From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jan 1 13:02:03 EST 1997 Article: 8814 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Diversity is a fact of life; get used to it Date: 31 Dec 1996 16:49:35 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 14 Message-ID: <5ac1pf$m4n@panix.com> References:<32BEDBFB.40D9@novagate.com> <59q3og$1tf@keelung.transend.com.tw> <59qv38$217@is05.micron.net> <59tvub$3en@chaos.dac.neu.edu> <151127404wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5a4iuf$ch7$1@news01a.micron.net> <5aa635$b3m@news.usaor.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In le@put.com (Louis Epstein) writes: >Diversity has caused every war there ever was.We need to see it as a >challenge to be overcome! This is obscure. War results from differences. More specifically, though, doesn't it result from A treating the differences of other people as a challenge to be overcome? To the extent the differences are simply permitted to exist it seems there is no war. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Jan 2 07:30:45 EST 1997 Article: 8833 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: naive Christians and public schools Date: 2 Jan 1997 07:25:56 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 30 Message-ID: <5ag9gk$6lc@panix.com> References: <5afb33$otm@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <5afb33$otm@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com> Daniel Benson writes: >The anti-Christ philosophy of those who founded the public education >system in America is readily apparant to all who will take the trouble >to investigate a little. Do facts about the views of Horace Mann or whoever deserve this much emphasis? To say "the founders of public education didn't like Christianity and public schools are in fact anti-Christian" leaves out a lot needed to make the situation comprehensible. Millions upon millions of people have been involved in public education since the 1840s -- why has the net effect of all their efforts been what we have today? It would help I think to be analytical as well as historical -- to point to basic features of politics, large public bureaucracies, professional organizations and so on in America that mean that public education necessarily tends to have a secularizing effect and promote central administrative control rather than self-rule. >Conversly, the true role of public education is to condition children to >accept their manipulation by the state. Consider the package of moral attitudes that are emphasized -- self-expression, tolerance and acceptance of change. Basically they're being taught to concentrate on short-term individual satisfactions and compliance with what's been decided for them by others. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From neocon-request@abdn.ac.uk Thu Jan 2 16:36:15 1997 Received: from abdn.ac.uk (mailserv.abdn.ac.uk [139.133.7.21]) by mail2.panix.com (8.7.5/8.7.1/PanixM1.0) with ESMTP id QAA09862 for ; Thu, 2 Jan 1997 16:36:01 -0500 (EST) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by abdn.ac.uk (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA00310; Thu, 2 Jan 1997 21:34:52 GMT Received: from panix.com (panix.com [198.7.0.2]) by abdn.ac.uk (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id VAA00302 for ; Thu, 2 Jan 1997 21:34:49 GMT Received: (from jk@localhost) by panix.com (8.8.4/8.7/PanixU1.3) id QAA05276 for neocon@abdn.ac.uk; Thu, 2 Jan 1997 16:28:45 -0500 (EST) From: Jim Kalb Message-Id: <199701022128.QAA05276@panix.com> Subject: Re: Flags In Churches To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon) Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 16:28:44 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: neocon-request@abdn.ac.uk Status: RO > >>> >Is it not simply Clearer to ask whether Neuhaus is becoming > >>> >UTOPIAN in his political thinking? > Perhaps the most interesting thing about this dispute is that it is > happening in the pages of First Things at all. Neuhaus has been such > a major figure among neoconservatives as a religious apologist for > liberalism, capitalism, and democracy that it is shocking to see him > openly questioning the legitimacy of the American regime. The problem arises as it does I think because Neuhaus etc. are liberals and believe that popular consent is the reason a government is legitimate. So if the government authoritatively proclaims part of its essence to be things like the right to abortion to which he believes no one can legitimately consent it becomes very hard for him to view it as legitimate. Another aspect of the problem is that the government is thought to be an agent of the people, of which we are part, so we become responsible for whatever the government does or doesn't do. Presumably if Neuhaus were a subject of an absolute monarch who didn't do anything about dueling or infant exposure he wouldn't feel called upon to try to overthrow the government even if the king thought what he was doing was a matter of principle. As a liberal, democrat and patriot Neuhaus has a hard time thinking of the U.S. government that way though. > >I think there is a genuine danger that the 'religious conservatives' > >will be infected by the same controlling political moralism which > >drives or drove socialism. No doubt. When the government is thought to have a general power and obligation to reorder social life I don't see how controlling political moralism is to be avoided. How do you convince people such things are not the role of government? After all, once it has been accepted that it is, the proposal to restrict the role of government will be interpreted often correctly as a proposal to reorder social life to the advantage of those benefit from laissez-faire. As long as the social order is not viewed as somehow providential it's going to be very hard to get the genie back in the bottle. And I'm not sure how that view of the social order is going to reassert itself. If that's right, then the issue becomes whose controlling political moralism determines policy. At present there is the c.p.m. of the Left, and there are moderates who don't like c.p.m. but like social peace and muddling through so they accommodate it. The arrangement doesn't work if the Right comes in with its own c.p.m.; hence the convention that everyone to the right of Bob Dole is to be treated as an extremist with no legitimate role in political life. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Jan 3 07:00:27 EST 1997 Article: 8837 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Conrservatism Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Date: 2 Jan 1997 20:43:24 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 39 Message-ID: <5aho7s$q88@panix.com> References: <5ae3ar$c7n@panix.com> <32CC46D0.6A12@zxzxz.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <32CC46D0.6A12@zxzxz.net> Mike Lepore writes: >> 4.2 Why don't conservatives care about what happens to the poor, weak, >> discouraged, and outcast? >> >> Conservatives do care about what happens to such people. That's >> why they oppose government programs that they believe multiply >> the poor, weak, discouraged, and outcast by undermining and >> disrupting the network of habits and social relations that >> enable people to carry on their lives without the aid of >> government bureaucracy. Moral community declines when people >> rely on government to solve their problems rather than on >> themselves and those they live with. >Okay. Then you would have no objection if the working class were to >form a revolutionary industrial union, declare the property rights of >the ruling class null and void, and implement workers' control of the >means of production. I guess you and I agree that the solution to our >problems isn't in the actions of government. The working class will >have to overthrow capitalism (the cause of all social problems) >without any help from the government. A revolutionary industrial union that declares property rights null and void and implements workers' (as a practical matter, its own) control would have to have enormous centralized power vested in a small number of men responsible to no one. Existing law, convention and social relations would be abolished; nothing could fill the gap and provide social order except force wielded by an omnipotent bureaucracy under the absolute control of some small group guided by their own ideology. A stupendous number of decisions would have to be made with no ability to rely on settled practice or the market to coordinate them. Coordination, it appears, would require the supremacy of a single central will backed by force. Sounds like a bad idea. Or perhaps I'm being unfair. Perhaps we should look at history and see if some group with this kind of goal has ever come to power ... -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From bit.listserv.christia Sat Jan 4 07:40:31 1997 Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU ~Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia Comments: ******************************************************** Comments: * The following "Approved" statement verifies header * Comments: * information for gateway passage. No approval of the * Comments: * content is implied. * Approved: NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU * Comments: ******************************************************** Path: news.panix.com!panix!feed1.news.erols.com!hunter.premier.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!cs.utexas.edu!natinst.com!news-relay.us.dell.com!paladin.american.edu!auvm!not-for-mail ~Lines: 13 ~References: <13677.851840408@copland.rowan.edu> Message-ID: <5adrb3$rdg@panix.com> ~Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 09:11:47 -0500 ~Sender: CHRISTIA@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU ~From: Jim Kalb Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences ~Subject: Re: For a young, confused mind: a clarification, please! In <13677.851840408@copland.rowan.edu> "Dr Nancy's Sweetie" writes: >So far as I can make out, the real problem is that some people just >don't like their brothers and sisters in Christ, and so make up some >way to exclude the people they dislike. If someone doesn't agree with >JoeBlow, and isn't prepared to disagree agreeably, then he's got to >find a way to redefine Christianity so that JoeBlow doesn't fit. Pascal said that it was difficult to speak chastely of chastity, or humbly of humility. The same applies to tolerance, I think. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From bit.listserv.christia Sat Jan 4 07:40:31 1997 Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU ~Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia Comments: ******************************************************** Comments: * The following "Approved" statement verifies header * Comments: * information for gateway passage. No approval of the * Comments: * content is implied. * Approved: NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU * Comments: ******************************************************** Path: news.panix.com!panix!arclight.uoregon.edu!super.zippo.com!zdc!paladin.american.edu!auvm!not-for-mail ~Lines: 80 ~References: <32B86B13.33FB@pacbell.com> <59bjus$m9v@panix.com> <59q5p5$c99@panix.com> Message-ID: <5aduam$2on@panix.com> ~Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 10:02:46 -0500 ~Sender: CHRISTIA@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU ~From: Jim Kalb Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences ~Subject: Re: For David Coomler: A Simple Question In Tim Ikeda writes: >I had been going under the assumption that "theory of everything" was >a literal description about having an all-encompassing theory or >explanation of everything. Clearly we don't know of any. I had probably been using the phrase unclearly and in more than one sense, to include both the sum total of our actual beliefs and what you say above, which in my second post I refer to as "absolute omniscience" and attribute to God. The implicit thought I suppose had been that the latter somehow motivates the former, and that we implicitly but necessarily make sense of the former by reference to the latter, so if our understanding of things treats the latter as nonsense we have a problem. Another way of making the point of the previous sentence: thought like life is impossible without ideals such as "truth", "reality", and "goodness". Ideals don't work though if we think of them as things we make up ourselves. Therefore belief in transcendent realities is necessary for ordinary life. It seems difficult however to dissociate the ideals of "truth" and "reality" from the concept of absolute omniscience. Otherwise there would be truths that could not be known, a strange notion. So to the extent we should believe in the things that best order and make sense of our experience we should believe in absolute omniscience, that is in the existence of an absolutely omniscient being. >I think the problem is that one can be (should be?) just as leery >of top->bottom (metaphysical/religious) explanations as of bottom->top >(analytical/scientific) ones at least with regard to providing a >coherent and complete picture of "it all". I don't think we've yet >found where the "stalactites and stalagmites of explanation" touch. We do the best we can. We are in no position to base our thoughts and actions solely on particular truths that can be rigorously demonstrated. We orient ourselves by reference to the whole of which we are part, so religious beliefs -- beliefs about that whole -- are necessary to us. Such beliefs may not be rigorously demonstrable but they are not simply arbitrary either. >> The obvious inference seems to be that absolute omniscience -- >> possession of a completed theory of everything, known to be true >> -- would require a non-discursive mind that knows things immediately >> rather than by chains of reasoning from axioms. >Hmmm... How would that work? I'm not suggesting that would be >impossible, but would such an ability be completely outside our >limited comprehension to understand? We can make sense of it abstractly and by analogy, I think. We understand with what it is to know something (a color for example) immediately rather than by chains of reasoning. We also make sense of theoretical notions like the ones above that are distant from everyday life by the role they play in our overall understanding of things, rather as we understand what subatomic particles are by reference to the role they play in physical theory. >But, we do evaluate incoming information locally, and mostly in our >brains. I think that to the extent that our brains function similarly >(thanks to a common biology and perhaps culture), we can communicate >our impressions about our "local" experiences. Where I think things >break down in terms of hard and fast common understanding are in >questions about "what came before the universe", "did the universe >require an uncaused cause or an infinity of causes", and "what is the >ultimate purpose of 'x', 'y' or 'z'". While we are marginally capable >of understanding local (proximal) phenomena, we really have a pretty >poor handle on understanding distant (distal) causes. There is >anything but solid footing at the edges. I think this was the point >of Dan'l's original post. There are interesting topics at the "edge", >sure; but more likely decided by faith rather than reason. [This is >not meant to slight the importance of faith but to suggest that >"reason" might not be as influential as some think.] Life is difficult, but we do the best we can. It seems to me that in all judgements we make both faith and reason play a role. So reason has an important role in religious faith. How far people will succeed in finding common ground in such things can not be known in advance. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From jk Sat Jan 4 10:22:22 1997 Subject: Re: Flags In Churches -Reply To: BillR54619@AOL.COM Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 10:22:22 -0500 (EST) Cc: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon) In-Reply-To: <970104042639_1491482118@emout17.mail.aol.com> from "BillR54619@AOL.COM" at Jan 4, 97 04:26:39 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 837 Status: RO > > Samuel Rushdoony. R(ousas) J(ohn) Rushdoony? Or maybe there are mobs of Rushdoonys out there ... > It is odd to reflect what might happen if the Christian Coalition > really "won" the culture wars. What would their governing platform be > ? In _The Road To Holocaust_, Lindsay stated quite explicitly that > politics is none of the Church's beeswax, and that the mission of the > Church, its only mission, is evangelism. Presumably, most CC supporters would agree, as long as they don't see the government as anti-Christian in its very nature (for example as that nature is authoritatively expounded by the Supreme Court). Until the past couple of decades they didn't, and they indeed stayed out of politics. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From jk Sat Jan 4 10:28:36 1997 Subject: Re: Flags In Churches To: BillR54619@AOL.COM Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 10:28:36 -0500 (EST) Cc: neocon@abdn.ac.uk In-Reply-To: <970104051227_1324484914@emout09.mail.aol.com> from "BillR54619@AOL.COM" at Jan 4, 97 05:12:29 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 258 Status: RO > I think that Jim and I agree on the notion that civil society exists > prior to the state. We agree, but American law no longer agrees. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From jk Sat Jan 4 21:46:30 1997 Subject: Re: Flags In Churches To: div093@abdn.ac.uk Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 21:46:30 -0500 (EST) Cc: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon) In-Reply-To: from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at Jan 4, 97 06:07:42 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1712 Status: RO >> > I think that Jim and I agree on the notion that civil society exists >> > prior to the state. >> >> We agree, but American law no longer agrees. > >Could you give one or two examples? I take "civil society exists prior to the state" to mean something like "the state must recognize the legitimacy of the social institutions independent of it by reference to which people organize and have always organized their lives, and of the moral conceptions at the base of those institutions." The law doesn't do that now, though -- to say something is a "deeply rooted social stereotype" is to debunk it, especially if it has to do in some way with power inequalities other than those established by the state, which independent social institutions always do. Almost everything the Supreme Court has had to say in relation to sex and the sexes would serve as an example. I suppose the decisions on religion would be another example. Sex roles, standards of sexual conduct and religious views all enter into the construction of civil society but the law denies them public validity. The law does still recognize the presumptive validity of contractual and property rights, but even there takings law is a real mess and there is I think a trend in determining rights and obligations away from contract and toward status (but as established by law rather than autonomously developed social tradition). Employment law would be an example of that, for example the steady decline of employment-at-will and the growth of antidiscrimination law and other protective legislation. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From jk Sat Jan 4 21:47:37 1997 Subject: Re: Flags In Churches To: div093@abdn.ac.uk Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 21:47:37 -0500 (EST) Cc: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon) In-Reply-To: from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at Jan 4, 97 06:07:42 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1099 Status: RO >Its unconservative, I think, to imagine that societies can have NO >taboos, no unspeakables or undepictables. 1990s PC replaces a whole lot >of earlier 'pc's. It is disengenious for conservatives to pretend >otherwise - for example, by the use of the word 'pc'. 1990s PC in line with the times stikes me as more formalized. I don't think Bowdler inspired a raft of committees issuing guidelines on the reform of language, but Bowdlerizing I think was nonetheless considered an unusually obtrusive form of PC. "More formalized" suggests less in line with common understandings and therefore more tyrannical. Also -- what's wrong with demanding that people comply with their stated principles and permit free expression if free expression is still one of their big causes? You don't have to believe in a social order to feel entitled to claim the benefits of the principles it sticks *you* with. Anyway, I thought neocons believed in free speech, democracy, etc. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From jk Sat Jan 4 21:52:22 1997 Subject: Re: Flags In Churches To: div093@abdn.ac.uk Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 21:52:22 -0500 (EST) Cc: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon) In-Reply-To: from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at Jan 4, 97 07:14:24 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 766 Status: RO > long long before the Hittengers and Arkes and society as a whole > manage legally to limit abortion (I would place bets on the year > 2050, the 50s always being that sort of decade), people (moral > individuals) will have to sort out the roles of 'father' & 'mother'. I think it's obviously right that the abortion issue has to do with what men and women are. That's what the Supreme Court says and they're the experts. So how it gets resolved depends on a whole complex of things about sex and sex roles. My one reservation on what you say is that I'm not sure that by 2050 there's going to be a "society as a whole" that sorts things out. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From jk Sun Jan 5 15:08:12 1997 Subject: Re: Flags In Churches To: div093@abdn.ac.uk Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 15:08:12 -0500 (EST) Cc: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon) In-Reply-To: from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at Jan 5, 97 03:07:56 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1815 Status: RO > > My one reservation on what you say is that I'm not sure that by > > 2050 there's going to be a "society as a whole" that sorts things > > out. > Do you believe there is such a thing as 'human nature'? If yes, does > it create implicit bonds between people? If yes, can the sort of > social anarchy of which you speak be a real possibility? Yes. Yes. Our knowledge of human nature doesn't tell us all that much. There are lots of different ways of concretizing it, so all living systems of law and ethics are particular. For example, it's good for people to recognize some standard other than whatever outlook they happen to have individually, and for the standard they recognize to somehow reflect accumulated experience of society at large. The Chinese might think the way to do that is to teach the young to defer to the old and the Anglo-Saxons might think the way is to teach all to defer to law. Both systems have something to be said for them and both serve similar needs of human nature. They aren't consistent with each other though, so taken together they don't give rise to a "society as a whole" capable of "sorting things out." I presume in the year 2050 there are going to be both Chinese and A-Ss, not to mention Muslims, Rushdoonyites, Social Democrats and what have you, all nanoseconds away from each other via the hyperinternet, and none is going to convert all the others. I also assume that no consumer society combination of all the above is going to give people a way of life they find tolerable. None of that necessarily implies utter chaos of course -- it may be possible to agree on a sort of _ius gentium_ that permits various ways of life to coexist. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From jk Sun Jan 5 15:25:15 1997 Subject: Re: Flags In Churches To: div093@abdn.ac.uk Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 15:25:15 -0500 (EST) Cc: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon) In-Reply-To: from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at Jan 5, 97 03:12:03 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1097 Status: RO > Below the political level, isn't there a lot of social/self > censorship going on? Sure. There must be some reason though why people feel it has to be formalized. For one thing, regime affects culture. For example, the civil rights laws require everyone in a responsible position to have some motives and not others. You have to really try to bring about diversity, and make sure everyone who works for you does the same and understands how good and valuable a goal it is. Otherwise there are going to be legal problems. If personal devotion to diversity is not optional for those with ambitions then social/self censorship will result. > You gotta get this 1975 model of neocon out of your head. I like making digs though. Basically, though, I agree with you and Bill there's a problem adopting rhetoric you don't really believe in. If you think something is objectionable in the long run you're probably better off saying why you really think it's objectionable. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From jk Sun Jan 5 15:34:46 1997 Subject: Re: Joe on 1996 To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 15:34:46 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970105131152.006d1c78@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Jan 5, 97 01:11:56 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 792 Status: RO > I face the end of this disgusting year with a strange feeling: I've > never been so ashamed to be an American. Still, there's been a decline in serious crime for 5 years running. Abortion and divorce are down somewhat too. What does that show? Better police methods? No-one's married so there aren't any divorces and everyone's using contraceptives? That if enough young punks kill each other off or get tossed in the slammer crime goes down? That after initial growing pains the post-60s moral order is establishing its own stability and so represents change rather than decline? Or that below the radar screens of popular perception something new is happening? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Jan 6 07:01:41 EST 1997 Article: 8866 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: public schools and crime Date: 5 Jan 1997 14:44:10 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 17 Message-ID: <5ap0aa$9ro@panix.com> References: <5a31c4$5gt@panix.com> <19970105121401.HAA19951@ladder01.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <19970105121401.HAA19951@ladder01.news.aol.com> talsl@aol.com (TALSL) writes: >It is not necessarily public schools in particular, but more likely >the American regime. Dr. Donald Livingston (Southern League and >Professor of Philosophy at Emory) talks of the modern unitary state on >the one hand (present day America) and the federative polity on the >other. But what if anything could have kept things from taking this turn? Could a clearly-recognized right of succession for example have prevented consolidation? Or is the notion of political society as a rationally-designed instrument for promoting peace and prosperity and securing universal human rights radically inconsistent with the more organic conception behind Dr. Livingston's federative polity? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From jk Mon Jan 6 14:17:41 1997 Subject: Re: Flags In Churches To: div093@abdn.ac.uk Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 14:17:41 -0500 (EST) Cc: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon) In-Reply-To: from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at Jan 6, 97 03:12:57 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1170 Status: RO > > I also assume that no consumer society combination of all the above > > is going to give people a way of life they find tolerable. > You forgot the 'ius McDonald'. No. See above. The issue as I see it is whether the _ius McDonald_ will be sufficient for things like the socialization of children into a stable way of life they find worth supporting. Plato didn't think so, see bks. viii and ix of the _Republic_. > Perhaps the chairman of McD will decide that the family is good for > business. That is the only practical hope I can see for Arkes & Co, The complaint about neoconservatism of course is that it boils down to this. > unless they take Hauwerwas's advice and live in an Ark. Except on the margins of Eurasia, where multiculturalism has been far less of an issue, most of civilized humanity has lived in arks of one sort or another. Your view I take it is that the _ius McDonald_ will lead to society generally sorting out the relations of the sexes and abortion and no doubt many other things by the year 2050 or thereabouts? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From jk Mon Jan 6 14:36:34 1997 Subject: Re: Joe on 1996 To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 14:36:34 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Mark Cameron" at Jan 6, 97 11:24:17 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 830 Status: RO Mark Cameron: > I think the positive indicators you point to are primarily a product > of two things: an aging population and a powerful and intrusive law > enforcement and criminal justice system. Maybe so. Or maybe decline like progess is two steps forward and one back so there are always false dawns if you're looking for them. > Meanwhile, the cultural rot Sobran refers to continues unabated. > [Horrible example.] It does seem to be getting worse. I stopped by a music store this Christmas^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H holiday season and looked at the pop music and felt like crying. Do they really have to have a group called the "Butthole Surfers" do music for the current film version of Romeo and Juliet? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From jk Mon Jan 6 20:57:04 1997 Subject: Re: Putting the Civil Back Into Society To: MCAMERON@pco.gc.ca (Mark Cameron) Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 20:57:04 -0500 (EST) Cc: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon) In-Reply-To: from "Mark Cameron" at Jan 6, 97 04:11:32 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1028 Status: RO > One aspect of the campaign to renew civil society is the plea for > public "civility." I thought a lot of this was a campaign to tell moderate and conservative people they should go along with what's coming down when the Left is in control. When Tip O'Neill said it was "a sin" for a man like Reagan to be in the White House, or when the _New York Times_ frontpaged Gary Sick's allegations or Kitty Kelly's claims of lengthy private sessions between Nancy Reagan and Frank Sinatra, I don't recall complaints about lack of civility. Come to think of it, comments about the GOP war on the poor or on women don't seem to violate civility either. Nor do comparisons of Pat Buchanan with the Nazis. The beneficiaries of civility in politics include only those people, ideas etc. that are legitimate. That leaves out everything to the right of Bob Dole when he's trying especially hard to be soft and cuddly. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jan 7 15:29:11 EST 1997 Article: 8884 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: public schools and crime Date: 6 Jan 1997 14:45:35 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 18 Message-ID: <5arkov$55e@panix.com> References: <59vm2b$ahd@dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com> <5a0c9q$341@panix.com> <32c47aac.19592146@news.swva.net> <5a31c4$5gt@panix.com> <19970105121401.HAA19951@ladder01.news.aol.com> <5ap0aa$9ro@panix.com> <19970105224400.RAA06023@ladder01.news.aol.com> <19970106080929168626@deepblue4.salamander.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <19970106080929168626@deepblue4.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes: >> If certain groups did not like certain things, they could >> "secede" and create their own community more to their likings. >I wonder if societies require "pulling together" forces as well as >"pulling apart" forces? If so, how would that be accomplished, and how >balanced? Breaking up is hard to do, as a poet/philosopher once said. Businesses do not tend to break up into units too small for efficiency even though there are no legal barriers to doing so. It's inconvenient to secede, and most people most of the time go with what's convenient in day-to-day life. So I don't think constant splits would be a big problem. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From soc.religion.christian Wed Jan 8 20:06:24 1997 Path: news.panix.com!panix!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!news.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!128.6.21.17!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian ~From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) ~Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian ~Subject: Re: Atheisitic Morality ~Date: 7 Jan 1997 21:03:02 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences ~Lines: 35 ~Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <5auv8m$604@geneva.rutgers.edu> ~References: <59l13q$3if@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5a7jkb$f2a@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5afb4c$lip@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5asac9$27t@geneva.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: geneva.rutgers.edu In <5asac9$27t@geneva.rutgers.edu> brown9@niehs.nih.gov (Lance A. Brown) writes: >> For without God, how in the world can an act be "right" or "wrong?" >> "Because it is right" becomes "because I like it." Well, what if you >> don't like what others label "right?" >I disagree, strongly. One does not need an external force to define >what is "right" and "wrong" in order to live a moral life. Personal >morality can be built upon societal norms, for example, or something >as simple as the Golden Rule. Neither of these require a deity >figure. If someone made a practice of following societal norms simply because they were societal norms, would that be an instance of personal morality? I wouldn't have thought so. Why would that be personal morality more than the practice of flipping a coin or trying to maximize one's bank balance? I think the line of thought is that (1) the way people use "right," "wrong" and other such words don't make sense unless there is an objective moral order that doesn't depend on societal norms, individual beliefs or anything else about human habits or states of mind, and (2) it's difficult to justify (1) without reference to God. Also, the thought is that God is not wholly an external force; he made us and not we ourselves, and in him we live and move and have our being. >from personal experience of knowing several extremely moral atheists. The claim isn't that such people don't exist but that their outlook on the world is incoherent; they accept principles that exclude each other. Self-contradiction is not uncommon. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From soc.religion.christian Wed Jan 8 20:06:24 1997 Path: news.panix.com!panix!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!mindspring!uunet!in1.uu.net!128.6.21.17!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian ~From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) ~Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian ~Subject: Re: Atheisitic Morality ~Date: 7 Jan 1997 21:03:05 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences ~Lines: 14 ~Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <5auv8p$605@geneva.rutgers.edu> ~References: <59l13q$3if@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5a7jkb$f2a@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5afb4c$lip@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5ascg3$2s6@geneva.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: geneva.rutgers.edu In <5ascg3$2s6@geneva.rutgers.edu> lehnerer@phish.nether.net (The Mighty Timm) writes: >Perhaps a better definition of moral behavior (without theistic >references) would be along the lines of "what is most benificial or >least harmful to the greatest number of people". Is that definition correct, or is it simply one you're asserting because you feel like doing so? If the former, what is it about the world that makes it correct? If the latter, why should anyone care about it? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jan 8 20:06:40 EST 1997 Article: 8893 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: bork book Date: 7 Jan 1997 20:20:20 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 19 Message-ID: <5ausok$ebo@panix.com> References: <19970101211500.QAA21164@ladder01.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <19970101211500.QAA21164@ladder01.news.aol.com> ddavis8570@aol.com (DDavis8570) writes: >from reading this weeks american spectator i understand robert borks >book slouching to gomorrah was panned in the previos issue. What were the complaints, or could you tell? I looked through it. It struck me as mostly a summary of a lot of things a lot of people have been saying. I suppose it might be considered radical by current establishment conservative standards because he says it would be a good idea to have a legislative check on the Supreme Court, censoring porno would be OK, freedom and equality aren't unqualified goods, and our current difficulties result from very long-term trends in Western Civ. Nothing exciting, although it shows some definite steps in the right direction by an establishment sort of guy. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jan 8 20:06:41 EST 1997 Article: 8896 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: The Guarantee Date: 8 Jan 1997 15:34:59 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 19 Message-ID: <5b10dj$r2k@panix.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In James Cobb writes: > A federal court in NJ ruled that a property interest > --here: the patent-- "may trigger the 14th Amendment, > and through it the Fifth Amendment's protections, thus > abrogating any claimed state immunity." > > A NY patent lawyer sums up: > > "The case says states, by ratifying the 14th Amend- > ment, have impliedly consented to waiving their 11th > Amendment rights when property exists." I'm not sure what the limitations on this principle would be, since whenever you sue a state for money I suppose you have a property interest in your right to recover. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From jk Wed Jan 8 17:56:41 1997 Subject: Re: the first things flap To: leo-strauss@freelance.com Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 17:56:41 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <35c.2592.124@freelance.com> from "Abram Shulsky" at Jan 8, 97 11:54:31 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2196 Status: RO Abram Shulsky writes: > I guess the point is that in a democracy, if one disagrees with the > law, one can attempt to convince one's fellow citizens to change it. > Thus (I'm still speculating) I imagine that Neuhaus (the editor of > First Things who wrote the introduction to the symposium which caused > the flap) would say that if there were a democratically-passed law > allowing abortion, then Christians should try to convince their > fellow citizens to repeal it. However, since the matter has been > decided by the Supreme Court, this path isn't open. Hence, (still my > reading of Neuhaus) one must simply withdraw one's support for the > regime. > > Teti noted that, in 1857, following the Dred Scott decision, things > must have looked similarly bleak for the anti-slavery cause I think part of the difficulty for Neuhaus et al. is that for the past 25 years almost the Supreme Court has been saying that abortion rights are intrinsic to the American regime. The written Constitution doesn't mention them, but apparently it goes without saying that they are part of our fundamental law simply from consideration of our fundamental moral commitments as a polity. So either the Supreme Court's authoritative interpretation of the constitution, which is supported by a consensus of respectable institutions, about the legal status of abortion is simply wrong and (given likely developments regarding euthenasia) getting more wrong all the time, or our regime is intrinsically evil from Neuhaus's point of view. The same problem would not exist I think if the legalization of abortion had been a legislative matter. The analogy to Dred Scott would be more persuasive if there had been no Civil War, if as a result of the decision and its progeny slavery had spread not only to the territories but to the free states as well even though substantial majorities wanted to limit it in some way, and in 1880 the Court was still affirming the decision and telling opponents to shut up because to do otherwise would call in question the American constitutional system. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From bit.listserv.christia Thu Jan 9 19:25:36 1997 Path: news.panix.com!panix!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!paladin.american.edu!auvm!panix.com!jk Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia Comments: ******************************************************** Comments: * The following "Approved" statement verifies header * Comments: * information for gateway passage. No approval of the * Comments: * content is implied. * Approved: NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU * Comments: ******************************************************** X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Approved-By: Jim Kalb Message-ID: <199701082142.QAA11965@panix.com> Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 16:42:07 -0500 Sender: CHRISTIA@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU From: Jim Kalb Subject: Re: Muslims' beliefs In-Reply-To: <199701081458.JAA22378@mh004.infi.net> from "Judith H. Taylor" at Jan 8, 97 09:55:44 am Lines: 84 Judith H. Taylor writes: > > What's the point of saying that the one the Muslims worship is not > > really God? > > The Muslims call Allah god and they say Mohammed is his prophet, yet > Mohammed received his revelation from an *angel* out in a cave in the > desert and .... > > The apostle Paul tells us "if we or an angel from heaven preach any > other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be > accursed" [Gal 1:8], so I guess that takes care of Mohammed since his > is *another gospel* It probably doesn't take care of Mohammed since he wasn't perverting the Gospel of Christ. They were Arab polytheists in Mecca and Medina, except for a few Jews. I didn't say Mohammed was right, just that by "Allah" Muslims mean "God" and that's who they intend to worship. Even if someone believes many false things about God it can still be God he believes in. If someone says "I believe in a being who is infinitely wise and powerful, who made all things out of nothing, who is the source of all good, obedience to whom is our supreme duty and knowledge of whom our supreme happiness, whose judgment decides our eternal destiny, and who revealed himself to Adam, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus," I would say that person is speaking of God even though he has important beliefs about God that are false. > Look at the fruit of this worship of Allah. in middle eastern > countries where church and state are one. Look at the way women are > treated, they are chattels and young girls must endure the painful > humiliation of female circumcision. Look at the human rights > violations and the injustice there. I see no love at all in that > system only legalism, avarice, and lust. This is not a picture of > Jesus, who said "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father" Horrendous things have happened and still happen in Christian countries as well. You might as well say that partial-birth abortion shows how bad Christianity is since it is the Western country in which church attendance is highest that just upheld its legality. Some Christian leaders praised the President, an ostentatiously church-going Christian, for doing so. It's not true that church and state are one in Muslim countries. The religious authorities do not as such have political power. Treatment of women as chattels and female circumcision are not commands of Islam. Almsgiving on the other hand is a basic principle of the faith, one of five. Saying Islam is only legalism, avarice and lust is about as fair as saying the same thing about Christian fundamentalism or the Roman Catholic Church, which people do say. Again, though, I'm not saying Muslims are right on the points that divide them from Christians, only that the one whom they worship is God. > > When Saint Paul visited the Athenians he didn't say > > "all these poets and altars you think so highly of are just a lot of > > garbage." He tried to find the truth they already had and build on > > it. Why not do the same? > > Paul didn't validate their error. He pointed out that one of their > altars was to the *unknown* god and he then went on to tell them that > they could *know God*. He preached Jesus to the Athenians. I'm not suggesting validating errors, just finding common ground where there is common ground. Paul reminded the Athenians that some of their poets had said that in God we live, and move, and have our being. Even though they were pagans Paul thought when they talked about God they meant God. Why isn't that true of the Muslims? Is paganism so much better than Islam? > I'd like to see someone go to the town square in the middle of Terhan > or Mecca, in Saudi Arabia and try to do the same .... It would of a > surety be his last message. Why the conflict if we are all > worshipping the same God? He'd be in trouble. There have been times in Christendom when someone could have gotten into the same kind of trouble. Would you agree that Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Anabaptists (the Amish, for example) worship the same God? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From jk Thu Jan 9 16:11:05 1997 Subject: Re: the first things flap To: leo-strauss@freelance.com Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 16:11:05 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <35c.2598.124@freelance.com> from "Leslie Goldstein" at Jan 9, 97 11:23:01 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 506 Status: RO > why wouldn't the regime be even more immoral if it had passed > legislatively? Because then it would be easier to say that the bad law wasn't necessitated by the very nature of the regime (the basic political arrangements, including the moral understandings on which they rest), which the relevant authorities say is the case with respect to the right to abortion in the United States. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From jk Fri Jan 10 06:43:28 1997 Subject: Re: the first things flap To: leo-strauss@freelance.com Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 06:43:28 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <35c.2600.124@freelance.com> from "Leslie Goldstein" at Jan 9, 97 11:35:22 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1599 Status: RO > for the sake of avoiding misinformation in this file, I note that > (a)there is no state in the U.S. where it is legal toabort a viable > fetus without the justification that a continued pregnancy endangers > the health or life of the mother. (honesty requires that I add that > "health" in this context always includes mental as well as physical > and it is by this logic that a fetus with severe abnormalities can > get aborted even tho it is technically viable) More information: in Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade, the Court had the following comments on a legal requirement that an abortion be performed only when necessary, in accordance with the physicians' best clinical judgement: "We agree with the District Court, 319 F. Supp., at 1058, that the medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age -- relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health. This allows the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment. And it is room that operates for the benefit, not the disadvantage, of the pregnant woman." The language has usually been thought to make it impossible to enforce any significant restrictions on third-term abortions, and my impression is that no state attempts to do so. (If anyone had successfully been prosecuted post-Roe for performing a third-term abortion surely we would have heard about it.) -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From jk Fri Jan 10 10:00:15 1997 Subject: Emerson embraces Laffer curve! To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU (Newman discussion list) Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 10:00:15 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1242 Status: RO I haven't been able to come up with the source of the quotation on the terrors hidden within reform, but it does turn out that R.W. Emerson was an early proponent of the Laffer curve: If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. "Compensation", _Essays: First Series_. Somewhat more seriously -- he's well worth reading. He writes beautifully, in a aphoristic style that makes very abstract points with very concrete images. He had read and digested in his own way the European thought of the preceding 50 years. As promised, he is in many ways a prophet of modern American liberalism, but that's OK -- read things in the original, I say. Why bother with current theoreticians when you can read Nietzsche? His comments on the C of E in English Traits are interesting and somewhat relevant to earlier discussions -- no-one at base believes in it, not as part of their living understanding of the world, but they keep it up out of pigheaded national feeling. Not that he isn't very much aware of the advantages of pigheaded national feeling, but he thinks it makes for boring conversation on certain issues. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From jk Fri Jan 10 10:13:14 1997 Subject: More on _First Things_ theocrats To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon) Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 10:13:14 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1829 Status: RO I looked briefly at the January issue of _First Things_, which continues the discussion of judicial usurpation and the legitimacy of our laws and government in the November issue that caused such a fuss. The reason for the fuss isn't immediately obvious. The dominant view on both sides seems to be "something is very wrong with procedures and outcomes in our actual current system of government, the things that are wrong are closely connected (as both cause and effect) with strong cultural trends, if there aren't fundamental changes things may get very bad indeed, and while it's clear what we can try to do it's very doubtful we'll get anywhere." It seems that the objection was to talking about what the "very bad indeed" might involve. The most substantive argument seems to be that such references would make "right-wing extremism" the issue the symposium raised in the eyes of most (non right-wing) people. Some concern does seem ethnically based -- Jews have generally done better when the king is firmly in control, and get alarmed when people start saying that maybe the king should be disobeyed because he's a usurper who has set himself against the law of God. The experience of the 60s also seems to have continuing effects. The "theocon" label does seem an odd one to me, though. So far as I can tell, the idea is that a theocrat is anyone who thinks that there are binding moral obligations such that one can not consent to a political regime an essential purpose of which is to deny them. The label sticks even when recognition of the obligations has no unique connection to any particular religion or even to religion as such, as opposed to nonreligious understandings of natural law. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Jan 11 02:29:49 EST 1997 Article: 8903 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Revision - First Alert From the Revolutionary Right - Part 1 of 3 Date: 10 Jan 1997 20:36:56 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 26 Message-ID: <5b6qro$60u@panix.com> References: <5b6kss$7hk@camel5.mindspring.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <5b6kss$7hk@camel5.mindspring.com> jimric@stpete.mindspring.com (Kirk Brothers) writes: > a) the Social Security Act, in its entirety, comprises a coercive >contract within the meaning of UNITED STATES V BUTLER, 297 U.S. 1, >(1935); > b) by definition of terms, enforcement of a coercive contract >comprises the crime of extortion; > > c) therefore enforcement of the Social Security Act comprises, in >effect, the crime of extortion by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), >and deprives every taxpayer of money (a form of property) without due >process of law, in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the >Constitution of the United States. Why isn't it enough just to say that the SS tax isn't an authorized tax and so is unconstitutional? Once that's been shown then it would be up to someone defending the system to say it's contractual. That would be extremely unpersuasive though. Putting the emphasis on refuting such an argument may make it seem you don't have a good argument on the main point, the validity of the SS tax as a tax. So I would suggest expanding the space devoted to the argument it's not a good tax and radically shrinking the space for the contractual argument. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Jan 11 10:47:54 EST 1997 Article: 8905 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Revision - First Alert From the Revolutionary Right - Part 3 of 3 Date: 11 Jan 1997 02:27:58 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 20 Message-ID: <5b7fdu$8vb@panix.com> References: <5b6kt8$7hk@camel5.mindspring.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Thought the following, which someone sent me recently, was relevant to the line of thought: Good news. I read an interesting law review article recently that concludes no president since Zachary Taylor has constitutionally held the office, including William Jefferson Clinton. The Eligibility Clause of Article II, section I of the Constitution restricts presidential eligibility to those persons who were "natural born Citizen[s], or a Citizen of the United States, AT THE TIME OF THE ADOPTION OF THIS CONSTITUTION." The article cites some interesting documentation surrounding the Constitutional Convention that indicates this language was specifically adopted in accordance with the idea that a social compact could only bind those living at the time of its adoption, and the Jeffersonian idea that the tree of liberty must be watered with blood by each new generation. See 74 Texas Law Review 237; see also 46 Stanford Law Review 907. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Jan 11 10:47:55 EST 1997 Article: 8906 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Revision - First Alert From the Revolutionary Right - Part 3 of 3 Date: 11 Jan 1997 02:22:04 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 31 Message-ID: <5b7f2s$8bk@panix.com> References: <5b6kt8$7hk@camel5.mindspring.com> In <5b6kt8$7hk@camel5.mindspring.com> jimric@stpete.mindspring.com (Kirk Brothers) writes: >Athens was a city-state, and a true democracy. It was a center for >the arts, a model of education in philosophy (Socrates, Aristotle >and Plato come to mind)--yet they had slaves. Aesop, whose fables >are still read by children (and adults for sophisticated reasons) >was a slave. The majority of Athenians wanted to own slaves, so >that's the kind of laws they passed. >In short, in a democracy, the power of government is virtually >unlimited, and any numerical majority may impose any kind of >oppressive laws against any minority. The example seems a bad one. Athens had slavery before it became a democracy. All republics (not to mention monarchies, oligarchies and tyrannies) did in classical antiquity. Also, it seems that American government was more republican before the 1861-1865 war than afterwards but there was slavery in the former period and not the latter. >DEATH CANCELS ALL CONTRACTS. Why can't someone adopt a contract by course of conduct? If I get on the bus and ride, when the ticket taker comes around I have to pay because I made a contract. Since (as you say) only majority adherence is necessary in the case of a constitution it seems that the Constitution would still be valid if in each generation the majority accepted it as such and signified that acceptance by voting, accepting benefits from the government, etc. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From jk Sat Jan 11 15:50:40 1997 Subject: More on _First Things_ theocrats To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon) Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 15:50:40 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 4974 Status: RO > I think that the First Things symposiasts gained the reproach of > advocating 2, and were thus called 'theo-cons', not so much because > of the content of what they said as because of the emotional tone of > the introductory editorial and of eg Colson's piece. Some random thoughts, not necessarily a good response to what you say: The symposium shows I think that the Right is becoming more aware of its situation. It's a difficult one. The goals of the Left and the interests of influential elites have converged. If more demand for social services, for formal education, training and indoctrination, and for legal, social science and managerial expertise makes you more important you will tend to think that liberation from traditional restraints is not such a bad thing. From a business standpoint there are definite advantages if traditional bonds are broken so that all human capacities become equally raw material for production, to be used in accordance with purely technical considerations. Further, at least since the '60s the Left has had no qualms about irrationality and fanaticism, and has demonstrated that it is quite willing to use illegal and violent means. As a result, social peace is now based on an agreement between those responsible for order and prosperity and those who threaten those things from the Left that traditional principles of order like family, religion, and local or ethnic community are to be deprived of public validity and replaced by some combination of the market and the state bureaucracy. To propose any significant role for such things as religion or traditional views on sexual matters in public life is therefore an attack on the social contract that virtually constitutes a declaration of civil war. You can talk about "community" and so on if you don't mind Steven Holmes calling you a cryptofascist, but you have to keep it rhetorical and vague -- the bottom line is that everything has to be optional except central control guided by the principles of contemporary liberalism. Further, national elites have far more influence on political discussion and decisions than in the past. Since government is more centralized and makes more decisions the public can influence it less. Developments in constitutional law mean that if the public does organize to make a decision on a fundamental political matter, and the decision is seriously at odds with the views of national elites, it will be denied effect. The enormous influence of TV and other national media means that access to the public forum is controlled by comparatively few gatekeepers. Even if they intend to be fair to a variety of viewpoints ("advocacy journalism" is not an unknown ideal) the fact that it's a rather small class that decides what is significant and responsible and so worth covering stacks the deck. For example, since a centralized activist government makes the national media more important, the national media will tend to view it as a good thing. There are other built-in biases as well. So the "regime" -- the actual system of government with the moral understandings that motivate it -- is unable to treat the concerns and goals of the Right as legitimate and it is very difficult for the Right to do anything about it. It seems to me that under the circumstances any straightforward discussion of our current situation from a point of view that for example views something like traditional sexual morality as a necessary coordinating principle for social life will be attacked as divisive, bigoted, theocratic, whatever. If you say "this would be nice" people will say you're just being nostalgic, unrealistic, whatever. If you say "no it's necessary" they'll ask why, and if you describe bad things that will happen and what has to be done at a minimum to avoid them you're being apocalyptic and you're aiming at a moral tyranny. So I suppose I'd agree with the earlier comment (regarding PC) that it's better to speak freely of the things one finds of concern rather than force them into the mold of established views. If you have fundamental disagreements with the regime there's no way you can develop and communicate your thoughts and act on them and still remain respectable. I also agree though that the offhand references to "morally justified revolution" and so on in the introduction to the symposium were silly. The biggest single problem I think is organizing people to oppose the regime or even live in a way contrary to its moral understandings in an atomized mass society of continental size that still believes in its own democratic legitimacy and still has a well-organized and self-confident governing class. If there was or foreseeably could be an opposition that was well enough organized to make a revolution the situation would be so different as to be unrecognizable. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From news.panix.com!panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!news.radio.cz!voskovec.radio.cz!news.radio.cz!CESspool!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Tue Jan 14 06:23:20 EST 1997 Article: 89981 of soc.religion.christian Path: news.panix.com!panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!news.radio.cz!voskovec.radio.cz!news.radio.cz!CESspool!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Atheisitic Morality Date: 12 Jan 1997 23:27:06 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 22 Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <5bcdiq$alp@geneva.rutgers.edu> References: <59l13q$3if@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5a7jkb$f2a@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5afb4c$lip@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5asac9$27t@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5auv8m$604@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5b1p4c$24i@geneva.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: geneva.rutgers.edu In <5b1p4c$24i@geneva.rutgers.edu> wiegand@woodcock.cig.mot.com (Robert Wiegand) writes: >2) Absolute right and wrong don't exist >Personally, I go with answer 2. The issue it seems to me is whether answer 2 in the long run enables you to make sense of your moral experience. I'm not sure though what you mean by non-absolute right and wrong. Something like conformity to the rules of a game that could just as well have been chosen differently? >>>from personal experience of knowing several extremely moral atheists. >There is no contradiction if they don't claim that absolute right and >wrong exist. Again, the issue is how to make sense of non-absolute right and wrong. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From news.panix.com!panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!news.sojourn.com!cancer.vividnet.com!news.wildstar.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!nntp.portal.ca!news.bc.net!arclight.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Tue Jan 14 06:23:23 EST 1997 Article: 89997 of soc.religion.christian Path: news.panix.com!panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!news.sojourn.com!cancer.vividnet.com!news.wildstar.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!nntp.portal.ca!news.bc.net!arclight.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Atheisitic Morality Date: 12 Jan 1997 23:30:11 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 57 Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <5bcdoj$apm@geneva.rutgers.edu> References: <59l13q$3if@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5a7jkb$f2a@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5afb4c$lip@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5asac9$27t@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5auv8m$604@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5b1p4e$24j@geneva.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: geneva.rutgers.edu In <5b1p4e$24j@geneva.rutgers.edu> mandtbac@josie.abo.fi (Mats Andtbacka) writes: >>If someone made a practice of following societal norms simply because >>they were societal norms, would that be an instance of personal >>morality? I wouldn't have thought so. >i wouldn't think so, either. what if they practiced following societal >norms because doing so made sense, in some sense or other? What kind of sense? If moral sense, then it seems the way it would make sense is by reference to moral standards that precede and therefore transcend societal norms. It would follow that talking about societal norms doesn't explain morality. If some other sense I'm still not clear what would be moral about the conduct. A statement of moral principles might for example make metrical sense if it were cast in _terza rima_, but so what? >>I think the line of thought is that (1) the way people use "right," >>"wrong" and other such words don't make sense unless there is an >>objective moral order that doesn't depend on societal norms, individual >>beliefs or anything else about human habits or states of mind, >"the way people use..." your argument seems to me to be about >linguistics, not ethics. if you're saying that "right" and "wrong" are >incorrectly defined, more power to you, but definitional arguments are >really not very interesting. I might have said "people use and can't avoid using." Also, by "other such words" I meant to include whatever the moral vocabulary of the person's language is. >>and (2) it's difficult to justify (1) without reference to God. >no it isn't. read Socrates. Really? Mostly Socrates professes ignorance. Does he say anywhere "the objective moral order is independent of God?" He does point out somewhere as I recall that "good" (or "just" or whatever) can't mean "dear to the gods", but the concepts of God and of the gods are quite different. In the _Republic_ he does suggest a derivation from the idea of the good, but the idea of the good while not conceived as personal has enough God-like qualities to be inconsistent with the atheism with which I'm familiar. Once again though I don't think he says anywhere that the idea of the good and God are utterly irrelevant to each other. Also -- since Socrates spent a lot of time discussing the meaning of words, I'm surprised you find him of any interest. It seems to me that the reason what he says is of interest is that the way people use words makes concrete their understanding of the world. So if someone for example claims that "good" means "the advantage of the powerful" pursuing the proposed definition leads to results that go beyond what the correct entry would be in a dictionary. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jan 14 11:04:35 EST 1997 Article: 8932 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: WHY AND HOW AMERICA MUST COLLAPSE Date: 14 Jan 1997 11:03:17 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 49 Message-ID: <5bgao5$n86@panix.com> References: <5b6ksj$7hk@camel5.mindspring.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <5b6ksj$7hk@camel5.mindspring.com> jimric@stpete.mindspring.com (Kirk Brothers) writes: >Bad habits might be deplored, but to outlaw them is to put Mrs. Grundy >in the driver's seat, where she is absolutely out of place. Mrs. >Grundy wants to PROHIBIT things which many people like, simply because >she feels superior for not liking the same things. She is stupid, and >a bigot to boot. There are good reasons for burdening legally or otherwise bad habits that don't directly harm others. The reasons might or might not apply in a particular situation, and just what makes sense depends on circumstances, but the above is far too categorical. It wouldn't make much sense to say "it's OK to do things that make bad habits more difficult to carry on, but prohibiting them is stupid, bigoted, and explicable only as an exercise in unjustified self- assertion." The implication therefore is that it is simply stupid and bigoted to think that as a general thing law and other public standards should try to discourage bad moral conduct. I don't see why that should be so. We may be concerned in the bad habits of others because the habit changes what the person is or does, and others are affected. Someone who drinks heavily may ram another automobile head-on, or make bad decisions that affect others, or end up with cirrhosis and drive up medical costs others have to pay for one way or another, or be unable to look after his family, or (if female) end up with a kid who's unnecessily defective. Ditto for crack or whatever, except I don't think crack causes cirrhosis. Also, bad acts set a bad example and if widespread become bad social customs. For example (to pick an example with which everyone will agree) indecent entertainment promotes sleeping around. If a lot of people sleep around so it's viewed as something people just do, the level of trust and commitment between men and women will be affected, and so therefore will the stability of marriages, the frequency of bastardy, and the way children are brought up and how they act as adolescents and adults. So why shouldn't the law at least try to discourage conduct that contributes to things that injure us? There are of course limits on how much laws can do to make people good. The goal might be OK but sometimes the attempt causes more problems than it's worth. Usually the law is more helpful preserving an existing system of good habits that mostly rests on other things than creating one out of whole cloth. But why make it a fundamental principle that discouraging bad habits and defending morals is not an allowable purpose of the law? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From alt.revolution.counter Fri Jan 17 20:25:10 1997 Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail ~From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) ~Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter ~Subject: Re: WHY AND HOW AMERICA MUST COLLAPSE ~Date: 17 Jan 1997 20:23:28 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences ~Lines: 46 Message-ID: <5bp8mg$e06@panix.com> ~References: <5b6ksj$7hk@camel5.mindspring.com> <5bgao5$n86@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In "James C. Langcuster" writes: >But alas, thanks to the Roosevelt Court's abominable incorporation >doctrine, public virtue in the form of secular liberalism is being >legislated not from local courthouses or even state legislatures but >from the marble corridors of the imperial capital, Washington, D.C. Mixing liberty and order is an art that can't be carried on dogmatically as the Supreme Court etc. would like. Tradition is necessary -- it's the way arts develop and are refined. Since tradition is particular and local, federalism of some sort is needed as well in a country the size of the United States. There's always some form of established religion. "Man posits values, each for himself" is a statement of faith like any other. We're constantly being drilled in the catechism whether we like it or not. Here is some language from the Court's opinion in _Planned Parenthood v. Casey_ (1992). The point of the language is that when the Court decides a contentious issue of fundamental political morality like abortion it must stick by its decision for the sake of the stability and therefore plausibility of the faith that makes us a society: Like the character of an individual, the legitimacy of the Court must be earned over time. So, indeed, must be the character of a Nation of people who aspire to live according to the rule of law. Their belief in themselves as such a people is not readily separable from their understanding of the Court invested with the authority to decide their constitutional cases and speak before all others for their constitutional ideals. If the Court's legitimacy should be undermined, then, so would the country be in its very ability to see itself through its constitutional ideals. So the Supreme Court it seems is Pope and prophet of what is functionally our established church, the institution that articulates and promulgates the highest authoritative doctrines. We are a people only through our national faith, we are told, and that faith can not exist unless divinity is present in the persons of Justices who tell us what it requires and who like God are the same yesterday, today and forever. Without the Pope, no Church; outside the Church, no salvation. It seems that those principles are all the stronger in our national faith since it denies the transcendent and its God must therefore be a power wholly of this world. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From alt.society.conservatism Sat Jan 18 15:10:13 1997 Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,talk.politics.theory,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,talk.politics.misc Subject: Re: Conrservatism Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Date: 11 Jan 1997 08:59:47 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 32 Message-ID: <5b86cj$32n@panix.com> References: <5ae3ar$c7n@panix.com> <32CC46D0.6A12@zxzxz.net> <5aho5g$q3q@panix.com> <32D2627B.6F89@zxzxz.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Xref: news.panix.com alt.society.conservatism:85444 talk.politics.theory:128959 alt.fan.rush-limbaugh:674371 talk.politics.misc:656896 In <32D2627B.6F89@zxzxz.net> Mike Lepore writes: >> A revolutionary industrial union that declares property rights null >> and void and implements workers' (as a practical matter, its own) >> control would have to have enormous centralized power vested in a >> small number of men responsible to no one. >I don't see how you can tell us what an organization "would" >do, without making any references to that organization's >constitution. Consider the situation such a union would find itself in. Existing law, convention and social relations would be abolished. A stupendous number of decisions would have to be made with no ability to rely on settled practice or the market to coordinate them. Coordination, it appears, would require the supremacy of a single central will backed by force, since the settled understandings and habits required for legitimacy would be lacking. What could fill the gap and provide social order other than force wielded by an omnipotent bureaucracy under the absolute control of some small group guided by their own ideology? That's the way it seems to me, anyway, and I think my understanding is supported by the experience of what's happened when groups with this kind of goal have come to power. Paper constitutions are of course nice but they don't do much when they don't correspond to the realities of the situation. Thanks for the references, by the way. I'll take a look. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Jan 18 17:34:20 EST 1997 Article: 8951 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: That Many! Date: 18 Jan 1997 17:33:48 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 30 Message-ID: <5brj4c$6ar@panix.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In James Cobb writes: > 01 16 97 Reuter Information Service distributes a news- > story headlined: > > RECENT ATTACKS ON U.S. ABORTION CLINICS > > In 1996, bombings, threats and harassment affected > about one-third of U.S. abortion clinics. > Last month, there were three arson attempts at the A-Z > Women's Center in Phoenix; an armed robbery at Planned > Parenthood of Dallas and northeastern Texas; and a doc- > tor was stabbed at a Baton Rouge, La., abortion clinic. I wondered what all this meant, and decided that most likely a sympathetic reporter had simply picked up inflated figures from a press release from NARAL or somebody. "Harassment" affecting a clinic could mean a single telephone call asking why they were killing babies. I never heard of armed robbery of an adversary as a political crime, not unless your adversary is a bank. It made me wonder whether the robbery and for that matter the stabbing was nonpolitical, and someone had just accumulated all violent crime of any sort affecting abortion clinics. The language in the _New York Times_ story was consistent with that interpretation although it was not of course the one the writer intended to give. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Sat Jan 18 20:23:13 1997 Subject: Re: That shock To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 20:23:13 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970118155006.00699a04@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Jan 18, 97 03:50:06 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1081 Status: RO > What struck me was how a divorced child could be regarded as as great > a disaster as a suicide, or the unspecified scandal that the son John > was embroiled in. I suspect the reader is also intended to believe > that the girl who died in child birth may have had the child out of > wedlock. Also the suicide was after a debauch (what's that, exactly?), and the girl who became a recluse for the love of a man was I think taking things more seriously than people do these days. > One thing I've noticed is that divorce is nearly as epidemic among > putative conservatives as it is anywhere else. Which supports the view that social standards are necessary in sexual matters. People can say they make up their own but in the end they probably won't behave that differently from those around them. (Present company excepted of course.) There's a difference between marriage as something you view as a good thing and marriage as an objective social reality. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Sat Jan 18 20:31:02 1997 Subject: Re: New book on Ango-Catholicism To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 20:31:02 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970118192047.006e3adc@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Jan 18, 97 07:20:47 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 521 Status: RO > John Shelton Reed, the sociologist of the South who's at Chapel Hill. In their jollier days _Chronicles_ used to publish his "Letter from the Lower Right" every month I think. I remember piece about an effort to promote birth control among the beavers near Chapel Hill because there were getting to be too many of them and nobody wanted to kill or even neuter them. Anybody know why he dropped out? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jan 19 21:45:22 EST 1997 Article: 8960 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: WHY AND HOW AMERICA MUST COLLAPSE Date: 19 Jan 1997 21:42:03 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 57 Message-ID: <5bum1r$kjn@panix.com> References: <5b6ksj$7hk@camel5.mindspring.com> <5bgao5$n86@panix.com> <5bp8mg$e06@panix.com> <32e15efa.88337231@news.infoave.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <32e15efa.88337231@news.infoave.net> sethwill@swva.net (Seth Williamson) writes: >Do you happen to know if the Court, anywhere in this abominable >decision, addressed the matter of decisions that were wrong in the >past? Dred Scot, for example? They didn't mention Dred Scott. If several percent of the adult population die in battle as a result of a decision and those who like the decision lose, it presumably grabs their attention. What they say about overruling in general is that: [W]hen this Court reexamines a prior holding, its judgment is customarily informed by a series of prudential and pragmatic considerations designed to test the consistency of overruling a prior decision with the ideal of the rule of law, and to gauge the respective costs of reaffirming and overruling a prior case. Thus, for example, we may ask whether the rule has proved to be intolerable simply in defying practical workability, Swift & Co. v. Wickham, 382 U. S. 111, 116 (1965); whether the rule is subject to a kind of reliance that would lend a special hardship to the consequences of overruling and add inequity to the cost of repudiation, e. g., United States v. Title Ins. & Trust Co., 265 U. S. 472, 486 (1924); whether related principles of law have so far developed as to have left the old rule no more than a remnant of abandoned doctrine, see Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, 173-174 (1989); or whether facts have so changed or come to be seen so differently, as to have robbed the old rule of significant application or justification, e.g., Burnet, supra, at 412 (Brandeis, J., dissenting). The foregoing basically means "we overrule when our decisions on related issues show that we've changed our minds on the substance, or when the decision turns out to have made the law hard for us to administer, and we're more likely to overrule when doing so wouldn't upset a lot of applecarts." On abortion none of these considerations support overruling. >Have they ever given any indication since 1963 that there is such a >thing as a crisis of legitimacy? There isn't any from their standpoint. All reputable institutions stand solidly behind them. There is political opposition that they feel must be faced down to maintain the principle of the rule of law. As they say in the opinion, the way to assure legitimacy is for those who don't like the abortion decisions to give up their opposition. They say right up front: Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt. Yet 19 years after our holding that the Constitution protects a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy in its early stages, Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), that definition of liberty is still questioned. So if there is a problem the fault is in the schismatic heretics (a.k.a. divisive extremists) among the people. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!panix!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!worldnet.att.net!arclight.uoregon.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!uwm.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Wed Jan 22 09:16:50 EST 1997 Article: 90418 of soc.religion.christian Path: news.panix.com!panix!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!worldnet.att.net!arclight.uoregon.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!uwm.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: On Bishop Spong Date: 20 Jan 1997 23:35:50 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 18 Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <5c1h36$b0@geneva.rutgers.edu> References: <52tc52$6lq@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <53f1j3$e93@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <59qk5i$7ta@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5a7jfl$f0p@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5aaam0$hed@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5asaco$280@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5auvab$60l@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bcdnv$apc@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5beue5$d90@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bv0s6$qma@geneva.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: geneva.rutgers.edu In <5bv0s6$qma@geneva.rutgers.edu> "D.L. Scott" writes: >However, I do not place blind faith in the experience and traditions >of other mere mortal men - whether they are living now or lived a >thousand years ago. >I worship God - not the opinions and traditions of mortal men. It's a ticklish question, though, because you also don't want to worship your own opinions. If it seems to you that one thing is true, and it has seemed to most of those who have thought and cared deeply about the matter and given their lives to it that the contrary is true, which way does love of truth lead you? After all, truth is no less independent of your views than of the views of other people. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!panix!news.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news-xfer.netaxs.com!newsfeeds.sol.net!uwm.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Wed Jan 22 09:16:52 EST 1997 Article: 90449 of soc.religion.christian Path: news.panix.com!panix!news.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news-xfer.netaxs.com!newsfeeds.sol.net!uwm.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Religious conversion is wrong Date: 20 Jan 1997 23:35:54 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 42 Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <5c1h3a$b2@geneva.rutgers.edu> References: <5auv6b$5v9@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bcdh9$al2@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5beu74$d7c@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bk9tq$i2t@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bms25$k72@geneva.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: geneva.rutgers.edu In 5bms25$k72@geneva.rutgers.edu "Nora Rivkis" writes: > I would, myself, make it a demand rather than an argument or an > assertion: keep your religion out of my face. You don't have to agree > with my belief system to obey that; all you need to believe is that I > do not want your religion in my face, which is relatively easy. > Failing that, all you have to believe is that I will do something > gruesome to you if it doesn't happen. It's not obvious what justifies your demands and (apparent) threat. Do you want everyone to keep his opinions on all subjects out of your face? To what extent should others take that desire to heart and why? Should they do so only in your case or should they presume that everyone justifiably feels as you do? > Delivering them in a physical fashion that it is impossible or > difficult for the listener to avoid constitutes failure to leave them > alone. Posting in a newsgroup is fair game; one can always skip the > article, at least if it's got an honest header. Ringing someone's > doorbell, catching hold of someone's arm physically on the street, > yelling through a bullhorn in a public square, are all imposing one's > will by physical force on the un-consenting. That is wrong, and it > doesn't matter what you want to say by that method. How do you feel about political demonstrations or imposing taxes to support public education? Both are physically obtrusive ways of spreading opinions. Door-to-door solicitation is common enough for all sorts of purposes. Are all equally objectionable? How about methods of religious conversion that respect non-consent? Suppose someone merely puts ads on TV and billboards, passes out leaflets, talks to those who are willing to talk to him, publicizes classes for inquirers, etc.? Lots of questions. The basic problem as I see it is that you haven't given a reason for thinking all attempts at religious conversion bad. You've suggested that you personally dislike heavy-handed attempts, and that decency imposes limits, all of which seems well and good but not very illuminating. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Jan 25 15:14:25 EST 1997 Article: 8988 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: comments on "The Last Ditch" Date: 24 Jan 1997 20:32:34 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 32 Message-ID: <5cbnri$aav@panix.com> References: <199701231430271068421@deepblue7.salamander.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <199701231430271068421@deepblue7.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes: >Markets work (I read in Mises and Rothbard) because individuals >discover the advantages of the division of labor. Everyone is able to >have more if they specialize in producing what they are best at and >then trade for other goods. But what if there are needs which are not >alleviated by the exchange of goods, or which are aggravated by social >interaction? The need is for protection from violence, which I think is no less fit for alleviation by the exchange of goods than protection against bad weather. It's aggravated by social interaction in the same sense as the need for protection against communicable disease, but I'm not sure why that is a problem at least in the fundamental sense you suggest. >Violence is not self-moderating, and countering violence does not >always contain it. There is an entirely different dynamic in the human >being here: the economic factors of need and advantage and estimation >do not apply. What you will have are blood feuds and unlimited >retaliation. If violence is not self-moderating it's not altogether clear why state violence would moderate it. In fact, as we all know, it does not always do so. A classic example of a society that had institutions that moderated violence but no state is medieval Iceland. Blood feuds and retaliation didn't go on forever because people then as now had other motives than revenge and victory and because social arrangements can reflect the full range of human motives even in the absence of a state. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!panix!news.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!howland.erols.net!math.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Sat Jan 25 15:14:32 EST 1997 Article: 90629 of soc.religion.christian Path: news.panix.com!panix!news.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!howland.erols.net!math.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Religious conversion is wrong Date: 23 Jan 1997 21:59:34 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 23 Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <5c98im$83u@geneva.rutgers.edu> References: <5auv6b$5v9@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5beu4s$d6g@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bv0sf$qmf@geneva.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: geneva.rutgers.edu David Butler wrote: > "My religion is right and all others are wrong" is exactly akin to > racism. One of the stronger evils perpetuated by people who claim to > follow "love". You seem to believe that your view of religion is correct and those inconsistent with it are wrong, and that the latter sort of view is evil and leads to evil. Such a view may show you to be a noble apostle of tolerance. It may also explain what seems to be a tendency to identify the belief that there are truths valid for all men with intolerance and hatred. It's worth noting that in this century the governments that murdered the most innocents were guided by antireligious and internationalist ideologies, and the government usually considered the most evil had a strong element of relativism in its outlook, distinguishing for example Jewish from Aryan science, and no particular fondness for traditional forms of religion. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jan 26 09:12:09 EST 1997 Article: 8999 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: comments on "The Last Ditch" Date: 26 Jan 1997 09:11:36 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 100 Message-ID: <5cfomo$nct@panix.com> References: <199701231430271068421@deepblue7.salamander.com> <5cbnri$aav@panix.com> <19970125101744768096@deepblue4.salamander.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <19970125101744768096@deepblue4.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes: >> The need is for protection from violence, which I think is no less fit >> for alleviation by the exchange of goods than protection against bad >> weather. >I suggest that when you and I are trucking and bartering we use one >mode of thought and behavior, but when I bash you with a cudgel an >entirely different mode comes into play. Sure. The claim though isn't that all human behavior is market behavior any more than people who think the state is essential to society claim that all behavior is law-abiding. As I understand it the claim is that market behavior {and other behavior that arises naturally in social life but does not essentially depend on the existence of a state} is enough to order social life {under many circumstances}. The stuff in "{}"s is stuff I would include but anarchocapitalists possibly would not. >When your clan seizes me and prepares to string me up, my clan do not >make some sort of economic estimation of cost and benefit, nor do they >consider the right and wrong of the matter. Why think that the only feature a clan can have is clan solidarity? Other principles are of course necessary to social life, and if forced to it clans could learn them. People eventually figure out how to handle situations that arise repeatedly without everyone in sight getting killed. There could for example be a common law accepted by all clans applicable to their relations to each other and treated by each clan as part of its own law. International law among nation-states would be an analogy. Another example would be procedures among Gypsies for handling disputes among different groups. In the case of the Gypsies it's admittedly helpful that they don't like to kill each other because they don't like either ghosts or attention from the non-Gypsy authorities. A stateless society might also lack clans and have instead overlapping networks of kinship and friendship. That was true of Iceland and it was part of what made the system workable -- there were always people in the middle of disputes who tried to work out settlements. >> If violence is not self-moderating it's not altogether clear why state >> violence would moderate it. >Would you say, "If a game has become chaotic it's not altogether clear >why rules would make it orderly"? This touches on a basic issue. Social life requires transcendent ordering principles. What are they to be and how are they to be institutionalized? Modern international society for example has a variety of institutions and principles that help keep the peace and moderate conflict -- while we've had destructive wars in this century most of those who have died unnatural deaths have died from the internal violence of states against their own subjects. Anarchocapitalists think property rights institutionalized in market practices are sufficient. That seems unlikely to me, although maybe there's something to techno-optimist theories about the increasing productivity of economic activity and decreasing yields from predation as property becomes more intangible. Actual stateless societies have relied on other things as well. Ancient Israel before Saul added to property rights a sense of common ethnicity wrapped up with a common religion with a priesthood and charismatic judges. Medieval Iceland (870 - 1262 A.D.) had common religion, common moral concepts of honor, moderation, and loyalty to friends and kinsmen, and a common law with a system of public assemblies and courts. (Since there was no public method for enforcing the law, and no public officials except one man who was recognized as the chief legal expert, Iceland I think should still count as a stateless society in spite of the law, assemblies and courts.) >State violence may be acceptable where private violence is not because >the State is impersonal and supposedly impartial; we have agreed, or >at least recognize, that transfering our powers of retaliation to >leviathan helps to manage violence. That's the Hobbesian view and I don't think it works. Transcendent principles are necessary preconditions to society. You can't dummy one up by simple concentration of physical power. In order for the right of retaliation to be transferred to the king there must first be a natural law that explains why the right exists and is transferrable. But if natural law says that much why can't it say other things as well? If social order is in the end based on common acceptance of transcendental principle rather than on force, though, it's not clear why the state should be in principle essential to it. Other institutions might be sufficient. >I've heard the Iceland example before (some also say Ireland) but it >sounds like a fantasy to me. Is this like Margaret Mead in Samoa? There's lots of documentation. For one discussion, see http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html Really, though, you should read the sagas for a picture of how things worked. There are a lot of them. _Njal's Saga_ is the best and is available in a Penguin version. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Fri Jan 24 09:32:47 1997 Subject: Re: New book on Anglo-catholicism To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 09:32:47 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199701240217.VAA05996@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Jan 23, 97 09:17:18 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 601 Status: RO > What, you think the Chronicles crowd aren't jolly? Just > because their artwork is things like bats flying around the Statue of > Liberty at dusk and pictures of heads with the brains exposed? They used to have the regular columns by Reed and Jane Greer and now they have Sam Francis. Not that Sam "I've got a little list" Francis isn't well worth reading, but he does seem somehow less jolly. > he said he hopes to pick it up again some day. Hope he does, it was fun. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Fri Jan 24 13:54:15 1997 Subject: Re: New book on Anglo-catholicism To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 13:54:15 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Jan 24, 97 04:10:37 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 372 Status: RO > P J O'Rouke said that the Croatians, Serbs and Bosnians were divided > by religions none of them believe in. Most men's anger about religion is as if two men should quarrel for a lady they neither of them care for. - George Savile, Marquis of Halifax -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Sat Jan 25 03:07:25 1997 Subject: Re: Larry Flynt's daughter To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 03:07:25 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Steve Laib" at Jan 24, 97 06:49:13 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 886 Status: RO > Don't know about you guys, but I've about had it up to here >with the trendoids gushing over the Larry Flynt movie and the smarmy >assurances that the First Amendment's survival depends on guys like >flourishing. It's interesting, isn't it? I think one reason for it is that the case of Larry Flynt enables our betters to overcome their alienation from their own country. Flynt after all is an uneducated successful entrepreneur from the southern parts of middle America who was even a born-again Christian of sorts for a while. His success is based wholly on an appeal to the people. So his fundamental spiritual kinship to our rulers' cultural aspirations and his service to their causes must give rise to profound and unlooked-for hope for the future. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Sat Jan 25 15:08:12 1997 Subject: Re: the first things flap To: leo-strauss@freelance.com Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 15:08:12 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <35c.2649.124@freelance.com> from "Leslie Goldstein" at Jan 25, 97 12:05:04 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 384 Status: RO > Walter Berns has disavowed "First Things" The news did my heart good. > Did anyone see his letter who can recount what his argument was? His letter was extremely short and had no argument unless "I read it and no discussion is possible so I quit" is an argument. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Mon Jan 27 04:56:52 1997 Subject: Re: Federal Courts (Was Larry Flynt's daughter) To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 04:56:52 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Steve Laib" at Jan 26, 97 08:29:35 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 599 Status: RO > the fact does exist in the favor of the judges that a questioned > right has to be brought to the attention of the courts before action > can be taken. Thus, if people did not think that there was a need to > question an "all male" policy, then even if the policy was > unconstitutional 100 years ago, no one had the chance to say so. So the courts won't act unless there is at least one person in the country who thinks they should act. How significant a limitation is that? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Jan 27 20:10:22 EST 1997 Article: 9007 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: BEYOND THE FRINGE: 32-10 Date: 27 Jan 1997 14:05:27 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 38 Message-ID: <5ciu9n$pci@panix.com> References: <5c51bf$q72@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> <5cbmes$79r@panix.com> <32E96279.3DC7@mindspring.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <32E96279.3DC7@mindspring.com> James Hedman writes: >> What does it show that when somebody has an article on Pareto >> written by a Roman Catholic priest it gets published in something >> entitled _Beyond the Fringe_ and the first place it occurs to >> someone to post it online is alt.skinheads? >I think it shows how the acceptable breadth of political discourse is >narrowed and constrained by PC ideology and sheep think. The sky's the limit in some directions and in others you have to watch it. Actually, I'm not sure that even the sky's a limit if you're on the Left -- neither grammar, metaphysical coherence nor the laws of physics seem to be constraints. Enough complaints, though. Turning to Pareto, does it seem that modern conditions have given a decisive advantage to the foxes and cut away the ground the lions once stood on? Territorially-based national solidarity seems hard to maintain due to improved transportation and instant communication, and it appears that class solidarity will be weak in a complex worldwide economy that is always changing in uncontrollable ways. So it's not clear what the lions would defend if they did make a comeback. Since the foxes can't maintain the coherence of society and the lions can't create it when it isn't already there, it seems that the outlook is for radical social dissolution. Radical social dissolution isn't stable either, so the further outlook would be for society to be reconstituted on some other principle that would give the lions something to defend and the foxes something to manipulate. I'm not sure Pareto's system of residues tells us where to find the prophet and lawgiver, though. I've suggested (often enough to be boring) the solidarity of tightly-knit ethnic/religious communities as a possible basis for future societies. Any other possibilities? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jan 28 18:18:42 EST 1997 Article: 9013 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: BEYOND THE FRINGE: 32-10 Date: 28 Jan 1997 06:39:51 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 32 Message-ID: <5ckoi7$dsh@panix.com> References: <5c51bf$q72@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> <5cbmes$79r@panix.com> <32E96279.3DC7@mindspring.com> <5ciu9n$pci@panix.com> <32ED0E34.5B40@mindspring.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <32ED0E34.5B40@mindspring.com> James Hedman writes: >However, the imminence of the dissolution is suspect. Eurpoean >civilization (including the United States) is extremely wealthy in >terms of physical and intellectual capital. These resources will have >to be drawn down a LOT more before radical transformation will take >place. I think it was Robert Walpole who said there's a lot of ruin in a country. My own tendency though is to think of the transformation as beginning with small-scale structures rather than overall framework. After all, the overall framework -- the economy, the bureaucracy, and so on -- comprise things we do well today and people consider worth taking care of because they think those things can carry the whole burden of social life. The small-scale structures -- family and other face-to-face communities -- in contrast seem to me in disarray to a degree that has no historical precedent although they are absolutely necessary to a stable and tolerably satisfying way of life. That disarray seems a necessary consequence of the development of our particular public order. So what I'd expect is for the small-scale structures to re-establish themselves on new principles inconsistent with that order. The growth of home schooling, home business and religious sectarianism, including in the limit extreme separatists such as the Amish and Hasidim, as well as gated communities, are not I think fads. Exactly when and by what stages it all happens who can say. Things come suddenly or not. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!panix!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.sgi.com!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Tue Jan 28 18:18:48 EST 1997 Article: 90796 of soc.religion.christian Path: news.panix.com!panix!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.sgi.com!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Religious conversion is wrong Date: 27 Jan 1997 23:23:19 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 30 Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <5cjuvn$gqc@geneva.rutgers.edu> References: <5auv6b$5v9@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bcdh9$al2@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5beu74$d7c@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bk9tq$i2t@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bms25$k72@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bv0qg$qkq@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5chl42$e7o@geneva.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: geneva.rutgers.edu In <5chl42$e7o@geneva.rutgers.edu> "Nora Rivkis" writes: >If you are not making a specific effort to circumvent my attempts to >ignore, move away from, or avoid hearing you, you're not in my face, >you're just there. It's when you try to force me to listen whether I >want to or not that you're overstepping -- badly. The right not to hear about something one doesn't want to hear about is an odd one. Most examples you give are things that are wrong for other reasons -- assault, trespass, crude fraud or whatever. I've never run into anything like most of them, but I don't doubt that everything someone might do someone somewhere does do. I have experienced loud bullhorns in small parks and agree they should be legally restrained, but for reasons that don't have a lot to do with the content of what's said. I don't see anything wrong with ringing doorbells, although if there got to be a lot of it I might put up a "no solicitation" notice and get annoyed if it were ignored. Your concerns seem to have to do with content, though. In day-to-day life it's common enough to raise issues someone doesn't want to deal with and try to checkmate attempts to avoid them. "I don't want to talk about that" is not necessarily dispositive although it's a response that is often sensible to accept and rude to ignore. It seems though that you want that response to be dispositive in matters relating to religion in a way it is not in connection with other topics. Why is that? Or do I just misunderstand? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!panix!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!uwm.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Tue Jan 28 18:18:51 EST 1997 Article: 90836 of soc.religion.christian Path: news.panix.com!panix!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!uwm.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Religious conversion is wrong Date: 27 Jan 1997 23:23:24 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 35 Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <5cjuvs$gqe@geneva.rutgers.edu> References: <5auv6b$5v9@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bcdh9$al2@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5beu74$d7c@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bk9tq$i2t@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bms25$k72@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5c1h3a$b2@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5chl3d$e7g@geneva.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: geneva.rutgers.edu In <5chl3d$e7g@geneva.rutgers.edu> "Nora Rivkis" writes: >They should probably presume strangers don't want to be bothered. You seem to be saying that it's wrong to raise an issue with someone unless you have specific reason to believe he would be interested. I say that because this seems an additional requirement beyond your requirement that those who say they don't want to be bothered not be bothered. >Nor do I have as complete a right to be left alone in general as I do >on the topic of religion. What is special about religion that takes it out of public discussion and advocacy? >Political demonstrations should be held in places where the >politicians, who have volunteered to listen to their constituents' >political opinions by running for office, can hear them and so can >anyone interested, but those who are not interested can easily avoid >them. Not on the Mall in Washington, then. On your view it seems all political (and other?) parades should be done away with. I'm not sure what public life would look like if your sensibility became the dominant one. I'm still trying to see what's at stake here. It seems our experiences and sensibilities both differ radically. The basic substantive issue I suspect is whether the most important things can be treated as radically private. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Wed Jan 1 10:40:04 1997 Subject: Re: Christmas greetings To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 10:40:04 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961231191041.006d2e28@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Dec 31, 96 07:27:18 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 725 Status: RO > It seems that the order of nuns who've been making our bread for the > Host for lo these many years sent him a card saying, "Happy > Holidays." He said, from the pulpit, "This is an order of NUNS, for > goodness sake, and they're saying 'Happy Holidays'? Give me a > break!" I do think there has been a shift toward greater self-consciousness about this sort of thing in just the past couple of years. An example of something similar but I think more extreme is the Episcopal Sunday school curriculum, put out by Virginia Theological Seminary, which uses "BCE" in talking about Old Testament history. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From jk Wed Jan 1 20:51:23 1997 Subject: Re: For David Coomler: A Simple Question To: sathre@ix.netcom.com (Tom H Sathre) Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 20:51:23 -0500 (EST) Cc: timi@mendel.berkeley.edu In-Reply-To: <199701012048.MAA22746@dfw-ix1.ix.netcom.com> from "Tom H Sathre" at Jan 1, 97 12:48:14 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1769 Status: RO > In 1883, Georg Cantor wrote "Foundations of a Universal Theory of > Manifolds". His general theorem, that the number of subsets of a set > is always greater than its "member count", is contradicted by the set > comprised of all sets. Cantor discovered this contradiction. What's the current view of this? Is the problem with Cantor's theory or with the set of all sets? (I think this is irrelevant to the main part of the discussion, but I'm curious.) > This is self-contradictory. My best guess is that this is what Jim > meant by an incoherent notion. Yes. > At the risk of being a "one-note Johnny", I'd remind both of you that > a pretty powerful "proof" of Christianity is love in all its many > sources and destinations. Yet love isn't axiomatizable. Not by us in any way I can imagine. Still, it seems worth while to try to bring the different parts of our life and thought -- love, axiomatic systems and whatever -- into as much coherence and mutual relation as possible. After all, they all relate to the same world God created. > >> The obvious inference seems to be that absolute omniscience -- > >> possession of a completed theory of everything, known to be true > >> -- would require a non-discursive mind that knows things immediately > >> rather than by chains of reasoning from axioms. A traditional theist > >> can live with that. > I'm reminded of Arthur Clarke's observation, "Any sufficiently advanced > technology is indistinguisable from magic." Are we simply talking here > about advanced technology? I don't think so. Technology has to do with means-end rationality and therefore with chains of reasoning. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil. From jk Fri Jan 10 17:57:04 1997 Subject: re: abortion and mr. pehme To: v-jmarino@bbs2.umd.edu Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 17:57:04 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1278 Status: RO > "Notice how easily capitalism and feminism can get along, in fact the > feminist agenda has made labor cheaper and provided business newer > labor saving strategies." > > Your remark regarding the collusion between capitalism and feminism > (or feminism as the unwitting foil of capitalist greed?) is quite > preposterous. I'm puzzled by your comment. Surely the tendency of the market is to treat all things, other than consumption goods, in accordance with their contribution to profits. So if you're arranging production the market gives you good reason to use all available resources, including men's and women's labor, to produce the most at the least cost in accordance with purely technical considerations. On the whole that will lead you to ignore traditional sex roles, which weren't designed to maximize enterprise profits especially under modern circumstances. You wouldn't care about them any more than a logger would care whether the mountain he was logging was sacred to some Indian tribe. (I send this to you privately because it's really wandering off the purpose of the list. You don't have to pursue the issue if you don't want to.) -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm. From jk Tue Jan 28 10:53:00 1997 Subject: Re: Federal Courts (Was Larry Flynt's daughter) To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 10:53:00 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Steve Laib" at Jan 27, 97 08:52:05 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 575 Status: RO > As far as the courts were concerned, the federal constitution limits > any action to "cases and controversies", so an actual law suit has > to be filed before action can be taken. What are the limits that the "case or controversy" requirement imposes on what can be done by a well-organized pressure group with an intelligent litigation strategy and goals consistent with the political and social outlook dominant among the elite of the legal profession? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Tue Jan 28 16:13:01 1997 Subject: Re: sodomy To: leo-strauss@freelance.com Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 16:13:01 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <35c.2664.124@freelance.com> from "Charles Butterworth" at Jan 28, 97 12:19:06 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 668 Status: RO > Ms. Murphy calls into question Mr. Krannawitter's claim that gender > distinctions constitute human nature. And she points to other > differentiae that characterize human beings, but that do not > therefore make them generically different, e. g., being political and > laughing. I'm missing something. It seems to me that some of the things that constitute human nature do not differentiate it from all non-human nature. For example, it is essential to men to have bodies, to exist in time, and to die. The same of course is true of kangaroos. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Wed Jan 29 16:43:48 1997 Subject: Re: sodomy To: leo-strauss@freelance.com Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 16:43:48 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <35c.2680.124@freelance.com> from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at Jan 29, 97 11:02:40 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 4632 Status: RO Since some of Miss Murphy's questions are at least in form directed toward me, I will throw out some answers in the hope of inducing comments from those who know better. >1) It what sense, and why, are the constitutive (as distinguished from >distinctive) features of one's nature morally binding and obligatory? > >EG, you say that having a body is constituent feature of human nature. >Does that have moral implications too? What we should do is determined by our good, and our good depends on the type of beings we are and therefore our constitutive features. Or, if you want to base morality on something other than the human good, you could say that our constitutive features provide us with a permanent setting for our actions, and so to the extent specific moral obligations depend on setting they determine permanent features of the moral obligations to which we are subject. So yes, having a body has moral implications since it makes us what we are and permanently defines our situation. >Is disembodied activity immoral? Is it most moral of all to work with >one's hands, less moral to sit in front of a computer all day, not >really moral to have no arms and legs after a car accident, and quite >decadent to be a ghost awaiting the last judgement & resurrection of >the body? A pattern of life that excludes use of the body, development of its capacities, and protection of its well-being would not be adequate to the human good. To lose arms and legs is to suffer the loss of part of our good, and to be a human ghost awaiting resurrection is to look forward to the completion of that good. "Moral" involves choice. If embodied life of a certain sort is the human good, and the moral follows from the good, then both self- mutilation and the choice of a disembodied life (virtually so in the case of someone who spends all his time in front of a computer and literally so in the case of a ghost who somehow refuses resurrection) would be immoral. Simply being mutilated or being a ghost would not. Both would however be evils. >2) If moral obligations follow from 'nature', as understood as kind of >physical teleology, why are these moral obligations only binding on >human beings? Moral obligation does not follow from teleology alone. A pair of scissors would not have moral obligations even if it were directly created by God to cut paper. There must also be the capacity to recognize the teleology and conform one's conduct to it. >My only question was how one obtained moral obligations from the >(physical fact) of sexual differentiation. Unless male and female >human beings belong to different species (something which some >feminists seem to believe), then they must share something over and >above the differentiation, and which constitutes the 'nature'. You seem to assume that human nature can be fully realized in a single human being. To say that man is social is to say that the human good can not be so realized; human differentiation is necessary. Therefore sexual dimorphism can be constitutive of human nature even though neither a man nor a woman is sexually dimorphic and both are fully and equally human. Further, society can not be understood as a construction by individuals who establish it to achieve purposes they already have without regard to it; if it could it would be a device to achieve goods that were not essentially social and man would not be essentially social. Since society is necessary and prerational it is natural. Accepting it in its naturalness is a precondition to the realization of the human good and therefore morally obligatory. To the extent the connection of a woman with her children and a man with the mother of his children are irreplaceable relationships upon which human society naturally rests then loyalty to those relationships and to social customs and attitudes that support and strengthen them would also be obligatory. So far as I can make out the customs and attitudes that by nature are necessary to those ends include differing sex roles and restrictive sexual morality. The morality varies somewhat from society to society but it would invariably legitimate the use of the sexual organs for procreation while imposing many other limitations. Thus the difference between the sexes, which is primarily but not only physical, gives rise to moral obligations. The foregoing isn't particularly punchy but it's the best I can come up with. Others may do better. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Jan 30 10:41:42 EST 1997 Article: 9024 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: BEYOND THE FRINGE: 32-10 Date: 30 Jan 1997 10:39:32 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 22 Message-ID: <5cqfbk$a46@panix.com> References: <5c51bf$q72@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> <5cbmes$79r@panix.com> <32E96279.3DC7@mindspring.com> <5ciu9n$pci@panix.com> <32EF9AC5.5DAD@bellsouth.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <32EF9AC5.5DAD@bellsouth.net> John Fiegel writes: >In his After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre came to a conclusion about >the future similar to yours, although he looked for dark age monastic >type communities, rather than the tribal ones your post seems to >allude to. Monastic commnities are good for the continuation of specialized functions such as learning but not sufficient for life as a whole because they can't accommodate sex or private property. Those not called to them will also have to find some tolerable way of living, and I think it will be less and less possible to base such a thing on the public culture. Therefore we will see the development and spread of private cultures, which define and draw their coherence from bonds of ethnicity and religion. There will no doubt also be monasteries for MacIntyre and his friends. I agree of course with your observation that the decline of a civilization leads to brutality. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From news.panix.com!panix!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!hunter.premier.net!netaxs.com!news.fast.net!uunet!in2.uu.net!207.90.222.2!news.brewich.com!robomod!srp-submit Thu Jan 30 10:42:06 EST 1997 Article: 90921 of soc.religion.christian Path: news.panix.com!panix!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!hunter.premier.net!netaxs.com!news.fast.net!uunet!in2.uu.net!207.90.222.2!news.brewich.com!robomod!srp-submit From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.paganism,soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Christian Pagans Date: 29 Jan 1997 10:56:32 -0600 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 34 Sender: srpbot@news.brewich.com Approved: SRP Approval Key Message-ID: <5cn8kh$63b@panix.com> References: <5bahg7$5c9@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au> <32E99368.6A84@earthli <32ebaf8d.4748627@news.inet.tele.dk> <5cldo2$lk6@xochi.tezcat.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: brewich.com X-SRP-Homepage: http://www.brewich.com/org/srp/index.html X-SRP-Info-1: Send submissions to srpbot@brewich.com X-SRP-Info-2: Send technical complaints to srp-admin@brewich.com X-SRP-Info-3: Send complaints about policy to srp-modkin@brewich.com X-Robomod-Written-By: ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov) X-Auth: PGPMoose V1.1 PGP soc.religion.paganism iQBVAwUBMu+BPlzemumcYbkZAQHyggIArgPePqnHQjjKMZjk20mAACpC3q5y3x1x 0ri7YC97/ZuD4Is9jW0AgnfyIotPcglxp204KseATGBFgvkXEL5tvg== =qJOc Xref: news.panix.com soc.religion.paganism:6015 soc.religion.christian:90921 In marjorie@netcom.com (Marjorie Rosen) writes: >You cannot hold the opinion that others have the right to their own >opinion on this matter. If someone has an opinion on abortion or any other subject it seems logically necessary for his opinion to be his own opinion. I'm not sure what it means to say he does or does not has a right to it. Are you saying that no-one can be mistaken about the morality of abortion in her own case, so that if she thinks it's OK to have one it really is OK for her to have one? >This concept has shown up in several other areas. A few years ago, a >young girl was tossed out of her Parochial school because her mother >was employed by Planned Parenthood. The mother said she would not >have an abortion personnally, and her daughter shared her opinion. >However, she *worked* for a company that advocated abortions. I >*think* (but am not sure) that the mother was at least officially >repremanded by the local monsignor or Archbishop and may have been >actually excommunicated. I don't see the point you're making. The mother worked for an organization one of the basic activities of which is to do things she knew to be very seriously wrong. Is the point that it's OK to help people do things that are very seriously wrong as long as they don't think they are wrong? Why should that be? (The expulsion of the daughter because of the mother's conduct raises other issues that don't seem to be relevant to what we're discussing.) -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! ========================================= MODERATOR COMMENT MOD: Hampster From news.panix.com!panix!news.columbia.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Thu Jan 30 10:42:21 EST 1997 Article: 90938 of soc.religion.christian Path: news.panix.com!panix!news.columbia.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: On Bishop Spong Date: 29 Jan 1997 23:20:33 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 18 Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Message-ID: <5cp7ih$mcn@geneva.rutgers.edu> References: <5afdcq$lkl@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bcdo7$apg@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bhmno$fv1@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5bv0s4$qm8@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5c1h4d$bg@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5c488v$33q@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5chl9c$e9v@geneva.rutgers.edu> <5cmmvs$jq2@geneva.rutgers.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: geneva.rutgers.edu In <5cmmvs$jq2@geneva.rutgers.edu> mkluge@wizard.net (Mark D. Kluge) writes: >It might be that churches and their people are BOTH becoming more >liberal, but that the churches are moving faster. As a result, while >church membership, as a whole, becomes more liberal over time, it >becomes more concentrated in the more conservative churches. Another way of describing this situation would be to say that the more successful churches are the ones that resist the liberal trend. If you add to that the observation that the influence of religion and the churches on our national life has declined as the trend has progressed it still remains true that concern for the wellbeing of religion and the church is not a reason to support liberalism in our churches or our national life. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Fri Jan 31 08:00:35 1997 Subject: Re: Federal Courts (Was Larry Flynt's daughter) To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 08:00:35 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: from "Steve Laib" at Jan 30, 97 08:25:54 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1928 Status: RO > Interpretation, especially with political underpinnings is the demise > of a government of laws. But you can't follow the laws without making sense of them, and you can't make sense of them without interpretation. I'm not sure what follows -- maybe that a government of laws is impossible if there is no commonly accepted understanding of relevant questions of responsibility, good and evil, etc. > The legal argument would be that it was unconstitutional, but that > no one had taken the time to point it out. Why not that the legal system has guiding principles as well as specific rules and understandings, and that the specific rules and understandings rightly develop in response to new situations and the deeper understanding of the guiding principles that comes with time and experience? A new holding of unconstitutionality would then be well-founded if based on both a developing consensus of the existing specific rules and understandings and on the permanent guiding principles that motivate them. On that approach the VMI ruling would have been invalid in 1896 but was valid last year and now. At least that is so if the guiding principle of the American legal system is an Enlightenment conception of equal liberty under law. > Common sense has little to do with modern legal decision making. Common sense differs in accordance with fundamental commitments. Many people find it a violation of common sense given modern social ideals and practices to exclude students purely on grounds of gender. Common sense further tells them that if someone in a position of authority is doing something that blatently violates the guiding principles of the regime as understood and proclaimed by all respectable public authorities then a well-ordered legal system will somehow be able to stop him. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego! From jk Fri Jan 31 08:21:39 1997 Subject: Re: sodomy? To: leo-strauss@freelance.com Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 08:21:39 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <35c.2720.124@freelance.com> from "ao066@osfn.rhilinet.gov" at Jan 30, 97 11:49:38 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1083 Status: RO > what condems a city or a nation is not the various excesses that are > committed within it, by this regard all human regimes fall short of > the mark of the rightous city, but whether the guiding principle of a > regime aims at rightousness or perversion and slavery. To what should one look to understand the guiding principles of the actual American regime? A great many people consider settled Supreme Court doctrine that has the strong, uniform and continued support of an overwhelming consensus of respectable public authorities a good indicator. That doctrine now seems to say that abortion rights (and perhaps soon the right to a voluntary death and to freedom from public conduct motivated by moral disapprobation of homosexuality) are essential to the regime, since even in the absence of specific prohibition violations are necessarily unconstitutional. As a result, people infer that opponents of those rights as such necessarily reject the regime. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego!
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