Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Sep 13 10:33:55 EDT 1994
Article: 33529 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.radical-left
Subject: Re: More liberals and conservatives (was Re: Productive Chaos...)
Date: 13 Sep 1994 08:52:16 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <94Sep11.171638edt.48153@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <352rve$1t4@panix.com> <94Sep13.015235edt.48167@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:33529 alt.politics.libertarian:47097 alt.politics.radical-left:26299
cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>The first principle of justice allegedly still ensures that people have
>automony to form their own rational plans of life and pursue them,
>without being "administered" by some "custodial" state.
Supposedly the rational plans of life aren't administered by the
custodial state on behalf of the collective ownership. However,
everybody's capacities, talents, and other useful personal
characteristics are. I'm not sure how much room for freedom is left.
>To me, the only solution to this seems to be that one's being is, at
>some sense, integrated and at peace with itself. This can be achieved
>by conservative tradition only under very special circumstances (a
>cloistered life fostered through brainwashing).
You take natural science as an ideal. Natural science, as I understand
the matter, thrives best somewhat in a cloister. "Brainwashing" means
the conscious and manipulative inculcation of a point of view recognized
as disadvantageous to the object of the process. I'm not sure why you
think it's applicable. Your view may be that good-faith conservatism is
impossible, that someone could not believe for example that there is no
perspective available to him that gives him more light than the
perspective of some particular tradition and that therefore he must
accept that tradition as true and authoritative.
>| How and on what grounds is it decided which gets
>| watered down and how much?
>
>Like you said, only you had it backwards: "Degree of universality".
So if it turns out that participants in all moral traditions train up
the young in the belief that their own moral tradition is best for them
that won't be something that gets watered down?
>| The actual function
>| of such complaints in modern politics is to promote the next step in the
>| same process of turning society into a unified machine that treats
>| everything and everybody as resources to be used in a rational process
>| of producing goods and services to satisfy actual preferences. If
>| someone has a believable alternative to modern capitalism that isn't
>| socialism I'd be very much interested in hearing about it.
>
>"Modern big capitalism" is [ ... ] something that conservatives
>typically completely ignore, for reasons that would mystify me if I
>thought they were being completely honest.
I answered this above.
>This talk about "actual preferences" [ ... w]hat other kind of
>preferences are there, unless you advocate critical reflection?
The intended contrast is with the good. Conscious and articulate
critical reflection is not the sole avenue to the good any more than it
is to the beautiful or even the true. For most people it can't be much
of an avenue to anything, since the talent for abstract thought is not
common, and for all people it has a function only within a setting of
tradition, stereotype and prejudice that is generally trusted. Also,
you should bear in mind that we cannot grasp the most important things
whole because they are the things that make us what we are.
>Why are you ruling out socialism above, anyway?
"Socialism" seems to refer to systems which try to realize an abstract
idea of equality either by setting up very active bureaucracies or by
doing something that I don't understand. For reasons discussed, I don't
like overall schemes to implement abstract ideas. Also, the socialist
notion of equality seems typically to relate to satisfaction of
preferences rather than any more persuasive notion of the good. I
should add that the schemes I've seen never seem very workable, and the
ones that have been tried out seem to have flopped.
>Are you familiar with all the possible varieties of socialism
>available?
No more than I'm familiar with all the possible varieties of anything.
What I've sampled hasn't been impressive.
>I might recommend the following texts (which I haven't got around to
>studying myself):
>
>_The Political Economy of Participatory Economics_
> by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel
>
>_Against Capitalism_
> by David Schweickert
>
>_Democracy and Economic Planning_
> by Pat Devine
>
>_Market, State and Community_
> by David Miller
>
>_Rethinking Democracy_
> by Carol Gould
Noted.
>There is a lot of planning than goes on inside big corporations.
Sure. The more definite the goal and the more restricted the setting,
the more planning can do. Social planning is at the opposite pole from
the settings within which planning works best.
>| alternative to some sort of at least voluntary separation of people who
>| participate in different cultural traditions is the destruction of all
>| cultural traditions except at most one. I don't think that would be a
>| good thing.
>
>This doesn't have to happen. There are plenty of people who support
>different cultural traditions who also would never consider themselves
>"conservative".
I don't see the relevance of what you say to what I said. Are there
plenty of people who think they can support a particular cultural
tradition purely as individuals, without any tendency preferentially to
form connections to others supporting the same tradition? If people
like that do exist, do their beliefs make sense?
>The Jews I know are quite liberal and secular, most of them.
There was an interesting article, I think in the October 1993
_Commentary_, about the prospects for liberal secular diaspora Jewry.
As a result of a 50+% intermarriage rate, a very low birth rate, and
declining Jewish participation it looks like they're on the way out.
The strictly Orthodox, on the other hand, are thriving. The Israelis
aren't doing so bad either.
>The Mennonites I've met are also very liberal.
The Amish and Hutterites aren't liberal, and with their high birth and
retention rates they're growing quickly. The children of liberal
Mennonites, on the other hand, tend to become dropouts.
>Lot of "self-realization" ethic amongst these groups. They fit it in
>pretty well with their traditions.
And from my standpoint god-kings fit in with the contractarian
tradition.
>How many liberals want to abolish long-term pair-bonding relations?
Very few, I'm sure. The issue is whether their desire to do away with
the things they don't like in the institutions supporting those
relations will have that effect.
>The gist of my complaint was that you only consider the power of the
>elites who directly make law, but don't consider the powers of the
>elites (business leaders, church leaders) who are well-positioned by
>the set of stereotypes you favour (respectively, "hard worker who shows
>up and does what we say without complaint", and "person who does what
>the church tells them to, in political and economic matters, providing
>status and tithes to us").
I use the expression "ruling elite" for the elite that tends to set the
terms of debate and win, not for the elites that are fighting a losing
battle to maintain what once was. We live in a dynamic and changing
world, as they say, so that usage seems appropriate to me. Also, I'm
nothing if not forward-looking.
>Just the appeal to "illegitimacy" to begin with is misleading. As far
>as I understand it, Sweden doesn't confer such a horrendous title on
>people who are born to couples who are not legally married.
The issue, of course, is the effect of the situation to which the title
is applied.
>Business elites have a common interest in supporting the basic
>capitalist system, as opposed to a more democratically run economy (at
>whatever degree of centralization),
If there were something other than the basic capitalist system that
looked workable, I agree this common interest could give rise to a
common outlook and collective action.
>and supporting the ideology of a person working lots of hours a week in
>order to buy lots of goods.
Collective action as an elite is not necessary for this. Every company
separately for its own purely private interests encourages employees to
work hard for economic incentives and customers to buy a lot of goods.
>Religious elites: who else is pushing all this stuff about "traditional
>families". Including being against lesbians and gays? I don't think
>it's all that rearguard.
Are the stereotypes supporting traditional families, and the social
restrictions on lesbians and gays, stronger or weaker now than they were
10, 20, 30, and 40 years ago?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 14 13:06:40 EDT 1994
Article: 150782 of alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Rush Chelsea dog joke
Date: 13 Sep 1994 17:55:35 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 9
Message-ID: <35574n$plo@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
I just read an article in a respected publication by a respected author
that asserted that in a talk Limbaugh showed a picture of Socks and
said "here's the White House cat" and then said "now I'll show you the
White House dog" and pulled out a picture of Chelsea Clinton. Does
anyone know whether that actually happened?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 14 14:21:35 EDT 1994
Article: 33568 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Charles Murray and the coming apocalypse
Date: 14 Sep 1994 14:21:20 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 47
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:33568 alt.politics.libertarian:47294
pajerek%telstar.kodak.com@kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>The ability of non-poor women to support their single-parent households
>has broken down the general taboo against single motherhood. The
>weakening of this taboo, plus the availability of welfare, has created
>the phenomenon of the poor, welfare-dependent, single-parent family.
>Welfare was designed to work in an environment in which unmarried women
>were strongly discouraged from having children, by social pressures
>alone. It cannot work in an environment which doesn't socially penalize
>single motherhood.
I agree with everything except the first sentence. My objection to the
first sentence is that it makes no sense to add cultural factors, which
make everything rather a web, to the discussion and then treat a single
economic factor as the cause. Economic factors do get tangled up with
a lot of other things, which is why you say that the cultural
consequences (breakdown of taboo) of one economic factor (economic
independence of non-poor women) aggravate the effect (rising rates of
illegitimacy among the poor) of another economic factor (availability of
welfare). One could also say, I suppose, that the availability of
welfare for poor unwed mothers established a cultural principle of
women's autonomy that then promoted the entry of women into the
workforce, and so reverse your causality.
To bring things slightly down to earth, it's worth noting that
illegitimacy among blacks rose sharply in the 60s, before the great
expansion of female participation in the workforce. I don't have the
statistics handy, but anyone interested could look at the _Statistical
History_ and _Statistical Abstract_ of the United States for the figures
before and after 1970.
I do agree that women's economic independence has been a factor. People
noticed a long time ago that prosperity relaxes social standards. "We
now suffer the evils of a long peace. Luxury, more deadly than war,
broods over the city, and avenges a conquered world." (Juvenal) It
seems that it would be hard to persuade people to favor a program of
national impoverishment to make everyone poor but honest, though. The
best idea I can think of, if we're talking public policy, is to find
government programs that greatly reduce the probability that people will
ever have to place serious reliance on their long-term connections to
particular other people and get rid of them, cut them back, tailor them
more carefully, or whatever. Such programs would include welfare and
social security.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 14 19:44:58 EDT 1994
Article: 33569 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: More liberals and conservatives (was Re: Productive Chaos...)
Date: 14 Sep 1994 14:22:58 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:33569 alt.politics.libertarian:47295
pajerek%telstar.kodak.com@kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>>You take natural science as an ideal. Natural science, as I understand
>>the matter, thrives best somewhat in a cloister.
>The progress of science in our time is directly related to the openness
>of the process, the ability of scientists to review and duplicate each
>other's work. To relegate science to a 'cloister' would be the quickest
>way to shut down scientific progress.
Then why do scientists like to work in scientific institutes and
communicate regarding their work only with other scientists, who were
trained in the same way, accept the same standards, read the same
scientific journals, and so on? A community with the social structure
of the scientific community strikes me as extremely cloistered. It's
international, and its members are in constant communication with each
other, but it takes a lot of specialized training and commitment and
special talents to get into it, so very few people are members, and
members rarely carry on serious discussions of the things with which
they are concerned with outsiders.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Sep 15 05:17:36 EDT 1994
Article: 33578 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Charles Murray and the coming apocalypse
Date: 14 Sep 1994 20:39:38 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 40
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References: <353st1$97j@panix.com> <357qg2INN4r5@no-names.nerdc.ufl.edu>
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Keywords: families, traditional and otherwise
Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:33578 alt.politics.libertarian:47328
kennedy@quark.phys.ufl.edu (Dallas Kennedy) writes:
>To a inject a note of historical reality: *real* traditional family
>means extended family/feudalism/partiarchy, which has never existed in
>a major way in American culture, except perhaps in the South. The
>romantic/individualist/ nuclear family (including feminism) is a
>product of two centuries of freedom and capitalism, although it has
>premodern antecedents.
I found Ferdinand Mount's book, _The Subversive Family_ interesting on
changes in family structure. Basically, he asserts that the various
claims about radical changes in family structure through history, at
least in Europe, are false.
He's a journalist and not a scholar, and I haven't gone into all the
stuff that's been written on all this. My inclination is to think he's
right, though, in part because the literary indications are that the
nuclear family (a man, a women, and their children living together,
with other relatives viewed as optional or peripheral) is not a recent
or local development. Mencius says that a man and a woman living
together is the most important human relationship. In Genesis it is
said that a man leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife, and the two
become one flesh, and the saying is repeated in the New Testament. In
the _Oddysey_ Laertes is somewhat peripheral to the triad of Oddyseus,
Penelope and Telemachus, and the closest bond seems to be the one
between Oddyseus and Penelope. Consider the reunion scene, in which
Penelope struggles against admitting that it is really her husband
because it would be too overwhelming if that were true. For that
matter, consider the House of Atreus, as depicted in the _Oresteiad_.
They're a royal family, so patriarchs, ancestors and the like ought to
be important, but what you basically have is the (rather dysfunctional)
nuclear family of Agammemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes and Electra.
Can anyone think of works of European literature that depict a social
system in which the nuclear family is not emphasized more than the
patriarchal extended family?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Sep 16 16:23:12 EDT 1994
Article: 33658 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: More (yet more!) on cons and libs
Date: 16 Sep 1994 16:22:07 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 42
Message-ID: <35cupf$g0h@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Another thought relevant to the subject.
One way of looking at conservatism is to view it as an attempt to keep
the way moral learning takes place in mind when designing social
arrangements. For conservatives, morality is a concrete collection of
attitudes and habits that makes it possible for people to live well
together. Those attitudes and habits are part of what makes us what we
are. Moral learning therefore takes place mostly through long-term
connections to particular people to whom we are answerable and with
whom we create a way of life that affects all parties. Loose
assemblages and overly-formal arrangements don't work because people
don't affect each other enough.
Since conservatives think the natural setting of moral learning is
small-scale face-to-face communities that can't be left at will, they
try to maintain the importance of such arrangements, both to ensure that
moral learning takes place and to promote the likelihood that the moral
lessons people learn will be fully applicable to the social arrangements
through which they actually carry on their lives. Hence, for example,
"family values".
Liberalism seems to view morality far more abstractly, as the set of
conceptual limitations that must be imposed on the pursuit of individual
self-interest to facilitate that pursuit in society as a whole and
prevent conflicts. One conservative criticism of the liberal view is
that there is no way uniquely to determine such a set of limitations,
and therefore the greatest claimed strength of liberalism, its
universality, is an illusion. A more practical criticism suggested by
the line of thought above is that the assumption that people can first
be self-seeking individuals and then limit themselves by rules required
to let all other individuals be equally self-seeking is unrealistic.
Abstract concepts don't play such a determinative role in human life.
Any actual liberal society will in practice create an endlessly
ramifying bureaucratic machine to make up for the weakness of respect
for liberal moral law as a governing principle, but will find itself
unable either to man the machine with the right sort of people or to
extend the power of the machine sufficiently to realize the ends of
liberalism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Sep 16 16:23:48 EDT 1994
Article: 26 of alt.current-events.haiti
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.haiti
Subject: Re: Lies about Aristide & Ironies
Date: 16 Sep 1994 12:04:47 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 15
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References: <1962800055@cdp>
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In <1962800055@cdp> Robert D. Bernstein writes:
>In particular, the claims that Aristide had advocated violence against
>opponents and specific claims that he had advocated "necklacing" all go
>back to that fraudulent report.
The claims were confirmed by an article this past spring in the _NY
Review of Books_, a left-liberal publication, by a staff writer for the
_New Yorker_, another left-liberal publication. The article was
quite sympathetic to Aristide and critical of what it's writer
considered anti-Aristide PR.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Sep 16 20:47:49 EDT 1994
Article: 44 of alt.current-events.haiti
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,alt.current-events.haiti,alt.politics.clinton,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Aristide and Necklacing
Date: 16 Sep 1994 20:45:38 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 14
Message-ID: <35de7i$hpj@panix.com>
References: <35d3pe$1dc@access1.digex.net> <35dc0s$973@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>
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Xref: panix alt.politics.libertarian:47655 alt.current-events.haiti:44 alt.politics.clinton:84766 talk.politics.misc:195808
In <35dc0s$973@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> mmcohen@dewi.ucsc.edu (Dr. Michael M. Cohen) writes:
>IMHO, Necklasing the tonton-macoutes would be a mild
>return given their atrocities. If Aristide said it
>was a good thing to do, fine.
How about threatening to necklace judges who might otherwise sentence
polical opponents to 16 years in jail (the maximum term provided by
law) rather than life? Even if the opponents are Tonton-Macoutes the
threat seems extreme.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Sep 18 10:56:19 EDT 1994
Article: 7883 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Conservatives, liberals and moral learning
Date: 18 Sep 1994 10:53:35 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 45
Message-ID: <35hk9f$kha@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Just a thought, based on a discussion I was having in another
newsgroup:
One way of looking at conservatism is to view it as an attempt to keep
the way moral learning takes place in mind when considering social
arrangements. For conservatives, morality is the concrete collection
of attitudes and habits that makes it possible for people to live well
together. Since moral attitudes and habits are fundamental to what a
person is it is unreasonable to expect that people will choose them for
themselves. The manner in which they are formed is therefore the most
important single thing about a society.
The conservative view is that moral learning takes place best through
long-term connections to particular people to whom we are answerable
and with whom we create a way of life that affects all parties. Loose
assemblages and overly-formal arrangements don't work because people
don't affect each other enough. Since conservatives think the natural
setting of moral learning is small-scale face-to-face communities that
can't be left at will, they try to maintain the importance of such
arrangements, both to ensure that moral learning takes place and to
promote the likelihood that the moral lessons people learn will be
fully applicable to the social arrangements through which they actually
carry on their lives. Hence "family values", for example.
Liberalism views morality far more abstractly, as the set of conceptual
limitations that must be imposed on the pursuit of individual
self-interest to facilitate that pursuit for everyone equally and
prevent conflicts. One conservative criticism of the liberal view is
that there is no way uniquely to determine such a set of limitations,
and therefore the greatest claimed strength of liberalism, its
universality, is an illusion. A more practical criticism suggested by
the line of thought above is that the assumption that people can first
be self-seeking individuals and then limit themselves by rules required
to let all other individuals be equally self-seeking is unrealistic.
Abstract concepts don't play such a determinative role in human life.
It follows that any actual liberal society will in practice create an
endlessly ramifying bureaucratic machine to make up for the weakness of
respect for liberal moral law as a governing principle, but will find
itself unable either to man the machine with the right sort of people
or to extend the power of the machine sufficiently to realize the ends
of liberalism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Sep 18 19:11:07 EDT 1994
Article: 2331 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Yggdrasill's Weekly Lesson #4
Date: 18 Sep 1994 19:10:50 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 69
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References: <34rjo4$o7e@agate.berkeley.edu> <35ia1r$bg3@news.cc.oberlin.edu>
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sae9785@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu (sae9785) writes:
> Discrimination, in its simplest terms, is defined by the following
>formula, one all too familiar to those of us dedicated to ending racism
>and discrimination in the United States:
>
> Prejudice + Power = Racism/Discrimination
>
>Discrimination is the act of expressing or realizing racist views by
>using socio-economic advantage as a tool/weapon. According to this
>definition, those peoples in the United States who do not have access
>to such advantage --- peoples of color and women --- are simply
>incapable of perpetuating the kind of dscrimination that white males
>are supposedly suffering at this point.
This theory seems odd to me. The obvious meaning for "discrimination"
is "differential treatment". Given that meaning it's notorious that in
many instances the government and other powerful institutions
discriminate against white men in favor of others.
Your point seems to be that white men can't be subjected to injustice by
others because the others don't have the power to do so. People who
talk about "reverse discrimination" aren't claiming that white men are
being oppressed by women and nonwhites, though. They are claiming that
they are being treated unjustly by the government and other powerful
institutions, and often add the claim that such institutions are
dominated by a ruling class that consists mostly of white men but has
its own ideology and power at heart. The fact that the government is
run mostly by white men does not show that it is run for the benefit of
white men collectively any more than the fact that it is run entirely by
human beings shows that it is run for the benefit of all humanity.
> The problem of discrimination in this country cannot be viewed as
>so easily "reversible," like a pullover sweater or a stick-shift
>vehicle.
Agreed. My own inclination is to think of it as so little reversible
that it should not be viewed as a problem, at least not one that
government should try to solve. All societies have sex roles that give
men predominant formal authority and responsibility for public affairs
and women predominant responsibility for home and childcare. Bad
results from the weakening of such roles in the United States in recent
years, such as rising illegitimacy and deteriorating child welfare, are
easily visible. As to ethnicity, people generally live better lives if
they grow up as members of communities with reasonably clear standards.
Such communities typically have definite ethnic characteristics. So it
seems that it will be difficult to create a tolerable social life in
the absence of sex and ethnic discrimination.
> Given two peoples, the Alphas and Betas, of equal socio-economic
>status according to their respective cultures. Group Alpha, with its
>own interests in mind, travels to the dwelling of the Betas, robs their
>banks and takes their resources. The Betas are left with their
>livelihood in shambles. Years, decades, finally a couple of centuries
>pass. The many younger generations of the Alphas are, for the most
>part, well off from the crimes that their ancestors committed scores of
>years before they were born; likewise, the children of the Betas are
>still suffering from the same thing.
Is the idea that most white men are living off inherited wealth that
they got from some crime a long time ago? If so, the idea is false. I
would agree that the analogy made sense if white men were a landed
aristocracy and every one else were landless peasants. It might make
sense as to the relation between the Indians and everyone else, but
then again maybe not.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Sep 20 14:16:56 EDT 1994
Article: 214 of alt.current-events.haiti
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.haiti
Subject: Re: Did Carter help?
Date: 19 Sep 1994 20:11:33 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <35l9bl$huj@panix.com>
References: <94262.185510LDM102@psuvm.psu.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <94262.185510LDM102@psuvm.psu.edu> The Ramblin' Man writes:
>Was Carter actually still in Haiti when the capitulation occurred? Was
> it anything to do with him, or was it the 61 warplanes?
The _New York Post_ published the actual agreement, and it said very
little. It wasn't obvious reading it who had capitulated. Maybe
Carter had some influence on the acceptance of such a document. All it
really said was that "certain military officers of the Haitian armed
forces are willing to consent to an early and honorable retirement in
accordance with U.N. Resolutions 917 and 940 when a general amnesty
will be voted into law by the Haitian Parliament, or Oct. 15, 1994,
whichever is earlier ... Their successors will be named according to
the Haitian Constitution and existing military law." It also said
something about democratic elections and the lifting of the embargo.
Nothing specific about Aristide or Cedras.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Sep 20 14:16:59 EDT 1994
Article: 233 of alt.current-events.haiti
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.haiti
Subject: Re: Aristide and Necklacing
Date: 20 Sep 1994 06:56:55 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <35mf5n$1a6@panix.com>
References: <35lfcb$47u@pipe3.pipeline.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <35lfcb$47u@pipe3.pipeline.com> rwpb11@pipeline.com (Robert Beckham) writes:
>This has been very widely distributed on videotape. If you
>have to see it on CNN before you believe it, you may have to
>wait for a while.
>arild@milan.ims.uni-stuttgart.de (Arild Hestvik) wrote:
>>Can you provide a reference to a publication of this
>>speech, or wherever you got it from?
>>-Arild
There was an article earlier this year in the _New York Review of
Books_ by a journalist sympathetic to Aristide that included most of
the "necklacing" quotations.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Sep 20 20:02:00 EDT 1994
Article: 7967 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Conservatives, liberals and moral learning
Date: 20 Sep 1994 17:12:58 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 214
Message-ID: <35nj8q$nce@panix.com>
References: <35hk9f$kha@panix.com> <35mq2a$1m3@whitbeck.ncl.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Chris Holt writes:
>Hi Jim.
Howdy!
>>One way of looking at conservatism is to view it as an attempt to keep
>>the way moral learning takes place in mind when considering social
>>arrangements.
>
>It implies that alternative viewpoints ignore the way moral learning
>takes place when considering social arrangements. Some alternatives do
>so, but many do not
Can you name names? Is there a current competitor to conservatism that
can deal with the issue at all adequately? I should mention that when
liberals speak of education and childrearing what they say as liberals
never seems persuasive to me when it is taken as a description of
fundamentals rather than as a corrective to something else. When people
farther to the left speak of those things they usually sound to me like
they're in fantasyland.
>>For conservatives, morality is the concrete collection
>>of attitudes and habits that makes it possible for people to live well
>>together.
>
>Is this definition sufficiently flexible to encompass the observed fact
>that different groups of people have different attitudes and habits?
>That they have found different ways to live well together? [I think
>some conservatives would acknowledge this, while others would have
>difficulty doing so.]
I think so. Conservatives generally don't think that a functioning
system of morality can be derived by reason from universal principles,
at least not as a practical matter, so they think that loyalty to the
particular tradition in which one grew up is part of the necessary basis
of morality. That view fits well with the view that what's binding on A
isn't necessarily binding on B. An important point here is that B, who
isn't bound by what binds A, won't be part of the same community as A,
and so A will hold him somewhat at a distance. The view I am presenting
therefore implies both tolerance and intolerance of a sort.
>>Since moral attitudes and habits are fundamental to what a
>>person is it is unreasonable to expect that people will choose them for
>>themselves.
>
>This seems to ignore the process of reflecting upon and examining
>one's ideas.
"Unreasonable to expect" doesn't mean "categorically impossible". But
not many people will be able to do better than try to live up to the
moral ideas they were brought up with. Very few will be able to come
up with anything radically better. The point isn't that reflective
moral thought is impossible, any more than reflective thought on
manners or on cosmology is impossible. Rather, the point is that we
all must rely heavily on the moral habits and attitudes with which we
were brought up, and not many of us will be able much to improve on
them. Therefore, moral education is a matter of supreme importance.
>>The manner in which they are formed is therefore the most
>>important single thing about a society.
>
>This seems like a non sequitur, unless you make explicit that your
>metric for what is most important in society involves the
>(unquestioned) morality of its members, which is at least somewhat
>controversial.
The thought is that the most important thing about a society is the kind
of people it produces, and the most important thing about people is what
they understand as important. Man is a free and rational animal, so the
direction of his will is the most important thing about him. A man's
understanding of what is important and the direction of his will is what
defines his morality.
>>The conservative view is that moral learning takes place best through
>>long-term connections to particular people to whom we are answerable
>>and with whom we create a way of life that affects all parties. Loose
>>assemblages and overly-formal arrangements don't work because people
>>don't affect each other enough.
>
>Is this view of long-term connections viable in an age of high mobility
>and widespread economic independence? Would you want to curtail that
>mobility severely, and bring back economic servitude just to bring back
>a sense of community? If not, how do you see this spirit as being
>fostered in the modern context?
In the absence of the welfare state, people can't count on being
economically independent throughout their lives. Accordingly, I
propose abolishing the principle of state responsibility for the
welfare of particular individuals in order to promote a society in
which people see their connections with particular other people as
fundamental.
>Everyone has "family values"; just that different people have different
>ideas of what counts as viable families, and what the values are that
>should be promulgated within them.
Viewed abstractly, "family values" are any constellation of values that
enables small groups of people to form functional and durable units for
raising children. Abstractions can't be relied on, though, to get
people to put themselves out day-to-day for long periods of time. So
every society has evolved some far more concrete set of values to do the
job, and every society I know of has made the husband-wife-children unit
central to the scheme, perhaps wrapping it into some larger family or
clan unit. In a mobile society, large stable extended families and
clans will be hard to come by, so "family values" in any foreseeable
future will have to be based on the nuclear family as described.
If we accept that such an arrangement will be the standard we must, I
think, accept sex roles of some sort, which presumably will involve the
apparently universal pattern of giving women more responsibility for
home and childcare and men more responsibility for more public matters.
The details of all this can't be specified by theory--social standards
for the families of sea captains, 19th century upper-class Brits, and
others have to evolve in accordance with circumstances. All I want to
argue as a theoretical matter is that it's legitimate for people to
treat one particular pattern (the traditional nuclear family, say) as
the standard and to accept differentiation of the roles of men and women
as part of that standard.
>>Liberalism views morality far more abstractly, as the set of conceptual
>>limitations that must be imposed on the pursuit of individual
>>self-interest to facilitate that pursuit for everyone equally and
>>prevent conflicts.
>
>Is that really more abstract than "the concrete collection of attitudes
>and habits that makes it possible for people to live well together"?
The intended contrast was between "conceptual limitations" and "concrete
collection of attitudes and habits". The former is derived by
philosophical analysis, while the latter are institutions of a
particular society.
>>One conservative criticism of the liberal view is
>>that there is no way uniquely to determine such a set of limitations,
>>and therefore the greatest claimed strength of liberalism, its
>>universality, is an illusion.
>
>Many liberals do not claim such universality...
Can you name names? I think liberals typically aspire to universality
and most often think they've come at least pretty close to achieving it.
That's the way I read Rawls, for example. In his most recent book
(_Liberalism_) he seems to say that he intends his system to be some
sort of super-system that accommodates any reasonable moral view someone
might have. I should add that the emphasis on questioning received
standards suggests a belief that an adequate system of self-evident
moral truths is readily attainable. Also, the embrace of
multiculturalism and the accusations of narrowness and bigotry leveled
at conservatives suggests that liberals believe their own system is not
culturally bound.
>>the assumption that people can first
>>be self-seeking individuals and then limit themselves by rules required
>>to let all other individuals be equally self-seeking is unrealistic.
>
>That assumption isn't necessary.
The liberal theories I know of start with the idea that people are
fundamentally separate individuals, each with his own goals, and try to
come up with some fair way of handling the conflicts. My point was that
such a picture of morality is unrealistic. Do you have liberal theories
in mind that start from a fundamentally different picture?
>One thing that is generally assumed, however, is that if and when
>people start to question and examine their beliefs (as suggested far
>above), this line of argument is the most convincing.
Sure. The idea seems to be that if you only engage in sufficient
questioning something pretty solid and definite is available rather
quickly to most people.
>It has a certain attraction that "it was good enough for your
>grandparents so it's good enough for you" does not (especially given
>the changing social structures and environments that we see about us).
On the other hand, loyalty to one's forebears also has an attraction
that relying exclusively on one's own opinions lacks. The ultimate
question, it seems to me, should be which approach gives people the best
life.
>>It follows that any actual liberal society will in practice create an
>>endlessly ramifying bureaucratic machine to make up for the weakness of
>>respect for liberal moral law as a governing principle, but will find
>>itself unable either to man the machine with the right sort of people
>>or to extend the power of the machine sufficiently to realize the ends
>>of liberalism.
>
>You seem to be saying that such a (poor) implementation mechanism is
>necessary to achieve abstract liberal ends; but such a position
>requires at least a bit of argument.
The notion is that liberal moral standards are not something that arise
very directly from what people experience from childhood on dealing
with the people they care about in their daily lives. Rather, they are
arrived at by abstract reflection (your "questioning") and based on the
notion that people have essentially divergent goals and interests. If
that's right, it's not clear why even people who intellectually are
convinced they are right would feel much personal devotion to them. In
the absence of any very profound personal committment to liberal
standards, it seems that people whose passions or interests point
elsewhere would follow them only if forced to do so. The demands of
liberal standards (social justice, for example) are quite comprehensive
and often make sense only when applied to society as a whole. The
obvious way to enforce comprehensive rationally-derived standards that
people tend to ignore if left to themselves is by establishing a large
and meddlesome bureaucracy. The bureaucracy will have to be manned by
the people who are available, who will be (if the rest of the
discussion is right) people who don't care that much about what the
bureaucracy is designed to achieve.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 21 08:32:11 EDT 1994
Article: 2341 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Back to the future
Date: 21 Sep 1994 08:30:47 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <35p91n$jb5@panix.com>
References: <34l49u$h6o@panix.com> <35o4ce$t0a@nyx10.cs.du.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
wbralick@nyx10.cs.du.edu (William Bralick) writes:
>we should probably place TV in the _revolutionary_ category until CRs
>have become such a threat that TV becomes actively anticounter-
>revolutionary ;-)
Has the time come for a discussion of the relation between
anticounterrevolutionary ideology and antiantidisestablishmentarianism?
Good to see you back, Will.
>Pardon my cynicism, but most of our fellow citizens prefer to rivet
>their posteriors in front of the boob-tube and let _it_ control the
>agenda. Too lazy or too stupid or too apathetic to control it
>themselves.
I suppose one could do surveys of the extent to which people make use of
the interactive aspects of electronic media. These at present range
from switching channels now and then to reading TV schedules and use of
VCRs for time-switching. Certainly there are lots of people who
channel-surf via the remote control, and there seems to be a market for
TVs capable of imaging two channels simultaneously so that the viewer
can keep track of more than one sporting event.
Also--even if people don't in effect construct their own morning
newpaper/TV show from the myriad sources that will be available
electronically, presumably there will be lots and lots of people in
competition with each other willing to do it for them. Consider the
fragmentation of the magazine biz since the late '60s--_Life_, _Look_
and the _Saturday Evening Post_ aren't what it's about now. Commercial
TV could go the same way if costs for assembling and distributing a
package of stuff come down enough.
>To do so would require CRs to "invade" other newsgroups and establish
>their identities there - rather than just "hiding out" here.
I make frequent forays into talk.politics.theory and others. Arguing
with the unconverted is healthful mental exercise, and as Stuart points
out it's the only way any of the stuff we blather about is ever going to
influence anybody.
>How about a Counter-Revolutionary WWW homepage?
I think Nils was devising some such (at nyx!). Maybe he can comment.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 21 08:36:27 EDT 1994
Article: 2342 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Back to the future
Date: 21 Sep 1994 08:32:06 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <35p946$jje@panix.com>
References: <351bo5$bbm@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Stuart writes:
>(I have a number of questions here which are non-rhetorical. Does
>anyone 'own' ARC? Who set it up and what rights, if any, do they have
>over its content and continued operation? Could anyone pull the plug on
>it?)
It was set up, I believe, by Catholic monarchists. Nils Monaghan seems
to be the only one of the founders who's still around. Like other
usenet groups, a.r.c. exists only as an entry in the "Newsgroups" line
of some of the messages interchanged among the sites participating in
usenet and as a decision at many of those sites to treat it as a
newsgroup. So no-one owns it and it's not clear how anyone could pull
the plug.
>We also need archiving and access to CR texts - including 'back issues'
>of past threads and so forth. Volunteers, and I would certainly count
>myself as one if we can agree a _modus operandi_, will be required to
>carry out these various functions, and their duties and rights defined.
>(Inevitably, this will mean some low-level formalization of our
>activities.)
I mentioned Nils and his WWW page. I'm currently trying to figure out
how to publish the 19th century English translations of de Maistre
electronically. Project Gutenberg say they will scan and publish off-
copyright books if you do the proofreading and basic formatting, but the
only copies available to me are in the research collection of the New
York Public Library and can't be sent elsewhere.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 21 08:38:25 EDT 1994
Article: 2343 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Yggdrasill's Weekly Lesson #4
Date: 21 Sep 1994 08:36:14 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <35p9bu$kdt@panix.com>
References: <35o7t9$nj1@news.cc.oberlin.edu> <34rjo4$o7e@agate.berkeley.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
al998@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Jason Smith) writes:
>>I am an African-American woman. You may address me as "ma'am" or as Ms.
>>Evans in any future correspondance.
>
> My sympathies. Will "Bitch," "Hoe," or just "Jigaboo" do as
>well?
Why the abuse? I suppose your point could be that the first two words
seem to be black English for "woman". On the other hand, Ms. Evans has
been reasonably civil by usenet standards. Why not deal with the
substance?
Ms. Evans says:
>Statistically speaking, white people will be in the minority in your
>grandchildren's generation.
If that happens it will be a result of immigration policies.
>I suggest you make great pains to educate yourself before you find
>yourself lost in a society that is truly unsympathetic to your myths of
>"reverse discrimination."
Are you saying that immigration policies are likely to lead to a society
that is less concerned with the interests of European Americans? If so,
what reason would you give to European Americans to accept those
policies?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 21 10:39:03 EDT 1994
Article: 7984 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Draft FAQ for a.s.c.
Date: 21 Sep 1994 10:31:11 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 236
Message-ID: <35pg3f$jsv@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
The following is a draft alt.society.conservatism FAQ. It doesn't
represent any a.s.c. consensus, in part because there is little
discussion on a.s.c. other than crosspostings and in part because there
is no conservative consensus in America today. (Although a.s.c. is an
international newsgroup, the participants have been mostly American.)
All I've done has been to summarize my own answers to questions that I
keep running into in one form or another.
Many conservatives will no doubt disagree with many of my answers. I'd
be happy to expand the draft to cover other views within conservatism,
or if people want to write their own FAQs or just shoot holes in this
one that would be a contribution to the discussion as well.
1. Q--What is conservatism?
A--Opposition to rationalism in politics, together with a tendency
to rely on tradition as a source of wisdom greater than one's own.
2. Q--So conservatives prefer irrationalism in politics?
A--Only if everything other than reliance on explicit theorizing is
"irrationalism". That's a mistaken way of thinking, though. People
don't become good cooks by theorizing about what they're doing. They
don't even become good physicists that way. The same is true of
becoming good citizens. People learn how to do things well mostly by
following those who came before, and most of what they learn consists in
attitudes, habits and implicit presumptions that they absorb but
couldn't begin to put into words. Such a process is alien to
rationalism, which ignores what hasn't been articulated and put in
rational form.
3. Q--"Tradition" and "wisdom greater than one's own"--in other words,
isn't conservatism a blend of obstinacy, bigotry, and obscurantism?
A--It would be if things typically worked out better when one
rejects the outlook he grew up with in favor of following some abstract
ideology or inventing something new every time a question arises.
Conservatives believe things usually turn out better doing the contrary,
and unless it can be shown they are wrong the accusations fail.
4. Q--What's so great about tradition? Why isn't it better to reason
things out from the beginning?
A--Because the world's too complicated and because you can't lift
yourself by your bootstraps. You can't evaluate political ideas or
proposals unless you've already accepted a great many presumptions and
beliefs about politics, morality, the nature of man, and so on. Also,
the effects of any political proposal are difficult to predict and as
the proposals become more ambitious their effects become incalculable.
So the most reasonable way to approach politics is to take the existing
system of society as a given that can't be changed wholesale and to try
to make any changes cohere with the principles and practices that make
the existing system work as well as it does.
5. Q--If everything's so complicated and hard to figure out, why try
to hang on to things that are transforming themselves into something
else? Society has always changed, for the better in some ways and for
the worse in others. Why not accept it?
A--The changes have always reflected the effects of resistance to
change as well as acceptance of it. Why not accept that as well?
Presumably the changes that occur will be better if they have to make
their way over opposition.
In addition, modern conservatism is not primarily resistance to
change as such but resistance to changes of a peculiarly sweeping sort
characteristic of the period beginning with the French Revolution and
motivated by the philosophy of the Enlightenment and successor
philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism. For example, it is true
that the family as an institution has changed over time, although many
writers exaggerate the changes. However, the current liberal proposal
to abolish any definite institutional structure for the family as an
infringement on individual autonomy is different in kind from the sort
of thing that has happened in the past.
6. Q--Are conservatives racist sexist homophobes?
A--Depends on what those words mean.
"Racist"--Conservatives consider community loyalty important. The
communities people grow up in are generally connected to ethnicity.
That's not an accident, because ethnicity is what develops when people
live together in accordance with a common way of life over a long
period. Accordingly, conservatives think ethnic loyalties are OK.
"Sexist"--All societies engage in sex-role stereotyping, with men
undertaking more responsibility for public affairs and women for home,
family, and childcare. There are obvious benefits to stereotyping,
since it makes it more likely that men and women will complement each
other and so be able to form functional and stable unions for the
rearing of children. Conservatives see no reason to struggle against
those benefits.
"Homophobes"--Finally, sex-role stereotyping implies a tendency to
reject conduct and patterns of impulse and attitude that don't fit the
stereotypes, such as homosexuality.
7. Q--Why do conservatives always want to force their values on
everybody else?
A--Conservatives aren't different from other people in that regard.
Everyone with a notion of how society should work believes that other
people should get with the program. If A thinks the government should
have final responsibility for the well-being of children, and wants to
implement that responsibility through a taxing system that sends people
to jail who don't comply, and B thinks the family should have that
responsibility, and wants to implement it through a well-defined system
of sex roles enforced by social obloquy for violators, then very likely
both will object when the public schools start using the book _Heather
Has Two Mommies Who Get Away with Paying No Taxes_. A would be more
likely to object when they start using the book _Heather's Mommy Stays
Home and Her Daddy Goes to his Office Where He Works Only with Other
White Males_, while other texts would be more objectionable to B.
8. Q--Why do conservatives favor laissez-faire capitalism when they
say they favor virtue and community? Doesn't laissez-faire capitalism
promote the opposite?
A--Conservatives are not fans of pure laissez-faire capitalism.
For example, they are often skeptical of free trade and favor restraints
on immigration for the sake of permitting the existence and development
of a national community. They have no opposition in principle to the
regulation or suppression of businesses that affect the fundamental
moral order of society, such as prostitution, pornography, and the sale
of certain drugs.
Conservatives do tend to favor free markets when the alternative is
the expansion of bureaucracy for the sake of implementing liberal goals.
Also, they recognize that an advantage of the market over bureaucracy is
that the market reflects people's infinitely various and often
unconscious and inarticulate perceptions and goals far better than any
formal bureaucratic process could. They believe that the world as a
whole can't be administered, and so tend to think that government
intervention in markets is likely to cause more problems than it cures.
Finally, in the United States in 1994 they view economic liberty as one
of the traditional liberties of the American people that on the whole
has served that people well.
9. Q--What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and
others marginalized in a conservative society?
A--The same as happens in a liberal society to religious and social
conservatives and to ethnics who consider their ethnicity important.
They live in a social order they may not like dominated by people who
may look down on them. In either situation, people on the outs can to
some extent practice the way of life they prefer in private or break off
from the larger society and establish their own communities. Such
possibilities are on the whole more realistic in a conservative society
that believes in federalism, local control, and minimal bureaucracy than
in a liberal society that idealizes social justice and therefore
constantly tries to establish a unitary social order.
An important question is whether alienation from the social order
will be more common in a conservative or a liberal society. It seems
that it would be more common in a society that emphasizes abstract
rather than concrete aspects of moral obligation and seeks universal
bureaucratic implementation of ideology rather than accepting moral
feelings and loyalties that arise over time within particular
communities. So it seems likely that a liberal society will have more
citizens than a conservative society who feel that their deepest values
and loyalties are peripheral to the concerns of the society and who
therefore feel marginalized.
10. Q--Why don't conservatives care about what happens to the poor,
weak, discouraged, and outcast?
A--Conservatives do care about what happens to such people. That's
why they oppose government programs that multiply the poor, weak,
discouraged, and outcast by undermining and disrupting the network of
social customs and relations that allow people to carry on their lives
without being reduced to dependency on a soulless bureaucracy.
11. Q--Many things liberals favor, such as the welfare state and steady
expansion of the scope of the civil rights laws, are now well-
established parts of our political arrangements. Should conservatives
favor such things because they have become so well-established?
A--Yes, to the extent they are consistent with the older and more
fundamental parts of our social arrangements (such as family, community,
and traditional moral standards) and contribute to the over-all
functioning of the whole. Unfortunately, the particular things
mentioned fail on both points.
12. Q--I was raised to believe in certain substantive liberal positions
(the color- and gender-blind ideal, for example) on the grounds that
those are the positions good Americans should hold. Does that mean it
would be conservative for me to stay true to them?
A--Yes, if those are the views the people among whom you grew up
really lived by and experience does not drive you to change them. Such
a situation can't arise often, because liberal positions (affirmative
action is an example) typically are developed centrally and propagated
through the mass media and the educational system, are adverse to the
connections between people that make community possible, and in any case
are more suited to be applied to society as a whole by a bureaucracy
than incorporated into people's informal day-to-day way of life.
13. Q--I was raised a liberal. Does that mean that to be conservative
I should stay true to liberalism?
A--If you were raised an ideological liberal, you were raised to
reject tradition, follow reason, and trust in your private judgement.
How can you feel bound by loyalty to a viewpoint or way of life that
does not value loyalty? Similar comments apply to other views people
are raised with, for example the view that career success and self-
fulfillment should be valued above all. Such views can not give rise to
binding traditions because they contain no principle of loyalty to
things that make a decent life in community possible. If you were
raised in one of them, the conservative approach would be to look to
what it was that the people you grew up with really relied on in their
lives, and also to the traditions of the community upon which the group
among whom you grew up depended for its existence.
14. Q--What's all this stuff about community and tradition? The groups
that matter these days are groups like yuppies, gays, and senior
citizens that people join as individuals and are based on interests and
perspectives rather than traditions.
A--To the extent that is true, can it remain true? When times are
good people can follow their own impulses and imagine that they can
define themselves as they choose, but when times get hard they have to
base what they do on things they would be willing to sacrifice for.
Membership in a group with an identity developed and inculcated through
tradition serves the purpose far better than choice of life-style
option, career path, or leisure-time activity. One of Bill Clinton's
problems as president is that everyone knows he's a yuppie and there's
nothing he would die for. At some point that sort of problem becomes
decisive. Conservatism doesn't claim to be the philosophy that is
always easiest to apply; it just claims to give the best results
long-term.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 21 10:39:07 EDT 1994
Article: 33830 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Charles Murray and the coming apocalypse
Date: 21 Sep 1994 08:38:13 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 37
Distribution: na
Message-ID: <35p9fl$kqk@panix.com>
References: <353st1$97j@panix.com> <357qg2INN4r5@no-names.nerdc.ufl.edu> <35oeic$t0@news.u.washington.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Keywords: families, traditional and otherwise
Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:33830 alt.politics.libertarian:48482
davidb@ce.washington.edu (David W. Barts) writes:
>The thesis that welfare promotes illegitimicy by providing a financial
>incentive for women to have babies seems unfounded to me. All the
>statistics I've seen indicate that women on welfare have a slightly
>_lower_ birth rate than the female population at large (in the USA).
The claim isn't that women on welfare have more incentives to have
babies than the average woman does, only that a young and unmarried
woman with no money has more of an incentive to have a baby if it means
she gets an apartment, a monthly check, and food stamps than if it
doesn't.
>And in Canada, which has as a rule more generous welfare programs than
>the USA, the birth rates for such women are lower yet.
Do you know what the comparisons are for whites only? Birth and
illegitimacy rates vary a great deal between populations. In America
both rates are higher among blacks than among whites, and
internationally illegitimacy rates are much higher in Denmark and Sweden
than in Holland or Germany. The claim isn't that welfare is the sole
factor in illegitimacy, only that it is an important factor that over
time has a decisive effect. I believe that the _Statistical Abstract of
the United States_ has tables near the end giving international
comparisons over time that are instructive in this regard.
To recur to the subject of this thread, Charles Murray had an
interesting article on the British underclass in the Spring 1990 issue
of _The Public Interest_. It appears that the very sharp increase in
the British illegitimacy rate began shortly after the 1977 Homeless
Persons Act gave single mothers an immediate right to housing. Another
factor seems to have been the cumulative effect of increases in other
aspects of the level of support given unwed mothers.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Sep 23 04:25:19 EDT 1994
Article: 8041 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Conservatives, liberals and moral learning
Date: 22 Sep 1994 21:21:03 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 76
Message-ID: <35tahv$qu9@panix.com>
References: <35hk9f$kha@panix.com> <35mq2a$1m3@whitbeck.ncl.ac.uk> <94Sep22.135406edt.48177@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:33872 alt.society.conservatism:8041
cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>_A Theory of Justice_, Chapter VI, "The sense of justice", where Rawls
>discusses moral learning in more detail
I will look at it next time I get hold of a copy of the book.
>Slaves, women forced to live a very limiting role. gays, and others
>who just don't fit these habits are held forcefully in place by them.
>That's not living well.
Are there many conservative thinkers who have championed slavery? It
pretty much died out in the West before the appearance of modern
radicalism and therefore of modern conservatism. That's why it was
referred to as the "peculiar institution" of the American South. Also,
conservative thought tends to emphasize mutual obligation and reliance,
and the essence of slavery is the absence of those things. So it's no
surprise that in modern times slavery has been characteristic of
politically radical regimes that reject relations that grow up without a
plan among people who live together in favor of something more
theoretically pure.
As to sex roles and those whom they chafe, I'm not sure the concerns
should be different from what they are in the case of social roles
generally. Everyone in every possible society is born into a mass of
expectations that he didn't create and that weren't designed with his
particular characteristics in mind. The most that can be hoped is that
the pattern of expectations will lead to a society within which most
people can live well. If the mismatches are great enough the
expectations change. A great many people say they believe that the
expectations shouldn't take sex into account. I don't understand that.
If the idea is to have a society in which (among other things) people
feel comfortable and at home, why shouldn't their expectations of others
take into account whatever they feel is important?
>Since their habits and conventions are *arbitrary*, they fear that
>questioning will lead to them being overturned.
No more than language or the habits of an ordinary nonreflective man are
arbitrary. It takes a great deal of perception and argumentative skill
to articulate defences for either under hostile questioning.
Nonetheless, every man is a fool in the home of another, and I think it
would be difficult for a team of scholars to create a medium of general
communication better than one of the natural languages.
>But they want to keep people in the early stages of this moral
>learning, while their one elite sits around describing how good this
>all is.
"One elite" suggests a society more thoroughly organized in accordance
with a single clear principle than conservatives favor.
>Liberals want to move everyone into the elite, in the sense that they
>all reach the stage of "morality of principles". Jim is correct that
>many people don't reach this stage. If it were true that this were
>fitting for them, he might have a point. And so would Aldous Huxly in
>_Brave New World_.
You seem to believe that the only way anyone can participate in the good
is by establishing abstract propositions and deriving conclusions from
them by explicit reasoning. Would you like to eat in a restaurant that
was run that way? If not, why do you think life would in general be
better if people tried to live that way? Most people's concrete
judgments are better than the principles they can give for them. So why
do you think they should strive to rely as much as possible on
principle?
>I think Jim is confused by Rawls's "representational device" of the
>original position.
What does the original position represent if not in some sense man's
fundamental moral situation? Why bother talking about it if it doesn't?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Sep 23 12:05:16 EDT 1994
Article: 2351 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Yggdrasill's Weekly Lesson #4
Date: 23 Sep 1994 11:59:12 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <35uu0g$o1j@panix.com>
References: <34rjo4$o7e@agate.berkeley.edu> <35ia1r$bg3@news.cc.oberlin.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In dgard@netcom.com (dgard@netcom.com (!)) writes:
>European-Americans must remain unified or they will never overturn
>these preferences.
If I can use your post as a springboard for a comment of my own:
More and more people on the right are saying that we need a political
movement that is consciously based on specific white interests.
However that may be, it seems to me important to maintain that the
ultimate aim is a political framework that benefits all peoples.
As an example, the consequences of the '60s for black people have been
catastrophic. Consider the ending around 1970 of the long decline in
black poverty, the sharp increases in violent crime and illegitimacy,
the reduction in the life expectancy of some groups of blacks, and so
on, all with no end in sight and all during an age of affirmative
action, multiculturalism, and large increases in social welfare
expenditures. Ditto for the Jews, who are whites but have their own
distinctiveness. The current regime means the disappearance of the
Jews as a people to the extent they continue to accept it. I can't
believe that would be good for anybody.
A counterrevolution no doubt requires a lot of different people doing a
lot of different things, which means it requires combat as well as
conciliation. But if as part of the mixture we can legitimately hold
out something to everyone, I don't think we should miss the
opportunity.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From alt.society.conservatism Sun Sep 25 09:55:55 1994
Path: panix!not-for-mail
~From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
~Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.society.conservatism
~Subject: Re: Conservatives, liberals and moral learning
~Date: 23 Sep 1994 04:28:13 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
~Lines: 35
Message-ID: <35u3it$670@panix.com>
~References: <35hk9f$kha@panix.com> <35mq2a$1m3@whitbeck.ncl.ac.uk> <94Sep22.135406edt.48177@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
~Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:33878 alt.society.conservatism:8055
[a couple of additional comments]
cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>Liberals want to move everyone into the elite, in the sense that they
>all reach the stage of "morality of principles".
Liberals want to make the establishment of social justice the overriding
practical pursuit of government, and they think social justice isn't
something that just falls out of people's pursuit of their individual
projects in daily life. They think reflection and debate is going to
lead to a coherent body of principle that adequately carries out the
fundamental goals of liberalism and that (since social justice doesn't
just happen) makes comprehensive demands on people that are definite
enough to be applied by administrators.
What kind of process could work that way? The best examples that occur
to me of institutions that extract such definite results from extensive
debate over evaluative issues are the legal system and the Roman
Catholic Church. Both feature a tiny ultimate elite that is treated as
infallible, that is appointed for life by another tiny elite, and that
people participating in the process are expected to revere. They also
feature an elaborate selection and training system for the small
minority that is taken seriously in the debate.
You say that everyone will be in the elite in a sense. I rather doubt
that as a practical matter the project of bringing everyone to the stage
of morality of principles could amount to more than pressuring people to
think about things the way the elite does. So the people will be in the
elite in the sense that things that would separate them from the elite
won't be tolerated.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From alt.society.conservatism Sun Sep 25 09:55:55 1994
Path: panix!not-for-mail
~From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
~Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,talk.politics.theory
~Subject: Revised conservatism FAQ
~Date: 24 Sep 1994 10:43:34 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
~Lines: 290
Message-ID: <361dum$ipl@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
~Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:8094 talk.politics.theory:33894
Here is a revised draft of a conservatism FAQ. I can't claim that it
sets forth any consensus, although it has benefited from the comments of
several people. So far what I've done has been mostly to summarize my
own answers to questions that I keep running into in one form or
another.
Many conservatives will disagree with many of my answers. I'd be happy
to expand the draft to cover other views within conservatism and respond
to further objections from people who are not conservatives. If others
want to write their own FAQs that would be a contribution to the
discussion as well. I'm sure a lot of people would prefer something
snappier and more concrete.
1. Q--What is conservatism?
A--Opposition to both rationalism and irrationalism in politics,
together with reliance on tradition as a source of wisdom greater than
one's own.
2. Q--How can conservatives reject both rationalism and irrationalism?
A--By recognizing in loyalty to tradition informed by a wisdom
greater than one's own a middle ground between exclusive reliance on
explicit theorizing and arbitrariness. Reason, as orderly thought, is
good for developing and putting in order what we know about the world.
However, it has limits. It's not our sole source of knowledge and it
can't create a political and moral world out of nothing. People don't
become good cooks or even good physicists by theorizing about what
they're doing, and the same is true of becoming good citizens. We
learn how to do things well by following those who came before, and
most of what we learn consists in attitudes, habits and implicit
presumptions that we absorb and work with but couldn't begin to put
into words. Such a process is equally alien to rationalism, which
ignores what hasn't been articulated and put in rational form, and to
irrationalism, which in despair of perfect rationality embraces
arbitrary will.
3. Q--"Tradition" and "wisdom greater than one's own"--in other words,
isn't conservatism a blend of obstinacy, bigotry, and obscurantism?
A--It would be if things worked out better when one rejects the
outlook he grew up with in favor of following some abstract ideology or
inventing something new every time a question arises. Things don't work
out better, though. Productive thought depends on acceptance of
tradition and of a wisdom greater than one's own. If we don't accept
that a wisdom superior to our own in some sense exists and to some
degree is accessible to us, why should we bother with thought or
investigation in the first place? Also, thought is impossible except
from a point of view, and tradition is the process through which each of
us starts with a comprehensive and coherent point of view that reflects
the thought and experience of those who came before us.
4. Q--Why isn't it better to reason things out from the beginning
rather than relying on tradition?
A--Because the world's too complicated and because you can't lift
yourself by your bootstraps. You can't evaluate political ideas or
proposals unless you've already accepted a great many presumptions and
beliefs about politics, morality, the nature of man, and so on. Also,
the effects of any political proposal are difficult to predict and as
the proposals become more ambitious their effects become incalculable.
So the most reasonable way to approach politics is to take the existing
system of society as a given that can't be changed wholesale and to try
to make any changes cohere with the principles and practices that make
the existing system work as well as it does.
5. Q--If everything's so complicated and hard to figure out, why try
to hang on to things that are already changing into something else?
Society has always changed, for the better in some ways and for the
worse in others. Why not accept it?
A--The changes have always reflected the effects of resistance to
change as well as acceptance of it. Why not accept that as well?
Presumably the changes that occur will be better if they have to make
their way over opposition.
In addition, modern conservatism is not resistance to change as
such but resistance to changes of a peculiarly sweeping sort
characteristic of the period beginning with the French Revolution and
motivated by the philosophy of the Enlightenment and successor
philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism. For example, it is true
that the family as an institution has changed over time, although many
writers exaggerate the changes. However, the current left/liberal
proposal to abolish all definite institutional structure for the family
as an infringement on individual autonomy is different in kind from the
sort of thing that has happened in the past.
6. Q--Wouldn't we still have slavery if conservatives had always been
running the show?
A--Why? Conservatism is not rejection of all change. Moral habits
evolve with experience and changing circumstances, and social
arrangements that grow to be too much at odds with the moral life of a
people change or disappear. More specifically, the conservative outlook
emphasizes community and mutual obligation, both of which slavery
denies. It's worth noting that slavery disappeared in Europe long
before the modern revolutionary age, and has recently been far more
characteristic of radical than conservative regimes.
7. Q--Isn't conservatism simply another way of saying that the people
currently in positions of wealth and power should stay there?
A--If arguments that political views advance the public good are
to be taken into account, then the arguments for conservatism should be
considered on their own terms. On the other hand, if all political
views are to be treated as rationalizations for the interests of
existing or would-be elites then the same no doubt applies to
conservatism. It's worth bearing in mind that movements aiming at
social justice turn out intensely elitist because the purer the
principle the smaller the group that can be relied on to understand and
apply it correctly.
8. Q--Aren't conservatives racist sexist homophobes?
A--That depends on what those words mean.
"Racist"--Conservatives consider community loyalty important. The
communities people grow up in are generally connected to ethnicity.
That's not an accident, because ethnicity is what develops when people
live together in accordance with a common way of life for a long time.
Accordingly, conservatives think ethnic loyalties are OK.
"Sexist"--All societies engage in sex-role stereotyping, with men
undertaking more responsibility for public affairs and women for home,
family, and childcare. There are obvious benefits to stereotyping,
since it makes it more likely that men and women will complement each
other and so be able to form functional and stable unions for the
rearing of children. Conservatives see no reason to struggle against
those benefits.
"Homophobes"--Finally, sex-role stereotyping implies a tendency to
reject conduct and patterns of impulse and attitude that don't fit the
stereotypes, such as homosexuality.
9. Q--Why do conservatives always want to force their values on
everybody else?
A--Conservatives aren't different from other people in that regard.
Everyone with a notion of how society should work believes that other
people should get with the program. If A thinks the government should
have final responsibility for the well-being of children, and wants to
implement that responsibility through a taxing system that sends people
to jail who don't comply, and B thinks the family should have that
responsibility, and wants to implement it through a well-defined system
of sex roles enforced by social obloquy for violators, then both will
object to a school textbook entitled _Heather Has Two Mommies Who Get
Away with Paying No Taxes_. A would be more likely to object to the
book _Heather's Mommy Stays Home and Her Daddy Goes to his Office Where
He Works Only with Other White Males_, while other texts would be more
objectionable to B.
10. Q--What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and
others marginalized in a conservative society?
A--The same as happens in a liberal society to religious and social
conservatives and to ethnics who consider their ethnicity important.
They live in a social order they may not like dominated by people who
may look down on them. In either situation, people on the outs can to
some extent practice the way of life they prefer in private or break off
from the larger society and establish their own communities. Such
possibilities are more realistic in a conservative society that believes
in federalism, local control, and minimal bureaucracy than in a liberal
society that idealizes social justice and therefore constantly tries to
establish a unitary social order.
An important question is whether alienation from the social order
will be more common in a conservative or a liberal society. It seems
that it would be more common in a society that emphasizes abstract
rather than concrete aspects of moral obligation and seeks universal
bureaucratic implementation of ideology rather than accepting moral
feelings and loyalties that arise over time within particular
communities. So it seems likely that a liberal society will have more
citizens than a conservative society who feel that their deepest values
and loyalties are peripheral to the concerns of the society and who
therefore feel marginalized.
11. Q--Why don't conservatives care about what happens to the poor,
weak, discouraged, and outcast?
A--Conservatives do care about what happens to such people. That's
why they oppose government programs that multiply the poor, weak,
discouraged, and outcast by undermining and disrupting the network of
social customs and relations that allow people to carry on their lives
without being reduced to dependency on a soulless bureaucracy.
12. Q--Why do conservatives favor laissez-faire capitalism when they
say they favor virtue and community? Doesn't laissez-faire capitalism
promote the opposite?
A--Conservatives are not fans of pure laissez-faire capitalism.
For example, they are often skeptical of free trade and favor restraints
on immigration for the sake of permitting the existence and development
of a national community. They have no opposition in principle to the
regulation or suppression of businesses that affect the moral order of
society, such as prostitution, pornography, and the sale of certain
drugs.
Conservatives do tend to favor free markets when the alternative is
the expansion of bureaucracy for the sake of implementing liberal goals.
Also, they recognize that an advantage of the market over bureaucracy is
that the market reflects people's infinitely various and often
unconscious and inarticulate perceptions and goals far better than any
formal bureaucratic process could. They believe that the world as a
whole can't be administered, and so tend to think that government
intervention in markets is likely to cause more problems than it cures.
Finally, in the United States in 1994 they view economic liberty as one
of the traditional liberties of the American people that on the whole
has served that people well.
13. Q--Why do conservatives always act as if the world is coming to an
end? People have been saying that for a very long time, but things
don't seem so bad today compared with earlier times.
A--There have been a great many catastrophes along the way. In
particular, the history of Marxist regimes displays the results of
energetic attempts to implement post-Enlightenment radicalism. Less
energetic attempts, such as modern American liberalism, bear the
characteristic fruit predicted by conservative theory more slowly.
However, social trends such as those toward breakdown of affiliations
among individuals, centralization of political power in irresponsible
elites, and increasing stupidity and brutality in daily life suggest
that the characteristic fruit is likely to come just the same. Why not
worry about it?
14. Q--Many things liberals favor, such as the welfare state and steady
expansion of the scope of the civil rights laws, are now well-
established parts of our political arrangements. Shouldn't
conservatives favor such things because they have become so well-
established?
A--Yes, to the extent they are consistent with the older and more
fundamental parts of our social arrangements (such as family, community,
and traditional moral standards) and contribute to the over-all
functioning of the whole. Unfortunately, the particular things
mentioned fail on both points.
15. Q--I was raised to believe in certain substantive liberal positions
(the color- and gender-blind ideal, for example) on the grounds that
those are the positions good Americans should hold. Wouldn't it be
conservative for me to stay true to them?
A--Yes, if those are the views the people among whom you grew up
really lived by and experience does not drive you to change them. Such
a situation can't arise often, because liberal positions (affirmative
action is an example) typically are adverse to the connections between
people that make community possible, are developed centrally and
propagated through the mass media and the educational system, and in any
case are more suited to be applied to society as a whole by a
bureaucracy than incorporated into people's informal day-to-day way of
life.
16. Q--I was raised a liberal. Doesn't that mean that to be
conservative I should stay true to liberalism?
A--If you were raised an ideological liberal, you were raised to
reject tradition, follow reason, and trust in your private judgement.
How can you feel bound by loyalty to a viewpoint or way of life that
does not value loyalty? Similar comments apply to some other views
people are raised with, for example the view that career success and
self-fulfillment should be valued above all. Such views can not give
rise to binding traditions because they contain no principle of loyalty
to things that make a decent life in community possible. If you were
raised in one of them, the conservative approach would be to look to
what it was that the people you grew up with really relied on in their
lives, and also to the traditions of the community upon which the group
among whom you grew up depended for its existence.
17. Q--What's all this stuff about community and tradition? The groups
that matter these days are groups like yuppies, gays, and senior
citizens that people join as individuals and are based on interests and
perspectives rather than traditions.
A--To the extent that is true, can it remain true? When times are
good people can follow their own impulses and imagine that they can
define themselves as they choose, but when times get hard they have to
base what they do on things they would be willing to sacrifice for.
Membership in a group with an identity developed and inculcated through
tradition serves the purpose far better than choice of life-style
option, career path, or leisure-time activity. One of Bill Clinton's
problems as president is that everyone knows he's a yuppie and there's
nothing he would die for. At some point that kind of problem becomes
decisive. Conservatism doesn't claim to be the philosophy that is
always easiest to apply; it just claims to give the best results
long-term.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Sep 25 11:26:08 EDT 1994
Article: 2360 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Yggdrasill's Weekly Lesson #4
Date: 25 Sep 1994 11:22:09 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <3644j1$lbi@panix.com>
References: <35p9bu$kdt@panix.com> <35o7t9$nj1@news.cc.oberlin.edu> <34rjo4$o7e@agate.berkeley.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In ai433@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (John Baglow) writes:
>"hoe" (whore) has the same register in Black English as
>in received American English. Mr. Kalb is being a bit sly here, I think...
It's hard to do anything very artful with the slang of a community not
one's own. It would take more skill than I have as a writer to do so
while attributing thoughts to someone else. I should mention, though,
that I've seen posters here in New York advertising a black all-girl
singing group called "Hoes with Attitude", so the register doesn't seem
to be quite the same.
For all that, I agree I shouldn't have used "seem to be black English
for 'woman'". "Seem to be freely applied to women among blacks" would
have been a blander thought to attribute and therefore better under the
circumstances. My intention, after all, was to say "maybe your
substantive point is that there's a lot of crudely-expressed misogyny
among blacks, and that's one reason among others you want blacks to
sort their stuff out among themselves while others sort their other
stuff out separately, but if so why not say so without being abusive?"
My apologies to Ms. Evans if she is still reading any of this and found
my own language offensive.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Sep 25 11:26:19 EDT 1994
Article: 17903 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.tech,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Query for online Wittgenstein text
Date: 25 Sep 1994 09:53:38 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix soc.culture.german:46630 talk.philosophy.misc:17903 sci.philosophy.tech:12516 alt.postmodern:11834
In <363u1f$96e@panix.com> gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>| If there is a 'copyright problem' with the Tractatus, how can it be in
>| the public domain?
>The copyright might apply only to one particular English
>translation.
I think that in the U.S. copyrights run for 75 years after publication
and in most other places for 50 years after the death of the author.
Since the Tractatus was published in 1921 by a man who died in 1951 it
should be a couple of years before it comes off copyright anywhere.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Sep 25 18:52:51 EDT 1994
Article: 2367 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Yggdrasill's Weekly Lesson #4
Date: 25 Sep 1994 18:29:53 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 42
Message-ID: <364tl1$5sd@panix.com>
References: <3644j1$lbi@panix.com> <35p9bu$kdt@panix.com> <35o7t9$nj1@news.cc.oberlin.edu> <34rjo4$o7e@agate.berkeley.edu>
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In ai433@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (John Baglow) writes:
>This is a courteous response, and moves me to apologize to you for reading
>racism into your original comments.
Who knows? Maybe I would have written it differently if I were never
annoyed with black people. It's hard to know exactly why you choose
the expressions you do. The neighborhood I live in is mostly black and
I see and hear things that put me off at times.
Two points, though: first, it is
>difficult for us to judge precisely how irony and other kinds of discourse
>are used within the Black community, ie, among themselves. But I would
>suggest, nonetheless, that the use of the word "Hoe" in the example you
>gave is aggressively ironic, and that Black women probably react to be
>called whores or bitches much the same as White women do. Nevertheless, we
>should hear from people in that community (possibly Ms. Evans).
I agree that slang refects a way of life, and it's hard for outsiders
to get all the implications. To comment, though: the pictures of the
girls on the poster suggested hard-edged aggressive sexuality. I don't
think that's an attitude that women who were happy about their world
and their relations with men would adopt. To me the name of the group
and their presentation of themselves seemed to reflect despair and
defiance of their own tender impulses, which I suppose black women have
as much as white women and which I don't doubt are damaged by being
called those things.
>My second point is about Jason Smith's comments. I do not read them as you
>have done. How would you explain the term "jigaboo" in the context you
>have set? The fact is that Smith was being deliberately racist and
>abusive--he wasn't making the subtle point you seem to think.
I agree he wasn't trying to be subtle, and I don't disagree with the
rest of what you say. What's wrong with distorting things for a
purpose, though? If people are capable of better things than abuse,
why not respond to what they might be capable of rather than to the
abuse?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Sep 26 13:33:07 EDT 1994
Article: 8169 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Conservatives, liberals and moral learning
Date: 26 Sep 1994 10:49:30 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 152
Message-ID: <366n1q$8qu@panix.com>
References: <94Sep22.135406edt.48177@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <35tahv$qu9@panix.com> <94Sep26.032328edt.48171@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:33930 alt.society.conservatism:8169
cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>Fact is, you are wrong when you say liberals do not consider the way
>moral learning takes place.
I said:
One way of looking at conservatism is to view it as an attempt to
keep the way moral learning takes place in mind when considering
social arrangements.
Which is not to say liberals don't consider moral learning at all, only
that liberalism is not the view you get if you keep in mind how people
learn. If I am right that moral learning is a problem for liberals it
follows that someone conscientious like Rawls would spend a lot of time
on it and still not be satisfied, which is what you say happens in _T of
J_.
>Well, we are darn lucky slavery didn't exist all over when conservatism
>first reared its head [ ... ] And slavery can be read even more
>broadly, figuratively, to refer to those who aren't served well by
>hoary institutions, generally economic in nature. Haven't you ever
>heard any kind of criticism of conservatism in which it was considered
>to be just an apology for the wealth and privilege of a few?
These issues are considered in the revised conservatism FAQ I posted a
day or two ago.
>Why can't slavery involve restrictions on how you are allowed to treat
>your slaves? It has, I think, in many times and places. When the
>place of a slave, his station, his duty, is solidified into
>institution, it bears a little more sticking power if there is some
>notion, no matter how sham, of reciprocity attached.
If you start mixing in restrictions and notions of reciprocity it does
become harder to condemn categorically and more an issue of
circumstances. Old Testament patriarchs and medieval Icelanders had
bondservants whose situation seems to have been quite different from
that of Roman slaves used in the mines or field slaves on cotton
plantations in the old South. Perhaps the issue is how sham the
reciprocity is, which in turn depends on a great many features of
technical development, social organization, and so on. The
disappearance of slavery and decline of serfdom in Western Europe in the
pre-revolutionary period suggest that those institutions no longer fit
much else in European life. That's why they look so bad to us today.
>| As to sex roles and those whom they [please or] chafe [ ... ]
>
>They can expect what they want, but I feel they should prepare to be
>disappointed if their expectations are not fulfilled, rather than
>attempt to ensure that they are fulfilled. These people would also be
>better off altering their expectations to something reasonable.
>One aspect of this reasonableness would be that where their
>expectations are arbitrary, they should accede to the deeply felt
>personal identities of those people who choose to shape their personal
>lifes in ways that may not currently accord with these arbitrary
>prejudices.
I would agree with all this, except that in the last clause I would
strike the two instances of "personal", as well as "choose to" and "may
not currently", and substitute "traditional" for "these arbitrary".
The issue, I suppose, is what is arbitrary and what is reasonable. The
view among liberals seems to be that socially defined sex roles are
arbitrary and radical egalitarianism in such matters is reasonable,
while I claim the reverse.
>Again you make the claim that the current crop of stereotypes are in
>place because people want them that way, ignoring that just because
>quite a few people don't want them that way, it doesn't follow that the
>stereotypes will change.
I agree that just because a lot of people don't like something doesn't
mean it will change.
>As far as language goes, this is an interesting comparison. There
>*are* no teams of scholars attempting to force upon us a particular
>artificial language. But there are conservative, self-styled,
>protectors of good English, such as John Simon and William Safire, who
>rail endlessly, and often ignorantly, about how language is going to
>hell in a hand-basket. Is it an accident they are politically
>conservative as well, I wonder?
As I understand Simon and Safire (I almost never read Safire), they view
language as a system that all speakers participate in and contribute to.
Therefore, what A does linguistically is of concern to B. It embodies
values (like clarity and expressiveness) that are not the private
property or choice of any single speaker or group of speakers. Some
understand it better and contribute more to it than others. It includes
the peaks of achievement that constitute its monuments, and it can be
injured by general rejection of the notion of authority as well as by
other things, including attempts to impose authority that is overly
systematic. If those are indeed their views, then it would not be
surprising for them to be politically conservative.
>Within any given natural language, it is possible for a person to learn
>many ways of writing and speaking and use them as he feels appropriate.
"As he feels appropriate" after he has accepted and mastered the
language. Also, his feeling that something is appropriate can sometimes
be wrong. Otherwise the feeling would mean nothing.
>Such a language already seems to embody a liberal framework!
Libertarian, perhaps--the invisible hand and all that. As to
liberalism, where is the rejection of the arbitrariness of arrangements
that just evolve without a conscious plan? What would the derivation be
from an original position? I don't have the influence on language some
people do. What equality does language guarantee to me? What are the
safeguards against the wrongs that come about when people in society
just do what it occurs to them to do to advance their purposes and get
the willing cooperation of other people?
>And it has its conservative critics as well. What it doesn't have is a
>demonized liberal elite.
If what you're saying is that a lot of criticisms of language reflect
an overly-narrow perspective and that the system does OK without
conscious reform designed and implemented by a state bureaucracy, I
agree completely. Others feel differently, though, or at least that's
the impression I get from the various bureaucratic attempts to develop
and implement guidelines for inclusive language and the like.
>Favoring reflective equilibrium means that one includes one's basic
>perceptions of the good (actually we are talking a narrower things
>here: political morality) as part of the data to work on.
The work, it appears, is carried on preferentially through developing
formal theories and seeing what happens when they are applied to society
through bureaucratic instruments. That procedure works fine in physics,
but in morality and politics there are going to be a lot of dead bodies
and ruined lives before the theoreticians in power are convinced that
the theory that justifies their positions and what they have done, and
to which they have dedicated their lives, can't be made to work.
>I think these things should not just be ignored. I think they should
>be brought out into the open and examined when possible.
The issue seems to be the appropriate role for the various things
people use to deal with fundamental political and moral issues--formal
theories, intuition, common sense, habit, tradition, faith, practical
knowledge based on experience of what works, whatever. You and the left
generally tend to emphasize formal theory (I think that's what your
"brought out into the open and examined" really means). Conservatism
arose as a reaction to that tendency, as well as to the particular
nature of the theories favored by the left, and aims to point out its
shortcomings and thereby justify greater reliance on the other things I
mentioned.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From alt.fan.rush-limbaugh Mon Sep 26 17:52:37 1994
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Conservatism FAQ
Date: 26 Sep 1994 15:49:35 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 375
Message-ID: <3678kf$532@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Here is a draft conservatism FAQ that I've floated in some other
newsgroups. It has benefited from comments, but many conservatives will
still disagree with some of it. I'd be happy to expand the draft to
respond to further objections or to cover other views within
conservatism. If others want to write their own FAQs that would be a
fine too--I'm sure a lot of Rush fans would prefer something much
snappier.
QUESTIONS
1. Q--What is conservatism?
2. Q--How can conservatives reject both rationalism and irrationalism?
3. Q--"Tradition" and "wisdom greater than one's own"--in other words,
isn't conservatism a blend of obstinacy, bigotry, and obscurantism?
4. Q--Why isn't it better to reason things out from the beginning?
5. Q--If everything's so complicated and hard to figure out, why try
to hang on to things that are already changing into something else?
Society has always changed, for the better in some ways and for the
worse in others. Why not accept it?
6. Q--Wouldn't we still have slavery if conservatives had always been
running the show?
7. Q--Isn't conservatism simply another way of saying that the people
currently in positions of wealth and power should stay there?
8. Q--Aren't conservatives racist sexist homophobes?
9. Q--Why do conservatives always want to force their values on
everybody else?
10. Q--What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and
others marginalized in a conservative society?
11. Q--Why don't conservatives care about what happens to the poor,
weak, discouraged, and outcast?
12. Q--Why do conservatives favor laissez-faire capitalism when they
say they favor virtue and community? Doesn't laissez-faire capitalism
promote the opposite?
13. Q--Why do conservatives always act as if the world is coming to an
end? People have been saying that for a long time, but things don't
seem so bad today.
14. Q--Many things liberals favor, such as the welfare state and steady
expansion of the scope of the civil rights laws, are now well-
established parts of our political arrangements. Shouldn't
conservatives favor such things because they have become so well-
established?
15. Q--I was raised to believe in certain substantive liberal positions
(the color- and gender-blind ideal, for example) on the grounds that
those are the positions good Americans should hold. Wouldn't it be
conservative for me to stay true to them?
16. Q--I was raised a liberal. Doesn't that mean that to be
conservative I should stay true to liberalism?
17. Q--What's all this stuff about community and tradition? The groups
that matter these days are groups like yuppies, gays, and senior
citizens that people join as individuals and are based on interests and
perspectives rather than traditions.
ANSWERS
1. Q--What is conservatism?
A--Opposition to both rationalism and irrationalism in politics,
together with reliance on tradition as a source of wisdom greater than
one's own.
2. Q--How can conservatives reject both rationalism and irrationalism?
A--By recognizing in loyalty to tradition a middle ground between
arbitrariness and excessive reliance on theorizing. Reason, as orderly
thought, is good for developing and putting in order what we know about
the world. However, it has limits. It's not our sole source of
knowledge and it can't create a political and moral world out of
nothing. People don't become good cooks or even good physicists by
theorizing about what they're doing, and the same is true of becoming
good citizens. We learn how to do things well by following those who
came before, and most of what we learn consists in attitudes, habits and
implicit presumptions that we absorb and work with but couldn't begin to
put into words. Such a process is equally alien to rationalism, which
ignores what hasn't been articulated and put in rational form, and to
irrationalism, which in despair of perfect rationality embraces
arbitrary will.
3. Q--"Tradition" and "wisdom greater than one's own"--in other words,
isn't conservatism a blend of obstinacy, bigotry, and obscurantism?
A--It would be if things worked out better when people reject the
outlook they grew up with in favor of following some abstract ideology
or inventing something new every time a question arises. That's not the
way to make things better, though. Productive thought can bring
improvement, but it depends on acceptance of tradition and of a wisdom
greater than one's own. Thought is impossible except from a point of
view, and tradition is the process through which each of us starts with
a comprehensive and coherent point of view that reflects the thought and
experience of those who came before us. Also, if we don't accept that a
wisdom superior to our own in some sense exists and to some degree is
accessible to us, why should we bother with thought or investigation in
the first place?
4. Q--Why isn't it better to reason things out from the beginning?
A--Because the world's too complicated and because you can't lift
yourself by your bootstraps. You can't evaluate political ideas or
proposals unless you've already accepted a great many presumptions and
beliefs about politics, morality, the nature of man, and so on. Also,
the effects of any political proposal are difficult to predict and as
the proposals become more ambitious their effects become incalculable.
So the most reasonable way to approach politics is to take the existing
system of society as a given that can't be changed wholesale and to try
to make any changes cohere with the principles and practices that make
the existing system work as well as it does.
5. Q--If everything's so complicated and hard to figure out, why try
to hang on to things that are already changing into something else?
Society has always changed, for the better in some ways and for the
worse in others. Why not accept it?
A--The changes have always reflected the effects of resistance to
change as well as acceptance of it. Why not accept that as well?
Presumably the changes that occur will be better if they have to make
their way over opposition.
In addition, modern conservatism is not resistance to change as
such, but to change of a peculiarly sweeping sort characteristic of the
period beginning with the French Revolution and motivated by the
philosophy of the Enlightenment and successor philosophies such as
liberalism and Marxism. For example, it is true that the family as an
institution has changed over time, although many writers exaggerate the
changes. However, the current left/liberal proposal to abolish all
definite institutional structure for the family as an infringement on
individual autonomy is different in kind from the sort of thing that has
happened in the past.
6. Q--Wouldn't we still have slavery if conservatives had always been
running the show?
A--Why? Conservatism is not rejection of all change. Moral habits
evolve with experience and changing circumstances, and social
arrangements that grow to be too much at odds with the moral life of a
people change or disappear. More specifically, the conservative outlook
emphasizes community and mutual obligation, both of which slavery
denies. It's worth noting that slavery disappeared in Europe long
before the modern revolutionary age, and has recently been far more
characteristic of radical than conservative regimes. The reason is that
radicalism, by overemphasizing the role of theory in politics, destroys
all reciprocity between the ruling theoreticians and those they govern,
and therefore is far more likely than conservatism to lead to gross
forms of oppression.
7. Q--Isn't conservatism simply another way of saying that the people
currently in positions of wealth and power should stay there?
A--If arguments that political views advance the public good are
to be taken into account, then the arguments for conservatism should be
considered on their own terms. On the other hand, if all political
views are to be treated as rationalizations for the interests of
existing or would-be elites then the same no doubt applies to
conservatism. It's worth bearing in mind that movements aiming at
social justice typically turn out intensely elitist, since the purer the
principle the smaller the group that can be relied on to understand and
apply it correctly.
8. Q--Aren't conservatives racist sexist homophobes?
A--That depends on what those words mean.
"Racist"--Conservatives consider community loyalty important. The
communities people grow up in are generally connected to ethnicity.
That's not an accident, because ethnicity is what develops when people
live together in accordance with a common way of life for a long time.
Accordingly, conservatives think ethnic loyalties and some degree of
ethnic separateness are OK.
"Sexist"--All societies engage in sex-role stereotyping, with men
undertaking more responsibility for public affairs and women for home,
family, and childcare. There are obvious benefits to stereotyping,
since it makes it more likely that men and women will complement each
other and so be able to form functional and stable unions for the
rearing of children. Conservatives see no reason to struggle against
those benefits.
"Homophobes"--Finally, sex-role stereotyping implies a tendency to
reject conduct and patterns of impulse and attitude that don't fit the
stereotypes, such as homosexuality.
9. Q--Why do conservatives always want to force their values on
everybody else?
A--Conservatives aren't different from other people in that regard.
Everyone with a notion of how society should work believes that other
people should get with the program. If Liberal Jack thinks the
government should have final responsibility for the well-being of
children and wants to implement that responsibility through a tax system
that sends people to jail who don't comply, and Conservative Pete thinks
the family should have the responsibility and wants to implement it
through a well-defined system of sex roles enforced by social obloquy
for violators, then both will object to a school textbook entitled
_Heather Has Two Mommies Who Get Away with Paying No Taxes_. Liberal
Jack would be more likely to object to the book _Heather's Mommy Stays
Home and Her Daddy Goes to his Office Where He Works Only with Other
White Males_, while other well-known texts would be more objectionable
to Conservative Pete.
As to the enforcement of whatever moral values are accepted,
conservatives typically prefer to rely on informal social sanctions
because they think of moral values as determined by the feelings and
traditions of the people rather than by theory. They believe that the
government should not act in ways that undercut the moral values that
society relies on, for example by teaching in the public schools that
such values are arbitrary or by providing material and moral support to
those who reject such values (for example, artists who intend their
works to outrage accepted morality). How much more the government can
or should do to promote morality is a matter of circumstance and
prudence to be determined in accordance with experience. In this
connection, as in others, conservatives typically do not have high
ambitions for what government can achieve.
10. Q--What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and
others marginalized in a conservative society?
A--The same as happens in a liberal society to religious and social
conservatives and to ethnics who consider their ethnicity important.
They live in a social order they may not like dominated by people who
may look down on them. In either situation, people on the outs can to
some extent practice the way of life they prefer in private or break off
from the larger society and establish their own communities. Such
possibilities are more realistic in a conservative society that believes
in federalism, local control, and minimal bureaucracy than in a liberal
society that idealizes social justice and therefore constantly tries to
establish a unitary social order.
An important question is whether alienation from the social order
will be more common in a conservative or a liberal society. It seems
that it would be more common in a society that emphasizes abstract
rather than concrete aspects of moral obligation and seeks universal
bureaucratic implementation of ideology rather than accepting moral
feelings and loyalties that arise over time within particular
communities. So it seems likely that a liberal society will have more
citizens than a conservative society who feel that their deepest values
and loyalties are peripheral to the concerns of the society and who
therefore feel marginalized.
11. Q--Why don't conservatives care about what happens to the poor,
weak, discouraged, and outcast?
A--Conservatives do care about what happens to such people. That's
why they oppose government programs that multiply the poor, weak,
discouraged, and outcast by undermining and disrupting the network of
social customs and relations that allow people to carry on their lives
without being reduced to dependency on a soulless bureaucracy. It is
the weak who suffer most from moral chaos. Those who think
interventionist liberalism makes the problems such people face less
widespread should consider the effects on blacks, women and children of
trends of the past 30 years such as family instability, increased crime,
and lower educational achievement, and of the reversal since the late
60s of the former long-term trend toward less poverty, all during a
period when social welfare expenditures were rising greatly.
12. Q--Why do conservatives favor laissez-faire capitalism when they
say they favor virtue and community? Doesn't laissez-faire capitalism
promote the opposite?
A--Conservatives are not fans of pure laissez-faire capitalism.
For example, they are often skeptical of free trade and favor restraints
on immigration for the sake of permitting the existence and development
of a national community. They have no opposition in principle to the
regulation or suppression of businesses that affect the moral order of
society, such as prostitution, pornography, and the sale of certain
drugs.
Conservatives do tend to favor free markets when the alternative is
the expansion of bureaucracy for the sake of implementing liberal goals.
Also, they recognize that an advantage of the market over bureaucracy is
that the market reflects people's infinitely various and often
unconscious and inarticulate perceptions and goals far better than any
formal bureaucratic process could. They believe that the world as a
whole can't be administered, and so tend to think that government
intervention in markets is likely to cause more problems than it cures.
Finally, in the United States in 1994 they view economic liberty as one
of the traditional liberties of the American people that on the whole
has served that people well.
13. Q--Why do conservatives always act as if the world is coming to an
end? People have been saying that for a long time, but things don't
seem so bad today.
A--There have been a great many catastrophes along the way. In
particular, the history of Marxist regimes displays the results of
energetic attempts to implement post-Enlightenment radicalism. Less
energetic attempts, such as modern American liberalism, bear the
characteristic fruit predicted by conservative theory more slowly.
However, social trends such as those toward breakdown of affiliations
among individuals, centralization of political power in irresponsible
elites, and increasing stupidity and brutality in daily life suggest
that the characteristic fruit is likely to come just the same. Why not
worry about it?
14. Q--Many things liberals favor, such as the welfare state and steady
expansion of the scope of the civil rights laws, are now well-
established parts of our political arrangements. Shouldn't
conservatives favor such things because they have become so well-
established?
A--Yes, to the extent they are consistent with the older and more
fundamental parts of our social arrangements (such as family, community,
and traditional moral standards) and contribute to the over-all
functioning of the whole. Unfortunately, the particular things
mentioned fail on both points.
15. Q--I was raised to believe in certain substantive liberal positions
(the color- and gender-blind ideal, for example) on the grounds that
those are the positions good Americans should hold. Wouldn't it be
conservative for me to stay true to them?
A--Yes, if those are the views the people among whom you grew up
really lived by and experience does not drive you to change them. Such
a situation can't arise often, because liberal positions (affirmative
action is an example) typically are adverse to the connections between
people that make community possible, are developed centrally and
propagated through the mass media and the educational system, and in any
case are more suited to be applied to society as a whole by a
bureaucracy than incorporated into people's informal day-to-day way of
life.
16. Q--I was raised a liberal. Doesn't that mean that to be
conservative I should stay true to liberalism?
A--If you were raised an ideological liberal, you were raised to
reject tradition, follow reason, and trust in your private judgement.
How can you feel bound by loyalty to a viewpoint or way of life that
does not value loyalty? Similar comments apply to some other views
people are raised with, for example the view that career success and
self-fulfillment should be valued above all. Such views can not give
rise to binding traditions because they contain no principle of loyalty
to things that make a decent life in community possible. If you were
raised in one of them, the conservative approach would be to look to
what it was that the people you grew up with really relied on in their
lives, and also to the traditions of the community upon which the group
among whom you grew up depended for its existence.
17. Q--What's all this stuff about community and tradition? The groups
that matter these days are groups like yuppies, gays, and senior
citizens that people join as individuals and are based on interests and
perspectives rather than traditions.
A--To the extent that is true, can it remain true? When times are
good people can follow their own impulses and imagine that they can
define themselves as they choose, but when times get hard they have to
base what they do on things they would be willing to sacrifice for.
Membership in a group with an identity developed and inculcated through
tradition serves the purpose far better than choice of life-style
option, career path, or leisure-time activity. One of Bill Clinton's
problems as president is that everyone knows he's a yuppie and there's
nothing he would die for. At some point that kind of problem becomes
decisive. Conservatism doesn't claim to be the philosophy that is
always easiest to apply; it just claims to give the best results
long-term.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 28 05:35:17 EDT 1994
Article: 33973 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Conflict, the political, and liberalism
Date: 27 Sep 1994 17:26:07 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 36
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Since my previous comments on liberalism have been greeted by prolonged
and stormy applause, I thought I'd post another one.
Liberalism is sometimes thought of as a system that accommodates
fundamental conflicts uniquely well. If Tom wants X and Dick wants Y,
liberalism tries to the extent possible to deal equally favorably with
both. That, of course, will be difficult to the extent the point of
wanting X or Y has to do with particular features of society, for
example the sort of life a society honors. If X is an heroic military
life and Y is a life of universalistic multicultural androgynous
sensitivity, it seems very unlikely that any society will be able to
treat them equally.
It follows that a liberal society, since its reason for being is
defusing fundamental conflicts, will tend to encourage people's goals
and treat them as legitimate to the extent they are private--that is, to
the extent they can be carried out without affecting the success of
others in achieving their goals. That characteristic, of course,
creates a problem for political institutions premised on broad
participation, since such institutions can't work unless there is a
public that takes political goals and activity seriously and thinks of
them as highly honorable, contrary to the spirit of a liberal society.
The problem is not an easy one, since failure to maintain the form of
democratic institutions would be a formal denial of the liberal
principle of equality. The favored solution seems to be to establish a
system in which all important decisions are made by reference to rights,
and to yell at people who say politics has been packed into the way the
rights are defined and interpreted. For this purpose, libertarians
prefer property rights, while more modern liberals favor a more
comprehensive system of rights that gives more latitude to those in
charge of interpretation.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!zip.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!mantis!mantis!not-for-mail Wed Sep 28 07:20:05 EDT 1994
Article: 5293 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: REQ: Firing Line Transcript
Date: 28 Sep 1994 10:49:42 +0100
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In <367egj$9lb@clarknet.clark.net> staffjf1@clark.net (Staffords) writes:
>I waw the same show on another night and the conservatives brought up an
>argument that I had never heard before. I'd like to know the legal
>history behind it. The idea is that the first amendment says "Congress
>shall make no law" respecting establishment or free exercise of religion.
>Note that the State governments are not mentioned here. Then the tenth
>amendment says that "powers not ... prohibited by it (the Constitution) to
>the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
>They then argue that separation of church and state only applies to the
>Federal governement and not to the several State governments.
When the Bill of Rights was adopted it was clear to everyone (and the
courts so held) that they were restrictions only on Federal action.
After the Civil War the 14th Amendment was adopted, which provided that
no state could deprive any person of "life, liberty or property without
due process of law". Although on its face this provision looks like a
restriction on how state governments can proceed rather on the
substance of what they can do, in the late 19th century the courts
began applying the provision to set substantive limits on state
actions, for example striking down state laws limiting hours of work as
violations of the liberty of contract protected by the "due process"
clause. In the teens and twenties of this century the courts began to
take the view that the "due process" clause incorporated and applied to
the states some of the limitations placed on the Federal government by
the Bill of Rights. Eventually the courts decided to apply all the
restrictions of the Bill of Rights to the states by means of the due
process clause, except the requirement of jury trial in civil cases.
The argument you mention, of course, is the argument that as the 10th
amendment demonstrates the courts had no justification for doing so.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!zip.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!mantis!mantis!not-for-mail Wed Sep 28 07:20:07 EDT 1994
Article: 5299 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Deistic reflections
Date: 28 Sep 1994 10:50:08 +0100
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Any comments on the following?
We believe in God because we can't do otherwise.
We find that we are in a world we did not make and can understand only
in part. It is a world of reason and value as well as of events in
space and time. We can't avoid recognizing as valid implications and
goods we did not invent, if only because without reasoning and
evaluation we can't even form beliefs about our physical surroundings.
The world we inhabit permits us neither skepticism nor confidence in our
own power to know. We can study it, plainly with some success, but the
results of our studies are always partial and of uncertain reliability.
We can modify it in accordance with our choice, but only to a limited
extent and never with complete confidence as to the results.
We cannot deal coherently with such a situation without something that
closes the gap between value and fact, reason and reality, subjectivity
and objectivity. To accept the best theory about some aspect of the
world as the true theory is to make the good the criterion for the real,
and to apply a theory is to assume that reason governs the world. Such
proceedings can be valid only if what is good and reasonable somehow
determines and explains the way things are. The notion that what is
good and reasonable is the cause of what is real is full of paradox and
difficult to explicate. Nonetheless, it is on some such notion that
whatever certainty we have as to other matters rests.
When we look more closely at that notion, it seems that "what is good
and reasonable" is irreducibly connected to subjectivity; value, it
appears, can't exist without an evaluator. In a world in which there
were no minds there would be no values. Also, objective reality, which
can be known only by making evaluations, can be known as it is only if
what it is accords with the best evaluations. Otherwise, the best
theories would falsify it. It seems, then, that if the world is
knowable what it is somehow is necessarily connected to the best
evaluations, which in turn seem necessarily tied to the subjectivity of
an evaluator. But who is the evaluator upon whom the best evaluations
depend? Not us--we can err, while the required evaluator would be an
all-wise being whose evaluations infallibly correspond to what is real.
If (as the foregoing suggests) we cannot deal coherently with the world
without assuming the existence of an all-wise being, whom we might as
well call God, does it follow that he exists? It does from any point
of view we might hold, and none other is available to us. But granting
that such an assumption is necessary, what follows from it? We find out
by living with it. Deism that makes no practical difference will fade
away; otherwise God will become more than an abstraction for us.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 28 15:17:57 EDT 1994
Article: 2384 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Inalienable rights?
Date: 28 Sep 1994 07:23:10 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References:
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al998@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Jason Smith) writes:
>I would like to know this: is there such a thing as "inalienable
>rights," "inherent rights," "human rights," or any of the other
>buzzwords which flood our society? Aren't these concepts human
>constructs? In nature, otherwise known as reality, or perhaps the
>forces which govern us all, ultimately, do all things have rights? By
>what authority? By whose decree? Who or what determines these rights,
>and what are they?
Someone has a "right" if he can make a claim that someone else ought to
respect and comply with. Rights can be legal, moral, or both. Examples
of rights are the right of a property owner to expel an intruder, the
right of a participant in a conversation to make his point without
constantly being interrupted or shouted at, the right of 18-year-olds in
the United States to vote for president, and a husband's marital rights.
Rights don't just hang in the air, they exist as part of a legal or
moral system. To the extent you think there's some universally valid
moral system governing politics you are likely to think there are
inherent human rights. What you think those rights are depend on what
you think that system is. If your overall view of politics is that each
people has to develop the political arrangements that best foster its
own unique way of life then you might not recognize many inherent human
rights other than the right not to be subjected to foreign rule.
The odd thing about discussions of rights today is that they do seem to
hang in the air. People just assert them, and the idea is that
everything else just has to give way. You aren't supposed to take into
account the effect on the overall system that recognition of the right
would have. Also, even people who deny the objectivity of morality
nonetheless assert absolute rights that seem to come from nowhere.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 28 15:17:59 EDT 1994
Article: 2385 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: a.r.c FAQ and resource lists
Date: 28 Sep 1994 09:13:05 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Here's the latest version of the FAQ. As always, it's a draft, so
comments are requested, especially from those who think I've
misrepresented their views. The resource lists are appended.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
1. Q - What is the purpose of alt.revolution.counter?
A - The discussion of counterrevolutionary perspectives on society,
politics, culture and religion. The newsgroup was orginally started by
Catholic integrists and others of similar persuasions attached to
Christianity as the basis for politics and culture and opposed to the
ideals of the French Revolution and its progeny. It has developed into
a forum for the discussion of all aspects of counterrevolutionary and
related thought, including American paleoconservatism, the European New
Right, Integrism, Distributism, Southern Agrarianism and ethnic
nationalism.
2. Q - What is a counterrevolutionary?
A - One who believes that the leftward trend of recent times
(which some extend back to the Middle Ages) is irredeemably destructive
and recognizes that it has triumphed. Egalitarian hedonism has become
the guiding principle of almost all present-day political institutions
and discussion. As a result, conservatism as it has been conceived in
the past is no longer tenable because there is not enough left to
conserve; fundamental changes in the direction of society are required.
3. Q - What do counterrevolutionaries oppose?
A - In general, they oppose the tendency of modern society to take
nothing seriously other than the impulses and desires particular
individuals happen to have and the establishment and maintenance of a
universal rational order designed to organize all available resources
for the maximum equal satisfaction of those impulses and desires. The
modern order is universalistic, materialistic, egalitarian, and
hedonistic, and counterrevolutionaries don't like any part of it.
4. Q - What do counterrevolutionaries favor?
A - The things that don't fit into the foregoing scheme of things:
the Good, the Beautiful, the True, God, love, loyalty, family, local and
ethnic particularity, and so on.
5. Q - Are all counterrevolutionaries the same?
A - No. Major schools of thought include:
a. American Paleoconservatism. Bring back the pre-1861 (or at
least pre-FDR) republic. Down with the neoconservative revistionists
and other left-wing deviationalists. Keep government small, limited and
local. Bring back the Protestant ethic. Build communities of
individualists. (Typical query from other counterrevolutionaries:
isn't the present situation a necessary outcome of the thought of John
Locke and Thomas Jefferson?)
b. European New Right. Down with all universalisms. Long live
the Europe of 100 flags, the Fourth World, and polytheism. What we need
is a fundamental shift in our collective consciousness and basic
philosophical and epistemological foundations. (Typical query: exactly
what does this all mean? Is this the wish list from outer space, or is
there something here that can be taken seriously?)
c. Ethnic nationalism. Let's have a politically independent state
as the vehicle for the collective life of each people. (Typical query:
isn't partitioning a state on ethnic lines messy when transfers of
populations are required? Also, once there are separate ethnic states,
what then? Is Sweden really the ideal? If we're looking for a
fundamental political attitude, can ethnic nationalism really fit the
bill?)
d. Integrism. Long live Christ the King! (Typical query: if
that's such a great idea, why not come out and tell us about it?)
e. Distributivism. Decentralize economically. Promote small
business. Build a nation of independent property owners.
6. Q - Since counterrevolutionaries are so different from each other,
how can they all fit into a single newsgroup?
A - Their views on the ills of modern society are broadly
compatible, as are some characteristics of the societies each would
promote. The discussions in a.r.c. can be useful in developing the
counterrevolutionary diagnosis of modern ills and bringing out the
strengths and weaknesses of proposed remedies.
7. Q - Are counterrevolutionaries racist sexist homophobes?
A - As a general thing, yes. They tend to think that socially-
defined sex roles and ethnic loyalties are OK, and so qualify on all
three counts.
8. Q - My ex-wife in Ulan Bator wants to join a.r.c. so she can
discuss her plans for bringing back the Mongol Empire, only with more of
a theocratic emphasis. She has Internet email but not Usenet access.
What can she do?
A - Your ex qualifies for our outreach program to third-world
women of color who reject the traditional patriarchal family. She
should send email to jk@panix.com asking for a connection to the a.r.c.
mail gateway. (Others may also request the connection.)
9. Q - How can I find out more?
A - Listen to the discussions, join in if you wish, and take a look
at the following a.r.c. Resource Lists.
RESOURCE LISTS
Here are revised and updated Resource Lists. New material is marked
with a "#". As always, additions, comments and reassignments among
categories are welcome.
The purpose of the lists is to help users explore and study
counterrevolutionary and related thought in all its forms. They have
grown through contributions from a number of sources, are not at all
balanced, and include material many people find objectionable. The
brief descriptions are from a number of sources and often reflect the
views of the contributor or of the publication itself rather than any
neutral judgment.
Table of Contents:
Books & Articles
Journals
Organizations
Book Stores & Mail Order Services
BOOKS & ARTICLES INDEX
Table of Contents:
General
Books
Articles
Other Sources
Christian Counter-Revolution
Christian Society
History & Biographies.
History of the Revolution
United Nations, New World Order, Communism, and Other Conspiracies
Catholic Traditionalism
Monarchism
Distributism, Economics
Southern Agrarians
European New Right
Third Positionist
Populist, Nationalist, White Separatist, and Beyond
Literature
Miscellaneous
GENERAL: books
Aquinas, Thomas. _Works_. [selection of his political writings]
Aristotle. _Ethics_ and _Politics_.
Aurelius, Marcus. _Meditations_.
Babbitt, Irving. _Democracy and Leadership_ and _Rousseau and
Romanticism_. An analysis of modern cultural and spiritual
tendencies and proposed remedies.
Frank Bryan and John McClaughry. _The Vermont Papers_ (Post Mills, VT:
Chelsea Green Publishing Company 1989). A neo-anti-federalist
program for the 1990s covering issues ranging from agriculture and
administration to land-use and education.
Burke, Edmund. _Reflections on the Revolution in France_.
Burnham, James. _The Suicide of the West_ (1965); _The Managerial
Revolution (1941). Antecedents to Burnham''s theory of
bureaucratic elites set forth in the latter book are Vilfredo
Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Robert Michels.
Confucius. _Analects_. An example of tradition-based thought at its
best.
Eliot, T.S. _Notes toward the Definition of Culture_.
Kendall, Willmore, _The Conservative Affirmation in America_ (available
from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute); _Willmoore Kendall
Contra Mundum_.
Locke, John. _Second Treatise of Government_. Should we follow most
American conservatives and retain Locke because he inspired the
American order or reject him as part of the liberal tradition?
Ludovici, Anthony. _Defense of Aristocracy: A Text Book for Tories_
(1915) London: Constable; _A Defense of Conservatism: A Further
Text-Book for Tories_ (1921) London: Faber and Gwyer.
Maistre, Joseph de. _Works_. The most admired French
counterrevolutionary thinker.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. _After Virtue_ (Notre Dame, 1981). An exploration
of the collapse of moral order in the modern period.
Marx, Karl. _Works_. If you want to understand the revolution, you
have to read him.
Molnar, Thomas. _The Counter-Revolution_ (Funk & Wagnalls, 1969). A
general study of counterrevolutionary thought and the reasons for
its pragmatic failure.
Nisbet, Robert, _The Quest For Community: A Study In The Ethics of Order
and Freedom._ Oxford University Press, 1953. Explores how
individualism and statism have flourished while the primary sources
of human community have grown weaker.
Alfred Jay Nock. _Our Enemy the State_.
Ortega y Gasett, Jose. _Revolt of the Masses_.
Lord Percy of Newcastle: The Heresy of Democracy. A study in the History
of Government (London, 1954). A conservative criticism of the new
Democracy of 1789 which puts forward the alternative of the Moral
State based on Dualism as opposed to Totalism.
Plato. _Republic_ and _Laws_. Among its excellencies the _Republic_
includes (in books viii and ix) a penetrating account of social and
political evolution, from military aristocracy through commercial
oligarchy to democratic consumer society and then to tyranny.
Rousseau, J.-J. _Social Contract_ and other writings.
Schmitt, Carl. _The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy_ (MIT Press
1992), _Political Theology_ (MIT Press 1988), _Political
Romanticism_ (MIT Press 1986). Also see Carl Schmitt: Politics
and Theory, by Paul Gottfried (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990),
and recent English language articles on Carl Schmitt in TELOS and
POLITICAL THEORY.
Roger Scruton. _The Philospher on Dover beach_ (essays) and _The
Meaning of Conservatism_ (the first edition is more CR than the
second).
Spengler, Oswald. _Decline of the West_.
Stephen, James FitzJames. _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity_.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. _Democracy in America_.
Voegelin, Eric. _The New Science of Politics_.
GENERAL: Articles
Berlin, Isaiah. "Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism", in _The
Crooked Timber of Humanity_.
John Grigg: Nobility & War, _Encounter_ March 1990 Vol. 74 No. 2
An interesting discussion on whether Britain was more or less
moral in the First or the Second World War.
Wilmoore Kendall. "The People of Athens vs Socrates Revisited"; "The
Two Majorities" (_Midwest Journal of Political Science_, Nov. 1960,
pp. 317-345); "John Locke Revisited" (_Intercollegiate Review_,
Jan.-Feb. 1966 pp. 217-234); "The People versus Socrates
Revisited" _Modern Age_ (Winter 58-59, pp. 98-111).
GENERAL: Other Sources
_Guide to the American Right_, compiled by Laird Wilcox (Editorial
Research Service, PO Box 2047, Olath, KS 66061). $24.95.
A directory (updated annually) of over 3,300 anti-communist,
conservative, patriotic, tax protest, pro-family, libertarian,
ethnic (white) nationalist and other "right-wing" organizations,
publishers, book dealers, newsletters, and journals in the United
States and Canada. Listings are coded to indicate special areas of
interest and serials are cross-indexed with sponsoring
organizations. Includes a bibliography of over 540 books on the
American "right-wing".
Louis Filler: A Dictionary of American Conservatism (Citadel Press,
Secaucus, NJ, 1988). Not quite as complete a guide as the blurb
claims, but still a useful reference for mainstream American
conservatism (especially for non-Americans). The coverage is
varied and not just limited to America - there is an article on
Belloc (but not on Distributism).
Ciaran o Maolain: The Radical Right: A World Directory (A Keesing's
Reference Publication, Longman Group, UK, 1987). Somewhat dated,
this work is a directory of groups and organisations considered by
the author to be right-wing, ranging from Anti-Communist to
Monarchist to White Supremacist to Mainstream right-wing political
parties. The author is fairly obviously biased against these
groups. The information provided for the various groups included
is often out-of-date and incomplete (even when such information
would be reasonably easy to find).
CHRISTIAN COUNTER-REVOLUTION
James Aho: _The Politics of Righteousness_ (1990, University of
Washington Press)
Hugh Akins: Christian Order and the Modern World
G.K. Chesterton: What's Wrong with the World? (1910)
Discusses the family, imperialism, feminism, education.
Corneliu Codreanu: For My Legionaries.
The story of the Iron Guard in Romania as told by its leader.
Many are still inspired by this book.
Plinio Correa de Oliveira: Revolution and Counter Revolution
An inspired analysis of the forms that the Revolution has taken
and an examination of valid Counter Revolutionary responses.
Plinio Correa de Oliveira: What does Self-Managing Socialism mean for
Communism - A Barrier? Or a Bridgehead? Crusade for a Christian
Civilization Vol 12 No 3 Apr-Jun 1982).
Plinio Correa de Oliveira: Unperceived Idelological Transshipment and
Dialogue (also > Crusade for a Christian Civilization Vol 12 No. 2,
Oct-Dec 1982 originally Port. Baldeaco Ideologica Inadvertida e
Dialogo)
Plinio Correa de Oliveira: Indian Tribalism, the Communist-Missionary
Ideal for Brazil in the Twent-First Century (also > Crusade for a
Christian Civilization Vol. 10 No. 4 / Vol. 11 No. 1 (joint
publication)
Plinio Correa de Oliveira: Agrarian Reform - A Question of Conscience
Shows how socialist agrarian reform offends against Catholic
doctrine.
Plinio Correa de Oliveira: In Defense of Catholic Action
An attack on the infiltration of progressive ideology with the
Catholic Church.
Plinio Correa de Oliveira: What does Self-managing Socialism Mean for
Communism - A Barrier or a Bridgehead? > (1) Crusade for a
Christian Civilization Vol 12 No 3 April-June 1992; (2) The
Washington Post 9 Dec., 1981; (3) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
9 Dec., 1981
Examines the implications of the policy of self-managing
socialism in France.
Rev. Denis Fahey: The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World (3rd ed.
1939, rpd Omni Publications, Hawthorne California, 1987)
An extremely important book for all concerned with restoring
the Social Reign of Christus Rex (Christ the King).
Rev. Denis Fahey: The Kingship of Christ and the Conversion of the
Jewish Nation.
Rev. Denis Fahey: The Social Rights of Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ the
King
Rev. Denis Fahey: The Kingship of Christ According to the Principles of
St Thomas Aquinas
Solange Hertz: The Start Spangled Heresy - Americanism (Veritas
Press, Santa Monica, CA)
Traces the source of many ills such as democratism,
revolutionary liberalism and religious pluralism in the
contemporary Church to the influence of the heresy of
Americanism (that the liberal and democractic assumptions of the
USA should be applied to the Church) on the Second Vatican Council.
Douglas Jerrold: The Necessity of Freedom. Notes on Christianity and
Politics (London, 1939)
Concerns the restoration of Christian authority and freedom
against the ideas of 1789.
James Hitchcock: Years of Crisis. Collected Essays, 1970-1983
(Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1985)
Discusses many topics affecting Christianity in general and
Catholicism in particular in an increasing secular modern
America.
C.S. Lewis: The Abolition of Man
Rev. Praniatis: The Talmud Unmasked.
An examination of the Talmud and its anti-Christian basis.
ed Avril Smith: The Voice of Christian Affirmation
Thirteen talks given at conferences of the Christian Affirmation
Campaign 1974-1986. (Christian Heritage Publications, Worthing, 1987)
Includes talks by Michael Davies, Hamish Fraser, Rev. Arthur Lewis,
Ray Honeyford, Prof Dr Peter Beyerhaus, Edmund Ball, Rev Francis Moss,
John Braine, Rev Maurice cartledge, John Gouriet, Ian Thompson
on a variety of subjects.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Rebuilding Russia (1990)
How Russia can be reconstructed.
Tradition, Family & Property: Half a Century of Epic Anti-Communism (New
York, 1981). The history of the founding of the TFPs and their
campaigns for a Christian society.
Marion Michael Walsh: The New Christendom. How We will Build It
Marion Michael Walsh: A Manual of Christian Social-Political Action
The Christian Law Institute Position Papers, Releases and Reports
CHRISTIAN SOCIETY
Alan J. Barron: _The Death of Eve_
The effects of "women's liberation" on Western society.
Attacks the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of
Discrimination Against Women and "equal opportunities".
Hilaire Belloc: _The Jews_
An examination of the causes of friction between Gentile and
Jew.
L. Brent Bozell: _Mustard Seeds_ (Trinity Communications).
Carlos Patricio del Campo: _Is Brazil Sliding Toward the Extreme Left?_
How left-wing policies threaten to ruin the properity of
Brazil.
Homer Duncan: _Secular Humanism_. On Anti-Christian secular education.
Rev. Denis Fahey: _Money Manipulation and Social Order_
Rev. Denis Fahey: _The Church and Farming_
Grady: Abortion - _Yes or No?_ Pro-life booklet which sets out the case
against abortion.
Fr. Francis Marsden: _Weaving a Web of Confusion_ (Parents' Concern,
16 St Mary Court, Faversham, Kent ME13 8AZ, 2.50 pounds).
A booklet examining the failure of current religious syllabi to
actually teach the Catholic faith in favour of false religions.
Malcolm Muggeridge: _Great Liberal Deathwish_
David Thompson: _Green Hoax_
An attack on the hoax of the greenhouse effect.
HISTORY & BIOGRAPHIES
Books by counterrevolutionaries, about counterrevolutionaries and
studies of the Revolution and Counterrevolution in action.
Carlos de Arce: _Los Generales de Franco_ (Barcelona, 1984)
An account of the generals who fought on the Nationalist side
during the Spanish Crusade.
D. Bacu: _The Anti-Humans_
The story of the Romanians who had followed Cornelie Codreanu
after the Bolseheviks took power.
Luis Bolin: _Spain - The Vital Years_ (J.B. Lippincott Company, 1967)
The account of the author's participation in the Spanish
Crusade (a.k.a. Spanish Civil War) including his part in aiding
Franco at the start of the war.
Salvador Borrego: _Puzzling Neighbours - A Historical Guide to
Understanding Modern Mexico_
An account of how Masonic forces have attacked and weakened
Mexico.
G.K. Chesterton: _Autobiography_
Corneliu Codreanu: _Nest Leaders Manual_
Organisational handbook of the Iron Guard.
Corneliu Codreanu: _Circulars & Manifestoes_
It records the victories and defeats, bitterness and pain, hopes
and joys, but always the moral brilliance and the honour of the
man who led the Legion.
Barbara Cole: _The Elite - The Story of the Rhodesian Special Air
Service_.
The story of this crack anti-terrorist unit during the Rhodesian
struggle against Communism.
Jay P. Corrins: _GK Chesterton & Hilaire Belloc. The Battle Against
Modernity_ (Ohio, 1981)
Ian Crowther: _ G.K. Chesterton_ (Thinkers of Our Time, The Claridge Press,
London, 1991)
An introduction to Chesterton and his philosophy concentrating
on his Christian worldview and its relevance today.
Donald Day: _Onward Christian Soldiers_
A correspondent for The Chicago Tribune in Europe, Day reports
on the Bolshevik subversion in the Baltic states before and
during the Second World War.
Leon Degrelle: _Persiste et Signe. Interviews recueilles pour la
television francaise par Jean-Michel Charlier_ (Editions Jean
Picollec, Paris, 1985).
In a series of interviews, Leon Degrelle details his youth, his
activities as the leader of Rex in Belgium, his struggle during
the war and his subsequent exile in Spain.
Leon Degrelle: _Campaign in Russia_
A more detailed account of Degrelle's campaigns in Russia as a
political soldier.
Leon Degrelle: _Letter to the Pope on his Visit to Auschwitz_
Leon Degrelle: _Hitler - Born at Versailles_.
Traces the causes and results of the First World War in the
shaping of the 20th century.
F.C.C Egerton: _Salazar. Rebuilder of Portugal_ (London, 1943)
A description of the Portugese state and its ruler Antonio de
Oliveira Salazar.
Mike Hoare: _Congo Mercenary_ (London, 1967)
An account of the campaign against the communist rebellion in
the Congo (shortly after the UN suppression of Katanga) by 'Mad
Mike', the leader of the mercenaries.
Michael Ffinch: _G.K. Chesterton. A Biography_ (London, 1986)
W. Foss & C. Gerahty: _The Spanish Arena_ (Catholic Book Club, London)
A contemporary account of the Spanish Crusade.
L. Fry: _Waters Flowing Eastward_
Eye-witness account of the Bolshevik Revolution and its causes.
Solange Hertz: _Dicovering Cristabal Colon_ (Supplement to Apropos No 12)
Seeking the real Christopher Columbus amongst the lies and
detractions of his enemies.
David Irving: _Uprising! - One Nations Nightmare: Hungary 1956_
The story of the revolt of the Hunagrian people against
the Communist regime.
Siegfried Kappe-Hardenberg: _Ein Mythos wird Zerstoert - Der Spanische
Buergerkrieg, Guernica, und di Antideutsche Propaganda_
A refutation of the myth of Guernica as portrayed by the Red
propaganda campaign.
Michael Kenny S.J.: _No God Next Door - Red Rule in Mexico and Our
Responsibility_ (Wm. J. Hirten Co, 1935; rpd C.S.G. & Associates
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA)
First published in 1935, this book has been recently reissued.
It describes the sufferings of the Cristeros inflicted by the
Masonic-Socialist alliance (with American backing).
Jesus Salas Larrazabal: _Guernica_ (Libros de Historia 22, Ediciones Rialp,
Madrid, 1987)
Examines the myth of Guernica from a neutral viewpoint and
concludes that the actual facts of the bombing raid bear no
relation to what was later reported outside the local area in a
world-wide propaganda campaign.
Father Arthur Lewis: _Christian Terror_
Details communist terrorist atrocities during the Rhodesian
bush war and the financial backing given to the perpetrators by
the World Council of Churches.
Hon. Mrs Maxwell-Scott: _Garcia Moren~o, the Regenerator of Ecuador_
Geoffrey Moss (Major Geoffrey McNeil-Moss): _The Epic of the Alcazar_.
A History of the Siege of the Toledo Alcazar, 1936 (London,
1937)
A daya-by-day account of this famous siege during the Spanish
Crusade.
Eustace Mullins: _Ezra Pound - This Difficult Individual_
An insight into 'the most difficult years of this difficult
individual'.
Ezra Pound (ed DD Paige): _Selected Letters 1907-1941P
Ezra Pound: _Selected Prose 1909-1965_
A selection of Pounds political and literary writings. Includes
_ABC of Economic_, _Murder by Capital_, _National Culture -
A Manifesto_ and commentaries on Eliot, Buchan and others.
Tolstoy: _Victims of Yalta_.
How anti-Communist fighters were repatriated by the British
after the war to face torture and death.
Maisie Ward: _Gilbert Keith Chesterton_ (London, 1944)
The official authorised biography.
E. Waugh: _Robbery under Law - the Mexican Object-Lesson_ (Catholic
Book Club, London, 1940)
A sketch of Mexico during the 1930's detailing the attacks on
private property and the Church.
Robert Wilson: _Last Days of the Romanovs_ (first 1920; updated ed, ?)
An investigation by a journalist into the murder of Czar
Nicholas and his family. With a modern introduction and
appendix by Ivor Benson.
HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION
D. Manifold: Karl Marx - True or False Prophet?
A critical analysis of the life of Karl Marx and his part in the
Revolution.
Nesta H. Webster: The French Revolution
The causes and effects of the French Revolution - corrects many
misunderstandings.
Nesta H. Webster: The Socialist Network (London, 1926)
The links between socialist organisations and people.
Probably somehat dated to be of more than historical use.
Nesta H. Webster: Secret Societies and Subversive Movements (1924, rpd
Christian Book Club of America, 197?)
An account of masonic and other subversive movements from the
Middle Ages to the early Twentieth Century.
Nesta H. Webster: World Revolution. The Plcot against Civilization
(London, 1921)
Details the links between the Illuminati, the French
Revolution and their modern ideological descendants.
Nesta H. Webster: Surrender of an Empire (3rd edition, 1931)
Details the attacks launched against the British Empire in
order to bring abouts its downfall as a stumbling block to
Communist expansion.
UNITED NATIONS, NEW WORLD ORDER, COMMUNISM, AND OTHER CONSPIRACIES
Is the Revolution simply a series of unconnected waves in society? Are
there philosophical connexions between the different directions and
emphases of the Revolution? Or is there a guiding hand behind the
scenes? Many of the books in this section will not be to everyone's
taste.
Gary Allen: Done Dare Call it Conspiracy
The secrets behind the World Revolution and the hidden
financial influences of manipulators behind the scenes.
Gary Allen: Say 'No' to the New World Order
How the West has helped Communist regimes.
Ivor Benson: The Zionist factor
An examination of the Zionist impact on the 20th century.
James Billington: Fire in the Minds of Men - Origins of the
Revolutionary Faith (1980)
Discloses the part played by Illuminism in the French and
Bolshevik Revolutions.
Eric D. Butler: Red Pattern of World Conquest (1961)
An examination of the UN and the One World Government.
AK Chesterton: The New Unhappy Lords
GK's cousin examines international finance and the power it is
able to obtain and the global assault on Nationalism.
AK Chesterton: Facing The Abyss
The treason within our governments in their support for a "world
order".
ed Ronald Duncan & Colin Wilson: Marx Refuted. The Verdict of History
(Ashgrive Press, Bath, 1987)
A selection of anti-Marxist writings from a variety of (mainly
liberal-conservative) viewpoints including Hayek, Thatcher,
Flew, Rowse, Solzhenitsyn,
Paul Findley: They Dare to Speak Out
An examination of the powerful Zionist lobby in American
politics.
G, Edward Griffin: The Fearful Master. A Second Look at the United
Nations (1964).
Attacks the double standards guiding the UN. Uses Katanga as a
case study in which the UN troops inflicted atrocities as they
crushed the attempt by Katanga to become an independent state
from the rest of the Belgian Congo.
Rev W. Hannah: Darkness Visible
An expose of the evils of Freemasonry.
Douglas Hyde: I believed. The autobiography of a Former British
Communist (London, 1950)
The story of a communist and his work and his eventual
conversion to Catholicism.
Inter-City Researchers: The Longest Hatred. An Examination of
Anti-Gentilism (London, 1991)
This booklet looks at the phenomenon of anti-gentilism.
Kitty Little: Mammon versus God. The Bankers "New World" Disorder
(London, 1993)
This booklet [30pp] examines usury, the power of international
finance over national governments and the undermining of
civilization.
Stephen Knight: The Brotherhood
A mainstream examination of Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry.
Arthur Koestler: The Thirteenth Tribe
Shows that the majority of Jews are in fact descended from the
Khazar tribe which converted to Judaism.
Robert W. Lee: United Nations Conspiracy
The real purpose of the UN.
Alfred Lilienthal: Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace?
Israel and the Zionist lobby examined from a critical
viewpoint of an Anti-Zionist Jew.
Deirdre Manifold: Karl Marx - A Prophet of Our Time (CSG & Associates
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA)
A concise history of Marx, his Satanic doctrine and its effects
including the Church through the medium of Liberation Theology.
Deirdre Manifold: Fatima and the Great Conspiracy
Sketches the destruction of civilisation, the forces
responsible and an answer to the malaise.
Deirdre Manifold: Towards World Government - New World Order (Firinne
Publications, Galway)
Analyses what lies behind the changes in Russia. A sequel to
Fatima and the Great Conspiracy.
Count Leon de Poncins: State Secrets
A selection of state documents which illustrate some of the
forces which have shaped this century.
Count Leon de Poncins: Secret Powers behind Revolution
A study of the influences behind modern revolution and
subversion.
Prof Carroll Quigley: Tragedy & Hope
An 'insider's view on the global money-power and how governments
are manipulated.
Captain A.H. Ramsey: The Nameless War
Details the secret war against Europe. The author was gaoled
during the 1940's without charge despite being a Conservative
Member of Parliament.
Douglas Reed: The Controversy of Zion
This book reveals the real nature of Zionism.
Bernard Smith: The Fraudulent Gospel. Politics and the World Council
of Churches (new edition, 1990)
The World Council of Churches and its support for communist
terrorism in Africa - this book gives the facts about the WCC's
political activities. This is a recent edition of a book first
issued some years ago.
Bernard Smith: The Crooked Conscience
Another work on the World Council of Churches and its support
for communism in Africa.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Alexander Solzhenitsyn Speaks to the West
Contains 4 speeches from 1975 & 1978 warning of the real nature
of the Soviet Union and the moral weakness of the West.
Stuart: The Beast in the Temple
An account of the world-wide corruption of morality and good
order in society.
Stuart: The Lemming Folk.
A study of the enemy within Western society that seeks its
destruction.
Prince Michael Sturdza: Betrayal by Rulers
The betrayals by Western rulers since the Second World War.
Richard Wurmbrand: Was Karl Marx a Satanist? (1976)
Argues that there is evidence that Marx and other communist
leaders were Satanists rather than Atheists as commonly
accepted.
CATHOLIC TRADITIONALISM
Hilaire Belloc: Survivals and New Arrivals (London, 1929, rpd 1939)
An examination of lines of attack used against the Church, both
old and new.
GK Chesterton: Orthodoxy
An explanation of Chesteron's belief in Christianity.
Piers Compton: The Broken Cross
Masonic infiltration within the Vatican. Some of the claims made
in this book should be treated with care.
Michael Davies: Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
Part I 1905-1976 (The Angelus Press, Dickinson, Texas, 1979)
Part II 1977-1979 (The Angelus Press, Dickinson, Texas, 1983)
A detailed 'blow-by-blow' account of the dispute between the
former traditionalist Archbishop and the Vatican.
Michael Davies: An Open Letter to a Bishop on the
Development of the Roman Rite (Chulmleigh,Devon, 1980)
Michael Davies: A Privilege of the Ordained (The Angelus
Press, Dickinson, Texas, 1982)
Michael Davies: The Goldfish Bowl: The Church Since
Vatican II (The Angelus Press, Dickinson, Texas, 1985)
Michael Davies: St Athanasius. Defender of the Faith
(The Angelus Press, Dickinson, Texas, 1985)
Michael Davies: The Legal Status of the Tridentine Mass
(The Angelus Press, Dickinson, Texas, 1982)
Michael Davies: The Catechetical Revolution. Blessing or
Disaster (The Antony Roper Memorial Lecture, 1984)
Michael Davies: Archbishop Lefebvre and Religious
Liberty (Augustine Publishing Co, Chulmleigh, Devon, 1980)
The above 7 booklets by Michael Davies deal with the
contemporary crisis in the Church in the wake of Vatican 2 and
related matters.
Michael Davies: The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty
(Neumann Press, Long Prairie, Minnesota)
Examines how the traditional teaching of the Church on religious
liberty was distorted at the Second vatican Council under the
influence of Americanism amongst others.
Marcel Lefebvre: A Bishop Speaks
Marcel Lefebvre: An Open Letter to Confused Catholics
(tr The Society of St Pius X - Great Britain, Angelus
Press, Dickinson, Texas, 1987)
Marcel Lefebvre: They Have Uncrowned Him. From
Liberalism to Apostasy. The Conciliar Tragedy (tr
Reverend Father Gregory Post, Angelus Press, Dickinson, Texas, 1988)
Count Leon de Poncins: Judaism and the Vatican
Describes the eternal conflict between Judaism and Christianity
and how the 2nd Vatican Council was affected.
Count Leon de Poncins: Freemasonry and the Vatican
The secret Freemasonic attacks on the Church.
MONARCHIST
Plinio Correa de Oliveira: Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in
the Allocutions of Pius XII
Yves Dupont: More about the Great Monarch (Tenet Books, Hawthorne,
Australia)
John Farthing: Freedom wears a Crown (Toronto, 1957)
A presentation of the constitutional power and significance
of the British Crown. A study of constitutional monarchy.
Marquis de la Franquerie: Le Caractere Sacre et Divin de la Royaute en
France (Editions de Chire, Vouille, 1978)
Marquis de la Franquerie: Louis XVI le Roi Martyr (Editions Resiac,
Montsurs, 1974)
Solange Hertz: The Strange Spirit of '76 (Big Rock Papers, 1975)
Solange Hertz: The Thought of His Heart (Big Rock Papers, 1975)
Solange Hertz: Louis XVI, Royal Martyr and Victim (Big Rock Papers, 1979)
DISTRIBUTISM, ECONOMICS
Hilaire Belloc: The Servile State (1912)
An attack on socialism and statism.
Hilaire Belloc: Restoration of Property (1936)
An essay [78pp] which argues against both Communism and Capitalism.
Hilaire Belloc: The Alternative
An reprinted article originally from _St George's Review_ which
explains that socialism is no alternative to capitalism and that
puts the case for distributism.
G.K. Chesterton: The Outline of Sanity
Classic Distributist work. Argues for the wide-spread ownership
of property as the economic way forward which will preserve
the individual and family.
Rev. Cleary: The Church & Usury
The history of the opposition of the Church to usury.
Cobbett: Cottage Economy
The alternative to the concentration of economic wealth and
power in the hands of a few - small businesses and a return to
honesty and craftsmanship.
Rev. Charles Coughlin: Money - Questions and Answers
Father Coughlin, the famous "radio priest" answers questions on
money.
Rev. Denis Fahey: Workingmen's Guilds of the Middle Ages
Olive & Jan Grubiak: The Guernsey Experiment.
A booklet [25pp] on how Guernsey freed itself from usury
and high taxation.
Aidan MacKay: Hilaire Belloc and his Critics
Available from the GK Chesterton Study Centre - vide list of
organisations. An introduction to Hilaire Belloc and
Distributism in booklet form [26pp].
Aidan MacKay: The Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton
A short introduction [15pp] to Chesterton and his Distributist
ideals.
E.F. Schumacher: Small is Beautiful
The anti-social effects of big business and the need for small
family properties.
E.F. Schumacher: A Guide for the Perplexed
E. Soddy: Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Reality
A study of money and credit.
Gary North: Salvation Through Inflation: The Economics of Social
Credit. Tyler, TX; Institute For Christian Economics, 1993.
A comparison of Austrian economics and social credit theory.
SOUTHERN AGRARIANS
_Twelve Southerners: I'll Take My Stand_.
The twelve Southerners consisted of Donald Davidson, John Gould
Fletcher, H.B. Kline, Lyle H. Lanier, Stark Young, Allen Tate, Andrew
Nelson Lytle, H.C. Nixon, F.L. Owsley, John Crowe Ranson, John Donald
Wade, and Robert Penn Warren.
Calhoun, John C. 1992. _The Papers of John C. Calhoun_.
ed. Clyde Wilson, New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers.
DeRosa, Marshal L. 1991. _The Confederate Constitution of 1861_
University of Missouri Press.
ed William C. Harvard & Walter Sullivan: A Book of Prophets (1982)
Kirk, Russell 1978. _John Randlph of Roanoke: A Study in American
Politics_ Indiapolis: Liberty Press.
Thomas D. Young: Waking their Neighbours Up (1982)
Weaver, Richard M. 1991. _The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver_.
ed. George M. Curtis and James J. Thompson. Indianapolis: Liberty
Fund.
ed Clyde Wilson: Why the South will Survive (1981)
EUROPEAN NEW RIGHT
Alain de Benoist:
_Vu de Droite, Copernic 1977
_Les Idees a L'Endroit_, Libres-Hallier 1979
_Comment peut-on etre Paien?_, Albin Michel 1971
_Les Traditions d'Europe, Labyrinthe 1982
_L'Eclipse du Sacre, Table Ronde 1986
_Eroope, Tiers Monde: Meme Combat, Robert Laffont 1986
John Casey, _Pagan Virtues_. Casey is 'old right' in English terms and
had quite a lot to do with the Salisbury Review in its earlier days.
His book has no specific connection with the ENR, but is mentioned here
because of the ENR interest in paganism. He argues that there are
'Pagan' (Classical world) virtues different from those engendered by
Christianity and worth considering seriously.
Tomislav Sunic, _Against Democracy and Equality: the European New
Right_, Lang 1990.
See also under G.R.E.C.E. in Bookstores (France).
THIRD POSITIONIST
Derek Holland: Political Soldier 1
Explains why the Nationalist militant must strive to become the
Political Soldier needed to fight corruption and save Europe.
Derek Holland: Political Soldier 2
Thoughs on struggle and sacrifice. For those who wish to fight
for Tradition and Order.
International Third Position: A Third Positionist Reader.
Contains 5 extracts on the family, economics, Palestine,
Codreanu and the 'Rural Revolution'. Useful as a cheap
introduction to the policies of the ITP, but fairly limited if
the reader is already familiar with these topics.
POPULIST, NATIONALIST, WHITE SEPARATIST, AND BEYOND
Eric D. Butler: Truth About the Australian League of Rights (1985)
A response to attacks on the Australian League of Rights.
Roy Clews: To Dream of Freedom
Details the campaigns of the Movement for the Defence of Wales
and the Free Wales Army during the 1960s.
Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt: The Silent Brotherhood: Inside
America's Racist Underground
#Joscelyn Godwin: _Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and
Nazi Survival_ (Phanes, 1993). A treasure trove of material on
Evola, Guenon, Schwaller de Lubisz, and others whose relations with
the Nazi Black Order would scare the pants off those New Agers
buying up their books today.
#Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: _The Occult Roots of Nazism:Secret Aryan
Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology_ (NYU, 1992)
Hearne: ABC of the Welsh Revolution
Although based on Wales, the ideas in this book are true for all
nations. The 'Revolution' of the title is what we would rather
call Counter-Revolution.
David Lane: Percepts
A short pamphlet [10pp] of a gaoled White Racial activist in
AMerica.
Jack B. Moore: Skinheads Shaved for Battle: a Cultural History of
American Skinheads.
Prof R.P. Oliver: America's Decline
Prof R.P. Oliver: Enemy of Our Enemies
Prof R.P. Oliver: Is there Intelligent Life on Earth
A debunking of liberal myths.
James Ridgeway: Blood In the Face
Wilmot Robertson: The Dispossessed Majority
How the liberal/minority coalition discriminates against White
Americans.
Wilmot Robertson: Ventilations.
A follow-up to _The Dispossessed Majority_. A call for White
awakening in America.
George Lincoln Rockwell: White Power
By the leader of the American Nazi Party
Michael Schmidt: The New Reich: Violent Extremism in Unified Germany
and Beyond
Zeev Sternhell. _The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion
to Political Revolution_. Princeton University Press. Aroused a
storm of response when published in France and Italy. In
Sternhell's view, fascism possessed a coherent ideology with deep
roots in European civilization, and was a major cultural phenomenon
long before it became a political force.
Donald Warren: _The Radical Center_
Francis Parker Yockey: Imperium
A call to arms in defence of Europe & America with a plan
for European rebirth.
LITERATURE
Various fictional works from different streams of the Counter-Revolution.
Hillair Belloc: Hills and the Sea (1906)
GK Chesterton: The Return of Don Quixote
GK Chesterton: The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
A entertaining novel about patriotism and the richness of life in
small communities. Anti-imperialist.
GK Chesterton: The Man who was Thursday (1908)
Paranoia and suspicion are the themes of this novel in which
an anarchist council call themselves by the days of the week,
but nobody seems to be quite who he seems.
GK Chesterton: The Flying Inn (1914)
GK Chesterton: The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)
GK Chesterton: The Wisdom of father Brown (1914)
GK Chesterton: The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926)
GK Chesterton: The Secret of Father Brown (1927)
GK Chesterton: The Scandal of Father Brown (1935)
Classic detective stories.
C.S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia
C.S. Lewis: The Perelandra Trilogy
Jack London: Call of the Wild
Jack London: White Fang
A Macdonald: The Turner Diaries
A violent novel about revolution and a future ethnic war in America.
George Orwell: Animal Farm
The Classic allegory of Communism.
George Orwell: 1984
A view of what a future super-state might become. Frightening.
Ezra Pound: The Cantos
Jean Raspail: The Camp of the Saints
Europe invaded by millions of refugees. A chilling novel.
Alan Stang: The Highest Virtue
A novel of Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution.
Stuart: Holocaust Island
Ten families driven by the threat of nuclear war build their own
community. Then they need a money system and send for a London
banker...
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Harvey Ward: Sanctions Buster (William Maclellan Embryo Ltd, 1982,
Glasgow)
A novel set in the world of sanctions busting during the
Rhodesian bush war.
MISCELLANEOUS
Material which does not seem to fit well elsewhere.
H. Belloc: Advice (Harvill Press, London, 1960)
H. Belloc: A Moral Alphabet in Words of from One to Seven Syllables
(1899, rpd Duckworth, 1974)
Elizabeth Lady Freeman: Traditionalist's Anthology
A collection of quotations under various headings.
Marinetti, _Let's Murder the Moonshine_ (Sun and Moon Press, $12.95).
Selected works of the Futurist artist.
PERIODICALS INDEX
Some publications are marked as 'local interest' - i.e. that they would
probably not be of much interest to people in other countries.
Table of Contents:
General
Christian Counter-Revolution
Southern Agrarians
European New Right
Third Positionist
Populist, Nationalist, White Separatist, and Beyond
Miscellaneous
GENERAL
_Chronicles_
Subscription department:
P.O. Box 800
Mount Morris, IL 61054
Tel 1-800-877-5459
Subtitled "a magazine of American culture", _Chronicles_ puts out
"theme" issues with an interesting mix of stuff mostly tending toward an
anti-internationalist and neotraditional outlook that bases conservative
views on modern modes of analysis. They also have an interesting group
of regular contributors.
Published monthly for $24 a year, $30 for foreign subscribers. U.S.
funds only.
_Conservative Review_
Council for Social and Economic Studies
1133 13th St., N.W.
Suite C-2
Washington, D.C. 20005-4297
Telephone (202) 789-0231 FAX (202)-842-1758
This periodical occasionally publishes articles by European New Right
intellectuals. Subscription: $28 for 6 annual issues.
_The Freeman_. [Any info on when it was published and why back issues
should be of interest?]
_The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies_
Council for Social and Economic Studies
1133 13th St., N.W.
Suite C-2
Washington, D.C. 20005-4297
USA
Telephone (202) 789-0231 FAX (202)-842-1758
Subscription: $32.50 for four quarterly issues
_Intercollegiate Review_.
[Published by Intercollegiate Studies Institute, below.]
_Modern Age_.
Intercollegiat Studies Institute, Inc.
14 S. Bryn Mawr Avenue
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-3275
USA
The scholarly magazine of American paleoconservatives. Founded by
Russell Kirk.
Quarterly. One year $15, two years $25. Add $5 for Canadian and
foreign postage. Academic rate (students and staff) available at $7.50
one year; $13.50 two years.
_The Salisbury Review_
33, Canonbury Park South
London, N1 2JW
UK
An intellectually distinguished magazine covering continental as well as
British culture and politics. Edited by Roger Scruton, a professor of
philosophy.
Quarterly. Annual subscriptions are 16 pounds sterling for Europe and
for the rest of the world 18 pounds sterling surface mail and 23 pounds
sterling airmail. North American subscriptions are $23 from
Intercollegiate Studies Institute at the address given for _Modern
Age_.
_Telos_.
Quarterly. The Frankfort School goes reac. The search for federalism,
tradition and communalism in pomo-speak. Paul Gottfried is a frequent
contributor.
_The Unpopular Review_
Published between 1914 and 1921, it contains some very lucid critiques
of national trends in that period, and prescient essays. Paul Elmer
More was a frequent contributor.
CHRISTIAN COUNTER-REVOLUTION
_Action Familiale et Scolaire_
31 Rue Rennequin
75017 Paris
France
Articles from this publication are often published in an
English translation in Apropos
_All These Things_
5835 Bramble Ave
Cincinnatti, OH 45227
USA
_Apropos_ (previously _Approaches_)
Editor: Tony Fraser
Burnbrae
Staffin Road
Portree
Isle of Sky
Scotland
Officially quarterly but tends to appear less frequently. _Approaches_ was
founded by the late Hamish Fraser, the famous Catholic convert from
Communism, and _Apropos_ is the continuation of his work by his son.
It is a traditionalist Catholic publication and tends to concentrate on
social issues in the light of Catholic social teaching.
_Candour_
Forest House
Liss Forest
Hampshire
GU33 7DD
United Kingdom
Founded by A.K. Chesterton, now edited by Rosine de Bounevialle,
_Candour_ recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. Monthly. UK
subscriptions 10 pounds; overseas 12 pounds; US airmail $25.
A list of audio tapes is also available from the same address.
_Catholic_
Published under the patronage of Our Lady help of Christians by
Silvester Donald Maclean.
Mail Address: P.O. Box 36 Yarra Junction Vic. 3797 Australia
Phone (+61 (59) 66-6217)
Australia: $15 Supporting $30
Seamail: all countries $A20.00 Airmail: all countries direct on
application.
Overseas Agents:
New Zealand:Mrs. Margaret McKenna 33 Puketea Street Blockhouse Bay,
Auckland 7 ($NZ20.00)
UK: Mrs. Susan Horton Flat 1, 30-32 Worple Road, Wimbledon SW19 4EF. (8.40p)
USA: Mr. Richard Bullard P.O.Box 1789 Post Falls, Idaho 83854 ($US15.00)
RSA: Mrs. Mena Povarello, 42 Carisbrook Str. Sydenham, Johannesburg (R30.00)
Canada: Mr. John Cotter, 38 Jill's Court, Barrie Ont. L4M 4L7 ($C18.00)
_Catholic Action_
P.O. Box 184
Dover
Kent CT16 1NQ
England
A journal dedicated to the Social Reign of Christ the King.
Subscriptions are 5 pounds within Europe; 7 pounds outside Europe. Bulk
rates are also available.
_Catholic Counter-Reformation_
CONTRE-REFORME CATHOLIQUE
Maison Saint-Joseph
F-10260 Saint-Parres-les-Vaudes
France
The journal edited by the Abbe de Nantes. It is concerned with the
nefast tendencies and even heresies which have been
introduced in our Church since the 2nd Vatican council.
It is NOT connected with the Society of St Pius X.
Subscription for U.K., Ireland and other countries of Europe: 10 pounds,
20 dollars, 100 FF with payment to the above address.
Subscription for Canada, U.S.A., Ireland and other countries of America:
30 dollars, 150FF with Payment to:
CENTRE DE RENAISSANCE CATHOLIQUE des Laurentides (Inc.)
255, Chemin de la Reserve
Shawinigan - RR2, P.Q.
Canada G9N 6T6
Tel: (819) 539 9779.
_The Catholic Quarterly Review_
The Society of St Pius X
St George's House
125 Arthur Road
London SW19 7DR
UK
Catholic Traditionalist review.
_The Chesterton Review_
Robert Hughes
11 Lawrence Leys
Bloxham
Oxon OX15 4NU
UK
Published in Canada. The above address is the UK subscription contact.
_The Correspondent_ is a newsletter which was launched in December. It
is designed to be an information exchange between Catholic
Traditionalists in America and Europe. There are no subscriptions, the
basis of operation being a "pay what you think it is worth basis". To
be added to the mailing list, write to:
Matthew Anger
P.O. Box 10311
Arlington VA 22210
USA
Readers in Europe should contact monaghan@lingua.cltr.uq.oz.au to
receive a sample copy.
_Crusade for a Christian Civilization_
Issued by the American Society for the Defnse of Tradition, Family and
Property. Now defunct.
_Gaudete. A catholic Quarterly of Counter-Revolutionary Politics_
PO Box 338
Winsted CT
06098-0338
USA
A Journal devoted to spreading the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ.
Subscriptions (1991 prices) $10.
_A Half-Open Eye_
Flint House
30 Clifton ROad
Worthing
Sussex BN11 4DP
UK
Subscription: 2.50 pounds p.a.
Published by Bernard Smith of the Christian Affirmation Campaign as an
occasional newsletter.
_The Keys of Peter_
157 Vicarage Road
London E10 5DU
UK
Catholic. A newsletter "faithful to the authentic teaching of the Church".
Prag (Pragmaticus Mercurius) describes itself as a Christian Tory
quarterly. Very High Anglican/RC orientated. Normally 12 pages long,
including a couple of pages of organisations and publications of similar
outlook, some good journalism and political pieces and often rather bad
bits of potted history. 40 Albany Court, Epping, Essex CM16 5ED.
Subscription 4 pounds in the UK, 5 pounds elsewhere surface, 6 pounds
airmail. They ask for a further 3 pounds if you don't pay in sterling.
_The Remnant_
2539 Morrison Avenue
St Paul
Minnesota 55117
USA
Traditionalist Catholic. Issues semi-monthly. Subscriptions $13 USA, $16
foreign.
_Signposts_
Signposts Publications and Research Centre
PO Box 26148
Arcadia 0007
Republic of South Africa
Tel 012-98-2680
A Christian fundamentalist, strongly anti-communist, anti-secular
humanist newsletter concentrating on South African politics and church
affairs. Subscriptions, R36 in South Africa, US $40 overseas (airmail).
Issues 6 times p.a.
_Verbum_
R.R. 1
Box 97 A-1
Winona
Minnesota 55987
Tel 507-459-8000
A full colour Traditional Catholic newsletter issued by St Thomas
Aquinas Seminary (Part of the Society of St Pius X). Also issued is a
monthly letter by Bishop Williamson. No charge, but a donation would be
appreciated.
_The Wanderer_
SOUTHERN AGRARIANS
Southern Partisan
P.O. Box 11708
Columbia, SC 29311
$14 for four quarterly issues.
_Southern Partisan_ is a quarterly magazine that defends the culture,
traditions, and symbols of the Old South.
EUROPEAN NEW RIGHT
_Elementi_
C.P. 51
41034 Finale Emilia
Modena
Italy
Italian New Right journal.
_EUROPA VORN_
Postfach 30 10 10
5000 Koln 30
Telephone 0221-520 999
FAX 0221-526 848
_Krisis_
5 impasse Carriere
Mainguet
75011 Paris
France
Another French journal.
_O_rion
Marco Battarra
La Bottega del Fantastico
via Plinio
32-20129 Milano (MI)
Italy
Another New Right journal.
_Perspectives_
Transeuropa, BM-6682
London WC1N 3XX
England
_Perspectives_ , like _The Scorpion_, is influenced by GRECE and the
ENR, but takes a more strongly regionalist, neo-pagan, and semi-
anarchist position than others in this tendency. Strong interest in
regional folklore & folk music, *as well as* modernism, futurism and the
avant garde.
Airmail to the Americas: 13 Pounds sterling
Surface mail outside Europe: 10 Pounds sterling.
Checks/postal orders made out to Transeuropa.
_The Regionalist_
16 Adolphus Street West
Seaham Harbour
County Durham
Northern England
Name says it all.
_The Revolutionary Conservative_
The Revolutionary Conservative Caucus
BCM 6137
London WC1N 3XX
England
#Due to a lover's tiff between the two people who produced this
#publication, it may no longer come out. The RCC promotes radical,
right-wing politics within the Conservative (Tory) Party. It apparently
also publishes the _Revolutionary Conservative Review_, which apparently
has aroused widespread comment in the main stream British press.
_Right NOW!_
PO Box 3561
London E1 5LU
England
Similiar to the RC above - advocating traditional right wing politics
within the Tory party and rejection of third party attempts at political
power.
_The Scorpion_
Lutzowstrasse 39
50674 Koln
Nord-Rheinland
Germany
Right now, _The Scorpion_ is coming out at the rate of a year or more
per issue (the subscription rates are for 4 issues). Back issues are
worth getting. _The Scorpion_ is the prime source for English
translations of GRECE writers such as Alain de Benoist and Guillaume
Faye (Tomislav Sunic is now publishing his translations of some of M.
Benoist's essays in _Telos_). The writing in _The Scorpion_ is of a very
high quality and though it comes out infrequently, it's been getting
longer - 52 pages in last issue.
North America air mail: 25 pounds sterling ($40.00 U.S.)
Surface mail: 17 pounds sterling
All curencies accepted. Cheques made payable to _The Scorpion_ except
for francs and marks (made payable to Michael Walker). For cheques in
currencies other than Pounds sterling, French francs, and Germans marks,
add 10%. Mr. Deane sends cash in U.S. dollars, as this avoids the
problem, but of course there is the usual risk of sending cash through
the mail. If you can send money orders in foreign currency, that can
work too.
_Third Way_
P.O. Box 1243
London SW7 3PB
England
Strictly speaking, _Third Way_ is not part of the ENR, but the influence
is there, Mr. Deane thinks. This group emphasizes "common sense"
approaches to political problems, opposition to Maastricht, green
politics, cooperation between conservatives/nationalists of all
ethnic/racial/relgious groups, etc. _Third Way_ does not state that it
is ENR, nor does it write or act as an ally of G.R.E.C.E. in the way
that _The Scorpion_ does. But it does advertise ENR publications
(_Elements_?). Patrick Harrington and _Third Way_ came to their present
stance via "third position" politics (weird & radical stuff, pro-
Khaddafy, pro-Islamic militancy, radical Catholicism a la Derek Holland
and Nicolas Griffin). The influence of _The Scorpion_ and the ENR in
general may have pulled Mr. Harrington and his group in a less extremist
direction.
Outside UK, surface mail: 19 pounds sterling.
Outside Europe, airmail: 24 pounds sterling.
All payment must be in pounds sterling (Mr. Deane has gotten away with
cash, U.S. dollars, but he sends a little more than what the exchange
rate is, just in case). All cheques/postal orders/International money
orders payable to Third Way Publications, Ltd.
_Ulster Nation_
PO Box 140
Belfast
Ulster BT15 2HY
U.K.
THIRD POSITIONIST
_News from Somewhere_
BCM ITP
London WC1N 3XX
England
An occasional newsletter describing progress on the 'News from
Somewhere' project which aims to set a practical example in creating
another way of life built on an alternative society based on Religion,
Patriotism and Family. The current activity is centred on renovating a
farm in France. For a copy send a small subscription or an s.a.e. or a
couple of IRCs. Possibly of local interest (UK and France) only.
POPULIST, NATIONALIST, WHITE SEPARATIST, AND BEYOND
_American Renaissance_
PO Box 1674
Louisville, KY 40201
USA
Edited by Samuel Taylor, author (as Jared Taylor) of _Paved with Good
Intentions_. Articles on sociobiology, genetics, and racial
differences, and on current events, detailing the deterioration of
America, ethnic and racial fragmentation, liberal doublethink and racial
double standards. Very intelligently written. $20 a year. First class
postage add $8. Canada first class and overseas surface, $30. Overseas
airmail, $40.
American's Bulletin
Robert Kelly, proprietor
c/o P.O. Box 935
Medford, Oregon 97501
(503) 779-7709
A Patriot newspaper. They also operate a bookstore stocking materials
of interest to Patriots.
The Balance
C/O Cause
1101 Post Oak Blvd. Suite 9497
Houston, TX 77056
_Choice_
31 East Vale
Second Avenue
Acton Vale
London W3 7RU
UK
A Nationalist, Anti-immigration newsletter edited by Lady Jane Birdwood.
No set subscription. Local interest only.
_Final Conflict_
BCM 6358
London WC1N 3XX
UK
A Nationalist newsletter offering articles on popular music, politics and
history. Subscriptions: UK 6 pounds; Europe 8 pounds; Rest of the World
12 pounds; for 5 issues. Special rates for bulk copies available.
probably local interest only.
_Identite_ describes itself as 'Principal orgue de reflexion du Front
national, Identite a pour ambition de jouer le role d'aiguillon
intellectuel dans le comabat politique et philosphique qui oppose
desormais les defenseurs de l'identite francaise et europeenne aux
partisans du cosmopolitanisme'
_Instauration_
Howard Allen Enterprises, Inc.
Box 76
Cape Canaveral, Florida 32920
$20/year for students and $30/year for others
Considered one of the best magazines dealing with racial topics from a
right-wing perspective. Very intelligently written, but mostly
anonymous. Much in this publication will offend some people. This is
the publication that got Joseph Sobran in trouble.
The _Intelligence Survey_
Australian League of Rights
GPO Box 1052J
Melbourne 3001
Victoria
Australia
Published by the Australian League of Rights, _The Intelligence Survey_
is a monthly with in-depth articles. Subscription: $A20.
_The Jubilee_
P.O. Box 310
Midpines, California 95345
(209) 742-6397
$15 donation/Year
A Christian Identity newspaper.
_The New American_
770 Westhill Boulevard
Appleton, WI 54915
800-341-1522
$39/yr, single issues are $2.50
Published biweekly
Well-written and well-researched magazine published by the John Birch
Society.
#_New Britain_
2-9 Mason's Avenue
London EC2V 5BT
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 171 600 4282
Fax: +44 181 4032 7351
Email: c/o san@cksed.demon.co.uk
Monthly newsletter of the political party of the same name. Usually 10-
12 pages. Populist in tone; opposes British membership of the European
Union, multiculturalism and PC. Favours reconstruction of UK society
along CR lines. Annual subscription 5 pounds sterling.
_The New Order_
NSDAP-AO
P.O. Box 6414
Lincoln, NE 68506
USA
A National Socialist newspaper, edited by Gerhard Lauck. The
subscription is $10 p.a. within the US and Canada; $20 elsewhere by
surface mail. The following affiliated newspapers are also publised
by the NSDAP-AO:
_Nouvelles NS_ (French)
_Boletin de Noticias NS_ (Spanish)
_Sveriges Nationella Fo"rbund_ (Swedish)
_Uj Rend_ (Hungarian)
_Foedre landet_ (Danish)
_NS Kampfruf_ (German)
_Boletim de Noticias NS_ (Portugese)
_Bollettino Novita NS_ (Italian)
_NS Nieuwsbulletin_ (Dutch)
_On Target_
Australian League of Rights
GPO Box 1052J
Melbourne 3001
Victoria
Australia
Published by the Australian League of Rights, _On Target_ is a weekly
news bulletin. Subscription $A30.
National Vanguard
by National Alliance P.O. Box 330 Hillsboro WV 24946
NS Kindred P.O. Box 256 N.S.J. Ca 95960
_The New Times_
Australian League of Rights
GPO Box 1052J
Melbourne 3001
Victoria
Australia
Published by the Australian League of Rights, this monthly has an
international circulation. Subscription: $A20.
Plexus: A National Socialist Theoretical Journal
by National Worker's League P.O. Box 642376 Omaha Ne 68164-8376
_The Populist Observer_
PO Box 15499
Pittsburgh, PA 15237
USA
$25 a year. Tabloid format. Current events, political topics: NAFTA,
immigration, Bosnia, Somalia, "new world order", political correctness,
etc. Also reprints from both "movement" and mainstream (Pat Buchanan,
Joseph Sobran, Samuel Francis, etc.) sources. Published by Populist
Party.
_Spearhead_
P.O. Box 117
Welling
Kent DA16 3DW
UK
_Spearhead_ supports the British National Party editorially, although it
is officially independent. A sample copy is available for 1 pound. An
annual subscription (12 issues) costs 12.50 in the UK. Probably local
interest only.
_Stormfront Magazine_
203 Lakeland Drive
W. Palm Beach, Florida 33405
$22/year
A new publication.
_Die Sweepslag_
Posbus 274
Ventersdorp, 2710
Republic of South Africa
The newspaper of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging. Mainly in Afrikaans
but usually contains a number of articles in English. Cost with South
Africa is R.18 p.a. R.40 would likely cover foreign postage (i.e. about
$US 15 depending on the exchange rate).
_The Truth at Last_
P.O. Box 1211
Marietta, Georgia 30061
USA
$15/year
A newspaper covering a variety of topics of interest to separatists.
Originally _The Thunderbolt_, the publication of the (presumably
defunct) National States Rights Party.
WAR P.O. Box 65 Fallbrook Ca. 92088
The War Eagle P.O. Box 6881 Champaign Illinois 61826
_White Eagle_
P.O. Box 299
Caerdydd
CF2 3XQ
Wales/Cymru
Published by the Welsh Distributist movement, the _White Eagle_ is a
Welsh Nationalist newsletter with a focus on Distributism.
MISCELLANEOUS
_Fundamentos_
A New Right journal.
Apdo 45024
28080 Madrid
_Por Ellos_
A four page broadsheet describing itself as the organ of the Bases
Autonomas, which seems to be a loose collection of youth-orientated
right-wing groups. For those interested a subscription costs 1350 pts,
but we only have phone contacts--91 5228173 and 91 5232108, both
Madrid.
_El Porvenir_
Styles itself un 'periodico de politica y cultura'. Comment on Spanish
and European politics plus book reviews. Subscriptions 1350 pts payable
to
Area Inconformista
c/Dominicos 3-5
Alcala de Henares
28801 Madrid
BOOK STORES & MAIL ORDER SERVICES
Unless otherwise stated, the entries will run a mail-order service. SOme
also have display rooms which can be visited. If possible, telephone to
check before a wasted journey.
The definition of 'book' has been stretched to include other resources
such as video-tapes and audio-tapes.
Again, unfortunately with the exception of one French entry, all from
English speaking countries. Suggestions for outlets in other countries
are very welcome.
Table of Contents:
Australia
France
UK
USA
AUSTRALIA
Conservative Bookshop
2nd Floor
McConaghy House
460 Ann Street
Brisbane
Queensland
Tel 831-5481 Fax 03-650-9368
A Division of the Australian League of Rights. Telephone for opening
hours for the display room.
Heritage Bookshop
145 Russell Street (or GPO Box 1052J)
Melbourne
Victoria 3000
Tel 03-650-9749
A Division of the Australian League of Rights
Heritage Bookshop
2nd Floor
24 Waymouth St
Adelaide
South Australia
Tel 08-231-3801
A Division of the Australian League of Rights
Heritage Bookmailing Service
P.O. Box 93
Boronia Park
New South Wales
Tel 02-817-1776
A Division of the Australian League of Rights
Heritage Bookmailing Service
P.O. Box 1035
Midland
WA 6065
Tel/Fax 09-574-6042
A Division of the Australian League of Rights
FRANCE
G.R.E.C.E.
13, rue Charles Lecocq
75015 Paris
France
For a list of all the works by members of G.R.E.C.E and current prices,
write to the above address enclosing two International Reply Coupons.
UNITED KINGDOM
BNP Book Service
154 Upper Wickham Lane
Welling
Kent DA16 3DP
Tel 081-316-4721
The British Nationalist Party Book Service operates both as a mail order
service and as an actual book shop (the one that various left-wing
groups keep threatening to take apart brick-by-brick). 'Phone to check
the opening days and times.
Carmel of Plymouth
1 Grenville Road
St Judes
Plymouth
Traditionalist Catholic.
Christus Vincit Productions
P.O. Box 17
Rainham
Gillingham
Kent ME8 OJU
UK
Traditional Catholic audio-tapes.
Final Conflict
BCM 6358
London WC1N 3XX
UK
Nationalist books, videos and other material by mail-order. Send an
s.a.e. for current list. A second hand list is also available.
Freedom Videos
BM Truth
London WC1N 3XX
Nationalist videos, including American imports in VHS PAL format
suitable for European systems.
Rising Books
P&P Rising Books
BCM ITP
London WC1N 3XX
England
An interesting and useful source of Distributist & Nationalist books. Rising
Books imports many otherwise hard to get AMerican reprints into the UK.
USA
Aryan Free Press Books P.O. Box 6853 Champaign Illinois 61826
National Vanguard Books
P.O. Box 330
Hillsboro, West Virginia 24946
Broad assortment of books on history, philosophy, culture and other
subjects that you can't get anywhere else (except below). Run by Dr.
William Pierce, a national socialist.
The Noontide Press
1822 1/2 Newport Blvd. Suite 183
Costa Mesa, California 92627
$1.00 for the catalog
A wide assortment of books, cassettes and pamphlets you can't get
anywhere else. A branch of the Institute for Historical Review.
OMNI/Christian Book Club
P.O. Box 900566
Palmdale, California 93590-0566
Political and Catholic works. Social credit, conspiracy, Nesta Webster.
Ask for their catalog.
Andrew Proser
Book Seller
3118 N. Keating Ave.
Chicago, IL 60641
USA
Andrew Proser is said to be a good source for out-of-print titles of
Chesterton, Belloc and several other authors of what is sometimes
referred to as the "Catholic Revival" . He asks that you send a
self addressed, stamped envelope for his list.
J.S. Sanders and Company
P.O. Box 50331
Department SP
Nashville, TN 37205
Phone: (615) 790-8951
Recently reprinted titles by the southern agrarians are available from
this company.
Transaction Publishers
Rutgers--The State University
New Brunswick, N.J. 08903
Telephone: (908) 932-2280 Fax (908) 932-3138
Titles by such illustrious counter-revolutionaries as Mel Bradford,
Russell Kirk, Paul Gottfried, and Thomas Molnar. Call or write for a
catalogue.
Trax Book and Tape
332 W. Martin Ln.
Murray, Utah 84107
(801) 262-3601
Tied to the American Patriot movement. "Your source for books and other
information about freedom, health, survival, common law, sovereignty,
economics, conspiracy, home schooling, liberalism, satanism, science,
christian books, history, IRS, and others." Write them for a catalog.
Sources of Christian Reconstructionist Literature:
Institute for Christian Economics (ICE)
P. O. Box 8000
Tyler, Texas 75711
Biblical Horizons
P. O. Box 1096
Niceville, Florida 32588
Chalcedon
P. O. Box 158
Vallecito, California 95251
American Vision
P. O. Box 724088
Atlanta, GA 31139-1088
(404) 333-6203
The Christian Statesman
715 School Street
McKees Rocks PA 15136
Messiah's Congregation
2662 E. 24th St.
Brooklyn, NY 11235
Still Waters Revival Books
4710-37A Ave.
Edmonton, AB Canada T6L 3T5
ORGANIZATIONS INDEX
Table of Contents:
English-Speaking Countries
General
Christian Counter-Revolution
Monarchist
Third Positionist
Populist, Nationalist, White Separatist, and Beyond
ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES
GENERAL
Council for Social and Economic Studies
1133 13th St., N.W.
Suite C-2
Washington, D.C. 20005-4297
Telephone (202) 789-0231 FAX (202)-842-1758
It publishes two periodicals: _Conservative Review_ and _The Journal of
Social, Political and Economic Studies_.
CHRISTIAN COUNTER-REVOLUTION
American Catholic Lawyers Association
KTF
810 Belmont Avenue
P.O. Box 8261
Haledon, N.J. 07538-0261
USA
Aims to be a counter-American Civil Liberties Union to counteract the
forces of revolution in American Society. Open to all, lawyers and
non-lawyers.
American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property
4107 North 27th Road
Arlington, VA 22207
Phone (703) 892-1810
Publishes various books, and magazines/newsletters in defence of
Catholic Social Teaching and its application to current political
problems.
Christian Affirmation Campaign
Flint House
30 Clifton Road
Worthing
Sussex BN11 4DP
England
A group concerned with Marxist infiltration into Christian Churches.
Publishes an occasional newsletter _A Half-Open Eye_.
Christian Anti-Communist Crusade
P.O. Box 890
Long Beach, CA 90801-0890
USA
Tel 310-437-0941 Fax 310-432-2074
Publishes a newsletter. The CACC is active in anti-communist
missionary work in the Third World.
Christian Law Institute
Box 37070
Omaha, Nebraska 68137
U.S.A.
Founded to promote Christian values in Civil law. Each year the
Institute celebrates the feast of Christ the King with a public dinner
honouring Christ the King. A symposium is also held each year, normally
with sessions in both Spanish and English.
G.K. Chesterton Study Centre
15 Shaftesbury Avenue
Bedford
U.K.
Tel 0234-357760
A booklet 'Hilaire Belloc and His Critics' by Aidan MacKay,
the owner of the study centre is available for 1.50 UK pounds plus postage.
Second hand books may also be available.
Directory of Organizations:
_A New Rite: Conservative Catholic Organizations and Their Allies_,
published by Catholics for a Free Choice, a pro-abortion outfit.
Profiles 28 organizations with explicit Catholic identities or close
alliances with Catholic leaders or Roman Catholicism. Researched and
written by freelance journalist Steve Askin, _A New Rite_ examines and
analyzes each group's policies and activities. Each entry provides
financial data, as well as information on structure and leadership. The
91-page directory includes a comprehensive index of individuals and
their organizational affiliations. The groups profiled in the book
include the Catholic Campaign for America, Catholic League for Religious
and Civil Rights, Free Congress Foundation, Opus Dei, Knights of Malta,
Human Life International, Tradition, Family, and Property and more than
20 others. The book can be ordered from CFFC at 1436 U St. NW,
Washington, DC, 20009 for $15.00 US, although some may be unwilling to
give money to that organization.
MONARCHIST
Monarchist League
BM Monarchist
London WC1N 3XX
THIRD POSITIONIST
International Third Position
BCM ITP
London
WC1N 3XX
UK
A Nationalist, Distibutist Third Positionist movement based on the
Principles of The Primacy of Spirit, Popular Rules, Racial and Cultural
Diversity.
POPULIST, NATIONALIST, WHITE SEPARATIST, AND BEYOND
Australian League of Rights
GPO Box 1052J
Melbourne 3001
Victoria
Australia
The Australian League of Rights is a conservative Christian pro-British
monarchy, anti-communist and anti-republican political group. It
publishes _On Target_, _Intelligence Survey_, and _The New Times_.
National European American Society
P.O. Box 2245
St. George, Utah 84771
USA
Fax/Voice: (801) 673-9558
A pressure group to support the European American identity. Send a few
dollars for a newsletter.
NSDAP-AO
P.O. Box 6414
Lincoln, NE 68506
USA
National Socialist. An introductory pack is available for $2 (+overseas
postage presumably). This contains samples of the various newspapers
available including _New Order_.
Welsh Distributist Movement
P.O. Box 299
Caerdydd
CF2 3XQ
Wales/Cymru
The aim of The Welsh Distributist Movement is to see Wales as an
integral part of a loose federation of Europeran nations united in
purpose by ties of faith, honour, justice and a common heritage. This
group publishes _White Eagle_.
SPANISH ORGANIZATIONS:
Comunion Tradicionalista Carlista
c/ S.Mateo 12
28004 Madrid
or
Apdo 1306
E-31080 Pamplona
Falange Espanola (Independiente)
A group founded in the 60s by falangistas dissatified with francismo.
It is very national syndicalist orientated and strongly RC in outlook.
They produce an interesting manifesto - 500 pts A book on the falngist
lifestyle 'Etica y estile falangistas - 1500 pts and a well produced
magazine 'No importa' - 1500 pts for 6 issues
Apdo 4189
41080 Sevilla
Spain
Falange Espanola de las JONS
possibly the largest radical right group in Spain. They used to produce a
magazine called Libertad
c/ Cuesta de Santo Domingo 3, 1
Madrid
another address is
Apdo 37.106
Madrid 28080
Nacion Joven
who also style themselves Frente Alternativa Nacional
c/Eguilaz 5, 1 extn izda,
28010 Madrid
Movimiento Social Espanol
c/Hortaleza 9, 1 derecha
28004 Madrid
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 28 15:18:12 EDT 1994
Article: 33996 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Conflict, the political, and liberalism
Date: 28 Sep 1994 07:25:08 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 58
Message-ID: <36bjqk$4mo@panix.com>
References: <36a2lf$su8@panix.com> <36alht$df6@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
mxr52@po.CWRU.Edu (Michael Rectenwald) writes:
>"Freedom of belief" certainly is a commodity provided for a price. The
>freedom of religion, for example, is already an exchange of something
>(call it "x" for now) for what is a symbolic system of reference. "X"
>is exchanged for a freedom to believe in certain symbols. For a belief
>in symbols, believers exchange something, 'x.'
This seems to stretch the notion of commodity too far. For something to
be a commodity, I think, the consumer must view it as freely
exchangeable for something of similar status. I can understand the
statement that freedom of religion turns religious beliefs into
commodities, since it puts those beliefs into a system within which they
are viewed as equal objects of choice. I have a hard time viewing
freedom of religion as itself a commodity since those who accept it
don't consider it freely exchangeable for your "x", which most likely
would be acceptance of a particular religious system as constitutive of
what is most fundamentally real.
>There is a relationship between this so-called 'liberalism' and the
>endless commodities proffered in capitalism.
Agreed. What to do about it, though? Also, is the relationship purely
[stage of development of productive forces]=>[capitalist economic
relations]=>[liberal political system and ideology]? Belief in that
causality follows from belief that man is most fundamentally a producer,
but that makes no sense because "production" can't be defined unless you
know what you want to produce. So man is more fundamentally an
evaluator, and the desire to turn everything into equal objects of
individual choice is a force in itself that after a while feels
constricted by capitalism and goes on to create left-wing politics.
>The reason all this business about accepting diversity is being
>promulgated is that this ideology serves capitalism in maintaining
>distinct bodies of individuals and markets--to create worker/consumers
>in the market.
I don't agree with what you say after "capitalism"--the point of the
acceptance of diversity is the elimination of its significance and
therefore of distinct bodies that matter. Otherwise, why would there be
an emphasis on integrating diverse individuals into a single rationally-
organized system of production and distribution within which the
characteristics that make people diverse have no material relation to
position or status? Modern industrial production likes to deal with
things that can be readily sorted into grades relevant to industrial
operations within which they are as uniform as possible. Why wouldn't
that preference apply to workers and consumers as well as other things?
>Finally, as Gore Vidal noted, liberal and conservative debates are a
>false pitch and ping-pong game spectacle of the corporate
I would say that many such debates represent merely a contrast of
emphasis within a movement toward a unitary universal society rationally
organized toward economic ends.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Sep 28 17:23:02 EDT 1994
Article: 34007 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Conservatives, liberals and moral learning
Date: 28 Sep 1994 17:22:29 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 9
Message-ID: <36cmql$592@panix.com>
References: <94Sep26.032328edt.48171@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <366n1q$8qu@panix.com> <94Sep28.014353edt.48170@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:34007 alt.society.conservatism:8272
The exchange between Mr. Ostrum and myself seems to me to have broken
down, and I will discontinue my side of it. Since the exchange has
been public, I suppose I should say that one reason for ending it is
that the views he directly or implicitly attributes to me aren't close
enough to my own for discussion to be productive.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
Back to my archive of posts.