Items Posted by Jim Kalb
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Federal Courts (Was Larry Flynt's daughter)
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: from "Steve Laib" at Jan
31, 97 07:13:16 pm
Status: O
> I've just been involved in a discussion of the UN convention on the
> rights of the child.
Which I don't like. The function of the modern conception of human
rights is to eliminate all authorities that do not fit into a rational
universal system based on individual hedonism. People who don't think
that system captures the full human good should have trouble with that
conception and attempts to implement it.
It's not a question of abuse, though, but what the thing is
fundamentally *for*. The same is true in the case of the
constitutional principles currently operative in the American legal
system.
> The fact is that more of these decisions are based more on political
> power relationships and less on the common sense which one would
> associate with time and experience. When you look at who benefits
> and who gets the detriments, AND how they use them, then you see what
> I am talking about.
> We do not have a "well ordered" legal system, and our public
> authorities are not "respectable." Instead, both are so shot through
> with corruption as to make all actions and pronouncements suspect.
One could of course point out that the construction of a rational
universal system based on individual hedonism (and therefore denial of
individual responsibility) means an enormous transfer of power to the
people who are going to be running the system. One could also say that
recent social trends and the Clinton administration show what that
system leads to among the people and among their rulers.
Still, that's not all there is to it. Rational individual hedonism is
a moral system, and one that can be dressed up in idealistic language
of equality, human rights, respect for autonomy, etc. I don't see the
current American legal system as notably unprincipled or corrupt in in
any ordinary sense. The justices aren't on the take -- they really
can't imagine that principles at odds with the ones they are following
could be valid. If they look to the consensus of eminent legal
scholars, renowned historians, world-famous philosophers, deans of law
schools, spokesmen for the bar, etc. they won't find many who tell them
different.
One would like of course to say that bad features of the political
order of his own society are corruptions of something fundamentally
good rather than true expressions of something fundamentally bad. That
may be especially true for Americans and it is certainly especially
true for conservatives. When though can that no longer be done? When
does a "true America" -- of federalism and individual and local
responsibility, of faith, family and flag, of a continuation of
specific traditions in a New World, whatever -- become too far from
reality to be a possible object of loyalty?
--
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 Feb 1 21:25:31 EST 1997
Article: 785 of alt.thought.southern
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.thought.southern
Subject: Re: public schools
Date: 30 Jan 1997 14:16:15 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <331a0e04.702169446@news.esinet.net> shack@esinet.net (Shack Toms) writes:
>I think that the biggest change there has been the weakening of the
>honor code. Apparantly this weakening was the result of some lawsuits
>by some who thought that expecting people to behave honorably was
>somehow discriminatory.
Do you know of a good written account? I'd be interested.
It seems to me that the lawsuits were probably well-founded under the
principles of the existing American legal system. Concepts of honor,
and for that matter of personal morality and responsibility, may be
universal in abstract terms but their concrete requirements vary from
people to people. A society that intends to be inclusive and favor the
outlook of no particular ethnic people, religion, etc. must therefore
exclude such thing from its public life. The Clinton administration is
no anomaly.
--
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 Feb 1 21:25:32 EST 1997
Article: 806 of alt.thought.southern
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.thought.southern
Subject: Re: public schools
Date: 1 Feb 1997 20:51:16 -0500
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In <3314b8cd.942498511@news.esinet.net> shack@esinet.net (Shack Toms) writes:
>However, I do think it is odd that a person claiming that their
>culture did not value the ethic of "do not lie, cheat, or steal" would
>seek sympathy from the US court system.
I think most cultures say "do not lie, cheat, or steal" under
particular circumstances or to particular persons. Honor codes say
that certain forms of dishonesty are so utterly beyond the pale that
someone who engages in them even once has excluded himself from good
society without possible excuse. So they depend on a particular ideal
of what it is to be a gentleman that I think can't exist in an even
modestly multicultural setting. They won't work unless people share a
common ideal of honor that they think trumps all ordinary day-to-day
considerations. Usually the way people acquire that kind of ideal is
by being brought up to it. If an institution expects it it's going to
end up far more closely tied to some ethnic groups and social classes
than others.
>It is the business of a school to define a culture, though.
>That is what schools do. I agree with you that government ought
>not to define culture, rather the culture ought to define the
>government. That is why I don't think that the government has
>much business running schools.
If culture did define government then I suppose government could run
schools. The problem is that if government does too many things it
develops its own comprehensive purposes and point of view and comes to
want to define culture for its own ends. So I agree that overall
government responsibility for education is a bad idea although I think
it's more a matter of context and degree than absolute principle.
>The thing is that liberty demands that culture shape the
>government rather than the other way around. This means that
>the government ought to place an impediment to no culture--other
>than demanding certain minimum standards of behavior through its
>laws.
This though seems to come close to an ideal of government as
independent of culture. I'm not sure what a government that did not
express any particular culture would be like or why anyone would be
loyal to it or willing to serve it. In America in 1997 of course the
claim that government should treat all cultures equally is simply a
claim that it should enforce contemporary liberal culture.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From jk Sun Feb 2 07:28:30 1997
Subject: Re: Federal Courts (Was Larry Flynt's daughter)
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 07:28:30 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199702012040.PAA26863@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 1, 97 03:40:59 pm
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> I lack the legal learning of both of you, but it seemed that
> Bork made a good case in "The Tempting of America" that we have not
> in practiced the interpretation of law with this notion of
> "development" that Jim hypothetically raised, which sounds more like
> something you'd hear from a catholic theologian. Has it not
> generally been the case before a few years ago that the meaning of a
> statute was considered immutable unless and until the statute was
> changed, and that the only question was figuring out just what that
> original meaning was?
The notion of "development" in the law has indeed developed. Otherwise
it would be false.
The one I put forward is now I believe a common one in the law schools
among profs who want to maintain both the integrity of law over time
and its current integrity. I can't think of a better theory for that
purpose. The alternative seems to be to say that we are ruled by
revolutionaries or usurpers, or that the notion of "law" is an
obfuscation, a cover for power relationships. On the first view the
story of American law is the story of the fuller comprehension and
realization over time of its guiding ideal of equal freedom under law.
All very nice if you thing that ideal is sufficient for comprehensive
guidance.
Isn't something of the same true of the notion of development in
theology? Newman wrote his essay when he did for a reason. You don't
need the notion until you have a shift to a point of view that
emphasizes fundamental historical changes. After the shift you need a
theory to explain why "Catholic teaching" or "the Constitution" are
still the same now as at the first even though historians point to ways
in which they seem very different.
The issue we're discussing I think is the same one that came up some
months ago -- was the political society Americans set up 200+ years ago
so conceived that _Roe_ and _Romer_ are its true fruition, just as law
professors and no doubt right wing Catholic monarchists will tell us?
Or is some other more satisfactory and nonetheless realistic
understanding of American political ideals still available to us and if
so what? What positive vision can people who don't like _Roe_ and
_Romer_ put forward?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From jk Sun Feb 2 07:37:36 1997
Subject: Re: Federal Courts (Was Larry Flynt's daughter)
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 07:37:36 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199702012040.PAA26858@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 1, 97 03:40:59 pm
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> > An apologist for the feminists would also assert that there were
> > more imporatant issues to deal with first, such as the right to
> > vote, and this issue had to wait until later.
>
> Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that this mode
> of reasoning is a nuclear weapon against the whole notion of
> precedent if not stare decisis. I thought that long usage counts for
> something in law. It would seem to permit almost any novel
> interpretation to be introduced against the face of history and usage
> and settled opinion
Not _stare decisis_. Pre-70s there really wasn't much law on whether
the due process clause meant that you could have an abortion or engage
in sodomy if you felt like it, so there weren't any decisions to stand
by. Legal and social practice of course presumed that you couldn't,
but the point of a written constitution is that it's more authoritative
than practice.
One effect of _Brown_ was radically to reduce the authority of original
intent, long usage and settled understanding. It's somewhat startling
in a system based on common law to find that support from "deeply
rooted social stereotypes" now counts *against* something.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From jk Thu Jan 30 11:00:08 1997
Subject: Re: sodomy
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 11:00:08 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <35c.2698.124@freelance.com> from "James Eisenberg" at Jan 30, 97 03:26:45 am
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> The problem with this analysis insofar as it touches on Strauss and
> Socrates, is that both suggest that on the highest level the only
> thing which they know is that they don't know, i.e., Socratic
> wisdom=Socratic ignorance. That does not mean that in pursuit of
> wisdom one may jettison all morality, but it does mean that a
> religion's or regime's moral principles are provisional until we know
> the truth, and they are open to question.
This seems to assume that a philosophical regime is a possibility, and
even the only legitimate regime. Is that Strauss's view?
> Nevertheless, to the extent that an individual has an obligation to
> the regime to procreate, to create a family life conducive to the
> proper upbringing of children, etc., it becomes an empirical, rather
> than a moral question, as to whether these responsibilities exhaust
> his resources, or whether (without endangering his other obligations)
> he can sally forth and play sexually with other men and women.
This seems to make the related assumption that individuals can be
understood as guided supremely by reason to the practical exclusion of
habit, impulse, passion, unanalyzed or unanalyzable presupposition,
etc. It also assumes knowledge as to the nature of sexual morality,
that it can be analyzed without remainder into rules directed to the
promotion of ends with no essential relation to sex.
--
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!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!howland.erols.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Mon Feb 3 08:37:27 EST 1997
Article: 91196 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: filioque (was Re: trinity (new))
Date: 3 Feb 1997 00:45:00 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <5crto2$osl@geneva.rutgers.edu> Khalil Siddiqui writes:
>Doesn't it bother you to say that God can 'beget?' That is wholly
>inappropriate if you believe in only one God.
>[One viewpoint regarded him as part of the created universe. The
>other viewed him as being of the same nature as the Father, i.e. God.
>The distinction was expressed as whether the Son was begotten or made.
>--clh]
The "begetting" is of course an eternal relationship. I believe the
usual view in Islam is also that the eternal word of God is uncreated.
The two religions differ in that Islam holds that the eternal word of
God is made most perfectly manifest in the world as an Arabic text, the
Koran, while Christianity holds that it (or rather He) is made manifest
as a particular man, Jesus Christ. It may be that the issue between
the two religions is whether anything other than a divine person can be
uncreated, and if not whether a divine person can be better revealed by
a text or by a man.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego!
From jk Mon Feb 3 08:17:16 1997
Subject: Re: Federal Courts (Was Larry Flynt's daughter)
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 08:17:16 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Steve Laib" at Feb 2, 97 11:02:07 am
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> I am more concerned in their taking a political stand, then rewriting
> the law to suit personal beliefs, rather than saying "the law is
> this, even if I disagree with it." Even if the majority of people in
> the legal "community" agree with them it does not make them right.
I don't think the courts change the law in accordance with the personal
beliefs of judges except incidentally. On the whole the changes
express the evolution of the American mind -- the development of the
consensus view as to what is right, proper and practicable among the
most influential and respected institutions, thinkers, scholars and
publicists. Otherwise the changes wouldn't have the coherence and the
powerful support they do.
Suppose you did a poll among the presidents of the 50 leading
universities, the deans of the 50 leading law schools, the editors of
the 50 leading newspapers, the heads of the major charitable
foundations, etc. and asked them whether the decisions in _Roe v.
Wade_, _Romer_, the VMI decision, the "wall of separation" religion
decisions and so on were right or wrong. I think you'd get a lopsided
vote in favor. So far as respectable opinion is concerned, it's
unthinkable that the law should be to the right of what the Supreme
Court has made it, and the only problem is that because of Republican
appointments the Court has been conservative to the extent of
neglecting its settled principles and constitutional duties. The view
that the courts have just been enacting the personal preferences of the
judges I think trivializes the problem.
> I once posed the question that if it was wrong keep people as slaves
> in early America, then what makes it right for the government to
> force us to work for it, today.
My own answer would be that involutary servitude is not wrong as such,
since the right to do what one chooses is not the ultimate standard of
right and wrong, but it needs a better justification than slavery had
in the 19th century. Taxation for public purposes does I think have
such a justification.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Feb 4 10:06:30 EST 1997
Article: 9049 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 4 Feb 1997 09:58:50 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In "James C. Langcuster" writes:
>In fact, I've determined one of the most effective methods for
>separating "official" from authentic conservatives is by employing the
>"Lincoln test."
I wonder -- is the "Lincoln test" distinguishable from the "Martin
Luther King test?"
>the phrase "one nation under God indivisible..." was intended as a
>insult against post-war Southerners.
It's worth noting that the "under God" was added in the 1950s.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Feb 4 10:06:32 EST 1997
Article: 9050 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: 4 Feb 1997 10:04:04 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
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In <32F64D29.5F48@mindspring.com> James Hedman writes:
>> But the spread of the nuclear family, an asocial social unit through
>> which ties of clan and community are dissolved the seemingly eternal
>> ties of parent/child/sibling are being unbound in the name of
>> self-fullfilment and self-gratification.
>This does not make sense. If the ties are eternal (as I believe they
>are) then the nuclear family is hardly an asocial unit which dissolves
>anything ... Far from being asocial, the family unit is the elemental
>first stone in the building of any community.
It does seem though that the nuclear family is not a complete community
in itself, so that if it becomes the only non-contractual community
accepted as natural and legitimate it will eventually go to pieces.
That seems to be what has happened under liberalism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Feb 4 10:06:40 EST 1997
Article: 831 of alt.thought.southern
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.thought.southern
Subject: Re: Home School history material for Southerners
Date: 4 Feb 1997 09:02:12 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 14
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In <5d6bb5$rqf@sjx-ixn3.ix.netcom.com> Daniel Benson writes:
>THE ABOLITIONISTS
>Spells out the theological convictions of many in the Abolitionist
>Movement, showing that abolitionism was actually a religion--a religion
>that was a substitute for biblical Christianity.
An interesting notion. In our own times "civil rights" and
"inclusiveness" are plainly substitute religions, and the pre-Civil War
period in America was full of New Agey substitutes for biblical
Christianity. So this would round out the picture.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Feb 4 10:06:42 EST 1997
Article: 833 of alt.thought.southern
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.thought.southern
Subject: Re: Public Education Debate (ATT. Shack Toms)
Date: 4 Feb 1997 09:53:12 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 84
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In <32fbbe33.29663533@news.esinet.net> shack@esinet.net (Shack Toms) writes:
>But your desire to have the state define the culture through
>manipulation of education would do just that.
It seems to me the question is whether formal authority can ever help
realize the culture of a people. It seems to me it can -- the monarchy
and established church have not for example made the English less
English or less free. It's possible of course that American culture
isn't easily expressible through formal authority, or that the
situation is such that formal authority will invariably be used to
undermine the culture of the people, or there might be some other
problem, but viewing the government as necessarily a clique run for its
own private purposes is I think wrong.
>I think that you ought to take it as given that in a free society
>there will be disagreements about values and about the proper
>direction for the government.
There isn't going to be a free society unless substantial agreement on
the fundamentals of such things can be presumed. That's why above I
speak of "the culture of the people" -- if there's no such thing there
can only be despotism.
The reason is that in a free society the government must answer to the
people, and it can't do that unless there is a "people" with a coherent
enough point of view to act collectively in calling the government to
account. That by the way is why it's difficult for an extensive
political society to be free unless government is limited and organized
federally. Otherwise too many people have to be in accord on too many
issues for "the people" to have a view on all the things the government
is doing.
>To me, the role of government is to provide services for the people.
National defense is a necessary function of government. Can a soldier
in wartime ordered to do something very dangerous make sense of his
situation by saying to himself "the role of government is to provide
services for the people?"
>>What we have today is a country( U.S.A.) which only demands of its
>>citizens that they obey rules. Its binding principles are "freedom"
>>"equality" or other abstract notions which, despite what some may
>>think, do not inspire great patriotism.
>What is the point of patriotism if you are being patriotic to a state
>that oppresses you?
None. The point of patriotism is that you feel that being part of a
particular people and political society is part of what makes you what
you are. If that is so you won't in general find your public duties
oppressive. If you don't feel that way then you'll object to
everything except a system of formal rules based on freedom and
equality, and you'll probably in fact object to that as well.
>If a person defines his culture externally, through the demands of the
>state, then what difference does it make what the form of that
>government is? He has already given up the fight. He has defined
>himself in terms of that which he is not, and to that extent he has
>lost his capacity to desire one thing more than another. He has
>become a puppet, and his desires are merely reflections of the desires
>of whomever pulls the strings.
If a man defines his goals externally, through the demands of his
family, then what difference does it make whether his family are
mafiosi or natural aristocrats? Most men view the good of their wives,
children, etc. as part of their own good, and their view of that good
usually has a lot to do with what their wives etc. think their good is
and want. They'll often go along with things which they would have
judged otherwise left up to themselves. Does that mean most men are
mere puppets?
>You see, the thing that makes everything work is that there is a
>real world out there. So some things really work better than
>other things. With ideological freedom, those things that work
>will become evident to all.
I don't think anyone has suggested the extirpation of ideological
freedom. Saying "government can't be neutral on ideological issues and
public schools can be a good thing" does not amount to that. The
one-room schoolhouse and the Gulag are not the same.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Feb 5 20:03:50 EST 1997
Article: 9055 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: 5 Feb 1997 06:58:56 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 37
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In <32F77E53.587B@mindspring.com> James Hedman writes:
>When was the nuclear family ever "the only non-contractual community
>accepted as natural and legitimate" !?!
That was John Locke's view.
>Far from taking this view liberals have been in the forefront of the
>attack on the nuclear family.
Implicitly of course liberalism is inconsistent with family ties, and
liberal policies have the effect of weakening those ties. Nonetheless,
the injustice of the nuclear family only became a major theme of
liberalism within the last 30 years. Previously most actual liberals
accepted the nuclear family as a fundamental social institution.
>This has included your absurd notion that nuclear families are somehow
>detrimental to other communal institutions rather than ESSENTIAL to
>their creation and maintenance.
Not my notion. My only point is that the view that nuclear families
are not merely essential but sufficient for social order is one at home
in classical liberalism and it doesn't make sense. I agree that people
like the First Lady talk as if the insufficiency of the nuclear family
for social order implies that it is non-essential. I make no excuses
for them.
>A major function of churches and schools is the support of the family.
>It is no coincedence that their degeneration has occured concomitantly
>with the attack on the family. When societal support for the family
>was stronger so were the larger intstitutions that are organically
>linked to it.
I agree with all this.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!news.radio.cz!voskovec.radio.cz!news.radio.cz!CESspool!news.apfel.de!news.maxwell.syr.edu!worldnet.att.net!howland.erols.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Wed Feb 5 20:03:59 EST 1997
Article: 91361 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Faith of the founding fathers
Date: 5 Feb 1997 02:05:47 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 15
Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu
Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu
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In <5d6f7c$3dk@geneva.rutgers.edu> Charley Wingate writes:
>It's quite clear that nobody wanted a state-established institution of
>religion. This is spelled out *very* plainly in the constitution and
>in the 1st amendment.
Do you mean a *federally* established institution of religion?
"Congress shall make no law with respect to an establishment of
religion" sounds like it means among other things that the Federal
government would leave alone the religious arrangements of the states,
as indeed it did until this century.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From jk Fri Feb 7 08:46:14 1997
Subject: Re: Solitaria (2/6)
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 08:46:14 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <970207025239.158cd@npr.org> from "Alphonse Vinh - Reference Library - x2350" at Feb 7, 97 02:52:39 am
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> For me this is a crucial sign of how utterly bankrupt the West is in
> terms of spirituality. Leaving aside the legions of Middle American
> evangelicals, our cultural, artistic, and economic elites are
> fundamentally irreligious. They exist in an utterly godless universe.
It's a real problem. What's worse is that the elites are only in part
superimposed upon something they don't express. It's in all of us.
(Present company other than myself of course excluded.)
> Of course, I much prefer the bracing company of Nietszche, of the
> Pre-Socratics, of Plato, of Confucius, and Chuang-Tzu to the narrow
> collectivism of contemporary American secular humanism.
I was struck by this list. I have a hard time thinking of a better
one.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From alt.revolution.counter Fri Feb 7 13:06:40 1997
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: 7 Feb 1997 09:13:21 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
~Lines: 33
Message-ID: <5dfda1$ovi@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> <5cqfbk$a46@panix.com> <32F5146F.72B0@bellsouth.net> <32F64D29.5F48@mindspring.com> <5d7j54$4id@panix.com> <32F77E53.587B@mindspring.com> <5d9sm0$fml@panix.com> <518743676wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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In <518743676wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>> the injustice of the nuclear family only became a major theme of
>> liberalism within the last 30 years. Previously most actual
>> liberals accepted the nuclear family as a fundamental social
>> institution
>The attacks on the nuclear family are surely older than this, going
>back to free-love advocates in the 19th and early 20th century, if not
>earlier.
For sure -- what's in the blossom was in the bud. Free love wasn't
mainstream liberalism though. One source of liberal guilt is that they
know they're holding back from the full implications of their views.
>But the 1960s attacks on the nuclear family seem to derive from a
>sub-Marxist sociologists' historical myth that the nuclear family had
>supplanted an earlier extended family system, and was itself the sign
>of breakdown of social institutions under the effects of capitalism.
And in the future the state bureaucracy was to substitute for the
vanished extended family.
Is there evidence though that one result of industrialization was to
increase emphasis on the nuclear family as the one non-contractual
relationship that could be relied on under modern circumstances? It
seems to me that in a village or even in pre-industrial towns there
could be a variety of non-contractual relationships and authorities
other than an extended family system (several generations under one
roof) that supplemented the nuclear family.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From neocon-request@abdn.ac.uk Sat Feb 8 09:59:03 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199702081457.JAA19427@panix.com>
Subject: commentary on first things
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 09:57:54 -0500 (EST)
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A symposium on the future of conservatism that appeared in the February
issue of _Commentary_ is now online. The symposium is mostly about
issues relating to the _First Things_ neotheocon flap. The URL is:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/9702/febsymp.html
A few comments:
1. Most of the _Commentary_ symposiasts seem to agree with most of
their _First Things_ counterparts that the problems are judicial
usurpation and "the culture," prominently including elite culture but
also the way we all live, and that the problems go to the heart of the
American way of life and its value.
2. As usual with neoconservative positions, those set forth in the
_Commentary_ symposium can be accused of a fundamental manipulativeness.
All positions are judged by their likely pragmatic effect under existing
circumstances. For example, religion and traditional morality are good
for other people because they support social order. We really need them
bad, but we have to figure out some way get them and also control them
with overarching liberal principles. It used to work that way in
America; it's too bad the Supreme Court screwed things up and and made
it so hard to think of the right slogan or formula that would keep
everything in its place.
3. The _Commentary_ types repeatedly express faith that the right
side will win in the end. They present what seems to be a religious
faith in America as such. That is a view that unites second-generation
immigrant Jews who have emancipated themselves from Orthodoxy with
Americans generally, and tends to exclude Papists, anti-Federalists,
neoconfederates and other such weirdos. It's the neocon trump card.
4. They are emphatic that what the judges are doing is a *usurpation*
and therefore does not affect the essential nature of American political
society. I'm doubtful. If something has been going on thoughout the
lifetime of most Americans, and all respectable institutions think it's
good and necessary to our national life and morality, it becomes
difficult to view it as a usurpation. Russell Hittenger's essay in the
original symposium is good on this point.
5. They mostly think conservatives are winning. It seems to me that
view comes from too much concern with day-to-day political fights. If
the concern is not victory of a party but the well-being of a polity
it's not clear that the things conservatives think are necessary for a
tolerable common life, for example a common culture with sufficient
moral content to guide both government and private conduct, aren't
continuing to disappear beyond retrieval. In the _Commentary_
discussion, Mark Helprin and Ruth Wisse, literary types rather than
politicos, are interesting on this point.
6. Has any Kristol married any Podhoretz? If not, why not? Can
anyone think of a way to cheer up Walter Berns? And just what do the
_Commentary_ people propose for the future of conservatism apart from
Mr. Podhoretz's plan to make Fr. Neuhaus publicly say he's sorry?
What's the vision and strategy? Peter Berger seems to say at the end
of his piece that he'll come up with something, and he's a smart man,
so we'll wait and see.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Mon Feb 10 06:16:24 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Federal Courts (Was Larry Flynt's daughter)
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <199702100213.VAA29039@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 9,
97 09:15:09 pm
Status: RO
> It seems to me that the most germane point here is not so much the
> fact that there's been a sea-change in attitudes and beliefs--isn't
> the main point the fact that this change occurred first primarily in
> the cultural elite and not so much in the rest of the body politic?
It's a puzzling issue -- how much difference have the courts made,
apart from accelerating changes that would have come anyway and making
people dislike them more and feel more alienated? Could American
elites have acted differently and how could that have come about?
Certainly the anti-democratic way it has happened has made political
resistance based on popular feeling far more difficult, which is
upsetting.
> Because if the alteration had occurred throughout society at more or
> less the same time, it would have been a trivial point to accomplish
> whatever changes were thought to be needed via democratic means and
> without the necessity of pretending that the Constitution
> countenanced things that it clearly did not.
Several things were at work. Any alteration progresses faster and
reaches self-awareness sooner among some classes than others. Those
who get there first think laggards are best kept far from power. Also,
part of the alteration was a shift in what things were thought morally
legitimate and what are not. Only the former can be the subject matter
of democratic politics, which require that you view yourself and your
opponents as fundamentally on the same side. So elite intolerance was
inevitable or close to it.
Another part of the changes has been the increasing prominence of
radical individualism and ideals of social justice, which radically
narrow the morally legitimate possibilities and insist on conceptually
correct results rather than local compromise and mutual accommodation
and so demand central administration of society by experts. So changes
in the outlook of all classes made elites much more important even
though people don't like them.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Mon Feb 10 06:36:08 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Federal Courts (Was Larry Flynt's daughter)
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <199702100213.VAA29057@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 9,
97 09:15:07 pm
Status: RO
> > an attempt to put national health care into effect by the first
> > Clinton Administration.
> But I would counter by saying that such individuals are usually
> simply not thinking straight. Or they've convinced themselves that
> the failure of socialistic systems is due to some impediment thrown
> in the way by greedy, self-centered people, and that if we could
> simply limit the participation of such greedy people in the process,
> that the project would finally work as advertised.
People can't get along without believing in providence, that the world
they live in is a system that somehow works together to protect and do
good things for them. If they are hedonistic materialists "providence"
takes the form of the successful application of technology to all
issues including social organization. Therefore bureaucracy *must* be
the right way to go.
> > >I lack the legal learning of both of you
You've said this, but on these grand issues it really doesn't matter
much. Learning has been made subservient to purpose.
> But isn't it true that most of the "living Constitution" types have
> made at least a pretense of showing how the decision squared with the
> document? I simply don't understand how they can do what they did to
> VMI and claim it's consistent with usage and the document itself.
It's easy, you just say the 14th amendment requires equal protection of
the laws and announce that women turned down by VMI purely on account
of their sex^H^H^H gender have been denied equal protection. They are
refused something other people get and the reason's a bad one. It's
true that in 186? the reason wasn't thought bad, but since then the
ideal of sex equality has been thoroughly institutionalized everywhere
remotely reputable as a fundamental moral principle and a function of
the courts is to maintain the coherence of the law with the most
fundamental social understandings, especially those that are legitimate
and even necessary developments of our basic constitutional principle
of equal liberty under law and especially when applying open-ended
phrases like "equal protection of the law."
> Hell, it would seem that the whole idea of written law in the first
> place is to PREVENT "evolution" unless you specifically decide to
> alter the statute.
Then you think _Brown_ was wrongly decided.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Feb 10 09:00:09 EST 1997
Article: 9098 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: 10 Feb 1997 07:57:56 -0500
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In <725382775wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> Is there evidence though that one result of industrialization was to
>> increase emphasis on the nuclear family as the one non-contractual
>> relationship that could be relied on under modern circumstances?
>If anything, the evidence seems to be the other way round: nuclear
>family encourages saving (need to establish your own household), late
>marriage, mobility of younger siblings, of which the first and last
>were factors favouring industrialization.
So nuclear families and industrialization was a combination that worked
well together. That was certainly my understanding.
What about how people understood social order, though? If an older
understanding of society as based on throne, altar and hearth, or maybe
as an organism with head, hands, feet, etc., was giving way to an
understanding in which all is based on consent, it seems that an
intermediate view would be that there is both a contractual public
sphere and a non-contractual private sphere of natural affections
centered in the nuclear family. The point I have been trying to make
in this thread would then be that the intermediate view wasn't really
coherent and couldn't last. Fundamental principles of moral obligation
can't be neatly confined to separate spheres.
What has happened I think is that consent has become the fundamental
principle, in the family as elsewhere. The result is gross disorder in
family life. Also, it has turned out that consent can't be a universal
principle of social order since people aren't reasonable and since all
processes for aggregating the consent of individuals are defective.
Therefore the criterion has become what would draw the maximal equal
consent of the people as a whole if everyone was reasonable, with what
that thing is determined by experts and bureaucrats.
>> It seems to me that in a village or even in pre-industrial towns
>> there could be a variety of non-contractual relationships and
>> authorities other than an extended family system (several
>> generations under one roof) that supplemented the nuclear family.
>Some studies of 17th-century England have I believe given support to this
>idea: neighbours were important.
It just seems to me that there must have been a lot of non-contractual
relationships and authorities that were important for the
throne/altar/hearth, head/hands/feet, or estates-of-the-realm views of
social order to be plausible.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Feb 10 09:00:12 EST 1997
Article: 9099 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 10 Feb 1997 08:12:44 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <5dm2bp$ogj@chronicle.concentric.net> drotov@concentric.net (dimitri rotov) writes:
>We can even make a little list in descending order.
>G.B. McClellan. You can't say enough about this man, especially
>his politics. His loss to Lincoln in '64 was a national
>calamity.
[ ... ]
>Sherman. His politics were mind-boggling
>The "conservative" Southerners. I'm thinking of an
>attitude attributed to Lee: (1) "I wish these people
>would leave us alone" and (2) "I follow Virginia."
>McClellan generalized these attitudes in the analysis
>that proposed the South had been seized by a radical
>junta and the underlying population were, politically
>still Americans. They were "enablers" to the junta.
This seems odd. McClellan it appears had a lot of sympathy with the
fundamental outlook of the "'conservative' Southerners" and he's the
most CR in your list, while the cS's are almost at the other end, even
more radical than the "mind-boggling" Sherman.
The secessionist leaders of course are for you the most radical of all,
a couple of steps beyond Sherman. It seems to follow that the social
order of 1861 America was embodied for you first and foremost in the
Federal government, which the secessionists wanted to replace among the
states that agreed with them with a somewhat looser arrangement, rather
than in anything Sherman wanted to touch. That seems odd. The Federal
government was after all a conscious construction made within the
memory of a few men still living, and an institution of limited power
and influence, far less (if we are to believe Tocqueville writing not
long before) than the state governments.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Feb 10 09:00:18 EST 1997
Article: 863 of alt.thought.southern
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.thought.southern
Subject: Re: public schools
Date: 10 Feb 1997 08:41:40 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 57
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In <330747f9.104094509@news.esinet.net> shack@esinet.net (Shack Toms) writes:
>>If an institution expects [an honor code] it's going to end up far
>>more closely tied to some ethnic groups and social classes than
>>others.
>I don't believe that it is a matter of social class or ethnicity,
>though.
Enjoying chamber music is not I suppose "a matter of" those things.
Still, it's not a cross section that takes up the cello or goes to
concerts.
>But so what if it is?
My original comment in this thread is that a multicultural society --
one that believes in the moral necessity of roughly equal participation
of all ethnic groups etc. in major social institutions -- is not going
to be a society in which major social institutions are going to be able
to define and enforce honor codes. If you don't find that an
interesting topic to discuss, that's OK.
>The point is that it is better for a culture to promote honor. The
>people within the culture generally are happier, more prosperous, and
>have more freedom.
Sure. It's nice to have a culture with functional institutions.
>This doesn't necessarily mean that they are uniform--a Muslim will
>still be a Muslim and a Baptist will still be a Baptist--but, with a
>liberal arts education, they will be more free to decide these things
>for themselves.
>So that the people the student deals with are all living that culture.
>And most people can do it. From whatever ethnic background they come.
You seem to be saying that culture is something (essentially?
properly?) separate from religion and ethnicity. I find that odd. It
seems to me they're all connected. It's not clear to me what the point
is though. We're touching on a variety of issues from quite different
directions.
>I think that in any cases in which it makes a difference, that it is a
>bad idea. In other words, in an ideal government, the aims of
>government match the aims of the people--so in that case it doesn't
>matter who decides what to teach the kids.
It's not just a matter of which good is produced and how efficient the
production is though. When the government does something -- gives
someone a medal for heroism or supports historical scholarship -- it
ties the value of what is supported to our common citizenship. Of
course if the government does too many things its actions will no
longer have that kind of moral effect, but still it's an effect that
has to be taken into account.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Feb 10 09:00:19 EST 1997
Article: 864 of alt.thought.southern
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.thought.southern
Subject: Re: Public Education Debate (ATT. Shack Toms)
Date: 10 Feb 1997 08:49:53 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
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In <330848fe.104355665@news.esinet.net> shack@esinet.net (Shack Toms) writes:
>Why do you believe that the government will be able to make better
>choices for your children than the experts you would select to teach
>them would make?
I don't recall saying I believe this.
>I think that the loss of ideological freedom is exactly what has been
>suggested. The premise has been that too much freedom in the
>development of ideology will divide the culture and therefore that the
>development of ideas ought to be controlled.
I don't recall anyone saying the development of ideas ought to be
controlled. The discussion seems to have lost its way. Anyone else
who wants to continue it may of course do so.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Mon Feb 10 07:32:58 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Federal Courts (Was Larry Flynt's daughter)
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <199702100213.VAA29044@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Feb 9,
97 09:15:09 pm
Status: RO
> I guess what looks so counterintuitive to a non-legal person like me
> is that such fundamental usages might have been ragingly
> unconstitutional all along with the greatest legal minds being none
> the wiser. Something about the whole situation looks profoundly,
> fundamentally wrong.
The American regime has been a compound of the liberal principle of
consent as the basis of all authority and older principles such as the
authority -- not based on consent -- of other things, traditional
arrangements as to sex, religion or whatever. The tendency has been
for the former to gain ground at the expense of the latter.
Conservatives say "the constitution" means the compound, so it includes
both in some fixed way, while liberals say "the constitution" refers
more to the overall arrangement whereby the former eats up the latter,
or maybe to the requirements of that arrangement at a particular time.
A liberal would not I think say that the exclusion of women from VMI
was ragingly unconstitutional in 1870. He might say that it would
inevitably have been held constitutional then but since then there has
been a legitimate and necessary development in our understanding of the
requirements of the constitution.
Think of slavery and Christianity. The Pope and many others say today
that slavery is unChristian, but that doesn't seem to have been St.
Paul's view. One way of understanding that is to say that it takes a
long process to bring out and make concretely binding all the
requirements of a fundamental principle.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Feb 11 20:23:33 EST 1997
Article: 9110 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: 11 Feb 1997 20:19:43 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 54
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References: <5c51bf$q72@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> <5cbmes$79r@panix.com> <32E96279.3DC7@mindspring.com> <5ciu9n$pci@panix.com> <32EF9AC5.5DAD@bellsouth.net> <5cqfbk$a46@panix.com> <32F5146F.72B0@bellsouth.net> <32F64D29.5F48@mindspring.com> <5d7j54$4id@panix.com> <32F77E53.587B@mindspring.com> <5d9sm0$fml@panix.com> <518743676wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5dfda1$ovi@panix.com> <725382775wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5dn60k$fg@panix.com> <233607263wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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In <233607263wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> So nuclear families and industrialization was a combination that
>> worked well together.
>there was a suggestion of a particular order of causality, not just of
>association, in your paragraph above.
Sure. The implicit suggestion was that the existence of a trend
usually shows that several things reinforce each other, which makes
cause and effect hard to distinguish. I didn't present an argument as
to the particular case it's true, but I don't think it would be hard to
construct one.
>There are several different antitheses, though, aren't there? Contract
>used to be contrasted with status: in the 1970s it was fashionable to
>say that an alleged trend from status to contract had been reversed.
>Contract is not the same as consent: the modern idea of consent
>undermines contract, surely (especially the marriage contract).
Yes. The intention is to portray the "reversal of the trend from
status to contract" as a continuation of a deeper trend, the
elimination of transcendent moral obligations. First contract
supplants essentialist theories of obligation (I ought to do X because
I am an Englishman and that's part of what it is to be an Englishman),
because that kind of obligation can't be reduced to the concrete
desires and choices of particular men. Then people start to feel that
the always-the-same-over-time contracting self and the resulting
objective scheme of contractual obligations is a bit too transcendent
>from the point of view of immediate feeling and impulse. So we go to
the modern split between the more authentic "romantic" side of
liberalism ("Just do it!") and the more conscientious "rational" side
("let's set up an order that maximizes the equal satisfaction of all
feelings and impulses"). The earlier emphasis on contract drops out
except as a metaphor.
>The argument between your organic understanding and the consensual
>understanding is that of Filmer v. Locke, where the crucial shift was
>as long ago as the 17th century. And the economist's idea that value
>is determined by individuals' arbitrary preferences (an idea today
>tied in with that of autonomic consent) goes back to Grotius and
>natural-law ideas, whereas in the early liberal period labor theories
>of value were perhaps more important.
So then early liberalism had not yet worked itself clear, and no single
early liberal had gotten it all straight. No surprise there.
Something of the sort has been my claim, really -- that for example it
took liberalism a very long time to decide to do away with the family,
and that there was an illogical halfway house along the way that
involved acceptance of the nuclear family as a legitimate organic
institution somehow existing in a consensual world.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Feb 12 06:45:51 EST 1997
Article: 9111 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 11 Feb 1997 20:30:39 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 13
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References: <5cvni0$6r6@sjx-ixn10.ix.netcom.com> <5d7ira$388@panix.com> <861348402wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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In <861348402wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>> It's worth noting that the "under God" was added in the 1950s.
>Is that when what an acquaitance of mine calls 'the McCodwee Trust'
>got its logo on your coins? (The lettering was so bad that he misread
>it for years). Or is the legend earlier?
It was about that time we got the "In God We Trust" on our bills. It
had been on coins for some time before that, how long I don't know.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Feb 12 22:01:48 EST 1997
Article: 9119 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 12 Feb 1997 18:06:46 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 18
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In <5dr91q$eif@chronicle.concentric.net> drotov@concentric.net (dimitri rotov) writes:
>Evaluation of "conservative" CSA seceders is not that hard:
>ultimately even the best of them supported the formation of a new
>order based on a "revival" (revivals=novelties) of certain
>constitutional ideas. In other words, we have the problem of an
>innovative "White revolution" -- which is mock conservatism -- or of
>its cousin, Whig-like support of neo- Hanoverians -- which is also
>mock conservatism.
Is there any conservatism that is at all self-conscious that is not
mock conservatism? Is non-mock conservatism a matter of heart-felt
loyalty to established practices and principles and to what is most
respectable, whatever those things may be, so that here and now anyone
to the right of Jack Kemp really *is* an extremist and no conservative?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Feb 14 07:33:49 EST 1997
Article: 9126 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: 13 Feb 1997 20:05:14 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 27
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In <527670067wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>An alternative view might be that there's no such single thing as
>liberalism: that very different outlooks and ideas are being lumped
>together under a single term.
That approach can be applied iteratively to show there isn't such a
thing as anything. Which doesn't properly respond to your point of
course, since it might be the case that there are some things but not
others, and "liberalism" might happen to be one of the things that is
not.
Basically what I am doing is taking contemporary philosophical
liberalism as the standard and calling earlier thinkers liberal by
reference to their position in the developments that led to what we
have today. That makes sense if the current situation is not utterly
contingent but the outcome of am implicitly rational historical
process. My comments on why the reversal of the trend from status to
contract wasn't really a reversal were of course an attempt to show how
rational developments have been in spite of appearances to the
contrary. It seems to me Plato's description of a similar long-term
process in bks. viii-ix of the _Republic_ supports the "historical
process with its own inner logic" theory or at least undercuts the
"contingent roll of the dice that could never happen again" theory.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Feb 14 07:33:50 EST 1997
Article: 9131 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: 14 Feb 1997 07:32:15 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <5e1m0f$bgs@panix.com>
References: <5c51bf$q72@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> <5cbmes$79r@panix.com> <32E96279.3DC7@mindspring.com> <5ciu9n$pci@panix.com> <32EF9AC5.5DAD@bellsouth.net> <5cqfbk$a46@panix.com> <32F5146F.72B0@bellsouth.net> <32F64D29.5F48@mindspring.com> <5d7j54$4id@panix.com> <32F77E53.587B@mindspring.com> <5d9sm0$fml@panix.com> <518743676wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5dfda1$ovi@panix.com> <3303B3E0.59D1@bellsouth.net>
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In <3303B3E0.59D1@bellsouth.net> John Fiegel writes:
>> Is there evidence though that one result of industrialization was to
>> increase emphasis on the nuclear family as the one non-contractual
>> relationship that could be relied on under modern circumstances?
>On the contrary, "no fault divorce" has reduced the family to just one
>more contractual relationship.
Sub-contractual, I suppose, since you aren't even bound to what you
agreed to.
My question, though, was whether after the onset of industrialization
(but before the revolutions of our own times) there was an increased
emphasis on the special nature and importance of the nuclear family.
One hears for example of the "cult of domesticity," the "two spheres"
theory for the sexes, the home as a "haven in a heartless world," etc.,
as distinguishing features of 19th c. attitudes.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Fri Feb 14 08:50:11 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: MacIntyre WSJ letter
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Status: RO
Alasdair MacIntyre wrote a letter to the WALL ST. JOURNAL which
appeared in their letters section on Monday, Feb. 10th headed "MORAL
ISSUES USED AS POLITICAL TACTICS". Someone posted it to another list
and I thought I'd pass it on:
"You understate the case when you say of the weeks of political
maneuvering that accompanied the House Ethics Committee proceedings
that they 'bloodied both parties' ("House Votes to Reprimand Newt
Gingrich" Jan. 22)
What those weeks revealed was the extent to which members of
Congress, with remarkably few but hightly honorable exceptions, think
of moral issues and principles primarily as weapons to be used for
party political purposes. But those who think of moral value in this
way not only make it evident that they themselves are deeply confused
about morality, they also help to discredit what they are ostensibly
defending. This confusion is recurrent. When Sen. Dole's campaign
organizers allowed it to be known they they were debating the tactical
effectiveness of his using moral accusations against President Clinton,
they ensured in advance that Mr. Dole's audiences would not hear his
charges as genuine moral accusations, but as political tactics.
When moral confusion enters into conflict with clear-headed moral
corruption, clear-headed moral corruption always wins, as it did in the
presidential election. The House Ethics Committee should find itself a
new name. Such a change might not improve the House, but it would
bring less disrepute on ethics.
ALASDAIR MACINTYRE
Department of Philosophy
Duke University
Durham, N.C.
"Moral confusion in conflict with clear-headed moral corruption" seems
to me a good description of our recent presidential election. The
tendency to treat everything as a tactic in a game played basically to
win extends beyond politics though. It seems that there are people who
openly do just that in the academy as well, perhaps even at Professor
MacIntyre's own present institution, and deny that anything else is
possible. It's rhetoric and power and nothing else all the way down,
or so we are given to understand.
One runs into such things in personal life as well. Cutting corners is
always common, but do we have more of it now than at times in the past?
I've known people who were in many ways extremely cultivated and even
serious, but at bottom thought everything was tactics and were unable
to take seriously any other possibility. "It's all about survival" as
the poet sings, with "survival" interpreted rather broadly.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Feb 15 06:48:53 EST 1997
Article: 9138 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: 15 Feb 1997 06:38:46 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <5e4786$lav@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> <5cqfbk$a46@panix.com> <32F5146F.72B0@bellsouth.net> <32F64D29.5F48@mindspring.com> <5d7j54$4id@panix.com> <32F77E53.587B@mindspring.com> <5d9sm0$fml@panix.com> <330359FF.15D3@bellsouth.net>
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In <330359FF.15D3@bellsouth.net> John Fiegel writes:
>When society reaches the point where it can become infected with a
>spiritual bacillus like the nuclear family myth, it is already in such
>a weakened condition that sooner or later it will eventually be
>overrun by most, if not all, of the pneumopathologies (spiritual
>diseases) of modernity
This sounds very much like the Taoist objection to the Confucians. In
order to defend traditional society against the pneumopathologies of
modernity the Confucians were forced to analyze and systematize, and
distinguish what is more and less fundamental. With respect to the
family, for example, Confucius lists the fundamental relationships
(father/son, older brother/younger brother etc.) and Mencius says that
a man and woman living together is the most important of human
relationships. The Taoists objected that all such efforts, not to
mention classification and prescription of the rites that had ordered
traditional society, were necessarily part of a larger effort to put
things into a state in which they could be manipulated.
Historically, of course, the pneumopathologies won with the victory of
Ch'in. Oddly, the Legalist ideology upon which Ch'in relied drew
heavily on Taoism (the ineffable sublimity of traditional society was
to be replaced by that of the absolute tyrant) but was developed by Han
Fei Tzu and Li Ssu, students of Hsun Tzu, a Confucian in whom the
tendency toward analysis and formalism had become atheistic social
science. Thus pneumopathology turns everything to its purpose. On the
other hand, Li Ssu contrived Han Fei Tzu's death, which may show
something about limits which the internal contradictions of
pneumopathology places on its triumph.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Feb 15 06:48:54 EST 1997
Article: 9139 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 15 Feb 1997 06:46:58 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 25
Message-ID: <5e47ni$m0d@panix.com>
References: <5cvni0$6r6@sjx-ixn10.ix.netcom.com> <5d7ira$388@panix.com> <5dr91q$eif@chronicle.concentric.net> <5dtie6$mud@panix.com> <5e3cr2$csp@chronicle.concentric.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <5e3cr2$csp@chronicle.concentric.net> drotov@concentric.net (dimitri rotov) writes:
>What makes it "mock" is that it is a self-consious innovation based on
>a conservative theme (in the first case) OR it is a structural
>commitment to innovation (via loyalty to innovators). An honest,
>heartfelt reactionary position, untainted by novelty, is McClellan's
>dogma: status quo ante -- with NO additions or subtractions.
Status quo ante though can apply only if it is an isolable recent event
that is troubling you.
>I appreciate your point, though I'm not clear on the Kemp reference.
>Kemp is the Pierre Laval of the American Right.
My ignorance includes ignorance of Pierre Laval except as a name. I
used Kemp as a symbol of an outlook that accepts big government
activism in support of the usual goals (individual economic well-being
and security, comprehensive racial and sexual equality, national unity)
and thus accepts the fundamentals of the political status quo but
attempts to modify programs in technical ways so that "conservative"
goals (individual initiative, local responsibility, whatever) are also
preserved.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From BORK-owner@u.washington.edu Sun Feb 16 09:33:02 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
To: "Conservative Law List"
Subject: Re: musings
In-Reply-To: <199702151800.KAA07450@m9.sprynet.com> from "wfb" at Feb 15, 97 11:03:47 am
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> How much do I have to take though, of laws regulating every aspect of
> my life, which the Constitution and Founding Fathers never
> envisioned?
> Congress is equally guilty of passing laws which they were
> never authorized to, but where were the courts to strike them down as
> being not delegated to them?
What do we owe a government that is illegitimate, either absolutely or
by its own standards? An interesting question.
The first kind of government I suppose would be one established for
purposes that are fundamentally bad, like making Tom the master of Dick
and Harry simply because Tom likes it that way. An example of the
second would be one that says consent of the people is necessary for
legitimacy, and intervenes in the internal affairs of countries in
which government is not based on that principle, but ignores the
principle in its own case.
A lot of people say our government is illegitimate for both reasons,
that part of its essential purpose as authoritatively declared by the
Supreme Court is protecting bad stuff like abortion and keeping
religion from having any effect on public life, and that it insists on
popular consent as the basis of legitimacy while ignoring the
requirement in its own case. There's a symposium in the magazine
_First Things_ that discusses these issue and includes an essay by
Judge Bork at http://www.firstthings.com/menus/ft9611.html. The
symposium caused quite a fuss.
Either way I suppose one should obey the laws in general, because most
laws are mostly for the public good. I think that's the traditional
answer. The ruler may be tyrannical, but for every tyrant there could
be a worse tyrant, so what there is of law in the existing order of
things should be supported. Even the Nazi regime had laws governing
commercial transactions and prohibiting murder, theft, double-parking,
and so on, and those laws were binding unless for some unusual
overriding purpose. (It would be hard to object if someone stole a van
loaded with Jews bound for the camps, drove it someplace to let them
go, and then abandoned the van thus violating parking regulations.) And
whatever you say about the present American government it's a lot
better than many.
The big problem we have today though is that we have a lot more law
than in the past and it's a lot more ambitious. It wants to remake
society on a scale that in the past was generally not attempted. What
do you do for example if you think government policy, the
constitutional law of the United States as declared by the Supreme
Court, what they teach in the public schools etc. etc. is part of a
comprehensive effort to remold society in a way that leaves little room
for say family life and religion? If you think family life and
religion are important and in fact precede government in the scheme of
things it seems your obligation to comply with everything the
government wants you to do can become more restricted.
Sorry to jump in with all these words that don't come to any very
snappy conclusion, but I just joined the list and the first topic that
came up was one I'm interested in so I thought I'd say something about
it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Feb 16 14:56:17 EST 1997
Article: 9150 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: 16 Feb 1997 14:55:54 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 22
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In <33075032.7CDB@bellsouth.net> John Fiegel writes:
>One huge problem revolves around multiple and mutually contradictive
>uses of the word "liberty" itself.
To my mind our understanding of liberty depends on our understanding of
the human good. We act freely when we act unimpededly in pursuit of
our good. It also depends on what is the environment and what is the
subject matter of action. If say traditional family structures and
rules of property are the environment of action we get a different
understanding than if those things are human creations that could be
made otherwise.
The tendency has increasingly been to understand the human good as
identical with actual human preferences, and to view moral rules as
socially created through and through. Thus the change in the
understanding of "liberty" -- it now means to live under the social
institutions that maximally enable us to get whatever it is that we
happen to want.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Feb 17 09:19:14 EST 1997
Article: 887 of alt.thought.southern
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.thought.southern
Subject: Re: Public Education Debate (ATT. Shack Toms)
Date: 16 Feb 1997 18:44:09 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <333e7b6e.270208699@news.esinet.net> shack@esinet.net (Shack Toms) writes:
>It is an implication of support for government-run schools over
>parental choice of the educators one would choose for his children.
>If there is another reason for this differential support other than a
>mistrust that the parents will freely select a good education for
>their children then I'd like to know what it is.
All I've said in the thread is that government involvement in education
is not categorically bad, that it could add something. For example:
1. A system of free schools, which very likely would mean schools
supported by taxes, could make education more widely available. That
could benefit not only those educated but the public at large. Tax
support means though that taxpayers should have quite a lot to say
about what they're paying for.
2. The people of a locality who have their local government run a
system of free schools might think it would be good if those schools
were the common schools that just about everyone goes to, so that
children growing up in the community would have more of a common
background and their schools could be a focus of local patriotism. So
they might try to make the schools attractive and successful by
spending more than the bare minimum on them, taking school board
elections seriously, joining the PTA, supporting school programs and
teams voluntarily, and so on.
3. A government might support advanced research and education on
things that don't pay for themselves commercially but are important
publicly, like basic scientific research or literary and historical
scholarship. It might do that by founding and funding a public
university.
I don't see what any of the foregoing has to do with mistrust of the
ability or willingness of parents to make good choices for their
children.
>>I don't recall anyone saying the development of ideas ought to be
>>controlled.
>Check out the post that started this thread
>:I am a most firm believer in the power of government to do good and
>:in the public sphere. The difference for me however is that I believe
>:that this government should be local and support and re-enforce the
>:culture of the community. It does this via the public schools and
>:other community action.
>How are the public schools going to re-enforce this culture except by
>controlling the ideological development of the students?
"Have some influence" and "control" aren't the same. If the government
passes out medals for heroism in wartime it is among other things
trying to encourage certain attitudes toward sacrifice for the public
good. It's not trying to control the development of ideas though.
>I don't see how you interpret the above-quoted paragraph as meaning
>anything other than that the government ought to run schools in order
>to help preserve the cultural identity of the community in the face of
>cultural drift and division that would otherwise occur. In other
>words, in order to control the natural ideological development of the
>community.
Why does "natural" mean "what would happen in the absence of
government?" Do laws against theft obstruct the natural circulation of
property in the community? If the government passes out medals or does
other things intended to affect popular feeling (adopts a flag and
other symbols, puts on impressive public ceremonies, builds the
courthouse in marble on the main public square and dresses the judges
in robes) is it trying to control the natural ideological development
of the community?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Feb 18 12:39:38 EST 1997
Article: 9165 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 18 Feb 1997 12:36:41 -0500
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In "James C. Langcuster" writes:
>I suppose most late-twentieth century American conservatives -- Kemp,
>Kristol, Bennett, et al -- would argue that their principles are
>steeped in Burke. Burke believed in change (innovation),too -- but
>only so long as it was filtered through the right channels. Neocons
>believe in filtered change, but within the context of a
>post-industrial, global economy. Perhaps the question should be: Is
>this really an adequate foundation on which to build?
It seems to me incoherent. One reason Burke objected so vehemently to
the French Revolution is that his understanding of politics would make
no sense in a polity guided by its principles.
Conservatism is not a complete social and political philosophy by
itself. There has to be something to conserve other than the way
things happen to be at the moment, even though the _status quo_ is
always and everywhere the concrete outcome of the historical process.
To say anything at all, conservatism has to be motivated by some
principle other than "go with what has grown up historically."
Conservatism won't be conservative though unless the guiding principle
is one already socially institutionalized. Conservative theory
emphasizes the importance of prejudice, habit, etc. and so tells us
that it's going to be very difficult to have good government except by
preserving and when needed developing good principles upon which
society is already based. Conservative practice then is a matter of
developing a feeling for those principles and their contemporary
meaning and value as known through experience and consideration of
concrete circumstances.
The foregoing falls apart if the political principle in a society to
which all else must give way is "promote the overall technological
organization of things that will enable everyone as much and as equally
as possible to get whatever they happen to want." That seems to be
entrenched as our most authoritative political principle. (Is there
any part of it with which one may permissibly disagree?)
That principle is inconsistent with any possible conservative outlook
because it looks at society as something to be reconstructed
technologically to promote goals that can be defined operationally and
numerically. Tradition, habit, prejudice etc. lose all authority
because clear and explicit knowledge of the proper goals of social
organization and the means of achieving them is presumed available.
It seems what people who agree with the foregoing and would like to be
conservatives are left with is a sort of metaconservatism -- a belief
that conservatives are right about how good government comes about but
fundamental features of modern politics keep that from happening, and
so a desire for radical political change. Therefore this newsgroup,
the name of which suggests radicalism oriented in a direction opposite
to that now institutionalized in our society.
>I can't think of one public conservative in America, with the possible
>exception of Buchanan, who wouldn't consider "progess" as one of his
>"core values."
And from the standpoint of all respectable public opinion Buchanan is a
bigoted extremist who has no legitimate place in our political life.
In short, a radical. It doesn't take much to become one.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!news.radio.cz!newsbreeder.radio.cz!news.radio.cz!CESspool!news.maxwell.syr.edu!worldnet.att.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!EU.net!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!rutgers.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Tue Feb 18 12:39:48 EST 1997
Article: 91996 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Defining Fundamentalism (was: Jehovah's Witnesses Attack Fu
Date: 17 Feb 1997 23:02:50 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 43
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In <5e8sqg$mb0@geneva.rutgers.edu> jrghgb@worldaccess.nl (J.R. Grit) writes:
>scriptures, tradition and the church. But, if you study these three
>closely it becomes very hard to distinghuish them from culture.
My way of understanding this is to say that mankind, every human
community, and every man including some great saints (Paul comes to
mind) is split between practices, attitudes, beliefs, etc. ordered by
the love of God and those ordered or rather characterized and partially
ordered by rebellion against God -- pride, self-will, what Paul calls
"the flesh" and others the "world," the "City of Man," or whatever.
Things that make up human culture (bread, wine, social institutions,
human language, philosophical concepts and arguments) can most often be
made part of either order of things. So it's true that the Church (the
ordering of human things toward God) can't be separated from culture in
the sense of the things arising from human activity to be ordered
toward God. On the other hand any actual human culture also includes
an institutionalization of rebellion against God. It may for example
be the authoritative view within a culture that the proper goal of
social life is the maximum equal satisfaction of whatever desires and
goals people actually have. The Church must I think be radically in
opposition to "the culture" in that sense.
>Well, faith is not a human possibility, it must be God working in us.
>That means to me that I have to keep all the options open. I must
>guess what is divine in the world and what is not. I can have a few
>guidelines here and there (from bible etc.) but because my own
>interpretations - and that of the people with which I live - are
>limited when compared to God, I have to admit that in the end: I don't
>know. That means I have to be humble in my opinions and judgements and
>try to accept others (love) as we have heard God does.
If God works in us to create faith why couldn't he lead us to recognize
something other than ourselves in the world as a vehicle of revelation
to us? St. Peter recognized Jesus Christ as authority beyond all other
authority. Since Jesus was a particular man in Peter's environment
does that show that Peter was in your terms a fundamentalist who was
small-minded and lacking in love and humility?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Feb 21 07:39:28 EST 1997
Article: 9179 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: 21 Feb 1997 07:37:37 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <5ek4uh$iou@panix.com>
References: <5e7ooa$6hj@panix.com> <330D4549.5FF6@bellsouth.net>
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In <330D4549.5FF6@bellsouth.net> John Fiegel writes:
>The past understood human preferences to adhere at the level of the
>local community, especially if we are talking in Anglo-American terms.
I think "view of what is good" is a better term than "preference." Such
things draw stability, coherence and reality from being anchored in
daily life and durable face-to-face relationships, which is why the
local community is important. In societies that are not wholly tribal
common understandings of what is good also define far larger
communities, Christendom or whatever.
>One tendency of modernity is to nationalize this understanding of
>community. The other tendency is to individualize it.
It seems to be a sort of moral equivalent of logival positivism. There
are immediate sensations and impulses and there is a universal logical
order, with nothing in between.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Feb 21 07:39:33 EST 1997
Article: 10300 of nyc.announce
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: ny.announce,ny.politics,nyc.announce,nyc.politics,nyc.general
Subject: Re: bruno annouces war on tenants-2 (fwd)
Date: 20 Feb 1997 09:50:17 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <5ehob9$jiv@panix.com>
References: <32F5F9E3.3C84@ix.netcom.com> <32fa7ab0.7526652@news.albany.net> <32FBDCF9.4014@ix.netcom.com> <3307aeab.34320735@pandora.digitaladvantage.net> <32FFDC6D.7 <5eagan$jqq@kensie.dorsai.org> <5eciur$h9f@mtinsc04.worldnet.att.net>
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Xref: news.panix.com ny.politics:26541 nyc.announce:10300 nyc.politics:8067 nyc.general:35771
In SteveManes@see.sig.for.address writes:
>How is someone else's rent-controlled apartment taking money out of
>your pocket, even abstractly?
Suppose there are 100 apartments, 150 people who want them, a free
rental market, and no new apartments being constructed. Presumably
rents will rise until 1/3 of the people drop out of the market.
Now suppose that 50 of the apartments are rent controlled and occupied
permanently or practically so by 50 of the people. Then on the free
rental market there will be 50 apartments and 100 people who want them,
so rents will rise until 1/2 the people drop out.
Another possibility is that a history of controls on rent and other
burdensome regulations imposed after construction could make investors
demand higher expected payoffs to compensate for risk of unexpected
government action. As a result, less rental housing would be built at
higher prices to consumers.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!panix!news.columbia.edu!rutgers.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Fri Feb 21 07:39:36 EST 1997
Article: 92156 of soc.religion.christian
Path: news.panix.com!panix!news.columbia.edu!rutgers.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Defining Fundamentalism (was: Jehovah's Witnesses Attack Fu
Date: 20 Feb 1997 22:28:54 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 46
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In <5edvo1$rc3@geneva.rutgers.edu> jrghgb@worldaccess.nl (J.R. Grit) writes:
>it is IMO still quite difficult to actually identify
>"institutionalized rebellion" as such.
The point seems to be that moral issues are often quite ambiguous,
especially in social and political matters. Certainly true, but not
always so or always equally so.
>Nevertheless, it would be entirely wrong for the church to speak with
>divine authority. It is always our human interpretation in a specific
>situation (of the wrongs of society as well as the will of God) which
>is voiced. If God speaks, God speaks.
And if God speaks through a particular man, he speaks through a
particular man. Why couldn't he do that, perhaps on very rare
occasions?
On a different point, could the church speak with an authority of its
own that is not the same as the voice of God but nonetheless has to do
with God? Physicians speak with an authority that is not the same as
the voice of physical health but nonetheless has to do with it.
I should say though that the church's primary vocation is not to tell
other people what to do. When I speak of the church being in
opposition to the world what I mostly have in mind is that the church
should have a way of living that differs in fundamental ways from that
of the world (from "the culture"). If the difference can't be seen it
seems to show that the church's basic orientation is no different from
the world's.
>You will perhaps have noticed that immediately after his momentous
>confession - which according to many theologians is the beginning and
>heart of Christianity - Peter thinks he knows exactly what is right
>and wrong (Mark 9:33).
Even though he knew the most important thing Peter made important
errors. To escape those errors he needed an authority other than
himself to tell him he was wrong. You seem to be saying that our
spiritual authority cannot be one that we can see and hear expressing
itself in ordinary human language. Peter's experience was otherwise.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal -- rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!panix!news.columbia.edu!rutgers.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Fri Feb 21 07:39:37 EST 1997
Article: 92158 of soc.religion.christian
Path: news.panix.com!panix!news.columbia.edu!rutgers.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Defining Fundamentalism (was: Jehovah's Witnesses Attack Fu
Date: 20 Feb 1997 22:29:00 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 35
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In <5edvo9$rc8@geneva.rutgers.edu> jrghgb@worldaccess.nl (J.R. Grit) writes:
>> I'm not sure how one can have total commitment to X without treating
>> some propositions about X as beyond doubt,
>If "X" is a stone you are correct. If "X" is "God" it is an entirely
>different matter. The 'being' of God is totally different from that of
>a stone (even more than an ontological difference).
I don't see how we can have a commitment to God that we can know about
and speak of if we can't say anything about God himself. How can we
even use the name "God" if we can't use it correctly in propositions?
>The existence of God cannot even be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Neither can the existence of anything else, except maybe one's own
present subjective experience. Nonetheless we treat the existence of
many things as beyond doubt and rely on them. That's faith.
>Besides as I have also stated elsewere - religious truth is not
>propositional (if it was propositional it would only produce
>irrational nonsense). Religious truth is more existential and
>relational (and it concerns people, not objects).
No realities except maybe logical realities are propositional.
Nonetheless we can speak about them using propositions. We can speak
correctly in propositions about existences and relations. I'm not sure
what else propositions are good for.
Was Peter's confession in Mark 8 in error because he was using words?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal -- rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Feb 22 14:34:13 EST 1997
Article: 10312 of nyc.announce
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: ny.announce,ny.politics,nyc.announce,nyc.politics,nyc.general
Subject: Re: bruno annouces war on tenants-2 (fwd)
Date: 21 Feb 1997 16:21:12 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In SteveManes@see.sig.for.address writes:
>Suppose you present a conclusion instead of byzantine what-ifs.
You asked how abstractly a result could come about, so what-ifs are
enough. I'm not sure how simple something has to be before you call it
byzantine.
>: Another possibility is that a history of controls on rent and other
>: burdensome regulations imposed after construction could make investors
>: demand higher expected payoffs to compensate for risk of unexpected
>: government action.
>Let them demand all they want. That's what rent controls are for.
As you point out, rent controls don't apply to new housing. Your
question was how rent controls benefiting renter A could cost renter B
money.
>: As a result, less rental housing would be built at higher prices
>: to consumers.
>With all due respect, there was more construction of new rental
>housing in NYC per capita in the last fifteen years than cities, like
>Philadelphia, which have no rent control.
A comprehensive comparison of cities would of course help judge the
applicability of abstract scenarios (which is what you requested) to
the real world. When we discussed this issue several years ago I cited
a scholarly article to you that did so. Your conduct on that occasion
doesn't lead me to believe it would be worth my while to do any digging
on your behalf.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Feb 22 14:34:14 EST 1997
Article: 10317 of nyc.announce
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: ny.announce,ny.politics,nyc.announce,nyc.politics,nyc.general
Subject: Re: bruno annouces war on tenants-2 (fwd)
Date: 21 Feb 1997 20:26:33 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In SteveManes@see.sig.for.address writes:
>If you're referring to that NY Mag piece against rent control
Actually it was a piece from _The Public Interest_.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Feb 22 14:34:15 EST 1997
Article: 10318 of nyc.announce
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: ny.announce,ny.politics,nyc.announce,nyc.politics,nyc.general
Subject: Re: bruno annouces war on tenants-2 (fwd)
Date: 21 Feb 1997 20:38:47 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In SteveManes@see.sig.for.address writes:
>: Suppose there are 100 apartments, 150 people who want them, a free
>: rental market, and no new apartments being constructed. Presumably
>: rents will rise until 1/3 of the people drop out of the market.
>A nice euphemism: "drop out of the market". A term with more common
>usage though is "evicted", correct?
"Stop looking, move out, or stop paying rent and get evicted" would I
suppose be correct. Remember that since demand is 150 and supply 100
1/3 of the people do not presently have apartments and so could not be
evicted. Also, if rent were edging up and eventually became too high
to be worth paying I think most people would find someplace else, New
Jersey or whatever, instead of not paying and waiting to be evicted.
The language I used was briefer, and you don't like complexity. Also
what the 50 would have in common is that they would lose interest in
renting an apartment at the rent demanded and go elsewhere. So "drop
out of the market" seemed accurate as well as brief.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Feb 23 13:53:31 EST 1997
Article: 9189 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 22 Feb 1997 17:00:22 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <5enq9m$f5t@panix.com>
References: <5cvni0$6r6@sjx-ixn10.ix.netcom.com> <5d7ira$388@panix.com> <5dr91q$eif@chronicle.concentric.net> <5dtie6$mud@panix.com> <5e3cr2$csp@chronicle.concentric.net> <5e7o7d$mae@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> <5ecpb9$1q0@panix.com> <330f261a.522789063@news.infoave.net> <330f528b.19374649@news.interport.net>
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In <330f528b.19374649@news.interport.net> asp@interport.net writes:
>So what are the practical consequences to be drawn from this? More of
>the free market, laissez-faire dogma that's gotten us into this mess?
Sure, if the alternative is a bureaucratic legal order that generalizes
and makes universal and compulsory the principal of individual
hedonism.
Another possibility I suppose would be basing society on the principle
of struggle and supremacy of the self-will of the collectivity as
embodied in the individual will of a leader. So the triumph of the
will would be realized by victory in the struggle against other
collectivities.
If you start with ethical nihilism laissez faire is the best you can
aim at. Ethical nihilism is where the societies of the West are now,
and it can't be escaped by an act of political will. The best that can
be done politically at this point is to limit its use of force. The
constructive work is not political in a pragmatic sense.
I don't think it's specifically laissez faire dogma that's gotten us
where we are. That dogma has not been as prominent in the European
countries but socialism hasn't gotten them to a better or even very
different place. When the Wall came down everyone wanted to go
shopping.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Feb 23 13:53:36 EST 1997
Article: 10330 of nyc.announce
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: ny.announce,ny.politics,nyc.announce,nyc.politics,nyc.general
Subject: Re: bruno annouces war on tenants-2 (fwd)
Date: 23 Feb 1997 02:54:04 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In SteveManes@see.sig.for.address writes:
>: The language I used was briefer, and you don't like complexity.
>"Drop out of the market" is more brief than "evict"?
At this point all I can say (assuming you find my views of any
interest) is reread the message to which you are responding.
>: Also what the 50 would have in common is that they would lose
>: interest in renting an apartment at the rent demanded and go
>: elsewhere.
>Yes, but under rent control they can stay right where they are with
>their rent indexed by something more fair, like inflation.
Remember that there are 150 who want apartments and only 100
apartments, so 50 will have to go elsewhere in any event.
>So tell me how removing rent control benefits those who are priced out
>of a market where there is no competition to keep rents at sane,
>affordable levels?
I don't see why you say "no competition." In the no rent control
situation the owners of 100 apartments are competing against each other
for the 100 out of 150 prospective tenants who will pay the highest
rent. In the rent control situation the owners of 50 apartments are
competing for the 50 out of 100 prospective tenants who will pay the
most. Rents would normally end up at a lower level in the first case.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!panix!news-xfer.netaxs.com!feed1.news.erols.com!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!munnari.OZ.AU!uunet!in1.uu.net!128.6.21.17!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Tue Feb 25 06:31:19 EST 1997
Article: 92447 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Defining Fundamentalism (was: Jehovah's Witnesses Attack Fu
Date: 24 Feb 1997 23:04:40 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
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In <5er6pj$aau@geneva.rutgers.edu> jrghgb@worldaccess.nl (J.R. Grit) writes:
>I cannot remember ever having said that God cannot speak through a
>particular human being.
You had said:
>Nevertheless, it would be entirely wrong for the church to speak with
>divine authority.
If God spoke through say the Pope it seems to me that the Pope would be
speaking with divine authority.
It seems more and more unlikely to me that the medium will allow us to
progress further in this discussion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!panix!news-xfer.netaxs.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cdc2.cdc.net!news.texas.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!128.6.21.17!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Tue Feb 25 06:31:20 EST 1997
Article: 92474 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Defining Fundamentalism (was: Jehovah's Witnesses Attack Fu
Date: 24 Feb 1997 23:04:38 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 58
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In <5er6or$aaq@geneva.rutgers.edu> jrghgb@worldaccess.nl (J.R. Grit) writes:
>> >The existence of God cannot even be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
>>
>> Neither can the existence of anything else, except maybe one's own
>> present subjective experience. Nonetheless we treat the existence of
>> many things as beyond doubt and rely on them. That's faith.
>That is not faith, IMO. I hope you agree there is a considerable
>difference between the being of things & persons and the being of God.
Sure. For one thing ours is dependent on something outside ourselves
while God's is not. That, by the way, is why it is not slavery --
submission to something outside ourselves in a way that violates our
integrity -- to take God as absolute authority.
>I personally agree with those theologians who maintain that it is
>absurd to speak about God's existence - as if God were some
>innerworldly object (thing / person).
>From your use of the word above I took it that you were treating
"existence" as an attribute of everything that is. I wouldn't have
guessed that you thought your use of the word absurd.
>> No realities except maybe logical realities are propositional.
>I think I fully agree, but I feel I could be missing your point. My
>starting point was "truth" rather than "propositions".
I was using "realities" to express what I thought you meant by "truth."
>Wouldn't you say "truth" is often connected (by a lot of others
>anyway) with propositions?
Sure. Propositions are about what is true. I love my children and as
a father I should love my children. The preceding sentence contains a
couple of propositions, but neither my love nor my obligation is a
proposition. It's imaginable that I could be a good father who loves
his children even though somehow I were convinced that I didn't love
them and was obligated not to love them. Still, especially in the most
important matters I act as a whole man, and part of what I am is a
being that has beliefs that can be expressed in propositions, so it's
likely I will act better and be in the right relationship if my
propositional beliefs are accurate than otherwise. If I thought for
example that the proposition "John, Emma and Susannah are really
androids under the remote control of evil space aliens on Mars" were
true I imagine my relation with them would become grossly disordered.
If God then said to me "that space alien stuff is stupid, they're your
children" my relation would likely improve even though the divine
revelation was propositional.
My guess, by the way, is that our ways of thinking and talking about
these things are too different for this to be a good medium of
discussion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Feb 25 08:13:58 EST 1997
Article: 9201 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 25 Feb 1997 08:13:49 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 46
Message-ID: <5euoid$edr@panix.com>
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BaM-bAm writes:
>However I've assumed, given the emphasis on economic and political
>liberalism in this ng to the exclusion of any other type of 'right'
>traditions (and I'm aware of the ambiguity in this formulation) such
>as, e.g., the varying forms of monarchism, integrism, nationalism,
>distributism, fascism and corporatism, as well as the postings of the
>traditionalist conservatism FAQ that this group was pretty well
>populated and dominated by American-style conservatives.
There has been a continuing debate whether a basically
liberal/libertarian legal order, with exceptions such as immigration
restrictions and much more freedom to be non-liberal/libertarian at the
state and local level, is a worthy political goal at least in America.
One might claim for example that the "paleofederal/states' rights/no
immigration" approach really isn't that different with local
adjustments from a "Europe of the 100 flags" approach. The debate has
often taken the form of a debate on the libertarian alliance. The
"pro" side has usually been American, the "con" English. If you had
something to add to the debate I'm sorry you didn't do so. If you want
to discuss any of the traditions in your list that would be good as
well.
>By this I mean people who try to claim some kind of divine dispensation
>for economic and political liberalism.
I can't think of a participant in discussions on this newsgroup who has
anything like this view. There may have been someone but no-one comes
to mind. I'm not counting people who post long pronouncements but
decline to take part in exchanges.
>their contradictory stance toward the relation of individuals to
>society and their strangely ambiguous position toward politics and the
>state -- seems typical of American conservatism.
So point out contradictions and strange ambiguities as they arise. My
view is that there *are* contradictions in the relation of individuals
to society and strange ambiguities in the ethical status of politics and
the state. That may make me wrong, or irrational, or a typical American
conservative, or all three, or none of the above. The important thing
for this newsgroup though is that if there are good points to be made
against any position presented here it would help everyone if they were
made.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Feb 26 07:38:15 EST 1997
Article: 9202 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 25 Feb 1997 08:17:42 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 51
Message-ID: <5euopm$es4@panix.com>
References: <330f261a.522789063@news.infoave.net> <330f528b.19374649@news.interport.net>
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"James C. Langcuster" writes:
>First thing we've got to do is disabuse ourselves of the notion that
>liberalism is some step-by-step blueprint that proceeds step by step to
>some ultimate end. As most of the more convincing proponents of
>liberalism has stressed, it is a process rather than some vision of a
>shining city on a hill, which puts us squarely at odds with many
>collectivists, Marxist and tory alike.
Under what conditions can it stay a mere process? Part of what forms a
society is common recognition of certain things as goods -- as natural
and when need be authoritative goals of effort. Liberal process is a
matter of arriving at consent and enforcing it. If the process is the
sole basis of society and there is otherwise no common good then the
process will give rise to the common good because society can't exist
without one. The good to which liberal process taken by itself gives
rise though is maximum satisfaction of preference. So it seems that a
society that is liberal and nothing else will in fact have its own
shining city, that of hedonism.
For a long time America avoided the full force of that outcome because
we in fact had an established religion, a vague form of Protestantism.
It may not have been much, but it was a lot more than we have now, and
it was was enough to have major effects.
It's important to note that hedonism is lawless. It follows that the
triumph of liberalism means its destruction because people no longer
respect the process when it gets in the way of getting what they want
right now.
It's not clear what to do about all this. One possibility is that
schematic descriptions exaggerate problems and that the most sensible
thing is to try to strengthen the aspects of American society that made
it work better in the past -- cut back on big government and give more
of a role to religion and traditional moral values generally. Maybe
liberalism is not necessarily a successfully imperialistic principle,
and something can be pieced together that will work in line with
durable features of American life. That may be BaM-bAm's "Bible and
Business" conservatism. Another would be to put on sackcloth and ashes
and pray for illumination, or join a religious sect and flee the wrath
that is to come. Yet another would be to say "I don't like
contradictions and strange ambiguities in the relation between the
individual, society and the state, and this Jesus stuff etc. is stupid,
so I'll say individual, society and state are all one and the state is
the source and standard of the values that are going to be
authoritative."
There are no doubt other possibilities and proposals are welcome.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Feb 26 07:38:16 EST 1997
Article: 9208 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 26 Feb 1997 07:37:50 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <5f1aqu$8fr@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <19970225155137177919@deepblue3.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>If we take liberalism to be "neutrality toward ends" or toward a
>notion of "the good", then your comments are very much to the point.
>But what we call L. is not like that--it takes a notion of the good as
>its premise: that individual liberty is to be maximized.
I couldn't agree more. I don't accept the liberal claim of neutrality.
I go a step further though and ask "why is it that individual liberty
is to be maximized? Why is that and not some other good thing or some
combination of good things the ultimate standard?" The best answer I
can think of is that for liberalism the ultimate good -- the natural
object of all our striving -- is whatever it happens to be that we feel
like going after. For liberalism there is no standard not reducible to
our wanting to determine whether what we want is good. If there were
such an standard then individual liberty would sometimes have to give
way to some goal inconsistent with itself.
>Given other foundation premises of a society, could we still call it a
>"liberal" one if given the basic rules, recognition was given to the
>importance of process? That is, there are other "games" besides the L.
>one, but the umpires are always "liberal" in their management of the
>game, no matter what its rules. They are neutral between participants,
>but not as to premises.
I don't think so. The Inquisition as I understand it was careful about
process but people don't call it liberal.
You are right that the pervasiveness of liberalism makes it difficult
to step back and say what it is and what what its tendencies and
contradictions are.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Feb 27 05:59:53 EST 1997
Article: 9211 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 27 Feb 1997 05:59:23 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 65
Message-ID: <5f3peb$svh@panix.com>
References: <5f1aqu$8fr@panix.com>
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"James C. Langcuster" writes:
>there are basic impulses intrinsic to the human conditions, and, though
>I may suffer from some chronic case of tunnel vision, I simply can't
>envision any other system adequate to channeling these impulses.
If you accept impulses as given then liberalism is the system that
accepts them and arbitrates among them. Men aren't bundles of impulses,
though, because they don't understand themselves that way. So
liberalism is based on a false understanding of man.
In addition to impulses men have understandings shared with others of
the moral nature of things, actions, etc. Such understandings normally
do a lot of the work of channelling. For example, it is only within the
last 30 years or so that the idea has caught on that liberal principles
are appropriate for channelling sexual impulses, which are certainly
intrinsic to the human condition. Before that those impulses were
channelled by quite different conceptions.
>I haven't a clue as to how such a communitarian vision could be
>reintroduced today other than on a very small scale, but that, of
>course, is precisely where I see our society moving, notwithstanding
>the best efforts of bureaucrats to turn the tide.
Communitarian visions can't be introduced because they precede choices,
including the choice to introduce one thing or another. Community is
created by ethical understandings that define what the world is for
those who share them. It is within that world that people make their
choices. I agree that such understandings normally arise in social
settings marked by durable face-to-face relations. So it's quite
understandible that someone who thinks about politics by asking himself
"what can I construct" would come up with liberalism.
>Furthermore, I can't concede that all forms of liberalism advocate a
>constant maximalization of personal liberties.
My inclination is to identify something as liberalism by reference to
its role in the development of those things. It's been a tendency
rather than a fixed position. It seems to me though that we are
approaching a condition in which liberal positions embody liberal
tendencies as much as they're ever going to. That's why talk of the
End of History has come to seem plausible to many people.
>That's why I can't understand why liberalism and these values need be
>mutually exclusive Hasn't every prominent American liberal since the
>foundation of the American republic acknowledged the important role
>civil society plays in sustaining liberty?
It's not a question of what's acknowledged but of the effect of
fundamental purposes. It's common enough to acknowledge the importance
of something your behavior is destroying. Today for example liberalism
is destroying civil society by depriving its coordinating principles
(e.g., property and family obligations) of their authority.
>However, many of the contradictions imputed to liberalism didn't grow
>of of liberalism per se but, rather, from the distorting effects
>brought on by government interventionism.
In its development liberalism eventually requires government
interventionism because civil society comes to seem arbitrary and
oppressive when compared to the ideal of a rational order maximizing
individual autonomy.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
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Article: 92603 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Defining Fundamentalism (was: Jehovah's Witnesses Attack Fu
Date: 27 Feb 1997 01:14:33 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <5f0bui$etj@geneva.rutgers.edu> "J.R.Grit" writes:
>You seem to hold that the very words themselves of the pope can be the
>exact words of God. I hold that the listeners can recognize God's Word
>"through" the words of the pope (or anyone / anything else).
For me the self-revelation of a personal God implies that God wills and
does particular things. The most notable case is God's incarnation in
Jesus Christ but God can also intend that a particular man other than
Christ say a particular thing.
The notion of God doing particular things in the world is a difficult
one but it seems to me Christianity depends on it.
>Both thinkers vehemently deny that the exact words of some human are
>the exact Words of God.
Were the exact words of the man Jesus the exact words of God?
>The authority of this revelation is self-evident to those adressed
>when this Word is felt to address their totality / deepest roots.
It seems that for you revelation is whatever provokes you to get in
touch with what is deepest in you. God it seems is within. To me it
seems though that what is within is a need for God rather than God. I
want a world that is bigger and better than I am. The Kingdom of
Heaven is to include God and the whole world, including the physical
world. At our best each of us will only be an infinitesimally small
fraction of it, and we are not now at our best.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From jk Thu Feb 27 09:00:05 1997
Subject: Re: The Church Suffering
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 09:00:05 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Mark Cameron" at Feb 26, 97 02:48:59 pm
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> Why is it that Jewish people and the State of Israel will go to the
> wall (think of the Entebbe rescue or the "no questions asked"
> admission of Ethiopian Falashas or Russian Jews) for their fellow
> believers, while we Christians are blissfully ignorant of the
> persecution of Christians in the world.
Interesting question. Another answer is that Americans think of
religion as a private matter and religious solidarity as an
illegitimate basis for political action. "Persecuted minorities" are
an exception but on the whole worldwide Christians aren't a persecuted
minority.
Another is the way our public life is carried on through TV and
therefore is based on TV producers' understanding of the world, in
which the persecution of Christians as Christians can't possibly be an
issue and if it is it should be kept quiet to avoid waking the beast.
People sometimes rebel against that outlook and complain about things
that affect their immediate environment, gay rights laws or whatever,
but it's going against gravity.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Defining Fundamentalism (was: Jehovah's Witnesses Attack Fu
Date: 27 Feb 1997 20:45:29 -0500
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In <5f38op$i29@geneva.rutgers.edu> jrghgb@worldaccess.nl (J. R. Grit) writes:
>The only problem is that we, fallible human beings, can never pinpoint
>exactly where and how God acts.
If God does particular things in the world, why couldn't one of those
things be helping us to recognize where he acts?
>the symbol of Incarnation
You speak of "symbol." One can speak of all language as symbolic, or
one can contrast symbolic language with literal language. Do you mean
to say there is a more literally true way to describe what we speak of
when we say "Incarnation?"
>I don't think I can come up with a solution that avoids Monophysitism
>as well as the image of "the person with the two heads".
No-one seems to be able to put together a view of the world that is
adequate and avoids paradox. Maybe there's a reason in formal logic or
someplace why that would be impossible. So the question to my mind is
whether we're better off accepting literally (as literally as language
can be accepted) the formulations of the Church as to who Christ was or
whether we'd be better off trying to come up with something more
readily explicable on general principles, thereby disordering other
parts of the system.
My own inclination is to think that even if you think the language of
the Creeds has no special inspired status it's going to be hard to do
better. They were drawn up by very smart men after a very intense
process of discussion and debate that went on for a very long time, and
they've endured -- understood literally rather than symbolically -- at
the heart of Christian belief ever since. If you asked me to redesign
my own DNA in the hopes of turning myself into a superior being I might
give it a try, but this seems trickier.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Mar 3 14:28:01 EST 1997
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Lincoln and big government
Date: 3 Mar 1997 14:24:35 -0500
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raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>What is distinctive about modern liberalism -- and this is far more
>true of global liberal capitalism than of welfarism -- is its radical
>discontinuity from the past of our own cuture
Wouldn't national liberalism rather than welfarism be the appropriate
comparison? Global welfare capitalism is a possibility, and I think
even the ultimate goal of policy. It would go to an extreme in opposing
cultural particularism since it would call for interventionist
government policies designed to make all factors with a bearing on
measurable human well-being uniform worldwide.
In any case the view that the state is a rational construction to serve
human passions, which goes back at least to Hobbes, seems necessarily to
lead to radical discontinuity with past culture at least unless the
responsibilities of the state are sharply limited. So your modern
distinctive is I think the fruition of something much older.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
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