From panix!not-for-mail Fri Apr 15 06:44:23 EDT 1994 Article: 1635 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: CR FUTILITY: A Musical Perspective Date: 14 Apr 1994 13:52:29 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 28 Message-ID: <2ojvst$buc@panix.com> References: <16F90DDD2.SESSMAN@ibm.mtsac.edu> <2o8q9h$ptq@panix.com> <16F95E178.SESSMAN@ibm.mtsac.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com SESSMAN@ibm.mtsac.edu writes: > "Diversity" is the phenomenon where which groups who come from a >large variety of backgrounds, nations, families, races, orientations, >genders and ages join together to discover that the principles which >envelop behavior & human activity apply to all of them universally and >equally, with the only variations as such occurring due to situational >factors beyond their control. It sounds like "diversity" means the common discovery that there aren't really any material differences among groups of people, although circumstances sometimes lead to the opposite appearance. If so, please explain the connection you see between diversity and the special popularity of black music. If there's nothing special about blacks, how can there be anything special about their music? > Whether this is "good" or not is insignificant; it is real and >inevitable. It's inevitable that groups discover they don't really differ from each other? I get the opposite impression. Blacks and whites, men and women, young and old have been living together for a long time, and many of them have not yet come around to your way of thinking. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun Apr 17 17:09:16 EDT 1994 Article: 1643 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Music and Antimusic Date: 17 Apr 1994 17:09:09 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 34 Message-ID: <2os8hl$c6p@panix.com> References: <125308Z11041994@anon.penet.fi> <2omerr$l9n@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com dbruedig@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Dena L Bruedigam) writes: >Students are not taught to be critical, but that whatever they think is >art, IS art, and it is all of equal value. It's an interesting issue. Some thoughts: 1. People today think of art as expressive rather than imitative. When people thought of art as imitative they could judge works by the nobility of the thing imitated as well as by the skill with which the imitation was carried out. So tragedy, which imitated noble actions of noble men, ranked higher than farce, which imitated the opposite. But if people think art expresses something _sui generis_ within the artist or his experience that can't be judged by any external standard, that kind of ranking can't be carried out, so all that is left as a basis for judgment is technical skill and inventiveness. In any activity, though, skill is subordinate to something else that is the purpose of the activity, so judging art by skillfullness alone isn't possible either. So we are left with no way at all to judge art. 2. Art is connected to particular peoples and their ways of life at particular times. It seems to express something very deep about the people who produce it and their way of life. So if it's possible to say that Shang bronzes are incomparably better than the macrame produced by the ladies of suburban Minneapolis, it seems to follow that there is some serious deficiency in the suburban lifestyle compared with that of Shang aristocrats. That's a notion people don't like to deal with. Why study art if it's not going to make you feel good about yourself? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun Apr 17 17:11:50 EDT 1994 Article: 1644 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Sovereign Citizenship Date: 17 Apr 1994 17:11:40 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 50 Message-ID: <2os8mc$cm9@panix.com> References:NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com priced@apple.com (David Price) writes: >From what I could gather, there is a process that one can go through to >renounce U.S. citizenship and become a citizen of the state in which >one resides. The only problem was the inability to get federally- >secured loans (that probably means loans from virtually all banks), >inability to vote in national elections and some other >"inconveniences". > >This information was received second-hand and I'm not sure how >believable it is. I was told that some people have successfully "un- >citicized" themselves and are living in the mountains of Montana (or >some such state) and avoiding, quite legally, federal income tax >payments. This doesn't work. Even if you could get a state to recognize you as its citizen after you renounced U.S. citizenship, resident aliens pay Federal taxes on the same basis as citizens. Also, I'm not sure it's possible to renounce your citizenship to become the citizen of no independent country at all. >Contributions to Social Security and Medicare constitute a violation of >the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads: > >Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a >crime whereof the party shall be duly convicted, shall exist within the >United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Taxpayers make this kind of argument all the time, and get nowhere. My favorite argument was the Quaker who felt responsible for the whole world, and so reported no tax due because he had 5,000,000,000 dependents. I think a legally stronger argument would be that you don't have to pay SS and Medicare taxes because the Constitution doesn't grant Congress the power to set up a system for paying people retirement income and covering their medical bills. That would be an instant loser too, of course, because the Supreme Court has decided that > To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the > debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of > the United States means to "provide for the general welfare by spending the money any way they choose" rather than to "provide for the general welfare through the exercise of the powers they have been specifically granted by this Constitution". -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun Apr 17 17:12:47 EDT 1994 Article: 1645 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Sovereign Citizenship Date: 17 Apr 1994 17:12:33 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 18 Message-ID: <2os8o1$cuq@panix.com> References: <1994Apr16.172322.1@clstac> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com aelebouthill@csupomona.edu writes: >When you acquired your social security card, you gave jurisdiction to >the Federal courts on all manner of things. As such, you became a ward >of the District of Columbia and forfeiture citizenship in your state. >As such, you are not a citizen of your state but a resident. >From the Constitution: 14th Amendment Sect. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun Apr 17 19:40:42 EDT 1994 Article: 1646 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Jewish Right Manifesto Date: 17 Apr 1994 17:14:46 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 29 Message-ID: <2os8s6$ddr@panix.com> References: <1994Apr16.013203.10772@newstand.syr.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com clstampe@gamera.syr.edu (Chris Stamper) writes: >Spare me any anti-Semitism, please. As in "Buddy, can you spare me a dime?" I'll do my best: "It's nothing personal, because Jewish people are some of my best friends, but you gotta admit a lot of them are real Jews!" (Sorry, but it was the best I could come up with.) >I found this on SCJ. Comments? An interesting post. More than half of American Jews intermarry, but I had thought the Jews in Israel were retaining more of their ethnic consciousness because of their different history and circumstances. It appears that the trend in Israel is in the same direction as elsewhere, toward the universal consumer society without boundaries. That's troubling, in part because the universal consumer society without boundaries isn't going to exist, and if you see a uniform and growing trend with no coherent opposition or alternative headed toward something that's not going to happen, you suspect that what will stop it will be a catastrophe of some sort. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon Apr 18 06:47:12 EDT 1994 Article: 1648 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Nevermind Date: 17 Apr 1994 19:51:55 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 13 Message-ID: <2osi2r$3lv@panix.com> References: <1994Apr17.211444.27229@news.cs.brandeis.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <1994Apr17.211444.27229@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: > (goodbye Kurt Cobain, you ditz) What's your view on Kurt Cobain, and why was he a ditz? I never heard of the guy before his latest (and last) achievement. My son tells me they had a moment of silence in each of his classes for the occasion. What's going on, anyway? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed Apr 20 12:52:04 EDT 1994 Article: 5748 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism Subject: Re: Conservative magazines/journals? Date: 20 Apr 1994 12:50:33 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 23 Message-ID: <2p3mgp$339@panix.com> References: <2p0r05$nrh$1@garnet.msen.com> <2p2e08$6rf@search01.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <2p2e08$6rf@search01.news.aol.com> waterloo@aol.com (Waterloo) writes: >In article <2p0r05$nrh$1@garnet.msen.com>, ewoertz@garnet.msen.com (Erick >Woertz) writes: >"What would you reccomend to someone looking for periodicals which >represent the conservative outlook/philosophy?" >--Policy Review. This is the quarterly publication of Heritage Foundation. >Though it has only around 25,000 subscribers, Policy Review is the most >influential conservative publication around, because they feature mostly >conservative think-tank superstars and their recommendations for policy >initiatives. It can be a bit wonkish or dry, however, for the casual reader. If you want to go a bit farther into small-circulation wonkland and articles by think-tank and academic superstars, take a look at _The Public Interest_, edited by Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer. It has a circulation of less than 5000 and articles dealing with social science and public policy from a neoconservative perspective. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Thu Apr 21 19:51:54 EDT 1994 Article: 1661 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Sovereign Citizenship Date: 20 Apr 1994 13:18:11 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 44 Message-ID: <2p3o4j$d5c@panix.com> References: <1994Apr17.204324.1@clstac> <94110.083007U24C1@wvnvm.wvnet.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Terry Rephann writes: >Incidentally, Raoul Berger gives a good solid, fundamentalist treatment >of the 14th amendment in his book _The 14th Amendment and the Bill of >Rights (University of Oklahoma Press). According to him, the bill of >rights do not apply to the new citizens. All the 14th says about >rights is that "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall >abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the U.S.; nor shall >any State deprive any person of life liberty, or property without due >process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the >equal protection of the laws." > >What are "privileges" and "immunities?" Berger argues pretty >effectively that they aren't rights and they particulary aren't >anything in the bill of rights. What is "due process of law"? Whatever >process the states feel is appropriate. They aren't results as current >constitional practice holds, however. What is equal protection of the >laws? The obvious argument to make in this connection is that the sole function of the Bill of Rights was to limit the powers granted the federal government by the Constitution, and nothing in the 14th Amendment changed that situation. However, in its capacity as constitutional oracle the Supreme Court has decided that any violation by a state of the limitations imposed on the federal government by the first 10 amendments, other than the requirement that jury trials be granted in a civil action for more than $20, is a violation of the "due process" clause of the 14th amendment. (Don't even ask for an explanation. You already understand the reasoning as well as anyone does.) It's also worth noting that on its face the Constitution imposes no "equal protection" requirement on the federal government. However, the Supreme Court has decided that the "due process" clause of the 5th amendment imports all the requirements of the "equal protection" clause of the 14th amendment, as those requirements are determined by the Supreme Court. It must be nice to be a judge whose decisions no one can appeal. Or maybe not. After all, you're responsible to History, as impersonated by respectable political opinion. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Thu Apr 21 19:51:59 EDT 1994 Article: 5760 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism Subject: Re: Conservative magazines/journals? Date: 20 Apr 1994 16:41:23 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 25 Message-ID: <2p441j$ai2@panix.com> References: <2p0r05$nrh$1@garnet.msen.com> <2p2e08$6rf@search01.news.aol.com> <2p3mgp$339@panix.com> <2p3qsd$2ep@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com >Well, I'm probably going to regret getting into this, but I want to >comment, if I may, that neocon mags, by definition, DO NOT "represent >the conservative outlook/philosophy". Although I applaud the "Public >Interest" for running the Jeff Snyder piece last fall, the neocons >are just the same old liberal-statist types cross-dressing as >conservatives. Moreover, Irving Kristol, as the "king" of the >neoconservative philosophy, is the moral equivilant of an ideological >transvestite. If it is your desire to try to put a friendlier face >on the failed socialistic ideas of the past, then the Irving Kristol >philosophy is just fine. But please...., DON'T call it "conservatism"; >another destruction of a great American word. Flame at will........ Why is _The Public Interest_ more objectionable from a paleocon standpoint than _Policy Review_, to which I suggested it as an alternative? The advantage of TPI is that it emphasizes social science more than policy, so that their analyses can be useful even if many of their writers retain an attachment to the welfare state and so on. If investigations tend to show that liberal statism doesn't work on its own terms, I think they become more persuasive if one has a sense that the investigators regret their findings. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Thu Apr 21 20:22:41 EDT 1994 Article: 1664 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Music and Antimusic Date: 21 Apr 1994 20:22:24 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 33 Message-ID: <2p75c0$obq@panix.com> References: <2omerr$l9n@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> <1994Apr17.014826.23216@newstand.syr.edu> <2p6cqr$2p4@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >Until about the 1940s most art was commissioned and bought by private >individuals. This I suspect tended to put a break on the worst aspects >of narcissism as those individuals were not themselves part of what we >could call the 'arts establishment'. Unfortunately since the >nationalisation of arts patronage we have panels of 'experts' who >decide what is to be purchased and since these are drawn from the same >narrow world as the main art schools the result is inevitable - the >purchase of ideological art rather than that which can communicate to >the general public. What we have is academic art, or rather super-academic art, since what we have in effect is an academy that not only sets the standards and awards the honors but also controls the funds. So we get the usual vice of academic art, which is conformity to standards that can be articulated and argued. As you put it we get ideological art, or as Tom Wolfe put it we get the painted word. What we lose is the art, which is the part of a production that is of supreme importance but can't be put into words. Does anyone love any of this stuff? On a totally different subject -- the current issue of the Rothbard- Rockwell Report has a rather good piece by Murray Rothbard on the importance of separation that bears on some of the issues that came up in the recent a.r.c. ethnicity talkathon. Basically, MR thinks America worked because of a unique set of arrangements that no longer exists, so we might as well break the whole thing up. They also have their usual amusing scandalmongering about our American First Couple. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon Apr 25 06:22:18 EDT 1994 Article: 1670 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: History and Counterrevolution Date: 24 Apr 1994 08:50:39 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 48 Message-ID: <2pdpuv$ci2@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com For comment, if anyone wants: "Counterrevolutionary" seems to refer to attempts to reverse fundamental social and political changes that have already taken place. The current style of historical and social thought assumes such attempts will not succeed because the changes express underlying tendencies (e.g., advances in techniques of material production or social organization) that are beyond conscious human control. Accordingly, the discussions of restorations I've read lately tend to emphasize things that have changed behind the facade of tradition, discussions of cyclical events (the rise and fall of dynasties in China) tend to emphasize how different the cycles have been one from the other, and so on. One important point in this connection is that to the extent what happens results from unconscious or uncontrollable forces, all conscious political movements, and not only counterrevolutionary movements, become pointless or have effects quite different from those envisioned by their adherents. Another point is that what look like irresistible waves of the future can turn out to be nothing of the kind. Even a wave of the future that does express underlying tendencies might run into problems, because there can be many underlying tendencies that conflict with each other. A tendency to rational bureaucratic order might lead to socialism, but conflict with technical changes that lead toward more efficient markets and so to capitalism, and then both trends might conflict with basic tendencies of human nature such as needs for meaning and affiliation that lead (for example) to religious fundamentalism. In this connection, it would be interesting to know if anyone has a favorite example of successful counterrevolution. Recent events in the communist countries? Attempts from time to time by various Asian countries up to the 19th century (Japan, China) or today (Burma) to exclude foreign influences? (Some such attempts worked for a very long time.) Resistence against centralization in England in early modern times? Dynastic cycles? Religious reforms or revivals? It seems to me that one could base history on the view that man is particular species of animal with fundamental tendencies that are not historically conditioned, even though the way they develop and express themselves varies from time to time. Can anyone suggest examples of history written from the point of view of continuity and reversion rather than cumulative change and development? To the extent history is a story of continuity and reversion it seems that conservative or counterrevolutionary movements would have no less standing than progressive or revolutionary ones. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon Apr 25 15:00:38 EDT 1994 Article: 1675 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: History and Counterrevolution Date: 25 Apr 1994 15:00:16 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 48 Message-ID: <2ph400$d8m@panix.com> References: <2pdpuv$ci2@panix.com> <2pg9vf$e9t@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >Although it might be unfashionable to say this in American circles it >seems to me that the Islamic revolution in Iran is a prime candidate, >indeed Islamic politics seems to be one of the most potent expressions >of disgust with 'New World Order' arrangements that we have at the >present time. Any comments on how successful the Islamic revolution has been? The coverage here suggests that people are getting tired of it, that more and more they are wishing they could live in what the Eastern Europeans call (used to call?) "a normal country", and so on. >Anacyclosis was a very common form of looking at the world in antiquity >- Polybius in particular springs to mind. Amongst the moderns I suspect >Vico who emphasises that the cycles are similar bit inevitably not >identical in form would be someone to play with. Oddly enough, I just bought a copy of Vico's _New Science_ in a used bookstore, so I will take a look. >More interesting I think is looking for an historian who thinks that >the cycle can be reversed by human action. Polybius accepts the decline >of Rome as inevitable, even Plato by complex maths (the worst passage >in the Republic!) accepts that his perfect state will collapse and >advises a wiseman in a collapsing state to keep his head down. But then >is CR simply about going backwards anyway... Maybe historians have a professional prejudice against the view that historical process can be much changed by conscious human action. If things happen because people happen to choose them when they might have chosen otherwise, then historians' accounts of causation and historical process seem a lot less impressive. Can the mathematics have been meant seriously? I always thought Plato needed a transition between talking about what the ideal state is like and talking about what really happens, and he made the transition with a joke. If CR isn't simply about going backward, but has to do with restoring the substance of something that has been lost, then I would think it happens all the time. I was wondering who the historians are who concentrate on that side of things. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From alt.revolution.counter Tue Apr 26 19:44:35 1994 Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: History and Counterrevolution Date: 26 Apr 1994 07:27:32 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 38 Message-ID: <2pitr4$up@panix.com> References: <2pdpuv$ci2@panix.com>,<2pg9vf$e9t@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <1994Apr26.004515.16350@news.cs.brandeis.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >As for contemporary academic historians, I fear one will look in vain. >"Philosophy of history" is right out. Spengler is a no-no, and even the >liberal Toynbee is viewed with amused contempt. Academic specialization >is the rule, making it that much easier to leave progressivistic >historical assumptions unexamined. I will be happy to be proved wrong >if anyone can cite an example of a _contempory_ historian who views >history in a truly CR fashion - that is, cyclical and not linear. I'm >not aware of any such. I suppose one could stitch together a bunch of stuff on "The Failed Revolution in Tannu Tuva: 1919-1929" (showing how immemorial patterns of Tannu Tuvan culture continued to express themselves in new forms) and "Nordic Sexism: The Monster that would not Die" (on various attempts to eradicate the troubling tendency of Scandinavians to have differing expectations for men and women) and build a case out of the contemporary literature for a CR point of view. Out of all the tens of thousands of historians who know the literature there's no one doing that? It's odd (as you seem so say) that there's not much interest in philosophy of history. Don't historians discuss what it is they are doing, what relevance it might have to other things people do, and what general conclusions their findings suggest? It's hard to deal with things without some sort of at least implicit assumptions as to what those things are and what importance they have. Don't historians on occasion try to explicate their own assumptions as to history? My ideal CR philosophy of history would be neither history as progress nor history as cyclical, but history as deviations from and reversions to norms under varying circumstances. Of course, one would have to come up with an appropriate abstract definition of just what the norms are. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From alt.revolution.counter Tue Apr 26 19:44:35 1994 Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: History and Counterrevolution Date: 26 Apr 1994 15:28:16 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 25 Message-ID: <2pjq0g$lil@panix.com> References: <2pdpuv$ci2@panix.com>,<2pg9vf$e9t@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <1994Apr26.004515.16350@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <2pjmjb$k6i@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >In answer to Mr Kalb's comment I wonder who the people are who talk >about the Iranians 'tiring' of the Islamic state, I fear it might be >its enemies. I was speaking of the people a general reader runs into in the United States, so I did mean enemies of the Islamic state. _New York Times_ reporters and the like. >One interesting thing I think has been the longevity of Iran in its >present form which must drive the Fukayama theorists mad... Fifteen years or so in one country isn't enough to do in a grand theory of history. Remember that the End of History came in 1806 (or so the theory goes) with the Battle of Jena and Hegel's completion of his _Phenomenology of the Spirit_. Of course, it takes a while for things to settle and the smoke to clear, and the process is not without incident. The communist revolutions were an incident and so is Islamic fundamentalism. Or so they say. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Tue Apr 26 20:18:48 EDT 1994 Article: 1150 of panix.policy Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: panix.policy Subject: Re: some of you guys...revised... Date: 26 Apr 1994 20:13:46 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 28 Message-ID: <2pkanr$rqj@panix.com> References: <2pgmfa$6bp@panix2.panix.com> <2pi6ng$7se@panix2.panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com taranto@panix.com (James Taranto) writes: >To determine how principled Kim's action is, we need to consider what >would happen if we adopted her modus operandi as a matter of principle. >Suppose I took it upon myself to cancel every message I didn't like, >mailing a copy to the sender and cc'ing it to staff, urging the sender >(in highly emotional terms) not to repost the message. Clearly this >would be intolerable censorship on such a scale. Why should we view it >as "principled" when applied to a single message? This isn't reasonable, say I (who have no particular ax to grind, because I don't read any of the panix.* groups except panix.announce and panix.policy and so don't know any of the people involved even electronically). I imagine Kim has seen many messages she disliked, but she apparently hasn't cancelled any up to now. The principle doesn't seem to be "cancel every message I dislike, making a scene but preserving for the poster the option to repost", but rather "cancel every message directed at me personally that I find so cruel that I spend most of the morning crying, making a scene but preserving for the poster the option to repost". Would it really be intolerable if everyone adopted the latter principle? Also, it seems unfair not to admit that cc'ing staff was a move intended more to put Kim's own position at risk than that of the sender. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed Apr 27 13:26:28 EDT 1994 Article: 1688 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: History and Counterrevolution Date: 27 Apr 1994 13:26:08 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 23 Message-ID: <2pm77g$j2r@panix.com> References: <2pjmjb$k6i@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <2pjq0g$lil@panix.com> <2pm4h1$d40@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >I suppose that one man's blip is another man's epoch the rhetoric of >this could get terribly slippery. People go for theories that explain things with fewer and smaller blips. I suppose the problem is that in history new theories that radically and unarguably reduce blips are a lot rarer than in physics. Life is tough. >On a totally different point does anyone know of groups who look at >Spengler seriously? I've been rereading him and find it very >interesting indeed. He has lots of unexpected ideas, doesn't he? I remember being very much impressed with his notion that the conception of space is a fundamental distinguishing feature of a civilization. I have no idea if there are any living, breathing Spenglerians, though. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Thu Apr 28 14:05:16 EDT 1994 Article: 1691 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: History and Counterrevolution Date: 28 Apr 1994 07:22:41 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 53 Message-ID: <2po6a1$blm@panix.com> References: <1994Apr26.004515.16350@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <2pitr4$up@panix.com> <1994Apr27.234948.7874@news.cs.brandeis.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >I am not aware of any _academic_ historian who is "CR" in any way. Interesting. The more people there are studying something, the more difficult it becomes to question existing categories of discussion. If you're specialized you produce fragments, and fragments have value only if they are accepted as being part of a structure. No doubt that's part of your point. Are there people you would call nonacademic CR historians? >For the progressivist, history is something that we are escaping from, >and though some sort of mythical "golden age" might be postulated, the >real focus is on the steady defeat of traditional barriers to the >egalitarian/universal/individualistic/formless social Utopia that, >thanks to the left, is progressively being striven for, and which in >theory is just around the corner. I never understood how this viewpoint could be reconciled with perspectivism based on race, gender and class. I take it that's the neocon objective to the latter? Also, is the logical incompatibility of progressivism and perspectivism one of the motives for protests against logocentric thinking? Ever since the 60s, or maybe ever since de Sade, people have been demanding an unimaginable utopia in which there are no restraints on the expression of subjectivity. Lots of luck. >I gather that you see a CR philosophy of history as arguing that there >exists a certain ideal normative state (almost a Platonic ideal type), >which might decay over time, only to be restored at a later date, since >this ideal state is the optimum and deviation from it will have >predictably disasterous results. You could fuzz things up by making the ideal normative state rather abstract -- an equilibrium among universal and particular, authority and freedom, and no doubt yang and yin, that could be approximated through a reasonable variety of institutions. >I agree, but speaking not only as a Counter-Revolutionary, but also as >a Conservative Revolutionary, I would say that the entire system - >that is to say, the entire historical cycle - is itself a normative >state. Thus the historical cycle is the norm, not just the ideal state >or its opposite. But if the cycle is the norm, why be a CR rather than a revolutionary, a pragmatist, a stand-patter, or (best of all) a go-with-the-flow kind of guy? It only makes sense to be a CR is there is a particular state, however abstractly defined, that is the norm, and if it is possible to move toward that norm by human effort. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Fri Apr 29 20:46:54 EDT 1994 Article: 26037 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 28 Apr 1994 19:39:48 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 50 Message-ID: <2pphg4$kei@panix.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com A few questions on the FAQ: >Libertarians ask: is anyone violating another's rights? Is someone >committing murder, rape, robbery, theft, fraud, embezzlement, arson, >trespass, etc.? If so, then it's proper to call on government to help >the victim against the wrongdoer. The government can't do this unless it knows who has what rights. So the FAQ should include an explanation of why people have the particular rights libertarians think they have rather than the rights Jesse Jackson thinks they have. >Nothing is more personal than the way people chose to shape their >sexual relationships. Government has no business intruding into >people's bedrooms. Financial matters are private too, but laws against theft, fraud, and embezzlement are OK. So why not laws against fornication and adultery? Theft, fraud and embezzlement cause problems for society at large, but so do fornication and adultery -- if there were no fornication or adultery there would be no illegitimacy and less marital instability, both of which cause lots of problems for us all. So what's the objection in principle? >Respect for human rights and compassion for the world's poor require >that we relax immigration restrictions. Do the immigrants vote? If so, suppose they decide they like the welfare state or the Islamic republic more than Libertopia, because that's what they were used to where they came from? Why shouldn't the wretched of the earth make a habit of moving to wealthy libertopias, forming alliances with the local deadbeats and bleeding hearts, and voting themselves generous welfare benefits? >Libertarians want to see people of all types working in the most >harmonious relationships. "Affirmative action" refers to laws which >force people into relationships whether they want them or not. Not too >many years ago, there were laws in many states which prevented people >of different races from doing a variety of things together, working, >eating, marriage, etc. Libertarians oppose all such laws because the >people involved have the right to decide for themselves whether or not >to enter a relationship or association. Doesn't all this apply equally to any sort of antidiscrimination law? If so, why not say so? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Fri Apr 29 20:46:55 EDT 1994 Article: 26073 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 29 Apr 1994 06:28:22 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 15 Message-ID: <2pqng6$1co@panix.com> References: <2pphg4$kei@panix.com> <2ppq0v$sr4@gap.cco.caltech.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <2ppq0v$sr4@gap.cco.caltech.edu> phoenix@pride.ugcs.caltech.edu (Nerado) writes: >The initiation of force and fraud are unlibertarian; thus theft is out. >Fornication and adultery (and prostitution) consist of voluntary actions >between people. How about bribery? That's normally a nonviolent act among consenting adults in private. Ditto for conspiracy to evade taxes. (I take it that the illegitimacy of all taxes is not a required libertarian belief.) -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sat Apr 30 20:49:22 EDT 1994 Article: 26154 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 30 Apr 1994 06:39:45 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 25 Message-ID: <2ptchh$eek@panix.com> References: <2pphg4$kei@panix.com> <2ppq0v$sr4@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <2pqng6$1co@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald) writes: >> > Fornication and adultery (and prostitution) consist of voluntary actions >> > between people. >Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) wrote: >> How about bribery? That's normally a nonviolent act among consenting >> adults in private. Ditto for conspiracy to evade taxes. >Libertarians are of course all in favor of conspiracy to avoid taxes. Is the illegitmacy of all taxes a LP position? I understand how it follows from the "no force" rule and libertarian views on property. >Bribery is a breach of trust. For example if a banker takes a bribe >to loan money to someone not creditworthy, for example the dummy >companies of the whitewater landflip, he is of course acting >dishonorably. But adultery is normally a breach of trust as well. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sat Apr 30 20:49:24 EDT 1994 Article: 26170 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 30 Apr 1994 11:43:37 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 30 Message-ID: <2ptub9$dhg@panix.com> References: <2pphg4$kei@panix.com> <2ppq0v$sr4@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <2pqng6$1co@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In bagley@hc.ti.com (Ross Bagley) writes: >Bribery would only be illegal if you were bribing someone to commit a crime >(the crime being something that had a victim, etc) and in that case the bribery >would mean that you are an accomplice to the crime. The bribery itself is >not illegal, but the fact that it links you to a crime would be where you >were prosecuted. Suppose I bribed the personnel officer of a company to hire me, or a government prosecutor to exercise his prosecutorial discretion not to prosecute me for a crime I had committed. Assume that in each case the act I am procuring through bribery would not in itself be a criminal abuse of the discretion of the official receiving the bribe. Is the bribe OK? >As for tax evasion, you are right, some taxes may not be illegitimate. Hm. >Which tax wouldn't be illegitimite... perhaps a land tax that would fund >the military (which is defending that land, so this acts as a user fee). >This has a victim, namely the contractor (or bureaucracy, whatever) providing >the defense of the country. How did the contractor or bureaucracy get the right to be paid for the defense of the land. Did I as the owner of the land personally decide to hire them? Did I buy the land subject to a previous contract that a previous owner had chosen to subject it to? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sat Apr 30 20:49:26 EDT 1994 Article: 26196 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 30 Apr 1994 20:39:45 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 18 Message-ID: <2putoh$o99@panix.com> References: <2pphg4$kei@panix.com> <2ppq0v$sr4@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <2pqng6$1co@panix.com> <2ptchh$eek@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald) writes: >> But adultery is normally a breach of trust as well. >Strictly speaking it is an indication that someone is likely >to breach trust - an indication that a women is likely to >produce a little cuckoo for her husband to support, an >indication that a husband is likely to abandon his wife. People who discover that their spouses have committed adultery usuually consider the adultery itself a breach of trust. Do you think such people are simply wrong? If so, how do you account for such a common mistake? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sat Apr 30 20:49:27 EDT 1994 Article: 26197 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 30 Apr 1994 20:42:34 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 20 Message-ID: <2puttq$oo8@panix.com> References: <2pphg4$kei@panix.com> <2ppq0v$sr4@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <2pqng6$1co@panix.com> <2ptub9$dhg@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald) writes: >> Suppose I bribed the personnel officer of a company to hire me, or a >> government prosecutor to exercise his prosecutorial discretion not to >> prosecute me for a crime I had committed. Assume that in each case the >> act I am procuring through bribery would not in itself be a criminal >> abuse of the discretion of the official receiving the bribe. Is the >> bribe OK? >Whoever appointed the personnel officer would certainly consider >it fraud and a breach of trust, and rightly so, even if it were >nominally within the powers delegated to the the personnel officer. Why? There need be no damage to the employer. No crime without a victim, I thought. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sat Apr 30 20:49:32 EDT 1994 Article: 1698 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Militant Kookburgers Stalk Washington! (Is this a hoax?) Date: 29 Apr 1994 21:16:26 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 16 Message-ID: <2psbha$8n4@panix.com> References: <1994Apr27.161013.438@news.cs.brandeis.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com monaghan@zanskar.avc.ucl.ac.uk (N.O. Monaghan) writes: >I find the contrast between America and the "European Union" very >interesting - there are many controls being backed in Europe at a >'federal' level which are allowed in America to remain at the state >level. It seems rather bizzare since 'subsidiarity' is one of the proud >claims of the "European Economic Community". Presumably "subsidiarity" means "these are historically independent states and we're just getting started, so it'll be a while before we manage to centralize everything." -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun May 1 09:47:01 EDT 1994 Article: 26233 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 1 May 1994 06:31:54 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 51 Message-ID: <2q00eq$jvs@panix.com> References: <2pphg4$kei@panix.com> <940430.103520.5G1.rusnews.w165w@wvolusia.oau.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <940430.103520.5G1.rusnews.w165w@wvolusia.oau.org> drdave@wvolusia.oau.org (David Vessell) writes: >an individual has the right to be secure in >his person and property against force and fraud. All other arguments about >"rights" is based on this from a libertarian perspective. But someone might claim that all goods and services produced in the United States, since they are produced with the aid of an extensive system of social cooperation that involves all Americans, should be viewed as the common property of all the participants in that system of cooperation and divided up in accordance with democratic procedures. Or that land and natural resources are God's creations and they and everything made from them are accordingly the common property of all God's children (that is, the entire human race). Or that need confers a property right in things that satisfy that need, so that that a hungry man who steals food is only enforcing his property rights. So how do libertarians know that the property rights they think people have are really the ones they have? >The difference is that theft, fraud, and embezzlement are coercive activities. >The other person almost certainly does not consent to those acts. On the >other hand, fornication and adultery are consentual acts between two people >(except in the case of rape, of course). Society need not be considered at >all. Embezzlement can be a consensual act between two people, as in the case of conspiracy to embezzle. If perfectly successful, there will never be anyone who objects to the act (because it will not be discovered by anyone who would object). So I take it your objection to embezzlement is not that it is coercive in any ordinary sense but that it wrongfully injures the interests of some third party. In that regard, it is not obviously different from adultery, since in adultery there is a wronged spouse. In addition, given the quite serious social problems resulting from illegitimacy, it's not clear to me why fornication should not be viewed as damaging the interests of each member of society. Your response might be "while adultery and fornication may injure people's interests in some respect, they don't injure property interests, and property interests are the only interests that government may justly defend". Assuming that limitation on proper government action is accepted (I don't see why it should be), marriage is at least a contract and adultery is a violation of that contract unless the marriage is a rather unusual one. As to fornication, it causes illegitimacy which leads to a whole complex of bad things, including increased property crime, so effectual opposition to fornication might well turn out to be a good way to defend property. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun May 1 09:47:03 EDT 1994 Article: 26234 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 1 May 1994 06:37:53 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 13 Message-ID: <2q00q1$kb5@panix.com> References: <2pphg4$kei@panix.com> <2pv06r$1d9c@inca.gate.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <2pv06r$1d9c@inca.gate.net> caliban@inca.gate.net (Caliban) writes: >As far as I'm concerned, all that really >matters is that whatever rights people have >should be equal -- the same -- for everyone, so >that Neutrality isn't violated. How about a right to equality of condition? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun May 1 09:47:04 EDT 1994 Article: 26246 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 1 May 1994 09:44:31 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 23 Message-ID: <2q0bnv$89@panix.com> References: <2pphg4$kei@panix.com> <2ppq0v$sr4@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <2pqng6$1co@panix.com> <2ptub9$dhg@panix.com> <2q06bi$mjq@inca.gate.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <2q06bi$mjq@inca.gate.net> caliban@inca.gate.net (Caliban) writes: >Seriously, though, the personnel officer or >prosecutor have a specific, contractual >obligation, as part of their jobs, to follow >certain rules (e.g., pick the most qualified >applicant, execute the laws as written, etc). >If they violate these rules they are at fault -- >whether they do for money, or for friendship >or family ties, or racial prejudice, or simply >out of laziness, it doesn't really matter. The point of the bribery example was to explore why adultery would be legally permissible in a libertarian society, as the FAQ and some posters seem to assume. If I recall your earlier postings correctly, your view is that it would not or at least need not be so. If that's right, does libertarianism impose any restraints on the permissible sanctions against adultery? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun May 1 16:37:15 EDT 1994 Article: 26266 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 1 May 1994 16:37:08 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 25 Message-ID: <2q13tk$ko2@panix.com> References: <940430.103520.5G1.rusnews.w165w@wvolusia.oau.org> <2q00eq$jvs@panix.com> <2q0761$mi6@inca.gate.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com caliban@inca.gate.net (Caliban) writes: >I personally support libertarianism myself because I believe it is the >only social system which does not violate the principle of Neutrality. In what sense is it neutral? If A is an ineffectual kind of guy with no obvious talents and a lot of weird quirks who wants to live in ease and comfort without any feeling of inferiority to other people, he won't find libertarianism at all neutral as to what he wants out of life. >As for fornication, if the parties involved practice contraception, or >of there is simply no child conceived from the union, I assume that you >would not have an objection to the act, since no illegitimacy results. I would have no objection if it looked as if a stable constellation of social customs and personal habits could be achieved that included general acceptance of fornication (and presumably all other consensual sexual activity not contractually forbidden) but did not lead to high levels of illegitimacy, family breakup, paternal nonsupport of children, and the rest of it. I see no reason to think such a thing is possible. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun May 1 19:11:35 EDT 1994 Article: 26268 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 1 May 1994 16:41:51 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 44 Message-ID: <2q146f$ldu@panix.com> References: <2pv06r$1d9c@inca.gate.net> <2q00q1$kb5@panix.com> <2q0793$1ij8@inca.gate.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com caliban@inca.gate.net (Caliban) writes: >: >As far as I'm concerned, all that really >: >matters is that whatever rights people have >: >should be equal -- the same -- for everyone, so >: >that Neutrality isn't violated. > >: How about a right to equality of condition? > >Yes, how about it? :-) >Seriously, though, I'm not sure exactly what you >mean by this. Could you please give a definition >for this right? A right to the elimination of the practice of granting benefits or placing burdens on some classes of people that are out of line with those given to or borne by other classes. For starters, such a right implies a right to an income equal to everyone else's, unless there is a special condition like poor health requiring unusual expenses. Of course, if everyone has the same income it may take compulsion to get people to work, but universal compulsion doesn't seem to violate neutrality, which is your concern. Like other rights, the right to equality of condition will evolve as it becomes better established and understood. So once we are well on our way to economic equality other respects in which people's social conditions differ become more noticeable. As one example out of many, people who are tall, good-looking and cheerful are generally treated better than grouchy ugly midgets ("GUMs"), so that being a GUM is a social condition that our society subjects to special burdens. It follows that the government (if concerned about neutrality in the sense of not singling out particular classes for special burdens) should take action to vindicate the right of GUMs to equality of condition. They might get preferential access to other stuff (like extra income), so that on balance their condition would be equal to that of other people, or perhaps other people could be forced to go to sensitivity classes and comply with speech codes in the interests of uprooting social prejudices against GUMs. Again, there would be compulsion, but I don't see how neutrality would be violated. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 2 21:11:54 EDT 1994 Article: 26330 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 2 May 1994 21:08:54 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 27 Message-ID: <2q4876$7vd@panix.com> References: <2q00eq$jvs@panix.com> <2q0761$mi6@inca.gate.net> <2q13tk$ko2@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In bagley@hc.ti.com (Ross Bagley) writes: >>>I personally support libertarianism myself because I believe it is the >>>only social system which does not violate the principle of Neutrality. >Libertarians don't say that life is fair. The claim, then, is that a social system that does nothing to alleviate the unfairness of life is Neutral. I don't understand the claim. >Laziness is not rewarded, and neither is >stupidity, but most of the lazy and stupid people will have similar results, >barring selective charity, which is neutral and fair to boot. The claim here seems to be that under libertarianism like cases are usually treated alike, and therefore libertarianism is neutral and fair. But what reason is there to think that libertarianism does better at treating like cases alike than big meddlesome bureaucracies? After all, the point of all the rules and regulations BMBs promulgate is to provide standards intended to result in like treatment for like cases. So why shouldn't BMBs be even more neutral and fair if neutrality and fairness simply mean like treatment for like cases? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 2 21:15:41 EDT 1994 Article: 26331 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 2 May 1994 21:14:52 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 34 Message-ID: <2q48ic$9qg@panix.com> References: <2ptub9$dhg@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com bagley@hc.ti.com (Ross Bagley) writes: >Since one of the duties of a government is to defend it's citizens and >it's constitution from all enemies foriegn and domestic, and an army >(though not necessarily a standing army) of citizens is the best way to >go about a forceful defense, and that costs money for guns and ammo >and training and equipment and storage and etc... Some way must be >found to pay for the army. I prefer to have payments be directly >attributable to the thing for which they are paying. To get a license, >you pay a user fee, to register a patent, you pay a different fee, >when you commit a crime, you pay a fine that covers your court costs. >To have your land defended, you pay a fee to the army. The idea seems to be that if there's a system going that people think is generally beneficial, it's compatible with your version of libertarianism to force people to support it even if they don't feel like supporting it and apparently even if they don't think the system benefits them personally (an American farmer who happened to be a Nazi might not have felt personally benefited by taxes imposed to support our armed forces during the Second World War). Suppose that by 2004 people decide that a strict system of sexual morality (no sex outside of marriage and divorces are hard to get) is generally beneficial because it promotes habits and attitudes that make for stable two-parent households for children to grow up in, and people are convinced that's very important for the general well-being. Would it be consistent with your version of libertarianism to force people to support and comply with that system? If not, why is forcing them to support the Department of Defense any better? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 3 06:22:28 EDT 1994 Article: 1706 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ Date: 2 May 1994 22:06:35 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 60 Message-ID: <2q4bjb$m0s@panix.com> References: <2q1aj4$527@panix.com> <1994May2.222016.20852@news.cs.brandeis.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >>isn't the present situation a necessary outcome of the thought of John >>Locke and Thomas Jefferson?) > >A question often asked by European New Right types. One response is to play up non-Lockean aspects of the Founding. People have written books on the subject, but I don't know enough to comment. >If by "New Age" one means the "crystals and pyramids", sappy, >humanitarian, egalitarian, universalist crap that one hears from people >like Shirley McClaine, then the answer is obviously no. ENR types are >far too realistic and hard-bitten for such fluff. If by "New Age", one >means a fundamental shift in our collective consciousness, and in our >basic philosophical and epistemilogical foundations, then yes, the ENR >is "New Agey". Picture thunderclouds, Odin, and Thor, instead of >rainbows, unicorns, and Care Bears, and you've got a close >approximation. Some of us don't have that much more confidence in the former than the latter. It was no accident that Odin and Thor got replaced. Read _Njal's Saga_, a great book. (Actually some of the arguments at the time were pretty non-substantive: "Didja hear Christ asked Thor if he could pick up a rock, and he couldn't" kind of thing.) Also, don't ask me to betray my sources but I recently discovered that Alaine de Benoist, via a time-warp, is actually a reincarnation of Shirley Maclaine. The ENR has been trying to cover up, but more and more people are finding out and it's beginning to affect foundation grants and so on ... >Everything is messy, but nothing is messier than multiracialism. Did the partitioning of British India or the breakup of Austria-Hungary really make the world much less multi? It's hard to unscramble eggs. The issue (apart from the difficulty of finding a generally-acceptable way to do the partitioning) is what political form is best in view of the multiplicity of ethnic groups, multiple unitary national sovereignties or a federal system featuring multiple layers of limited sovereignty and an emphasis on social ordering through nongovernmental institutions. >Racist sexist homophobes! Rah! Rah! Rah! I thought of using Joe Sobran's SHARX ("Sexist Homophobic Antisemitic Racist Xenophobes", mentioned in the most recent Rothbard-Rockwell Report. >>7. Q - My ex-wife in Ulan Bator wants to join a.r.c. so she can >>discuss her plans for bringing back the Mongol Empire. > >To the right of Attila the Hun, eh? On a grander scale, and it has the charm of the exotic. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 3 19:42:45 EDT 1994 Article: 26376 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 3 May 1994 06:58:06 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 18 Message-ID: <2q5anu$13q@panix.com> References: <2q0793$1ij8@inca.gate.net> <2q146f$ldu@panix.com> <2q4a18$16bn@inca.gate.net> caliban@inca.gate.net (Caliban) writes: >it would violate Neutrality to make one particular viewpoint i.e., >that "equality of condition" is good) into a right. I don't see how making "private property is good" into a right solves the problem. Suppose someone thought we all have an equal right to use all things and proposed securing equality of access and resolving conflicts through bureaucratic procedures. Why would that proposal be less neutral than what libertarians propose? Quite possibly any attempt to base the bureaucratic procedures wholly on neutral principles would fail, but so (it seems to me) would any attempt to define property rights wholly on neutral principles. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 4 06:45:26 EDT 1994 Article: 1709 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Discipline today Date: 3 May 1994 21:09:41 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 12 Message-ID: <2q6skl$hc2@panix.com> References: <1994May2.025254.5446@news.vanderbilt.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com rickertj@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (John Rickert) writes: > Well, evidently the motto for discipline today is, "Spare the rod, >spoil the child." I'm lost. Do you mean Singapore or U.S.? Or is there a news item I missed? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 4 06:45:29 EDT 1994 Article: 5919 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism Subject: Re: William Bennett (was Bennett's War on Drugs) Date: 3 May 1994 21:14:20 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 98 Distribution: usa Message-ID: <2q6stc$ico@panix.com> References: <1994Apr30.173703.15983@anasazi.com> <36472@ursa.bear.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com halat@panther.bear.com (Jim Halat) writes: >Perhaps drugs have helped a great many people deliver positive aspects >of themselves that would otherwise never be seen, without the >>extremeness of use that might cause an overdose and early death. And >who are you to say what affect Joplin's songs had those who followed >her? Personal and public calamities have often frequently helped a great many people deliver positive aspects of themselves that would otherwise never have been seen. Read any account of men at war. That doesn't mean they weren't calamities. As to the effect of Miss Joplin's songs, presumably they were of a piece with the effect of 60s culture in general. If you like rising crime rates, a reversal in what had been a long-term decline of poverty, deteriorating child welfare, loss of civility, and all the rest of it, all in the face of sharp increases in social welfare expenditures, I suppose you will find much to approve. >Her "culture" shared the ideals that the war and killing in Vietnam >were bad, that free expression and openness of love (along with >sexuality) were good. And that taking care of one another is good. >Some things that are *not* espoused by traditional morals. So people are more loving and take care of each other more today than in the past? Odd, but I hadn't noticed. I would have guessed the opposite from all the signs of the weakening of intimate ties among people since the early 60s (divorce, illegitimacy, unwillingness of couples to commit to marriage, declining household size, lessened willingness to care for one's children). I also hadn't been aware that traditional morals considered war and killing other than bad. >Pardon me, but part of the values that made our country an economic >powerhouse were slavery, child labor, and the subjugation of women. Slavery? If so, it's hard to understand why places where there were no slaves thrived most. Also, it's hard to understand how both sending children out to work and keeping women home belong in the same category. >And our cultural heritage was built by people like Joplin, people who >dared to buck the values of the day. I'm glad to hear it. I had been afraid that too much of our actual cultural heritage was built by people like Danielle Steele who make tons of money going with current trends and indulging an ignorant public in its love of sensation. In fact, I had even been worried that Miss Joplin fell in the latter category. >Bill Bennett wants to retain a mono-cultural white european education >system, ignoring the important contributions of other peoples to our >own culture. I thought BB wanted people to study the classics. The ancient Hebrews, Greeks and Romans may have been white (and I realize that troubles a lot of people, no doubt with good reason) but they were culturally rather different from us. The Hebrews weren't even European. I'm broad- minded, though, so if people also want to study Confucius I have no objection. It might do them a lot of good. >Progress always seems to come with somem pain, and I rather suffer and >work through these problems than to suffer through another time of >stifling morals. One man's "working through" is another man's "stifling morals". Many people find PC horribly stifling. In any society there are accepted beliefs about which institutions, habits, procedures and so on are best for dealing with its problems, and the society's moral code reflects those beliefs by supporting the favored institutions. For example, if you think the family is an institution of fundamental importance, you'll support the things that support stable and effective families (traditional sexual morality and sex roles, for example). If you want to get rid of small-scale, traditional and informal institutions like the family and rely exclusively on government bureaucracy to solve people's problems, you'll support measures that weaken the former and ideals like nondiscrimination that can only be effectuated by reliance on the latter. >religion is no panacea and has itself in the past led to much >corruption, opression of free thought, and countless gallons of blood. Same could be said about politics. People often bobble important things. It doesn't show the things are not necessary. >Anyone who still thinks that a 2000 year old tradition is suitable to >rule the expression and progress of society today, is not really >thinking too much. Our mathematical and literary traditions are both older than 2000 years. No doubt the time has come for us to turn over a very major new leaf. Any proposals for how to go about it? If there are, don't express them using the English language. Invent a new one that doesn't go back so far. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 4 15:53:42 EDT 1994 Article: 26458 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 4 May 1994 07:50:56 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 56 Message-ID: <2q8270$479@panix.com> References: <2q4a18$16bn@inca.gate.net> <2q5anu$13q@panix.com> <2q6vhc$kt4@inca.gate.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com caliban@inca.gate.net (Caliban) writes: >: I don't see how making "private property is good" into a right solves >: the problem. Suppose someone thought we all have an equal right to use >: all things and proposed securing equality of access and resolving >: conflicts through bureaucratic procedures. Why would that proposal be >: less neutral than what libertarians propose? >I'm afraid I can't give you a good answer to your questions until I >make sure I understand what you mean by "private property," and what >alternative there is to it. I was using "private property" to mean what libertarians mean by "property" when they say "the protection of property is the sole proper function of government". It appears from the way libertarians speak (I am philosophizing for other people, so please excuse me if I don't get it right) that they want a form of society in which everything people might have disputes over is assigned in the first instance to particular individuals, each of whom has the right to make all decisions regarding the things assigned to him. The things assigned to an individual and his rights in them are referred to as his "property". The idea seems to be that if such an assignment of rights were carried out as to *everything* people might have disputes over, there would be no further need for politics because there would be no possibility of justifiable dispute. The state would be reduced to an agency for enforcing property rights. The initial assignment of rights includes the right to one's own body. Once the initial assignment of rights is made, people could assign rights to each other by exchange or gift, form partnerships and so on. >However, if I understand you correctly, I would say that >libertarianism doesn't need to be based on the idea that "private >property is good" (although I'm sure that many libertarians would >strongly agree with that assertion :-] ). Instead, I would say that >libertarianism gives everyone the right to organize his (share of) >property in whatever way he prefers -- whether he wants it to be >individual or group property. Libertarianism seems to be based on the idea that an initial assignment of rights into individual shares, including self-ownership, is good. A non-libertarian might say "the earth and its fruits belong to all men, and dividing it up into individual shares subject to the arbitrary choices of particular individuals is wrong". Another non-libertarian might say "I gave birth to my children and cared for them when they were helpless, so they don't own themselves -- I own them". I take it that libertarians reject the views of such people, and a libertarian state would back up the rejection with force. How is that neutral? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 4 17:14:27 EDT 1994 Article: 1714 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ Date: 4 May 1994 17:14:18 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 80 Message-ID: <2q937a$il@panix.com> References: <1994May2.222016.20852@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <2q4bjb$m0s@panix.com> <1994May4.152621.19213@news.cs.brandeis.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >>One response is to play up non-Lockean aspects of the Founding. People >>have written books on the subject, but I don't know enough to comment. > >It's an approach that I have much sympathy for; however it necessarily >involves debunking many of the myths of American history that have become >deeply ingrained - myths not only defended by liberals, but by many >conservatives as well. Obviously, a lot of myths of American history have to be debunked. It seems to me that the CR problem is the problem of what to do if your general outlook is conservative but you are caught in a tradition that's grown disfunctional. It's clear that some things have to go, and the question is how much you can keep. >Could you give precise examples of what you mean by "it was no >accident"? I'm not prepared to give you anything very precise. The accounts I've read of voluntary conversions from paganism to Christianity have given me the impression that people felt Christianity was simply a better explanation of what the world is like and why on all sorts of levels -- cosmological, social, personal. I mentioned _Njal's Saga_ because it seems a good depiction of what the world was like for people at the time, as well as for the (somewhat irrelevant) reason that it's a very good book. I suppose it's also relevant that mediaeval Iceland is the favorite historical society of net libertarians, so the political motives of kings don't seem to have had much effect on the process there. >Conversions - whether forced or voluntary - had much to do with >politics and the relations between pagan and Christian Europeans. Are >you saying paganism was "fated" to die out because of some form of >inferiority? I'm not a great believer in historical inevitability. >Pagan Kings converted their peoples for very sound (to them) political >reasons. Political motives go in all sorts of directions, and don't seem adequate to explaining the process as a whole even if a political explanation could be advanced for each incident in the process. For starters, monotheism is more systematic than pagan polytheism, and thought tends to become systematic. Late antique paganism tended toward monotheism, for example. >If one dies and is reborn as someone/something else, but one has lost >one's memory, one's personality, one's viewpoints and opinions, then >how is it really possible to say that the reincarnation is truly the >same person? God knows. (Depending on taste, you can read that either as an answer or as a profession of ignorance.) Philosophers, and posters in philosophy newsgroups on usenet, sometimes speculate about whether there is anything to personal identity beyond continuity of memory or embodiment. Usually the discussions have to do with what happens to you when Scotty on Star Trek beams you up -- are you really the same person afterwards, or were you killed and a duplicate created? >>The ENR has been trying to cover up, but more and >>more people are finding out and it's beginning to affect foundation >>grants and so on ... > >Foundation grants? Now that's a laugh.... I'm telling you, it's because people are catching on to Alaine de Benoist and Shirley Maclaine. Have they ever been seen together? >>>Everything is messy, but nothing is messier than multiracialism. > >I have no problems with multiculturalism - the more the better. I was >thinking of false multiculturalism, in which all cultural differences >are minimized/trivialized so as to make possible a vague, atomistic >humanism. I would prefer partition to what you call false multiculturalism. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 4 17:17:01 EDT 1994 Article: 1715 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ Date: 4 May 1994 17:15:28 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 15 Message-ID: <2q939g$109@panix.com> References: <1994May2.222016.20852@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <2q4bjb$m0s@panix.com> <1994May4.183023.22446@news.cs.brandeis.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >>(Actually some of the arguments at the >>time were pretty non-substantive: "Didja hear Christ asked Thor if he >>could pick up a rock, and he couldn't" kind of thing.) > >Anyway, how big was the rock??? Unfortunately, the "kind of thing" means that I couldn't remember the exact line of argument, but it was about on that level. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 4 17:17:02 EDT 1994 Article: 1716 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Discipline today Date: 4 May 1994 17:16:37 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 21 Message-ID: <2q93bl$1et@panix.com> References: <1994May2.025254.5446@news.vanderbilt.edu> <2q6skl$hc2@panix.com> <1994May4.192009.15508@news.vanderbilt.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com rickertj@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (John Rickert) writes: >>> Well, evidently the motto for discipline today is, "Spare the rod, >>>spoil the child." > > Drats. My attempt at humor was too obscure. I meant in the U.S. >The old motto is now taken as a command, not an inference. Now does >it make some sense? It occurred to me you might mean that, but I wasn't sure. Sorry to be a wet blanket. > Different topic, somewhat: Any thoughts about Zbigniew B's new >book "Out of Control"? Know nothing about it. Worth reading? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 4 20:59:16 EDT 1994 Article: 26548 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 4 May 1994 20:58:54 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 23 Message-ID: <2q9gce$lh7@panix.com> References: <2q0761$mi6@inca.gate.net> <2q13tk$ko2@panix.com> <2q3l7c$6c1@inca.gate.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com caliban@inca.gate.net (Caliban) writes: >Libertarianism is "neutral" because it gives every >person and group equal (i.e., the same) rights, and >doesn't privilege any particular beliefs or goals >in life. I truly don't understand this. Isn't it obvious that in a libertarian society it would be easier to lead some sorts of life ("hermit"; "entrepreneur") than others ("soldier in the army of socialist labor"; "loyal servant of the king")? The sorts of life that are easier to lead are those that are privileged by libertarianism. People who prefer freedom and enterprise to security and solidarity are privileged by libertarianism. Suppose A likes to do better than other people by working hard and looking out for himself, while B likes to let things go and do what people tell him to do but nonetheless have a safe and comfortable life. A's goals and B's goals are obviously not going to be equally favored by a libertarian society. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Thu May 5 13:10:16 EDT 1994 Article: 1719 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ Date: 5 May 1994 07:44:12 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 36 Message-ID: <2qam6c$h58@panix.com> References: <2q4bjb$m0s@panix.com> <1994May4.152621.19213@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <2qadej$3p8@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >From an English perspective it is easy to see there is a vacuum of what >you might call public spirituality - look at the abdication of >leadership of the Church of England, but if this is to be filled I >suspect that it will be filled either by a form of CXhristian >revivalism or a synthesis of Christian and non-Christian belief, but >certainly not by pretending we're all Vikings again. Christianity grew up in a world empire that tended toward universal citizenship and a universal code of law and in which peoples were becoming mere populations. It was well fitted to thrive in that environment. To the isolated Christianity gave the fellowship of the church and the love of a universal deity who was also a particular man, and even a man of the people. To the troubled and fearful Christianity gave hope and trust in a future that would overcome all sorrows. To the skeptic Christianity gave a faith that could be subtly and profoundly articulated by philosophy but could not be seen round or explained away. For the deracinated Christianity created a new race with a glorious history, unshakeable identity and lofty destiny. To put it very crudely, all these things seem likely to be effective selling points for Christianity in the times to come. I don't see any real competitor. Abstract speculations about the advent of a new pagan and polytheistic consciousness don't seem convincing to me. I might feel differently if I could see examples of pagan polytheism as a living system experienced by its adherents as authoritative. >The negative form I think is best exemplified at the moment by the EC's >growing attempts to produce a flattened 'euroculture' What sort of attempts? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 9 14:14:23 EDT 1994 Article: 26948 of alt.politics.libertarian Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 8 May 1994 19:21:51 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 62 Message-ID: <2qjs6f$irs@panix.com> References: <2qc7pc$s9k@inca.gate.net> <2qdbk1$8qb@panix.com> <2qjl14$vf5@inca.gate.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com caliban@inca.gate.net (Caliban) writes: >: Suppose you have a libertarian society and you add to it a progressive >: income tax on above-average incomes and negative income tax on below- >: average incomes, or a public health service funded by a land tax. >: Where is the sudden failure to treat goals and beliefs equally? >I would say that people are being treated >differently based on their incomes, or whether >or not they own land; and that one goal (health) >is being treated differently from others (like >education, security, or entertainment). I understand your point on the public health service. I don't understand, though, why different treatment based on income or property ownership is an example of different treatment of goals and beliefs. Also, I don't see why the protection of private property does not in itself constitute different treatment based on property ownership. People's property rights differ, so if the law protects all property rights equally it is doing something different for you and for me. If I am rich and you are poor, a libertarian code of law would (unless something else happened) keep me in wealth and you in poverty. I don't see why that would be an example of equal treatment of your goals and beliefs and mine. >: Your view seems to be that formal freedom and equality and minimum >: government mean that every goal and belief is treated equally. Whatever >: goal someone has, he has the equal right to organize with other >: likeminded people and work to bring it about. That view seems >: misleading to me, though. > >How else could we legitimately treat every goal and >belief equally? I find the notion that every goal and belief can be treated equally altogether chimerical. >I would say that while I agree that "society" in the sense of culture >(i.e., "goals, beliefs, habits, etc.) certainly can't be neutral, the >laws -- the system of defining rights and arbitrating disputes -- >certainly can, and should. I was misled, then. Some of your language seemed to suggest that a society with a libertarian legal system would also be culturally and practically libertarian and pluralistic. It seems to me that a society with a libertarian legal system would, in many respects and possibly categorically, offer fewer practical lifestyle choices than our current one. For example, women who wish to have children would find it considerably more difficult to raise them without tying themselves permanently to the children's father in a libertarian state than in a welfare state, and to that extent would have fewer lifestyle choices. The choice of a libertarian legal order over a welfare state would not at all promote neutrality as to such women's preferences. It is therefore not clear to me why neutrality requires that choice. (Examples could be multiplied.) -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 9 14:14:47 EDT 1994 Article: 1726 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Paganism Date: 8 May 1994 19:23:02 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 36 Message-ID: <2qjs8m$j1i@panix.com> References: <2qgddl$rkh@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >I'm not too sure that late Antiquity should be seen as Universalist. Here's what I had in mind: 1. Intellectually, philosophy was cosmopolitan. Philosophy was not an epiphenomenon that can be ignored. It was taken seriously by educated men as a guide how to live, and Stoic philosophy was a major influence on Roman law. 2. Political particularism tended to disappear. The Roman Empire was not viewed as one state among others, but as the appropriate master of the world. In the 2nd century Roman citizenship became universal for everyone in the Empire. As time went on, the Empire lost its practical ties to the city of Rome and relied more and more on barbarians in Roman service for defense. Also, the separate civic life of cities declined greatly as the burdens placed on the cities by the Empire made civic office something to avoid if at all possible. 3. Cultural particularism also declined greatly. Ortega y Gassett comments on the process in his _History as a System_. (He thinks it made people a lot stupider than they had been.) In the West, everyone spoke the same Latin everywhere. Local styles of art and architecture seem likewise to have been of minor importance. >However should the following be added to the FAQ? > >Pagan Virtues by John Casey. Will do. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 9 17:53:41 EDT 1994 Article: 1728 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Paganism Date: 9 May 1994 14:49:16 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 44 Message-ID: <2qm0jc$9d2@panix.com> References: <2qgddl$rkh@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <2qjs8m$j1i@panix.com> <2qlr17$bk5@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >While I think it's true that the aristocracy of the Late Roman empire >was cosmopolitan, movement amongst lower orders of society declined if >anything. I don't know much about the evidence on this issue. Latin became the language of the people in most of the Western Empire, a development that suggests cosmopolitan influences among the lower orders as well. I was also under the impression that military colonies, invasions and peaceful settlements by barbarians resulted in significant mixing of populations. I believe that people who had tombstones in Rome itself, a group far larger than the aristocracy, tended to be freedmen or the descendents of freedmen, and thus of foreign descent. I don't know about the situation elsewhere. >The period also sees areas of the empire trying to break away. It is >the case that these places tried to be microcosms of the larger Roman >state but the principle of the 'Empire of the Gauls' say tends to >suggest a growing regionalist trend. What was the basis of that trend if the aristocracy were cosmopolitan and the lower orders lacked political influence? Was it simply a case of local commanders in a military empire trying to set up as independent rulers when the center grows shaky? >: In the 2nd century Roman citizenship became universal for >: everyone in the Empire. > >The pedant in me say actualy in 212 under Caracalla. Oops! >The problem is that by this time it was a worthless qualification what >counted was what sort of citizen you were an honestior or a humilior >and this distinction remained and indeed became greater But universally-applicable grades of citizenship based on wealth are still universal rather than particularistic or regional. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From alt.politics.libertarian Thu May 12 06:19:25 1994 Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Libertarian FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions Date: 9 May 1994 19:10:59 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 81 Message-ID: <2qmfu3$ssj@panix.com> References: <2qjl14$vf5@inca.gate.net> <2qjs6f$irs@panix.com> <2qm7ai$9gd@inca.gate.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com caliban@inca.gate.net (Caliban) writes: >: I don't >: understand, though, why different treatment based on income or property >: ownership is an example of different treatment of goals and beliefs. > >It's not -- but it's an example of unequal treatment >of individuals, which also violates Neutrality. Suppose high-income individuals have a portion of their income taken from them and low-income individuals receive an income supplement from the proceeds, in all cases in accordance with a schedule that applies to everyone. Under the system similarly-situated individuals would be treated similarly and differences in treatment would be part of what looks like a rational attempt to maximize the equal practical ability of every individual to achieve his goals. Further suppose that the laws grant each person a property right in any income supplement he has coming to him and state that no person has a property right in his income to the extent that income is taken in accordance with the schedule to fund the supplement. I really don't understand why such a system would violate neutrality because of unequal treatment of individuals more than protection of rights to unequal property would. >Basically, assuming that property rights exist, in order to be Neutral >they must be based on a assuming that property rights exist, I don't >think they violate Neutrality as long as the standard on which they're >based applies equally to all people. For example, as long as you and I >both have the same right to own/ control property, according to the >same rules, this is consistent with Neutrality. In a hereditary aristocracy that accepted the rule of law, each baby could have an equal right to the status he is born into and be equally protected in that status. Thus, the same rules regarding the acquisition and security of rights would apply to everyone. It's not clear to me why protecting me in my rights as a duke under such a system would be less neutral, assuming you are equally protected in your your rights as a peasant, than protecting Amy Rockefeller in her enjoyment of her grandfather's money (I assume that like other libertarians you think intergenerational transfers are OK), the most recent winner of the New York Lottery in his enjoyment of his gains, or Picasso in his enjoyment of what he earned by the exercise of the extraordinary talent he was born with. All of us would have what we have mostly by chance, often the chance of birth. >: I find the notion that every goal and belief can be treated equally >: altogether chimerical. > >I'm sorry to hear that. Which beliefs do you >think should be treated as superior, and which >should be treated as inferior, and why? My argument that impartiality of the sort you want is impossible does not depend on the correctness of any specific positive program, any more than an argument that Socrates was mortal depends on the correctness of a specific date for his death. >It certainly could be, but that's ultimately up >to the members of that society. There's no >reason, for example, that they couldn't all >decide to be fanatical, mindless conformists -- >it's just highly unlikely. :-/ Why unlikely? Count de Tocqueville observed that Americans were conformists and thought it followed from our free and equal political institutions that made mass public opinion the only authority. Many people since then have thought that one of his shrewder observations. >Neutrality requires that some people (e.g., >single women with children) not be treated >differently from anyone else. Most people aren't required to support and care for other persons with whom they have no contractual relationship. Is doing away with the parental obligation of support part of your version of libertarianism? How do you deal with small children? Simply announce that like other people they are free to sink or swim? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Thu May 12 16:07:33 EDT 1994 Article: 1735 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: HACK-SINGAPORE-DUNGEON Date: 10 May 1994 08:36:48 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 42 Message-ID: <2qnv50$6im@panix.com> References: <2qnhja$olg@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >Personally I was pleased that Singapore had the courage to go through with >what seemed to me an entirely just punishment and have been amused by the >racialism of the liberal press here and it seems in America. Why did no-one >ever worry about those yellow Singaporeans suffering I wonder? If it had been a yellow American I presume _The New York Times_ (which led the attack on the sentence in the United States) would have attempted to be equally outraged. I'm not sure they would have quite succeeded. Although they might still have made the attempt, I'm pretty confident they would have failed if it had been a naturalized citizen from the Orient. If it had been a black American they would have been outraged for a different reason. They would have assumed that the sentence reflected Chinese racism. I'm not sure what they would have said if it had been a Brit. Probably not much. I suppose in theory the British press should have been more upset about the Hong Kong boy who got sentenced than about the American. The problem, of course, is that the outrage sprang from irrational feelings of solidarity, and it's not clear how _The New York Times_ can in clear conscience approve of such feelings. They do, of course, when the feelings can be strictly subordinated to their own purposes. So the _Times_ approves of American national feeling to the extent it breaks down lesser distinctions and centralizes ("every American has a right to decent housing, health care and a job"; "no American should be subjected to discrimination based on characteristics like race, religion or gender"; "gays are part of America too"). They also approve of American national feeling to the extent "America" can be dentified with liberalism on the international scene. The use of national feeling for liberal ends is, of course, manipulative, since liberalism has reached a stage of development in which it is clearly inconsistent with national feeling. Liberalism can't help but be manipulative, though, because it lacks a principle of solidarity and disapproves of other people's principles of solidarity. So it can't do anything except parasitically. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Fri May 13 18:52:40 EDT 1994 Article: 1746 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Some history? Date: 13 May 1994 18:52:08 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 26 Message-ID: <2r10ao$g15@panix.com> References: <2r04ce$hfr@panix.com> <1994May13.210248.19370@newstand.syr.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <1994May13.210248.19370@newstand.syr.edu> clstampe@rodan.syr.edu (Chris Stamper) writes: >jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes: >>The notion of self-organizing emergence is no novelty. See _Wealth of >>Nations_ (1776) and _Origin of Species_ (1859). Nonetheless, better >>results can sometimes be obtained by the application of conscious >>management to things resulting from self-organizing emergence. >Wouldn't "conscious management" mean either some form of statism or a >dominant managerial class? It would include that, but I meant to include any sort of government. Every society of any size and complexity has elites, and it's elites who run governments, so I suppose there's going to be something you might call a "dominant managerial class" in anything much beyond a small band of hunter-gatherers. The phrase, of course, suggests statism, by which I understand a failure to understand that the self-organizing emergence is primary and the management very much secondary. That's not at all what I had in mind, so maybe I chose the wrong word. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sat May 14 06:25:28 EDT 1994 Article: 1747 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: new age, assorted meanderings Date: 13 May 1994 20:32:19 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 31 Message-ID: <2r166j$t4j@panix.com> References: <1994May13.191418.7822@news.cs.brandeis.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >Michael Walker, in the last issue of _The Scorpion_, refers to the "New >Age" suggesting that there is a cyclical historical pattern akin to (by >analogy) the astrological system, such that the coming "Age of >Aquarious" will necessitate certain new forms of sacrality and social >organization different from the preceding "Age of Pisces" (i.e., >Christian era). I don't remember enough of his argument to say anything >about particulars, but I think it likely that any "New Age" will in >fact involve transformations in _essences_, even if the corresponding >_forms_ remain the same. I recall the article as somewhere between speculative and rhapsodic. Not much in the way of argument. (Not that I object to speculative rhapsodies.) Any two historic situations are of course different. Essences are difficult things to grapple with, though. Is the essence of the Pythagorean theorem, or the Apostle's Creed, or Newton's Laws of Motion different now than when those things were formulated? How about the Pilobolus? Does it matter that the Greeks painted their statues and we think white marble looks ever so much more refined? I suppose my view is that if a thing seemed to express something of transcendent value then and it still does now, then that's a good sign that the essence has survived. Some things can in fact be communicated from one culture to another, even another that is very different. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun May 15 06:50:07 EDT 1994 Article: 15019 of talk.philosophy.misc Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: Views on MacIntyre? Read Nietzche (was the other way around<199 Date: 14 May 1994 15:38:41 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 28 Message-ID: <2r39c1$3dq@panix.com> References: <1994Mar13.194756.24714@midway.uchicago.edu> <2r2iui$j8g@search01.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com farinahar@aol.com (FARINAHAR) writes: >But if MacIntyre lived in a world dominated by Nazism (with a long >history of Nazism) he would have no basis to say Nazism is wrong. And if he lived in a paleolithic society he would have no basis to say the top quark exists. Is it MacIntyre's point that the existence of a tradition is what makes a statement from the point of view of the tradition true, or is it that you need the tradition to form and understand the statement and have grounds to believe it true? Maybe another response to your example is that philosophy can only be of use to rational animals and that rational animals do not form worlds in which over time no tendencies of thought and feeling appear that are inconsistent with Nazism. It's hard to imagine a world in which everyone has always been a Nazi, by the way, since it is part of the essence of Nazism (as I understand it) to have an in-group and an out-group, and for the in-group to wage war on the out-group in order to increase its solidarity and demonstrate its superiority over the out-group by defeating and enslaving or annihilating it. In such a situation it's hard to see how the in-group and the out-group could see eye-to-eye on things. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 16 06:26:52 EDT 1994 Article: 1752 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: HACK-SINGAPORE-DUNGEON Date: 15 May 1994 16:41:51 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 54 Message-ID: <2r61ef$jb8@panix.com> References: <2qnhja$olg@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <1994May13.180333.6999@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <2r5bb7$soq@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >Those polls seem to indicate a growing phenomenon namely the >political/philosophical alienation of large numbers of people in >Western countries from their ruling elites. I suspect that in part this >may lie at the root of the anomie that we now see in the West, many of >its own people fail to identify with the system. Our problem though is >how to harnass that disillusion in a positive way and indeed to get >over the message in the first place. Any ideas? It seems to me that the alienation is in part a consequence of the New Class strategy for achieving its goal, a state in which the New Class elite controls the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy determines everything significant and permits no competing powers. The strategy is to distinguish "rights", which are statements of the long-term goals of the bureaucracy, from "personal values", which are other goals people might have, and establish the principle that rights always trump personal values. The success of the strategy means that people expect the government to supervise everything rather closely and they know they can't expect what the government does to reflect anything they much care about. Hence alienation. Maybe it would clarify the point to give a couple of examples of rights: 1. People have a right not to be discriminated against on grounds of race, sex or religion. That means that it's improper for people to organize themselves in accordance with ethnic identity, family ties and functions, or fundamental understanding of the world. In order to prevent such forbidden modes of self-organization, the bureaucracy has to exercise extensive and detailed supervision and control over all significant organizations with respect to relations among the people who compose them. 2. People have a right to autonomy, but they must respect the rights of others. That means they should be supported in attacking the authority of institutions that compete with the bureaucracy, but not in attacking the authority of the bureaucracy itself or its long-term goals. So schools should teach the equal or superior worth of attitudes and habits inconsistent with the institution of the family, but should not teach the equal worth of attitudes and habits inconsistent with (say) the functioning of the tax system or willing compliance with EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) requirements. So maybe what's needed is a different notion of rights from the left- liberal one. Maybe rights of communal and organizational self-rule? In the United States such rights used to be protected by states' rights, property rights, and limited government. Maybe they should be brought up to date, at least in presentation. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 16 06:59:45 EDT 1994 Article: 1755 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Pink revolution Date: 16 May 1994 06:56:36 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 20 Message-ID: <2r7jh4$5i5@panix.com> References: <2qnrq9$t42@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <1994May13.203312.8889@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <2r63ib$54t@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >A friend of mine works for the labour party on the grounds thatvit is >the only party which stands Conservative values i.e. those based on >social solidiarity not atomised libertarianism. Certainly I think the >espousal of Lib values in the 70s and 80s by the Conservative Party >here has left a very problematic legacy I don't know a lot about the British Labour Party. The problem with the left-wing solidarity I know about is that it is always mass solidarity -- in aspiration, at least, equal solidarity of every individual with every other individual that reduces distinctions to unimportance and tries practically to minimize them. So what it really aims at is a universal order with nothing of importance between the universal order and the individuals composing it. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sat May 21 05:13:05 EDT 1994 Article: 1757 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Pink revolution Date: 19 May 1994 20:24:25 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 41 Message-ID: <2rgvvp$97t@panix.com> References: <2r63ib$54t@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <2r7jh4$5i5@panix.com> <16FBA936F.SESSMAN@ibm.mtsac.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com SESSMAN@ibm.mtsac.edu writes: >In article <2r7jh4$5i5@panix.com> >jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes: > >>-- in aspiration, at least, equal solidarity of every individual with >>every other individual that reduces distinctions to unimportance and >>tries practically to minimize them. > >Ah, but isn't that the point of your advocacy of an all "white" >society? To the best of my recollection, the only person who has posted in favor of white separatism on this newsgroup has been Arthur LeBouthillier. >In your aforementioned (you as in counter-revolutionary ideals posted >by this group in Jan-March) ideal of a seceding "white" society, you >would inevitably be reducing the distinctions among our society's >individuals so to maintain a population that has the qualities in the >quote above. By eradicating diversity, you gain solidarity with MORE >LIMITED distinctions among your individual group members - hence the >opposite of individual idiosyncrasy and identity. It is true that what is called multiculturalism and (for example) Naziism have a similar goal: a society whose unity is uncompromised by significant cultural and ethnic differences. Multiculturalism tries to achieve that goal by forbidding people to recognize the significance of differences and by compulsory mixing for the purpose of destroying what differences exist. Naziism tries to achieve it by establishing a society based solely on one of the existing ethnic and cultural groups. I don't like either. I prefer permitting people to choose the degree to which they will associate with those with whom they feel they have a lot in common, or will also associate with those who they feel are different but are willing to associate with them. In other words, I prefer allowing voluntary discrimination on racial and similar grounds. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun May 22 06:56:12 EDT 1994 Article: 1758 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Pink revolution Date: 21 May 1994 05:52:37 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 35 Message-ID: <2rkll5$1vd@panix.com> References: <2r7jh4$5i5@panix.com> <16FBA936F.SESSMAN@ibm.mtsac.edu> <2rgvvp$97t@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes: >I prefer permitting people to choose the degree to which they will >associate with those with whom they feel they have a lot in common, or >will also associate with those who they feel are different but are >willing to associate with them. In other words, I prefer allowing >voluntary discrimination on racial and similar grounds. On rereading what I had written I wondered whether it was at all comprehensible. To restate: diversity seems to me a good thing. If differences didn't matter then diversity would be indifferent rather than good. Therefore, the goodness of diversity means that differences matter. To say that differences matter is to say it's OK for them to affect the choices we make. To let one's choices be affected by ethnic differences is to engage in discrimination on ethnic grounds. Therefore, if you think that ethnic diversity is good you can't reasonably claim that ethnic discrimination is bad. In other words, I don't understand the claim "it's valuable for people to differ in some respect, but it's wrong ever to take those differences into account in acting". If the differences can never affect our actions, how important can it be to have them? Since the post I'm clarifying was intended as a response to Mr. Sessman's description of things I said a couple of months ago, I should add that I also proposed stricter limits on immigration. Any society must have unity as well as diversity. At present our problem seems to be disunity rather than lack of diversity. So it makes sense to me to close the gates at least somewhat and let the people who are already here organize their lives and work out how they are going to live together. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun May 22 12:46:33 EDT 1994 Article: 24695 of talk.politics.theory Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.radical-left Subject: Re: Single Payer Medical Insurance (was: Re: Is Health Care A Right? (essay)) Date: 22 May 1994 09:01:13 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 53 Message-ID: <2rnl2p$sla@panix.com> References: <94May15.185830edt.243@smoke.cs.toronto.edu> <2r9cdr$12ra@inca.gate.net> <94May17.011421edt.48147@neat.cs.toronto.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:24695 alt.politics.libertarian:28220 alt.politics.radical-left:14013 cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes: >my own thesis, which has remained implicit but goes something like >this, I guess: [A] "people's values are shaped by the institutions of >the society in which they live. It makes sense to consider, when >thinking about changes that are proposed, not only how people feel >about them now, but how they will feel about them after they have lived >with them for a while and have been reshaped by them" ... I don't think >I am a socialist, like Cohen, but more of a liberal in the sense of >Rawls. As such, I would probably tend to agree with the idea that [B] >political institutions should remain as neutral as possible, to enable >each person to form and pursue his own notion of the good. Do positions A and B sit together easily? B seems to take the values that people actually have as the criterion, and proposes that people be as free as possible to pursue whatever those values may be. As to the formation of those values, the most B seems to suggest is that their formation should not be distorted by influences external to the individual. A seems to look at all the values people might have and to propose that the institutions of the society promote the configuration of values that in the long run will prove most satisfying, even though at the moment most people might find some other configuration of values more appealing. The two seem quite different to me. >Rawls does not seem to consider the power that large corporations and >media will have in influencing people's "personal" conceptions of the >good, and when this is taken into account, things probably turn out >differently than he would portray them. Could Rawls still be Rawls if he took more seriously the effect of social institutions on the formation of conceptions of the good? It seems to me that if the sole purpose of public institutions is to facilitate the pursuit by each person of his own conception of the good, whatever that may be, then the sole principles of action each of us can reasonably expect to share with his fellow citizens are the desire to maximize his own ability to realize his conception of the good, and the desire that others not have greater ability to do so than oneself (at least unless the maximin principle is satisfied). The abstract ability to realize one's conception of the good, to the extent that ability can be distributed socially, is money and power. So it seems that the Rawlsian principle you describe leads to a culture, and therefore to personal values, based on greed, lust for power and envy because those are the only values people can legitimately assume they share. I speak, however, as someone who found Rawls incomprehensible. I should also say that since I have wandered into this thread late, I don't expect a response if the issues I raise have already been dealt with. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun May 22 12:46:34 EDT 1994 Article: 24696 of talk.politics.theory Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.radical-left Subject: Re: Single Payer Medical Insurance (was: Re: Is Health Care A Right? (essay)) Date: 22 May 1994 09:48:39 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 24 Message-ID: <2rnnrn$309@panix.com> References: <94May15.185830edt.243@smoke.cs.toronto.edu> <2r9cdr$12ra@inca.gate.net> <94May17.011421edt.48147@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <2rnl2p$sla@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:24696 alt.politics.libertarian:28224 alt.politics.radical-left:14015 In <2rnl2p$sla@panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes: >Could Rawls still be Rawls if he took more seriously the effect of >social institutions on the formation of conceptions of the good? > ... I speak, >however, as someone who found Rawls incomprehensible. To expand a little: as I recall, the representatives meeting in Rawls' original position represent people who have conceptions of the good, but they don't know what those conceptions are, and the negotiations leading to Rawls' basic principles have to do with protecting and furthering the ability to pursue those conceptions whatever they turn out to be. I'm not sure what the negotiations would look like in Rawls' view if the representatives got together and said "we're going to set up a society, and the institutions of the society will heavily influence substantive views of the good, so which substantive view of the good are we going to have the institutions favor?" In particular, I don't see why in that case they would end up enacting anything that looked very much like Rawls' principles. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 23 11:01:00 EDT 1994 Article: 1759 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Neo-techno-conservatism Date: 23 May 1994 06:31:34 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 18 Message-ID: <2rq0m6$8d6@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Any comments on neo-techno-conservatism? By that I mean the view that microchips, fiber optics and all the rest of it mean that centralized systems of comunications and control are outmoded, so people will more and more be able to avoid the exactions and do without the benefits of large formal centralized systems like the modern state. The "conservative" part is that if large formal centralized systems become less important then people will be forced to rely, for whatever they can't get by exchange, on small informal systems that engage their irrational loyalties, such as the family. Maybe "neo-techno-primitivism" would be a better term, since the guiding image seems to be one of small bands of hunter-gatherers wandering through the primeval forest, computer network, or whatever ... -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 23 11:01:16 EDT 1994 Article: 24703 of talk.politics.theory Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory Subject: Re: Those who do not know history (was: ... a Black Thing?) Date: 22 May 1994 16:20:52 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 64 Message-ID: <2roer4$9ej@panix.com> References: <2rn9ti$blv@netaxs.com> <2rnvek$gn1@peaches.cs.utexas.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes: >In 1930, after a decade of prohibition, the US murder rate was an order >of magnitude higher than it had been before prohibition, and higher >than it would be again until the height of the next drug war in the >late 1980s. ... I am not sure how we ever regained our sense and >legalized alcohol. But the blessed result was that the US murder rate >was halved in one year. This, and this alone, created the period of >relative internal peace, from the late 30s to the early 60s, on which >we now look back with fondness. Something is wrong somewhere. _Historical Statistics of the United States_ gives the following figures, arrived at by adding up state vital statistics reports: Year Homicides/100,000 1918 6.5 1919 7.2 1920 6.8 1921 8.1 1922 8.0 1923 7.8 1924 8.1 1925 8.3 1926 8.4 1927 8.4 1928 8.6 1929 8.4 1930 8.8 1931 9.2 1932 9.0 1933 9.7 1934 9.5 1935 8.3 [fairly steady decline] 1944 5.0 [bounces around a little] 1963 4.9 [fairly steady rise] 1970 8.3 It's worth noting that not all states participated until 1933, but the incompleteness shouldn't change the overall picture since by 1920 states with 80% of the U.S. population were participating. >Statistics show that whites and the middle class are as likely to >use the currently illegal drugs as the minorities and the poor. I've seen this assertion a couple of times, and don't doubt that the proportion of each group that has used illegal drugs is about the same. Are there significant differences in the type of drugs (e.g., marijuana vs. crack) or in degree of habitual use? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 23 11:01:19 EDT 1994 Article: 24706 of talk.politics.theory Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory Subject: Re: Those who do not know history (was: ... a Black Thing?) Date: 22 May 1994 19:55:55 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 17 Message-ID: <2roreb$444@panix.com> References: <2rn9ti$blv@netaxs.com> <2rnvek$gn1@peaches.cs.utexas.edu> <2roer4$9ej@panix.com> <2rolkj$ilf@peaches.cs.utexas.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <2rolkj$ilf@peaches.cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes: >> Something is wrong somewhere. _Historical Statistics of the United >> States_ gives the following figures, arrived at by adding up state >> vital statistics reports: >To add state averages correctly, one has to weight them by the >the state populations. The "adding up" was speaking loosely, and I didn't combine the separate state figures, the feds did. I presume they did it correctly, although of course I could be wrong. The very figures I gave can be seen in _The Statistical History of the United States_, range H 972. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 23 15:17:06 EDT 1994 Article: 1761 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Neo-techno-conservatism Date: 23 May 1994 11:49:25 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 47 Message-ID: <2rqja5$o4f@panix.com> References: <2rq8ta$ci1@beyond.escape.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com btraven@escape.com (James O'Meara) writes: >Your posting started off as if it were talking about Geo Gilder, but the >last part sounds more like the TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) of Hakim >Bey. I suppose that's because I've seen suggestions by GG and others that radical decentralization is the wave of the future for technological reasons, but never an account of what it would look like. I posted in order to get people's ideas. The best I could come up with is something like the social structure of wandering Gypsies, which involves an ideal of individual freedom, families based on strict sex roles and sexual morality, bands held together by the need for cooperation in practical matters, and tribes to provide marriage partners, arbitration of disputes, emergency assistance and so on. I would imagine something like that was the social structure during the paleolithic, so maybe it's the arrangement we're naturally happiest with. >Bey believes that anarchist should abandon the "overthrow the govt" >model and make use of the new possibilities technology affords us to find >temporary spaces in the control system: > >"The TAZ is an encampment of guerilla ontologist; strike and run away. >Keep moving the entire tribe, even if it is only data in the Web >(Web=Internet, or rather the semi-legal uses of it; Bey takes over from >Chaos theory the idea of data, and thus communities, "existing" virtually >within the Web, able to be reconstituted at random new locations)." Gypsies have no use for non-Gypsies except as marks. Bey's guerilla ontologists also seem to lack civic feeling. What's lost when people feel no tie to an overall public order? Could science and scholarship survive? If not, how much goes with them? Will there be monasteries to preserve the heritage of learning during the new Voelkerwanderungen? Details at 11 ... >For more, check out the hypertext site http://www/ifi/uio.no/~mariusw/bey/ >or the review on page 61 of the new Whole Earth Review, or check out TAZ >at your local "alternative" bookstore (Autonomedia, 150pp, $6 cheap!) I tried to get it via ftpmail once before but only got a couple of fragments. I'll try again. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 25 06:13:23 EDT 1994 Article: 12926 of alt.revisionism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Re: New German gag law Date: 24 May 1994 18:02:47 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 15 Message-ID: <2rtti7$ich@panix.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In codfish@netcom.com (Ross Vicksell) writes: >Here's something for our exterminationist friends to applaud. According >to a feature story last Saturday's Toronto Globe and Mail, "German >parliamentarians yesterday passes a law making it illegal to deny the >murder of more than six million Jews by the Nazis. As reported, it sounds like someone who said "The Nazis killed 5.7 million Jews" would be doing something illegal. Does anyone know what the law actually says? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 25 06:13:28 EDT 1994 Article: 1766 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Neo-techno-conservatism Date: 24 May 1994 18:09:29 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 60 Message-ID: <2rttup$jkt@panix.com> References: <2rq0m6$8d6@panix.com> <2rtfb2$o6t@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >: Any comments on neo-techno-conservatism? By that I mean the view that >: microchips, fiber optics and all the rest of it mean that centralized >: systems of comunications and control are outmoded, so people will more >: and more be able to avoid the exactions and do without the benefits of >: large formal centralized systems like the modern state. > >I'm not sure that this is a sort of Conservatism that I like. While >there is something to be said for cutting down on the bureaucratic >aspects of the state, the idea of atomised grouplets is not very >appealing. I suspect that what we would find is the growth of anomie, >alienation and perhaps of violence based on intolerance - one good >aspect of work is that you are forced to confront large numbers of very >different people and get on with them, I for one would view working >from home with horror. I have always regarded collectivities as >preceding individual identity and creating it not vice versa. The usual neo-tech con argument is one of neo-Marxist historical inevitability -- the stage of development of the means of production (microchips and fiber optics) determines the most efficient mode of cooperation (radical decentralization), which is inevitably adopted and determines everything else. They need some such "inevitable outcome of the historical process" argument, because it doesn't seem likely that the society they envision would be created by government bureaucrats or voted into existence. That kind of argument also enables them to say "it doesn't matter whether you like it or not, so get used to it". I find it hard to evaluate the form of society envisioned, maybe because I don't know how it would look. I suppose if it were ordered entirely by the market you'd get anomie, alienation and random violence because that's what you get when people experience the social structures they live by as alien, and it's hard to have warm and cozy feelings about the world market. Presumably it wouldn't be ordered entirely by the market, because the market can't take care of some wants and needs people have (rearing children, the mechanics and pleasures of domestic life, support in the face of uninsurable risks like unemployment) as well as other forms of cooperation like the family. If the modern state were out of the picture the family would have no competitors as an educational institution or as the institution that gives people what they can't buy with money, so it might be much stronger than at present. If so, then I don't think anomie and alienation would be a problem. The society would be radically familistic rather than individualistic. I'm not sure intolerance would be a problem either, since the whole theory is based on the notion that people are becoming more and more able to avoid each other. To my mind, the obvious problem is the end of a public world within which things like science, scholarship and political action for the common good can be carried on. I sometimes get the impression that's happening anyway, though. Of course, another issue is whether any of this speculation corresponds to things that are actually likely to happen. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed May 25 06:13:29 EDT 1994 Article: 1768 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: cuckoldry Date: 24 May 1994 22:06:20 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 17 Message-ID: <2rubqs$ns6@panix.com> References: <1994May24.234003.1824@news.cs.brandeis.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <1994May24.234003.1824@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >"In about 5 percent of cases, genetic >testing reveals the nonpaternity of a child's father - information that >might shatter a marriage." That still seems rather high to me -- it suggests that 10% of all wives are currently having affairs, assuming lovers and husbands are equally active and erring wives are no more careful with contraception with their lovers than the average woman is with her husband. It would be interesting to know who was tested to get the 5 percent and whether any special categories account for a disproportionate share. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Thu May 26 15:57:10 EDT 1994 Article: 1771 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Neo-techno-conservatism Date: 26 May 1994 15:56:52 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 91 Message-ID: <2s2uu4$jp7@panix.com> References: <2rq0m6$8d6@panix.com> <94146.081721U24C1@wvnvm.wvnet.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Terry Rephann writes: >>Any comments on neo-techno-conservatism? By that I mean the view that >>microchips, fiber optics and all the rest of it mean that centralized >>systems of comunications and control are outmoded, so people will more >>and more be able to avoid the exactions and do without the benefits of >>large formal centralized systems like the modern state. > >The same arguments were made when transportation improvements such as >the railroads networks and interstate highways were on the drawing >board. According to proponents, the new systems would chiefly >encourage peripheral development. What happened, in fact, was (as Adam >Smith predicted) the extension of markets. Certain goods and services >could be manufactured cheaper at certain nodes where greater degrees of >specialization are possible. Unfortunately, greater specialization >begets greater specialization. Cities become bigger cities through a >cumulative reinforcing process. Corporations become bigger corporations >(not unlike municipalities). The idea seems to be that continuing improvements in communication and information handling don't keep producing the same results forever. In particular, they need not have a constant effect with respect to increasing organizational size and centralization. I believe, for example, that the average worker has a smaller employer now than 30 years ago. (At least that's what all the claims about job growth in small business and downsizing of large enterprises lead me to think.) It is also my impression that there are no longer states that are losing population, because it is now easier than in the past to integrate activities anywhere into the productive process. >Therefore, the basic effect of such programs is not pro-competitive. >They lead to a greater degree of spatial polarization, expanding >trusts, and the need for more 'public services' for the alienated >masses. If conditions are unpropitious for large-scale managed organizations, and economic activity is carried on through markets that are too flexible and mobile to be effectively regulated and taxed [I have no idea if this "if" clause makes sense], then the public services won't be provided and the alienated masses will be forced to develop other ways of getting what they want and can't get on the market. The obvious alternatives to large-scale managed organizations that are reliable because their operations are prescribed by law (e.g. governments) are small-scale informal organizations (e.g. families) that are reliable because people are born into them and find it hard to leave them because there's no place else for them to go. Therefore social standards and morality will shift in the direction of familialism. The idea seems to be that if communications, information processing and markets were perfect no large-scale rational organization could survive because if it were a consensual organization whatever it did could be done better through the market, and if it were not consensual people could outwit and avoid it. However, it would still be true that people couldn't get through life without some organization they could rely on for something beyond giving them what they pay for. The organization that would survive in such a world would be the organization that appeals the most strongly to the irrational instincts and loyalties shared by the most people. Once it became accepted as the organization you look to for things the market can't do for you, its position would be very strong because if you didn't like it you would have no place else to go for what it offers. I'm sorry the foregoing is so vague and speculative, by the way. I'm finding it hard to think these issues through. >By the way, aren't most of these computer services provided by giant >corporations such as AT&T, General Electric, and IBM? What happens if >they decide to selectively start turning the switches off? There are a lot more suppliers of communications and computer services than there used to be. It seems to me that improved electronics does mean more routes, channels and bands for communications. If you don't like the phone company, you'll be able to send the message by microwave, by cable TV, through the electric lines, by means of micro-seismic waves in the Earth's mantle, whatever. >The systems that are created will be much less personal and much more >likely to facilitate the spread of rational loyalties such as binary >logic. They will help destroy family and community life as thoroughly >as did the TV and video game phenomena. If they do create informal >networks, they won't be the kinds that C-Rs cherish. The issue is what happens when the systems created by binary logic that supply all needs that can be supplied through monetary exchange become as impersonal as nature. Do people then proceed to create a new social order to satisfy their remaining needs? If so, what would it look like? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Fri May 27 16:16:33 EDT 1994 Article: 24852 of talk.politics.theory Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.radical-left Subject: Re: Liberalism (was: The U.S. Postal Service...) Date: 26 May 1994 20:40:38 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 28 Message-ID: <2s3fi6$dhc@panix.com> References: <2rtmds$rjq@zip.eecs.umich.edu> <2rtnb6$ol0@ncar.ucar.edu> <2s30nl$pug@zip.eecs.umich.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:24852 talk.politics.misc:175396 alt.politics.libertarian:28639 alt.politics.radical-left:14367 carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes: >a just society is one whose institutions treat each individual >impartially as an end in himself or herself ... society's institutions, >according to the egalitarian conception, should be designed to give >*everyone* an equal opportunity to pursue a meaningful life, except to >the extent that inequalities would benefit the least advantaged. Joseph de Maistre finds meaning working toward a society based on Papal supremacy. John Rawls finds meaning becoming famous, influential and admired writing books and articles promoting the sort of society you describe. Joe Blow finds meaning working very hard to make a lot of money so he can engage in his real love, ocean racing. I take it that liberals think Count de Maistre should be absolutely forbidden to realize his goal, while Joe Blow should be allowed to pursue his as long as he gives some of his hard earned cash to Professor Rawls, who is allowed to devote all his efforts to pursuing his goal, gets his views (in an ideal liberal world) adopted by the Supreme Court as the law of the land, and also gets an income supplement from poor Joe because Joe makes more money than he does. In what way do liberals give Joseph, John and Joe an equal opportunity to pursue a meaningful life? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 30 16:23:30 EDT 1994 Article: 1774 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Complex federalism Date: 30 May 1994 09:41:54 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 36 Message-ID: <2scqf2$1f1@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Another query: Can anyone suggest useful discussions of forms of political organization suitable to a civilized society other than the sovereign territorial state? The nightmare of CRs is a society ordered only by abstract principles equally applicable to all and motivated by goals of finite value. The modern state tends to bring forth that nightmare. It recognizes nothing superior to itself that justifies it, and so can justify itself only by making an absolute value out of its characteristic activity, the subjection of human action to a coherent body of rules. The rules can't be motivated by anything nobler than the state itself, since the state recognizes no such thing, so their purpose is chosen by default: the existence and power of the state itself, the satisfaction of whatever purposes particular people happen to have, the denial of the possibility that one purpose can be nobler than another. In a federal system it seems there is no sovereign state. Each of the states recognizes the federal system as superior, at least in some respects, and the federal system recognizes its powers as limited and the states collectively as its superior. The balance has been rather hard to maintain, though. One could imagine an extension of federalism in which there were both territorial and nonterritorial communities with a political existence of their own, and possibly such an extended federalism might have its advantages. In the Middle Ages I suppose the clergy and the Jews constituted nonterritorial communities of international scope, and others (guilds and estates) were important at least locally or within particular territorial states. No doubt more examples could be found in other parts of the world (millets in the Muslim world? castes in India?). I know nothing about corporatist or sydicalist theories, but possibly they may also be relevant. Any suggestions? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Mon May 30 16:23:33 EDT 1994 Article: 6162 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism Subject: Liberalism and our response Date: 30 May 1994 07:15:07 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 92 Message-ID: <2schrr$l5d@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com I wrote the following to clarify my own thoughts, and am posting it on the chance that someone may find it useful or worth commenting on. If someone is badly off and it appears that the government can do something for him and spread the cost among those who are better off, the liberal view is that it should be done. The refusal to do so, in the liberal view, is either a case of blaming the victim, a willful refusal to redress injustice, an obscurantist denial that the failure of government to act is also an action to be judged morally, or an assertion (unproveable but convenient for those who benefit from the status quo) that nothing should be done to correct the evil because the attempt might make something else worse. If the liberal view is right, then conservatism lacks adequate justification and so must be accounted for on non-rational grounds. The explanation may be more or less generous, depending on the liberal, but a common explaination is that conservatives are creepy. Their true principles are greed, love of domination, and irrational prejudice and hatred. They are at best indifferent to the suffering of others, and more often draw actual pleasure from inflicting pain on those less fortunate than themselves. They lack the capacity to enjoy things simply and directly, and so wish to destroy pleasures that they envy and cannot share. Conservatives naturally disagree. However, it is difficult for them to counter such views with arguments that concede that the function of government is to promote the good of society and individuals however it can. Big-government conservatism doesn't work. If case-by-case policy considerations are the only restraints on the scope of government activity, then the straightforward thing for well-meaning people to do in an uncertain and fluid world is to let the government deal directly with everything that seems a clear and concrete evil and leave any remote and uncertain consequences for another day. The result will be that the responsibilities of government will expand without limit. It follows that conservatives need more than anything to make the case for constitutional principles that limit the authority and responsibility of government. It's easier to say that than to know how to do it effectively, of course. The clearest reason for favoring constitutionalism is that in its absence modern society will eventually disintegrate into an all-powerful centralized government on the one hand and isolated and powerless individuals on the other. Unfortunately, people whose livelihood and status depend on politics and government usually don't want to hear about constitutional limitations that would reduce their own power and importance. Nor do remote consequences motivate ordinary people to become active in politics as effectively as the prospect of immediate benefits. So the people who are most interested in politics are not likely to be receptive to the case for conservative constitutionalism. Nonetheless, that case must be made. At one time, limited government was an accepted political principle in the United States, but it's not much talked about now. The limitations on the power of government discussed today are not intended to guard the independence and authority of social institutions other than government (e.g., subsidiary governments, businesses, churches, educational and civic institutions, private property, the family). Rather, they are limitations on the power of government to recognize and cooperate with such institutions. For example, the religion clause of the First Amendment has been used to keep religious organizations and even motivations out of public life and the Fourteenth Amendment has been used in a variety of ways to transfer power from states and localities to the federal government. The things that today are viewed as limitations on government are thus the reverse of what is needed. Far from restraining government, they have the effect of promoting the concentration of all power and authority in a single all-powerful state because they tend to weaken social institutions other than government. What then can we do? We can certainly present arguments more forcefully and more intelligently than we do now. We can argue that salvation is not to be achieved through political action, debunk the notion of social justice and show what must be destroyed by attempts to bring it about, and emphasize the dangers of centralization so that political discussion will have to take them into account. More positively, we can promote love of family, property, federalism, and the traditions of one's own place and people, and defend those attachments against accusations of greed and bigotry. But agitation and propaganda alone are unlikely to be successful as long as the proportion of politically active people with a strong personal interest in expanding the scope and power of government is as large as it is. Accordingly, conservatives must change that proportion. The obvious means for doing so are taking part in politics ourselves, and pushing tax reductions in order to reduce the number of those dependent on government for their livelihood and give people generally a stake in reducing the size of government. The three primary goals of conservatives at present, then, must be public education, personal political involvement, and tax reduction. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 31 05:33:18 EDT 1994 Article: 6166 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism Subject: Re: Liberalism and our response Date: 30 May 1994 22:05:59 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 72 Message-ID: <2se627$8nl@panix.com> References: <2schrr$l5d@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes: >>If someone is badly off and it appears that the government can do >>something for him and spread the cost among those who are better off, >>the liberal view is that it should be done. > >Although I daresay there are liberals who believe in this, in and >of itself, I would dispute that it is "the liberal view". It is >a frequent consequence of the liberal view, but I think there's >a little more underneath the sentiment than that. It might fit >a bit better if it were clear that the "badly off" and "better >off" apply to liberties and opportunities as much as if not more >than to financial conditions. Let it be clear, then. The liberal theory, as I understand it, is that being badly off financially is simply one case (although a very important case) of lacking the liberties and opportunities other people have, and that inequalities of liberty or opportunity call in general for remedial government action when such action is possible. (I suppose I could claim all that was clear in what I wrote, by asserting that "cost" includes the burden of restrictions such as anti-discrimination laws imposed for the benefit of persons other than oneself. If you're inclined to credit such a claim, by all means treat it as made.) >> The refusal to do so, in >>the liberal view, is either a case of blaming the victim, a willful >>refusal to redress injustice, an obscurantist denial that the failure >>of government to act is also an action to be judged morally, or an >>assertion (unproveable but convenient for those who benefit from the >>status quo) that nothing should be done to correct the evil because the >>attempt might make something else worse. > >The first two seem to happen often but not always. The third I >haven't seen. I saw it at least touched on very recently in talk.politics.theory, I think somewhere in Calvin Ostrum's posts, where he felt called on to argue that lassez faire is a policy like any other. I used to hear the denial of a distinction between state action and state inaction all the time in law school from proponents of the activist state like Bruce Ackerman. >The last requires measures of better and worse, of course; but many >people choose those measures that preserve their privilege. This is >not to say that accusations are always right, or anything stupid like >that (but then, this isn't an exhaustive list); but you can't just say >that victims are never blamed, etc. Sure. One of the points of my post was that on the face of it the charges have a great deal of plausibility. >Well, the liberal view IMHO is that we live in a world with >great inequality of liberty, opportunity, and generosity. I think that the specifically liberal view is not that such inequalities exist, but that they are the moral feature of the world that calls for the most attention. >Conservatism has to address the questions of whether changes >intended to repair these will make things better or worse, >and what the grounds for believing their answers will be. A main point of my post was that if those questions are treated as matters of ordinary policy ("shall I as a government official with a lot of discretion give this lady who seems to have lots of problems some money?") the answers will tend to be liberal. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 31 19:45:34 EDT 1994 Article: 1777 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Complex federalism Date: 31 May 1994 06:01:57 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 27 Message-ID: <2sf1ul$14j@panix.com> References: <2scqf2$1f1@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com jabowery@netcom.com (Jim Bowery) writes: >> Can anyone suggest useful discussions of forms of >> political organization suitable to a civilized society other than the >> sovereign territorial state? > >Yes, individual sovereignty. > >There is reason to believe that prechristian northern european culture >had a social contract which recognized the individual's right to >challenge another to a "fair fight" (which became the duel) -- thereby >breaking the monopoly on force that is the foundation of the modern state. The records of that culture I am aware of (like _Beowulf_ and the Icelandic sagas) show societies with constant feuds, intergroup warfare, and raids for booty on outsiders. No doubt it was better than our own culture in many ways, but I'm not sure it would be the best thing for us to aim at. Also, I'm not sure how great a density of population it could support, so getting there might be much less than half the fun. Do you know of any extended speculations as to what a modern society based on individual sovereignty might look like? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 31 19:45:40 EDT 1994 Article: 33897 of bit.listserv.catholic Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic Subject: Re: EEOC to ban religious articles... (long) Date: 31 May 1994 09:45:41 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 23 Message-ID: <2sff25$2ju@panix.com> References: <2sev9v$jbs@tierra.santafe.ede> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com >>I pretty much think this it what is >>going to happen: discrimination in hiring (e.g. "help wanted -- no >>Jews") will be forbidden, and some extreme cases of workplace >>harassment will be regulated (e.g., my hypothetical superior who >>demands that the employee attend the superior's church or be >>fired), but other than that the law won't be involved. >To what extent do these laws apply in regard to jobs which would require >a specific religious belief - e.g. a caretaker in a church or a teacher >in a Catholic school? How about an establishment (a farm, for example) that only takes on workers that are of a particular religion, insists that they attend and actively participate in services at the superior's church several times a day, supervises their lives in great detail in accordance with the superior's religious principles, and engages in blatant sex discrimination to boot. Such an establishment would be clearly illegal, right? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 31 19:45:41 EDT 1994 Article: 33963 of bit.listserv.catholic Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic Subject: Re: EEOC to ban religious articles... (long) Date: 31 May 1994 13:14:28 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 27 Message-ID: <2sfr9k$m93@panix.com> References: <2sev9v$jbs@tierra.santafe.ede> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com >: To what extent do these laws apply in regard to jobs which would require >: a specific religious belief - e.g. a caretaker in a church or a teacher >: in a Catholic school? >They don't apply at all. Religious organizations are exempt. What's a religious organization? Discrimination or internal compulsion in religious matters would normally demonstrate a religious purpose, I should think, and so on the face of it the exemption you mention should leave laws against religious discrimination and harassment not much to apply to. Suppose, for example, Joe's Department Store only hires Baptists, requires attendence at employee prayer meetings and fires people who don't attend Sunday services at the local Baptist church. When asked about his policies, Joe reads from the employee manual: "The purpose of Joe's Department Store is to demonstrate that an organization operated on Christian principles by the faithful can provide for the material needs of its owners and employees and serve the public while providing a setting for owners and employees to help each other grow as Christians in a Christian community". Is Joe's an exempt religious organization? -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Tue May 31 19:45:43 EDT 1994 Article: 34021 of bit.listserv.catholic Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic Subject: Re: EEOC to ban religious articles... Date: 31 May 1994 17:09:03 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 25 Message-ID: <2sg91f$bpf@panix.com> References: <2sev9v$jbs@tierra.santafe.ede> <2sff25$2ju@panix.com> <1994May31.134145.32870@hulaw1.harvard.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <1994May31.134145.32870@hulaw1.harvard.edu> hemr@hulaw1.harvard.edu (Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School) writes: >> How about an establishment (a farm, for example) that only takes on >> workers that are of a particular religion, insists that they attend and >> actively participate in services at the superior's church several times >> a day, supervises their lives in great detail in accordance with the >> superior's religious principles, and engages in blatant sex >> discrimination to boot. Such an establishment would be clearly >> illegal, right? >Not if the farm were a monastic community or something similar. There >are exceptions for those types of institutions built in to the fair >employment act (indeed, the 1st Am. would require such exceptions). Why aren't the features I described (leaving aside the sex discrimination, which I just threw in) enough to make the farm sufficiently similar to a monastery to qualify for 1st Am. protection? Patently its purpose is to establish a setting in which a voluntary group can live its life in accordance with particular religious conceptions. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 1 14:08:22 EDT 1994 Article: 34111 of bit.listserv.catholic Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic Subject: Re: EEOC to ban religious articles... Date: 1 Jun 1994 06:05:03 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 24 Message-ID: <2shmgf$l15@panix.com> References: <2sev9v$jbs@tierra.santafe.ede> <2sff25$2ju@panix.com> <1994May31.134145.32870@hulaw1.harvard.edu> <2sg91f$bpf@panix.com> <1994May31.194706.32883@hulaw1.harvard.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <1994May31.194706.32883@hulaw1.harvard.edu> hemr@hulaw1.harvard.edu (Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School) writes: >Basically, these questions aren't neatly resolved by the >law because they just don't come up that much. You mean there's a neat resolution in principle, but they haven't bothered putting it in the law because from a practical standpoint it hasn't been worth the effort? The job opportunities >provided by quasi-monastic communities aren't so desirable that there >are people knocking down the doors with injunctions demanding to be >considered for employment -- usually people want to live in those >communities because of their religious beliefs, not because they are >looking to advance their careers. My Joe's Department Store wasn't a quasi-monastic community. It was like any other store except that only active churchgoing Baptists who participate in company prayer meetings could work there. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 2 09:13:17 EDT 1994 Article: 1781 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Neo-techno-conservatism Date: 1 Jun 1994 15:29:52 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 58 Message-ID: <2sinjg$hs2@panix.com> References: <94146.081721U24C1@wvnvm.wvnet.edu> <2s2uu4$jp7@panix.com> <94152.083543U24C1@wvnvm.wvnet.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Terry Rephann writes: >these smaller firms can't compete without reaching some critical mass >of marketing capability Presumably, lower information costs would make the critical mass easier to reach. >It's ultimately a political question, not a economic or technological >one. According to a recent article in _Economic Development Quarterly_ >by Bennett Harrison, the tendency in the U.S. is toward mass production >and larger firms. Evidently, the political questions have been >resolved in favor of the large firms. Obviously the government would prefer larger firms, since they make it easier to enforce compliance with government policy. That seems to me something on which the government will have trouble getting its druthers in the long run. Perhaps I should look at the things you cite, though. >the transactions costs involved in information exchange may become so >low that familiar relations become obsolete. Some aspects of family >relations are economic--they provide ways for individuals to hedge >against uncertainty and change. If the risk and informational >functions of families atrophy then we could see them replaced by purely >economic networks. The uninsurability of some risks doesn't depend on information costs, though. Unemployment is an example of an economic risk that is uninsurable because it is too much a moral risk. Also, I don't think a purely contractual approach would work for raising children, which is an activity that has its economic side. >The family will, no doubt, survive. But, I suspect it will >increasingly be coopted in those areas where economic relations are >predominant. Even if the welfare state is abandoned? That's an essential part of neo-techno-con theory, as I understand it. If the welfare state goes, I suppose the key is how much can be contracted for and insured against. I'm not sure, but it seems to me that in the future, even with lower information costs, limitations on what can be done by contract will become increasingly apparent. It seems to me, for example, that in general honesty and reliability are not things that can be effectually contracted or insured for because there are too many people who are judgment proof and because it can be hard to enforce a contract when the other party is a skilled perjurer. So in the hi-tech binary logic world of the future, in which the common social morality formerly associated with institutions that no longer exist has been replaced by contractual arrangements designed to be easily enforceable, maybe all businesses will be family businesses because people will feel they can't trust employees who aren't relatives. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 2 09:13:24 EDT 1994 Article: 6178 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism Subject: A right-wing analysis of discrimination Date: 1 Jun 1994 18:07:01 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 106 Message-ID: <2sj0q5$rm9@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Another piece composed for my own benefit, posted on the chance someone might find it of interest or worthy of comment. The things classified as racism, sexism, homophobia and the like arise from the human tendency to feel kinship on account of common membership in groups with characteristic attitudes, perceptions, habits, experiences, affiliations, and so on. When membership carries with it benefits of some sort and the groups are ones that are difficult or impossible for outsiders to enter, nonmembers often object to being treated as such. The accepted view today seems to be that willing failure to remove the grounds for such objections is an inexcusable moral failing. There are several possible methods of eliminating, neutralizing or reducing the effects of discrimination of the sort objected to. All have major problems: 1. The "affirmative action" approach is to equalize benefits for all groups. Such equalization is hard to achieve, however. One problem is that benefits arise from what the members of a group do as well as what is done to them, so attempts to equalize them create resentments and, by their further effects on perceptions and behavior, create new distinctions that then also have to be equalized. If blacks are guaranteed an equal share of jobs and honors then non-blacks competing for the remaining jobs and honors will be resentful, talented blacks will feel less need to compete and their performance will suffer, and any honorable distinction will confer less honor on a black than on another person receiving it because the common view will be that it stands for less. 2. The strict antidiscrimination/equal opportunity approach is to forbid people to act on feelings of kinship based on common group membership, at least if the group is determined to be a privileged one. A problem with this method is that people feel membership in groups of the kind in question is part of what makes them what they are. That is why discrimination can be painful, but it is also why it is an extreme measure to tell people that in the common practical affairs of life they can't associate by preference with those they view as their fellows. Such feelings of kinship are often called irrational or worse, but calling them that doesn't make it reasonable to ignore or try to abolish them. Man is a social animal, and his good is typically realized through participation in communities tied together by common history, beliefs, habits, attitudes, and the like. It is just such ties that give rise to loyalties of the kind that antidiscrimination laws require people to ignore. Accordingly, such laws by their nature require people to ignore and deny affiliations of the kind that facilitate attaining their good. For example, different groups have different standards regarding intangible things that determine how institutions subject to antidiscrimination laws function: manners and courtesy; honesty, good faith and loyalty; the relative importance of organizational harmony, profit, public spirit, and personal goals; the appropriate relationship between authority and individual initiative and between rules and their exceptions. (The list could be extended.) The standards of no one group can be taken as a universal ideal, but if there are no particular accepted standards within an organization the organization is likely to become more a place for misunderstanding, conflict and self-seeking than for effective cooperation carried on in a manner and spirit that fits it to be part of a good life for those involved. Accordingly, every successful organization must be particularistic in the sense that it must have its own accepted ways. Since the ways of any organization will be far more compatible with the ways of some groups than others, it is hard to see how the organization could avoid being more hospitable to people from compatible groups than to others without undercutting the basis of its own success. 3. The libertarian approach is to reduce government regulation. This approach will sometimes reduce the amount or effect of discrimination if the government has required discrimination or has otherwise made it difficult for people to enter into relationships they view as advantageous. For example, governments sometimes in effect promote discrimination by imposing professional licensing requirements or supporting trade unions. However, this approach will not eliminate discrimination, if only because discrimination is often functional, and it tends to require government to treat discrimination as legitimate conduct when enforcing contracts and property rights. Accordingly, to accept this approach is to abandon the view that discrimination is by nature a gross evil that should be eradicated. It is not altogether clear why discrimination on racial and similar grounds is considered so profoundly and disgracefully wrong today. It is said to deny the human dignity of those discriminated against, but that seems clearly wrong. We all pick and choose our associates, for good reasons and bad, without necessarily denying the human dignity of those we reject. It is said to inflict material and emotional damage on those discriminated against, but so does discrimination on any other grounds, and prohibiting discrimination also causes damage since it forbids people to carry on the way of life they prefer in the community to which they are attached. Also, to be the object of discrimination is to be challenged to develop one's own community and way of life, while to be a member of a disadvantaged group protected from discrimination can be to see one's own group and way of life disintegrate as its most active and capable members leave it. Contemplation of the history of the Jews since emancipation or since arrival in America or of Jews and blacks since the late 1960s need not lead to the conclusion that restraints on discrimination are always favorable to the group that had been burdened. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 2 09:13:28 EDT 1994 Article: 34209 of bit.listserv.catholic Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic Subject: Re: EEOC to ban religious articles... Date: 1 Jun 1994 15:23:33 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 16 Message-ID: <2sin7l$g65@panix.com> References: <2sev9v$jbs@tierra.santafe.ede> <2sff25$2ju@panix.com> <2shmgf$l15@panix.com> <1994Jun1.134954.32892@hulaw1.harvard.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In <1994Jun1.134954.32892@hulaw1.harvard.edu> hemr@hulaw1.harvard.edu (Kurt Wm. Hemr, Harvard Law School) writes: >> My Joe's Department Store wasn't a quasi-monastic community. It was >> like any other store except that only active churchgoing Baptists who >> participate in company prayer meetings could work there. >This is an exam question, not an example of a typical real life scenario. I was misled then. I thought early on someone mentioned requiring membership or attendance at a particular church as a clear example of something the EEOC guidelines would be aimed at. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 2 18:54:57 EDT 1994 Article: 1785 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Neo-techno-conservatism Date: 2 Jun 1994 10:10:37 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 63 Message-ID: <2skp8t$t1k@panix.com> References: <94152.083543U24C1@wvnvm.wvnet.edu> <2sinjg$hs2@panix.com> <94153.070930U24C1@wvnvm.wvnet.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Terry Rephann writes: >>Also, I don't think a >>purely contractual approach would work for raising children, which is an >>activity that has its economic side. > >I'm not so sure about this. Boarding schools and Nannies have been >doing these things for years. Could they be mass-marketed, though? In the old English system a wealthy and well-placed class with coherent standards and strong family feeling had a quite definite institutionalized way of raising their children that didn't require much day-to-day parental involvement. I'm not sure anything similar could be set up in the free-to-be-you-and-me consumer society. There's also the matter of expense. >Children are bought and sold in adoption and black markets. A Uterus >can be rented to the highest bidder for test-tube pregnancies. NPR >reported this morning about a Swiss millionaire who would provide >$2,900 per month to a women who birthed and raised his first child. Sounds expensive and not much fun, so I don't think it will sweep the nation. If you're going to hire people to bear and look after your kids, and you don't live in a society where continuing the family is a prime value, why bother? >I'm assuming that the state is able to raise enough revenue for its >operations and still have enough left over for transfers. One theory on this is that economic activity will become mobile enough to avoid taxes by hiding, moving to another jurisdiction, restructuring in a form that isn't taxed, and so on. Another is that the techno-flexo economy of the future will reward energy and cleverness enough to create a large class of energetic, clever, and very rich people who will be able to control the state in their own interests. On a less speculative plane, it appears that over time redistributive policies require more and more redistribution to maintain any particular minimum level of welfare, so in the long run it won't be possible to base a social order on them. >I think that honesty and reliability can be contracted for. Like >registered mail delivery from the U.S. Postal Service, however, it >costs a lot more. I think that's usually right. But the large extra costs will lead people to value institutions that provide reliability cheaply. Presumably those will be institutions that feature long-term connections that are difficult to opt out of. >What are the effects of the new informational technologies on trust? >That's a tough question. Under certain circumstances, they might >improve trust. It all depends on the behavior of the other. I suppose better informational technologies mean less need for trust, so habits of trustworthiness will be less cultivated. On the other hand, they also mean it will be easier to check up on people, so maybe habits of dishonesty will also be less cultivated. As you say, it is an interesting question. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Fri Jun 3 06:10:48 EDT 1994 Article: 6183 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism Subject: Re: A right-wing analysis of discrimination Date: 2 Jun 1994 22:25:05 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 229 Message-ID: <2sm4a1$a7i@panix.com> References: <2sj0q5$rm9@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes: >There is an ethos in society that favours the idea of meritocracy, of >Horatio Alger working his way up, of any person having the potential to >achieve the presidency if they try hard enough. I'm not sure about the U.K., but over here that's rather a right-wing notion (not as right-wing as my notions, but right-wing nonetheless). The emphasis over here has definitively shifted, I think, to inclusiveness and diversity rather than meritocracy. I think of Bill Clinton's "cabinet that looks like America", which he apparently thought was a mass-market selling point, and a pronouncement I just read on diversity from my wife's employer, a major bank, in which they say that their goal is to have their personnel reflect the society they do business in and to develop an appreciation of the different sorts of contributions different sorts of people can make. As a practical matter it's hard to avoid such an approach, since from the standpoint of the U.S. civil rights laws there's no good way to explain away a workforce that's not reasonably similar in composition to the pool of eligible workers. Therefore employers and other institutions have to emphasize inclusiveness over meritocracy, and if an institution has to do something that superior authority tells it is good it develops an ideology that says the thing is good. I suppose there's also a question as to how devoted most people ever were to meritocracy. I would imagine it was always strongest as an ideal among people in skilled professions who considered career the most important thing in their lives, and that's not everyone. "The best man should get the job" is a principle most people would assent to, I agree, but people assent to lots of things they won't stick to if they see something else that matters more to them. For example, most people would also prefer to work with people they feel they have a lot in common with personally and who they think will fit in with their fellows, and would consider that a good basis for a hiring decision. >This depends on a lack of the cliquishness you describe in particular >kinds of human relationships, in particular those having to do with >commercial/professional actions. Anything interfering with this is >seen to be immoral, as you note; but this realm of interaction is >carefully separated from that of personal, private goings on. It is >true that such a division is (to a large extent) a fiction, a clear and >bright line drawn over a muddy continuum (much as the age of majority >distinguishes the "mature" from the "immature"); but in non-borderline >cases, most people have a good sense of when personal characteristics >should be taken into account in favouring individuals, and when they >should not. I can't help but wonder why if all this is so, and people in general agree on what they should and shouldn't do, the broad construction and vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws is seen as such an important duty of government. >As far as I can tell, the overall consensus among blacks is that >discrimination is still so widespread that they are not concerned with >second-order effects like feeling less need to compete, or receiving >less honour. They feel that even when talented, they are forcing their >way against an opposing current; even when honour is due them it is >offered only grudgingly. I think that is indeed how they feel. If the second-order effects are real, how likely is it that they will ever feel differently? It seems to me bad to have the career success of blacks depend on programs that are just only if it's assumed that they're not ever going to run into people who'll give them a fair shake. In order to view his own life and successes as justified every prominent black will have to tell himself that whites generally have been against him. >The question of resentment is harder, but again the sentiment I've >heard is that it is not the AA causing resentment so much as providing >a (legitimizing) focus for a pre-existing bias. Whether this is true I >don't know, but it has a certain plausibility. If you think AA is just, that's the sentiment you'll have. AA is needed because whites are biased, and if you want proof of how biased whites are just look at how much they object to AA. >Again, here we have to look at the kinds of interactions in question, >and the harm caused by interference vs. non-interference. Nobody would >try to tell anyone who their friends had to be; but systematically >excluding people from opportunities to advance themselves has to be >considered unfair. It is the large grey area in the middle that causes >so much grief; I don't think there is a general principle that allows >us to rule one way or the other every time. Suppose all civil rights laws were repealed. How much systematic exclusion would be possible? To take the case of blacks, there are 30 million of them in the U.S. and enough whites who don't mind mixing with them that civil rights laws can get passed. So who would do the excluding? Even if no American whites at all wanted to have economic dealings with blacks, markets and economic processes have gotten far more flexible and far harder to exclude people from in the past 25 years. On the face of it, 30 million blacks who are surrounded by whites who don't want anything to do with them would be no worse off than 2.5 million Singaporeans who are surrounded by water, and Singapore is thriving. It's worth noting, by the way, that the economic condition of blacks improved steadily from WWII until the late '60s, when the civil rights laws and the War on Poverty were first taking hold, and since then has on the whole stagnated (there are more black professionals but also a bigger black underclass). >In the larger, communal sense, allowing a group to exclude cannot be >justified if it causes undue harm to those excluded (and of course >"undue" is where the trouble starts). We have to try to characterize >those forms of bonding that are positive, both in themselves and for >society as a whole, and contrast them with bonds that although positive >for the people concerned, cause so much damage elsewhere. This is a >somewhat utilitarian approach, I suppose; but the sense of belonging >that a group of skinheads achieve with one another when they join in >kicking a helpless victim is not one that we can afford to tolerate. I would say that sex role differentiation and bonding on ethnic and religious grounds are necessary to a society that anyone would want to live in. Sex role differentiation because practically speaking that's the only way most children will ever get raised decently, and ethnic and religious bonding because that's how communities maintain and develop a way of life that goes beyond individual self-interest. As to paki-bashing by skinheads, we can agree it should be suppressed. You don't need civil rights laws to do that though. Old-fashioned laws against assault and battery are good enough. >there is a surprisingly wide and shared view of what "decent" behaviour >and respect consist of, even though these may be reflected in a wide >variety of actions. An organization built upon fear and scorn will >always generate resentment; one built upon concern and honour will tend >to build loyalty, even if individual rules of behaviour are misguided >and biased. Sure. Everyone agrees, for example, that politeness and loyalty are good things, but what they demand specifically differs greatly from group to group. An ethnic group is a bunch of people who have lived together for a long time and so have developed particular modes of cooperation (like particular standards of loyalty and politeness). On average, people who have grown up with a common mode of cooperation will work together with less friction and irritation than those who don't. In the U.S. we are always hearing about businesses looking for ways to meet the challenge of diversity. Colleges here are now having freshmen show up a week or so early for special training in how not to offend each other, and a number of them have instituted speech codes for the same purpose. Schoolchildren are subjected to nonstop propaganda about race relations and so on (actually, that's not quite true since schools also need time for antismoking and environmentalist propaganda). Why wouldn't things work better if we forgot about all the reeducation and allowed people to stay out of each other's way by separating to the extent they want to do so? In places like Switzerland or the Balkans where there is some geographic separation of ethnic groups people think granting local autonomy is a good way to reduce friction. Why not apply the same principle of allowing groups to separate and run their own affairs to a place like New York City? You speak of exclusion, but NYC is far too diverse for anyone to exclude anybody from anything. It's more a matter of people trying to establish islands on which life can go forward in a way the inhabitants agree makes sense. >Surely the reason discrimination is considered so wrong is because it >has a long history of doing exactly that: denying human dignity. So does government, but we need it. If you believe discrimination is illegitimate because it sometimes causes damage and has no positive function, you should think through just what the world would look like if discrimination on grounds like ethnicity, religion and sex were eradicated. For starters, there would be no cultural standards for anything whatever, because cultures are ethnic and religious and to treat any cultural standard as authoritative is to discriminate in favor of a particular ethnic and religous group and to stigmatize all others as inferior and wrong. >Furthermore, whenever it crops up, it still seems to do so. The >motives of those who discriminate seem, generally, not to be the high >and mighty desires to pick the best, but rather the base wish to >exclude, to deny others opportunities for no reason other than to gain >a cheap sense of superiority. It doesn't have to be that way; but the >practice is so consistent that suspicion is not unjustified as a rule >of thumb. That's not my impression of what had been going on in the publicized cases I'm aware of (mostly those leading to civil rights proceedings). You seem to think it a very rare occurance for someone simply to prefer to work with people whose background is similar to his own. I don't understand that. People are more likely to marry those with a similar ethnic, religious and class background than others. Plainly, that is not solely for the sake of a cheap sense of superiority. Part of the reason may well be that people simply prefer to be with people who are like themselves in those respects, and usually find it easier, other things being equal, to work closely for long periods with such people. If that's so, then such considerations would be relevant to employment decisions and I don't see why it would be so rare for people actually to act on them. It's also worth mentioning that since the mid-nineteenth century when new countries have been created the people who drew the borders have engaged in ethnic discrimination by attempting to draw the borders between ethnic communities. Was that also for the sake of cheap thrills or did someone have something public-spirited in mind? If it can be public-spirited to separate ethnic groups by drawing borders, why is it wicked to allow them voluntarily to separate themselves from others within a state to the extent they like it that way? >Do you remember the experiments where classes were divided into blue- >eyed and brown-eyed people, and one group was told they were better >than the other? Do you think the "lower" group benefited by being put >in a position where they were "challenged"? There's no real challenge if there's no real group with a heritage and way of life that add something irreplaceable to the world and so are worth preserving and developing. I take it that is not true of brown- eyed people but it is (for example) of blacks and Jews. The challenge I had in mind, by the way, is not a gratuitous hardship like black slavery or laws excluding Jews from most occupations. Rather, it is a sense on the part of the discriminating group that the other group is different and incompatible in some way. Therefore, in a libertarian world (which is the one I prefer on this point) it would be up to the other group to define what it is and make its way in accordance with its own capabilities and view of things. >As for the best leaving, you would have to argue the causal >relationship; do people leave *because* of the protection? Or rather, >do they leave because, despite the protection, they are well aware of >residual discrimination, and are doing their best to get to a point >where this doesn't hold them back? Obviously, the people who leave think that for a number of reasons they are thereby advancing their own overall good. The point of my comment was that something valuable is lost, not that nothing is gained. -- Jim Kalb "Nirgends bleibt sie zurueck, dass wir ihr *ein* mal entroennen jk@panix.com und sie in stiller Fabrik oelend sich selber gehoert. Sie ist das Leben,--sie meint es am besten zu koennen, die mit dem gleichen Entschluss ordnet und schafft und zerstoert." From panix!not-for-mail Sun Jun 5 18:36:37 EDT 1994 Article: 6186 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism Subject: Re: A right-wing analysis of discrimination Date: 4 Jun 1994 08:19:51 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 83 Message-ID: <2sprh7$t8@panix.com> References: <2sm4a1$a7i@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes: >Inclusiveness and diversity don't have to be at the expense of merit; >the argument is that over the long term, they actually enhance it, >since people are not so isolated from other sections of society that >they reject people on the basis of non-merit-related differences. It's been a long time since that argument has been used much. The idea of "merit", I think, is the idea that functions can be rationally defined and the best person chosen for the function in accordance with impersonal criteria. The problem with that idea from an equality t(standpoint is that when attempts are made actually to carry it out (for example by developing job-related aptitude tests) some ethnic groups do far better than others. So now the line tends to be that diverse characteristics in a workforce is intrinsically a source of strength and it is the job of management to use it creatively. Not exactly a meritocratic line, although I agree it includes a claim that inclusiveness and diversity can promote organizational goals other than themselves as long as management is doing its job. >Every prominent black will have met many incidences of prejudice, and >form opinions on that basis; why should the presence or absence of >programs have much effect when contrasted with a lifetime of dealing >with people? Most incidents can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and people choose the interpretation that fits their overall undestanding of how the world works. AA programs dispose their beneficiaries, for the sake of their own self-esteem, to favor a particular understanding of how the world works. >look at the arguments against AA. You notice that none of them attempt >to deal with the residual discrimination that you see in people's >behaviour. After all, that behaviour was present before AA ever came >on the scene, and it's the sort of thing that takes a long time to die >away... For AA to have an important function you need more than some residual discrimination. To get a job and advance you don't need every employer to be willing to treat you equally, you only need one. It seems to me the libertarian arguments regarding the effects of free markets on discrimination work unless the propensity to discriminate is strong and pervasive. That's plainly the belief, though. If what AA mostly does is undo discrimination and it requires major changes in every organization to which it is applicable then there must be lots of discrimination everywhere, even in institutions where one would not have expected to find it. >I have nothing against religious and ethnic bonding, but don't see >either as necessary for the preservation of a culture, which I see as >far more important for the stability of a community than either. Religious and ethnic groups are the bearers of culture, though. That's why "multiculturalism" is one of the antidiscrimination buzzwords. >There is a difference between discrimination in the workplace (and >common places in general) and that level of non-discrimination which >eradicates cultures. Don't agree. A culture is a shared way of life people grow up with that includes the values and standards a group takes most seriously, such as those that determine the group's style of living together. I don't see how much can be left of it if it can't govern anything of public concern. Suppose the population of Newcastle were a quarter English, a quarter Chinese, a quarter Hindu, and a quarter Zulu, and antidiscrimination laws required diversity (roughly equal representation) on the part of every employer, every educational institution, every media organization, every public agency and every provider of housing. What do you think would happen to English, Chinese, Hindu and Zulu culture in Newcastle? >People don't use the same criteria for choosing marriage partners >as they use in choosing compatible workmates, as far as I can tell. Really? I agree they are not identical, but when you choose a marriage partner you are among other things choosing someone you are going to have to work closely with for a long time under circumstances that can become difficult. The criteria don't seem unconnected to me. Also, it seems to me the "marriage partner as workmate" approach would be strongest among traditional types, who are also the ones most likely to marry within their ethnic group and religion. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt. From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 7 07:05:05 EDT 1994 Article: 6188 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism Subject: Re: A right-wing analysis of discrimination Date: 5 Jun 1994 21:14:13 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 128 Message-ID: <2stt95$mbm@panix.com> References: <2sprh7$t8@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes: >I don't trust "objective" tests very much (speaking as someone >who has always been good at them, and who has tried to set them >for some time now); so I can understand why people would complain. The tests aren't perfect, but they aren't worthless either. My understanding is that standardized intelligence tests, for both blacks and non-blacks, are the best single predictor of academic success, and also of job success for most jobs. Blacks on average do markedly worse on them than most other groups (their scores average about a standard deviation lower). I don't know of any indications that blacks tend to have other strengths that compensate for their relative deficit in whatever it is that intelligence tests measure, which evidently has to do with an ability to solve certain sorts of problems that may not matter much directly but does correlate strongly with success in other things. Obviously, the extent to which the difference in black and non-black occupational success results from current discrimination or from other factors, such as different culture and aptitudes, matters for the assessment of AA. If you favor the former explanation AA is going to look a lot better than if you favor the latter. It's probably relevant to our differences that I favor the latter. Quite apart from the evidence of intelligence tests and such things, black rates of criminality and illegitimacy are far higher than those of other groups, even correcting for factors like income and occupation, and suggest a degree of cultural disorganization that one would expect to have occupational and other consequences. Maybe I should add that one bad effect of AA and other government programs that intervene to promote what is thought to be economic justice is that you can't discuss them intelligently without getting into public discussions of offensive theories about just why particular people or classes of people have problems. For that and other reasons I don't think that our current form of democratic welfare state is going to last forever. (Just an aside.) >>AA programs dispose their beneficiaries, for the sake >>of their own self-esteem, to favor a particular understanding of how the >>world works. > >Well, we'll just have to disagree here for the most part. I >think their understanding is formed predominantly by other >things: their previous experiences, the ways they are treated >that don't depend on AA being either present or absent. You don't. I'm not sure the "you don't" is right. My point is not that in the absence of AA blacks today would think bias is not a major problem, but that AA looks to me like a permanent bad influence on the future development of race relations. >Consider 20 jobs, 36 whites and 4 blacks applying, 18 employers anti- >black (numbers made up to yield roughly 10%s). So 18 jobs are 50-50 >for the whites; and 2 jobs are 10-1 against for the blacks in the >initial stages. After the whites have taken their jobs, it's only 5-1 >against for the blacks, against the whites who lost their 50-50 >chances. It would be 50-50 for the blacks if the 2 unbiased employers >were definitely going to employ a black; but that's not unbiased, >that's biased the other way, and it's pretty rare. But the unbiased employers could reduce their offering salaries somewhat and still have the pick of the blacks even though the best of the whites wouldn't work for them. So it seems to me the whites would have a 50-50 chance of being hired and so would the blacks. It's true the blacks would be paid somewhat less, but not that much less (if they were only paid half as much then the least biased of the 18 biased employers would hire them). So if the unbiased employers were economically rational and if not all the biased employers had ironclad policies of never hiring blacks the results would not be all that different for blacks and for whites. >>If what AA mostly does >>is undo discrimination and it requires major changes in every >>organization to which it is applicable then there must be lots of >>discrimination everywhere, even in institutions where one would not >>have expected to find it. > >Depends what you count as a major change. Hopefully, just >getting personnel officers to check that they aren't biased >should be enough. That's not AA. The idea of AA is that you don't discover bias by inspecting people's state of mind, you discover it by looking at what they do. If black hirings don't correspond at least roughly to black availability, that's bias unless there's a very good explanation for the discrepency and rectifying it is a major business goal for the employer. The attempt to hire proportionately involves major changes in hiring practices for almost any employer. >They're among the bearers; I don't think they're the only >bearers, though. Geordies aren't very different in religion >or ethnicity from Yorkshire folks, for instance, but there's >quite a culture gap. Can you tell me in words of one syllable what a Geordie is? >Gateshead (across the river) has a considerable ex-mining community, a >large orthodox-ish Jewish community (because of a rabbatinical >college), and a growing Indian community. Now, I'm not sure what kind >of discrimination laws you mean, since most every one I've seen had >exemptions for small organizations, Why not for large organizations, then? If discrimination is wicked and disgraceful for large and medium-sized organizations I'm not sure why it becomes OK for small organizations. I think the tendency has been to reduce the size of the organizations to which antidiscrimination law applies as the wickedness of discrimination has become more firmly implanted in conventional public morality. >but there is a race relations board in the UK which can take companies >to court. It hasn't done so, to my knowledge, and the three cultures >seem to get on. Not without occasional incident and conflict, sure; >but it's nothing that threatens the fabric of the community. It's hard to comment without knowing more. Orthodox Jewish communities tend to be somewhat separatist, which usually suits other people just fine. My impression is that Indian communities tend somewhat in the same direction, perhaps as a legacy of the caste system. Both peoples seem to favor small to medium-sized family businesses, which as you point out tend to elude the antidiscrimination laws. I don't know much about ex-miners. If they are among history's losers they may be used by now to being pushed around. So I'm not sure, at least without hearing more, that this example of a multicultural society that works supports the view that the elimination of discrimination is the key to harmony and happiness. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt. From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 7 18:08:48 EDT 1994 Article: 1790 of alt.revolution.counter Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: How will antiegalitarian views resurface? Date: 7 Jun 1994 09:00:15 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 62 Message-ID: <2t1r0v$ckr@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Thoughts for comment, other ideas, whatever: The current ideological rigidity on equality issues evidently results from a sense that at bottom people don't really accept radical egalitarianism but have found no way to articulate their doubts that they can accept themselves. Therefore we have thought police, to make sure the doubts remain unarticulated and unacceptable. So how will this particular one-horse shay disintegrate? Some possibilities: 1. The scientific evidence for material differences in the innate abilities and propensities of the sexes and of various racial stocks may eventually become too strong to be ignored. However, too much is at stake for disinterested science to determine such things. The people involved in science are only human, and the presentation of evidence can be muted or lines of research suppressed for fear of social ostracism, loss of funding, disrupted classes, vandalized offices, and the like. Also, evidence needs to be interpreted, every particular piece of evidence can always be criticized or explained away, and superstrength arguments to the effect that for methodological reasons no conceivable evidence could establish the unwanted conclusion can be deployed. Such things are normally resolved within the scientific community, as I understand the matter, by the public consensus of the most admired scientists. But it will always be possible for the most authoritative scientific bodies to take a pro-egalitarian position by choosing to accept the right arguments, and such bodies are sufficiently part of our ruling elite that they will do so unless something else changes. 2. The multiplication of channels of communication (e.g., talk radio and the net) means that it will be easier than in the past for underground inegalitarian theories to develop, spread, and eventually surface in public discussions. That's why liberals and moderates worry about the use of the new technologies to spread "hate". One problem with talk radio chatter and net discussions is that the practice is to carry on disciplined investigations through other institutions, so the alternative media are the natural home of half-baked, frivolous and crackpot ideas. Of course, to the extent the official channels of disciplined investigation become less useable because of ideological pressures the alternative media may become more important. Such a change may take place, for example, to the extent ordinary scholarly and scientific institutions are shaped by affirmative action and therefore become unuseable for carrying on lines of investigation that lead to antiegalitarian results. 3. People eventually get tired of things that are tiresome. It is tiresome to have to believe or at least give lip service to things that do not explicate experience but rather contradict it. That's what happened in the case of Holmes's original one-horse shay (New England Puritan orthodoxy) and more recently to the Soviet one-horse shay. Presumably at some point it will happen among us as well. 4. Part of the reason people fear antiegalitarian ideas is that that they can lead to horrifying results unless they are tempered by notions of universal human dignity or something of the sort. Notions of universal human dignity are neither hedonistic nor materialistic, and therefore our time finds it hard to take them seriously. Egalitarianism isn't going to last forever, though, so people who are afraid of what happens when it goes should spend their time looking for some ground for human worth that transcends the natural and social distinctions among men rather than engaging in the destructive task of uprooting such distinctions. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt. From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 7 18:08:54 EDT 1994 Article: 6193 of alt.society.conservatism Path: panix!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism Subject: Re: A right-wing analysis of discrimination Date: 7 Jun 1994 09:10:09 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 22 Message-ID: <2t1rjh$eds@panix.com> References: <2sm4a1$a7i@panix.com> <2sprh7$t8@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com In Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes: >>Religious and ethnic groups are the bearers of culture, though. That's >>why "multiculturalism" is one of the antidiscrimination buzzwords. >They're among the bearers; I don't think they're the only >bearers, though. Geordies aren't very different in religion >or ethnicity from Yorkshire folks, for instance, but there's >quite a culture gap. I'm told that Geordies are people from the northern counties in England. If so, I would say that the differences between them and Yorkshiremen are the same in kind as ethnic differences although presumably less in degree. By "ethnic" I don't primarily mean "racial". An ethnic group is a group of people who have lived together and married mostly among themselves for a long time, who have developed a common and distinctive culture, and who understand themselves as a group with a common past and future. I would imagine that the distinction between Gs and Ys is an ethnic distinction by that definition (which I don't think is an arbitrary one). -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt. From alt.society.conservatism Tue Jun 7 20:04:05 1994 Path: panix!not-for-mail ~From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) ~Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism ~Subject: A right-wing analysis of discrimination (revised) ~Date: 7 Jun 1994 18:05:05 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences ~Lines: 205 Message-ID: <2t2quh$n2m@panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com Here, for anyone who's interested, is a revised version of the original piece I posted. Those who belong to a group with characteristic attitudes, perceptions, habits, experiences, affiliations, and so on have a natural tendency to feel kinship with each other. When membership carries benefits with it, and the group is one that is difficult or impossible for outsiders to enter ("straight white males"), nonmembers often object to being treated as such. The view publicly accepted today is that it is morally inexcusable to ignore such objections, at least if the benefits are anything but idiosyncratic, intangible and personal in nature. Several methods have been proposed for eliminating or neutralizing the effects of discrimination of the sort objected to. Of these, I will discuss affirmative action, pure equal opportunity, and libertarianism. For the reasons given below, I believe that none of these approaches can come close to doing what is intended without a great deal of social damage. Of the three, I favor the libertarian approach because it is least destructive, and because I am less convinced than most that the goal is a good one. 1. The "affirmative action" approach is to equalize benefits for all groups. Such equalization is hard to achieve, however. Benefits arise from what members of a group do as well as what is done to them, so attempts to equalize benefits create resentments and, by further effects on perceptions and behavior, create new distinctions that then also have to be equalized. For example, if blacks are guaranteed an equal share of jobs and honors then non-blacks competing for the remaining jobs and honors will be resentful, talented blacks will feel less need to compete and their performance will suffer, and any honorable distinction will confer less honor on a black than on another person receiving it because the common view will be that it stands for less. The affirmative action approach thus deals with material issues at the cost of making other aspects of intergroup relations worse. The deterioration of relations feeds on itself, since black beneficiaries of affirmative action are able to justify their own position only by finding that they are surrounded by powerful antiblack bias and can do so by treating non-black resentment of affirmative action programs as proof of such bias. Thus, the more unjust non-blacks consider affirmative action to be the more convinced blacks become that it is necessary and that an equal share of benefits is simply their right. The foregoing argument loses much of its force to the extent affirmative action only puts blacks in the position they would be in if they were treated in accordance with their conduct and ability rather than subjected to arbitrary discrimination. In that case one could hope that non-blacks would eventually come to understand the justification for the programs and stop discriminating, so that the programs would no longer have a function and could be done away with. However, if the primary effect of affirmative action policies is to redress arbitrary discrimination, then biases against blacks must be very strong and pervasive, since such policies have required major changes in all institutions to which they have been applied, including the institutions one would have least expected to be engaging in discrimination. If antiblack bias is so strong, though, it is hard to understand how such policies could ever have been adopted. In addition, there seem to be no grounds other than faith for believing that lesser black occupational success is mostly due to current discrimination rather than other factors such as black culture or lesser average aptitude. The differences between black and non-black success rates are very large in fields, such as athletics and the quantitative sciences, where performance is most easily judged and arbitrary discrimination should therefore play the smallest role. On the other hand, such things as the very high rates of criminality and illegitimacy among blacks, and their low average scores on intelligence tests, suggest that there are important reasons other than discrimination for their lesser occupational success. 2. The strict antidiscrimination/equal opportunity approach is to forbid people to act on feelings of kinship based on common group membership, at least if the group is thought to be a privileged one. A problem with this method is that people feel that their membership in groups of the kind in question is part of what makes them what they are. That is why discrimination on grounds like race or religion can be painful, but it is also why it is an extreme measure to tell people that in the common affairs of life they can't associate by preference with those they view as their fellows. As extreme measures, antidiscrimination laws have been very difficult to enforce, and in practice the government has fallen back on the "affirmative action" approach. Feelings of kinship based on ethnicity and the like are often called irrational or worse, but calling them that doesn't make it reasonable to ignore or try to abolish them. Man is a social animal, and his good is typically realized through participation in communities tied together by common history, beliefs, habits, attitudes, and the like. It is just such ties that give rise to loyalties of the kind that antidiscrimination laws require people to ignore. Thus, such laws by their nature require people to ignore and deny affiliations of the kind that for most people are basic to a good life. People normally lead a good life through participation in a particular culture. Cultures differ, of course, and such differences are not private matters. They are essentially public, because they relate to a shared way of life that includes a style of living together and a common understanding of what things are important. Since ethnic and religious groups are the bearers of culture, to demand that ethnic and religious affiliation be made irrelevant to matters that are publicly important, such as government, economic activity, education and housing, is to is to demand that culture be deprived of its essential functions. The consequences of full compliance with such a demand would not be liberation from narrowness but rather the destruction of culture and therefore public brutality and squalor. The more diverse society becomes the worse such consequences will be, because less will remain as a publicly acceptable common culture after particularisms are excluded. To be slightly more specific, different groups have different standards regarding intangible things that determine how organizations function. Examples are codes of manners, moral points of honor, the appropriate relationship between authority and individual initiative, and the relative importance of profit, organizational harmony, public spirit, and personal goals. The standards of no one group can be taken as a universal ideal, but if there are no particular accepted standards within an organization the organization is likely to be more a place for misunderstanding, conflict and self-seeking than for effective cooperation carried on in a manner and spirit that fits it to be part of a good life for those involved. Accordingly, every successful organization must be particularistic in the sense that it must have its own accepted ways. Since the ways of any organization will be far more compatible with those of some groups than others, and since it will normally be easier for an organization to deal with people who grow up with compatible outlooks and habits than people who have to learn them as adults, it is hard to see how an organization could avoid being more hospitable to people from some groups than others without undercutting the basis of its own success. To be particularly hospitable to one group, though, is to discriminate against all others. Another problem with the strict antidiscrimination/equal opportunity approach is that some distinctions between groups are necessary to a successful society. The distinction between the sexes is the most prominent example. Every known human society has recognized a difference in function between men and women, with men dominating the public sphere and positions of formal authority and women dominating childcare and the domestic sphere. The difference in function, which corresponds to differences between the sexes in average inclinations and aptitudes, has made possible stable unions between men and women that give women the protection and support they need to care for their children while socializing men's aggressive and domineering impulses. No substitute for that difference in function has yet become visible, and it is not clear what such a substitute would look like. The radical attack that has been mounted in recent years on sex role differentiation has therefore been an attack on a fundamental principle of social order, and the consequences we see around us, which are those that should have been expected, will continue until the attack is abandoned. 3. The libertarian approach in dealing with intergroup relations is to reduce government regulation. This approach would reduce the amount or effect of discrimination if the government itself discriminates, requires people to discriminate, or makes it difficult for people to enter into nondiscriminatory relationships (for example by licensing requirements or support of trade unions). Although this approach would reduce the potential harm from discrimination, it would not eliminate it, if only because discrimination is often functional. Also, since this approach tends to require government to treat discrimination as legitimate when enforcing contracts and property rights, to accept it is to abandon the view that discrimination is by nature a gross evil that should be eradicated. It is not clear, however, why that view should be retained. The doctrine that discrimination on racial and similar grounds is a moral outrage is novel, and its basis has never been made clear. It is said to deny the human dignity of those discriminated against, but that seems clearly wrong. We all pick and choose our associates, for good reasons and bad, without necessarily denying the human dignity of those we reject. It is also said to inflict material and emotional damage on those discriminated against. So, however, does discrimination on grounds such as incompetence. The issue is whether permitting discrimination or attempting to uproot it causes more damage. Modern trends have reduced the potential damage from private discrimination, since they have made markets more efficient and therefore made it harder to keep a worker from realizing the full potential value of his labor. If one employer is biased and unwilling to employ a worker to his full capacity, another will, and if none will then a market irrationality has been created that an entrepreneur (possibly from the group subject to discrimination) or foreign investor can take advantage of. In addition, as discussed above, prohibiting discrimination causes damage by forbidding people to carry on the way of life they prefer among the people to whom they are attached, and such damage becomes greater as society becomes more diverse; a prohibition of discrimination is ineffective without affirmative action programs, which cause their own problems; and it is hard to understand how antidiscrimination programs could ever get adopted if public attitudes were such as to justify them. A final point is that if discrimination means only a lessened ability to have dealings with members of other communities, as it would in a libertarian society, then to be subjected to discrimination is simply to be thrown on one's own resources and challenged to develop one's own community and way of life. In contrast, to be a member of a group protected from discrimination can be to see one's own group and its way of life disintegrate as its most active and capable members leave it. Contemplation of the history of the Jews since emancipation or of American blacks since 1964 need not lead to the conclusion that the legal abolition of discrimination tends to be favorable in all respects, or even on balance, to the groups that had been its object. Those who believe there is something valuable and irreplaceable in the separate culture and way of life of such groups will not necessarily favor measures that if successful will result in their absorption by an increasingly featureless larger society. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.
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