Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Apr 30 13:32:47 EDT 1996
Article: 7473 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
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Subject: Re: Roger Scruton article
Date: 30 Apr 1996 13:07:01 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <3186151e.78685500@news.crosslink.net> cgrimes@crosslink.net writes:
>People _don't want_ to be passive; most people who have access to
>interactive media prefer it; and more and more people will have access
>to it in the future.
>Direct experience must be local to the individual, but it need not be
>geographically local.
What kind of interactive media will prevail, though? Computer games
are interactive media, and people find them intensely absorbing, but
they don't provide them with direct experience. Even if other people
are involved, so there's an actual social element, from a political
perspective they lead to passivity.
In some ways CDs are more interactive than going to concerts, since I
can change one CD for another a lot more easily than I can change
artists in the middle of a concert, but they don't do much for the
vitality of musical culture.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Apr 30 13:32:48 EDT 1996
Article: 7474 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: the consequences of automation
Date: 30 Apr 1996 13:29:28 -0400
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In <31860a73.75954079@news.crosslink.net> cgrimes@crosslink.net writes:
>So, what will EE's be doing in ten or fifteen years? What sort of work
>isn't vulnerable to this sort of displacement? There are things, it is
>true; however, compared to the size of the population, jobs will be
>scarce indeed.
I'm not sure that mass unemployment is likely to be the problem.
Better information processing has meant more efficient markets, and
more efficient markets are better able to take any input whatever and
turn it into an economically valuable output. I think the risk
continues to be that too large and not too small a part of life will be
integrated into the universal economic techno-system.
>I would be interested to know what counter-revolutionaries think about
>both the already evident consequences, and the easily predictable con-
>sequences, of automation on the scale I describe.
As more and more of people's lives are governed by the logic of world
markets, cybernetically optimized production, and universal managerial
bureaucracy, they will become more and more incomprehensible to those
living them. All people will know is their impulses and the technical
means of gratifying them. Some will lose the personal coherence needed
to function at all, some will drop out and join the Amish, others will
somehow manage at least for a while. Long-term I expect a collapse of
some sort, but who knows? Maybe pharmaceuticals and computerized
environmental controls will advance to the point that the system will
be able to carry on things like childcare and psychotherapy
successfully in its own manner.
>Some people look at the situation that is developing, and they want to
>have more socialism. I do not. Yet, it would seem that if things con-
>tinue as they are now going, we may soon have more socialists, and
>more socialism, rather than less.
People will want socialism to take care of them because the world will
be humanly so fragmented, but it will be hard to organize for the same
reason. Who knows which trend will win, or whether the whole thing
will go bust before the contest can be decided?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Mon Apr 29 20:20:59 1996
Subject: Re: Liberalism & Neoconservativism (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 20:20:59 -0400 (EDT)
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Liz R, defendress of the Left, writes:
> I think what one must consider at the end of the day, is whether one
> finds in traditional religion, a social conscience.
I suppose someone with a social conscience would favor those things
that lead to a better life in society for people generally. Who are
the people adhering to traditional religion who lack such a conscience?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Mon Apr 29 20:52:00 1996
Subject: Re: Roger Scruton's skeptical piety
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 20:52:00 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960430001155.006c0cdc@swva.net> from "seth williamson" at Apr 29, 96 08:11:55 pm
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Seth Williamson:
> >Even the conservative temperament that
> >mistrusts individual reason can be an inducement to irreligion under
> >current circumstances.
>
> What do you mean?
A conservative tendency is to distrust one's private reason and to take
very seriously the outlook and beliefs that have developed and become
institutionalized over time in the particular society in which one was
born and bred. For many people today that outlook and those beliefs
are atheistic. That's a novel situation.
> I don't want to kick anybody when he's down, but it looks as if he's
> depressed because of fallacious ideas he holds. He evidently believes that
> science has "disproved" religion, or however they put it.
Different people have different powers of mind. He seems to be strong
on analysis, and on sensitivity to the views implicit in modern
intellectual life. Both are real strengths but neither helps him.
It's not a matter of proof for him, it's a matter of believability
which is an aesthetic and not logical matter.
> Roger Scruton is pleading for a civilization whose morality is to be
> founded on sentimentality.
He recognizes the need for subordination to something greater and more
authoritative than oneself, but can't feel the reality of the existence
of the necessary object and so tries to maintain the attitude without
the object. Is that sentimentality?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Mon Apr 29 20:54:25 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation VI (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 20:54:25 -0400 (EDT)
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Liz R Robinson writes:
> > Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
> > /\
> ||
> Do these still change every week or was that a tradition which died at
> the end of the last list?? (just wondering....) :)
Geese change continually, and tradition never dies.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Wed May 1 07:13:22 1996
Subject: To reopen the definitional controversy... (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 07:13:22 -0400 (EDT)
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Fred Wall:
> *Techno-Optimism and Libertarianism (Gingrich, Kemp, Forbes)
>
> *Cultural Conservatism (identifies only Pat Robertson)
>
> *Traditionalism (Kirk, Kendall)
>
> *Neoconservatism (Kristol)
>
> *The Straussians (Strauss, Bloom, and followers)
>
> *The Thomists
This seems a good enough list. The most common form of conservatism
here by far is a mixture of the first two. There's a streak of
libertarianism in almost all American conservatism. Traditionalism is
rather an eccentric view, which is a paradox but then if we could avoid
paradox our political situation would be simple. The Straussians, at
least atheistic Straussians like Bloom, tend to be allied to the
neocons. So far as I can tell they favor intellectual elitism (with
the right kind of elite) and maintenance of popular pieties they reject
themselves as a means of preserving the modern regime. It's hard to
say though, since they also believe in preserving the esoteric/exoteric
distinction. The Thomists I think are the least influential of those
listed.
> In the intellectual
> world at least, the dominant group of conservatives today is called
> neoconservative. The neoconservatives are newly conservative; they used
> to be liberal. They sometimes say they have changed sides largely in
> response to changed circumstances, not because they have changed their
> principles. The first generation of neos typically began as socialists in
> the 1930s, matured into welfare liberals, began to express conservative
> doubts about liberalism, became Reaganites, and finally Republicans."
Seems accurate to me. A second neocon generation, some of the most
prominent of whom are literally the sons and daughters of the first
generation, have made careers in conservative publications and
foundations in New York and D.C.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Wed May 1 14:49:58 1996
Subject: Re: To reopen the definitional controversy... (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 14:49:58 -0400 (EDT)
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> > The Thomists I think are the least influential of those
> > listed.
Francesca:
> When I was used to read it, The National Review contained a lot
> of what you could call vulgar Thomism. Crisis is quite Thomistic.
I just don't think its influence has spread much beyond conservative RC
circles, and America (especially conservative America) remains
fundamentally Protestant.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Wed May 1 15:01:09 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation XVI (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 15:01:09 -0400 (EDT)
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THE HORIZON OF POLITICS
> > > But nor do I think that revelation should be a direct source
> > > for practical politics. It may be the ultimate horizon,
> > > but it can't replace practical thinking about how to get
> > > to the horizon.
> > I would expect the nature of the ultimate horizon sometimes to affect
> > practice decisively.
Francesca:
> So there is
> not a lot one can say in advance about how it will affect
> practice;
> The horizon can not become identical with this
> particular culture. It is always on the edge of
> things.
The claim that practical politics depends decisively on revelation,
ultimate purposes, the ultimate horizon, or whatever, is not the same
as the claim that such things can be made fully explicit and fully
realized in practice.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Wed May 1 15:12:08 1996
Subject: Re: Moral Suasion versus Legal Enforcement? XVII (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 15:12:08 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> I think at least the English neocon position is that politics
> IS to with minor adjustments, nothing else being possible.
We live in an age of institutionalized radicalism, though. To make
politics a matter of minor adjustments would require radical changes.
> What other condition are you going to work with? And given
> a tradition deficit (we may disagree on its extent, but I
> think we agree on the fact of the deficit), what POLITICAL
> means are you going to use to redress it? The neocons
> accept that this cannot be redressed politically. At
> least the English ones do.
You could start by trying to do away with the antitraditional
application of state power. That would require very large political
changes. It would also require popular understanding and elite
acceptance of the harmfulness of much of what the modern state does,
which necessitates radical changes in the political culture. To get
the necessary understanding and acceptance of tradition requires a view
of tradition as a revelation of the way things are, which I think
requires a religious turn.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Wed May 1 15:26:07 1996
Subject: Re: More on universal reason III (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 15:26:07 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> I don't think the use of reason to which I refer has
> to do with the rejection of tradition in principle. If there are
> metaphysical, moral or even political truths, you can bring someone
> to the condition of being able to see them through rational argument.
> You don't have to talk them into joining your club. It is not
> a matter of joining a special club but of using your nous.
It's not a matter of clubbiness. Tradition in society corresponds to
memory in man. It means you don't always have to start with the first
crude thing that strikes you. It's a necessary condition for the
refinement of perception, conception, and evaluative judgment needed to
deal with metaphysical, moral and political truths. Reason may be
universal in principle but not all in fact participate in it equally.
If a society rejects tradition and authority in principle, recognizing
only what can be made explicit and demonstrated to everyone, people
brought up in that society are going to fumble such things grossly.
There will be exceptions, but the exceptions will have a hard time of
it rising above their surroundings. Man is after all a social animal.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Wed May 1 16:10:17 1996
Subject: Re: Moral Suasion versus Legal Enforcement? XVIII (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 16:10:17 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> > We live in an age of institutionalized radicalism, though. To make
> > politics a matter of minor adjustments would require radical changes.
>
> It means being totally in control. It can't work unless you are.
Don't understand.
> > To get
> > the necessary understanding and acceptance of tradition requires a view
> > of tradition as a revelation of the way things are, which I think
> > requires a religious turn.
> You are hypostatizing 'tradition'. Which tradition? There
> are liberal traditions. It is utopian to act as they were
> not there or could just be jumped over.
Whatever tradition one stands in. To continue to accept one's
tradition after becoming aware of the existence of other traditions
requires one to view it as somehow revelatory.
The liberal tradition we now have I think has ended up not working
because it demands a self-justification outside both itself and God --
some sort of universal reason that everyone in fact agrees on.
Unfortunately for that demand, not everyone is a liberal. The response
to the failure of liberal tradition is PC (if you don't agree with us
we'll shut you up because anyone who doesn't agree with us can't exist
and therefore if he does exist he must be some kind of monster) or
liberal irony that is the same as liberal Nazism (yeah I know I hold my
views as a result of pure contingency so they're not justified at all
in any way you should accept, but I intend to act on them anyway even
if you object and if you don't like it that's tough because I have the
power to make you eat it).
When I speak of "tradition" I mean "tradition that can function
coherently as such", and in 1996 that doesn't include liberalism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Wed May 1 16:19:31 1996
Subject: Universal Reason/ God the Father (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 16:19:31 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> How do you distinguish tradition and reason?
I think of reason as objectively valid performance relating to knowing
and tradition as the process of social evolution that makes that
performance possible. Reason always exists in a matrix of tradition.
I suppose "reason" suggests that what's going on is made explicit,
while "tradition" suggests that much that is most important remains
implicit. That's why authority is necessary for tradition although not
for reason except through the dependence of reason on tradition. I
suppose "reason" also suggests conformity to an objectively valid ideal
-- possibly we never quite achieve reason although tradition enables us
to approximate it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Wed May 1 20:11:31 1996
Subject: Re: unified self (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 20:11:31 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca throws
> open the question: what definition of the self does conservativism
> require (to function as conservativism) and which conception of the
> self do neocons run with?
>
> 1) the individual as moral agent
>
> 2) the universal, absolutely culturally invariant self
>
> 3) the partially culturally conditioned self
>
> 4) the self as possessor of a 'human nature' with a built
> in relation to a Good.
>
> 5) the self as gaining its relation to Good through culture
> [which culture will give it that relation?]
>
> What kind of self does conservativism require, and how
> will it argue for it?
(2) isn't conservatism, although it seems consistent with some forms of
neoconservatism and libertarianism which in America count as
conservatism.
Conservatism, of course, lives in the metaxy. So I'd suggest a mixture
of all the others. There's a human nature oriented toward the good
that discloses itself through moral agency and takes concrete form and
develops itself through culture. You argue for it by leading people to
see how that conception of the self illuninates experience.
As for the neocons, you tell me. It seems to me they're down on
cultural relativism, and not particularly strong on transcendent goods,
so they might tend toward (1) and (2).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu May 2 15:15:53 EDT 1996
Article: 7482 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: the consequences of automation
Date: 2 May 1996 08:46:38 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <877282494wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>Today, however, if there is a skilled job that _cannot_ be automated,
>it is regarded as _ipso facto_ too expensive: businessmen and managers
>_expect_ that productivity should increase in all activities at the same rate
>as in easily mechanized ones. The result is that some tasks are not
>undertaken at all any more, and others are undertaken by staff who are
>grossly overworked, becuase their work is inherently incapable of
>being mechanized.
This is puzzling. Do you have examples?
I would expect automation to result in more people engaged in some
activities that resist automation (that's why service industries are a
larger part of the economy than they were 50 or 100 years ago) and
fewer in others (e.g., I suppose the competition of movies and
electronic entertainment means there are fewer professional musicians
and the like).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Wed May 1 15:54:42 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation XX (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 15:54:42 -0400 (EDT)
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THE HORIZON OF POLITICS
> > > > I would expect the nature of the ultimate horizon sometimes to affect
> > > > practice decisively.
> > > So there is
> > > not a lot one can say in advance about how it will affect
> > > practice;
> > The claim that practical politics depends decisively on revelation,
> > ultimate purposes, the ultimate horizon, or whatever, is not the same
> > as the claim that such things can be made fully explicit and fully
> > realized in practice.
Francesca:
> Then in what way do you want it decisively to affect politics?
> Be explicit, as one theocrat who seems to have ceased to enliven
> the lists used to say.
I would expect the view that God made us and not we ourselves would
make projects that amount to the intentional reconstruction of human
nature through political means far less plausible. I would also expect
that view and the view that life is the theater for the realization of
goods dependent on God rather than values we posit to have an effect on
"life" issues like abortion and euthenasia.
> You will have to admit that theocracy is utopian and neocon
> is not! Neocon looks for steps that can be taken out of
> the current situation. Theocracy does not want to get there
> from here.
Not at all. "Utopian" means based on arbitrary concepts not connected
with reality. "Neocon" as you describe it pretends that political life
can be carried on without reference to what the ultimate horizon is
understood to be. That strikes me as utopian. "Theocon" seems to mean
accepting God as the ultimate horizon in politics as in other affairs.
That strikes me as a conception corresponding to the nature of things.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Thu May 2 06:25:36 1996
Subject: Re: Liberalism & Neoconservativism (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 06:25:36 -0400 (EDT)
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Liz R Robinson writes:
> I think such traditionalists could be identified by the extent to which
> they are unwilling to extend recognition of rights to those outside of
> their particular religion. So, in the case of welfare moms for example,
> private charity ought to fill the bill so long as the mom "belongs" (and
> is chaste but not chased). No qualms are suffered if, in the event she
> does not "belong", she is in danger of starving in the ditch - a tactful
> denial of the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Part of a traditionalist understanding of society is that it's not a
rational overall system run in accordance with uniform explicit
principles that's best understood by viewing it from a central point
and grasping it as a whole. It's made up mostly of particular
relationships rather than universal rights. The latter, after all,
could be established and implemented only by a central bureaucracy
while the former are what make concrete moral life possible.
On to welfare moms -- the basic idea is that people take care of things
they're connected to. Mom ought to line up means of support before she
gets pregnant, and Dad ought to step up and cover the cost if what he
does causes a child to be brought into the world. Also, parents ought
to bring up their children to view doing that as a fundamental
responsibility and the larger society ought to support parents in doing
so.
If Mom hasn't done so and Dad is reluctant, Mom most likely has family
herself who have obligations to look after her, although she'll have
some explaining to do, and who can try to put pressure on Dad to do the
right thing, maybe through his family and other connections. If Mom
doesn't have a family she may have other connections -- more distant
relatives, friends, church, another unwed Mom with whom she could set
up a household, whatever. Or she might be able to place the child for
adoption. If welfare is not understood as an entitlement owed by
government the foregoing systems are a whole lot more likely to work
than if it is.
Now suppose Mom has absolutely none of the foregoing and is unable to
look after herself and can't get anyone to look after her child and
they're both starving in a ditch -- that, as you suggest, is where the
parable of the Good Samaritan comes in. Who are the traditional
religionists who don't care if women and children are starving in a
ditch?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Thu May 2 12:07:24 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation XXI (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 12:07:24 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca to Bill:
> I am doing my best to bring you round to understanding that
> your task is to run American Christendom. This is a neocon,
> not a theocratic conception, because the American Christendom
> takes the form of a disestablished church.
But since WW II "disestablished church" has come to mean "no appeal to
religious conceptions in public life except maybe occasional rhetorical
florishes or observance of established forms." If the horizon is not
allowed to be Christian or if an ostensibly Christian horizon is not
allowed to have any effect I don't see how the society can be
Christendom.
> Its either pacific Confucianism or American Christendom.
More likely the world described in the _Muqaddimah_ of Ibn Khaldun -- a
fragmented populace ruled despotically by a succession of cliques that
can muster enough coherence to seize and hold power.
> Christendom has more to do with an idea of law than
> with creeds.
I never found the derivation of substantive rules from the conception
of law as such all that persuasive.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Thu May 2 12:41:54 1996
Subject: Universal Reason/ God the Father (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 12:41:54 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> > I suppose "reason" suggests that what's going on is made explicit,
> > while "tradition" suggests that much that is most important remains
> > implicit. That's why authority is necessary for tradition although not
> > for reason except through the dependence of reason on tradition. I
> > suppose "reason" also suggests conformity to an objectively valid ideal
> > -- possibly we never quite achieve reason although tradition enables us
> > to approximate it.
> If we put this together with your comments on tradition
> as revelation we have
>
> Reason as a subset of tradition as a subset of revelation.
Don't see that. The quoted language explicitly distinguishes reason
and tradition. There is a difference between saying A is necessary for
us to attain or at least increasingly approximate B and saying B is a
subset of A.
I know what your views are because I get messages by email but that
doesn't mean your views reduce to your email messages. Even if we met
in person I would still rely on my sense perceptions and preconceptions
based on experience etc. for my understanding of your thoughts. That
doesn't mean your thoughts reduce to ("are a subset of") those things.
As to tradition and revelation, I think all I said is that we have to
understand tradition as revelatory. Tradition is necessary for us to
attain understanding of the good, beautiful and true, so to trust it as
we must if knowledge is to be possible is to believe the world is set
up in such a way that we are right to trust it. If you think God made
the world very likely you'll think it was God who set things up that
way and maybe even put you in the tradition in which you find yourself.
Similarly, Descartes trusted sense perception because he proved the
existence of God and thought God wouldn't trick him. That doesn't mean
that Descartes couldn't legitimately distinguish natural science from
what is usually called revelation.
> Which means direct infusion of all knowledge from the
> mind of God into our minds.
No. See above.
> If this is not a utopian
> basis for political action and practice, I don't know
> what is.
This statement seems to depend on misconceptions discussed above. It
seems to me far less utopian to make political action and practice
depend on the approximation of truth through tradition than on
universal reason equally available to everyone. All utopian writers
and politicians I know of have emphasized the latter.
Incidentally, what do you think the relation is between your universal
reason and the mind of God?
> The question remains: which tradition and thus which
> theocracy. Islamic? Jewish? Calvinist? Why?
Ask Pascal. You can't think or act at all without presuppositions, and
no human society can exist at all without already having traditions.
As discussed even liberal society necessarily depends on its own
traditions that imply a particular horizon that could have been
different and some people reject, and that are unfortunately more and
more visibly incoherent. We start where we are and do the best we can,
always trusting in God. Do you have a better suggestion?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Thu May 2 16:05:50 1996
Subject: Universal Reason/ God the Father III (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 16:05:51 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> You want me to ask the Nation of Islam to ask Pascal? What do you do
> when you 'already have' mutually conflicting traditions? You have in
> the United States at least some Islamic theocrats, some Orthodox
> Jewish theocrats maybe (?) and some Calvinist theocrats.
I'm not sure of your point. There are always conflicting traditions.
Contemporary liberalism and contemporary neoconservatism conflict with
each other and also with other major historically rooted traditions in
America, not to mention with oddities like the ones you mention.
You started by saying neocons accept conflict and the need for force
but since then you seem to demand that views other than neoconservatism
be universally accepted before they can be treated as socially
authoritative.
> I don't think an incoherent tradition counts as no tradition.
OK, but at some point in the development of its own incoherence it will
stop being a possible ordering principle in the society it has
characterized.
> Liberal traditions have been embodied in European and American social
> and legislative and political life for two and more centuries.
> Practical conservative political thinking must take account of that.
I wouldn't contest that. It must also take account of among other
things the increasing narrowness and dogmatism of the liberal tradition
and its growing ambition to dominate and reconstruct all aspects of
social life in its own image.
> Political decisions have to take account of more variables,
> such as the existence of many traditions in one nation.
> This is why neocons look for a lower common denominator
> - reason - rather than the more specific, thicker thing,
> tradition.
I'm just not sure what "reason" apart from tradition tells us. It
sounds to me more like ideology -- the facade is universal reason but
the substance is more likely to be arbitrary will-to-power.
I can easily imagine that theoreticians sitting in New York City or
Washington D.C. who think they have a shot at influencing the levers of
power, which is who the neoconservatives tend to be, and who feel
somewhat alienated from ("not at home in") the actual social life of
the United States, might feel that there isn't any tradition any more
so the country has to be ruled by what they call "reason", which they'd
be happy to supply. Many of them very likely would also encourage the
pieties of the people that they reject for themselves so long as the
pieties can be kept denatured.
I just don't think that kind of approach is going to be any more
helpful here than elsewhere. Social order must begin with something
real, which means it must grow from the bottom up. Neoconservatism
like liberalism is a top-down view. The very way it poses the problems
("what does universal reason tell us?" "what do we do about Hindu
theocrats?") shows that it's starting by thinking of a rational uniform
order designed and imposed from above.
> Such 'cross-traditional' rationality does of course
> also exist in theology - as when Aquinasborrowed Maimonides'
> definition of faith, and argued with the Averroists.
It exists, but there's not enough there for either a religious or a
political community.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Fri May 3 06:29:13 1996
Subject: Re: Universal Reason/ God the Father IV
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 06:29:13 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at May 3, 96 09:55:38 am
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Francesca:
> 1) You have been defending the claims of theocracy as against
> those of neoconservativism. It is reasonable to ask which
> theocracy.
As a modern man, I have been using "theocracy" in the modern sense to
refer to public acceptance of an ultimate horizon defined by a
particular religion. To have a religious ultimate horizon doesn't
require theocracy in the old-fashioned sense, a comprehensive direct
administrative implementation of revelation. It does however require
that religious views sometimes matter decisively in public life and
that expression of such views as a reason for doing things be treated
as legitimate, and the denial of such views as such a reason be treated
as illegitimate.
By that definition the United States was a Christian theocracy until
rather recently. Now it claims not to be a theocracy at all, and to
exclude distinctively religious claims from public life. One of my
arguments is that the claim is a false one, since contemporary
liberalism itself is a jealous divinity with its own clear
understanding of ultimate reality and _summum bonum_. Indeed,
contemporary liberalism establishes theocracy in the old-fashioned
sense, since its demand for social justice requires a continuing
thorough transformation of social life through comprehensive direct
administrative implementation of its principles, which are publicly
said to be based on universal reason but to outsiders and even
thoughtful insiders look like matters of ultimate faith.
> 2) I don't think the tradition has to be universally accepted,
> just very widely make sense of a nation's experience. Once
> a nation has drawn on many traditions to make sense of it
> experience, a practical policical plan has to draw on
> conceptions / traditions which more than one group will
> find acceptable.
I think a Christian theocracy makes more sense of the American nation's
experience than a liberal theocracy. In fact, I think a Christian
theocracy would make more sense of the history of China, India or Saudi
Arabia than a liberal theocracy would. The view of man and the world
contemporary liberalism expresses doesn't have much support in anyone's
traditions. To accommodate differing views I suggest a regime of
federalism and local control. To try to keep radical divergence of
views within bounds and allow accommodations among particular views and
ways of life to be worked out I suggest restricting immigration. Both
of the latter two suggestions, by the way, are anathema to the
neoconservatives here.
The same seems to be true of your form of neoconservatism. I still
don't have a good idea what it is, but you seem to associate it with an
imperial Christendom implemented by American power and based on
univeral reason and the concept of law as such. Somehow the
Christendom is independent of public acceptance of anything
distinctively Christian and the universal reason gives rise to
conclusions that you call conservative and you are ready to establish
and defend by force.
For my own part, I'm not sure why a universal imperialism based on
abstractions and force should be called conservative or for that matter
why it would be desirable. I'm also not sure why it should be thought
to draw on more traditions and so be more universally acceptable. By
attempting to rule the world isn't it far more likely to find itself
unacceptable to the traditions of many of those ruled?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Fri May 3 14:27:26 1996
Subject: Re: Universal Reason/ God the Father V (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 14:27:26 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca writes:
> > As a modern man, I have been using "theocracy" in the modern sense to
> > refer to public acceptance of an ultimate horizon defined by a
> > particular religion.
> You have redefined theocracy in a neocon direction, ie, it is
> not based on a specific tradition, just a general ultimate
> horizon. That is fine with me.
How specific does something have to be to be a specific tradition? You
seemed to be worried about getting the religious approval of Muslims,
Orthodox Jews and so on and determined to base government an some form
of reason that all men in fact recognize as such. I was calling
everything to what appeared to be your right "theocracy" on the theory
that it's common in current language to call all attempts to import
specifically religious conceptions into politics by that name.
Remember that there is no general ultimate horizon that fits all
specific religious traditions equally well, and that the particular
ultimate horizon that is recognized has practical effects. That's also
true of course of the current ultimate horizon defined by liberalism,
in which neoconservatism appears willing to acquiesce although no one
seems to want to say exactly.
Basically, I have had the United States in mind, where Protestant
Christianity has traditionally been part of the ultimate horizon
defining public life even though the last of the formal state
establishments of religion died out in the early 19th century. It's
not a neocon thing. Until not so long ago the limited role of
government made it possible for the exercise of public authority to
conform with that specific religious outlook without making life so
difficult for religious minorities. Some might not much have liked the
choice of prayers or Christmas observances in the public schools, but
for most it wasn't intolerable and if it was intolerable they started
their own schools.
> Its idea of law is based on the distinctively Christian conception
> of the ultimate value of the person. [CF Doctrine of the Trinity]
No doubt Kant could only have come out of a Christian background.
Still, his derivation of specific rights and wrongs from the formal
conception of law doesn't seem that persuasive to me. And if law is a
specifically Christian concept I don't see why non-Christians should be
more willing to accept it than more substantive Christian concepts,
which I think Christendom would need anyway to get a body of law that
says anything useable.
You speak of federalism, by the way. I find it hard to imagine the
non-Christian world as part of the federation of greater Christendom.
Federations don't always hang together.
> I don't think the Muslims of Sarajevo care, so long as the
> Serbs stop dropping bombs on them.
When the Serbs stop doing so the gratitude of the Muslims may not be
enough to stabilize the situation.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Fri May 3 14:43:39 1996
Subject: Re: Welfare in the US (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 14:43:39 -0400 (EDT)
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Edward Kent writes:
> Do watch for the details as they really do make a big difference -- I worked
> with kids on welfare as a graduate theological student, so I can't reject
> them as non-persons from my comitments to the (traditional) values of worth
> of persons.
It would certainly be useful for you to point out any occasions on
which the discussions seem based on factual inaccuracies or a view that
those on welfare are not human beings.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Fri May 3 17:20:57 1996
Subject: Re: Universal Reason/ God the Father VI (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 17:20:57 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> They don't have to deduce it from abstract a priori ethical
> schemas. This is what Jim seems to be imagining.
My fantasies were based on your references to universal reason, which
you opposed to particular traditions which it seemed were inadequate
because there are Muslims, Jews and contemporary liberals in America.
And also perhaps on what you seemed to think a need to rule the world,
together with your suggestion that to rule requires something shared,
which in the case of the Bosnian Muslims wouldn't seem to include
anything based on Trinitarian concepts.
> The roots of this idea of law are already given, first in
> Roman Law, and then in the historical developments of this
> law in mediaeval times, down to the present. The neocons
> running American Christendom preside over the development
> of a notion of moral law (with Persons behind it) which
> is already with us. They are not inventing a blue print
> from scratch, but developing the historically and
> consensually given.
>
> How do we know what the Law is? First through dialogue
> with the historical community, and second through the
> direct insight of conscience as formed by knowledge of
> what historically the moral law of Christendom has been.
It all sounds very much like the development and application of a
particular tradition with an essential connection to a particular
religion. Do you think that contemporary liberals, whose importance in
our society you have emphasized, care a great deal about what
historically the moral law of Christendom has been? Would they join in
appeals to it as authority?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Sat May 4 06:28:57 1996
Subject: Re: Universal Reason/God the Father
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 06:28:57 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Rhydon Jackson" at May 3, 96 11:26:53 am
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Rhydon Jackson writes:
> It seems to me that this is the trend traditionalists would have us turn
> away from. Oakeshott might have refered to it as "telocratic rationalism,"
> Voegelin as Gnosticism, others as social engineering. But whatever you call
> it, it is the same thing that Burke identified in France. The same thing
> that Kirk, Bradford, and Nisbet assail. It is the idea that human problems
> are best dealt with by centralizing power in the political sphere and
> usurping the roles of those customary intermmediate associations between
> individuals and the State. It is the habit of responding with a bureaucratic
> administration to every dilemma.
I like the expression "technological rationality". People want a world
the determining features of which they understand and control so they
can bring about whatever they want. They want to be gods.
The world isn't like that, though. The nature and coherence of our
lives and our very thoughts depend on the past and on other men, so we
can't help but trust tradition if we are to be able to view anything we
do or think as justified. Our explanations must come in fact to an
end, and we do not possess explanatory principles sufficient to
generate the world, so we can't get by without revelation -- an
explanation why things are such that we are justified in believing and
staking our lives on things that we understand only very slightly.
> To stretch the ship analogy, Francesca is correct. We should advise the
> captain to adjust course moderately, to maintain an even keel, to refrain
> from violent changes in direction.
A difficulty is that technological rationality is thoroughly
institutionalized in our social and intellectual life. Principles at
variance with it are by definition radical.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Sat May 4 10:54:43 1996
Subject: Re: Universal Reason/God the Father (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 10:54:43 -0400 (EDT)
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Edward Kent writes:
> I am not sure exactly what technological reasoning is, but I think we all
> feel the distancing that our technology imposes on us -- alienation, if you
> will forgive the word, one from another.
I mean by it pure means/ends rationality that accepts the impulses and
preferences we happen to have as the standard for action, beyond which
(that is, apart from consistency, practicality and the like) there is
no transcendent good.
> When we talk of tradition, do we get it right? or have we bought some one's
> spin?
Tradition is mostly implicit and habitual. In a world in which nothing
is taken seriously unless it is clearly and explicitly stated and given
a clear pragmatic meaning it's not likely to be well understood.
> In my view, for instance, American Protestantism from which my
> roots stem -- my grandfather was for his time probably America's leading
> biblical scholar with double doctorates in philosophy of Semitic languages --
> is for all intents dead or dying.
It's in bad shape for sure. That's a problem for America because
Protestant Christianity and its offspring have been so important in our
public life. On the other hand, traditions can be reborn from
experience and the wreckage of the past, so who can tell? My own view
is that catholicism is in a much better position for the future,
though.
> Back to technological reason: it is being used and abused by ideologues of
> all persuasions. Once again I have a child's memories of Hitler's speeches
> which -- even without understanding of the German -- were awesome.
I view Naziism as one obvious direction for technological rationality
to develop. Pure means/ends rationality makes power and success in
realizing *your* preferences -- the Triumph of the Will -- the most
reasonable choice as an ultimate standard. The best way to realize and
make concretely demonstrable the triumph of your will is to have it
triumph over lots of other wills. On that view unlimited aggression,
torture and extermination become fundamentals of the Good Life.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Sat May 4 13:19:35 1996
Subject: Re: Universal Reason/God the Father (fwd
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 13:19:35 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <318B875B@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at May 4, 96 12:35:00 pm
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Edward Kent writes:
> The one caution I would make here is that Kant rejects what he calls
> "heteronomy" (being determined by external authorities) in favor of
> "autonomy" (chosing our rules of moral action ourselves).
Some sort of view that we choose in accordance with our conscience, but
we are obligated properly to inform and educate our conscience seems
necessary here. The obligation to educate and inform our conscience
can, I think, include the obligation to trust and rely on other people
who seem to know more than we do.
Man,after all, is a social animal. So it's necessary I think to
recognize that our understanding of good and bad, right and wrong,
depend essentially although not wholly on the community of which we are
members. The situation is the same for moral knowledge as for other
kinds of knowledge.
> Pope John Paul uses Kant explicitely as the basis of his own moral
> thinking.
As *the* basis? (I don't know much about the Pope's moral philosophy,
but somehow that seems unlikely.)
> My cautions would be several:
>
> l) there are traditions and traditions
Sure, just as there are actors and actors and lines of reasoning and
lines of reasoning. All can go wrong, but we can act only on what we
have and are.
> 2) one still has to interpret/relate tradition to new circumstances
> (e.g. death and dying).
Sure.
> 3) should autonomy be the crux as Kant argues?
I don't think so, the good is primary. For one thing, Kant seems to
believe that morality must be determined wholly by formal features of
autonomy because "substantive goods" are mere subjective inclinations.
I think that view gets leads nowhere as a practical matter.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat May 4 18:19:10 EDT 1996
Article: 7501 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Roger Scruton article
Date: 4 May 1996 18:17:32 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 47
Message-ID: <4mgl1s$jij@panix.com>
References: <4kv08e$b59@panix.com> <4l06np$dqt@infoserv.rug.ac.be> <4l2kdf$hdd@panix.com> <3186151e.78685500@news.crosslink.net> <4m5hbl$4q3@panix.com> <318b9d98.2323162@news.crosslink.net>
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In <318b9d98.2323162@news.crosslink.net> cgrimes@crosslink.net writes:
>Do you believe computer games, or equivalent passifiers, will prevail
>in the competition for our attention? That we will 'amuse ourselves to
>death'?
I dunno. I worry about it though. TV and other forms of electronic
entertainment have already engrossed a lot of attention that people
used to devote to each other and to other real things in their
environment. Add to that enhanced products (virtual reality, etc.) and
instant availability of the one product in the world that suits your
tastes best (with millions and millions available) and will engagement
with the real world increase? Maybe, maybe not.
>Furthermore, I think we were speaking of developing real lives and
>attendant ideologies by interacting with our environment and
>reflecting. My assertion was that this will be easier when our
>broadcast communications media have changed.
Sure it'll be easier, but other things will be easier yet. The real
world isn't designed to be immediately interesting and it resists our
will. No instant gratifaction, and when you get tired of it you can't
just get rid of it. So if everything gets easier to access because of
better communication I'm not sure it's the real world that people will
pay most attention to.
>The major trend in communications will be consumer choice, and
>consumers will choose more meaning than mass market advertisers have
>given them since the 1950s.
Meaning takes time and effort, and sometimes you get stuck with
something troublesome. So it's not a sure thing that more consumer
choice will mean more meaning. People who are heavy into meaning
(monks, for example) sometimes proceed by getting rid of consumer
choices.
>Furthermore, the real way recordings undermine musical culture is that
>the mass marketing of a few artists, however good, limits aggregate
>variety.
>Yet, in music, this situation will pass away soon.
You may be right that more niches for professional musicians will help
the current situation.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun May 5 13:52:10 EDT 1996
Article: 7504 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: the consequences of automation
Date: 4 May 1996 21:23:18 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 61
Message-ID: <4mgvu6$826@panix.com>
References: <31860a73.75954079@news.crosslink.net> <4m5ilo$9jg@panix.com> <318b99ff.1402125@news.crosslink.net>
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In <318b99ff.1402125@news.crosslink.net> cgrimes@crosslink.net writes:
>>I'm not sure that mass unemployment is likely to be the problem.
>>Better information processing has meant more efficient markets, and
>>more efficient markets are better able to take any input whatever and
>>turn it into an economically valuable output.
>I'm not sure I follow. When you say 'any input whatever', are you re-
>ferring to labor?
Yes.
>my point was that when innovation is the only job 'any input whatever'
>cannot be sufficient.
I'm not sure why innovation should be the only job. You seem to be
assuming strong AI that applies to everything except "creativity," so
that eventually most human beings will be in the position of 1984 PCs
in 1996, not worth keeping around. I'm not sure why strong AI should
be assumed. Also, if strong AI is assumed it proves too much. If most
men can be replaced by machines why not all men?
Which gets me to another point. The issue is not whether a reified
"economic system" can get along without men, it's whether men will be
able to use the resources around them to satisfy their needs. I don't
see why dramatic technical advances should make the latter more
difficult. It hasn't so far, despite all predictions. I think the
predictions are conceptually confused.
>For better or ill, the next phase may well be the interest-group
>family.
The interest-group family means no children, and what children there
are will be poorly socialized and so not able to carry forward a
workable way of life. By an easy Darwinian proof Orthodox Jews and
Amish will end up predominating.
>Certainly, it is far from traditional, but the forces at play go
>beyond the preferences of traditionalists. The change is occurring
>regardless.
The strength of traditionalism is not that tradition is nice, it's that
it's necessary for a recognizably human life. So if the changes that
are occuring are adverse in principle to tradition we know in advance
that there are going to be other changes (maybe based on Darwinian
selection of forms of life) that will counter the original changes.
>We began with the question of socialism, and you suggested that the
>popularity of socialism depends on the absence or weakness of bonds
>between people. It seems to me that net relationships may be either
>deep or shallow, but that few would offer the kind of financial
>security that the extended family and close-knit community provided
>their members in the Agricultural Era. Hence, despite all my argu-
>ment against your premise, I have to agree with your conclusion.
The problem with socialism, though, is that it exacerbates the weakness
of bonds that give rise to it. So it doesn't last -- somehow the bonds
get reconstituted because every unstable system somehow stablizes.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun May 5 13:52:11 EDT 1996
Article: 7512 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Roger Scruton article
Date: 5 May 1996 13:50:46 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <4mid8j$1qk@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>: The obvious cement is tradition viewed as a vehicle of revelation. Have
>: there been lasting societies that haven't been held together by that?
>: Examples are Confucianism in its nonatheistic form, catholic
>: Christianity and Americanism, although you don't like the last example.
>The problem is that all of these have been held together essentially
>by force - even the last one as the so-called 'civil' war shows.
What's the problem? Until man is fully rational force will be
necessary as the _ultima ratio_. The spiritual basis of every society
must be backed by force -- that's as true of modern welfare state
liberalism as of other social orders. The political advantage of
tradition viewed as a vehicle of revelation is that on the whole it
needs force less than other principles of social order. As you point
out, that doesn't mean it doesn't need force at all.
>We are now in an era where scepticism is our orthodoxy. Perhaps our
>best hope is to construct an anti-religious but Conservative
>scepticism of the type espoused by David Hume.
I can't imagine such a thing holding men in check. It may have worked
in imperial despotisms like China and Rome as the outlook of a
propertied elite that administered things. Force held the
superstitious masses in check and the elite just needed something that
would make more presentable in their own eyes the privileged position
they already held. So Conservative scepticism wasn't something that
had to do much work.
>I must confess that i find the small community option very defeatist and
>would such communities be tolerated by a triumphalist and universalist
>liberalism?. The incidence of attacks on them in the US would seem to
>suggest not.
It's a fallback rather than the option to lead with, I think.
I don't think liberalism has the inner strength to carry triumphalism
and universalism very far. It will soon be willing to accept aid from
anything that can help maintain social order without directly
challenging it. Liberalism's most pressing problem in Crown Heights is
not the racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic Hasidim who live
there; it's the black people and their way of life. The liberals will
let the Hasidim live as they want because the way they live makes
day-to-day life easier for the government however objectionable it may
be in liberal theory.
>we can hope that if we say the right things in an adequete way they'll
>come right.
Agreed.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 7 13:25:42 EDT 1996
Article: 7521 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: TAZ massacre
Date: 7 May 1996 07:09:55 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <4mn0l2$9mi@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>his victims are just more casualties of states who seemed obsessed
>with allowing people to carry guns around.
Like Scotland.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
From jk Mon May 6 06:03:01 1996
Subject: Imperialists At Work (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 06:03:01 -0400 (EDT)
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BillR54619@aol.com writes:
> I support the intervention, in something of the same spirit that
> motivated the Conquistadores and Cavaliers to impose their rule on
> the New World, or that motivated Woodrow Wilson to invade Latin
> American countries "to teach them to elect good men".
What spirit is that?
> And it may or may not be desirable. Who can know where it will lead ?
> We have no choice but to ante up and place our bets.
One characteristic conservative belief is that there *is* a difference
between acting and not acting, and that acting on a grand scale to
remake the world through force is something to avoid if possible. It's
going to be done ignorantly, and destruction is far more certain than
benefits.
> But imperialism is so corrupting to a people, that the race is now on to
> determine whether we shall overcome the cultures over which we have gained
> dominion, or be overcome by them first. It is therefore no surprise at all
> that some would try to make America into a cultural-religious fortress. But
> it is too late; the horse is out of the barn.
You speak as if imperialistic corruption is a one-time throwing of a
switch, and that once localism and traditionalism have been rejected
there is no choice but to complete the establishment of a universal
bureaucratic empire based on force but with some sort of ideology the
ruling class uses to justify its position to itself. I take it the
specific nature of that ideology is what you have in mind when you
speak of the cultural domination of the world.
The conservative position is that localism and traditionalism are
perpetual tendencies that of themselves order human life unless
something keeps them from doing so. The conservative political problem
is not to pick out this or that proposition, call it "Western
Civilization", "American Values" or whatever, and enforce it through an
apparatus. It's how to create fundamental conditions (e.g., local
control and some stability in the composition of local communities)
that permit the tendencies conservatives favor to develop.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
From jk Tue May 7 16:14:58 1996
Subject: Re: Imperialists At Work (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 16:14:58 -0400 (EDT)
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Bill R. writes:
> After all, if we really do know what is best for Bosnia, why hesitate
> to impose a solution ?
Why think we really do know?
> Every city will end up looking like Wichita, Kansas. Do you believe
> that, Jim ?
>
> My view is that we just as likely to see the Calcuttaization of
> Kansas.
The goal seems to be for every city to look like every other city.
Presumably that would be something like the traditional Middle Eastern
city, a hodgepodge of quarters without much connection with each other
except arm's length dealings in the marketplace and a common obligation
to satisfy the demands of the government.
> Perhaps at this point it might be profitable to discuss Hayek's
> "spontaneous order". Feasible or not feasible. I think the
> neoconservative view is that spontaneous order is not feasible.
That does seem to be the neocon view. The alternative to spontaneous
order, though, is chaos held in check by force commanded by a small
clique. Back to Middle Eastern society again. I'm not sure that the
fact it's neocons in command who choose "Western Culture" as their
slogan would make much difference.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
From jk Tue May 7 16:30:31 1996
Subject: Re: Moral Suasion versus Legal Enforcement? XVIII (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 16:30:31 -0400 (EDT)
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Liz R Robinson writes:
> But I think you glaze over the event which essentially established
> liberal public reason. To do so must mean there is a prior historical
> truth which is preferrable to such things as pluralism and civic tolerance.
> Liberal institutions did not spring up accidently. For those of us who
> still believe, there was a much greater horror to be avoided.
Your argument seems to be "experience has shown liberalism works
better, so let's stick with it". One problem with that argument is
that liberalism is a progressive view that both develops internally and
also transforms the setting in which it acts. As a result, its effects
don't stay the same forever. Also, what is "the event which
essentially established liberal public reason?" You seem to have
something very specific in mind.
> I think what is really going on here is a perhaps _wide_ discrepancy in
> our views of what liberalism means.
By liberalism I mean the tradition that is usually called liberalism,
exemplified for example by Locke, Mill and Rawls, understood as guided
by the principle of egalitarian hedonism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
From jk Wed May 8 06:35:55 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation XXI (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Wed, 8 May 1996 06:35:55 -0400 (EDT)
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Liz R Robinson writes:
> I continue to marvel at your denial of implicit religious
> principles underpinning the liberal democratic state.
Actually, as part of my campaign to put the liberal democratic state on
the same footing as other states I've said that it has implicit
religious principles. I've even suggested a theology, one in which our
individual wills constitute the will of God, and the emergence of God
in history is the process whereby those wills become freer, more
various and more fully realized.
One problem is that liberalism can't recognize its own religious
principles because it bases its claim of superiority on religious
neutrality. Everyone ought to accept liberalism, the claim is, because
it doesn't deny particular religious claims. Another problem is that
treating individual wills as the ultimate standard can't work because
it can't justify sacrifice and no society can last without sacrifice.
> Nothing restricts the horizon from being Christian. Why do you think
> liberalism contradicts Christian principles?
If the horizon of public life is Christian then at some point it will
be legitimate and appropriate to say "well, that's just not Christian"
and for the government to act accordingly. That's not true in liberal
politics.
Liberalism contradicts Christian principles by making man's
intelligence and actual desires the standard.
> What was the lesson of WWII?
You mean that war in which we allied ourself with one horrendously evil
gang of mass murderers against another? I suppose the lesson is that
if you take man as the measure then by definition there are no limits
on what men do. (No matter what he does, everyone will measure up to
the standard of himself.)
> Perhaps I ought to ask, why bother having Remembrance Day anymore??
We don't have it in the United States.
> > I never found the derivation of substantive rules from the
> > conception of law as such all that persuasive.
>
> Surely from Christian principles we have derived substantive rules to
> govern ourselves without resorting to theocracy?
By "theocracy" I have meant deriving substantive rules to govern
ourselves from religious principles. Isn't that what John Lofton wants
to do?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
From jk Wed May 8 07:04:20 1996
Subject: Re: Imperialists At Work (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Wed, 8 May 1996 07:04:20 -0400 (EDT)
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Bill Riggs says:
> 1. We're the democrats, and the future belongs to us
I don't think so. Rule by the people requires that there be a people
that can collectively deliberate and make decisions. Incoherence can't
deliberate or decide. To do so a people needs public spirit. It needs
common history, traditions, presuppositions, and values. How will
those things exist in the universal empire the neocons want?
> 2. Our values are best.
Assuming Wichita is best, can it exist as it would have to exist in
Bosnia, as something administered by foreigners?
> 3. Our system is universally applicable.
Is it even applicable to America? The American system is not the same
as it was 50 years ago, and at the moment what it's become doesn't seem
to be working very well for what we've become. Presumably we'll get
more changes in the future, although whether the result will be either
stable or pleasing is another question.
> My best case take on Hayek is that properly understood, he provides a
> framework for devolution, for "going with the flow", so that the
> empire doesn't have to constantly go against the grain of the
> underlying culture.
Spontaneous order as a tool of administration within a universal
empire? Somehow I'm doubtful. For Hayek, to say the state is subject
to law is to say it is subordinate to spontaneous order. Anyway, what
will the "underlying culture" be? The neocons don't like controls on
immigration, nor do universal empires in general.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
From jk Wed May 8 07:12:48 1996
Subject: Re: Moral Suasion versus Legal Enforceme (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Wed, 8 May 1996 07:12:48 -0400 (EDT)
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Edward Kent writes:
> >By liberalism I mean the tradition that is usually called liberalism,
> >exemplified for example by Locke, Mill and Rawls, understood as guided
> >by the principle of egalitarian hedonism.
> Jim, I think you are lumping together here apples, oranges, and pears
> (or more accurately one of each). These figures successively were
> severe critics of each other.
Traditions develop and they're inconsistent. Those belonging to them
differ from each other. Otherwise, why not just look at one and forget
about the others?
> There's much to be sorted out here before one can generalize and apply a
> label.
We talk about the world, sometimes overall and sometimes in detail.
What sense does it make to suppress overall discussions until detailed
discussions are carried out in full? That will never happen, and
besides it is the place details have in the overall picture that
motivates most of our interest in them.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 8 20:58:11 EDT 1996
Article: 7532 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Roger Scruton article
Date: 8 May 1996 16:39:58 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 18
Message-ID: <4mr0qu$jt1@panix.com>
References: <4kv08e$b59@panix.com> <4l06np$dqt@infoserv.rug.ac.be> <4l2kdf$hdd@panix.com> <3186151e.78685500@news.crosslink.net> <4m5hbl$4q3@panix.com> <318b9d98.2323162@news.crosslink.net> <4mgl1s$jij@panix.com> <31909ee2.689967@news.crosslink.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <31909ee2.689967@news.crosslink.net> cgrimes@crosslink.net writes:
>Which is more meaningful: a video game or a daydream? And which is
>more real?
An interesting question. It seems that a daydream requires more of us
and so is less of an opiate. Unless it's opium-induced, I suppose.
>One of his assertions was that we do not have more meaningful content
>because this does not serve the advertiser's interests, and this part
>of his argument made sense to me.
I dunno. Music, books and movies aren't designed and driven by
advertisers, and the costs of reproduction and distribution have
dropped. Do they have more meaningful content than in the past?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
From jk Thu May 9 16:55:30 1996
Subject: Re: Imperialists At Work II
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 16:55:30 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <960509084315_531487632@emout13.mail.aol.com> from "BillR54619@aol.com" at May 9, 96 08:43:15 am
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BillR54619@aol.com
>In theory, the advance of telecommunications technology will help
>create the "global village", and advance the possibilities for
>democracy.
Democracy is collective self-rule. It's not the instant availability of
information, misinformation, propaganda, fantasy and rumor. What counts
is what people do with those things and expect from themselves and each
other. I don't think telecommunications technology will help on that
score. More likely it will hurt, by reducing local solidarity for
example.
>Fukuyama was quite weak in making this point clear, and his neohegelian
>foundations are biased towards nationalism.
Actually, I'm inclined to agree that history has come to an end,
unfortunately though not in anything that will last. Once again, I
recommend Ibn Khaldun, who describes the state of affairs that succeeds
the end of history.
>Political man requires a polis to be public spirited. In the cosmos,
>the man must identify the polis with the cosmos ecumenically, or turn
>back within himself.
Cosmopolitans are not political. There have been cosmopolitan empires,
but no cosmopolitan democracies or republics.
>When I see the "Rads" wearing schwarz-rot-gold baseball caps, I
>understand how far this process has drenched the Bundesrepublik
>Deutschland. Admittedly, this situation results from 40 years of
>"occupation" by the US Army Europe.. We have only one year to convert
>the cities of Bosnia to Wichita standards.
I have no doubt the Bosnians will be wearing baseball caps and watching
_Dallas_ reruns if they aren't already. Those aren't the things that
made the American MidWest what it once was.
>The operative question is, "What have we become ?"
Yes. The original idea was self-rule. Over the years that's become
indistinguishable from having your own way. After all, the two are the
same unless transcendent standards are recognized.
>> For Hayek, to say the state is subject
>> to law is to say it is subordinate to spontaneous order.
>
>I take this to mean that the state is subject to itself (i.e. to its own
>laws) and not to the "underlying culture".
No, Hayek thought it meant the state could not be the creator of law,
that law had to be a fundamental structure evolving within the
underlying culture.
>Cultures, like empires, rise and fall, but resonate as "survivals of
>the past in men's minds".
That strikes me as an overly individualistic point of view. Man is a
social animal. To have no particular culture is to have no particular
society, and so to be either a beast or a god.
Sorry if I'm being short with you, by the way. I just had a wisdom
tooth yanked and it's bothering me.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
From jk Fri May 10 07:15:53 1996
Subject: The Lessons of WW II (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 07:15:53 -0400 (EDT)
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ksrj@airmail.net (Rhydon Jackson) writes:
> In his writings, a liberal society is one in which "regardless of who
> rules, ... each citizen enjoys the widest personal liberty compatible
> with the common good."
That can mean a lot of different things depending on what the common
good is and what the individual goods are the liberty to attain which
is to be secured. For example, "personal liberty" might mean getting
whatever you individually happen to want the way you want it and "the
common good" might mean a social order that promotes maximum equal
liberty as so defined. I'm not sure those definitions would give rise
to a libertarian society as "libertarian" is usually understood in
America today.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
From jk Sat May 11 11:50:08 1996
Subject: Liberalism, etc.
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 11:50:08 -0400 (EDT)
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Liz R Robinson writes:
>I intended not so much to argue that "liberalism works better, so lets
>stay with it" as to argue that our prior experience was that of eternal
>religious warfare and what liberalism does is provide a provisional
>framework till you invent something better.
>But as I see it, the main difference between Locke and modern
>liberalism, is the difference between formality and substance.
You say it has substantive moral content, and also that it provides a
provisional framework that avoids eternal religious warfare. If
"eternal religious warfare" means disputes over ultimate goods I'm not
sure your two statements can both be right since not everyone accepts
the substantive moral content. It's true of course that if everyone
agrees to accept liberalism until everyone agrees something better has
been invented there won't be any religious warfare. The same can be
said for Calvinism, though.
Incidentally, "eternal religious warfare" strikes me as a false
description of the history of the world.
>There were of course previous holocausts, and will likely be more in
>the future, but for a large mass ofpeople to recognize religious
>warfare ITSELF as immoral, precluded reverting to any prior traditional
>forms of arranging ourselves.
The holocaust wasn't religious warfare; if someone had Jewish ancestry
Hitler didn't care about religious convictions. If you want to see
religious warfare, you should look east, to the territories of our WWII
ally, where during the period before the war very large numbers of
believers and clergy were murdered as part of the government campaign to
extirpate religion.
>So you say, but your characterization of liberalism often seems to omit
>the moral components and focus heavily on some sort of amoral
>libertarianism - (or so it seems to me).
You tell me the key to liberalism is avoidance of eternal religious
warfare -- I assume that includes all disputes over ultimate goods --
through some sort of framework which lets people do as they wish while
avoiding conflict. Hence my characterization. "Good" seems to drop out
of the picture and "let your own will be done" expands to fill the space
left vacant.
>There is no reason to exclude a much more communitarian interpretation.
What I've seen of communitarians in the liberal tradition has struck me
as high-minded wishful thinking. "If only people would act as if they
were part of each other, though of course the government will protect
and facilitate their freedom to go their separate ways when there are
disputes."
>"Allowing religious plurality" has an awfully nasty opposite.
Suppose "the goal of man is the Christian beatific vision" had the same
place in a social order that "man's dignity and worth is his autonomy"
has in the American social order in 1996. You can reject it for
yourself, if you want and if you don't mind being out of the mainstream,
but all public institutions are constitutionally required to defer to
it, and if you attack it too sharply then under certain circumstances
something analogous to hate speech codes can come into play (for old
time's sake we could call them "blasphemy codes".) Would that be
religious plurality?
>Why is sacrifice imperative to every society?
Because no society can be built wholly on self-interest.
>How would you define sacrifice?
Willingly giving up some good of one's own for a greater or collective
good.
>Must sacrifice entail bloodshed?
No society can last without a willingness to engage in bloodshed to
preserve it. No free society can last without a widespread willingness
to accept the shedding of one's own blood in its defense.
>My point is that I can say "Christian" as easily as "Jewish" or
>"Muslim", or indeed, a great many of the other religions. The
>principles of the liberal state are essentially moral for them all. One
>only has to look at the list of signatories at the United Nations to
>understand the wide range of religions represented by liberal moral
>values.
Liberal moral principles seem to have a lot in common with the
principles of international law. My question is whether that kind of
principle is sufficient for an entire social order from top to bottom.
It seems to me just wrong to view them as common ground for all
religions, although as you suggest people from a variety of perspectives
may be willing to accept them as principles of international law.
>> > What was the lesson of WWII?
>>
>> You mean that war in which we allied ourself with one horrendously evil
>> gang of mass murderers against another?
>
>I'm trying hard not to be offended. I think this generalization and
>reduction would entirely serve the purposes of the holocaust deniers
How? The murder of millions of entirely innocent men, women and
children for the sake of some conjectural new society of dubious value
and practicality is a very, very bad thing. Surely the holocaust
deniers have goals other than the application of that principle to
Russia as well as Germany?
>There was only one side intent on exterminating a particular religious
>group.
Which side was that? The Germans wanted to exterminate a particular
ethnic group. The Russians wanted to extirpate all religions (along
with many other social and spiritual formations), and the anti-religious
campaign involved the murder of very large numbers of religious
believers.
>The "religious" principles underpinning the liberal state are perhaps
>pantheistic but definitely of a theological origin. This does not
>entail at the end of the day, a fundamentalist theocracy.
Would a state based on transcendental Christian rather than pantheistic
theological principles entail at the end of the day a fundamentalist
theocracy?
>Dad can't find work. It's two years later. He's overqualified for joe-
>jobs and low on hope. They've sold the house. Burnt through their
>savings. No money to give the kids a college education WHICH THEY HAVE
>TO HAVE NOW.
We can make up stories all day about bad things that might happen in
each other's favorite social order. Mine about yours is that Mom and
Dad get divorced because social morality shifts in the direction of
taking marriage less seriously, and the kids end up on drugs or suicidal
so they don't get anything out of college anyway.
We could also talk about the real issue, what institutions on the whole
make it most likely that people will end up living good lives and be
good people. Many bad things will happen whatever the social
institutions are.
>> Or she might be able to place the child for
>> adoption.
>
>Do you really think this should be an option? What of the concern for
>family? Where did that go?
To be concerned for the family is to believe that life will be better
for people generally if the family does a lot of the work of ordering
and carrying on individual and social life. I don't think such a
situation can coexist with a system determined to keep every particular
family from failing.
>Should government serve business or families? Because, obviously their
>needs conflict.
Don't know what you mean. Should government intervene, whenever a
business is having trouble, with programs designed to turn it around or
at least ensure it doesn't fail? No. Should the laws favor the
successful functioning of businesses and families in general? Yes.
>> Who are the traditional
>> religionists who don't care if women and children are starving in a
>> ditch?
>
>Those who would deny assistance to people in this circumstance because
>they don;t go to the "right" church.
It seems to me right to help first those to whom we have some particular
connection. Maybe an example would help; "don't care if women and
children are starving in a ditch" (I think that was your proposal) is a
high standard.
>Those who would cut back on welfare, regardless of the consequences.
Certainly views on what the welfare system should look like should have
a lot to do with general advantage. Are you saying that many
traditionally religious people say "I don't care if it makes things
better or worse, I just want to cut back on welfare because then I'll
have more money to spend on an RV?"
>My point is that it just seems far too easy to deny recognition that on
>occasion, "central authority" defends and protects tradition.
On occasion anything can happen. It's worth noting that in your example
a local community's customary way of dealing with the order of life its
members are used to and upon which they depend (in this case) for their
health is set aside by central authority in the interests of a couple of
people who showed up and wanted their way of doing things to come first.
So the example is ambiguous.
Francesca writes:
>the 'discovery' of the moral value of pluralism also goes back to the
>Wars of Religion and to the 19th century 'discovery' of the
>significance of individual conscience.
I would be very much interested in hearing your views on the 19th
century discovery of the significance of individual conscience.
>I also agree with Liz that Jim overstresses the amoral, technological
>and libertarian aspects of liberalism. I feel you are arguing from a
>caricature of the position.
Is ours an age in which nuance endures and prevails? Does liberalism
help it do so? "Liberalism" naturally includes a great many things. I
suppose the question I'm most interested in is which of those things are
most important under current circumstances and are most likely to
contribute to further developments in society. When your back is better
maybe you can point out the most important things my caricature ignores.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
From jk Sun May 12 14:49:12 1996
Subject: Re: Defining Terms (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 14:49:12 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca writes:
> there is an underlying essence of interestingness (for example),
> which transcends these minor local variabilities.
That may not be the best example. When I learned Persian I was struck
by the apparent absence of a pair of words that clearly meant
"interesting/boring." On referring to the OED, it appeared that the
words were first used in English in the appropriate senses in the late
eighteenth century, and that the notion of boredom was viewed as an
import from France. My own view, for what it's worth, is that the
discovery of interest and boredom were part of the same spiritual
process that led to Francesca's "19th c. discovery of the importance of
the individual conscience."
> Even Jim has conceded - under heavy pressure :) that theocrat means a
> different thing in American in 1996 than in France in 1789, or even
> in Iran in 1996, apparently. (Robespierre was the first liberal
> theocrat, in Jim's sense). Political ideas cannot be detached from
> what could be proposed with a straight face in a given historical
> situation.
I thought I was using the word theocrat all along in accordance with
current usage, and never suggested that it meant having a god-king.
Political language changes because it has to be used to refer to what
the people using it are concerned with in their particular
circumstances. The fact that usage may change does not suggest
untranslatability, of course.
Nor does it mean that statements like "liberalism has transformed
Western society and is leading us to situation Q" are meaningless -- it
just means one has to be able to explain what the tendencies and
processes are that he is calling "liberalism", and why he thinks that
those are the tendencies and processes that are most important in the
people and things usually referred to as "liberal."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
From jk Sun May 12 15:16:17 1996
Subject: Re: Imperialists At Work II
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 15:16:17 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at May 12, 96 04:23:41 pm
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Francesca
> I came back into work and found ninety messages on my machine, which
> I dealt with by deleting nearly everything. Who is this guy Ibn
> Khaldun? Did he write a good book we should read?
I'm touched and startled you didn't delete all mine. More to the
point, Ibn Khaldun was a 14th century Tunisian who invented value-free
social science. He wrote his best known book, the _Muqaddimah_, as an
introduction to his universal history (really a history of the Muslim
world). It's an analysis of historical process that fits his own
historical setting, a radically incoherent society in which history is
going nowhere and so becomes simply a matter of the rise and fall of
ruling cliques based mostly on their internal cohesion. The one-volume
abridgement, put out by Bollingen, is quite good.
> What is your political plan for getting universal standards to be
> recognized. Be specific!
Only a neocon would consider such a plan desirable or possible.
What's needed is not universal standards but transcendent standards.
What can be done politically is to deny the force of law to prejudices
and presumptions against such standards, and to decentralize, so
recognition of the transcendent can be more of a bottom-up than
top-down thing and so it's not necessary to remake the whole world in
order to make progress anywhere. As to the rest, "you can't hurry
love" as a philosophical member of the Riggs clan once observed.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
From jk Tue May 14 13:57:57 1996
Subject: Francis Fukuyama: 'The sober Compromise' (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 13:57:57 -0400 (EDT)
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According to Immanuel Wallerstein,
>The collapse of existing Communist regimes after 1989 was, in fact, a
>huge defeat for liberalism, because it ended the illusion that it could
>exist in anything but a nakedly exploitative form.
There's something to this. Francesca tells us that liberalism can't
deal with fundamental conflict. It accordingly can't face the
possibility that the image of a free and equal society in which all
divisions have been eliminated is necessarily fictitious. The collapse
of Communism struck a very serious blow to the notion that such an image
corresponds to anything that could be attained or even progressively
approximated in practice.
>Gray's real hostility, however, is reserved for the capitalist economy.
>From being a strong supporter of Thatcherism in the early 1980s, he now
>argues that the free market is the enemy of any form of settled
>community and is responsible for the decline of institutions across the
>board.
The free market can obviously be a problem. One possible way of dealing
with it is the Buchananist approach of limiting movements across
national borders (foreign trade, immigration) and transactions that
violate traditional moral norms (prostitution, sale of narcotics, etc.),
so the market will exist within the setting of a particular national
culture or complex of related cultures and their traditional standards.
A more likely eventual outcome I think is the one that has characterized
the Middle East, in which peoples that don't otherwise have much to do
with each other, and have adopted various practices that have the effect
of maintaining their separation, have settled institutions internally
but deal with each other in a free capitalist market subject to the
occasional intervention of a despotic but generally ineffectual
government.
>Like many contemporary critics of liberalism, Gray takes aim not at the
>actual liberal theory underlying societies, but a caricature [sic] of
>that theory, based in equal parts on John Rawls and modern neoclassical
>economics. By his account, liberal societies are built from isolated,
>atomized individuals who choose to enter civil society out of rational
>calculation, either to obtain justice or to advance their material
>well-being. If Gray had looked beyond Rawls and come to terms with the
>classical liberal philosophical tradition, including Locke, the
>American Founders, Adam Smith and Tocqueville, he would have had to
>acknowledge its awareness of modernity's necessary cultural
>underpinnings.
Gray and Fukuyama no doubt agree that modernity and liberalism won't
work without necessary cultural underpinnings. The issue is whether as
m. and l. develop they destroy those underpinnings, become caricatures
of themselves, and eventually meet some final crisis and so come to an
end. It seems to me that the liberal thought actually affecting society
today (for example that implemented by courts and bureaucracies and
defining the academic mainstream) has a lot more in common with Rawls
and neoclassical economics than with Locke, the Founders, A. Smith and
Tocqueville, and there's no prospect the situation will reverse.
>Liberalism came into being out of a sober recognition that there could
>be no ultimate agreement on human ends, and particularly no agreement
>on the nature of distributive justice.
If that's true, then loyalty to the particular society of which one is a
member is necessary as a first principle of social order. Liberalism
views such loyalty as irrational (see below) because of its conception
of reason, and so necessarily undermines social order and therefore
itself.
>It is a fantasy to think that pre-liberal societies with strong
>cultures were some kind of moral paradise.
A reference to claims by the people Fukuyama is discussing that pre-
liberal societies were some kind of moral paradise would be helpful.
>Liberalism got its start in Wallerstein's 'long sixteenth century';
>after all, because various sects of Protestants and Catholics spent the
>better part of that period slaughtering each other over questions
>related to final ends.
People have been killing each other for a long time for lots of reasons.
Hobbes tells us that when there is no organized society they will kill
each other out of material interest and out of fear. Once society is
organized it will have a final standard, and when necessary it will back
up that final standard by the _ultima ratio_. Francesca tells us that
neoconservatives are different from liberals because neoconservatives
recognize that necessity.
I'm not sure where the history from c. 1520 to 1648 gets us. Why is
the rise of liberalism in an exhausted Europe somehow special or
authoritative for us today? Lots of things have happened for lots of
reasons. Rejecting religious final standards doesn't seem to help; in
the twentieth century vast numbers of innocents have been murdered by
people who rejected transcendent final ends and so ended up deifying
state, party or race. The fact that the Roman Imperial order had been
found preferable to earlier anarchy and bloodshed did not make it
eternal even though people expected it to be so. Christianity no doubt
got its start and eventually prevailed, even in public life, because a
combination of philosophical skepticism, cultural syncretism, mindless
popular superstition and bureaucratic imperial despotism didn't present
people with a life they found tolerable.
>It is true that many of the real-world groups into which societies
>organize themselves are based on ascriptive factors like race,
>ethnicity, religious heritage and the like. This does not mean,
>however, that all forms of group life have to be based on irrational
>loyalties and non-voluntary attachments.
No one says that all forms of group life have to be so based, only that
such forms are absolutely necessary for a society to exist. "Family",
for example, is ascriptive and non-voluntary, entirely so for children,
and in effect so for husband and wife once they've aged a little and
are no longer the same as when they married and have had children and
so find themselves stuck with family members they didn't choose (no-one
chooses the persons he has as children) and to whom they have
obligations that are entirely open-ended.
The word "irrational" is an odd one. It doesn't seem irrational to be
loyal to people and institutions essential to what one is. I wouldn't
be who I am if I were born and raised in a different family in a
different society with different history and traditions, so my loyalty
to that complex of things seems quite natural.
A different matter: "Is God Unconstitutional?", an article by Philip
Johnson that is somewhat relevant to the issue of liberal society as a
theocracy can be found at:
http://www.iclnet.org/clm/real/ri-intro/isgodsum.html.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Wed May 15 21:02:37 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: your mail
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960515210522.0068c76c@swva.net> from "seth williamson"
at May 15, 96 05:05:22 pm
Status: RO
Seth Williamson writes:
>It seems to me that conservatives in general have consistently
>underestimated two things:
>
>a) the size of the job in reclaiming our culture from the current
>liberal hegemony, and
>
>b) the effectiveness of politics as a means of accomplishing that
>renewal.
It's a problem. Conservatism is based mostly on a feeling that one's
society is based on certain political and moral realities that are
settled and could not conceivably be rejected. It's also based on a
willingness to trust established institutions. So when the institutions
themselves reject the realities while retaining the old form and
language it's very difficult for conservatives to respond effectively.
When they become somewhat aware of what's going on their inclination is
to think it can't be real and will go away of itself or to view it as an
aberration that can be removed by straightforward administrative or
political action.
>The so-called "firebrand" Newt Gingrich couldn't even work up the nerve
>to dismantle a massively unpopular aspect of the liberal state like
>race and sex quotas when he had his brief window of opportunity.
"Liberal" has become a term of opprobrium, and people don't trust what
their betters tell them. Nonetheless, liberalism retains the power to
define "extremism" because for the average American no alternative
point of view is available that has nearly the comprehensiveness, self-
assurance and support from established authority. It's impossible
without a lot of work to feel comfortable in a position that's really
at odds with liberalism, and Americans like comfort and don't like
intellectual work.
>Before we can make the streets safe again, we have to instill again in
>Americans a vivid sense that right and wrong proceed from a
>transcendent order and not from their own momentary appetites. And we
>can't do that until we re-evangelize this pagan nation.
> I'm not suggesting that conservatives become quiescent
>politically.
The implication does seem though to be that the political problems
result from other problems that are far more serious. It's as if
someone were having career problems because he was sliding into
insanity. So at present it seems that the best thing we can do
politically is not so much try to win elections as deal with the other
problems and try to make clear to people just what our political
situation is.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Thu May 16 13:41:31 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at
May 16, 96 03:08:52 pm
Status: RO
Seth W:
> > It puts conservatives in the position of being revolutionaries
> > against the established order, doesn't it? Uncomfortable indeed.
> > Nevertheless, it has happened before in this nation, at the very founding.
>
> Francesca
>
> Kolnai says in his Memoir that America can never be conservative,
> because it begins from scratch with a revolution.
It's a puzzling situation. American conservatism has usually viewed
the Founding as a once-for-always event. That's been sufficient as a
basis for opposition to the modern managerial state, and so for most
conservative purposes. In particular it makes it possible to demand
the truly radical changes that would be needed to bring about a society
in which the Left is not institutionalized.
One difficulty is that the principles of the Founding themselves seem
at least somewhat anti-conservative. So another approach that some
intellectuals have promoted has been to play up a conservative
interpretation of those principles, to claim that it was a case of the
Americans holding to older common-law views, not to mention their own
particularisms, and not going along with the revolutionary English
doctrine of imperial parliamentary absolutism.
> 1) I have been told that Rush put Newt Gingrich and his followers
> into office.
It's believable.
> 2) Do you not have any conservative Newspaper proprietors?
There aren't many individual proprietors, they're mostly chains. Also,
the professionalization of journalism has made it hard for a proprietor
to have all that much effect on anything except maybe the lead
editorial on the days that happens to be the thing he's paying
attention to. It's the collective outlook of the class of journalists
that determines coverage and slant, and that outlook is liberal.
Thirty years ago there were still conservative big-city papers (the
Chicago _Tribune_ or Los Angeles _Times_), but no more.
> Getting into politics means usually means playing the liberals' game,
> and doing it less well than they do.
Still, when the government claims the power and obligation to remake
all of social life politics can't be avoided.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at
May 17, 96 10:53:28 am
Status: RO
Kolnai said:
> ...The original sin of American democracy did not lie in Hamilton's
> defeat by Jefferson and the crushing of the Whigs by Jackson but had
> been inherent in the primal gesture of the Rebellion and its 'New
> World' programme and messianic pretension as such. ..No doubt, an
> overseas colony may prefer to achieve her complete independence. But
> is difficult to abuse King George the Third as a 'tyrannt' unless you
> resort to some more ambitious, more subversive and sweeping
> conception of 'liberty', in whose context the appellation may appear
> justified."
It's a problem. I suppose such gestures can be reinterpreted,
relativized to something else, etc. but it's uphill unless a lot of
other things are pointing the same way. Again, the best I've seen is
that the tyranny consisted in the assertion of Parliamentary
omnipotence in contradiction to the older view (Lord Coke's, for
example) that the common law was superior. Tyranny, after all,
consists in arbitrary power. The actual theory of the Declaration
would then have to be treated as rhetorical excess.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at
May 17, 96 04:31:48 pm
Status: RO
Francesca
> But I think it is true there is that ineliminable republican element
> in American conservativism - I know the South did the best job of
> washing it out.
Why is republicanism necessarily revolutionary or antitraditional?
Tradition has no monarch or even strict hierarchy. Chesterton referred
to it I think as the democracy of the dead.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Fri May 17 21:49:42 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960518002211.00697e00@swva.net> from "seth williamson"
at May 17, 96 08:22:11 pm
Status: RO
Seth W:
>>One difficulty is that the principles of the Founding themselves seem
>>at least somewhat anti-conservative.
>
> Which ones?
Direct recurrence to equality, inalienable pre-social rights and the
consent of the people explicitly given as the basis for government, and
protection of rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
as the purpose of government. It seems that political society is
conceived as an instrument contrived by agreement among individuals to
protect them in pursuing whatever goals they happen to have. That's
what I get out of the Declaration anyway. "Prudence, indeed, will
dictate" that you don't recur to first principles often, but doing so
is a judgement call that in principle is not troublesome.
>>So another approach that some intellectuals have promoted has been to
>>play up a conservative interpretation of those principles, to claim
>>that it was a case of the Americans holding to older common-law
>>views, not to mention their own particularisms, and not going along
>>with the revolutionary English doctrine of imperial parliamentary
>>absolutism.
>
> But this is not so very much of a stretch, is it?
My impression is that the colonial position started out that way at
least for many men but then developed and became more radical. The
Declaration for example complains about the King rather than Parliament
and bases itself on universal principles rather than common law.
>If it's true that America is "founded on a proposition," then it's a
>new thing under the sun and to that extent revolutionary.
Novus ordo seclorum, or so they said at the time. Also, it would be
terribly difficult to make an interpretation of America politically
effective that doesn't accept the outcome of the 1861-1865 war and the
victor's interpretation of that war. Anything is possible, I suppose,
and we should do our best even if it's uphill, but uphill it is.
>I would disagree with Jim Kalb on this matter, or refine what he said,
>by noting that it's possible, if tremendously difficult, for ownership
>to force journalists to produce a more balanced product. They've done
>it at the Washington Times. But it's like trying to keep a rubber band
>in an odd shape: it requires continuous force.
True enough. How many owners are sufficiently determined, though? If
someone has a ton of money and owns a newspaper the next thing he's
going to want is the respect and admiration of well-placed people, and
he's not going to get it by putting out a right-wing rag.
>>That is what conservativism is. It has to do with the 'real assents'
>>of daily life and not the fantasy and sound bites of politics.
Therefore it's against nature for conservatives to have much influence
among people whose position depends on the importance of the ability to
stack imagery and information. That's why it seems doubtful to me that
changes in ownership or personnel can do much to reform the media. Seth
mentions the Washington _Times_. How much influence does it have? For
that matter, do Sam Francis' friends think it has succeeded in being all
that conservative?
>"Messianic pretension"? Where do we find this as a prominent strain
>among the Founders? They strike me as being among the most hard-headed
>men you could ever meet.
His point seems to be that it's implicit in what they did, in
establishing what they thought was a novus ordo seclorum. _The
Federalist_ is certainly hard-headed, but it appears they view the
construction of governments as a science they hope to demonstrate to
the world so that others can do the same. Also, messianism keeps
popping up in America which strengthens the feeling that it has some
essential connection to the sort of polity the Founders established.
(Incidentally, if the view is that the War for Independence was
fundamentally conservative shouldn't we come up with some expression
other than "Founders"?)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
From jk Fri May 17 09:25:11 1996
Subject: Re: Ibn Kaldun and Fukuyama: 'The sober Compromise' (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 09:25:11 -0400 (EDT)
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Status: RO
Bill Riggs:
>> A more likely eventual outcome I think is the one that has
>> characterized the Middle East, in which peoples that don't otherwise
>> have much to do with each other, and have adopted various practices
>> that have the effect of maintaining their separation, have settled
>> institutions internally but deal with each other in a free
>> capitalist market subject to the occasional intervention of a
>> despotic but generally ineffectual government.
>
>Where does the "value free social science" of Ibn Kaldun fit into this
>picture ? The implication seems to be that if the neocons have their
>way, and ignore transcendental(ist) aims, that civil society will
>inevitably decompose in the manner described above.
His value free social science enabled him to describe such a form of
society comprehensively and persuasively.
It seems to me that what has enabled us in the West to achieve a form of
society that has been both freer and more unified than that found
elsewhere, with a common civic spirit extending over large territories,
has been comparative religious unity and the absence of serious
invasions at least since the 10th century. I very much doubt that will
last in a multicultural age, and I think neocon imperial universalism
will only make things worse.
>Does this model, indeed, reflect a Byzantine society, as much as it
>reflects the Turkish empire?
Both Byzantine society and the Turkish empire carried forward old Middle
Eastern patterns. My impression is that Byzantine society was
comparatively speaking more unified (it was a long time before a
majority of the inhabitants of the Turkish empire were Muslims, and I
don't believe the Byzantines often ruled through foreign slaves as the
Turks did) but I don't know much about it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Sat May 18 17:27:29 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at
May 18, 96 06:20:57 pm
Status: RO
> > Why is republicanism necessarily revolutionary or antitraditional?
> > Tradition has no monarch or even strict hierarchy. Chesterton referred
> > to it I think as the democracy of the dead.
Francesca:
> By republican, I meant failure to respect the Monarchial and Aristocratic
> principle.
I simply meant constitutional rule without a monarch. That doesn't
mean no social differences.
> In practice, you will have a hard time keeping a tradition going without
> any sort of hierarchy.
Of course. I meant only that the hierarchy didn't have to have a
formal definition or single apex.
> I waiver to few in my admiration for GKC, but his politics were completely
> impractical, and he had very little (conservative) sense of original sin.
I don't think the phrase has to be understood as supporting political
or social egalitarianism. Aphorisms do not state the whole truth. The
way tradition develops means it can draw on the experience,
aspirations, etc. of all sorts and conditions of men far better than a
formal process managed and therefore manipulated from some center. A
paradoxical way of making that point is to say that it is more
democratic than democracy.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Sun May 19 18:35:33 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960519172105.006bbc08@swva.net> from "seth williamson"
at May 19, 96 01:21:05 pm
Status: RO
>>Direct recurrence to equality, inalienable pre-social rights and the
>>consent of the people explicitly given as the basis for government, and
>>protection of rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
>>as the purpose of government. It seems that political society is
>>conceived as an instrument contrived by agreement among individuals to
>>protect them in pursuing whatever goals they happen to have. That's
>>what I get out of the Declaration anyway. "Prudence, indeed, will
>>dictate" that you don't recur to first principles often, but doing so
>>is a judgement call that in principle is not troublesome.
Seth W:
> My quibble would be whether or not these things constitute
>something revolutionary or anti-conservative in our own history. In
>Europe, sure. But we never had a true landed aristocracy or native
>royalty here. It was a country of smallholders and yeoman farmers and
>mechanics from day one. It seems to me that these Lockean and
>Enlightenment notions constitute something like our received political
>culture.
I'm not sure of the distinction between what you say here and what you
said to Russell Kirk, that some sort of liberalism is at the heart of
the American political character.
One can of course speak of a liberal tradition, or the tradition of the
Enlightenment. In fact, neither liberalism nor Enlightenment thought
could exist apart from their specific traditions. That is the
contradiction at their heart, since they deny the authority of tradition
in favor of that of a supposed universal reason accessible to all and
capable of answering the main substantive political and moral questions.
Is there a similar contradiction at the heart of America?
I'm not sure royalty and landed aristocracy are the sole alternative to
Lockean and Enlightenment notions. It seems to me that what's lacking
in L. and E. notions, and in the political outlook I described, is the
notion of a substantive common good that does not reduce to the
arbitrarily chosen goals of particular individuals. I can understand
how the latter notion in effect implies conservatism, since it can be
developed, refined and made concrete only through common traditions that
people feel are more authoritative than private reason because they are
among the things that constitute their own identities. But does it
really imply royalty and aristocracy of the European type?
>If I were a betting man I'd say we are pretty much on course to be
>conquered by another civilization which actually believes in its
>founding principles. And then the whole question will be moot, won't
>it?
What civilization is that? My own bet would be in favor of radical
dissolution of civil society, regrouping on tribal-religious lines, and
despotism as the overall principle of political organization. It'll be
a while before there's a new civilization. (I've been boring people on
the subject for weeks on Francesca's list.)
>to the emphasis on freedom in Centensimus Annus, which, Jim, is
>different from the liberal conception of freedom ;)
I would expect so. One's conception of freedom follows from his
conception of man and the good. +:-)
(The next message will have a new palindrome.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Mon May 20 15:37:41 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at
May 20, 96 04:41:47 pm
Status: RO
Francesca:
> They didn't just despise trade, they despised 'knowledge' and being
> 'competent'.
Confucius: "A gentleman is not an implement."
> I don't know if you can have an idea of the best life, humanly
> speaking, without having a 'heroic class' who sum it up. Eg the
> Benedictines in Mediaeval Europe.
That seems right. I suppose in America we have had Jefferson's yeoman
farmers, and there have been recent attempts to make entrepreneurs the
heroic class of democratic capitalism. Maybe today "celebrities"
constitute an heroic class of sorts.
> I bore people on my list with the principle that the future is
> between American Christendom and Pacific Confucianism.
You'll have to write much, much more to have a shot at boring us.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots!
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Mon May 20 20:40:16 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960520230049.006a9a74@swva.net> from "seth williamson"
at May 20, 96 07:00:49 pm
Status: RO
Seth W:
> It does seem clear to me that the Founders were not, by and large,
> utopians. Indeed, quite the opposite. But there's something in the
> water here that has been hospitable to utopians.
Their practice was better than their theories, but they couldn't have
explained why experience and respect for habit should take precedence
over theory and will rather than the reverse. Or so say I, knowing
much less about their thought than I should.
> It would seem that the great majority of average Americans have
> always believed in God and the objective reality of moral standards,
> virtue and vice, that we are created by God for a purpose, etc.
But I think they've also been strong theoretical individualists, to a
degree that doesn't sit very well with the other beliefs you mention.
As long as government remained small and Protestant Christianity
dominant practical conflict between these two fundamental tendencies of
American thought could usually be averted. Not thinking was a help.
> Maybe not. They just occurred naturally to me as a kind of
> government that, theoretically, at least, refers to a transcendent
> order, aristocratic and royal prerogatives being supposed to come
> from God.
Israel under the Judges and Puritan Massachusetts were republican
social orders that referred to the transcendent. I suppose medieval
Iceland was a pre-modern republic that did not. It's an interesting
subject for historical consideration. Royalty does make earthly
reverence possible, and so makes it possible for a government to
somehow mirror the transcendent order without actually becoming a
theocracy.
> Don't know, but one candidate might be some Islamic state or
> confederation. The Muslims, at least, know what they believe.
They're used to ruling incoherent multicultural societies, like those
of the Middle East, and so do have advantages under current
circumstances. On the other hand, Islam has I think internal
philosophical disadvantages resulting from overemphasis on the absolute
unity, transcendence and arbitrariness of God. I think Christianity
will prevail because it refuses to oversimplify. The Incarnation shows
how a transcendent God can have a genuine relation to a world that is
real and good although finite and fallen. That makes it superior to
Islam as an ordering principle in the long run although not
immediately.
> When do you suppose this dissolution you mention might
> happen? Are you predicting it will be accompanied by bloodshed?
I picture it as a gradual process that people will deny every step of
the way. We already have bloodshed in the form of increased crime,
including the growth of international mafias, and the occasional race
riot. We have increasing dependence on universal formal arrangements
based on some combination of force and money (e.g., international
markets and bureaucracies) and also on radically privatized
arrangements (private police forces, private and home schooling,
housing developments with contractually-based private governments).
The things in the middle that defined civil society seem in steady
decline. It means something for example that the mainline churches
have been declining for decades and that it seems all-but-impossible
today to create public monuments that people generally find acceptable.
I don't see anything that is likely to cause any of these trends to
turn around.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots!
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Tue May 21 15:18:18 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
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In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at
May 21, 96 11:57:44 am
Status: RO
Francesca:
> But it is technologically adaptable cultures of South East Asia which
> can achieve economic predominance.
Japan will I think have trouble because so much of their way of life is
based on self-sacrifice for the sake of the group, with no visible goal
beyond that. Can such a system survive peace and extreme prosperity?
Won't people eventually grow tired of giving up everything for the sake
of meeting sales targets or whatever?
As to China, the Overseas Chinese have shown that Chinese families do
well economically wherever they are and I expect that to continue. I
doubt they'll achieve political dominance, though. Managing a
multi-ethnic empire would not I think be their long suit. (Grandiose
predictions about the future are fun, no?)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots!
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Wed May 22 13:13:55 1996
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In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960521220326.0069430c@swva.net> from "seth williamson"
at May 21, 96 06:03:26 pm
Status: RO
I looked at the opinions (Supreme Court opinions are immediately made
available on-line). As in Roe v. Wade, the majority got its dumbest
member to write the opinion. It was a dirty job, and elite lawyers can
be squeamish about what they'll put their name on, but someone had to
do it, so why not use someone who's too stupid to know the difference?
Also, it was interesting that Justice Scalia picked up on Pat
Buchanan's "peasants storming the castle" rhetoric. He referred to the
cultural wars as a battle between the knights and the villeins, with
the lawyers as Templars.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots!
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Wed May 22 16:08:11 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at
May 22, 96 02:23:39 pm
Status: RO
Francesca:
> > Japan will I think have trouble because so much of their way of
> > life is based on self-sacrifice for the sake of the group, with no
> > visible goal beyond that.
>
> All I can say is that our - very many - Korean PhD students know the
> meaning of self-sacrifice.
Do you have any sense of the ultimate purpose of self-sacrifice for
Koreans? In the case of the Japanese it seems simply for the sake of
the group and its expectations, with no sense that those things are
ordered to anything beyond themselves. I just wonder how durable that
will be after a few decades of cable TV and lots of disposible income.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots!
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Thu May 23 07:45:09 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960523031659.006a8768@swva.net> from "seth williamson"
at May 22, 96 11:16:59 pm
Status: RO
Seth:
> I was talking about the United States per se, this pagan country that
> seems headed for some kind of cultural collapse. I don't really have
> any good reason for picking Islam as our future conquerer. Maybe it
> will be China. It's just that fat, wealthy, corrupt and decadent
> countries don't seem to hang on to their independence for very long
> in the scheme of things.
It's an interesting question. Technology does make a difference, not
only because it gives rich commercial secular countries a military
advantage they never had but also because it reduces the value of
conquest. More of the wealth and power you conquer disappears when you
conquer it because it depends much more on complicated voluntary social
arrangements. Also, the annihilation of space by technology I think
tends to turn the Outer Barbarians into Marginalized Proletarians who
aren't likely to conquer anything.
Perhaps we could have a compromise combined position? What we have
known as the United States will end through immigration by a variety of
groups with some form of small-scale internal organization strong
enough to resist the solvent qualities of American life indefinitely.
Everyone else will die out because of low birthrates, gross failure of
socialization, the end of the social safety net because of increasing
expense and the absense of anything solid enough to tie it to, etc.
Maybe some native groups like the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses will
pull through, but most will not. So we can have both your conquest
from abroad and my dissolution into tribalism.
> Have you read Walker Percy's "Love in the Ruins" and "The Thanatos
> Syndrome"? Both set in a future U.S., and not all that far into the
> future, quite like the one you describe.
For some reason I haven't read much of Percy. I will look at the books
you mention.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots!
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Thu May 23 11:08:44 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at
May 23, 96 01:05:30 pm
Status: RO
> > So we can have both your conquest from abroad and my dissolution
> > into tribalism.
Francesca:
> This discussion is beginning to remind me of Chesterton's The
> Napoleono of Notting Hll Gate. If you recall, that novel begins with
> a discussion of all of the predictions about the coming century, made
> in 1900. What would the world be like in a hundred years time? After
> a couple of paragraphs of this, Chesterton says, 'A hundred years
> later, the world was pretty much the same.'
Could I get you to sign on to my compromise theory by extending it to
include Chinese families and kinship groups among the "tribes"?
I never read the book. What did he mean by saying the world in 2000
was pretty much the same as in 1900? The world in 1996 is very similar
in very important ways to that of 1896 but there also seem to be
material differences. And our bit of it has been very stable, compared
to say Russia or Japan.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots!
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Thu May 23 13:57:56 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The utility of politics
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: <199605231506.LAA18889@panix.com> from "Jim Kalb" at May 23,
96 11:06:17 am
Status: RO
How much of the Chinese way of doing things could effectively be
imitated by other peoples is an interesting question. I suppose a
people's version of universal reason is most easily imitated. Greek
universal reason gave us Hellenistic civilization and philosophy, Roman
universal reason gave us Roman law, an ideal of universal empire and
many aspects of the Roman Church. The universal reason of the West
gave the world modern science, industrialism and liberal democracy.
I'm not sure of what's included in Chinese universal reason. Legalism,
the philosophy of maximizing state power through ruthlessly practical
bureaucratic organization? That's what created Imperial China and
that's what's behind some of the specifics Francesca mentioned, like
centralized disposal of the unfit and unwanted. The other aspects of
Chinese civilization, like the family system, Confucian public spirit,
humility and reverence for tradition, and Taoist abstraction from the
everyday would be harder to transplant.
(Speaking of China: the exhibition of objects from the Imperial
collections that's been on in New York is now going on a tour of
several other American cities. Anyone who can should see it. Go
several times -- you can't see it all at once, and they rotate objects
to limit exposure to light. It wasn't until our final visit, the day
before it was over, that we saw our favorite thing in the show, a
40-foot scroll said to represent the peak of Southern Sung landscape
painting.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots!
From panix!not-for-mail Fri May 24 18:37:49 EDT 1996
Article: 7563 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Monarchism
Date: 24 May 1996 17:17:37 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 11
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References: <319A6E78.36A6@ix.netcom.com> <4o22km$ma8@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <4o22km$ma8@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> danny@athena.mit.edu (Daniel A Lagattuta) writes:
> Does anyone know of any good references on modern day
>monarchism?
There are a few references in the a.r.c. resource lists, available at
http://www.panix.com/~jk/resource.arc. If the monarchists who read
this newsgroup supplied more they could be added.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots!
From daemon@abdn.ac.uk Sun May 26 07:44:17 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199605261140.HAA11175@panix.com>
Subject: Re: Imperialists At Work III (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Sun, 26 May 1996 07:40:53 -0400 (EDT)
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Status: RO
Bill Riggs:
> Taking my favorite historical launching pad, the Hellenistic era, as
> a point of reference, I'll point out that Ibn Kaldun's description,
> could, indeed, have described Alexander's successors. It would
> describe the fate of the Roman empire well enough, had not Roman
> civilization terminated climatically in the triumph of the Christian
> ecumene. It certainly describes the history of the Indian
> subcontinent well enough.
I think it describes any extensive civilized society subject to
repeated invasion by very different peoples, at least if the peoples
are numerous enough not to be altogether absorbed as in China. In
Western Europe there were no such invasions after the 10th century so a
public order could grow up with enough common ethical content to permit
non-despotic rule. I'm not sure how frequent invasions were in India
before the Muslims; I suppose the division into castes had the same
effect as multiculturalism though.
Many neoconservatives seem to believe an ethically substantial public
order can be forced to exist by administrative means. That view
apparently goes with the view that the order that has grown up in the
West has been based on universal reason available to all men. So if
you include the Classics of Western Thought in the reading list
required in all schools all will be well.
> Is this aimless rise and fall of elites in an amorphous chaos an
> alternative, a viable alternative to traditional society?
It's plainly an alternative, because it's happened.
> And, in order to conceive of a civilization's progress, is it not
> necessary to visualize its end state?
One can avoid visualizing the end state while still believing in
progress. Liberals often do that; they view themselves as the party of
piecemeal reform and sneer when people ask where their conception of
"reform" and "progress" will lead us. Since they're on top they can
take the position that the stuff they favor is just common sense and
that arguments based on ultimate tendency are ideological fantasies.
> Does one promote socialism in one country, or opt for a synchronized
> world wide revolution?
One country, I suppose. World public order is both too far away and
too amorphous to be dealt with directly.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 27 13:25:30 EDT 1996
Article: 36358 of alt.postmodern
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Evaluating science (was: Peer Review)
Date: 27 May 1996 04:53:01 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix talk.origins:201598 sci.skeptic:168041 alt.postmodern:36358
In <4ob699$5o8@netnews.upenn.edu> weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>: >I'll try again: the word 'truth' has different meanings in
>: >different ideological/social/historical contexts. You can
>: >approximate these meanings by adding words to it, like
>: >"metaphysical," "scientific," "divine," etc.
>In a catholic context, papal decree is the truth.
It sounds as if you were saying that when a Catholic says "If the Pope
says something under the appropriate objectively determinable
circumstances not determined by reference to the truth of the thing
said then it's true" he is defining the word "true". Is that what *he*
thinks he's doing?
It seems to me people distinguish between truth and method of
ascertaining truth; otherwise the method would lack motivation. They
vary their method in accordance with subject matter and their
understanding of the world, which of course depends on
ideological/social/historical context. That doesn't mean they think
the meaning of "truth" varies accordingly.
I suppose the issue, at least as I understand it, is whether anyone can
avoid committing himself to truths he views as independent of
ideological/social/historical context. If not, then it seems pointless
to claim there are no such truths.
(I've stumbled into the middle of a discussion, and if my comments are
boring or aside the point please ignore them.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 28 11:51:35 EDT 1996
Article: 36451 of alt.postmodern
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Evaluating science (was: Peer Review)
Date: 27 May 1996 14:43:24 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <4o2l9d$us1@netnews.upenn.edu> <4o4pbm$q39@netnews.upenn.edu> <4ob699$5o8@netnews.upenn.edu> <4obqhd$rm9@panix.com> <4oceum$ihc@netnews.upenn.edu>
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Xref: panix talk.origins:201756 sci.skeptic:168170 alt.postmodern:36451
weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>: >: >I'll try again: the word 'truth' has different meanings in
>: >: >different ideological/social/historical contexts. You can
>: >: >approximate these meanings by adding words to it, like
>: >: >"metaphysical," "scientific," "divine," etc.
>
>: >In a catholic context, papal decree is the truth.
>
>I don't think the catholic gets to do the defining.
But if the Catholic doesn't get to define "truth", why do you say the
word has different meanings in different contexts, give the divine
context as an instance, and say "[i]n a catholic context, papal decree
is the truth"? Do you think "truth" has a meaning that transcends the
Catholic use of the word? Is there someone else who gets to do the
defining if the Catholics don't? If not, it seems you should say the
catholic *does* get to do the defining.
>It's like this: if the pope says, abortion is wrong, then it's wrong
>because he says so
I believe their view is not that it's wrong because he says so, but that
we can know without doubt that it is wrong because he says so in some
special way. (As an aside, I think there have in fact been only a
couple of infallible pronouncements, on specialized topics like the
Immaculate Conception.)
>I don't think people, in general, are aware of the historicity of their
>truths -- who wants to live in that drafty abyss all the time -- but
>that doesn't mean that we can't reflect on it, does it?
"Historicity" might mean several things. It might mean recognition that
each of our beliefs might have been different if our circumstances had
been different, or it might mean we can have no good grounds for
thinking that our beliefs as they are are superior to what they might
have been in other circumstances. The latter, I suppose, is your drafty
abyss. To my mind, the question here is whether it's possible
coherently to position ourselves in that abyss at all. If not, then
there's really nothing to reflect on except maybe the significance of
the temptation to believe in drafty abysses.
>: I suppose the issue, at least as I understand it, is whether anyone can
>: avoid committing himself to truths he views as independent of
>: ideological/social/historical context.
>
>I'm not sure I'm claiming that, though I might on further reflection.
>My whole point, which I have tried desperately to explain over and over
>again, is that "truth" means different things in different contexts.
No doubt a word can mean a variety of things. You say everyone
recognizes as much:
>all of you, if pressed, are, of course, quite ready to concede that
>"true" can mean all kinds of things to all kinds of people.
So it seems to me the point is not whether the word "truth" is used in a
variety of ways, but whether in order to think and speak coherently we
need at least implicitly to accept the notion of truth unmodified:
>You always come back with, yeah, but is it _really_ true
For some reason that question has become confused with the different
question whether the methods of modern natural science are the unique or
best road to simple truth in its entirety:
>whereas you should be asking, if at all, yeah, but is it scientifically
>true -- that these two are not the same thing is, I think, at the basis
>of the science wars.
Why shouldn't people ask yeah, but is it _really_ true? It appears
that you want to avoid identifying "scientific truth" with "real
truth", so you say that there's scientific truth, Catholic truth,
historical truth, paleolithic hunter-gatherer truth, Branch Davidian
truth and so on, and no real truth beyond all those particular
contextual truths. That seems an odd response to me. Why wouldn't it
make more sense simply to express doubt that the methods of modern
natural science can tell us all true things and go ahead and look for
other truths elsewhere with a clear conscience?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 28 11:51:37 EDT 1996
Article: 36470 of alt.postmodern
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Evaluating science (was: Peer Review)
Date: 27 May 1996 17:06:00 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 69
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References: <4o2l9d$us1@netnews.upenn.edu> <4o4pbm$q39@netnews.upenn.edu> <4ob699$5o8@netnews.upenn.edu> <4obqhd$rm9@panix.com> <4oceum$ihc@netnews.upenn.edu> <4oct4c$5e3@panix.com> <4od0mm$qmn@netnews.upenn.edu>
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Xref: panix talk.origins:201816 sci.skeptic:168219 alt.postmodern:36470
In <4od0mm$qmn@netnews.upenn.edu> weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>Sigh.
The discussion can always be dropped. It does seem doubtful it will
progress.
>The catholics don't get to define the truth since being a radical
>catholic means that you have delegated that business to the pope.
I thought we were talking about the definition of the word "truth"
rather than about determining what things are true. If Catholics
delegated the meaning of "truth" to the Pope I'm not sure what point it
would have for them to say "what the Pope says is true".
>: To my mind, the question here is whether it's possible coherently to
>: position ourselves in that abyss at all.
>I don't think it's possible all the time on all the issues, no. Too
>much work, intellectually and emotionally.
Nonetheless, you seem to believe that in some sense it's possible in
principle, which is what I have trouble with. It's as if someone said
"now I really know that I can't really know anything".
>: So it seems to me the point is not whether the word "truth" is used in a
>: variety of ways, but whether in order to think and speak coherently we
>: need at least implicitly to accept the notion of truth unmodified
>I don't think we need to, because we say, "yeah, ain't that the truth!"
>or the like all the time without giving much thought to the implications.
Not sure of the relevance. I might say "yabadabadoo" all the time as
an expression of general enthusiasm. The fact I do so would show
nothing about the general implications of the way I use evaluative
language.
>"Truth unmodified" sounds very Platonic, and very much in conflict with
>what most of the scientists have argued here about their understanding of
>sc. truth.
Not sure of the relevance. Does "sounds very Platonic" mean "wrong",
and is "what most of the scientists have argued here" the sole
alternative to your position?
>: For some reason that question has become confused with the different
>: question whether the methods of modern natural science are the unique or
>: best road to simple truth in its entirety:
>"Simple"? "entirety?" You're kidding, right?
I was trying to sketch what some participants seem to think at issue in
the discussion. If you think it an absurd description of any tendency
of thought that's come up, I won't press the matter.
>We're still misunderstanding each other, I think. I'm not arguing so much
>for equivalence of point of view on the same issues; I'm arguing for
>different realms of inquiry; I don't think, for instance, as Dewey seemed
>to think, that ethical problems can be solved scientifically.
Presumably mathematics, physics, history and ethics are all different
fields of inquiry for which different methods and standards of inquiry
are appropriate. I don't see what that has to do with "different
truths" or historicity in any strong sense. What's wrong with
supposing that there is one world that we can come to know better
although we lack a single universally-applicable method for doing so?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 28 11:51:39 EDT 1996
Article: 36503 of alt.postmodern
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Evaluating science (was: Peer Review)
Date: 27 May 1996 21:35:26 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix talk.origins:201876 sci.skeptic:168289 alt.postmodern:36503
In <4od8md$pq9@netnews.upenn.edu> weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>what I meant to say is, "catholics delegate the decision of what is
>true about certain issues to the pope." I'm afraid, however, that one
>of these issues is precisely, "what is truth as it relates to
>[whatever issues it relates to]."
Determining "what is true" or "what is the truth" I understand;
determining "what is truth" I don't. I don't see the point of claiming
infallibility unless it is previously known what it means for a
statement to be true. It would be like claiming "jiddlescreed".
>Possible in principle -- as absolute madness, yes, perhaps -- I'm not
>sure it is. I'm not sure it could be articulated -- as your formulation
>above seems to suggest as well. It would be a silence without spaces of
>articulation to define its limits.
I have trouble thinking of inarticulate lunacy as a possible position.
Mystics can pooh pooh conceptual knowledge because they believe they
have something better, but that move seems impossible here.
>I've been chided terribly a few days ago because I used the word
>"desire" in a way not comfortable to many of the posters here; they
>told me that I should use "desire" as everybody uses it, or say
>otherwise (as I did). Now I'm using "true" in that everyday sense, and
>I get chided for that as well. I don't think there is much of a
>context for "yabadabadoo," at least not in the same way as there is
>ample context for "true, sure, no doubt, yeah," etc.
Why would I chide you for using "true" in an everyday sense, or for
anything else you've said? My point was only that when we use "true"
and related words in their full repertory of everyday senses
implications appear that aren't obvious when we just consider a
particular phrase like "yeah, sure, anything you say".
>I'm no Platonist in the strict sense, but I'd be happy to meet one --
>will you offer yourself in that capacity?
I don't know enough. I try to keep things as simple as I can, but
don't know how to get by without accepting the existence of lots of
things, including universals, non-contextual truths and things in
themselves. If some of those things make me a Platonist then I'm a
Platonist.
>: What's wrong with supposing that there is one world that we can come
>: to know better although we lack a single universally-applicable
>: method for doing so?
>Nothing wrong with it as a religious conviction; what's your argument that
>such a thing is possible? I'm not facetious, but would you mind working
>this out a bit for ethics rather than for physics?
Why is it more likely that we live in multiple worlds that we can't
come to know better? What grounds could there be for asserting that to
be the case? As for ethics, we are all I think convinced that some
things we might do are categorically (that is, not simply
instrumentally) better than others, and that we can understand the
issues better and improve our chances of deciding rightly through
experience, inquiry, thought and discussion. Is there evidence that
should make us reject that conviction? If so, what is the nature of
the "should" in the previous sentence?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 28 11:51:41 EDT 1996
Article: 36554 of alt.postmodern
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Evaluating science (was: Peer Review)
Date: 28 May 1996 06:00:51 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <4odqm1$64b@netnews.upenn.edu> weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>It seems to me that "what is truth" is indeed answered by the doctrine
>of infallibility: truth is what will come out of the mouth of the pope
>if such utterance is framed according to the doctrine of
>infallibility.
Looks like a criterion of truth. If taken as a definition of truth the
doctrine of infallibility is vacuous.
>Or, in a more accepting way, truth is what God knows.
Looks like a statement of God's omniscience rather than a definition of
truth. I'm not sure of the purpose of a definition that assumes "know"
is understood but "truth" is not.
>how do you ground your belief in "things in themselves"?
What's the alternative? That the world reduces without remainder to my
understanding of it? That before I was, it was not?
>: As for ethics, we are all I think convinced that some things we
>: might do are categorically (that is, not simply instrumentally)
>: better than others, and that we can understand the issues better and
>: improve our chances of deciding rightly through experience, inquiry,
>: thought and discussion.
>No, I'm afraid we're not. Had a look at alt.revisionism lately? I dare
>you to come up with a single "thing" about which there is such a
>consensus.
There are people on alt.revisionism who are convinced that nothing
anyone might do is categorically better than anything else? I'm not
claiming no one errs, only that all agree error is possible.
>And I will drag in moggin by his (admittedly rather short) hair to
>convince you that he's out of it, if I must.
If need be I will be rude and say his account of his views fails to
articulate the principles implicit in how he lives and what he says.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From daemon@abdn.ac.uk Wed May 29 13:16:01 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199605291705.NAA24570@panix.com>
Subject: Re: setback for irrationalism (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 13:05:20 -0400 (EDT)
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Also sprach der Bill:
> Education for Ministry. It is an Episcopalian lay study group run by
> the University of the South (Sewanee). In the discussions periods,
> one is discouraged from using "we", since one can't be expected to
> know what "we" think or believe.
Apparently they've never heard of the social construction of reality.
Are they going to put the Nicene Creed in the BCP back in the first
person singular? Is Lew Rockwell a member?
> If you all don't watch it, pretty soon we'll be speaking in tongues
> around here.
That'll be OK as long as the .sigs are in Malayalam.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 29 20:18:02 EDT 1996
Article: 36765 of alt.postmodern
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Evaluating science (was: Peer Review)
Date: 29 May 1996 08:25:23 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <4ofgm1$n4@netnews.upenn.edu> weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>: >truth is what will come out of the mouth of the pope if such
>: >utterance is framed according to the doctrine of infallibility.
>according to the tradition of sacred madness, to which infallibility
>is a distant heir (no, Michael, that's not catholic theology), words
>spoken in a state of inspiration are true precisely because the
>subject has nothing to do with the speaking; in theory, then, it's the
>only transparent language there is since it comes straight from God.
I don't know anything about Catholic theories of language. It looks
like you want them to treat the dogmatic formulation of the doctrine of
the immaculate conception as the Incarnate Word of God. The Muslims do
something like that with the Koran, and maybe some Protestants do it
with the Bible, but I didn't think Catholics treat Papal pronouncements
that way.
>: >Or, in a more accepting way, truth is what God knows.
>Okay, turn it around: whatever God says is the truth. Gods don't lie, as
>Plato asserts
I didn't think Plato defined truth by reference to the gods or God. I
suppose one could do so if he understood God as omnipotent and
absolutely one, so that his knowledge and his word are identical with
the act by which he creates all that is. My impression is that
Catholics tend to understand God that way, but as mentioned they don't
think of Papal pronouncements as the word of God in that sense, but
rather as words of the Pope that God ensures are true. That's why I
say their understanding of what "truth" means comes before their
acceptance of infallibility.
>: >how do you ground your belief in "things in themselves"?
>: What's the alternative? That the world reduces without remainder to my
>: understanding of it? That before I was, it was not?
>What do you mean by "I"?
Something that did not exist in the Triassic, that exists now without
including all things, and that includes a particular connected series
of subjective experiences and intentions and physical events.
>I'm not sure whether the commonly shared belief that there are things
>that are "categorically better" (I guess that means better under all
>possible circumstances always and everywhere?) is much of an argument
>for itself, seeing that it hasn't produced any consensus...
I meant "categorically better" to contrast with "instrumentally better"
rather than "better under particular circumstances". The point is not
that the belief is commonly shared but that it is universal and
unavoidable, and there is no point in treating a universal and
unavoidable belief as anything other than true. How could we improve
on it?
>: If need be I will be rude and say his account of his views fails to
>: articulate the principles implicit in how he lives and what he says.
>I'm sure he'd be interested to hear you expand on this; I know I am. Hey,
>let's get _really_ personal now.
It's a bore that I've been through more than once, even with people
posting in this tangle of threads. What you do is have someone say
something like "the only shoulds I ever use are instrumental or
rhetorical" and then you find fault with his subsequent comments on all
possible subjects on the grounds that he's shoulding categorically.
It's as impersonal an exercise as can be imagined.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 29 20:18:03 EDT 1996
Article: 36875 of alt.postmodern
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Evaluating science (was: Peer Review)
Date: 29 May 1996 17:15:39 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <4oi2v2$65l@netnews.upenn.edu> weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>Yes, I do believe these procedures produce truth as understood by
>those who accept the legitimacy of the procedure ("believers" in this
>context, perhaps). I call them "true" not from my perspective; I call
>them truths of some other people.
You seem to speak of truth from your perspective and truths of some
other people as if you were able to contemplate both from some God-like
perspective from which they had the same status. I find that puzzling.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 29 20:18:04 EDT 1996
Article: 36882 of alt.postmodern
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Evaluating science (was: Peer Review)
Date: 29 May 1996 17:34:43 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix talk.origins:202568 sci.skeptic:168989 alt.postmodern:36882
In <4oi2s1$65l@netnews.upenn.edu> weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
>Catholic truth, whatever the theology, is pretty hard truth.
Do you believe it? If not, your description of it as truth seems to be
meant figuratively.
>: I didn't think Plato defined truth by reference to the gods or God.
>Well, he does, Republic, Book II or III when he attacks the poets -- he
>doesn't define truth, but he does state that Gods don't lie.
As I said, he doesn't define truth by reference to the gods or God.
>: That's why I say their understanding of what "truth" means comes
>: before their acceptance of infallibility.
>They can't really get around the need for interpretation -- recall that
>the catholic tradition doesn't favor catholics reading the Bible by
>themselves.
The Church tells them what is true and what the Bible means. That
isn't the same as defining "truth" and "meaning" for them.
>And how does that "I" you describe produce understanding? By itself?
Not sure what you're getting at. Presumably if I had been raised in a
box with no human contact I wouldn't have developed human abilities to
understand things. A great deal of my specific understanding is due to
books, discussions with other people, and so on. Somehow I feel you
are asking something else, though.
>: >the commonly shared belief that there are things that are
>: >"categorically better"
>I don't see how we could if we had it; which seems to suggest that it
>is indeed avoidable, since it has been avoided quite successfully so
>far.
By whom?
>Are you making a natural rights argument here?
Not that I know of.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Fri May 31 05:38:49 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Tobacco and the law
To: Multiple recipients of list NEWMAN
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960531004349.0069df20@swva.net> from "seth williamson"
at May 30, 96 08:43:49 pm
Status: RO
It's odd in a way. I suppose a lot of visceral anti-smoking feeling
has to do with with the fact that it's an established and traditional
vice. It's part of what has been accepted as normal life in America,
so if that's what you don't like you'll hate smoking and prefer other
vices that have the virtue of outraging conventional morality.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From jk Sun May 26 07:40:52 1996
Subject: Re: Imperialists At Work III (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Sun, 26 May 1996 07:40:52 -0400 (EDT)
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Bill Riggs:
> Taking my favorite historical launching pad, the Hellenistic era, as
> a point of reference, I'll point out that Ibn Kaldun's description,
> could, indeed, have described Alexander's successors. It would
> describe the fate of the Roman empire well enough, had not Roman
> civilization terminated climatically in the triumph of the Christian
> ecumene. It certainly describes the history of the Indian
> subcontinent well enough.
I think it describes any extensive civilized society subject to
repeated invasion by very different peoples, at least if the peoples
are numerous enough not to be altogether absorbed as in China. In
Western Europe there were no such invasions after the 10th century so a
public order could grow up with enough common ethical content to permit
non-despotic rule. I'm not sure how frequent invasions were in India
before the Muslims; I suppose the division into castes had the same
effect as multiculturalism though.
Many neoconservatives seem to believe an ethically substantial public
order can be forced to exist by administrative means. That view
apparently goes with the view that the order that has grown up in the
West has been based on universal reason available to all men. So if
you include the Classics of Western Thought in the reading list
required in all schools all will be well.
> Is this aimless rise and fall of elites in an amorphous chaos an
> alternative, a viable alternative to traditional society?
It's plainly an alternative, because it's happened.
> And, in order to conceive of a civilization's progress, is it not
> necessary to visualize its end state?
One can avoid visualizing the end state while still believing in
progress. Liberals often do that; they view themselves as the party of
piecemeal reform and sneer when people ask where their conception of
"reform" and "progress" will lead us. Since they're on top they can
take the position that the stuff they favor is just common sense and
that arguments based on ultimate tendency are ideological fantasies.
> Does one promote socialism in one country, or opt for a synchronized
> world wide revolution?
One country, I suppose. World public order is both too far away and
too amorphous to be dealt with directly.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From jk Tue May 28 15:32:18 1996
Subject: Re: setback for irrationalism (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 15:32:18 -0400 (EDT)
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Status: RO
Bill R. says:
> It is ironic to see the likes of Rockwell declaiming against
> postmodernism in this manner - a paleocon philosoph once again
> employing a neocon shield to guard the timeless verities of Western
> civilization.
Rockwell isn't a paleoconservative, he's a paleolibertarian. His
background and activities mostly have to do with Austrian economics.
(Historical point: the paleocon/paleolib alliance is only about 10
years old.)
So far as I can tell he didn't use any arguments in his piece that
neocons have a special lock on. Saying that modern natural science,
academic standards, empirical verification and the notion of an
external reality independent of thought (and therefore ideology) are
all good things is not the same as adopting a full neocon position.
I agree that his piece could have been written by a neocon. I don't
see the irony or opportunism, though. Neocons and paleolibs have some
points of agreement, so on some subjects they'll sound alike,
especially when addressing the public at large. One specifically paleo
feature I suppose was that he locates the _fons et origo_ of the
problem in Biblical criticism. Hence (among other things) this week's
palindrome.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From jk Tue May 28 18:40:18 1996
Subject: Re: setback for irrationalism (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 18:40:18 -0400 (EDT)
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Status: RO
div093@abdn.ac.uk writes:
> > One specifically paleo feature I suppose was that he locates the
> > _fons et origo_ of the problem in Biblical criticism.
> when you say paleo in this sentence, do you mean paleolibertarian or
> paleoconservative? Or just paleopal, a Hawaian way of saying
> goodbye.
Generic paleo. That is to say, not neo.
> I thought this was simply an ignorant error on Rockwell's part, and
> not an indication that he belongs to a particular school of
> conservative thought.
You're right, except to the extent a more antitheocratic con would be
less inclined to say the problem all started when people began to mess
with the Bible.
> What would Ibn Khabul say about it all?
In Kabul they would say "Ami dikonstrokshonizm ba Quran-o-Islam chi
rabt daara?" or something of the sort. Ibn Khaldun on the other hand
would probably think it's some bizarre kind of mysticism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
From jk Tue May 28 18:48:17 1996
Subject: Re: setback for irrationalism (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 18:48:17 -0400 (EDT)
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BillR54619@aol.com writes:
> Oh - before I forget; Feyerabend and Hayek do appear to have had some
> affinities. Is Feyerabend, then, to be considered a "neolibertarian"
> ? Just asking, you know.
I dunno. Hayek may in some ways have been a primordopaleolibertarian
but it's getting too complicated to keep up with.
> > Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
>
> Actually, I'd prefer the Protestant form of the palindrome: that is,
> first person singular.
I've changed it for this message.
> (That's also an EFM thing: we try to avoid first person plural at all
> hazards.)
I'll bite -- EFM?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: I panic in a pi.
From jk Thu May 30 19:31:36 1996
Subject: Is this Neoconservativism?
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 19:31:36 -0400 (EDT)
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John Marenbon writes (via Francesca):
>Using this guideline ..it is clear that, under present circumstances,
>if the state attempts to realize any perfectionist view of society, it
>will engage in unjustifiable coercion. A perfectionist state takes
>one comprehensive view and models social arrangements according to it.
>But some citizens will have other reasonable comprehensive views,
>supported by strong arguments, incompatible with the one the state has
>chosen. There will therefore be cases ..where, in putting its view
>into effect, the state directly or indirectly coerces people to do
>other than they would choose on the basis of their comprehensive view.
I've posted a lot of stuff arguing that a comprehensive view and even a
particular religious outlook can be educed from the principles and
institutions of the liberal state. Liz seems to agree with me on that
point, and anything on which the two of us agree must be true. It seems
to follow that by Marenbon's definition the liberal state is
perfectionist like all the others.
Be that as it may, the objectionable circumstances Marenbon mentions in
the final sentence quoted above will occur unless all reasonable
comprehensive views are able to thrive equally in the liberal state,
with none of them directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly, in
theory or fact, favored over others. Otherwise, by obeying the laws
those adhering to other views will support the one officially favored
at their own view's expense, something they would never be willing to
do absent coercion. Does anyone believe the liberal state is neutral
in that sense or even close to it?
We are political animals. The institutions of our society sink into
our souls and form them, and it's silly to pretend things are otherwise
in the liberal state. But if that's so, and the institutions of the
liberal state amount to a system of coercion in favor of some
comprehensive views and against others, what happens to the claim of
impartiality upon which liberalism bases its legitimacy?
>First, there are the areas of activity of the classic liberals' night
>watchman state: enforcing the laws which protect citizens from
>violence, theft and fraud, and which ensure that contracts freely made
>are kept. ..This coercion would not be wrong according to the
>criterion discussed above, because it is hard to see how a
>comprehensive view could be reasonable unless it endorsed these minimum
>requirements for communal life.
Coercion to protect entitlements and enforce obligations regarding
persons and property (I assume that it is violations of such things
that are referred to as "violence, theft and fraud") is indeed a
minimum requirement for communal life. However, that principle is
vacuous until we know what entitlements and obligations people should
have. I'm not sure such things can be defined intelligently without
recourse to a theory of the nature and good of man. If A is about to
commit rape, B to torture a cat, C to slaughter a cow for food, D to
hook a tarpon for sport, E to perform an abortion, F to commit suicide,
G to smoke a cigarette and H to desecrate the Blessed Sacrament, would
it be violence to stop them by force, or would they be violent to
resist the force? And what about the view that taking more than your
fair share of the National Output is a sort of theft? If property
institutions were defined appropriately, it *would* be theft, quite
literally.
>Such areas of overlap include, for instance, the general principles
>that the sick should be tended and, where possible, cured; that the old
>and helpless should be provided for; and that children should be
>educated. These overlaps have important practical consequences, but
>their extent should not be exaggerated.
The consequence is presumably that most people agree that a society in
which the sick, old and helpless are looked after and children educated
would be a good thing. Achieving those ends is certain to affect other
ends, and the overlapping views might not at all overlap with respect
to what other ends should be sacrificed. A, for example, might want to
achieve those things through legal enforcement of family obligations
and state-funded propaganda in their favor, and B might want to achieve
them through taxation and vouchers and citizenship education. C might
favor having the Church take care of it all, so he thinks the key is to
support by law the authority of the Church. Each might be appalled for
moral reasons at the thought of each other's approach. So it seems the
practical consequences of the overlap might not be so very great after
all.
>Finally, there is the question of justice in the distribution of goods.
>If there are criteria for the just distribution of goods beyond
>observing the rules laid down by the night watchman state, then
>government is justified in enforcing them by coercion in so far as they
>are not followed voluntarily.
Again, it depends on what other ends are sacrificed. The Amish for
example wanted (and luckily for them were able) to negotiate a special
deal whereby some aspects of the U.S. welfare system don't apply to
them. They were rightly afraid that the redistributive state would
weaken their own institutions. Not everyone is as conscious of the
practical basis of the way of life he loves, or as habituated to acting
to preserve it, as the Amish. In general, Marenbom seems to think that
the redistributive state does not affect the moral order of society in
any respect that a reasonable person might find troublesome. I find
that odd. Marx may have been wrong to think economic relations are the
whole explanation of moral institutions, but plainly they have an
effect.
>It seeks neither the minimal state of libertarianism, nor the ever
>expanding state of perfectionist theories.
"Ever expanding" is caricature. I'm shocked that a neoconservative
would engage in caricature. Why couldn't a comprehensive view call for
limited government or for that matter no government? For example,
Israel under the Judges was a perfectionist state with next to no
government.
>We usually try to place political views on a continuum, running from
>extreme egalitarianism on the left to outright individualism on the
>right.
When did English political thought give up on the notion of political
society as anything but a rational bureaucratic order imposed to a
greater or lesser extent on disconnected individuals?
>The bare medial state would fail because citizens, richer and poorer,
>could not be trusted to act in the best interests of themselves or
>their children. ..this might seem a strange admission to make in the
>middle of an argument for liberal anti-perfectionism. But my argument
>does not propose an anti-perfectionist state for the sake of it.
>Anti-perfectionism follows from government's moral ignorance. Where,
>because of the overlap between reasonably comprehensive views the moral
>ignorance of government is lessened, perfectionist action becomes
>justified and often requisite.
His principle seems to be that if it's known what should be done the
government should see that it happens. Why presume the wisdom and
virtue of government? If citizens can't be trusted with themselves and
their children, can government functionaries?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: We panic in a pew.
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
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