From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 16 22:29:56 EST 1995
Article: 3586 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: NYC conservatives
Date: 13 Feb 1995 09:04:37 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Something for conservatives in the New York City area:
I'm going to be putting out an electronic newsletter listing
events around New York City of interest to conservatives. Up to now
there hasn't been a good way of finding out what's going on. The first
issue should come out shortly before March 1 and be posted to this
newsgroup. Email subscriptions will also be available.
If you know of any meetings or events that should be covered,
please send me the necessary information. If your organization is
doing something, or there is a speaker at your school who other
conservatives might want to hear, or there's any other event that more
people should know about, do let me know. Remember, free publicity is
nothing to turn down!
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 16 22:30:01 EST 1995
Article: 3591 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Europe Awake
Date: 13 Feb 1995 14:00:15 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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kepley@photon.phys.unca.edu (Brad Kepley) writes:
>Don't the Nazis have a legitimate claim to being excellent counter-
>revolutionaries?
>From my point of view they embodied a lot of modern tendencies that I
don't much like. As I understand the matter, they aimed at absolute
social unity in accordance with simple principles ruthlessly applied.
Their goals, to which they were willing to sacrifice everything, could
be stated in pragmatic terms and fully achieved through political
organization and the application of technology to social organization
and other things. Most of my objections to the Revolution apply to
them as well.
>Hitler was probably the first and maybe only important politician to
>unabashedly declare war on the Enlightenment.
It's possible to reject the Enlightenment in more ways than one. It's
also possible to reject different pieces of it. If rejection of the
Enlightenment makes you counterrevolutionary then I suppose they were
counterrevolutionary, but so was the American New Left.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 16 22:30:10 EST 1995
Article: 3599 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.politics.white-power,alt.revisionism,alt.revolution.counter,alt.conspiracy,alt.illuminati
Subject: Re: The Christian Left
Date: 16 Feb 1995 08:55:28 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In "Sofya M." writes:
>Hi! I am doing some research on the Christian Left and especially on its
>cons. I am having a hard time finding out anything:(
>Can anyone help me?
There's a strong leftish streak in the mainline churches, especially
their national organizations. I think a couple of books have come out
on the National Council of Churches dealing with the matter. They'd
probably give you leads to other things.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 16 22:33:42 EST 1995
Article: 10840 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: M. L. King and conservatives
Date: 12 Feb 1995 18:36:19 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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>>>What should be the attitude of conservatives toward Martin Luther King?
>> Same as their attitude towards Lincoln or Jefferson, I'd say. Give him
>> credit that is due.
>If on the other hand, you just ignore him, the very people who care most
>will eventually render everything about MLK to a state that is so bland
>and empty that it will no longer matter.
He can be hard to ignore. I suppose on the whole I agree with both
suggestions. I don't object to saying that he was a brave man with a
more generous and disinterested spirit than is common in politics, and
that there was a lot of bad in the things he opposed. I suppose my
question really had to do with the conservatives who think that MLK has
to be treated as one of the prophets.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 16 22:33:44 EST 1995
Article: 10846 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 12 Feb 1995 22:19:08 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>A Russian serf could truly claim to be responsible to his lord, as
>could an eighteenth century woman to her husband or father. You have
>no such excuse. Like it or not, you are responsible to none but
>yourself, and no chain of illusion with which you choose to believe
>yourself bound can change this.
It makes sense to talk of my "responsibility" only if I inhabit a moral
world defined by common moral standards that I share with other people.
It is those other people, at least to the extent I am obligated to them,
to whom I am responsible.
It sounds as if you think that "like it or not, you are responsible to
none but yourself" is a moral principle that I'm just stuck with. If
that's not what you think, you should change your manner of speaking.
You also seem to hold the inconsistent view that the only possible
source of moral principles is that people make up their own. It's
unclear to me on the latter view why I am bound by a chain of illusion
and you are not if you make up the principle "whatever I say is good is
good" and I make up the principle "whatever the Pope says is good is
good".
>I can assure you from first hand experience that "narcissism",
>"licentiousness" and "degradation" can be reliably detected in one's
>self.
Very possibly. To say that something can be reliably detected, though,
suggests that it exists even if one should fail to detect it. "Can be
reliably detected" and "exist only to the extent they are felt" don't
have the same meaning. It doesn't even make sense to use the one in
connection with something to which the other is applicable.
>You seem to believe that I have been speaking ex cathedra in this thread.
>Nothing could be further from the truth. Everything here has been
>opinion, and (I had thought) labelled accordingly. Of course Mr. Robertson
>and his followers may attempt to get their agenda adopted. I will, of
>course, attempt to see mine adopted instead. We will fight this out
>through many means, from emotional appeals to pragmatic concerns to
>sneaky parliamentary maneuverings to outright bloodshed.
So the idea seems to be that you want stuff, and Robertson wants stuff,
and Jeffrey Dahmer wants stuff, and whoever wins wins.
>I show that his principles, if applied, will lead to horror, or at
>least an outcome worse than that which would follow from the
>application of my principles.
"Horror" and "worse" seem to mean "I don't like it". Tastes differ, of
course. You may or may not be able to enforce your own. Ditto for Mr.
Dahmer, who was able to make his own tastes prevail on many occasions.
If he were alive and at large, I would suggest a discussion with him.
You might learn something about rhetoric. His methods were unusual, but
far more effective than emotional appeals or parliamentary maneuverings
in achieving a favorable resolution to clashes of opinion.
>Surely you're not willing to stand up and make a reasoned intellectual
>defense of the unexamined life.
The point is not to have an examined life but a good life. Explicit
reasoning is not the only way people come to know truths. Otherwise no
truth could ever be known, because reasoning must start with truths that
have already been accepted. Why shouldn't the same be true of goods?
Actually, I'm not at all sure why you should place particular value on
the examined life. If it's impossible to make mistakes in morality (as
you appear to believe) it's not clear why it's sensible to spend much
time thinking about it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 16 22:33:50 EST 1995
Article: 10855 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: nyc.politics,ny.politics,alt.activism,alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.usa.republican,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: NYC conservatives
Date: 13 Feb 1995 09:03:28 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 17
Message-ID: <3hnorg$g5i@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix nyc.politics:743 ny.politics:4583 alt.activism:79903 alt.society.conservatism:10855 alt.politics.usa.republican:49215 alt.fan.rush-limbaugh:230049
Something for conservatives in the New York City area:
I'm going to be putting out an electronic newsletter listing
events around New York City of interest to conservatives. Up to now
there hasn't been a good way of finding out what's going on. The first
issue should come out shortly before March 1 and be posted to this
newsgroup. Email subscriptions will also be available.
If you know of any meetings or events that should be covered,
please send me the necessary information. If your organization is
doing something, or there is a speaker at your school who other
conservatives might want to hear, or there's any other event that more
people should know about, do let me know. Remember, free publicity is
nothing to turn down!
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 16 22:33:56 EST 1995
Article: 10871 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 13 Feb 1995 14:03:14 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <3hoadi$n9i@panix.com>
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powers@goofy.stat.unc.edu (Patrick Powers) writes:
>I will credit you with originality: the argument that hatred of
>outsiders and racial predjudice are net positive forces is truly a
>first.
I don't think I said anything about hatred of outsiders as a net
positive force. I did suggest, at least implicitly, that social order
grows out of the connections we feel we have with groups of people less
extensive than humanity as a whole, and that common history and culture
are most often what gives rise to such connections. Common history and
culture are what define ethnicity. None of that is original.
The one thing I added that isn't utterly platitudinous was a suggestion
that antidiscrimination laws don't take the foregoing features of
social order into account and the outlook out of which they arise views
such features as illegitimate.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 16 22:33:59 EST 1995
Article: 10872 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 13 Feb 1995 14:05:51 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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pajerek%telstar.kodak.com@kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>Mr. Kalb is apparently proposing in this thread a return to social
>formations governed by the self-evident verities of race, language,
>ethnicity, etc.
I'm proposing abandonment of the project of rooting out the formations.
I do think that ethnicity, language, gender and so on have an important
role in human life, and I don't see any prospect that anything will
replace them in that role. I don't understand the expression "self-
evident verities", by the way. The things under discussion are not
propositions and so can't be true or false.
>That mankind has spent any number of blood-soaked centuries trying to
>*rise above* these things makes no impression, so mesmerized is he by
>the spectacle of 'social atomization' that he perceives in today's
>society.
Most of the blood that has soaked this century has been spilled in
efforts to establish human life on a new basis having nothing to do with
the parochial loyalties men are born into. I think that should bother
you. Also, I don't understand the "rise above". Ethnicity, like family
life or eating, is certainly not the highest thing. However, it gives
ordinary life coherence, which I think is a precondition of pursuing
higher things for those capable of them.
>Atomization is quite inescapable, with or without civil rights laws.
>
>The past several hundred years are a record of our efforts to break out
>of seemingly predestined patterns of thought and behavior, and to reach
>what, at our best moments, we have long known to be our true potential.
Imminent historical triumphs usually don't work out as expected. Maybe
this one, as you expect, will be different. For my own part, nothing in
our day-to-day or public life suggests an impending Golden Age to me.
>Now, with this goal in sight, at least for some of us, Mr. Kalb is
>getting cold feet, and wants to return to the comforting myths of a
>past that never existed.
What comforting myths of a non-existent past have I mentioned? The
most I've said is that serious trouble is likely in the future, and
that a legal regime designed to root out practices inconsistent with
the triumph of what you think of as "our true potential" are likely to
cause more harm than good.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 16 22:34:02 EST 1995
Article: 10882 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 13 Feb 1995 21:48:26 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>Throughout, I have been using "responsibility" to refer to a purely
>personal phenomenon, the transcentant experience of taking ownership
>of own's life.
I can't understand "ownership" apart from a system in which more than
one person participates. It thus could not be purely personal in my
view. As you point out, we seem to be unable to speak to each other.
>My words imply an absolute morality.
The implication was quite opaque in many places.
>You mention the "good life", and imply that it might be unexamined. As
>such a conception falls outside those realms of ethical thought
>commonly referred to as Western, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and
>Buddhist, I can only wait in awe for your exposition of it.
Again, I don't understand you. You seem to think of the "examined life"
as one consciously chosen on reflection from among alternatives. Most
people haven't thought that was the only sort of life that could be
called good.
It's true that Plato (to pick an exemplary Western philosopher) seems
to have thought that a fully examined life was the best life and a
possibility for some few people. For the vast majority, though, he
thought that the good life could only be a life as a citizen of a good
city in accordance with the laws of that city in which he has been
educated.
Christians, Jews, and Muslims think of the good life as a life as a
member of the community constituted by the religion in accordance with
the things that the community thinks good. In each case there's no
particular requirement of reflection or choice from among alternatives;
what makes the life good is not how you came to live it but what it's
like when lived. A man who leads a Christian life because he loves
Christ and the Church and never thinks to count the cost or seriously
consider the advantages of alternatives wouldn't be living an examined
life in your terms, but Christians wouldn't view his life as lacking.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 16 22:34:04 EST 1995
Article: 10908 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 14 Feb 1995 16:11:59 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>Do you consider yourself, as a sentient being, to have any intrinsic
>moral attributes, i.e. attributes not defined by your relation with
>other beings.
A good philosophical question, rather like asking what a particular
thing is apart from all its attributes.
The answer is yes. The position regarding goodness seems to me the same
as that regarding truth. We can approach truth and goodness only
socially. That's what it means to say we are social animals who by
nature realize our good in society. On the other hand, neither truth
nor goodness reduces to a social construction. So our capacity to know
them must relate to some intrinsic attribute.
The attribute by which we can know the good and the true, although
different from our status as social animals, doesn't seem to be
effective apart from that status. As to truth: we can have definite
knowledge of truth only to the extent we can state it, and language is a
social institution. We cannot know truth without reliable evidence and
reasoning, and it is difficult to rely on such things confidently if
discussion with other investigators is not possible. Also, life is too
short and human capacities too small for one man to gather and put in
order all the evidence needed to conclude much of anything. Our
conclusions, including those that constitute knowledge, rest on the
conclusions of others whom we trust. That is one reason children reared
asocially (by wolves, for example) turn out hopeless idiots.
The position for moral truth is the same as that for other truth.
>If I am incorrect, then perhaps I can be enlightened by an exposition
>on your opinion on the validity of the Nuremburg defense.
Invalid. As Germans and as Europeans they should have known better.
Possibly the defense would have been valid for Joshua or for the
lieutenants of Genghis Khan.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 16 22:34:07 EST 1995
Article: 10909 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 14 Feb 1995 16:13:30 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 22
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>Looks like a toss-up to me. The bodies seem to pile up about equally
>on the "defend the parochial loyalties" side (WWI, WWII, Arm*nian &
>Rwandan genocides)
Those things don't strike me as examples of defending the complex of
parochial loyalties people grow up with, which is what is at issue in my
objections to the civil rights laws. WWII was initiated by a
professedly revolutionary movement that emphasized its utter contempt
for the existing system, idolized a national unity that would replace
all lesser attachments, and reduced all moral obligation to that of
obedient loyalty to the will of the Fuehrer. WWI, as I understand the
matter, began when one state that was trying to replace the old German
regionalism with a new nationalism based on military power and money and
another state that felt threatened by the parochial loyalties of its
very diverse subjects attempted to create a new European order that
would have been far more centralized than the old one. (I know too
little about the other situations to comment.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 17 06:16:20 EST 1995
Article: 10840 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: M. L. King and conservatives
Date: 12 Feb 1995 18:36:19 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <3hm61j$t17@panix.com>
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>>>What should be the attitude of conservatives toward Martin Luther King?
>> Same as their attitude towards Lincoln or Jefferson, I'd say. Give him
>> credit that is due.
>If on the other hand, you just ignore him, the very people who care most
>will eventually render everything about MLK to a state that is so bland
>and empty that it will no longer matter.
He can be hard to ignore. I suppose on the whole I agree with both
suggestions. I don't object to saying that he was a brave man with a
more generous and disinterested spirit than is common in politics, and
that there was a lot of bad in the things he opposed. I suppose my
question really had to do with the conservatives who think that MLK has
to be treated as one of the prophets.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 17 06:16:21 EST 1995
Article: 10846 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 12 Feb 1995 22:19:08 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 72
Message-ID: <3hmj3c$6tr@panix.com>
References: <3hbohq$4f3@panix.com> <3hg3n2$khd@crl.crl.com> <3hggko$27l@panix.com> <3hm7ml$571@crl9.crl.com>
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Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:10846 alt.discrimination:29560 alt.politics.usa.republican:49120 talk.politics.theory:41407
griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>A Russian serf could truly claim to be responsible to his lord, as
>could an eighteenth century woman to her husband or father. You have
>no such excuse. Like it or not, you are responsible to none but
>yourself, and no chain of illusion with which you choose to believe
>yourself bound can change this.
It makes sense to talk of my "responsibility" only if I inhabit a moral
world defined by common moral standards that I share with other people.
It is those other people, at least to the extent I am obligated to them,
to whom I am responsible.
It sounds as if you think that "like it or not, you are responsible to
none but yourself" is a moral principle that I'm just stuck with. If
that's not what you think, you should change your manner of speaking.
You also seem to hold the inconsistent view that the only possible
source of moral principles is that people make up their own. It's
unclear to me on the latter view why I am bound by a chain of illusion
and you are not if you make up the principle "whatever I say is good is
good" and I make up the principle "whatever the Pope says is good is
good".
>I can assure you from first hand experience that "narcissism",
>"licentiousness" and "degradation" can be reliably detected in one's
>self.
Very possibly. To say that something can be reliably detected, though,
suggests that it exists even if one should fail to detect it. "Can be
reliably detected" and "exist only to the extent they are felt" don't
have the same meaning. It doesn't even make sense to use the one in
connection with something to which the other is applicable.
>You seem to believe that I have been speaking ex cathedra in this thread.
>Nothing could be further from the truth. Everything here has been
>opinion, and (I had thought) labelled accordingly. Of course Mr. Robertson
>and his followers may attempt to get their agenda adopted. I will, of
>course, attempt to see mine adopted instead. We will fight this out
>through many means, from emotional appeals to pragmatic concerns to
>sneaky parliamentary maneuverings to outright bloodshed.
So the idea seems to be that you want stuff, and Robertson wants stuff,
and Jeffrey Dahmer wants stuff, and whoever wins wins.
>I show that his principles, if applied, will lead to horror, or at
>least an outcome worse than that which would follow from the
>application of my principles.
"Horror" and "worse" seem to mean "I don't like it". Tastes differ, of
course. You may or may not be able to enforce your own. Ditto for Mr.
Dahmer, who was able to make his own tastes prevail on many occasions.
If he were alive and at large, I would suggest a discussion with him.
You might learn something about rhetoric. His methods were unusual, but
far more effective than emotional appeals or parliamentary maneuverings
in achieving a favorable resolution to clashes of opinion.
>Surely you're not willing to stand up and make a reasoned intellectual
>defense of the unexamined life.
The point is not to have an examined life but a good life. Explicit
reasoning is not the only way people come to know truths. Otherwise no
truth could ever be known, because reasoning must start with truths that
have already been accepted. Why shouldn't the same be true of goods?
Actually, I'm not at all sure why you should place particular value on
the examined life. If it's impossible to make mistakes in morality (as
you appear to believe) it's not clear why it's sensible to spend much
time thinking about it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 17 06:16:23 EST 1995
Article: 10855 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: nyc.politics,ny.politics,alt.activism,alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.usa.republican,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: NYC conservatives
Date: 13 Feb 1995 09:03:28 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 17
Message-ID: <3hnorg$g5i@panix.com>
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Something for conservatives in the New York City area:
I'm going to be putting out an electronic newsletter listing
events around New York City of interest to conservatives. Up to now
there hasn't been a good way of finding out what's going on. The first
issue should come out shortly before March 1 and be posted to this
newsgroup. Email subscriptions will also be available.
If you know of any meetings or events that should be covered,
please send me the necessary information. If your organization is
doing something, or there is a speaker at your school who other
conservatives might want to hear, or there's any other event that more
people should know about, do let me know. Remember, free publicity is
nothing to turn down!
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 17 06:16:24 EST 1995
Article: 10871 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 13 Feb 1995 14:03:14 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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powers@goofy.stat.unc.edu (Patrick Powers) writes:
>I will credit you with originality: the argument that hatred of
>outsiders and racial predjudice are net positive forces is truly a
>first.
I don't think I said anything about hatred of outsiders as a net
positive force. I did suggest, at least implicitly, that social order
grows out of the connections we feel we have with groups of people less
extensive than humanity as a whole, and that common history and culture
are most often what gives rise to such connections. Common history and
culture are what define ethnicity. None of that is original.
The one thing I added that isn't utterly platitudinous was a suggestion
that antidiscrimination laws don't take the foregoing features of
social order into account and the outlook out of which they arise views
such features as illegitimate.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 17 06:16:25 EST 1995
Article: 10872 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 13 Feb 1995 14:05:51 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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pajerek%telstar.kodak.com@kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>Mr. Kalb is apparently proposing in this thread a return to social
>formations governed by the self-evident verities of race, language,
>ethnicity, etc.
I'm proposing abandonment of the project of rooting out the formations.
I do think that ethnicity, language, gender and so on have an important
role in human life, and I don't see any prospect that anything will
replace them in that role. I don't understand the expression "self-
evident verities", by the way. The things under discussion are not
propositions and so can't be true or false.
>That mankind has spent any number of blood-soaked centuries trying to
>*rise above* these things makes no impression, so mesmerized is he by
>the spectacle of 'social atomization' that he perceives in today's
>society.
Most of the blood that has soaked this century has been spilled in
efforts to establish human life on a new basis having nothing to do with
the parochial loyalties men are born into. I think that should bother
you. Also, I don't understand the "rise above". Ethnicity, like family
life or eating, is certainly not the highest thing. However, it gives
ordinary life coherence, which I think is a precondition of pursuing
higher things for those capable of them.
>Atomization is quite inescapable, with or without civil rights laws.
>
>The past several hundred years are a record of our efforts to break out
>of seemingly predestined patterns of thought and behavior, and to reach
>what, at our best moments, we have long known to be our true potential.
Imminent historical triumphs usually don't work out as expected. Maybe
this one, as you expect, will be different. For my own part, nothing in
our day-to-day or public life suggests an impending Golden Age to me.
>Now, with this goal in sight, at least for some of us, Mr. Kalb is
>getting cold feet, and wants to return to the comforting myths of a
>past that never existed.
What comforting myths of a non-existent past have I mentioned? The
most I've said is that serious trouble is likely in the future, and
that a legal regime designed to root out practices inconsistent with
the triumph of what you think of as "our true potential" are likely to
cause more harm than good.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 17 06:16:25 EST 1995
Article: 10882 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 13 Feb 1995 21:48:26 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>Throughout, I have been using "responsibility" to refer to a purely
>personal phenomenon, the transcentant experience of taking ownership
>of own's life.
I can't understand "ownership" apart from a system in which more than
one person participates. It thus could not be purely personal in my
view. As you point out, we seem to be unable to speak to each other.
>My words imply an absolute morality.
The implication was quite opaque in many places.
>You mention the "good life", and imply that it might be unexamined. As
>such a conception falls outside those realms of ethical thought
>commonly referred to as Western, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and
>Buddhist, I can only wait in awe for your exposition of it.
Again, I don't understand you. You seem to think of the "examined life"
as one consciously chosen on reflection from among alternatives. Most
people haven't thought that was the only sort of life that could be
called good.
It's true that Plato (to pick an exemplary Western philosopher) seems
to have thought that a fully examined life was the best life and a
possibility for some few people. For the vast majority, though, he
thought that the good life could only be a life as a citizen of a good
city in accordance with the laws of that city in which he has been
educated.
Christians, Jews, and Muslims think of the good life as a life as a
member of the community constituted by the religion in accordance with
the things that the community thinks good. In each case there's no
particular requirement of reflection or choice from among alternatives;
what makes the life good is not how you came to live it but what it's
like when lived. A man who leads a Christian life because he loves
Christ and the Church and never thinks to count the cost or seriously
consider the advantages of alternatives wouldn't be living an examined
life in your terms, but Christians wouldn't view his life as lacking.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 17 06:16:26 EST 1995
Article: 10908 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 14 Feb 1995 16:11:59 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>Do you consider yourself, as a sentient being, to have any intrinsic
>moral attributes, i.e. attributes not defined by your relation with
>other beings.
A good philosophical question, rather like asking what a particular
thing is apart from all its attributes.
The answer is yes. The position regarding goodness seems to me the same
as that regarding truth. We can approach truth and goodness only
socially. That's what it means to say we are social animals who by
nature realize our good in society. On the other hand, neither truth
nor goodness reduces to a social construction. So our capacity to know
them must relate to some intrinsic attribute.
The attribute by which we can know the good and the true, although
different from our status as social animals, doesn't seem to be
effective apart from that status. As to truth: we can have definite
knowledge of truth only to the extent we can state it, and language is a
social institution. We cannot know truth without reliable evidence and
reasoning, and it is difficult to rely on such things confidently if
discussion with other investigators is not possible. Also, life is too
short and human capacities too small for one man to gather and put in
order all the evidence needed to conclude much of anything. Our
conclusions, including those that constitute knowledge, rest on the
conclusions of others whom we trust. That is one reason children reared
asocially (by wolves, for example) turn out hopeless idiots.
The position for moral truth is the same as that for other truth.
>If I am incorrect, then perhaps I can be enlightened by an exposition
>on your opinion on the validity of the Nuremburg defense.
Invalid. As Germans and as Europeans they should have known better.
Possibly the defense would have been valid for Joshua or for the
lieutenants of Genghis Khan.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 17 06:16:27 EST 1995
Article: 10909 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 14 Feb 1995 16:13:30 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>Looks like a toss-up to me. The bodies seem to pile up about equally
>on the "defend the parochial loyalties" side (WWI, WWII, Arm*nian &
>Rwandan genocides)
Those things don't strike me as examples of defending the complex of
parochial loyalties people grow up with, which is what is at issue in my
objections to the civil rights laws. WWII was initiated by a
professedly revolutionary movement that emphasized its utter contempt
for the existing system, idolized a national unity that would replace
all lesser attachments, and reduced all moral obligation to that of
obedient loyalty to the will of the Fuehrer. WWI, as I understand the
matter, began when one state that was trying to replace the old German
regionalism with a new nationalism based on military power and money and
another state that felt threatened by the parochial loyalties of its
very diverse subjects attempted to create a new European order that
would have been far more centralized than the old one. (I know too
little about the other situations to comment.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Feb 19 07:39:19 EST 1995
Article: 11010 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.usa.republican,alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.reform,soc.history
Subject: Re: Abraham Lincoln sucked
Date: 17 Feb 1995 16:44:03 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <3i27ig$igj@butch.lmsc.lockheed.com> turf@skinner (Brian McInturff) writes:
> But if -- and this usually seems a bit more difficult to most
>people -- you'd like to know whether an individual is a libertarian
>or a conservative, ask about Abraham Lincoln.
Actually, there have been and are plenty of conservatives who have
problems with Lincoln. Mel Bradford, Reagan's initial nominee for head
of the National Endowment for the Humanities, got canned and replaced
by Bill Bennett because he had written against Lincoln. That was one
of the major incidents precipitating the
neoconservative/paleoconservative split. In general, the former tend
to like Lincoln and the latter tend not to.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Feb 19 07:39:20 EST 1995
Article: 11025 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: M. L. King and conservatives
Date: 18 Feb 1995 09:19:35 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 13
Message-ID: <3i4vln$7r6@panix.com>
References: <3hm61j$t17@panix.com> <3i24mh$3o5@balsam.unca.edu> <3i29n9$l60@panix.com> <3i4tb8$8e5@balsam.unca.edu>
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In <3i4tb8$8e5@balsam.unca.edu> kepley@photon.phys.unca.edu (Brad Kepley) writes:
>>>One of the prophets?
>>Someone whose words and acts are treated as morally exemplary and
>>authoritative.
>But what conservatives are holding M.L.King in this way?
I've seen such things in _Heritage Review_.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Snug and raw was I ere I saw war and guns.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Feb 19 07:39:23 EST 1995
Article: 41637 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: The alternative to libertarianism
Date: 18 Feb 1995 09:21:39 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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ipberg@acs.ucalgary.ca (Ian Paul Berg) writes:
>Instead, the human values, political rationalism, and economic freedom
>which is the most "realistic ideal" available is to be found in
>Neoconservatism.
It seems to me that neoconservatives are liberals who have realized that
liberalism pragmatically refutes itself but haven't changed their
fundamental way of thinking. Their view is still one of technological
utilitarianism. That's an awkward position, because the reason
liberalism fails is that technological and utilitarian attitudes toward
society don't work. The pragmatic defeat of liberalism is thus also its
theoretical defeat--liberalism is a form of t.u. and by its own
pragmatic standards t.u. disproves itself.
The difficulties in which neocons find themselves show up in their
attitude toward religion: it's very necessary, so long as the masses
are religious and we neocons who don't take any of this religion stuff
seriously but recognize its use are in control. I don't think such an
outlook can be made to work today.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Snug and raw was I ere I saw war and guns.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Feb 19 07:39:25 EST 1995
Article: 41638 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Conservative society+libertarian means = traditional ends?(was Re: A Letter to the Left)
Date: 18 Feb 1995 09:26:22 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>If all that was on the table for the cultural conservatives was a
>cheaper and cleaner disintegration of all they held dear, they'd just
>pack up their tents and turn apolitical, as they largely were prior to
>1978. The offer instead seems to be that cultural conservatism would
>enjoy a rebirth under libertarian means, _for those who wanted it_.
There are a lot of different views. One is that in any society
accepted values evolve to support whatever institutions people find
they must rely on as a practical matter. If you enact the libertarian
program and get rid of social security, publicly funded education,
government welfare progams, and all the rest of it, people will find
they need family and other forms of social organization based on
personal ties and essentialist roles (e.g., gender stereotypes).
The values cultural conservatives hold dear are the values that support
that kind of social organization and make it something on which people
can routinely rely. That's why those are the values that prevailed
pre- welfare state, and the fusionist claim is that they will also
prevail post-welfare state.
The kind of analysis you present seems to assume that people want
whatever they happen to want, and whatever that happens to be turns
rather directly into what they value. Not so--it's all socially
conditioned. What we want and value depends on the pattern of
relationships and possibilities we find ourselves in, and on the habits
and attitudes in which we have been reared.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Snug and raw was I ere I saw war and guns.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Feb 22 10:05:15 EST 1995
Article: 41663 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: The alternative to libertarianism
Date: 19 Feb 1995 09:33:44 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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dellb@gpu3.srv.ualberta.ca (Brian Dell) writes:
>Can you really afford to not get on board with neo-cons, Jim?
Depends on which neo-con, for what purpose, and compared to whom. I'd
usually support a neo-con who was running for public office.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Snug and raw was I ere I saw war and guns.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 23 13:59:41 EST 1995
Article: 3615 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: an even newer New Left?
Date: 22 Feb 1995 18:41:09 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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wmcclain@worf.infonet.net (Bill McClain) writes:
>Either I, like the neo-cons, secretly crave the approval of those I
>consider to be my moral and intellectual superiors,
I don't think that's it exactly. We wouldn't crave the approval of our
betters if the fact of their superiority could be analyzed into definite
things such as spiritual or material advantage. If it could we would
all be on the same footing and our pleasure in their approval would be
merely rational.
> She identifies with the practical efforts
> of the social movement left to organize in civil society but
> urges it to utilize government as a vehicle to empower self-
> organization...
Any specifics? It sounds like the sort of thing the Left complains of
in the Religious Right.
> One secret to the success of right-wing ideology has been its
> ability to obscure this role of social movements. It has done so
> by dividing all social activity into two categories: coercive
> action of government and free exchange between individuals in
> the market.
The more intelligent free marketeers turn "free exchange" and "market"
into terms of art so that a single comprehensive analysis can be applied
to all noncoerced actions. I haven't read enough to say how successful
the effort is. Does anyone know enough about Hayek to say how well he
is able to handle social institutions such as the family?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Snug 'n raw was I ere I saw war 'n guns.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Feb 25 06:27:51 EST 1995
Article: 3630 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Europe Awake
Date: 24 Feb 1995 09:26:33 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <3ikqap$cqg@panix.com>
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kepley@photon.phys.unca.edu (Brad Kepley) writes:
>>: Don't the Nazis have a legitimate claim to being excellent
>>: counter-revolutionaries?
>>
>>Not really - fascist and Nazi philosophy was heavily based on the
>>rationalist project of building a complete ideological society on a tabula
>>rasa.
>
>Hitler aimed purely at the non-rational. It's been a long time but I
>can remember portions of his writings which were totally aimed at
>destroying the Enlightenment and rationalism. The Nazis loved myth.
>Look at the SS ceremonies and the use of astrology by Nazi bigwigs.
>Seems totally crazy outside of their rejection of rationalism.
Which doesn't show that the Nazis did not share with political
rationalists the project of building a complete ideological society on
a tabula rasa. Everything was to give way before the principles of
purity of blood and the absolute validity of the will of the Fuehrer as
the embodiment of that of the German people. To the extent that CRs
don't think society should be based wholly on ruthless application by a
central power of simple and pragmatically clear principles they should
have serious problems with the Nazis.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Snug 'n raw was I ere I saw war 'n guns.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Feb 28 21:26:33 EST 1995
Article: 3651 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: A vision for mankind regarding universe
Date: 28 Feb 1995 21:26:21 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <3j0m0d$oqk@panix.com>
References: <3iv494$p22@lucy.infi.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
burchel@nr.infi.net (Demosthenes) writes:
>[ ... ] the universal life force, or God.
>
>In the beginning, I see the mind of God, the vaccum, bursting forth
>into spontaneous creation/anti-creation, which spawned a universe of
>sum-total nothing, yet rich and full with energy flowing in chaos
>toward organization into stable forms [ ... ] And finally, on this
>planet, at least, that life sought to understand that process. This
>was the beginning of true intelligence in living systems. This was the
>beginning of the emergence of God's form in chaos.
>
>[ ... ] At the close of this age, mankind is becoming aware of our true
>purpose, which is to create a universe which is mind completely, and
>completely stable, not subject to entropy or time. This age will be
>the final culmination of universe, or the true incarnation of God [ ... ]
It's a puzzling notion, an implicit God (implicit in what?) engaging in
an act of creation that's not creation (because the components all sum
to zero) so that he can achieve conscious realization through processes
within what he has created.
Also, I'm not sure how we men are going to create an eternal mind. It
seems that a process wholly within the world is going to transcend the
conditions of worldly existence. And when we create the eternal mind,
what relation will we have with it?
For all that, the conception has a certain grandeur.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Snug 'n raw was I ere I saw war 'n guns.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Mar 1 13:55:57 EST 1995
Article: 3653 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Europe Awake
Date: 1 Mar 1995 05:44:24 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <3j1j68$262@panix.com>
References: <3iagk0$8v3@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <3ikisi$2cl@balsam.unca.edu> <3ikqap$cqg@panix.com> <3ioo81$set@balsam.unca.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In dmdeane@netcom.com (David M. Deane) writes:
>One thing I disagree with Mr. Kalb on, though:
>his assumption of NS thinking being based upon a tabula rasa.
I was thinking of nature as providing the paper, history or political
will doing the writing, and social institutions and culture as what is
written. Thus, the NSDAP recognized biological but not historical or
traditional determinants. The latter could be overridden by political
will.
Maybe my use of the metaphor is flawed to the extent the NSDAP's
political will is viewed as carrying out biological commands. In that
case, the paper would determine what should be written on it (rather as
for Michelangelo the block of marble already contained the imprisoned
statue) and to the perceptive eye never would have been blank at all.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Snug 'n raw was I ere I saw war 'n guns.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Mar 1 13:56:08 EST 1995
Article: 11344 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.activism,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,nyc.announce,nyc.politics
Subject: NYC events for conservatives
Date: 1 Mar 1995 06:00:24 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 79
Distribution: ny
Message-ID: <3j1k48$a4s@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
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************************************************************************
Published by the Institute for the Human Sciences March 1, 1995
************************************************************************
This is the first issue of _NYC Right_, a newsletter listing events in
the New York City area of interest to conservatives, whether of
traditionalist or libertarian persuasion. I expect to distribute the
newsletter electronically every two weeks, both by email to those who
have requested subscriptions and by posting it to several usenet
newsgroups (including alt.activism, alt.society.conservatism,
alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, and nyc.politics) and mailing lists. Feel free
to distribute the newsletter more widely, print out and post it, and so
on. If you want to receive it by email, let me know at jk@panix.com.
The listings in this first issue are sparser than I would like, but I
can't publicize what I don't know about. If you know of any events open
to the public that might be of interest to people with conservative
sympathies, do let me know.
Jim Kalb
jk@panix.com
***********************************************************************
C A L E N D A R
***********************************************************************
Tickets for Rush Limbaugh TV show. Call (212) 397-7367 Monday through
Thursday between 10 A.M. and 1 P.M.
March 2 -- "Should There be Mandatory Pro Bono", presented by the
Federalist Society. Columbia Law School, Room D, 4 P.M.
March 2 -- "Is the SEC Obsolete?", a panel discussion presented by the
Federalist Society. Cornell Club, 6 East 44th Street. Reception 6:00
P.M., panel 7:00 P.M. Refreshments will be served.
March 4 -- Roundtable with Jane Orient. Foundation for Economic
Education, 30 S. Broadway, Irvington-on-Hudson. Reception 5:00 P.M.,
dinner 6:00, presentation and discussion 7-9:30 P.M. $40 per person,
for reservations call (914) 591-7230 or fax (914) 591-8910.
March 7 -- "Should Framers' Intent be used to Interpret the
Constitution?", a debate between Professor Chris Eisgroofer and Mark
Pollott, formerly of the Reagan Justice Department, presented by the
Federalist Society. New York University Law School, Room 210 in
Vanderbilt Hall, at 6:00 P.M.
March 14 -- Organizational meeting for discussion group on
traditionalist conservatism. Email jk@panix.com for details.
March 15 -- "Property Rights", with Chief Judge Loren Smith. Presented
by the Federalist Society at Touro Law School at 6:00 P.M. Touro Law
School (tel. 516-421-2244) is located on Nassau Road in Huntington,
L.I., off Route 110.
March 24 -- Memorial service for Murray N. Rothbard. Madison Avenue
Presbyterian Church, Madison Avenue and 73rd Street. 2:00 P.M.
April 1 -- Roundtable with Joe Sobran. Foundation for Economic
Education, 30 S. Broadway, Irvington-on-Hudson. Reception 5:00 P.M.,
dinner 6:00, presentation and discussion 7-9:30 P.M. $40 per person,
for reservations call (914) 591-7230 or fax (914) 591-8910.
***********************************************************************
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Snug & raw was I ere I saw war & guns.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Mar 5 05:34:20 EST 1995
Article: 42051 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 4 Mar 1995 07:55:50 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <3j9o0m$3re@panix.com>
References: <3j86qe$r4q@nntp.interaccess.com> <3j88tg$s7v@ncar.ucar.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3j88tg$s7v@ncar.ucar.edu> strandwg@ncar.ucar.edu (Gary Strand) writes:
>ce> The 9 political theories that are most self-consistent are:
> On the LEFT Anarchism; Socialism; Communism.
> In the CENTER Individualism; Liberalism; Communitarianism.
> On the RIGHT Libertarianism; Conservatism; Authoritarianism.
> We need to quibble over the utility of a 1-D scale and what the definitions
> of "left", "center" and "right" that you're using are.
It's not a 1-D scale. It's 2-D, with LEFT-CENTER-RIGHT (degree of
equality of condition?) as one axis and EMPHASIS ON INDIVIDUAL-EMPHASIS
ON SOCIETY as the other. Or so I read it.
Any other suggestions for how to define "political theory space"? The
notion intrigues me, possibly because I have a bad cold. I suppose
there's the "social tolerance X economic freedom" coordinate system
some libertarians propound. There must be others, though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Mar 5 12:35:57 EST 1995
Article: 42073 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 5 Mar 1995 06:58:50 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 58
Message-ID: <3jc91q$2tq@panix.com>
References: <3j9o0m$3re@panix.com> <3jbdc9$mgc@rover.ucs.ualberta.ca>
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dellb@gpu3.srv.ualberta.ca (Brian Dell) writes:
>How would you answer the question,
>"What should our collective end be?"
>
>If you say something like "material equality" or some sort of economic
>result I'd call you "left".
>If you say something like "saving everyone's soul" or some sort of
>psycho-spiritual result I'd call you "right".
>If you say, "there is no collective end!" I'd call you "libertarian" or
>"individualist".
A neat scheme -- one could also make the question "what ends should most
determine the organization of society". That would make it more
comprehensible that the three corners define a space any point of which
can be occupied.
My own scheme-of-the-day is derived from the question:
What procedure is best for integrating men's inclinations, reason,
and experience to arrive at a result that will be authoritatively
socially?
If you say "experts and functionaries organized in a bureaucracy" I'd
call you "left".
If you say "tradition" I'd call you "right".
If you say "the market" I'd call you "libertarian".
One feature of the resulting triangle is that it has no place for god-
kings, fuehrers, or anti-bureaucratic leftists. That's OK from my point
of view, because I don't think those are rationally defensible
positions. Others will differ. Anyway, anyone who's read this far can
amuse himself arranging or rearranging people on the following chart:
Bureaucracy ------------------------------------- Tradition
\ /
\ Ostrum /
\ /
\ Kalb /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ Sherwood/
\ /
\Griffith
\ /
Market
>From the standpoint of the chart, I think the local leftists are
somewhere in outer space. If that's so, and it's due to a defect in the
chart, I'd be interested in hearing accounts of just what the defect is.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Mar 5 15:29:57 EST 1995
Article: 42078 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 5 Mar 1995 13:10:47 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <3jcur7$nd2@panix.com>
References: <3jbdc9$mgc@rover.ucs.ualberta.ca> <3jc91q$2tq@panix.com> <3jcs9c$rqn@nntp.crl.com>
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viejo@crl.com (Gary Weston) writes:
>If you are concerned only with yourself you're a libertarian.
>
>If you are concerned with yourself and your socio-economic peers you're
>to the right.
>
>If you are concerned with mankind you are to the left (by your
>description, though that would put Christ, Buddha, etc. on the left).
There would be something to what you say, if instead of "socio-economic
peers" the second paragraph read "persons with whom you have some
particular connection", and if instead of "you are concerned with _____"
it read in each case "you think you should make decisions in the
ordinary course of day-to-day life based mostly on what you know of
_____ and your or their interests".
On that analysis, a problem with the left-wing view is that it's hard to
see why all decisions shouldn't be made by some central decision-maker
who's fed all the right info by pollsters, social scientists, and other
experts. The rest of us would be much too ignorant to decide anything,
so our moral duty would be limited to supporting the bureaucracy. That
doesn't sound so good to me, and I'm not sure Christ or Buddha would
have liked it either.
>On the other hand, why is it so important that every opinion, idea,
>proposal, or individual be labeled as something?
It's not the most important thing, but it's a way of seeing relations
among things. Extended thought is difficult without words, and words
classify and label.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Mar 5 19:06:06 EST 1995
Article: 42082 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 5 Mar 1995 16:44:38 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <3jdbc6$pof@panix.com>
References: <3jcs9c$rqn@nntp.crl.com> <3jcur7$nd2@panix.com> <3jd2pf$as@nntp.crl.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
viejo@crl.com (Gary Weston) writes:
>Hey, Jim, I didn't include anything about making decisions for anyone.
>I simply pointed out that people whom you and others label as left wing
>normally have a wider view of humanity's needs than the others.
I was trying to phrase my view in a way that makes it as easily
comparable with yours as possible. Yours is that leftists care more
about humanity than others, mine is that they want more than others to
have social arrangements that ensure that the interests of humanity are
made the explicit basis of decisions. I don't think I'm abusing
leftists by saying so; the point of my posting was to indicate some
problems with that approach to social organization. One is that the
only way of achieving what they want is to centralize decisionmaking, a
procedure that has many disadvantages.
I don't understand your apparent objection to "label[ling] as left
wing". It's impossible to discuss politics without using words that
indicate general categories. People do call themselves leftists or
liberals and mean something by it.
>If I tell a disabled person, or an impoverished child that he is just
>going to have to be responsible for himself, it appears to me that I
>have made a decision for him. If that decision results in his
>starving, then perhaps I share some of the responsibility. I suspect
>that this attitude would make me a bleeding heart leftist in your eyes.
I suspect your suspicion results from stereotypical labeling, not to
mention demonization and possibly even an attempt to marginalize views
that reject left-liberal hegemony.
More to the point, you say "I", but you don't mean "I", you mean the
welfare state. I don't think anyone posting to t.p.t. would object if
you personally did something for those people. Your phrasing suggests
that you view the state as the only possible vehicle for actions that
are not narrowly self-regarding.
No sane person denies that people are dependent on each other and that
we owe obligations to others. (It's possible that some libertarians are
not sane, but that's not my concern.) The issue is what obligations
should be recognized and enforced by law or social convention. That's a
practical matter to be judged by overall long-term results.
The libertarian tendency is to enforce as few obligations as possible,
and to rely on people's inner sense of moral obligation to their
fellows. The conservative tendency is to define specific relationships
where legal or social standards of obligation apply (you're legally
obligated to support family members; you have recognized social
obligations in particular situations to more distant relatives,
neighbors, colleagues, coreligionists and so on) and beyond that to rely
on a general sense of civic obligation. The liberal tendency is to
define the obligations that are practically important as enforceable
legal obligations between each person and the state.
Which approach leads long-term to the best society is in large part a
factual matter. The liberal approach has the obvious advantage, at
least in concept, of tending to equalize the benefits and burdens of
social life for each person. Nonetheless, libertarians and
conservatives claim that both recent history and reflection on the
nature of man and society show that the liberal approach in fact works
badly by its own standards -- it increases rather than reduces suffering
and indignity, and results in new forms of inequality. It is not a
response to such claims to say "suffering and indignity are bad things".
>As far as Christ and Buddha are concerned, I think you are just dead
>wrong.
This is rather a side issue since it isn't customary in t.p.t. to treat
anything Christ or Buddha said as authoritative. I don't think there is
anything in the Bible, though, that indicates that the state should take
any particular role in promoting social welfare. As to Buddhist thought
I don't know enough to comment.
>It also makes it easy to demonize those who disagree with you, which is
>what most politics is about these days.
I'm sure you and I can avoid the temptation to do so if we try.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Mar 5 21:29:34 EST 1995
Article: 42089 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 5 Mar 1995 21:12:54 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 76
Message-ID: <3jdr36$c85@panix.com>
References: <3jbdc9$mgc@rover.ucs.ualberta.ca> <3jc91q$2tq@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>> What procedure is best for integrating men's inclinations, reason,
>> and experience to arrive at a result that will be authoritative
>> socially?
>>
>> If you say "experts and functionaries organized in a bureaucracy" I'd
>> call you "left".
>>
>> If you say "tradition" I'd call you "right".
>>
>> If you say "the market" I'd call you "libertarian".
>No one sits down and thinks about
>what they would wish for their ideal polity and decides on
>"bureaucracy".
Of course not.
>The left chose this path contingently to reach
>it's larger goals.
It's not contingent, at least if you believe (as I do) that bureaucracy
is the only way that is even slightly plausible to bring about such
goals as radical equality.
>Contrary to the assumptions of many, "the market" is not a priori
>necessary to libertarian thought. The complex construct "free exchange
>economy with fixed enforcable property rights" is merely the best
>system we have found for assuring human freedom in non-intimate social
>interactions. (Some libertarians would go farther, and would attempt to
>prove that such a system is the best possible one for this purpose in
>any given set of circumstances.
The categorization is not based on what people think their goals are,
it's based on fundamental institutional strategies. As you observe, the
market is the fundamental institutional strategy for libertarians, and
many even believe that it is necessarily so.
>what then of the conservative choice of tradition. Is it the meat of
>the matter, or is there something else behind it?
Of course it's not the meat of the matter. The meat of the matter, as
in the case of libertarians and liberals, is the good. Tradition, like
bureaucracy and the market, is only an institutional strategy for
achieving the good.
We adopt different different institutional strategies depending on our
theory of how men know and realize the good. Those who believe each man
using his own resources can know his own good and see how to realize it
become libertarians. Those who believe each man can know his own good
but will likely be unable to realize it himself for lack of cooperation
>from others, and who also believe a scheme for bringing the good about
will be apparent to a well-informed decisionmaker, become liberals.
Those who believe it is very difficult for a man to know his own good,
because his good involves choices among incompatible forms of life that
can't be adequately known until it's too late to choose differently, or
to bring about his good, because the good life involves cooperation with
others in forms that can't be planned in advance because human society
is too complicated for the effects of institutions to be predicted,
become conservatives. The best chance for a good life, they believe,
lies in adherence to a tradition that develops over time in accordance
with what those living in the tradition have found satisfying.
>Burke, Acton, and Dos Passos aid some, but it is difficult for me to
>translate their meanings fully into this post-industrial era.
To translate conservatism into a post-industrial era, think tribal.
Think of Hellenistic cities inhabited by men of many nations, each
living under its own laws under an overall administration that tries to
let each go its own way as much as possible. Possibly the people could
be tribal and the administrative elite Confucian.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Mar 6 20:35:58 EST 1995
Article: 42103 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 6 Mar 1995 12:51:09 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 16
Message-ID: <3jfi2d$5pq@panix.com>
References: <3j9o0m$3re@panix.com> <3jbdc9$mgc@rover.ucs.ualberta.ca> <3jc91q$2tq@panix.com> <95Mar6.065241est.6164@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <95Mar6.065241est.6164@neat.cs.toronto.edu> cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>| From the standpoint of the chart, I think the local leftists are
>| somewhere in outer space. If that's so, and it's due to a defect in the
>| chart, I'd be interested in hearing accounts of just what the defect is.
>"And they call it democracy..." -- Bruce Cockburn
True enough, but a mechanism seems to be lacking and the chart is based
on possible decision-making mechanisms. Another corner could be added,
so that it would be a tetrahedron instead of a triangle, and the other
corner could be labeled "electoral politics", but I still don't think
I'd have found a place the local leftists would be happy.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Mar 7 07:15:06 EST 1995
Article: 42111 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 6 Mar 1995 21:20:39 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 55
Message-ID: <3jgftn$1rh@panix.com>
References: <3jdr36$c85@panix.com> <3jfg74$4m5@crl.crl.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>A libertarian would say instead that each man can know his own ends,
>rather than his own good. Whether the good is found is a completely
>separate question.
Sure. Just like liberals would say that bureaucracies sometimes run
amok and conservatives would say the same about traditions. Everyone
goes with what he thinks is most likely to work, not what works
necessarily. If a libertarian were really convinced that something
would lead men to their goods more reliably than individual free inquiry
and choice I can't help but think that he would stop being a
libertarian.
>A good handed to you on a platter by tradition or a bureacrat or a holy
>book is worse than useless.
I'm not sure that it's worse than a good I attain because by blind luck
at age 18 I make choices and they turn out to be the right choices for
me, a thing I couldn't possibly have known.
>And yet, there would seem to be a flaw in this schema in that it deals
>poorly with rapid change. Someone who today attempts to live the good
>life through tradition will find that most of his traditions were all
>developed at a time when the average human married at age twelve and
>died before age thirty-five. The clash between current conditions and
>the ancient traditions would surely seem to adversely affect one's
>chances of finding the good.
Do the ways of living a good life change all that much? That's not the
impression I get from literary sources. For that matter, there are
thriving communities in major world metropolises that live in accordance
with complex traditional rules codified in Palestine and Mesopotamia
more than 1500 years ago based on a code of laws at least a thousand
years older.
>Ah, so I should be reading Stephenson rather than Burke.
Who is Stephenson?
>I have to wonder Stephenson's (and my) view of post-industrial tribes
>as propagating themselves through voluntary memetic transmission
>rather than involuntary genetic inheritance fits in with your stated
>bias toward the family, but these problems will undoubtedly be ironed
>out in time.
A man's tribe is something he views as part of what makes him what he
is. Such things are typically not chosen, since what is chosen can be
rejected, and if you can reject something that thing is not part of what
makes you *you*. So a tribe is usually something one is born into.
There are exceptions, such as religious conversions, but they are indeed
exceptions.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Mar 7 07:15:08 EST 1995
Article: 42129 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 7 Mar 1995 07:11:56 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 43
Message-ID: <3jhiic$rk0@panix.com>
References: <3jbdc9$mgc@rover.ucs.ualberta.ca> <3jc91q$2tq@panix.com> <3jdr36$c85@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In milbauer@netcom.com (Gil Milbauer) writes:
>The way you present the conservative position, one might conclude that
>conservatives do not favor institutions that coercively enforce this
>adherence to tradition. If they didn't, their policies would be
>libertarian.
Both conservatives and libertarians tend to favor coercion where they
believe it necessary to enable their favorite system (which in neither
case is a state system) to function properly.
Most libertarians accept coercive enforcement of contracts and property
rights and maybe even coercive suppression of fraud and provision of
certain public goods (there are varying degrees of rigor among those
who legitimately call themselves libertarians). Their reason is that
they think such things enable markets to function better. Similarly, a
conservative would not think of a society's system of sexual customs or
family obligations as something the state should determine or enforce
comprehensively, but he might well think that the state should
sometimes coercively suppress particular things incompatible with the
accepted system (e.g., gross public indecency or failure by children to
support indigent parents).
Presumably, both libertarians and conservatives would expect the state
to act in a way that presupposes the validity of their own outlook.
For example, if a libertarian thought it was OK for the state to have
an army and police force he wouldn't want armies whose members are
committed to Maoism funded equally with armies whose members are
committed to libertarianism and he wouldn't want the "what kind of
society are we defending?" course given recruits to be taught from the
standpoint of Karl Marx or Pat Robertson. Nor would a libertarian want
the statue set up in front of the libertarian capitol building to
represent the theme "labor casting off the shackles of capitalism" or
"the triumph of the Church Militant".
Another aspect of the issue here is what sort of social institutions
and moral conventions a society would end up with if it adopted
libertarian political institutions. Most net libertarians believe
those things would be libertarian as well. I join many net leftists in
believing the contrary.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Mar 9 10:53:49 EST 1995
Article: 42145 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 7 Mar 1995 19:33:23 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <3jiu0j$dms@panix.com>
References: <3j9o0m$3re@panix.com> <3jc91q$2tq@panix.com> <95Mar6.065241est.6164@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <3jfi2d$5pq@panix.com> <95Mar7.142231est.6221@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>"Electoral politics"?? Democracy not a "decision-making mechanism"??
So far as I can make out, "democracy" is not the name of a decision-
making procedure but a quality supposed to inhere in such procedures.
G.K. Chesterton called tradition the "democracy of the dead". Others
talk about the "democracy of the marketplace". The welfare state,
civil rights legislation, and an activist judiciary are all said to
promote "social democracy" and therefore be democratic themselves.
Electoral politics of the sort we have in North America in 1995 (my
proposed fourth corner, making the triangle a tetrahedron) is also said
to be "democratic". Such statements are all made in good faith, I
think.
>Looks like you haven't done any of the reading I suggested a long time
>ago, Jim. To repeat some of the references, _Rethinking Democracy_
>(Carol Gould), _Against Capitalism_ (David Schweickart), _The Political
>Economy of Participatory Economics_ (Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel).
One has to pick and choose what one reads, on principles that might of
course be wrong. I have found the things you have recommended about as
illuminating as you have found Plato and Nietzsche.
>The kinds of system suggested in these works might not sit well with
>all "local" leftists, but they are the sort of thing favoured by lots of
>other leftists, and they have no representation on your little chart.
If you think it would add something to the discussion in t.p.t., why
not present one of the systems for discussion?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Mar 9 14:33:06 EST 1995
Article: 42199 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 9 Mar 1995 14:21:25 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <3jnkfm$5gn@panix.com>
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NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>a more normative characterisation of democracy as "government by the
>people". But even if the latter sense is used, as vague as it is, it
>still seems like it is opposed to such things as Bureaucracy,
>Tradition, and the Market.
That sense would be satisfied, I think, if what becomes authoritative is
a resultant of the knowledge, inclinations, choices and so on of
everyone involved. I don't see why B., T. or the M. couldn't qualify.
>you propose a scheme which leaves out many of the techniques advocated
>by certain groups (here, "the left"), and wonder out loud why these
>groups are not represented, it might make sense to consult some of the
>literature put out by members of these groups to see what they think.
The fact I soon stopped consulting your recommendations doesn't mean I
consult nothing. Wondering out loud is of course another way of
consulting.
>| If you think it would add something to the discussion in t.p.t., why
>| not present one of the systems for discussion?
>
>A rough cost-benefit analyis recommends strongly against such an
>action.
I find that outlook puzzling in someone who views open and comprehensive
debate as an essential part of his favorite decisionmaking procedure.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Mar 10 05:45:45 EST 1995
Article: 42202 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 9 Mar 1995 15:13:08 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 56
Message-ID: <3jnngk$ha4@panix.com>
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>>I'm not sure that it's worse than a good I attain because by blind luck
>>at age 18 I make choices and they turn out to be the right choices for
>>me, a thing I couldn't possibly have known.
>
>The difference comes in that goods attained as you describe are
>considerably more likely to be fully examined, consciously chosen, and
>lived responsibly than goods imposed from above.
You seem to like things to be made as conscious and explicit as
possible. To me it seems more important that a good be fully realized.
The good of a language is usually most fully realized by its native
speakers. The goods of music and the arts are usually more fully
realized by those who grow up in households and social circles in which
such things are cultivated. It seems to me the same is true of most
things that involve complex evaluations. You learn them best by growing
into a way of life that embodies them. That's the way of tradition.
>Do the ways of living a good life change all that much? That's not the
>impression I get from literary sources.
>This, of course, depends on just how precisely you delimit the ways of
>living a good life. If they consist merely of high level prescriptions,
>then perhaps you can get away with this [ ... ] There are no goats
>running through the Hassidim sections of Manhattan.
Nonetheless, most of their way of life is determined by things that
can't reasonably be called high level prescriptions.
>Those communities you describe are quite aware that their lives are
>merely the closest that they can come to their ideal lives under the
>given circumstances, and that circumstances are rapidly changing to
>the point that their lifestyles are becoming less viable.
I have no reason to think this true. It appears to me that
circumstances have made their lifestyles far more viable than formerly.
Certainly a lot more people live that way than did 20 or 40 years ago.
>How, exactly, do you imagine that such hereditary tribes will remain
>stable under the intense information saturation and mobility of a Third
>Wave society. How are you going to keep 'em down on the commune, if
>the 'net swarms with images of interesting lifestyles practiced
>elsewhere.
People can turn off, tune out, and drop out. What sorts of life do
people find most rewarding in the long run, and what sorts of life are
able to reproduce themselves? It seems to me that coherent individual
lives bound to coherent small communities are what people find most
satisfying and what are most fitted for social reproduction. If that's
right, then people will find ways of screening out the intense
information saturation and slowing down the mobility and the communities
that do so will end up predominating.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Mar 10 07:53:36 EST 1995
Article: 42239 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 10 Mar 1995 07:53:08 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 53
Message-ID: <3jpi3k$gu7@panix.com>
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>>I have no reason to think this true. It appears to me that
>>circumstances have made [haredim] lifestyles far more viable than formerly.
>>Certainly a lot more people live that way than did 20 or 40 years ago.
>
>That was not my understanding, do you have figures?
None at hand. I suggest David Landau, _Piety and Power: The World of
Jewish Fundamentalism (1993). Haredim families are large, few defect,
and there are substantial numbers of converts.
>The fallacy here is the assumption that tribal stability could only be
>(or even primarily be) attained through genetic transmission. But tribes,
>being social structures, have means of propagation and stabilization
>far more efficient than mere human reproduction. Imagine a tribe of
>ecology-minded Catholic lesbians.
The best historical analogy I can think of is monasticism, which has
existed for a long time and has often been important but has never
included a very substantial part of the population. The difficulty is
finding a principle that can give rise to associations as strong and
enduring as those based at least in part on blood relationship. You
seem to think that information saturation will lead to the
multiplication and strengthening of such principles. I doubt it --
urban communes don't last, and part of the basis of monasticism is the
control of information. The Catholic hierarchy lived in the world and
was well-informed, but it had the attractions of power to keep it
together and unpleasant disciplines (obedience and celibacy) to separate
it from the rest of mankind and ensure that its members took it very,
very seriously.
>In fact, such structures would seem to have considerable advantages
>over hereditary tribes, as their customs and mores could be more
>precisely matched to the needs of the members.
You are thinking non-tribally. A consumer good chosen to satisfy the
idiosyncratic pre-existing needs that you happen to have is not your
tribe. Your tribe is what makes you what you are ontologically. What
you grow up with and so makes you what you are developmentally is much
easier for you to view as your tribe than something you come to as an
adult. Religious conversions and similar experiences do happen -- you
seem to have gone through something of the kind -- but not to most
people.
As a sidelight, it's worth noting that the religious groups that have
been doing best in America for a long time have been those that make
serious demands on their members. Their members can feel that such
groups define what they are and what the world is, and that's what
people need in a tribe.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Mar 10 07:58:46 EST 1995
Article: 3673 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Who the Hell is Alain de Benoist?
Date: 10 Mar 1995 07:56:02 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 13
Message-ID: <3jpi92$hau@panix.com>
References: <183329Z26021995@anon.penet.fi> <3jn0j9$m92@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>The right in all versions seems more and more to be retreating into
>catacombs, it's as if the small is beautiful idea is really there to
>hide the fear that we can't transform society as a whole and therefore
>like Plato's just man in a time of anarchy merely give up on it.
I think part of it is the feeling that in the future there won't be any
society to transform, just social fragments. The issue then becomes how
to turn social fragments into societies and see that they survive.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Mar 10 07:58:49 EST 1995
Article: 42240 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 10 Mar 1995 07:55:15 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 42
Message-ID: <3jpi7j$h5v@panix.com>
References: <3jnb6o$q7i@crl.crl.com> <3jnngk$ha4@panix.com> <3jo238$l1q@crl.crl.com>
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>And yet, to fully realize the good in any of these fields, one must
>act consciously and willfully. Great art, music and literature are
>rarely created randomly or unconsciously. In fact, I would go so
>far as to say that such acts of artistic creation are among the
>greatest fruits of responsible action.
Great art is a mixture of conscious and unconscious things. If someone
sets out to write an epic poem the results will be determined by
conventions of language, form and style that come from tradition, the
influence of other writers, his own conscious decisions, and by things
having to do with talent and inspiration that aren't under his conscious
control. People think of talent and inspiration as essentially
individual, but they are more or less common and take different forms at
different times and places, from which it appears that they derive from
as well as contribute to tradition.
>Nor is great art to be found by merely following the formulas of
>tradition. The highest artistic creation may very well require the
>transcendence of traditional boundaries. It is only through such
>transcendence, after all, that traditions evolve.
Traditions develop through what artists do, and eventually become
transformed to a greater or lesser degree. Concentrating on innovation
in style and form doesn't seem to do good things for art, though. It
hasn't done good things for 20th century art, and many of the best
artists haven't much cared about such things.
"Formulas of tradition" is misleading, by the way. One of the
advantages of tradition compared with explicit rationality is that
tradition carries forward things that can't be reduced to formulas.
>Own your morality, Mr. Kalb, as cummings owned the english language and
>Renoir owned the play of light on canvas.
My morality is my recognition of good and evil. I wouldn't want that to
be so paltry that I could own it. What's wrong with a taste for things
that are bigger than I am?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Mar 10 21:02:54 EST 1995
Article: 42267 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 10 Mar 1995 20:35:13 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 86
Message-ID: <3jquoh$5fb@panix.com>
References: <3jnb6o$q7i@crl.crl.com> <3jnngk$ha4@panix.com> <95Mar10.134226est.6166@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
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cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>Who cares about "the good"? Frankly, if people are happy and satisifed
>with their lives, that's a lot more important to me.
It sounds as if you think of such things as the most important goods, or
possibly as the goods that are most relevant to politics.
>nothing is perfect. What this view of yours about contact with the
>good via tradition *does* seem to speak against is unbridled
>capitalism. I continue to remain "puzzled" that you do not seem to
>see this.
You've raised the issue several times, and I've responded several
times. As you say, nothing is perfect. I don't see much prospect for
large-scale state intervention in the economy under present conditions
that would promote contact with the good via tradition. For additional
considerations, look at the FAQ.
>A major point here seems to be that as society "advances" there is
>a definite "profit" to be made by those who can step-back and be reflexive
>and thoughtful, in a general context, about how people operate.
I agree. It seems a bad idea, though, to appoint them to be government
officials and give them general power to put the results of their
reflections into effect.
>people need to grow up in good environments to have good lives. If we
>believe that all people are in some sense of equal importance, it
>behooves us to try to think up ways to ensure that more and more people
>are able to grow up in such environments.
If you substituted "make it more likely" for "ensure" I would agree with
what you say here. The tendency of the Left, I think, is to emphasize
equality more than the good. "Good environment" is not something that
can be created by the will of administrators and apportioned to people
in accordance with their deserts, equal or unequal. It's as if the
adminstration at the U of Toronto decided to ensure that everyone at all
the parties on campus had an equally good time, and sent around
functionaries to make sure that happened. It wouldn't work.
>| If that's
>| right, then people will find ways of screening out the intense
>| information saturation and slowing down the mobility and the communities
>| that do so will end up predominating.
>
>Like a battle, right? Communities may predominate, but at the expense
>of what others?
Why like a battle and why at the expense of others? Communities
predominate when they're productive and prosper, people join rather than
leave, and lots of people are born into them and stick with it. People
don't predominate when their members are unhappy and contentious, more
leave than stay, and so on.
>This seems to me to be where a relativistic conservative attitude falls
>short *morally*, in its lack of universality.
I don't see the lack of universality. The universal rules are that man
is a social animal, and societies are particular. Therefore, man can
realize his good fully only a member of a particular society with a
particular way of life that he is loyal to. What's wrong with loyalty
to particular people as a fundamental virtue?
>I find much worse the alternative of seceding into an environment that
>says "our little group has managed to connect with our good (mind you
>the kids, if they heard anything about the outside world, would surely
>bolt -- especially if they heard, for example, that if they get sick,
>they don't have to die in pain because there is such a thing as
>medicine)", so the rest of you, well, you're not of our group, are you,
>so, heck, tough.
Extreme successionist groups like the Hasids and Amish hang on to the
great majority of their kids even though the kids know all about life in
the outside world. The Hasids live in big cities and the Amish
typically live cheek-by-jowl with non-Amish in rather thickly populated
rural districts. Also, young Amish adults aren't subject to communal
discipline because they don't get baptized until their early to mid
20's. Both groups make use of modern medicine.
I don't understand the "heck, tough". Most people recognize differing
degrees of affiliation and obligation, to their immediate family, their
neighbors and acquaintances, fellow countryman, human beings as such.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Mar 12 09:39:27 EST 1995
Article: 42295 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.radical-left
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 11 Mar 1995 19:59:12 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <3jth10$kik@panix.com>
References: <95Mar10.134226est.6166@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <3jqd8n$7a2@crl.crl.com> <95Mar11.114500est.6170@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:42295 alt.politics.radical-left:38812
cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>First of all that "the good" is in scare quotes. I was here objecting
>implicitly to Jim's hypostatisation.
It's not obvious to me where the hypostatization comes in. The trend
of what I wrote goes the other way. I said it was more important for
"a good" to be fully realized than clearly defined and consciously
chosen. As examples of goods I mentioned those of language and the
arts. The reason for my choice was that the goods of those activities
are implicit in practices and understandings that develop through
tradition rather than isolable goals that one could set up and realize
by some engineered technique. So I don't think I'm treating goods as
things.
>Generally, he blames the state for the eroding of tradition (a la
>Charles Murray), and is conspicuously silent about the effects of
>modern capitalism.
The political function of complaining about modern capitalism is to
propose additional functions for the state. So the issue is whether
having the state do more is favorable to tradition. It seems not. Both
Murray and myself have suggested ways that restricting the scope of
state action would give more scope for self-organizing systems to arise,
whether based on traditions that in the absence of state action would
serve important practical functions or on the market. I don't know
about Murray, but for me it's hard to think of many things the modern
state could do that would promote tradition. The way the two operate
are antithetical.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Mar 15 07:19:00 EST 1995
Article: 42381 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.radical-left
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 13 Mar 1995 14:30:31 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <3k26gn$kjc@panix.com>
References: <95Mar7.142231est.6221@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <3jiu0j$dms@panix.com> <95Mar9.040908est.6164@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <3jnkfm$5gn@panix.com> <95Mar12.123325est.6170@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:42381 alt.politics.radical-left:39112
In <95Mar12.123325est.6170@neat.cs.toronto.edu> cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>So, what works by those identifying themselves as both "democratic" and
>"left" *have* you consulted, and what makes you think they are more
>worthy of consultation than those that I have suggested?
I mostly page through magazines (_Dissent_ or what have you) and see if
anything looks interesting. Occasionally I follow up by looking at a
book that's been reviewed or something of the sort. I have no reason
to think anything I look at is more worthy than your suggestions. On
the other hand, if I keep looking in different places maybe I'll find
something illuminating.
The basic difficulty, as I see it, is that neither you nor anyone on
the left has any clear idea what to do. Also, it seems unlikely to me
that any way will ever be found to bring about the goals of the left
(to combine radical egalitarianism, freedom and popular rule, for
example).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Mar 15 07:19:01 EST 1995
Article: 42394 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.radical-left
Subject: Re: Political Categorization (was Re: A Letter To The Left)
Date: 13 Mar 1995 18:10:46 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 13
Message-ID: <3k2jdm$6rn@panix.com>
References: <3jnkfm$5gn@panix.com> <95Mar12.123325est.6170@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <3k26gn$kjc@panix.com> <3k2cgr$d40@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:42394 alt.politics.radical-left:39148
In <3k2cgr$d40@panix.com> gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>| The basic difficulty, as I see it, is that neither you nor anyone on
>| the left has any clear idea what to do. ...
>On the contrary: "The best lack all conviction, while the
>worst are full of passionate intensity."
In a newsgroup devoted to political theory, it would be pointless
unless forced to do so to pay attention to any but the best.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Mar 18 08:10:15 EST 1995
Article: 3689 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american,alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The Number Of The Beast
Date: 15 Mar 1995 08:43:59 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <3k6quv$8em@panix.com>
References:
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix soc.culture.african.american:95820 alt.revolution.counter:3689
adisa@sirius.com (blackman@ghetto.com) writes:
>Do we have any recourse against this movement?
>Is this another sinister plot by the wicked men in power?
>Yet another way to keep tabs on us?
>Do you have info to update this?
>Do you think this is a crackpot theory? Things that make ya go hmmm...
>
>Just think, if they can keep tabs on what we are doing thru our accounts
>then they could also DELETE any account that they feel is 'subversive' (by
>checking what you read or watch or where you go...) or they could delete
>accounts to cripple the BlackBrownRed communities...The possibilities are
>limitless.
Not a crackpot concern, but not for me the main worry about the future.
The weakness of systems of registration and control is that once they're
in place the government tries to do too much with them, so people find
ways of avoiding them. Things for which they cause a problem go
underground. If the only money is credit balances in the system then
people will use barter. The existence of the system will mostly mean
that payoffs have to be made.
The underground economy is growing everywhere. In the late Soviet Union
the country ran on it. It's also extremely large and important in Italy
and many South American countries. It's tolerated, because everyone
knows it's needed and everyone is either involved himself or has friends
and family who are.
The basic issue is whether a reliable social technology is possible. It
seems to me it isn't, because human society is too complex and too local
to be controlled centrally, and because there would be no one to control
the technocrats themselves and as a result the system could never be
complete.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Mar 18 08:10:21 EST 1995
Article: 11998 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Neoconservatism and the coming crisis
Date: 17 Mar 1995 10:38:04 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:11998 talk.politics.theory:42552
The neoconservatives are a group of people, mostly reasonably well-
placed academics or journalists, who gave up on liberalism as it moved
left in the 60s and thereafter. Their beliefs vary, but their residual
loyalty to many aspects of pre-60s liberalism has given rise to an
identifiable neoconservative ideal that is coherent and influential
enough to be worth discussing.
Their ideal is a unified, prosperous and powerful society that accepts
the New Deal, the earlier stages of the civil rights movement and an
individualistic form of feminism, but not radically egalitarian,
liberationist, or multicultural forms of liberalism. Neocons favor
American economic, diplomatic and military power, as well as hard work,
ambition, enterprise, and respect for learning. They are quite uneasy
with particularism. They favor immigration, free trade, and the civil
rights laws to the extent those laws emphasize individual opportunity
rather than group results. Religion, patriotism, and family values they
favor instrumentally, as a support for the foregoing.
Part of the issue between the neocons and those on their right is of
course whether the sort of society they favor is desirable. Putting
that issue aside, rightists also question whether such a society is a
real possibility. Free popular government, which both neocons and most
rightists want, requires willingness to submit one's own interests to
those of the community. That willingness seems to require men to view
their community membership as more important for what they are than any
of their particular pursuits. But that kind of civic-mindedness becomes
difficult to sustain if society is viewed as fundamentally a system to
enable individuals to pursue their own (mostly economic) goals. The
problem becomes more severe in a society of continental size that
rejects any myth of common origins and worse yet to the extent
government administration of the economy, which opens up new and
destructive ways for men to carry on their struggle for advantage, is
accepted as legitimate.
Will love and loyalty for democratic capitalism and the neoconservative
social safety net really be enough to console the losers and restrain
the winners in economics and politics? Can popular religion and
attachment to national traditions, viewed instrumentally by the
authorities, really solve the problem? It seems doubtful. What the
neocons want is to hang onto one particular stage of the development of
liberalism, but it's unclear how that stage can be recreated and
stabilized. On the whole, it seems more likely that liberal society
will self-destruct and be followed by chaos, tyranny, or neo-tribalism
within a framework analogous to international law (a refined and orderly
form of which could be called "federalism").
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: God, a slap! Paris, sir, appals a dog.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Mar 18 08:10:24 EST 1995
Article: 12028 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Neoconservatism and the coming crisis
Date: 18 Mar 1995 06:11:37 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 23
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References: <3kcacs$49g@panix.com> <3kdu2a$1ggm@rover.ucs.ualberta.ca>
Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:12028 talk.politics.theory:42587
In <3kdu2a$1ggm@rover.ucs.ualberta.ca> dellb@gpu3.srv.ualberta.ca (Brian Dell) writes:
> : Religion, patriotism, and family values [neo-cons]
> : favor instrumentally,
>The (mostly Ivy League alumni) neo-cons are unlikely to
>generate much enthusiasm for these things when they don't
>really believe in them.
It's a problem with neoconservatism and for that matter with a lot of
intellectual conservatism.
According to Gibbon, the various religions of the Roman Empire were
considered by the people equally true, by the philosophers equally
false, and by the magistrates equally useful. Old China could get by
with a Confucian elite who were mostly atheists and a populace that
believed in many gods.
Today none of that will work. There's too little social distance
between the people and their rulers.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: God, a slap! Paris, sir, appals a dog.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Mar 18 08:14:48 EST 1995
Article: 38 of alt.org.promisekeepers
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.org.promisekeepers
Subject: Questions about PKs
Date: 16 Mar 1995 03:45:19 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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I've looked at an article or two about the PKs, and thought I'd ask
what the movement means to those involved. It's grown so fast it must
be something a lot of men have felt a need for. Who gets involved?
What are they looking for? What do they find? What's involved apart
>from the two-day rallies?
Thanks for any thoughts.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Mar 18 08:14:49 EST 1995
Article: 72 of alt.org.promisekeepers
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.org.promisekeepers
Subject: Re: Questions about PKs
Date: 17 Mar 1995 11:02:52 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <3k8tqv$cq6@panix.com> <3kc3kd$dr2@taco.cc.ncsu.edu>
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In <3kc3kd$dr2@taco.cc.ncsu.edu> "Andrew C. McDannold" writes:
>Jim, PK is not about two-day rallies or meetings as such. It's about
>Christian men supporting one another in their efforts to truly be
>Christian men. It's about developing relationships with other men,
>about remembering that a man's responsibilities as husband and father
>should supercede all else, and about living a Christ-centered and
>Christ-following lifestyle.
Does the movement try to integrate itself into the formal life of local
churches (e.g., does it say in the bulletin "Our PK group will be
meeting Thursday night at 7:30") or is it more informal than that at
the local level? Also, I assume there's a lot of resistance to the
movement. I get the impression that the higher-ups in most of the
mainline churches would object violently to the notion that a man has
any specific responsibilities as a man.
It's a rather new movement. How do people find it works in their
personal lives? How and why has it grown so quickly? I'm sorry to be
so general in my questions. My hope is to start some discussion that
would be of interest to others as well.
My interest in the movement is mostly speculative. It seems to me that
the current attempt to deconstruct gender or whatever they call the
process isn't going to work and will injure a lot of people, so a
movement to clarify and revitalize the specific roles of men and women
especially in family life could be a very good thing. So I'm
prejudiced in favor of PKs but would like to get more of a feeling for
what it's all about.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: God, a slap! Paris, sir, appals a dog.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Mar 20 14:55:29 EST 1995
Article: 3697 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: "American Democracy": Paradigm vs. Praxis
Date: 19 Mar 1995 10:00:56 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References:
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bb748@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Milton Kleim) writes:
>While Machiavelli dealt with a single individual, a "prince," in modern
>times the "prince" has been superseded by a virtual living _entity_,
>with enormous, terrific power, power undreamt by rulers of
>Machiavelli's day.
>Television, which is perhaps the most effective weapon ever created,
>has been wielded with incredible skill by self-serving manipulators.
>A much mnore subtle but nonetheless effective process of
>"coordination" has occured in America. Today, it is proper to say that
>the American Establishment _is_ the State and the State _is_ the
>Establishment. All key institutions are structured to consolidate
>power for the State, though the fusion of state and other institutions
>is more de facto, than de jure as in the Third Reich.
The problem is that there isn't a special ruling clique (that for some
reason is incredibly subtle and skillful) that can be identified and
destroyed so that society can revert or be returned to its natural
healthy condition. Our society implies its rulers. What looks like a
result of incredible skill and subtlety is the cooperative action of
society as a whole, or at least its dominant political, social and
spiritual structures, considered as a virtual living entity. The
problem is compounded by the increasing incoherence of structures other
than the official ones. You can't create structures to replace the
existing ones at will or by force. So if you get rid of our rulers by
force their doubles will come back, only cruder and more violent.
Keep on reading Plato and consider how he felt about the possibilities
of counterrevolution as a pragmatic political program. Also, consider
that in discussing political devolution he didn't have talk about chance
elements (particular cliques or groups) extraneous to the society
itself. Yet he succeeded in describing what we see today.
> America has two possible destinies. The paths are not "rule of the
>People" or dictatorship, for we already have a form of the latter. The
>choice is between the malevolent Tyranny of Money, and the
>aforementioned ends it seeks, or a benevolent authoritarian regime
>that will restore justice, true progress, and true prosperity to this
>once-great Nation.
Another possibility is growing chaos that makes even dictatorship
impossible, followed by neotribalism which (one dreams) might settle
into some sort of federal system.
>A paper submitted to Political Science 465, Modern Ideologies, Winter
>1994.
I hope he gave you a good grade on it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: God, a slap! Paris, sir, appals a dog.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Mar 22 06:26:55 EST 1995
Article: 3705 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: "American Democracy": Paradigm vs. Praxis
Date: 22 Mar 1995 06:26:44 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
wmcclain@worf.infonet.net (Bill McClain) writes:
>I live in a small Midwestern town some distance from any big city.
>(Blessed or not, it's home). The people here are quite unambitious in
>terms of materialistic hustle. Most simply want a home and a bit of a
>garden [ ... ] I sometimes feel I have moved into a Norman Rockwell
>painting [ ... ] There is a sort of mild midwestern egalitarianism that
>I am very comfortable with [ ... ]
"Mild" is the right word, but how long can mildness sustain itself on
its own resources? It used to be a lot more widespread than it is now.
What defense does it have against attack or seduction except narrowness
and lack of imagination? Maybe I get a distorted view of things here in
New York, but *someone* must be watching all those TV shows and reading
all those magazines.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: God, a slap! Paris, sir, appals a dog.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Mar 22 09:18:09 EST 1995
Article: 3706 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Joint Victory Communique on the Death of America
Date: 22 Mar 1995 06:27:51 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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pas@phantom.com (gement) writes:
>All that remains is the local and the global.
"Local" isn't quite local enough, since what's needed is a word denoting
atomic sensations and impulses. That's why the welfare state is needed;
classical liberalism requires men to maintain a coherent identity over
time and is thus a form of bigotry.
A better formulation is that in _Journey to the End of the Night_, where
a character observes that the only significant things are mathematics
and pornography.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: God, a slap! Paris, sir, appals a dog.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Mar 26 17:28:58 EST 1995
Article: 3713 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: "American Democracy": Paradigm vs. Praxis
Date: 25 Mar 1995 09:08:36 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 38
Message-ID: <3l1854$k42@panix.com>
References: <3kngs5$f0b@insosf1.infonet.net> <3kp1hk$f7i@panix.com> <3kuvs7$q51@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>The worst part of this is surely the same phenomenon which occurs in
>England, namely that our political system entrusts an enormous amount
>of power to change society in the hands of a political class who are
>entirely out of step with the majority of society [ ... ] I don't
>really see minimal central government as the best way of escaping from
>this problem. Small groups of people are easily pushed around for
>convenience's sake.
Small groups can get pushed around by coordinated efforts carried on by
larger groups. On the other hand, if they create a general-purpose
authority to balance things out the authority is going to try to extend
its power beyond what the original intention requires. It's a tricky
constitutional issue, and the American solution seems to have failed.
Possibly a right of succession would have created a better balance.
>Could for example a small group of mid west towns resist commerical
>pressure for the total secularisation of Sundays (commercialism dressed
>up as freedom normally).
In America they would have a hard time doing so, in part because the
central authority (the federal government in its judicial system) is
suspicious of Sunday closing laws and can preempt the right of
localities to regulate anything having to do with interstate commerce.
>What we need to do is produce a Burkean model where local loyalty
>sustains a broader national loyalty.
Certainly some sort of equilibrium between the different levels of human
affiliation is needed. One issue is whether that equilibrium could be
reestablished from the present over-centralized situation or whether it
would have to develope again from the ground up. The latter view would
support the ENR and libertarian goal of abolishing or at least very
severely pruning existing central powers.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Boston, O do not sob.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Mar 30 13:58:40 EST 1995
Article: 43047 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: What would tribal federalism look like?
Date: 26 Mar 1995 20:59:18 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 17
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NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
The American political tradition emphasizes federalism. It seems likely
that the society of the future will emphasize tribalism. The difference
between the two seems to be that federalism is territorially based while
tribalism is not, at least not primarily.
Could federal principles be applied to the government of a tribal
society? Has something of the sort happened in the past, for example in
the millet system in Turkey, the caste system in India, the right of
clergy in mediaeval Europe, various forms of extraterritoriality, and so
on? Could the two be combined, for example (speaking in federal terms)
by having one federal state consisting of English-speaking neighborhoods
and another consisting of Spanish-speaking neighborhoods?
Any ideas?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Boston, O do not sob.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Mar 30 13:58:42 EST 1995
Article: 43194 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: What would tribal federalism look like?
Date: 29 Mar 1995 07:40:29 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 28
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References: <3l565m$c8f@panix.com> <3lavla$oj1@blarg1.blarg.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3lavla$oj1@blarg1.blarg.com> warrl@blarg.com (Donald Edwards) writes:
>"Could federal principles be applied to the government of a tribal
>"society?
>Certainly. Suppose that each person were permitted to cast X votes
>for a Representative in the US Congress, and they could vote for
>*any* person legally eligible for that position, and the 435 people
>with the most votes won.
The proposal is to respond to social and cultural fragmentation by
putting a fragmented Congress in charge of a unitary legal order. I'm
doubtful that would work.
The federalist idea is different, to respond to fragmentation by
letting each fragment have its own legal order within an overall system
that establishes justice or at least preserves peace among the
fragments. The United States and Switzerland are examples of sucessful
territorial federalism. The question was whether nonterritorial
federalism is possible.
Possible precedents include the legal system of British India, which
when appropriate applied "local law" that could include Muslim or Hindu
religious law or caste law, and the libertarian notion of contracting
into a legal regime when there are multiple regimes in competition.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Boston, O do not sob.
Back to my archive of posts.