>SW> a principled commitment to shrink and decentralize
>SW> government in this country over a period of years
>
>> One way to do it is to be a middle-of-the-roader. The only
>> way you can be a middle-of-the-roader and do b) is by having
>> people on your right who are vigorously making their case.
>
>> If your opponents are dominant it's fatal to let the range
>> of legitimate political positions be defined by inertia.
>> Even if you're viewed as legitimate you'll be at the extreme
>> and you'll always lose.
>
> Don't think I understand your first sentence in the second
>graf above.
Its meaning depends on the real meaning of the first graph, that you
should be one of the people on the right vigorously making the case for
downsizing and decentralization thereby extending the range of what is
understood as rational opinion and ultimately making d. and d.
politically possible and even appealing for the pragmatic
middle-of-the-roaders who actually get elected. (That explanation also
responds to your two further questions.)
> It seems to me that one logical response would be a long-
>term commitment to educating the electorate: making a reasoned
>case as to why liberal policies have failed and why conservative
>alternatives would be better. But it's difficult or impossible
to do that when the elite media--the very people you are forced
to rely on for this purpose--are part of the enemy camp.
Just so. Even though you lost, running for office would be one way of
making the case that to some degree would outflank the elite media.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Tue Feb 27 16:56:33 1996
Subject: Re: More Buchanan
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 16:56:33 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Feb 27, 96 04:16:10 pm
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> > There should be a "religious test" for immigrants. We were founded as a
> > Christian nation. If we allow non-Christians, anti-Christians, to come here,
> > this won't work. In fact, it already isn't working. John Lofton.
> >
> Well, they allowed us to "come here"...
The (non-Christian) Indians? Didn't work that well for them, as I
recall . . .
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Wed Feb 28 09:46:29 1996
Subject: Re: More Buchanan
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 09:46:29 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Feb 28, 96 05:31:31 am
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> > The (non-Christian) Indians? Didn't work that well for them, as I
> > recall . . .
>
> ...ahhh, the "Christian" ethic of - might makes right (?)
>
> Try another angle,...which Christians shouldn't be in Ireland?
It's rather late now to bounce anyone. Nonetheless it seems the Irish
would have been better off if the Irish Sea had been 10 times as wide.
This exchange has gotten extremely obscure. My point has been that it
is sometimes better for the inhabitants of a place and for the
continuation of their way of life that foreigners not move in. It was
not a moral outrage for the Indians to resist the whites or the Irish
to resist the English. That's true even though the Irish were not the
aboriginal inhabitants of Ireland and every Indian tribe lived on land
that had previously been inhabited by some other tribe. You seem to
disagree on the basis of some unstated principle, although the
specifics aren't clear.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Wed Feb 28 19:51:39 1996
Subject: Re: More Buchanan
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 19:51:39 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Feb 28, 96 05:21:58 pm
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> "better for the continuation of their way of life" has no necessarily,
> morally-superior connotation. In addition, "inhabitant" as you point out
> yourself, has no necessary claim to entitlement. The betterness is a
> matter of perspective. They may sacrifice their young or something.
There are no doubt peoples and cultures that deserve to come to an end.
It's unreasonable, though, to blame them for not seeing things that
way.
> Nevertheless, to the extent that it might be possible to manufacture a
> homogeneous/a/o/uniform state, would also seem to be the extent to which
> liberty might be lost. Which is more important?
What does any of this have to do with homogeneity or uniformity?
Surely there are any number of positions between absolute homogeneity
and unlimited diversity, and one might rationally prefer an
intermediate position and even take steps to maintain it.
I think we were talking about restrictions on immigration as a means of
maintaining social coherence in a world in which travel has become very
easy. Such restrictions like all restrictions constitute a limitation
on liberty. On the other hand, without social cohesion there will be
no self-rule and no established liberty.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Thu Feb 29 18:15:04 1996
Subject: Re: More Buchanan
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 18:15:04 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Feb 29, 96 06:03:51 pm
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> ...and do you not see any sort of oxymoron within the notion of
> "established liberty" itself???
Only if you think liberty can't exist as part of a reasonably stable
system. That's the same as thinking liberty can't exist at all in this
world, except momentarily.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Thu Feb 29 21:19:31 1996
Subject: Re: More Buchanan
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 21:19:31 -5300 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Feb 29, 96 07:12:17 pm
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Also sprach Liz:
> As you have defined the distinction
> between "liberty" and "liberalism", if you defend a kind of liberty bound
> by a reasonably stable system, this would seem to lean towards your
> "positive freedom" requiring "restrictions on liberty". Such is the
> liberal position you defined.
By "positive freedom" I meant things like "freedom from want" which
require government to facilitate or guarantee the achievement of some
of our desires in opposition to "negative freedom" which is simply the
absence of external coercion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Thu Feb 29 21:28:22 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 21:28:22 -5300 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Feb 29, 96 07:04:19 pm
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> And Jim, you do a lot of waffling between "liberty" and "liberalism".
> You can't have it both ways. Is it not the case that neocon leans hard to
> the right?
I've just discussed "liberty" and "liberalism" (or at least positive
and negative freedom) again.
Neocons lead hard to the right from the standpoint of liberals. What
that means is that if a liberal starts to lean to the right what he
becomes is a neocon. From the standpoint of right-wingers generally
they tend however to have a lot in common with liberals.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Fri Mar 1 09:17:30 1996
Subject: Re: Important Announcement
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 09:17:30 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <960301071516_235004331@emout05.mail.aol.com> from "David B. Levenstam" at Mar 1, 96 07:15:17 am
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> It was my understanding that he was a Deist, not a Christian. All the
> Christian conservatives with whom I've spoken on the subject either deny it,
> or agree with it and hate him for it.
He seems to have viewed God as in some sense a judge or governor of the
world, which would make him somewhat more than a philosophical Deist.
"Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
(Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18.) That doesn't make him a
Christian, of course.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Fri Mar 1 09:25:55 1996
Subject: Re: Important Announcement
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 09:25:55 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <960301083440_337665092@emout05.mail.aol.com> from "Bill Riggs" at Mar 1, 96 08:34:41 am
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> > Forbes view is that the right to life > inheres
> by the third trimester, and that therefore the
> > government has a duty to outlaw third trimester abortions.
> I think not. Current constitutional law presumes viability in the third
> trimester, but not before ... The point here is that, as you've
> described it, Forbes's position is a restatement of Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade said the gov't could restrict 3rd trimester abortions in
the interest of protecting the life of the child but that interest was
subordinate to the well-being of the mother. As I recall there was a
companion case that made it clear that if a mother carrying a 3rd
trimester baby could find a doctor who was willing to do the deed for
her there was nothing anyone could do to keep her from getting the
abortion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Fri Mar 1 18:19:31 1996
Subject: Re: Important Announcement
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 18:19:31 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <31375D40@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Mar 1, 96 03:26:00 pm
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> As I recall from my now dated theological training, most of the founding
> fathers were either deists or atheists.
I think it was a long time after 1776 or 1787 before there was any
substantial number of atheists anywhere. If "deist" means "believer in
a God who is not personal -- that is, who doesn't act, for example by
affecting the course of events" there weren't many deists either. That
does not of course mean that the leading founders were orthodox
Christian believers.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Mar 2 13:06:43 EST 1996
Article: 7211 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Enough Already!!!!!
Date: 1 Mar 1996 07:02:43 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <4h6p13$ap4@panix.com>
References: <00002fcb+000009a1@msn.com> <4gpgtj$jc9@panix.com> <00002fcb+000009cb@msn.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <00002fcb+000009cb@msn.com> BJMc@msn.com (Bryan McGill) writes:
>>>this Middle American state would
>>>dismantle a large portion of the existing state, but keep and expand
>>>those parts beneficial to Middle Americans.
>>What are those beneficial parts? What do Francis or Buchanan say on
>>the point?-- Jim Kalb
>The most obvious examples are trade and immigration.
>Buchanan has also said he believes the tax system can be
>restructured to provide incentives and penalties to discourage
>businesses from moving operations overseas.
Is that really all there is to it? Reading Sam Francis (no doubt in my
usual inattentive way) I get the impression his general view is that
we're not going to get constitutional limited government so the basic
issue is whose purposes big government serves. That could of course
result from his tendency to treat "who whom" rather than principle as
the fundamental political issue.
The more general impression that Buchanan is a statist fascist
socialist could result from the common view that "I think the welfare
of ordinary working people is important" and "I think traditional
values are good" mean "I think the centralized administrative state
should act decisively to guarantee those things". Still, it was
troubling that both SF and the mainstream seemed to take somewhat the
same view of the matter.
Is there a good source of info on Buchanan's actual views?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Sat Mar 2 14:06:51 1996
Subject: Re: Important Announcement
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 14:06:51 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Mar 2, 96 12:46:44 pm
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>Is it really impossible for government to be religiously neutral? If
>that is that case, what "place" does religion necessarily play in
>neoconservatism?
It's a weak point in neoconservatism. They tend to want a "civil
religion" that serves their political purposes. It's hard to create
such a thing to order, though.
Their general problem is that their ultimate goals (freedom, equality,
prosperity, social stability) don't differ that much from liberals'
goals, although neocons conceive them in a more moderate spirit. They
however recognize that those goals in themselves aren't sufficient to
generate and support a social order, so society has to have
institutional features like religion and family authority that can't be
reduced to those goals and sometimes conflict with them. The proposed
solution is to allow non-liberal institutions just enough power and
authority to maximize the goals; the difficulty is that such
institutions make no sense if viewed as a means to basically liberal
ends. Hence the paleocon view of neocons as manipulative and
disingenuous cryptoliberals.
>Is it consistent with neoconservatism that there is a division of
>liberty with respect to the sexes?
I think neocons would all want to preserve formal equality under the
law. They often waffle on abortion and gender issues, although I note
that the current issue of _Commentary_ has an article entitled "Women
should Stay at Home with their Children" or something of the sort. As
to abortion, I suppose they would say that men should be required to
support their children, and that if either men or women don't want to
deal with them they are free to abstain or use contraceptives (or for
that matter to engage privately in non-Euclidean sexual conduct).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Sat Mar 2 14:27:50 1996
Subject: Re: GO PAT GO
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 14:27:50 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199603021700.MAA01273@ctc.swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Mar 2, 96 11:57:04 am
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> On the topic of Pat Buchanan and the Republican establishment,
> here's a column from Cal Thomas that is apposite. Given the current
> blizzard of media distortion about Pat's character and positions, this is a
> useful corrective. Comments?
A good column that could be followed by others on inclusiveness,
intolerance, and the rest of the current terms of praise and abuse.
An additional point that should be repeated to the point of boredom is
that the cultural wars have to do with whether our fundamental
bottom-line relationship is our relationship to the government. If so,
all other ties and obligations become optional and the morality of the
Left is the consequence. Limited government is a necessary part of the
cultural-conservative package; the whole point of "traditional values"
and the like is lost if they are devised and imposed (rather than
respected and accommodated) by the government. Emphasizing that point
would help deal with the "Pat Buchanan is a fascist" theory.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Sun Mar 3 09:31:00 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 09:31:00 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 3, 96 01:28:59 pm
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> > All issues are "social" issues.
> I think you just made the Marxist point that everything is political.
> The problem is that if everything is political, nothing is.
It's not an empty assertion, though, is it? "Everything is political"
seems to mean something like "The world of human experience is socially
constructed, and the manner in which it is constructed can be brought
under conscious social control through the agency of the state.
Therefore, the state by action or inaction constructs reality; in other
words, the state is God."
> Now, if all issues are 'social' issues (by which I take it
> you mean such issues as are governed by moral absolutes) then there
> is really no such thing as politics, since politics can only
> take place in the space where there is legitimate disagreement.
John Lofton of course will have to speak for himself. One way to
understand the point is simply to admit that the world of our
experience is socially constructed in part (_credo ut intelligam_, but
belief is in part a social act since man is a social animal).
Admitting that does not require accepting either that all beliefs are
equally valid (so that social construction is necessarily based on the
arbitrary will of the powerful) or that our own beliefs capture the
truth in all its fullness. A space where there is legitimate
disagreement can remain.
For an interesting discussion of the view that what we take the world
to be depends on our fundamental religious commitment, see "We Can't
Get Along" by Stanley Fish in the current issue of the neopapist neocon
mag _First Things_.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Sun Mar 3 15:16:56 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 15:16:56 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 3, 96 03:06:04 pm
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> In general, I don't trust talk about the social construction
> of reality.
A little bit goes a long way, I agree, but I don't think it can be
dispensed with altogether.
> You can bang your head against a moral principle just as hard
> as against a wall.
To say something is in part socially constructed is not to say that it
is a matter of choice.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sun Mar 3 19:09:26 1996
Subject: Re: Petulant Mumbling
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 19:09:26 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <960303185625_437134477@emout04.mail.aol.com> from "Bill Riggs" at Mar 3, 96 06:56:26 pm
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> Shall we ask Mr. Lofton to enlighten us all as to what
> "presuppositionalism" comprises ? Eh, gang ?
Sounds good! In this postmodern anti-Cartesian world of ours it seems
like it ought to be a hot topic, from what little I understand of it.
(Not that I expect Mr. Lofton or anyone else to feel part of the "ours"
in the previous sentence!)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Mon Mar 4 08:46:14 1996
Subject: Re: Important Announcement
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 08:46:14 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <960304080828_237098470@mail04.mail.aol.com> from "Bill Riggs" at Mar 4, 96 08:08:29 am
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Status: RO
> > The only question
> > then is whether, in neoconservatism, women can
> > actually have equal opportunity in the absence of equality of
> > liberty.
>
> This looks like Jim's sector. Over to you, Jim.
Neocons don't share contemporary liberals' understanding of equality in
which equality of liberty and of opportunity become equivalent to
equality of condition (i.e., if people are really equally free to get
what they want they'll generally get what they want equally). On the
other hand, they wouldn't want to give up on equality as a standard.
So whatever their solution is to the abortion issue they'll call that
equality of liberty and say it gives rise to equal opportunity. (I
should repeat what I think I said before, though, that "neocon" refers
more to a group of people with a particular sort of background than to
a specific philosophy, so whatever one says about their positions is
likely to be more categorical than is justified.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Mon Mar 4 09:16:37 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 09:16:37 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 4, 96 11:13:15 am
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> There is not one monolithic thing called society constructing
> our beliefs or thinking through us. We all belong to many
> societies. It might be better to say that societies are the
> first of human constructs. So I don't really dig the
> Macintyre talk of moral language as the language of a particular
> community. People belong to many communities.
People belong to many communities, some more specialized and some of
higher order than others, and some of which cut across their other
allegiances in one way or another. They don't however belong equally
to every community, and they typically find it easier to see eye-to-eye
or to differ in ways that can be productively discussed with members of
their own community regarding the things with which that community is
concerned. Because of the complexity of the situation, the world
(including the moral world) as any particular man understands it comes
into being in a very complicated way and is not altogether coherent. I
don't see why the situation tends to show that talk of "the social
construction of reality" is necessarily misconceived. Such talk can be
and often is abused but that's a different point from the one you seem
to be making.
Do you reject the notion "_credo ut intelligam_"? It seems relevant to
me. If a Catholic believes, that he might understand what the world
and he himself are, and what he believes is what the Church believes
and teaches, then it seems that the Church is necessary to his grasp of
reality. Other people no doubt find themselves in an analogous
position, so our Catholic observing those other people would say
"reality as they understand and experience it is something that's been
constructed for them by the human societies to which they belong".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sat Mar 2 05:12:09 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 05:12:09 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Fred Wall" at Mar 1, 96 11:18:21 pm
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> Second, economic issues often intersect with social issues. The tax
> system is decried for punishing initiative and hard work while rewarding
> indolence. Insofar as a sound work ethic is important to American moral
> character, the tax system is inseparable from social issues. If one
> considers the tax code punitive or its consequences perverse, one is more
> likely to move to the party that agress with that assessment.
An additional comment: the social issues have to do with basic issues
of social organization that have economic aspects.
The view that our lives should be based on our connection to society at
large (practically speaking, the state) leads to the view that all
other ties and obligations should be fully optional. Therefore the
loftiest moral goals become provision by the state of help for those
who need it and elimination of the public significance of affilations
and obligations based on religion, ethnicity, and gender.
In contrast, people who take the view that our lives should be based on
a combination of our own efforts and ties to specific people and groups
tend to think that taxes and welfare programs undermine both
principles, that religion (which puts us in a cosmos not dependent on
the state) and traditional views regarding sex and gender (which
strengthen and guard the family) have a continuing public function, and
that policies that have the intention or effect of eradicating the
significance of ethnicity (e.g., affirmative action and open
immigration) are destructive because to do so is to eliminate the
significance of specific upbringing and culture.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
From jk Mon Mar 4 12:12:47 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 12:12:47 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 4, 96 02:41:39 pm
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> Bill [actually, Jim] asked: asked:
>
> Do you reject the notion 'credo ut intelligam'? It seems relevant to
> > me. If a Catholic believes, that he might understand what the world
> > and he himself are, and what he believes is what the Church believes
> > and teaches, then it seems that the Church is necessary to his grasp of
> > reality. Other people no doubt find themselves in an analogous
> > position, so our Catholic observing those other people would say
> > "reality as they understand and experience it is something that's been
> > constructed for them by the human societies to which they belong".
> >
> > --
> > Could I ask (just to clarify the question):
>
> What is the difference between your 'credo ut intelligam' and the
> Calvinist (?) 'presuppositionalists' Bill is telling us about?
I dunno. Presumably there's an historical as well as a logical
connection, since Calvin (I am told) read Augustine and "nisi
credideritis non intelligetis" (I am also told) was one of Augustine's
favorite texts. From Bill's article presuppositionalism sounds more
individualistic, but what do I know?
[For the neocon connection, ask Fr. Neuhaus, who saw fit to publish the
Fish article in _First Things_.]
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Mon Mar 4 15:25:36 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 15:25:36 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 4, 96 06:29:40 pm
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> 'credo ut intelligam'. I find that notion
> overly fideistic. The notion which makes sense to me is 'fides
> quarens intellectualam' - faith seeking understanding.
The two phrases seem quite close to me. Wasn't Anselm responsible for
both? They start with faith and from there attempt to find knowledge.
What to you is the distinction that makes the second phrase good and
the first bad?
These issues are difficult. It appears to me, though, that if one can
have a coherent and workable understanding of the world without faith,
then faith seems a willful add-on and acceptance of faith fideistic in
a bad sense.
> Faith IS
> a way of seeing. I don't like to call faith a way of constructing
> the world. I just don't like that word 'construct'! Faith sees
> things that are there on a different level. It doesn't
> add or build or put together.
I don't understand you here. If faith doesn't add to or build up or
put together what we have otherwise, why bother? What does the level
at which it sees things have to do with the rest of the world?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Mon Mar 4 15:40:45 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 15:40:45 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Mar 4, 96 02:21:34 pm
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> > People belong to many communities.
>
> ...UNLESS, you are a fundamentalist, in which case you can deny the
> existence of "other" communities within or overlapping your own
I thought fundamentalists were generally willing to accept the
existence of e.g. differing national loyalties among their
coreligionists, but that's just an impression. To broaden the scope of
the inquiry, do fans of the multicultural welfare state, who believe in
a single community that equally includes everyone, recognize the
existence of human communities that differ from each other in ways that
are important?
> or you can
> demonize them in order to justify keeping them away from your shores,
> etc.
Why is it necessary to demonize people to restrict immigration?
Iceland as I understand the matter doesn't have immigrants. Most
countries restrict immigration more severely than the United States
does. Is that because in Iceland and most countries people believe
foreigners are devils?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Mon Mar 4 15:49:42 1996
Subject: Re: Presuppositionalism
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 15:49:43 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Mar 4, 96 03:08:04 pm
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> I am sorry, Chris, but I think now it is important to know whether
> neoconservatism would embrace the notion of the morality of religious
> warfare encompassed by presuppositionalism,
> OR,
> the immorality of religious warfare encompassed by liberalism. Based on
> the discussion, I'm inclined to think neocons would lean towards the
> latter. Or are they split right down the middle? and if so, is this then
> the nature of the political split as well? Is this your department, Jim?
It's one of the things I've been blathering about. Neocons tend to
think a state of the sort the liberals want that is truly neutral
religiously won't work but they don't like religious wars either so
(as discussed) they tend to like the idea of a civil religion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Mon Mar 4 16:46:07 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 16:46:07 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 4, 96 09:03:27 pm
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> > > 'credo ut intelligam' Augustine said this, I THINK
> in the De Trinitate. Anselm in the Proslogion described his exploration
> of God as 'fides quarens intellectam' - faith seeking understanding.
Anselm says at the very end of chapter 1 of Proslogion:
Neque enim quaero intelligere, ut credam; sed
credo, ut intelligam. Nam et hoc credo, quia
nisi credidero, non intelligam.
I've been told that an electronic search of CETEDOC indicates that
neither Augustine nor any of the other Fathers used the phrase "credo
ut intelligam". Augustine himself quoted and reworked variously Isaiah
7:9, "nisi credideritis non intelligetis." (If you think I'm nitpicking
and showing off here you're probably right.)
> We are comparing analogies here. I prefer the analogy of seeing,
> because you 'see' something which is there whether you see it or
> not, on all of its levels. The analogy of 'constructing', on
> the other hand, implies that thinking does something to the cup.
> This idea has been around since Kant, and right through the
> American pragmatists to Rorty.
Haven't related ideas been around longer? There are old ideas that
God's knowledge of reality doesn't differ from his construction of
reality, and that truth is in God and apart from him what we're left
with is the devices, desires and imaginations of our hearts.
> I will give you an an example from Christology, since I'm in
> the middle of my Christology lectures. As you must know,
> the 19th century divided the Jesus of
> History from the
> Christ of Faith. No amount of re-constructing is going to
> put them back together again. AA A A
Couldn't one save the view that knowledge has an essential connection
to the construction of reality by saying that while the Jesus of
History was constructed by historians, the Christ of Faith was
constructed by an institution (the Church) that has a privileged
relationship with the construction of reality, and therefore is to be
preferred to the Jesus of History? (I would add "BB B B" to top your
final comment if I weren't afraid I'd be walking into a trap ... )
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Mon Mar 4 19:30:18 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 19:30:18 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 4, 96 09:48:06 pm
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> The analogy of constructing, building adding, does imply that
> we give an order which was not already there. It seems to me
> important - politically and indeed neo-conservatively Chris -
> to say - against the Idealist tradition and the American
> pragmatists - that knowing doesn't 'do' anything to its
> objects.
Knowledge that's not part of a system of thought and understanding that
does something to its objects may be a splendid ideal but it's not
something that we in fact have. Certainly not in connection with
political and social matters, and not even in connection with physical
science since the theoretical entities with which physical science
concerns itself change from time to time in ways that have nothing to
do with changes in the non-human world.
If we don't have something it probably will eventually cause political
problems to pretend otherwise. Aren't we better off recognizing that
our presuppositions are part of what determines our experience and
therefore the extract from that experience that we call knowledge? If
we recognize that, we might benefit for example from considering what
presuppositions are best rather than presuming that the way the world
looks to us is identical with ultimate reality and people who see
things otherwise (like fundamentalists, if we aren't fundamentalists)
are defective in some way, or possibly demonic.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Mon Mar 4 19:36:34 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 19:36:34 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 4, 96 09:41:05 pm
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> > Most
> > countries restrict immigration more severely than the United States
> > does. Is that because in Iceland and most countries people believe
> > foreigners are devils?
> >
> > --
> > No it is just that almost no-one wants to go and live in Iceland.
> I apologise to anyone who might consider that a racist remark.
So if a philanthropist organized free charter flights of immigrants
from Ruanda to Iceland and the flights filled up because people figured
things could hardly get worse the Icelanders would be happy to take
them in?
My understanding is that most of the world's legal immigration is to
the United States. There must be other places people would like to go.
If they don't go there it must be because they are being kept out. Is
it because in all those countries potential immigrants are demonized?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Mon Mar 4 19:45:50 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity (fwd)
To: neocon-l@listserv.syr.edu
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 19:45:50 -0500 (EST)
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It suddenly occurred to me that some translations might be in order:
> 'credo ut intelligam'
I believe that I might know.
> Neque enim quaero intelligere, ut credam; sed
> credo, ut intelligam. Nam et hoc credo, quia
> nisi credidero, non intelligam.
For neither do I seek to know, that I might believe; but I believe,
that I might know. For I also believe this, unless I shall have
believed, I shall not know.
> "nisi credideritis non intelligetis."
Unless you shall have believed you shall not have known.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Mar 6 08:37:59 EST 1996
Article: 7256 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: 6 Mar 1996 08:37:42 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 15
Message-ID: <4hk4f6$h3f@panix.com>
References: <4gtaj5$ggj@paladin.american.edu> <4hg6cs$d91@arther.castle.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
drotov@mail.castle.net (dimitri rotov) writes:
>> but I'd rather die free than live as a slave.
>
>Seriously, though, this is paradoxical: "I'll follow my freedom
>paradigm even if it means surrendering the source of all freedom, life
>itself."
I don't see what's paradoxical about holding to a conception of personal
integrity even at the cost of life itself.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Tue Mar 5 08:21:02 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 08:21:02 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 5, 96 09:57:44 am
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> > Knowledge that's not part of a system of thought and understanding that
> > does something to its objects may be a splendid ideal but it's not
> > something that we in fact have. Certainly not in connection with
> > political and social matters, and not even in connection with physical
> > science since the theoretical entities with which physical science
> > concerns itself change from time to time in ways that have nothing to
> > do with changes in the non-human world.
>
> Francesca says:
>
> This is sheer unargued assertion.
The things people talk about in connection with politics and society,
like "the public interest" or "the causes of poverty", are hard to
understand or discuss except by reference to particular theories and
understandings of the world, none of which can be proven in any strong
sense and each of which has a particular history among particular
men and will be different in the future from what it is now.
Do you disagree with the foregoing? In what respects? Or is your
point that it is not things like "the public interest for utilitarians"
that are the objects of political knowledge, even in the case of
utilitarians, but rather things like "the public interest", which the
utilitarians know although imperfectly through their theories and other
people know also imperfectly through other theories?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Tue Mar 5 17:54:22 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 17:54:22 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 5, 96 05:47:52 pm
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>> > > Knowledge that's not part of a system of thought and understanding that
>> > > does something to its objects may be a splendid ideal but it's not
>> > > something that we in fact have.
>
>You just claim that, "in fact" we don't have knowledge that is not a
>construction of the silly putty of things. That is what I call an
>inargued assertion, and what I would like to hear some evidence for.
Silly putty is the wrong metaphor, since I don't claim that the world
lends itself equally well to all constructions.
I'm not sure just what you're looking for. If my assertion is wrong it
would be simplest for you to give instances where it fails. Examples
are evidence, and I gave some. I mentioned physical theories, which
(as I understand them) concern entities such as wave states and
multidimensional space-time that seem clearly to be intellectual
constructions that are incomprehensible except by reference to theories
that have a definite history in a definite community and will surely
change again in the future. In the message that followed I suggested
that things like "the public interest" and "the causes of poverty" have
similar if somewhat fuzzier characteristics. Since political
discussion necessarily touches on such things it seems that the
assertion you quote is correct at least as to knowledge about the
things central to politics.
>I would have said, also, that political actors have to act fast,
>and thus, precisely, on the basis of a not entirely rational,
>and certainly not systematisable intuition of how things are.
>Unless that 'intuition' is actually sometimes a seeing,
>we are in trouble.
"Seeing" strikes me as an odd metaphor to use in a situation marked by
lack of consciousness and clarity. I would prefer "sense of fitness"
or maybe something cruder like "reliable gut reaction".
>The principle was - (this was whispered to be derived from Michael
>Oakeshott) that one had no theoretical political principles, just
>particular policies responding to particular situations. If one wants
>to describe that in non sceptical terminology one could say that
>politics turns on immediate intuitions of the situation.
Conservatism of course mixes awkwardly with theorizing. One problem is
that theorizing is imperialistic, and people who aren't conservatives
do it, so conservatives have to do it too if only defensively. Another
is that immediate intuitions with no theorizing tend to be based more
on existing institutions and tendencies than people who don't like
what's been going on can accept.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Tue Mar 5 17:56:48 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 17:56:48 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Mar 5, 96 02:06:12 pm
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>> > ...UNLESS, you are a fundamentalist, in which case you can deny the
>> > existence of "other" communities within or overlapping your own
>>
>> I thought fundamentalists were generally willing to accept the
>> existence of e.g. differing national loyalties among their
>> coreligionists, but that's just an impression.
>
>The problem here of course is the common jump made to the assumption that
>fundamentalism is a religion in itself. It is not. It is a particular
>lens through which any religion can be viewed.
I assumed that you were thinking of the fundamentalist's own community
as a particular religious group. Was I wrong?
>> do fans of the multicultural welfare state, who believe in
>> a single community that equally includes everyone, recognize the
>> existence of human communities that differ from each other in ways that
>> are important?
>>
>Certainly! That inclusiveness also means the inclusion of
>distinctiveness. For example, our Mennonites are as distinctive as
>yours - perhaps maybe more so. We don't try to pretend that everyone is
>integrated. There are however, limitations. Groups exist to the extent
>that they tolerate the existence of others. So in Canada, the Heritage
>Front has a tough time existing to the extent that it engages in the
>public expression of intolerance.
In America the most distinctive of the Mennonites (the Amish and the
Hutterites) are sexist and homophobic. They're all expected to marry
and have large families, and gender role stereotypes are strict. They
preferentially employ their correligionists in their enterprises, and
thus engage in blatant religious and (due to ethnic homogeneity) racial
discrimination. Because of their desire to avoid exposure to
difference ("wearing an unequal yoke", as they call it), they have
secured special provisions enabling them to opt out of the welfare
state, and more generally keep their involvement in public affairs to a
minimum. Also because of that desire, they deny "their" children,
including girls oppressed by sexism and gay youth oppressed by
homophobia, education beyond the 8th grade, and education up to that
point they carry on in their own schools. They thus imprison new
generations in their narrow attitudes and way of life.
Do you really think such groups would continue to thrive in an inclusive
multicultural welfare state? At some point won't someone at least feel
called upon to save the children?
>The issue would be the morality of exclusion on the basis of "other"
>beliefs.
As you imply in connection with the Heritage Front, every society is
hard on groups that oppose what it takes to be the basis of good social
order. You seem to believe that it is illegitimate for a society to
take Christianity to be the basis of good social order and so to treat
non- Christians with disfavor. Why is that? How about people who want
to emigrate from South Africa to Canada in hopes of building a white
supremacist state? Would it be immoral to exclude them if they
announced that was their goal?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Thu Mar 7 05:00:35 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 05:00:35 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Mar 6, 96 08:31:55 pm
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Liz says:
> ... "A way of life" whose positive features are decidedly absent from your
> description while you fetishize the negative.
I fully agree that religious extremists like the Amish and Hutterites,
whose way of life could not exist without sexism, homophobia, racism,
discrimination, religious intolerance (in my previous post I forgot to
mention the practice of shunning) and ignorance, has many positive
features. I even think it a better way of life than that led by most
other North Americans.
> Our Mennonites continue to thrive and their children continue to thrive
> (despite the slant you have spun). Pointedly, the Branch Davidian children
> in Waco do not.
Quite right about the children. Young people who have been gassed and
then incinerated have difficulty thriving. In society at large a
decline in the well-being of children has gone hand in hand with a
decline in sexism, etc., so it's not surprising Mennonite kids are
doing OK.
The question, though, is whether in the long run it will be consistent
with the multicultural welfare state for the Mennonites to continue to
thrive as a community. It seems to me it won't, if only because the
mcws believes among other things in kid's rights.
> In addition, although there is a high attrition rate for
> maturing Mennonites, there is also a high return rate - not because they
> can't fit into mainstream culture, but because they have seen "Pari' and
> choose the farm instead. This hardly fits with your exaggerated notion of
> "imprisoned new generations".
As the twig is bent, etc. If the vitality of the Mennonite way of life
is due to its superiority on a cool and disinterested comparison with
other options, why aren't lots more new members signing up? Feminists
point out that early conditioning can make autonomy difficult for
people, and relapses are common. Slaves often come to love their
chains, or so reformers say.
>From the standpoint of the mcws the appropriate response would be to
ensure that every child is brought up with a full understanding that he
has options. In other words, his education shouldn't take place wholly
within the Mennonite community. (Contemporary liberal theoreticians
are of interest on this point.) Presumably if the children of
Mennonites choose the Mennonite lifestyle at a rate grossly
disproportionate to the rate at which other children choose it, it will
show that the educational system has not done a good enough job opening
up options to them. It would be rather as if most girls chose to be
housewives just like their moms.
> I'm not certain to what extent the Waco
> children could have been described as "imprisoned" or not thriving, but
> perhaps this could stand as an example of the distinction between
> orthodoxy a/o ethnicity on the one hand, - and - fundamentalism on the
> other.
If the Branch Davidians are your idea of fundamentalists, while the
Mennonites are safely on this side of that line, how many
fundamentalists do you think there are in North America?
> Any society which bases itself on religious principles is either an
> authoritarian theocracy or a hypocracy.
How about societies that base themselves on other theoretical
conceptions, like the multicultural welfare state?
> In a state founded on Christian principles, WHO defines what "Christian"
> means (and thus, state principles)?
In any state, who defines what the state principles mean? The
multicultural welfare state, for example, has lots of principles. In
the United States the development of the mcws has gone with transfer of
power and authority to centralized bureaucracies and the federal
courts, which are thought to be best able to articulate and apply
principles uniformly and intelligently. Maybe a state founded on
Christian principles would have a council of elders or something. I
don't see a special problem in principle.
> At the end of the day it may be the case
> that there are larger "state" interests (like peace for example) which
> override even this kind of religious expression. Otherwise, one lives in a
> "civil state" where if I don't kill you while you sleep, you will kill me
> while I sleep, even though we may both be "Christians" in every sense of
> the word.
I agree that it would be unusual for a state to fail to suppress ideas
that seriously threaten the social order to which it is committed, and
that "the preservation of peace" is often the reason given for the
suppression.
> In Canada, no it would not be immoral to exclude them because their
> purpose for existence is to promolgate hatred against other groups.
What is the objection in principle to a Christian state excluding
groups whose purpose for existence is to promulgate disobedience to
God?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Thu Mar 7 05:02:03 1996
Subject: Re: Important Announcement
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 05:02:03 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Mar 6, 96 08:54:56 pm
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> Why suppose that the closing of American borders would be a one-way
> street? Which is bigger - America or the rest of the world?
What's the point, that most countries now have unrestricted
immigration?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Thu Mar 7 15:42:39 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 15:42:39 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <960307064202_162435748@emout09.mail.aol.com> from "Bill Riggs" at Mar 7, 96 06:42:04 am
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>> Knowledge that's not part of a system of thought and
>> understanding that does something to its objects may be a
>> splendid ideal but it's not something that we in fact have.
>
>I'm not sure what Jim means by "understanding that does something to its
>objects". Please clarify.
I'm not satisfied with the phrase either. I hoped that the examples I
gave, in the same message and the following one ("wave states",
"multidimensional space-time", "the public interest", "the causes of
poverty") would clarify the point somewhat.
I have no particularly vivid or novel insights on these issues. It
seems, though, that when we think and speak our thoughts and words have
to do most directly with the system of conceptualized experience that
constitutes the world as it is known to us. Conceptualization seems
like construction rather than something we get directly from the non-
human world, and experience is greatly affected by prepossessions that
lead us to notice some things and consider them more important than
others. Those are the thoughts that lay behind my original point to
Francesca, that there is unavoidable truth in talk of "the social
construction of reality" even though such talk can easily be abused,
not all constructions are equal, and the social does not exhaust the
real.
>Meaning, I assume, that physical scientists use different, if not better,
>frameworks than they used to. Or is it just that their measuring instruments
>are different, if not better ?
Different and better frameworks, I would think.
>If you give in to presuppositionalism, as you have done, then you will
>then end up having to determine what presuppositions, if any, are
>superior to other possible presuppositions.
Can you avoid that necessity? If it's avoidable, why bother with
philosophy or revelation? I suppose one could view philosophy as a
matter of clarifying the presuppositions that we all make, whoever "we"
may be. Perhaps that would have to be the correct view if philosophy is
to be sufficient by itself for knowledge of what is good, beautiful and
true. The same is not true of revelation, though. Revelation would be
rather trivial if what was revealed was not world-transforming, or if it
only clarified things that we could have figured out anyway.
>if Jim accepts that every group 'constructs'
>its own understanding of reality, we will simply
>have seventy-five groups, each with their own
>incommunicable 'construct'.
Is that an inaccurate description of the world? Does everyone really at
bottom believe and value the same things? Does the Catholic Church, for
example, say that what it says is really the same as what everyone else
says but in different words, and that its truths can be communicated by
purely human means to everyone?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Thu Mar 7 16:10:39 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 16:10:39 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 7, 96 07:04:12 pm
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> 1) To say our presuppositions determine our knowledge sounds
> circular. Knowledge OF what?
Knowledge of whatever we know it to be knowledge of, given that we have
accepted our presuppositions (i.e., our faith) as the basis of our
knowledge. I didn't suggest that our presuppositions are *all* that
determine our knowledge, if that's relevant to your question.
> 2) How can you tell which presuppositions are "best" if you
> are locked into this circle?
Less of a practical problem than you would think, since we can't act at
all without already having presuppositions. As Pascal says, we
necessarily make bets about ultimate issues, so each of us is already
committed to a reasonably full set of presuppositions. The issue then
becomes whether presuppositions we can recognize as better are
available to us. Pascal again is relevant; apart from the "wager"
argument (maximizing present value of returns) he suggests that the
presuppositions that enable us to make sense of our situation and
experience and show us how to act productively are the ones to adopt.
It appears that Presuppositionalists such as Van Til propose that
Christian apologists direct the attention of non-Christians to whether
their presuppositions are adequate to the burdens of life. Chris will
no doubt tell me if I'm wrong about that.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Thu Mar 7 16:30:28 1996
Subject: Re: What is Wrong with Civil Religion
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 16:30:28 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 7, 96 09:07:55 pm
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> So whats wrong with civil religion, and does it necessarily
> have to be invented by anyone? Doesn't it just grow in
> that nice unconscious intuitive way of which all
> conservatives approve?
Civil religion is a by-product rather than a policy. It can exist only
if it just grows in a nice unconscious intuitive way. That makes it
difficult to promote for practical ends like social cohesion, which is
what neocons are at least suspected of wanting to do. Also, it seems
manipulative to promote as a matter of policy a religious outlook one
does not share.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Fri Mar 8 02:44:03 1996
Subject: Re: An article ABOUT Neoconservatism
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 02:44:03 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199603080610.BAA20212@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> from "Chris Stamper" at Mar 8, 96 01:10:54 am
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> "General conservative" is dead too. Look at Alan Keyes.
The taxonomy gets rather confused. Is it really possible, though, for
a Straussian to be a general conservative? Also, where does Pat
Buchanan fit in your scheme?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Fri Mar 8 23:49:02 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 23:49:02 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Mar 8, 96 09:37:19 pm
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> Are you now going to argue that overt sexism
> is good for children?
That it always makes things better for children? No. That a world
from which socially-defined sex roles have been eliminated would be a
bad one for children? Yes.
> or that neoconservatism advocates overt sexism?
Neocons waffle around on the issue, I think. Nonetheless, I noted that
the last issue of _Commentary_ had an article entitled "Women should
Stay Home with their Children" or something of the sort.
> > mcws believes among other things in kid's rights.
>
> ...and in cultural rights. They are very strongly protected in our
> Canadian Constitution. There is a balancing point between the two. Our
> section 1 describes the balancing point as that which "is demonstrably
> justified in a free and democratic society", and then leaves the Supreme
> Court Justices to determine that point at which a balance will do the
> least harm to society in general.
If you think this makes sense as a constitutional provision to be
enforced by the courts I'm surprise that you think it would be so
difficult for govern officials to determine who is a true Christian.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sat Mar 9 06:50:49 1996
Subject: Re: We MUST beat Clinton!
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 06:50:49 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199603090207_MC1-16C-9A7A@compuserve.com> from "Paul K Hubbard" at Mar 9, 96 02:06:29 am
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> Remember, he has character - he may well have changed
> his mind based on his perceived responsibility to give the (Republican)
> people what they want. Certainly, it cannot be assumed that he has an
> over-arching left-wing, political agenda as Clinton does.
Where he comes out when he's dealing with Republican primary voters and
when he's dealing with the political forces predominant in Washington
between election years isn't going to be the same. That's not because
he's a bad man, it's because he's a problem solver and a deal-maker.
That's OK as a general thing, but it means that where he comes out on
any substantive issue is determined far more by predominant political
forces than by either personal agenda or feeling of obligation to the
particular people who put him in office. People who believe in the
American political system as such, as Dole does, think the latter is
illegitimate in the case of a president, who ought to be "president of
all the people."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Mar 9 12:47:54 EST 1996
Article: 7257 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: ******* A call to all libertarians: I need Help solving a political theory problem!!!!
Date: 6 Mar 1996 08:40:34 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <4hk4ki$hj0@panix.com>
References: <4hjavq$jlo@ecuador.it.earthlink.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Chuck Miller writes:
> In most democratic counrties the leadership is often drawn from but
>not always: a limited ethnic segement or the elite strata of a society.
>The results of this process is a dominant political culture which
>usally does not reflect the values or attitudes of
>everyone.subsequently reflecting ther own views instead.the question is
>then how do you acheive equal representation for all of the states
>citizens and not just the prevailing views of the elite.
Government by an elite is hard to avoid. Recent attempts to create
more equality by bureaucratic means have had the effect of
concentrating power in irresponsible elites. The Greeks tried to solve
the problem by making popular assemblies omnipotent and choosing
officials by lot, but the consequence was faction, instability, and
rule by demagogues and money. Presumably it wouldn't have helped those
particular problems to add women, slaves and metics to the political
class.
Why not find some other goal to aim for in politics? Pure equality
strikes me as a remarkably empty one.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Mar 9 12:47:55 EST 1996
Article: 7266 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Chesterbelloc mailing list
Date: 9 Mar 1996 12:44:06 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 12
Message-ID: <4hsg16$s83@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
I saw the following on another newsgroup:
Subscription requests for the new Chesterton and Belloc Mailing
List go to me [Richard Freeman] at:
Rfreeman@interaccess.com
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sat Mar 9 14:52:07 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 14:52:07 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Mar 9, 96 12:49:09 pm
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>Is "waffling" a neocon trait??
I think so. It's an in-between sort of outlook. The original impulse,
I believe, was to save liberalism from itself by stabilizing it at some
point, maybe where it was in the early '60s. They wanted to let in
enough basically nonliberal stuff like patriotism, family values,
religion, etc. to maximize the benefits of liberalism. How much? Who
knows.
>On the other hand, does _Commentary_ provide the most up-to-date
>definition of neoconservatism?
_Commentary_ is at the center of the only neoconservatism I am aware of.
Or was, since they themselves now say neoconservatism is dead.
>> > section 1 describes the balancing point as that which "is demonstrably
>> > justified in a free and democratic society"
>
>How to determine "truth"? John is as certain
>of his truth as I am of mine. Which of us shall constitute the true
>Christian state?
Why it is harder to determine what is demonstrably justified in a
Christian state than what is demonstrably justified in a free and
democratic society? No doubt Pol Pot was as certain of what a free and
democratic society would be as you are. Is your point that there is no
such thing as a truly "free and democratic society" since those words
mean only what the holders of power choose to make them mean?
>And unless I'm mistaken I believe it was you who first proposed some
>sort of civil religion for neoconservatism?
I said that's what the neocons need. Podhoretz's article on the death
of neoconservatism confirms that, I think; he says that as the movement
developed it became clearer to its members that the fundamental social
and political issues of today are really religious issues. So if I'm
right that what they wanted was the minimal changes that would save
liberal society (what Podhoretz says elsewhere in the article is
consistent with that view) the need for a civil religion would be a
consequence. I also said that a serious problem with the neocon view
is that civil religion is an outcome rather than an answer.
>Without a healthy dose of tolerance, how do you suppose a specific
>formulation of a true Christian state could accomodate social change?
What social changes do you have in mind? Some social changes wouldn't
much affect the continuation of John Lofton's Calvinist theocracy, while
others would make the continuation of a society that you would recognize
as free and democratic impossible.
Remember that "tolerance" is relative to circumstances. Everyone and
every regime tolerates some things but not others. For example, many
liberal parents would withdraw their children from a school teaching
appreciation of multiple cultures if what was taught was that all
cultures have been sexist, heterosexist and ethnocentric by the
official Canadian standards of today, that those characteristics have
been important in realizing the goods of those cultures, that the
culturally-based views of the many Canadians who reject today's
official standards should be accepted as no less valid than the views
held by those in power rather than subjected to opprobrium as "hatred"
and "bigotry", etc.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sat Mar 9 17:42:14 1996
Subject: Re: Americans still support right to life
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 17:42:14 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <960309161545_241809631@emout09.mail.aol.com> from "David B. Levenstam" at Mar 9, 96 04:15:45 pm
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> Here we find, in the case of rape or incest, that the issue
> has shifted away from any notion of the value of the potential human being
> (or any emotive vitriol about "killing babies") to an evaluative
> righteousness with regards to the innocence or lack thereof of the
> potential mother. Perhaps your title should read "Americans still support
> right to stand in righteous judgment of their neighbours", or, "Americans
> lust for the power to control the contents of women's bodies".
Innocence is patently not the issue, since the people you mention would
forbid abortion in the case of married women who became pregnant as a
result of marital relations with their husbands. While the most
hateful possible interpretation of the motives of others may of course
be correct, it's worth considering possibilities other than
self-righteousness and lust for power.
Here's one possibility: as a general thing the common law recognizes
the value of human life but does not impose a duty to do anything to
save it in the absence of a contract or voluntary conduct that makes
one somehow responsible for whatever the danger is. If Mother Theresa
is drowning and you happen to be standing on the shore with a life
preserver you don't have to toss it to her no matter how valuable her
life is and no matter how easy it would be for you to save it. On the
other hand, if you take Jeffrey Dahmer for a ride in your boat you have
to use reasonable care to ensure his safety even if it puts you to
enormous trouble to do so and even though taking him for a ride may
have been an innocent and even praiseworthy act.
It would be in somewhat the same spirit for the law to impose a duty on
you to preserve the valuable life of your unborn child only if you
became pregnant as a natural consequence of your own voluntary act. (I
take it that incest is included because it is presumed involuntary for
the woman.) The two situations are of course not identical, but I think
the similarity is close enough to motivate an analogous distinction.
Regarding neocons -- Podhoretz says that most neocons consider
themselves prolife but tend to think actual prolifers are extremist.
One might say that neocons w*ffl*.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sun Mar 10 06:01:10 1996
Subject: Re: Americans still support right to lif
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 06:01:10 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <31422A0F@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Mar 9, 96 08:01:00 pm
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> For the record, concern for the life of the conceptus is a relatively recent
> historical development.
I've read things to the contrary, for example Marvin Olasky's book on
the history of abortion in America. I've also read very severe
criticism on historical grounds of that collective historians' brief
that the Supreme Court and others (e.g., Dworkin) seem to rely on, and
of the historians who signed it. I'm not competent to discuss the
matter though -- perhaps someone else is?
> Why is abortion a 'neo-conservative' issue? Is a particularly religious
> criterion essential to its definition?
I don't think it was one of their defining issues. They tended to look
at it as part of a mass of cultural trends they didn't like. Over time
they tended toward a concern with religion, but that concern was
generally based on political and cultural concerns.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sun Mar 10 06:09:49 1996
Subject: Re: your mail
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 06:09:49 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Mar 9, 96 11:20:39 pm
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> one cannot fit racism into
> secular humanism. It just doesn't work. Remember, the absence of secular
> humanism would entail the presence of inhuman religious warfare.
I don't understand this. "Secular humanism" seems to mean something
like "man and his purposes is the measure, appeals to transcendental
standards get you nowhere." Such a view seems consistent with making
human biology, therefore breeding stocks, therefore race the measure.
Also, I'm not sure why the second quoted sentence makes sense unless
inhuman warfare is inevitable and the only way to keep it from having a
religious coloration is to get rid of religion. In that case though it
would have an irreligious coloration, and I don't see why that would be
an advantage.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sun Mar 10 06:12:30 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 06:12:30 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <960310024540_164859641@mail02.mail.aol.com> from "Bill Riggs" at Mar 10, 96 02:45:42 am
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> Indeed, what is a "hypocracy" ?
It comes from "hypo", meaning "low", and "cracy", meaning "rule", and
therefore refers to limited government based on consent of the people.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sun Mar 10 08:12:21 1996
Subject: Re: Americans still support right to life
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 08:12:21 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 10, 96 12:16:55 pm
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> I think it is a matter of 1) what is OK to say at cocktail parties &
> 2) very sharp, irritable people with a low boredom threshold.
Class and style, one might say.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sun Mar 10 08:15:29 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 08:15:29 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 10, 96 12:22:56 pm
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> > Do help me out here, Liz. Which am I, the authoritarian theocrat, or the
> > hypocrat ? Indeed, what is a "hypocracy" ?
>
> It is a society run by doctors who either can't spell or have very bad
> handwriting. I'm not coming in on whether or not they are pro-life
> doctors, it would involve me in too much hotwater.
I think the oath forbids inducing abortion, but that part's hard to
read too. I'll ask my druggist.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sun Mar 10 08:19:44 1996
Subject: Re: The politics of ethnicity
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 08:19:44 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 10, 96 12:48:33 pm
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> These experience makes it very difficult for me to
> see politics as it is usually taught in the universities
> as the result of big 'Isms' like - no offence - Hobbesianism.
> It comes out more as a random mix of whoever manages to get
> the Prime Minister's or President's ear at the right
> moment.
Interesting issue. Still, a gas has a specific temperature and
pressure even though it can be resolved into a collection of molecules
with random momenta.
Next message will have a different palindrome even though the one I've
been using will be hard to match.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week:
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw,
sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I--lo!--rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas
nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
From jk Sun Mar 10 14:08:23 1996
Subject: Re: Americans still support right to lif
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 14:08:23 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3142EC8B@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Mar 10, 96 09:51:00 am
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> One of the reasons that I asked is that
> one is wary of seeing a Machiavellian exploitation of religion by politicians
> (Machiavelli considers religion an exploitable 'ideology' that can be used to
> subdue the masses -- Marx may have picked up this theme from him). This sort
> of exploitation has a way of backfiring -- the tiger gobbles up its rider.
I didn't mean to imply that on the whole the neocons were manipulative,
wanting to make use of religion as a tool for essentially unrelated
ends. I think they have moved toward the view that the problem of a
tolerable social order implicates fundamental religious issues. That
recognition means the end of neoconservatism since (as Francesca's
"cocktail party" comment suggested) the neocons wanted to preserve the
social status they had achieved and fundamental religious issues can't
be dealt with in a way that that leaves one's personal and social
identity unaffected.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Sun Mar 10 14:12:22 1996
Subject: Re: your mail
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 14:12:22 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3142F123@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Mar 10, 96 10:11:00 am
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> But widespread use of
> the term "secular humanist" emerged from conservative Christian religious
> contexts to identify those who challenged such things as organized prayers in
> schools, etc.
Do you think some other term would be better to refer to people who
favor the continued secularization of public life?
> I am always wary of terms made up to serve a particular ideological purpose.
"Religious right" is an example of such a term.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Sun Mar 10 17:06:06 1996
Subject: Re: Americans still support right to lif
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 17:06:06 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 10, 96 07:48:07 pm
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> Except if one says religion is great for other people. I always
> felt that was sort of Allan Bloom's position; he wanted, at least,
> to teach the CHILDREN of religious Jews or Christians, not their
> irreligious great-grand children. But he detested what I think
> he also called the 'religious right'.
Neocons have been accused of such an attitude, maybe even by me, but I
don't think it's fair in all cases. Neoconservatism was not a coherent
and finished view, it was a variety of people in transition. Bloom of
course was a Straussian and some of them seem to have picked up the
view that (1) it's as appropriate for the people to believe as it is
for the philosophers to know (therefore the esoteric/exoteric
distinction), and (2) "philosophers" as so described actually exist and
many of them have studied at the University of Chicago.
> I think the short palindromes are the most stylish.
Aha! The real question, though, is what kind of con would come up with
the current palindrome.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Sun Mar 10 19:10:49 1996
Subject: Re: Back to presuppositions
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 19:10:49 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <960310150222_165105699@mail04.mail.aol.com> from "Bill Riggs" at Mar 10, 96 03:02:23 pm
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Bill Riggs says:
>Jerusalem calls on his to commit our hearts and minds, Athens to lay
>back, and suspend decisions on the ultimate issues.
Is this right? Plato seems to have had faith and Aristotle had no
desire to abandon ordinary beliefs. Possibly the tendency was toward
skepticism although I don't know enough to say. Pascal's point, of
course, is that fundamental skepticism is quite literally impossible.
>But on this I agree with Jim and Pascal, that an intellectually
>grounded faith is like a wager.
One distinction is that we might not wager at all but we can't help but
understand the world and ourselves in some sense or other. Another is
that an ordinary wager once made is not what makes us what we are and
the world what it is for us.
>What I attempted to point out is that we may or may not be fully
>committed (i.e. to a "reasonably full set of presuppositions") in the
>way Jim describes. Indeed, my great problem with Bishop Spong is that
>John Spong spends a great deal of his time going around stating either
>what he doesn't believe, or what he doubts, and seldom if ever, what he
>does believe, at least on the "ultimate issues" (though like many other
>liberal churchmen, he has a great commitment to a wide variety of
>secular concerns).
The only thing by Spong I've ever read is that speech I commented on,
on the ANGLICAN list. It seemed clear from the speech that he is
fundamentally an historical materialist who believes that political
power appropriately used will usher in a redeemed world. He doesn't
seem at all short of presuppositions regarding the things he considers
of decisive importance.
>Is it enough to just insert facts into the Weltanschauung jigsaw
>puzzle, and if everything fits, proclaim ala Feyerabend that this is
>good enough for now?
We see through a glass darkly, for sure. Presumably "good enough for
now" means at least "good"; that is, "capturing reality truly if not
fully." Your point is that we have no reason to think that about our
own constructions. Fair enough, but a construction seems to be all we
have. Therefore the need for faith in revelation as part of any
possibly justified Weltanshauung; to be reliable, the construction can
not be purely our own. As Pascal suggests, it's really the only game
in town.
>But the key, and I wonder if others have detected it, is that we are as
>Christians commanded not to add to their burdens. In fact, I struggle
>all the time with propositions of how much we are commanded to actively
>loose those burdens. I'm sure that Van Til and Schaeffer have got this
>wrong, but I'm also minded of my own inadequacies in this area, so who
>am I to talk?
Don't worry about talking. The wonder of the net is that loose-lipped
blabber is authorized and even demanded by the infinite emptiness of
the electronic spaces, eternally demanding to be filled. So follow my
example and say what you please.
Slightly more to the point, my knowledge of Van Til is based only on a
source that I'm told is unreliable. It seems unlikely to me, though,
that he wants Christians to add to their burdens rather than make clear
to them through discussion and the like what the burdens of life
necessarily are.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Sun Mar 10 19:11:42 1996
Subject: Re: your mail
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 19:11:42 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <31433D0B@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Mar 10, 96 03:35:00 pm
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>I really don't find many people that was to secularize public life. I
>do find those who don't want _other_ people's religion imposed on
>public life.
I don't see the distinction between eliminating all religion with which
someone in America in 1996 disagrees from public life and secularizing
public life. Why do you suppose the "wall of separation" metaphor has
become so popular?
Public life is always going to impose something because it's always
going to be based on something. The view that there are no specifically
religious propositions with which anyone disagrees that can legitimately
play a role in public life is hardly a neutral one.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Mon Mar 11 08:01:20 1996
Subject: Re: Gilstrap for Congress Web Site Available
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 08:01:20 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199603110646.BAA13113@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> from "Chris Stamper" at Mar 11, 96 01:46:07 am
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> Is neoconservatism really dead? And what does that answer do to
> paleoconservatism?
So you want to move from the sociology of religion to the sociology of
political outlook? One can only speculate. Paleoconservatism remains
what it was before it was named as such, a sort of anti-assimilationist
version of conservatism. The neocon episode I suppose heightened
consciousness of the ability of the contemporary liberal order to coopt
opposition from the right, but the Reagan experience was enough to do
that anyway. On the other hand, the neocons, together with popular
disaffection with the contemporary liberal order and the failures of
that order have put conservatism on the mainstream intellectual map.
The importance of whatever conservatives are able to present a coherent
vision has therefore increased, which presents the paleos with an
opportunity.
The "anti-assimilationist", "coopt" and "vision" language in the
previous paragraph and the failure of neoconservatism to find coherence
as an outlook preserving liberalism while mitigating its excesses
suggests another point, that liberal society has developed to the point
that conservatism as once understood (maintenance of a social order
based to a large degree on ancestral wisdom, particular loyalties,
informal practices that evolve rather than are designed, etc.) has
become impossible. The necessary kind of social order doesn't exist
any more except as fragments and subterranean practices. Instead we
have a radicalism seeking major institutional and cultural changes that
would create conditions permitting such a social order to reemerge.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Mon Mar 11 12:13:41 1996
Subject: Re: Socrates' Impiety
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 12:13:41 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <31443F93@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Mar 11, 96 09:57:00 am
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> Socrates was sentenced to death for impiety towards the gods as well as
> corrupting youth by asking difficult questions. But obviously -- in
> Plato's rendition -- was passionately committed to THE GOOD. Does that make
> him a secular humanist? -- or a neocon?
Hardly a secular humanist. He rejected the notion that man is the
measure, and had nothing against the establishment of religion. He
wasn't a neocon either. A neocon is someone who wants to stabilize the
oligarchy=>democracy=>tyranny slide described in the _Republic_ because
he likes democracy and thinks he can save it by mixing in elements from
earlier forms of society. That wasn't something Socrates thought
either possible or worth doing.
> It remains the case that MY religion is not necessarily
> YOURS. Almost uniquely in the US (but Canada or Great Britain) we Americans
> have our First Amendment which requires a difficult balancing act, almost
> case by case, between free exercise and non-establishment. It is all too
> easy a solution to execute the critic. It is done everywhere today, e.g.
> Iran literally. Elsewhere symbolically? [I am also an ardent defender of
> free speech.]
Why single out some understandings of the nature of man and the
universe, call them "religion", and ban them from public life, while
picking some other understanding ("man and his goals are the measure")
and making it obligatory? Sounds grossly intolerant to me. It remains
the case that MY understanding is not necessarily YOURS. Remember that
almost all of the tens of millions of political murders perpetrated in
modern times have been in the name of the latter kind of understanding.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Mon Mar 11 14:29:48 1996
Subject: Re: Socrates' Impiety
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 14:29:48 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <31446F1E@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Mar 11, 96 01:21:00 pm
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> Plato/Socrates rather liked long-winded
> old Protagoras (The original for "Man is the measure.").
It goes to show that believers in absolutes can disagree with people
without hating them. I never doubted it.
> And aren't you overdoing it lumping all the evils of Nazism and
> Communism (to which I assume you are referring) under this rubric.
Nazis, commies, ayatollahs -- why are the first two references
overdoing it but the last one isn't?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Mon Mar 11 17:33:23 1996
Subject: Re: A Common Moral Basis?
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 17:33:23 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <314475F8@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Mar 11, 96 01:49:00 pm
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>Is there some common moral basis in our Anglo-American-European
>traditions upon which we can build?
I assume you mean apart from religion. I don't think there is.
Christianity was constitutive of European, English and American
civilization. Now that has been taken away I don't think what's left is
a sufficient basis for a common morality.
I think of liberalism as the best attempt to construct a secular common
morality. "Good" was taken to be the same as "desired", with everyone's
desires counted equally and all resources marshalled in a rational
scheme to maximize their equal satisfaction. That didn't work, though.
For one thing it couldn't give a reason for sacrifice, and society can't
last unless people are willing sometimes to sacrifice to the common
good; for another it couldn't provide an adequate basis for family life.
So "good" has to be something that transcends individual desire. It
could be the good of society or humanity, but if so we must decide
whether "good" is whatever society happens to want, in which case we're
stuck with worship of the state, or whether it's something that
transcends not only all individuals but also all human collectivities.
In the latter case, though, we're back to religion or its equivalent.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Wed Mar 13 08:11:09 1996
Subject: Re: Socrates' Impiety
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 08:11:09 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 13, 96 10:28:19 am
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> 1) Acts 17.23 "..as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I
> found an altar with the inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom
> therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you."
>
> Paul therefore seeks common ground with the 'civic religion'
> of the Athenians. Whoever set up the altar was no doubt
> an ancestor of the Kristols & possibly even the first neo-con.
The altar and inscription sound more like an indication of
dissatisfaction with civil religion. Did the unknown god play any part
in the civil rites and festivals of Athens? Certainly it seems
unlikely that an Athenian philosopher set up the altar to bolster the
constitution of Athens by affiliating it with the ultimate loyalties of
the people.
> Libertarian Paleo-Con
There are also paleolibertarians, socially conservative libertarians
associated with the late Murray Rothbard. One of them (Hans-Hermann
Hoppe) published an article not long ago praising monarchy as the
privatization of government. Thus the circle closes. (Actually, his
best regime, which he understands as historically the one that preceded
the rise of European monarchies, would be something like medieval
Iceland. I suppose that makes him the most paleo of all paleos. A
"palaeo", maybe.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Wed Mar 13 12:34:10 1996
Subject: Re: Socrates' Impiety
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 12:34:10 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 13, 96 02:57:57 pm
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Per Francescam locutus est:
> > Certainly it seems
> > unlikely that an Athenian philosopher set up the altar to bolster the
> > constitution of Athens by affiliating it with the ultimate loyalties of
> > the people.
>
> Although Augustus had done just that for the Roman Empire,
> around fifty/sixty years before Paul was in Greece.
An altar to the unknown god? Doesn't sound very functional as a basis
for civil religion. I thought the early Christians had problems
participating in the actual civil religion of the Roman Empire, by the
way.
> I like to think of the Monarch as something more than a
> successful gangster. The point of the Monarchy is
> that it represents the public good, in addition to
> the private goods of citizens. Do you remember
> the pirate who told Alexander the great that
> Alexander was a very powerful pirate. All
> governments are successful pirates if there are
> no public goods. And there can't be public goods
> in a plural society without a civic religion.
I don't think that the notion of monarchy as privatized government
necessarily means that there are no public goods any more than private
universities mean that the disinterested pursuit of knowledge is
chimerical. It can be understood as drawing attention to the
inevitable tendency for those in control of the government whatever its
form or theoretical basis to use their power for their private ends,
and the consequent benefit of identifying those ends as closely and as
permanently as possible with the well-being of the state and society at
large. That identification can be accomplished most perfectly by
vesting ownership of the state in a single family -- that is, by the
institution of hereditary monarchy. Or such is the argument.
I think my comments on civil religion have been to the effect that it
can't be created for secular purposes by a ruling class whose
fundamental interests are secular. You might add that if the concerns
of the rulers of a society are wholly secular (e.g., maximizing the
long-term equal satisfaction of actual human desires) or are too plural
to cohere in a civil religion the society will end up without public
goods. I agree, and add that in such a society the actual concerns of
the rulers are likely to end up a lot less altruistic than the one I
just suggested.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Thu Mar 14 09:25:34 1996
Subject: Re: A Common Moral Basis?
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 09:25:34 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3148276B@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Mar 14, 96 00:02:00 am
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> No, Jim, I did not mean something apart from religion, nor did I mean some
> sort of hedonism. Our shared religious tradition does not oppose happiness;
> it includes altruism, respect for persons, basic rights (in its post 17th
> century versions (not St. Paul
Presumably whatever any religious tradition aims at is what it
understands as happiness. Also, I don't think there is a shared
religious tradition in the West that excludes St. Paul.
Altruism, respect for persons and basic rights in their modern versions
seem to me to come down to hedonism, even though people who write about
them often use heroic Kantian phrases. The ideal seems to be autonomy
in the sense of people forming their own goals and being able to expect
that those goals will be respected and included to the extent possible
in a general system of cooperation facilitating the attainment of each
person's goals. In the absence of a criterion other than consistency
with the goals of others for telling someone that his goals are wrong I
don't see how such an ideal can be distinguished from hedonism.
However, "respect for persons" as it's now understood seems to forbid
institutionalization of such a criterion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Thu Mar 14 16:31:24 1996
Subject: Re: A Common Moral Basis?
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 16:31:25 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <31483A64@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Mar 14, 96 10:25:00 am
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> Jim, I think you are using "hedonism" in a loose sense.
I was using it to mean identification of the good with people's actual
preferences. My thought was that current political theories like
liberalism that emphasize autonomy, human rights, human dignity and so
on favor government action to promote things (prosperity, vocational
education, etc.) that facilitate satisfaction of preferences but leave
no practical way to tell someone that his preferences (his
"autonomously chosen vision of the good") are wrong and unacceptable
apart from their inconsistency with other people's preferences. So
they have a clear theory of the good: the good is the satisfaction of
preferences simply as preferences.
> But what I am looking for as a common moral basis is a consensus that spans
> both religious and non-religious standards. I think it is there to be
> discovered.
I can't help but think that such a common basis would turn out to be
the formal qualities of moral thought as such. Kant thought that was
enough to generate a morality to live by, but other people haven't been
persuaded by his derivation of concrete moral rules from it.
From jk Thu Mar 14 16:36:08 1996
Subject: Re: Socrates' Impiety
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 16:36:08 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Mar 14, 96 04:14:01 pm
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> I have lost Jim Kalb's original letter about paleo-libertarianism.
> Jim said that it was propounded by someone called Murry
> Rothembard. Could you remind me how to spell his name and
> recommend a book by him? Was he the chap who said 'In
> Brooklyn we have seen da state of nature a hundred
> fifty years and it woiks'?
Murray Rothbard. I don't know what book by him to recommend. I also
don't know if he said that I think you'll find information on him at
http://www.auburn.edu/~lvmises/home.html
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
From jk Thu Mar 14 16:52:36 1996
Subject: Re: Socrates' Impiety
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 16:52:36 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Liz R Robinson" at Mar 14, 96 04:35:26 pm
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> "man and his goals are the measure". Make the connection for me between
> the murders you refer to and this latter kind of understanding?
That understanding authorizes the wholesale revision of morality simply
by changing goals. Morality becomes a purely human institution
recognized as such which men are therefore free to change as they wish
because it has no basis that transcends their wills. For example, "man
is the measure" is quite vague, and one might reasonably want to make
it more specific by saying just which men are to serve as the measure.
One way of doing that would be to pick one man and his people as the
measure. Then the Leader and his People could vindicate their status
as the measure of all things in a pragmatic and operationally clear way
that no-one could contradict by conquering the world, exterminating
some of its inhabitants and enslaving the rest. It's actually been
tried.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Bombard a drab mob.
Back to my archive of posts.