From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 7 14:49:21 2000 Return-Path:Message-id: <11057867@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 07 Sep 2000 14:48:09 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: [Paleo] Derbyshire and anti-Semitism (forwarded from kalb@aya.yale.edu) To: jk@panix.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: OR --- paleo@egroups.com wrote: Not on hearing anti-Semitic remarks, but plenty of raised eyebrows, comments about the Israeli lobby, etc. I hear them much more than in the 1980's, though perhaps because I no longer travel in neo-con circles. And John is right about Asians-- Chinese and Japanese both--who often lack the kind of inhibitions those raised in the Post ww2 America have on the subject. --- end of quote --- Partly it's where you are and who you're talking to, I suppose. Seth and Bill seem to be talking mostly about ordinary people in mid-America or the South, where there aren't many Jews and Goldman Sachs, Norman Podhoretz and Michael Eisner seem very far away, Where there's no issue there's no discussion. That in itself suggests we're not talking about "antisemitism," meaning some deeply-rooted irrational cultural symbolic whatever. Also, a lot depends on definitions. If someone complains that orthodox Jewish landlords in NYC don't treat their tenants right and don't seem to care about people who aren't Jews, is that antisemitism? Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sat Sep 9 08:26:30 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11098136@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 09 Sep 2000 08:25:52 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: [Upstream] The Inevitable Eve (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- "mark nelson" wrote: The 'Eve Hypothesis' states that all human populations are derived from a single female ancestor some 100,000 years ago. Although in researching the topic more fully on the net, one frequently sees the figure of 200,000 years. Nevertheless this amazing discovery borne of an analysis of mitochondrial DNA from ethnically diverse individuals forces the acceptance that all humans are essentially the same race. It underpins the proposition that no meaningful differences could have had time to develop within our species. --- end of quote --- Is there ever any argument to show why it is that the existence of an Eve 100,000 years ago means that current human populations could not have differences in average intelligence and other behavioral propensities as great as Eve might have noticed among her grandchildren? Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sat Sep 9 08:27:23 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11098140@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 09 Sep 2000 08:26:45 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: W. and Clintonism (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O I recall after the Waco business Janet Reno became a folk hero, or so we were told, because she said "I take full responsibility." Absolutely nothing followed from her doing so, and she didn't imply she was actually responsible for anything except in a general formal way, but that was enough. Say the magic formula and all unpleasantness is avoided and you're even admired. Not that what W. is doing is the same but it has something of the same quality of spin, word magic, avoiding giving discomfort at all costs. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From jk@panix.com Wed Sep 20 19:55:24 EDT 2000 Article: 14738 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Conservative v. Reactionary Date: 20 Sep 2000 19:53:23 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 29 Message-ID: <8qbilj$hds$1@panix3.panix.com> References: <8qaguc$lsv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 969494003 29952 166.84.0.228 (20 Sep 2000 23:53:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 20 Sep 2000 23:53:23 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14738 In <8qaguc$lsv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> OperationUSA.com writes: >I had a college professor who claimed a conservative is one who >believes in Burke (fundamental truths from time immemorial to time >immemorial, reliance on history, and resistance to change), and a >reactionary is one who is somehow "more conservative" than Burke, >believing that Burke was too progressive, compromised too much, and >there had been by his lifetime too much change already. >I would like to know Jim Kalb's take on this. I would also like to know >where traditionalist conservatism falls into this; is a traditionalist >conservative a reactionary? Or are conservatives and reactionaries too >far apart to be considered collectively? None of these words have well-settled definitions. "Conservative" tends to refer to an inclination to stick with what is settled and known, so there can be Marxist-Leninist conservatives or whatever, if Marxism-Leninism is what's been established for a while. My "traditionalist conservatism" tries to make conservatism more principled and consistent, so that you stick with what's settled and known only if consistent with the principle of what you're sticking with (if you stick with being a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary because that's what you're used to you're really betraying your own revolutionary principles). I suppose you could say that reaction makes conservatism dogmatic, so that some particular state of affairs in the past becomes the standard that must be restored. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:28:43 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391284@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:27:52 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: Article on development America's Idea-Worship from medieval Christianity (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O The piece raises some interesting issues. I suppose the evolution is communion with God =>possession of true propositions about God=>possession of true propositions about universal man, who has now replaced God=>communion with the divine Self. So propositions can be a method of distancing oneself from something. You treat things scientifically when you're abandoning them. The owl of Minerva flies at dusk. Another point is that at each end of the process communion involves emphasis on the suffering of the Divine. Communion and compassion are closely related, perhaps because we are alike in our sufferings and because whatever else salvation involves it must overcome and transform suffering. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:29:00 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391292@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:28:09 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: one further point (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: There's a book I have somewhere called America, Free, White and Christian. It goes through state constitutions up through late 19th century and shows the explicit provisions limiting citizenship rights variously to whites, men, and Christians or non-atheists. --- end of quote --- It would be interesting to know more. At this point I would interpret it as a demonstration that it takes a long time for universalistic secularism to penetrate and transform everything even though the society -- meaning I suppose its most authoritative part -- has authoritatively chosen it. It took until the early 60s to get prayers out of the schools and blacks into the polling places everywhere. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:29:14 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391304@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:28:24 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: my own suggestion (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: I think it could have been done by including in the documents the same sort of thing the leaders were constantly saying and writing: that, while there was to be no established church because of the diversity of sects, this form of government nevertheless presumed a religious and Christian people, even while protecting the basic citizenship rights of non-Christians --- end of quote --- This is cultural Christianity. As it is stated it leaves the government wholly secular, wholly unconcerned with man's transcendent interests. If membership in the political community ("citizenship rights") has nothing to do with Christianity neither can the purposes of that community. God becomes an outside support to government rather than something properly at the center of government as of other human activities. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:29:48 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391319@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:28:57 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: one further point (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: Well, you're parodying the idea of course, but what do _you_ think? I remember having a similar conversation 10 years ago, that the founding documents needed explicit statement of particularity. Could it have been done in some way? --- end of quote --- I don't think I was parodying the idea, there's nothing wrong with the preamble I suggested, I just think it's not what anyone would have done. It seems to me anything of the sort would have seemed extrinsic to the document. If course that's just a restatement of my basic view, that the change had already happened although no-one recognized it. It would be somewhat interesting I suppose to look at contemporaneous state constitutions in this connection. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:30:18 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391333@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:29:17 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: one further point (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: The way you put it, it's kind of devastating: that, regardless of what they believed and felt and said, they set up a government in which secular principles would be fully sufficient. It's always been my feeling that the founding was flawed in not making the ethnic and religious elements of the society explicit rather than implicit. --- end of quote --- I suppose an issue for factual investigation is how they came to do that. Could the error you mention have been corrected at the time? Could the preamble of the Constitution have gone "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, we the English settled in these United States, in order to protect public order under God and preserve our inherited religion and laws, do ordain and establish this constitution"? Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:30:37 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391358@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:29:46 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: excerpt (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: Sandoz is a good place to start, and would certainly give you another side of things that I feel you're currently lacking. --- end of quote --- I read Sandoz, I believe the work you mentioned, and found him very intelligent and interesting but to me the question seemed still to be what actually fundamentally happened rather than how they thought about it or talked about it at the time. I agree the questions are important and specifics must be dealt with, and I do read things about the Founding from time to time. This discussion makes it more likely I will do so again sooner than I otherwise would have. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:31:04 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391369@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:30:13 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: excerpt (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: I'm tempted to reply to this cleverly that yes, you conceded that CC view bulked the largest, but only in the sense that the inert gas nitrogen comprises the majority of the atmosphere! --- end of quote --- Maybe my claim is that the constitution makes the CC view into nitrogen, something not essential because the active principle is something quite different although it might be helpful in a variety of ways and certainly affects appearances. But then the question becomes why someone would decide to do that. Did the CC view, which had been foundational until then, suddenly become nonfunctional (as far as the public order is concerned) without anyone noticing? Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:32:10 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391402@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:31:20 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: excerpt (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: Meanwhile you won't make a single concession to my arguments. You won't be content until I concede that the CC view was basically of no importance at all during the Founding period. And on that you're wrong and need to do more reading. --- end of quote --- I thought I conceded somewhere that the CC view bulked the largest, so that it was indeed the context of things. I'm ready to concede that if Tom Paine had run for office on a "let's have an atheistic society" ticket he would have lost and even been run out of town. I'm ready to concede I should do more reading. I'm not sure what *facts* I could uncover would make a fundamental difference though. None of the claims I've heard or read seem to me to affect much. To me it seems mostly a philosophical issue, how you identify what choice someone or some group of people is actually making. I suppose then there's the succeeding question, whether the choice was somehow a big mistake or inadvertency or irrationality, or whether it just makes concrete what had already in essence happened. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:32:27 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391412@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:31:37 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: excerpt (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: Nevertheless, those secular principles were, during the Founding period, still experienced within a larger social/spiritual environment that profoundly shaped the way people understood them, though the principles spelled the overthrow of the environment. --- end of quote --- Could one also describe the situation by saying that people didn't understand what they were really doing? The problem perhaps was that since the secular principles were universal and self-evident, and sufficient to ground a constitution (unavoidably so since the colonists were claiming the right to set up a new political order and so had to appeal to something that transcended the actual political order), the context became optional. But still, the novus ordo seclorum wasn't just a trap people somehow wandered into. After all, when they asked themselves "what should political society be based on" a set of secular principles was their answer. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:32:44 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391424@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:31:53 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: excerpt (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: Of course, in the Const. itself there is nothing christian. But the founding period, including the writing of the Const, including the commencement of the government, was imbued with the CC spirit. --- end of quote --- My point I guess is that isn't the principle upon which they agreed to act and make the basis of future cooperation, upon which they erected their Novus Ordo Seclorum. The strict secular outlook may have been small in bulk but it was what was in fact made the basis of all public authority. They intended to set up a system that didn't need anything else. That's the significance of the religion clauses of the 1st amendment. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:33:31 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391460@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:32:40 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: excerpt (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O OK. One point or at least issue is how you decide what a group of people really believe as a group and as a practical matter, what the maxim of their conduct is. I suppose it's the principle upon which they cooperate, and my understanding is that the principle upon which the Founders cooperated was a strictly secular rather than a Christian/classical principle. That's what the preamble to the constitution seems to say and what emerges for me from the debates over the constitution. The reason that's important is that what they were doing was founding a government, not say a league for some limited purpose. The federal government had the power to raise and support armies and declare war on its own, in fact its right to do so was primary, and thus it had the right to command final loyalty and ultimate sacrifice. The Founding was a decision that those things could be put on a secular basis, or so it appears to me. After the Founding secularism *had* to win. Christian, Jew, Turk or skeptic, we were all Americans, and that was what counted, what our final serious objective publicly valid loyalty was. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:33:55 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391471@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:33:04 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: excerpt (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: I would certainly ask you, for example, how Federalist Number 10 is a secular democratic rather than Classical Christian document, with its profound understanding of the intrinsic flaws in human nature and the need to contain them. --- end of quote --- It seems to me the dividing line in political thought (e.g. between Christian classical thought and what we have now) is not whether you think human nature is basically good or basically flawed, since Hobbes and Machiavelli thought there were some major problems with human nature, or whether you think government should be limited by law and distribution of power or whatever, since that's what Hume thought, but whether you think there's an objective transcendent good to which politics like other rational human activities is in the end oriented. I haven't read Federalist 10 for a while, but don't recall the latter view in the Federalist generally. You did speak of secular democracy. It's true that the constitution isn't altogether democratic and later things got much more democratic. But to me that seems a lesser point that doesn't put the constitution on the Christian classical side. It's the radical secularism that's fundamental. If there is no transcendent that matters in politics then it's all a question of power and success and you can view egalitarian hedonism -- "secular democracy" -- as simply the view that power and success can be maximized on an aggregate basis for society as a whole by giving people their preferences as much as possible. Another line of thought: if the Classical Christian view is really what was fundamental to the outlook of the founders how come the outlook morphed so readily into Secular Democracy? Were the Federalist 10 Madison and the later Madison two different people? Was Jefferson a weirdo ideologue so that choosing him to articulate the reasons for separation was just one of those odd historical contingencies? It seems to me the 60s were implicit in what we had in the 50s, and affirmative action in the "noble colorblind vision of MLK." I'm inclined to view the relation between the Founding and what came later in the same way. I should admit by the way that my scholarship in this area is even worse than my scholarship elsewhere, so if you quote books at me I'll have read very few of them. Luckily though my view is based on very general considerations regarding wherefundamental divides are in politics, so I think I'm able to have a view on the subject. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:34:19 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391484@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:33:28 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: excerpt (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: If the Sec democratic view had been dominant during the writing of the Constituiton, it would have been a very different document. --- end of quote --- The pieces of the debate over the constitution I've read (the Federalist and some of the anti-federalist writings) seem to me more consistent with a secular democratic than a Christian/classical outlook. It seemed to me the latter (as well as experience with human affairs) mitigated the former but among the leading thinkers and actors the former was the fundamental loyalty. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:35:10 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391525@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:34:19 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: A Rousing Renovation (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: Congratulations on your revamped web page. I haven't visited it in some time and the changes make it very lively. I especially commend you on the Liber project. I apologize for never responding to your last email (from late last year, I think). It seemed like we were speaking past one another. I think I might try to write an essay which explores Jeffrey Hart's description of Mel Bradford as a 'Confederate Voegelin.' Have you read any of David Walsh's stuff? --- end of quote --- Thanks for the note, and glad you like the page. I should pull myself together and continually update it -- there's the section at the beginning on the continuing struggle. Also I haven't scanned any texts lately. I agree we were speaking somewhat past each other. My current tendency is to think that somehow at the center of the American Revolution -- in its smallest but most authoritative part -- was the germ of all we have seen since then. I'm ashamed to say I haven't read much MB or any DW. I usually don't read the people I tend to agree with except for absolute classics like say Plato or when I'm looking to see if something I'm writing has been done before. I'm more likely to read my opposites, or at least people who take a very different tack. The book that excited me most when I read it was Kojeve's Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, and Kojeve is generally thought the metaphysician of the NWO (he was also a Stalinist agent). I'm thinking of rereading it and writing on it. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:35:32 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391543@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:34:41 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: [Paleo] Lasciate ogni speranza (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- Jim Lancuster wrote: we simply can't assume we can push merrily along building an alternative culture, much as the Irish did in Medieval times, without significant degree of interference from the central state. It's simply no longer possible in the present age. --- end of quote --- I think the one bit of hope we have is the intrinsic corruption of the NWO. It excludes all principles that can give rise to loyalty, honor, etc. As in so many other respects, the Clinton people are only the beginning. And extreme corruption means -- luckily -- extreme inefficiency. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:36:14 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391569@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:35:24 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: excerpt (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: this is something really unique in history, for a population to adopt the ethos (at least the public ethos, as you've pointed out the importance of that distinction) that in any other period only low-level trash would have, and at the same time to hold on to a middle-class life style. --- end of quote --- It seems part of the logical development of liberalism, of the extreme public/private distinction with the public constructed by contract and all other concerns becoming private feelings. That can't work of course, and what is publicly authoritative (the goodness of doing whatever you feel like doing as long as it's consensual) eventually comes to dominate private feelings as well. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:37:21 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391602@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:36:16 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: possible solution (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O You're pointing to one of many problems liberalism creates by its onesidedness. If you try to abolish one side of an unavoidable dualism you don't abolish it, you just force it into a form that you don't recognize or maybe that you refuse to recognize. The attempt at abolition will only succeed in abolishing all intelligent connection and mutual limitation between the side of the dualism you're attempting to abolish and its contrary side. That's why in abolishing inequality liberalism subjects everything to control by an irresponsible elite, and when it tries to get rid of oppression it establishes newspeak, thought control, and re-education programs. So when it gets rid of higher unities it's quite natural for it to create a totally integrated and all-powerful whole. So I think the problem for you is one of presentation. If you want to say both "liberalism is anti-unity" and "liberalism is pro-unity" you have to explain what that means and how opposition to one sort of unity brings another sort of unity. If you don't want to add the complication I think your possible solution works. Or maybe you could add to your possible solution another sentence like "For the unity in diversity of tradition, ordered by reference to transcendent realities variously symbolized, the NWO substitutes a chaos of impulses made publicly manageable by their own futility and by the soulless principles of money and bureaucracy." Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:37:36 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391621@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:36:46 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: W. and Clintonism (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O I recall after the Waco business Janet Reno became a folk hero, or so we were told, because she said "I take full responsibility." Absolutely nothing followed from her doing so, and she didn't imply she was actually responsible for anything except in a general formal way, but that was enough. Say the magic formula and all unpleasantness is avoided and you're even admired. Not that what W. is doing is the same but it has something of the same quality of spin, word magic, avoiding giving discomfort at all costs. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Sep 21 14:39:13 2000 Return-Path: Message-id: <11391681@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 21 Sep 2000 14:38:22 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: recent discussions (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Status: O A couple of points on our recent conversations: 1. Unisex bathrooms in dormitories -- most of the people at the table probably had children who went through that, and people resist very strongly the idea that there's anything wrong with anything they sent their children into and that their children accepted. They might say they're miserable offenders in the confession but that's not really how they look at things. 2. On current intellectual life -- I suppose Orwell had it down in 1984, the bureaucratized control of the past, the conceptual reshuffling and reconstruction of language to make criticism of the dominant order unthinkable, the abolition of independent thought. jk From jk@panix.com Thu Sep 21 17:31:01 EDT 2000 Article: 14741 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix2.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Conservative v. Reactionary Date: 21 Sep 2000 12:42:31 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 43 Message-ID: <8qddpn$pbu$1@panix2.panix.com> References: <8qaguc$lsv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8qbilj$hds$1@panix3.panix.com> <8qcnp0$i7m$1@weber.a2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 969554552 13497 166.84.0.227 (21 Sep 2000 16:42:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 21 Sep 2000 16:42:32 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14741 In <8qcnp0$i7m$1@weber.a2000.nl> psychrophiles@hotmail.com (vtnet) writes: >'Conservatism' seems to oppose 'progressivism' rather than liberalism, >as even liberalism can become institutionalized and entrenched and than >finds its (reactionary) defenders among those having individual rather >than communual gain in mind. "Traditionalist conservatism" is intended among other things to prevent attachment to liberalism, Maoism or whatever from qualifying as conservatism. What are the features of the world, human life, etc. that make attachment to the familiar, loyalty to what is long-established, etc. political virtues? T.C. attempts to answer that question and so to make the conservative disposition reasonable and more principled than rejection of change simply as such. One consequence is that it becomes impossible to be a conservative defender of views like liberalism and Maoism that make the conservative disposition a vice rather than a virtue, because they hold that society should be constructed by reason or will rather than evolve slowly and with stability an important concern. >Is the mere reliance on traditions ('what was') as an justification not >dogmatic and therefore by your own definition reactionary? Libertarianism believes in markets as the means of accumulating and articulating implicit social knowledge and valuations to get the best results possible. Pure democracy believes in voting and socialism in bureaucracy as the best means for the same purpose. Traditionalist conservatism believes that tradition -- practices and attitudes etc. that grow up mostly informally, the bases of which are usually difficult clearly to articulate -- are a necessary part of the process, so that tradition has its own proper authority that can't be replaced by the authority of bureaucracy, market or ballot box. It believes there are fundamental truths that cannot otherwise be known and made concrete in human life, because they involve considerations that are too comprehensive, subtle, complex etc. I don't see anything dogmatic about that view. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Sat Sep 23 03:38:07 EDT 2000 Article: 14743 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Conservative v. Reactionary Date: 22 Sep 2000 08:25:40 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 51 Message-ID: <8qfj44$315$1@panix6.panix.com> References: <8qaguc$lsv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8qbilj$hds$1@panix3.panix.com> <8qcnp0$i7m$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qddpn$pbu$1@panix2.panix.com> <8qfe47$sfa$1@weber.a2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix6.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 969625541 1103 166.84.0.231 (22 Sep 2000 12:25:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Sep 2000 12:25:41 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14743 In <8qfe47$sfa$1@weber.a2000.nl> psychrophiles@hotmail.com (vtnet) writes: >Traditionalist political views are obviously more conservative (less >progressive) than liberal and socialist views for the simple reason >that the later were dreamed up and experimented with only recently in >political history -- probably under the influence of previously >unparalleled circumstances. By "progressive" you seem to mean "responsive to new circumstances" or some such. A traditionalist conservative obviously rejects that view. A response to circumstances is not determined simply by the circumstances -- it has to do with all sorts of things, what you think man and the world are like, what the human good is, etc. etc. A TC thinks of liberal and socialist views as "progressive" only in the sense of extending a particular line of thought and action that he believes fundamentally mistaken. One aspect of the liberal/socialist line of thought is a sort of superrationalism -- the belief that the world can fully be captured in propositions that we can manipulate, thereby enabling us to recreate it as we please. Liberal/socialist thought is thus utopian. A TC of course rejects that line of thought and believes it leads to radical mistakes in dealing with situations. >So conservatives claiming reason as their prime asset in political >discourse seems a little propagandistic. (They can and will of course >offer reasons for their reliance on proven methods rather than on >innovations, but that seems a different story.) If they do the latter and the reasons are persuasive then why doesn't reason become their asset? >But an implication is nevertheless that within the scope of political >discourse it means a moving away from inovation based on reasonable >argument in favor of conserving for its own sake -- on the ground, of >course, that that's the reasonable thing to do. TC does give tradition -- settled practices and attitudes that characteristically seem important to those brought up in them even though the reasons they articulate seem inadequate -- its own independent authority. As a political philosophy it attempts to show that doing so is more reasonable than not doing so. If it succeeds then reason really is on its side. Suppose a man chose his wife and friends solely relying on psychological tests, his food relying only on chemical analysis, etc., etc., etc. It seems to me such a man would not be reasonable. He would in fact be insane. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Sat Sep 23 03:38:07 EDT 2000 Article: 14746 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Conservative v. Reactionary Date: 23 Sep 2000 03:37:02 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 34 Message-ID: <8qhmiu$171$1@panix6.panix.com> References: <8qaguc$lsv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8qbilj$hds$1@panix3.panix.com> <8qcnp0$i7m$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qddpn$pbu$1@panix2.panix.com> <8qfe47$sfa$1@weber.a2000.nl> <39cc4c1c$0$34968$2a0ee87e@news.tdin.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix6.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 969694622 18252 166.84.0.231 (23 Sep 2000 07:37:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Sep 2000 07:37:02 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14746 In <39cc4c1c$0$34968$2a0ee87e@news.tdin.com> "Tony W. Frye" writes: >Progressivism, or more properly stated the Englightenment, may have >made it possible to alterate the political conditions to sprout a >Napoleon or Stalin, but Hitler was not a progressive and he certainly >did not base his ideas on reason. Hitler it seems wanted to construct a New Order based on force and will and using science. To my mind that puts him on the same side as the progressives. If you make the standards of reason too narrow, which is what antitraditionalists do, nothing ever measures up. As a result, one thing becomes as reasonable as another and you have irrationalism. So seems to me radical irrationalism like Hitler's is a likely consequence of radical rationalism. The latter destroys the complex of accommodations between the things that can be fully described, grasped and dealt with and things that somewhat or altogether elude us but the effects of which we must nonetheless live with. That complex is in fact the content of tradition. Give it up and you end up with the moral subjectivism that makes Hitler's or Jeffrey Dahmer's goals as good as anyone else's. >unless you are a strict rationalist like Bertrand Russell, reason will >not be the foundation of your beliefs. Some beliefs are nonetheless more reasonable than others, and those that are more reasonable can justly claim to have reason on their side even though they are not rationalistic. Rationalism, if "rationalism" is the belief that reason has all the answers, is in fact against reason. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Sat Sep 23 08:37:38 EDT 2000 Article: 14750 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Conservative v. Reactionary Date: 23 Sep 2000 08:25:06 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 27 Message-ID: <8qi7f2$s44$1@panix3.panix.com> References: <8qaguc$lsv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8qbilj$hds$1@panix3.panix.com> <8qcnp0$i7m$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qddpn$pbu$1@panix2.panix.com> <8qfe47$sfa$1@weber.a2000.nl> <39cc4c1c$0$34968$2a0ee87e@news.tdin.com> <8qhmiu$171$1@panix6.panix.com> <39cc848b$0$34968$2a0ee87e@news.tdin.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 969711906 21188 166.84.0.228 (23 Sep 2000 12:25:06 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Sep 2000 12:25:06 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14750 In <39cc848b$0$34968$2a0ee87e@news.tdin.com> "Tony W. Frye" writes: >He wanted to construct a racial order based on ancient tribalism The Aryan German was a modern invention and not ancient tribalism. Only modern methods of propaganda could have made it serve the role it did. Such methods, about which Hitler was very intelligent, were not a feature of ancient tribalism. They represent a technological approach to social relations. >A belief can only be deemed more rational than another if it is based >on rationality, or if the other belief is quantifiably less logical. >It is not based on rationality if it is merely a subjective view with a >rational stamp reasonably offered to hide a motive. Rationalism as a >base demands an objectivity that simply does not exist in most of the >political realm and arguably nowhere outside of the hard sciences. Thank you for a demonstration how the progressivist demand for hyperrationality leads quite quickly to the view that rationality really has nothing to do with politics (or presumably morals etc). The natural implication is that the master of force, propaganda, striking images etc wins and anything one says against his victory is just another instance of special pleading and manipulation. In other words, victory becomes the sole standard. Sieg Heil! as they used to say. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Sat Sep 23 08:37:38 EDT 2000 Article: 14751 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Conservative v. Reactionary Date: 23 Sep 2000 08:35:32 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 15 Message-ID: <8qi82k$sb7$1@panix3.panix.com> References: <8qaguc$lsv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8qbilj$hds$1@panix3.panix.com> <8qcnp0$i7m$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qddpn$pbu$1@panix2.panix.com> <8qfe47$sfa$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qfj44$315$1@panix6.panix.com> <8qi127$n6a$1@weber.a2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 969712532 21291 166.84.0.228 (23 Sep 2000 12:35:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Sep 2000 12:35:32 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14751 In <8qi127$n6a$1@weber.a2000.nl> psychrophiles@hotmail.com (M) writes: >And giving tradition its own 'independent authority' (that is, >independent of reason) goes seems much the same as saying giving an >existing (even if corrupted) social order its 'independent authority'. The world's a going concern when we're born into it, and we have no choice but recognize in general the social authorities that form the world we live in. Luckily no society is wholly or even mostly corrupt; if it were it would disappear immediately, just as a man would die instantly if he weren't 99+% healthy, if almost all of his biological processes weren't functioning normally. Evil is always parasitic. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Sat Sep 23 18:23:23 EDT 2000 Article: 14753 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Conservative v. Reactionary Date: 23 Sep 2000 12:47:06 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 25 Message-ID: <8qimqa$bq5$1@panix3.panix.com> References: <8qaguc$lsv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8qbilj$hds$1@panix3.panix.com> <8qcnp0$i7m$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qddpn$pbu$1@panix2.panix.com> <8qfe47$sfa$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qfj44$315$1@panix6.panix.com> <8qi127$n6a$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qi82k$sb7$1@panix3.panix.com> <8qifue$jpn$1@weber.a2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 969727627 24588 166.84.0.228 (23 Sep 2000 16:47:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Sep 2000 16:47:07 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14753 In <8qifue$jpn$1@weber.a2000.nl> psychrophiles@hotmail.com (M) writes: >jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) wrote in <8qi82k$sb7$1@panix3.panix.com>: >> The world's a going concern when we're born into it, and we have no >> choice but recognize in general the social authorities that form the >> world we live in. >Thus seen, we certainly have a choice and probably even a >responsibility to defy and oppose what is evil -- even if evil happens >to be the status quo at some point in history. Sure. That's the point of my "in general". And if evil weren't the status quo it wouldn't exist so we wouldn't have to worry about it. My point though is that even in fighting existing evils we must remain social -- conscious that there are comprehensive and pervasive goods to be preserved as well as evils to be fought. That is a point that revolutionary movements tend to forget, and modern philosophies like liberalism that demand that social order be a fully explicit rational construction are intrinsically revolutionary. Whatever they don't have consciously in mind doesn't exist for them, so while progressing toward their particular goals they create general degradation. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Sun Sep 24 14:08:40 EDT 2000 Article: 14755 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix2.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Conservative v. Reactionary Date: 24 Sep 2000 08:24:03 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 46 Message-ID: <8qkrp3$8ek$1@panix2.panix.com> References: <8qaguc$lsv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8qbilj$hds$1@panix3.panix.com> <8qcnp0$i7m$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qddpn$pbu$1@panix2.panix.com> <8qfe47$sfa$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qfj44$315$1@panix6.panix.com> <8qi127$n6a$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qi82k$sb7$1@panix3.panix.com> <8qifue$jpn$1@weber.a2000.nl> <8qimqa$bq5$1@panix3.panix.com> <8qis5t$9ej$1@weber.a2000.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 969798243 9315 166.84.0.227 (24 Sep 2000 12:24:03 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 24 Sep 2000 12:24:03 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14755 In <8qis5t$9ej$1@weber.a2000.nl> psychrophiles@hotmail.com (M) writes: >the good is rooted in the moral, and the moral both precedes and >transcends temporal society. I would say the moral is rooted in the good, although it's unclear whether we have a real dispute. Also, I would say that the good is one of the transcendent conditions of not only of temporal society but of human life generally. (Actually I would go beyond that even. Plato tells us the good is beyond essence, which is about as transcendent as you can get, and I'm not going to argue with him on the point.) >Although, the moral seems a matter of taste (stemming from nature and >creation) rather then of reason, since the reason for being cannot be >discovered by the agency of reason as reason, like all human faculties, >stems ultimately from 'being'. And 'being' separates the perceived from >the perceiver -- a separation that might well be viewed as the origin >of consciousness without which both reason and morality cannot exist. Is "taste" really the word you want? It suggests that the moral changes in accordance with how people feel about it, that there's nothing to it beyond our feelings. I would say the moral is a matter of a kind of discernment that you do not include in what you call reason. That refusal is a mistake, I think -- it reduces reason to formal logic, which is useless unless interpreted by principles that from the standpoint of formal logic are arbitrary. All human action and belief therefore becomes arbitrary and thus irrational. Your reflections on being are somewhat obscure to me. Perhaps part of your thought is that as transcendent the moral is beyond discursive thought -- it precedes the distinction of subject and object and therefore cannot be adequately expressed propositionally. >liberals, to the best of my knowledge, might well accept nonempirical >instruction as valuable. To my mind a defining feature of liberalism is its insistence on explicitness -- if you view all social relations as contractual then you have to be able to say what the contract is. The only nonempirical principles they will accept are fully formal principles like equality and the categorical imperative. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Fri Sep 29 09:47:52 EDT 2000 Article: 14770 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Say No To Extinction... Date: 29 Sep 2000 09:47:07 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 21 Message-ID: <8r26gr$96m$1@panix6.panix.com> References: <39CE1F16.97846821@innocent.com> <8r111q$87g$1@nnrp1.deja.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix6.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 970235227 22561 166.84.0.231 (29 Sep 2000 13:47:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 29 Sep 2000 13:47:07 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14770 In "Cyberia Edinburgh Public Mail" writes: >Apart from structural >constitutional changes to bring about direct democracy we have to confront >the domination of the media by large corporations which create an >establishment hegemony. Eventually this must be done by the State but whilst >in opposition we need to build a counter culture and alternative news >network. I'm a bit worried about structural constitutional changes done by the State to bring about direct democracy. The State will certainly never be a matter of direct democracy, not if it rules more than a few thousand people, and it will always represent an establishment hegemony. So if its supervision of social relationships is comprehensive enough to make direct democracy the rule it will also be comprehensive enough to make direct democracy a fraud. I do agree that we should all build CCs, ANNs, etc., and that the internet's an opportunity to get such things started. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Sun Oct 1 18:18:21 EDT 2000 Article: 14779 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Conservative v. Reactionary Date: 1 Oct 2000 18:14:02 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 24 Message-ID: <8r8cva$4go$1@panix6.panix.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix6.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 970438442 7625 166.84.0.231 (1 Oct 2000 22:14:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 1 Oct 2000 22:14:02 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14779 In <8r89ho$8h8$1@nnrp1.deja.com> eric_the_first@my-deja.com writes: >These >elements came from the left, while the theory of fascism comes from the >right. To me fascism seems an odd mix. By its emphasis on struggle and will and on the absolute character of the state it seems to want to recognize a transcendent ethical reality, but also to treat that reality as a wholly this-worldly human construction. It recognizes the problem (the necessity of the transcendent) that motivates traditionalism but tries to solve that problem in a wholly modern manner. So it seems to me that one might classify it as rightist, if the Left is taken to stand for denial of the transcendent, but also as progressivist, if progressivism is taken to stand for faith in the limitless capacity of the human will. >Apparently you've never read the republic, it's about the flaws of >democracy and the benefits of class distinction. It's about a whole lot of things. It is I agree a revolting misreading to treat it as a precursor of the Soviet Union. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Mon Oct 2 19:59:21 EDT 2000 Article: 14782 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix2.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: nature of fascism Date: 2 Oct 2000 04:14:09 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 34 Message-ID: <8r9g4h$svj$1@panix2.panix.com> References: <8r8cva$4go$1@panix6.panix.com> <8r8l62$h3o$1@nnrp1.deja.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 970474450 16079 166.84.0.227 (2 Oct 2000 08:14:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 2 Oct 2000 08:14:10 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14782 In <8r8l62$h3o$1@nnrp1.deja.com> eric_the_first@my-deja.com writes: >I've never seen fascism as accepting the limitless capacity of human >will, since it acknoledges the enivitability of war. True, "limitless capacity" was the wrong expression. Maybe "creative power" would be better. >I consider it >part of the right due to its opposition to conventional progressive >views and relation to older theory, such as the works of Hobbes and >Plato I would put Hobbes on the same side as the Left -- he made society a wholly human construction for purely material purposes that are common to all men. Fascism as a sort of mixture of Plato and Hobbes is an interesting angle though. >By emphasising the need for enlightened dictators and respect for >soldiers, I view the republic as being closely tied to fascism. I >cannot comprehend how it could be tied to communism. But the Republic makes contemplation rather than will and struggle the final standard. Its fundamental purpose is utterly different from fascism. As to communism, private property is abolished among the ruling group described in the Republic. And I suppose one could point out that communist governments have in fact emphasized the military and put all power in the hands of an elite that supposedly has special knowledge and moral character. Again though the purpose of the exercise is utterly different than in the Soviet Union. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Oct 22 06:13:49 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0891148AAA for ; Sun, 22 Oct 2000 06:13:49 -0400 (EDT) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA31466 for ; Sun, 22 Oct 2000 06:13:48 -0400 (EDT) Message-id: <12148453@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 22 Oct 2000 06:12:26 EDT From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: Human Rights Website [was "Belated Thanks"] (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: OR --- You wrote: One question I would have is with your concession (?) that some conception of universal human rights is necessary today. Is this principled, or a pure concession? The problem with it as a concession, in my view, is that it may be fighting the battle on the adversay's terrain. That is, is it possible to imagine a statement of universal human rights without accepting the liberal project of devising them by theoretical reason, without due appreciation of the social conditions that have led to certain things being valued (recognized as rights)? I can't help but wonder how much of a protection against liberal understanding the Statement will be; "security of the person" is the phrase Canada's Liberal court used to find a right to abortion. --- end of quote --- It seems to me that under modern circumstances there is in fact a world society that of necessity has standards, notions of right and wrong, etc. that its members view as applicable to each other. That's simply a statement of what happens when people have continuous extensive dealings with each other. The question is what to do about it. I don't think it is helpful to ignore the question of international standards or to claim they can't legitimately exist. I think some account is necessary which limits them but recognizes they have a place. In response to bad theorizing about them good theorizing is needed. It seems to me abuses like the Canadian decision you mention are far more likely to the extent no more satisfactory conception of human rights than the liberal one is available. As to what sort of standards make sense regarding for example treatment by governments of their own people, it seems that true universality is very hard to combine with concreteness. I suppose there's a universal rationally-determinable human right not to be treated simply as raw material for making catfood, and maybe that kind of right has enough bite to let you say that some of the major events of the past century violated universal rational knowable public law or some such concept. Still it seems to me that most human rights principles necessarily have a positive content and that should be clearly recognized. Liberalism I think is failure to recognize that that is the case. If that *is* recognized then I think it will be far more difficult to use "human rights" to override particular religious and cultural traditions and it will be more obvious what's going on when it's proposed to enforce human rights rather than simply state them as ideals and aspirations. Also there will be more room for thoughts like the ones expressed in the quote you gave from your dissertation. Human rights could include respect for local particularism, since the social good is realized in particular ways in concrete social settings which therefore should not be wantonly destroyed. Much of liberal human rights law could become recognized as a violation of the universal human right to live in a non-liberal society -- that is, one that accepts particularism. There are of course problems: the feeling that the universal is superior to the particular, the tendency on the part of superior jurisdictions to extend their power, the temptation (if you're someone like a lawyer or expert or journalist or judge whose place in the world is based on developing ideas and applying them to things) to take some general idea like human dignity and develop it into a system that enables you to tell everyone what to do. So there's lots to mull over and so far there doesn't seem to have been nearly enough mulling. So anyway thanks much for your comments. Any others would be very welcome. Also any references. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From jk@panix.com Thu Nov 2 06:31:14 EST 2000 Article: 14820 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Review: Manufacturing Consent Date: 2 Nov 2000 06:30:57 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 18 Message-ID: <8trj9h$b64$1@panix3.panix.com> References: <3A024102@MailAndNews.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 973164657 20622 166.84.0.228 (2 Nov 2000 11:30:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 2 Nov 2000 11:30:57 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14820 An aspect not considered is the class viewpoint and interests of those who work in the media. After all, the media are enormously powerful. People spend hours a day watching TV, and those who think they're a cut above the average get their info and (at least implicitly) ideas from the New York Times, Newsweek magazine, whatever. Journalists are conscious of themselves as a class -- there are formal standards of behavior, journalism schools, common heroes, a common mythology, etc. Also, GE or whoever it is who owns CBS might not want unfavorable coverage of the specific things they do but doesn't much care about general biases. Businessmen are not farsighted about general intellectual and cultural issues. All that being the case, why should media people represent the viewpoint and interests of anyone but themselves and those with whom they can make common cause? -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Sat Nov 4 20:55:42 EST 2000 Article: 14825 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Review: Manufacturing Consent Date: 4 Nov 2000 20:50:28 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 73 Message-ID: <8u2ed4$gh8$1@panix6.panix.com> References: <3A040461@MailAndNews.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix6.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 973389028 3241 166.84.0.231 (5 Nov 2000 01:50:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 5 Nov 2000 01:50:28 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14825 In <3A040461@MailAndNews.com> "S.T. Theleis" writes: >class viewpoint of media operatives does not diverge from >that of their employers. Class antagonisms aside, as a >practical matter nowadays, that is built into the >employer/employee relationship. Do their class interests >diverge? Perhaps in fact they do, but not as _they_ see it >-- or they wouldn't long remain as journalists. The "market" >would let them go. That's the central insight of this book. Don't really agree. Employers and employees do not as such have the same interests. Marx was right at least on that. Not that they're altogether in conflict. What the market wants is media people who will get viewers, and so make money, and not infringe directly on specific interests of their employer. That leaves a lot of room for producers etc. to angle things in a way that seems satisfactory to them. >That there is a class dynamic at work is not something >I dispute. It would be wrong to think, for example, that the >Jews are so powerful that they could achieve what they have >achieved without the extensive cooperation of White elites. Obviously interests converge. The ethnic interest for secular Jews I think favors an extensive multicultural empire with both a strong centralized state bureaucracy and a prosperous and somewhat free econony. Jews have done very well in such situations for a very long time. The media as media prefers such a situation as well, because the abolition of localism and weakening of traditional institutions (the "extensive multicultural" part) means that more things become public issues (the "strong centralized bureaucracy" part) and people rely on the media more to understand and deal with them. The media thus become absolutely central to the social order. As for prosperity, it means more advertisers and more money devoted to extras like entertainment. So the media as such and secular Jews as such aren't likely to be at odds. >But these many phenomena we see are not totally explainable >in terms of class conflict, I don't believe. A more adequate, >more complete explanation is one that takes into account the >biology of race, a biology which is manifested in culture. It seems to me a small group like the Jews is unlikely to be able to do more than enhance existing tendencies, it's hard to know how much. Plato gave what seems to me an adequate description of the general social, cultural etc. evolution we see around us without reference to any special group, except implicitly I suppose the Greeks. >But in another sense, you are wrong, because they do care very >much about general biases. That is why the agenda of political >correctness and multiculturalism is so aggressively promoted by >the media. What PC and multiculti mean is that money and bureaucracy are the only principles of social order. All other principles (family, religion, ethnic culture) are abolished as "hate." It seems to me the corporate media would favor that even if the Jews all moved to Madegascar and were replaced by Swedes. GE and Peter Jennings might argue over the relative proportions of money and bureaucracy in the governing mix, but neither has much reason to favor say family values. >But if you >are not a Jew, then seeing things from what is habitually a Jewish >perspective may not be much to your taste. From a racial point of >view, it can even be suicidal. Actually, it seems to me that the tendencies you attribute to Jews (and I think secular Jews generally do support PC, multiculturalism, globalization, moral permissiveness, etc.) are suicidal for Jews as well. The Jews are no doubt special in some ways, but I don't think they're as special as you think. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Tue Nov 7 09:21:18 EST 2000 Article: 14830 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Review: Manufacturing Consent Date: 7 Nov 2000 09:14:28 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 62 Message-ID: <8u92o4$c9f$1@panix6.panix.com> References: <3A0A8C92@MailAndNews.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix6.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 973606469 9550 166.84.0.231 (7 Nov 2000 14:14:29 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Nov 2000 14:14:29 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14830 In <3A0A8C92@MailAndNews.com> "S.T. Theleis" writes: >The attempt to reduce and explain these social phenomena solely in >terms of class struggle, when coming from those who claim to be on >the right, is just crypto-leftism. I haven't done so. I've pointed out institutional and class interests of the media and media professionals, and said that ownership by GE or whoever still leaves a great deal of autonomy to pursue those interests. The "class interests" I mentioned, by the way, are not specially interests over against employers and have nothing special to do with economic status. They are class interests in the sense in which weathermen have a class interest in changeable and extreme weather. The media would like a world in which the media is as important as possible, and that world is what their activities promote. >Second, you seem to be saying that media would necessarily have >a lesser role, or be less profitable, in a racially pure state. In a decentralized state, in a state in which public policy and public administration had less of a role, in a state that took concrete local traditional institutions like the family and religion more for granted. Therefore in a non-multicultural state. Racial purity isn't the key. The point is that how important the media are depends on how personal and social life is organized, and that in turn depends in large part on the factors just mentioned. >Attempts to preserve White culture and save the >White race from genocide through miscegenation are characterized as >"hate". But the Jews and their culture remain sancrosanct, as far as >the media is concerned. Attempts to save Jews from the same fate >is seen as laudable, conscientious. The overall goal I think of respectable modern political life is to do away with all culture in the interests of hedonism and of formal institutions like state and world market. The first step is to deprive culture of public authority, which as a practical matter means depriving the dominant culture of authority. That has two aspects: saying the dominant culture is bad, and saying minority cultures are good. Minority bigots, Jewish and otherwise, naturally join in the campaign for their own reasons. That doesn't mean that viewing "Merry Christmas" as bad and "Happy Kwanzaa" as good is simply a matter of minority bigotry. The minorities are going to be destroyed too. Have you looked at the state of the black family, or (in the case of the Jews) at intermarriage and birth rates? How many Jews do you think there will be in 100 years? >How anyone >can believe that Israel would have been handed the free pass it has >been if media ownership were not in the hands of Jews, is beyond me. I *do* think Israel gets better publicity and more support than it would if Jews were less influential. I don't think Israel and other specifically Jewish issues are the major parts of understanding what's going on in the world. Also, I don't think there would be nearly so many influential Jews if the interests and outlook of secular Jews were not so consistent with the interests and outlook of predominant institutions. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Tue Nov 7 09:21:18 EST 2000 Article: 14831 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Cato Date: 7 Nov 2000 09:19:24 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 11 Message-ID: <8u931c$cm8$1@panix6.panix.com> References: <3A040461@MailAndNews.com> <8u2ed4$gh8$1@panix6.panix.com> <20001106.2134.1553snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix6.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 973606764 9623 166.84.0.231 (7 Nov 2000 14:19:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Nov 2000 14:19:24 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14831 In <20001106.2134.1553snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes: >> "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato >That reminds me: what is the Carthago of the Cato Institute? Dunno. Must republican virtue have a Carthage? If so it's probably Washington DC. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Fri Nov 10 13:45:22 EST 2000 Article: 14833 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix2.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Review: Manufacturing Consent Date: 9 Nov 2000 22:15:57 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 99 Message-ID: <8ufp9d$l01$1@panix2.panix.com> References: <3A2854EA@MailAndNews.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 973826157 10721 166.84.0.227 (10 Nov 2000 03:15:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 10 Nov 2000 03:15:57 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14833 In <3A2854EA@MailAndNews.com> "S.T. Theleis" writes: >> The >> media would like a world in which the media is as important as possible, >> and that world is what their activities promote. >So would their Jewish bosses, so the interests don't differ there. My general point is that Jews are not the explanation, because general institutional interests lead to the same results you attribute to them. >The technological state will always be impelled to centralize >those things for resultant gains in efficiency. I just don't think the attempt will be permanently successful. It's too antihuman. A system that can't successfully produce human beings won't work long term, and I think that's increasingly true of the current state of affairs. >So, if >one would hope to fractionate the state with religion, that would >need to change, and it's hard to see how the present situation can >be reversed. It's not necessary to reform the present situation, only for there to be ways of thinking and acting that lead to group success. Then those ways of thinking and acting will prevail even if to begin with they're completely marginal and lacking in any conceivable influence. Modern secular men don't have children so they will disappear. Secular people who have lots of children because they can't control their lives will disappear too, because they can't support themselves. That will leave non-secular separatists to inherit the earth. >Can family oppose? Perhaps, but this is what is meant by racial >purity. For what is race but an extended family? It is telling >that the elites are so frightened of race being the one force that >is potentially able to oppose them that they are now bending every >effort to destroy it. I agree it's interesting that elites are so obsessed with race. It seems to me though that race has limits as a principle of social order. It doesn't tell you much of anything. It's an aid to cohesion but far >from sufficient. >But they cannot arise autochthonously either >unless, as I indicate above, 1) the technological system is restricted >or abandoned on a global scale and 2) society is broken down along >racial lines. As suggested, it seems to me the technological system will be restricted because groups that give it free reign in their lives will be unable to reproduce themselves as groups with a culture that is definite enough to make them functional, and most likely even biologically, since their members won't choose to have children. Restricting technology in the interests of definite culture will be possible only for exclusive inward-turning groups. So it is such groups that will come to predominate. They will no doubt on the whole have ethnic attributes but I don't see why race in a biological sense should be the key. >> the dominant culture of authority. That has two aspects: saying the >> dominant culture is bad, and saying minority cultures are good. >This is not true in Israel, for example, or Iran. Iran does not buy into the liberal project. Whether that lasts time will tell. I've seen reports from Israel suggesting that liberal universalism and inclusiveness is making headway there among advanced thinkers, as it certainly has among American Jews. I expect that to continue. Secular Jews have given up their religion and need a substitute, and liberal universalism and inclusiveness is what's on offer. I don't think pure ethnic loyalty is enough, because pure ethic loyalty doesn't guide you toward anything very definite and stable. >The cultural style of blacks is to have no family, in the White sense >of that word. Absent fathers are the norm. Look at Africa. >Read Rushton on r-K reproductive strategies. >From my standpoint this is simply a claim that blacks are particularly vulnerable to liberalism and have particular difficulties in technological society. That may be so. >the Jew *survives*. They certainly have for a very long time, while they kept their religion and their specific way of life, including family arrangements, and while everyone else cooperated in keeping them a people apart. They don't have magical qualities though. >The interests and outlook of predominant institutions come, in large >part, from the characters of those in control of them. In America we have lots of Jews, in other Western countries they have many fewer. Nonetheless, the interests and outlook of predominant institutions don't seem that different. English TV for example is at least as PC, "inclusive," and devoted to abolition of traditional decencies as ours. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Thu Nov 16 03:07:52 EST 2000 Article: 14839 of alt.revolution.counter Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Review: Manufacturing Consent Date: 12 Nov 2000 04:23:56 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 39 Message-ID: <8ulnjc$k3o$1@panix6.panix.com> References: <3A4CA724@MailAndNews.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix6.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 974021036 12939 166.84.0.231 (12 Nov 2000 09:23:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 12 Nov 2000 09:23:56 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14839 In <3A4CA724@MailAndNews.com> "S.T. Theleis" writes: >showing almost exclusive ownership and control of major news media in >America to ethnic Jews. Jews are certainly influential in the media. The question remains how important specifically Jewish issues are and how different Jewish interests are from those of the institutions in which they prosper. It seems to me that Jews mostly do well by advancing the interests of whoever it is they're working for. Like other people they do well where their outlook fits in with what's wanted. >I also pointed out that Israel's invasion of Palestine It's not much of a reason to think the Jews are the explanation for why the world is the way it is. If it weren't happening the world wouldn't be that different overall. >This occurs in a framework in which the extermination of up to >60 million Whites in Soviet Russia, largely at the hands of Bolshevik >ethnic Jews, is all but unknown to Americans. If the communist exterminations were basically the Jews' doing, then it becomes hard to explain events in China and Cambodia. You would have to take the view that similar events called by the same name and with institutional and ideological connections really had little to do with each other. It becomes hard to explain the number of Jews who the communists killed in Russia. Lots of top communists were Jews, but top communists were particularly likely to die, so it's hard for me to interpret what happened as fundamentally a campaign to advance the ethnic or other interests of those who controlled the party. It also becomes hard to explain why in the later years of the Soviet Union so many Jews wanted out if the whole thing was their own construction. It really does seem to me you believe the Jews are magical in some way. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net) "Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato From jk@panix.com Sat Nov 18 12:38:38 EST 2000 Article: 126401 of soc.rights.human Path: news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.rights.human Subject: Re: Human Rights Must Become Non-Liberal Date: 18 Nov 2000 06:41:41 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 38 Message-ID: <8v5ptl$8hi$1@panix3.panix.com> References: <8v40ko$p7n$1@panix6.panix.com> <3a15fd72$0$9973$272ea4a1@news.execpc.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 974547702 24404 166.84.0.228 (18 Nov 2000 11:41:42 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 18 Nov 2000 11:41:42 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com soc.rights.human:126401 In <3a15fd72$0$9973$272ea4a1@news.execpc.com> ron_p@earth.execpc.com (Ron Peterson) writes: >Rights are limitations on the power of the state. You want to establish >a system that would impose laws and your ideology on others. With regard to your first sentence, you might read the comments of Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, linked at http://www.freespeech.org/antitechnocrat/news.html. Rights can be against anyone, not just the state. Whatever government does can be called enforcing rights. Also, anything whatever can be called a limitation on the power of the state. One might say the state is forbidden to deny access to health care, which means in effect that it is required to establish a system of socialized medicine, or that the state is forbidden to countenance sexism, which can mean it must use whatever means necessary to change social attitudes, family arrangements, etc. Think of what would be involved in enforcing a right to an environment free of sexism. With regard to your second sentence, I favor local autonomy. >Liberals don't exist as a group, because they have no common ideology. Don't understand. "Liberal" seems to refer to a point of view that implies political goals, and those who hold that point of view have it in common and, at least to the extent they recognize that they have common goals and cooperate in working toward them, exist as a group. In any case I don't see how anything I say depends on liberals existing as a group. >Your effort to demonize them makes one suspect your motives. Don't understand. Where's the demonization? It is true that I give a brief but unflattering account of the reasons that make liberalism as successful as it is among many of the powerful. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://human-rights.20m.com From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 07:03:52 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A6BF78F47 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 07:03:52 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id HAA29366 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 07:03:52 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876207@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 07:02:01 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: Sexual morality in antebellum america. (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: We have read comments that regular sexual activity by young men was considered desirable by medical opinion of the day for reasons for health. We are seeking references to that subject in the literature, and wonder if you might suggest appropriate sources. --- end of quote --- I don't have references and don't know much about the subject. A comment though: the 1840s were a very New Agey period, and I wouldn't doubt that the opinion of some doctors was to that effect. I would be cautious in accepting claims that was the general medical view though. On the somewhat related topic of abortion there have been serious incidents of distortion by well-known historians for the sake of undermining the claim that the view that abortion is a serious evil simply as such was really the traditional view. There's a book by Marvin Olasky that deals with the issue. Not with yours though. Good luck! Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 06:53:15 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A32248E34 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 06:53:15 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA30164 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 06:53:14 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876175@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 06:51:23 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Comments To: jk@panix.com Status: O Many thanks for the comments and references. Liberalism is an odd thing. It tries to create a social world that avoids ultimate issues, which can't be done, because as Pascal points out we always give an implicit answer to the ultimate questions just by acting one way rather than another. So what it does first is create a social world in which the ultimate answers remain what they always were but are now implicit so no one can fight about them. People are said to be free to choose their own goals, but it goes without saying (everyone assumes) that there are certain limits. If that's the world to which you're loyal then you're what is now called a conservative. Eventually, however, the principle that there are no answers to ultimate questions, so "what is good" simply means "what I want," becomes more demanding. Because all desires are equally desires, and it is simply desire that makes things good, all deires must be treated equally and the social order must become a rational arrangement for the maximum equal satisfaction of desire. Liberalism then becomes totalizing - all appeals to a standard transcending desire must be rooted out as bigoted and intolerant, because they deny the principle of egalitarian hedonism (a.k.a. equality and freedom) on which social order is to be based. Naturally, that can't be done. It's against human nature and even impossible in concept to eliminate appeals to the transcendent. So the result is a PC tyranny in which discussion must be suppressed because it has become impossible consistent with maintenance of the principles of the social order. That I think is where we are today. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://human-rights.20m.com From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 06:57:52 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A579748DC3 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 06:57:52 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA29188 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 06:57:52 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876185@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 06:56:01 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: [Paleo] Re: Buchanan-Bush-Gore (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- Louis Andrews wrote: why are we seeing so many "conservatives" bemoaning the electoral college? Is this just another example that shows that much of what passes for conservatism these days is what used to be called leftist egalitarianism? --- end of quote --- I think it's moderately right-wing populism rather than leftist egalitarianism. No one remembers the notion of constitutionally distributed power so that's an irrelevancy. Instead we have the classes and the masses, with the classes insisting on the continuing revolution and the masses sometimes somewhat balky. So those who don't like the continuing revolution come to favor majority rule as such, basically because it offers the best shot at gumming up the works. Not that their position is completely intelligent, coherent or conscious, or that they would admit to anything but true love of democracy. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) www.counterrevolution.net From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 07:03:20 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2971B48D8A for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 07:03:20 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id HAA29354 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 07:03:19 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876205@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 07:01:28 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: to whom it may concern (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: HELLO MY NAME IS ALEXIS AND i'M A FRESHMAN IN COLLEGE i'M SEARCHIN FOR INFORMATION ON THE dOUBLE sTANDARD THAT EXSIST SEXUAL BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN. ( wHY Can men have multiple partners and its cool but women with many partners can be put down?) If you have an information, suggestion, or input it would be very appreciated. --- end of quote --- I can't think offhand of anything very useful written on the subject. Sexual activity doesn't mean exactly the same thing for the two sexes. Saying that it should is pointless, it's like saying no one should like sweets because they're bad for you. Men and women differ sexually -- women carry and nurse the babies and men don't, so their attitudes toward their own sexual conduct naturally differ. There are sociobiologists who comment on evolutionary aspects of the situation. From the standpoint of successful reproduction men's interest is more to have many partners, women's to get an enduring commitment from one partner. Natural differences in inclination aren't the end of the matter of course even though you can't abolish them and it's necessary to take them into account. Traditional sexual morality and the institution of marriage -- especially monogamous marriage -- recognized that stability in family relationships is very important and that while promiscuity is more of a problem for a woman men's sexual adventurousness must be limited too to make sure children get supported and struggles among men over women don't make social life a constant battle. Now that traditional sexual morality has been abolished there are big problems. Men and women don't trust each other, they want different things and their dealings become a battle of wills and deceptions, children don't get supported, status and money are all-important because high-status men get harems and low-status men get nothing. I don't see any solution. By the way, when you send out a request like this you should make sure your spelling, grammar and capitalization are correct. You're more likely to get a considered answer. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 07:00:53 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5A07A4893C for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 07:00:53 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id HAA32269 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 07:00:53 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876196@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 06:59:02 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: NYT (Bernstein)'s review of Postville ... (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: The situation fits the definition of multiculturalism, which is incompatible cultures sharing the same space. --- end of quote --- To my mind the multiculturalism is intended to be the cooexistence of multiple cultures in the same space attained by each accepting "tolerance," meaning abandonment of its own claim to public authority and recognition of the equal value of the other cultures. So this is a situation in which one of the parties rejects multiculturalism and so puts itself in the wrong. The only embarrassing aspect is that the bigoted culture is not European or Christian. If it had been a bunch of Christian Identity types moving into town and annoying everyone the situation would have fit the liberal story-line perfectly. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 07:00:31 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 53E92488AA for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 07:00:31 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id HAA31267 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 07:00:31 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876195@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 06:58:40 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: NYT (Bernstein)'s review of Postville ... (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: such equality and tolerance must inevitably lead to--indeed, they inherently signify--the destruction of the majority culture as a culture. So what the Hasids in this little town are doing is only a more active and explicit manifestation of the attack on the majority culture that is implied in all multiculturalism. --- end of quote --- But the Hasid attack is a different kind of attack and much more limited. They don't demand that the local majority give up its religion, moral outlook, holidays, heroes, symbols, etc. They just act in an annoying, aggressive, self-centered and exclusionary way. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 06:59:34 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 75A5248DC3 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 06:59:34 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA29601 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 06:59:34 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876192@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 06:57:43 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: NYT (Bernstein)'s review of Postville ... (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: multiculturalism is a concrete fact in which mutually incompatible groups share the same space in such a manner that the natural unfolding of the majority culture is harmed or even ceases to be possible. --- end of quote --- The traditional response to this kind of situation is segregation of one sort or another. In radically multicultural societies you get something like the traditional middle east -- separate households in separate communities, everything with walls around it, no overall public life worthy of the name. In America we had formal or informal racial segregation, understandings as to who was admitted where, and so on. So the mere fact of common presence is not the problem until the ways of dealing with it become ideologically and legally impossible. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 06:59:03 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4B69C909F for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 06:59:03 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA30877 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 06:59:02 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876190@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 06:57:11 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: NYT (Bernstein)'s review of Postville ... (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: But I think the idea of the majority getting respect--after it's already been undone and delegitimized as the majority culture--is fraudulent anyway. It doesn't happen. The "equal value" business is nothing but rhetoric designed to undo the majority and advance the minorities. --- end of quote --- The "equal value" obviously makes no sense. A culture is a scheme of valuation. If you come to value another scheme equally with your own then by definition you've given up your own scheme. So then the question is what's really going on. It seems to me it's not an attempt to put the minorities on top, since that's impossible too if only because there are multiple minorities with inconsistent cultures. The minorities are going to be undone as well, it's just that less effort is needed because they start off on the defensive. Rather, it's an attempt to eliminate all culture, all settled public systems of valuation, except technocratic hedonism. This of course is the dispute or at least difference of emphasis we've already had as to how principled antiracism is. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 06:58:34 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0DB2F9054 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 06:58:34 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA29231 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 06:58:33 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876188@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 06:56:42 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: NYT (Bernstein)'s review of Postville ... (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: I meant mutually incompatible groups sharing the same space under conditions in which there is the assumption that all cultures are equal. --- end of quote --- My intended point was that the situation with the Lubavitchers in Iowa is no embarrassment for multiculturalist orthodoxy because the Lubavitchers reject that assumption. They do demonstrate that people who are neither western nor Christian can be "bigots." So to the extent the Times is willing to talk about the situation it indicates that they are at least somewhat principled in their multiculturalism -- for them it's a desire to abolish all culture and not merely white Christian culture. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 08:45:29 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 866194871C for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:45:28 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA04428 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:45:28 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876451@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 08:43:37 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: Mark Steyn has no problem with the browning of Britain--just don't push it artificially (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: I suggest that persecution against Holocaust deniers is not the best example to use. --- end of quote --- It's a minor part of the overall structure that I raise because of its great theoretical interest. As I said it's a subpage of the links page, one I made such because it doesn't deserve too much emphasis. The content of the site is conceptual and to that extent rather dry. It tends to treat the issues the way a lawyer would treat them. I *am* a lawyer after all. From some perspectives I suppose that means I treat them in a way at odds with common sense. It seems to me that Holocaust revisionism is the current version of blasphemy. To say that is not to defend or mitigate it unless you're a human rights movement person who thinks blasphemy is good or that objecting to it is laughable. I do think it's a very bad thing to obscure the murder of millions of innocents. The issue though is the attitude of human rights law toward such conduct. The fact it's legal in the US doesn't seem that relevant to me. Its legality here strikes me as a particularism, and my interest in the site is something more general than special features of the US legal tradition. I'm writing about the worldwide human rights movement, an absolutely central part of which here as elsewhere is the antihate movement. It seems to me that an extirpationist antihate movement, one that speaks for example in formal public documents like international treaties of the overriding priority of eliminating all forms of discrimination, xenophobia, etc., necessarily contradicts itself in any number of ways, and blasphemy prosecutions in the name of tolerance seem to me a particularly clear example. So I would like to refer to the treatment of Holocaust revisionists in Europe, and I don't want to go to the trouble of reading their stuff because to me it doesn't matter, the point regarding human rights theory is the same no matter what revisionists actually say. I do understand that the prosecutions have extended to some rather soft-core revisionists and relate to tangential issues, and for my purposes such situations are of far more interest than the nature of revisionism in general, which I don't much care about. The point I'm dealing with after all is not revisionism but rather human rights as an institutionalized movement. As such, situations in which people are prosecuted and sent to jail for thought and speech crimes are enormously important, because they go to the heart of the integrity of the movement. That's why I included a reference to "historical issues" on the intro page, because US-style PC, which doesn't treat revisionism specially, didn't seem to highlight the issue as to the ultimate tolerance of "human rights" as much as situations that are treated criminally, and revisionism is the only one I know of that's so treated. >From my standpoint nothing on the site raises the issue of whether Israel is good or bad, right or wrong. The middle eastern situation is not close to my heart. I'm perfectly happy with people believing anything at all about it, within certain limits of arguable rationality I suppose. I don't propose to argue it either way. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 08:45:47 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A6FE59432 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:45:47 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA05016 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:45:47 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876453@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 08:43:56 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: Mark Steyn has no problem with the browning of Britain--just don't push it artificially (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O Remember that the subpage on Irving's materials is only one item on a page of links. I did want to include people getting jailed in Europe simply for expressed beliefs. It seems to me that situation summarizes certain aspects of "human rights" that are particularly self-contradictory from its own point of view. Boy scouts aren't jailed. It's very hard at least on the net to find an overall survey of the European situation, no one wants to seem to take an interest in this stuff, and the best I could come up with were the materials on Irving's site (I was referred to them by a guy named Laird Wilcox who writes books on political extremism). You have convinced me though that I should (1) modify the item on suppression of speech on the intro page to eliminate the reference to historical questions, so that it just talks about say "hateful thoughts", and (2) include the stuff about the new crime of blasphemy and the dangers of extirpationism to the general discussion, so that the Irving page really does become just a subpage of the links page rather than a page that includes substantive discussion. On the arguments for throwing them in the clink - much more than the Nazi party is illegal, the laws are not just in Germany, whether the gas chambers at Auschwitz were fakes or a footnote to the history of WWII is extremely tangential, and anyway the war has been over 55 years and there have been no signs of life in Nazism since then while the strictures have been getting stronger. The US communist party was not illegal as such, it was illegal to advocate overthrowing the govt by force. I think there were also registration requirements. At the time there actually *was* a Soviet Union, there had very recently been high-placed communist spies and agents in the govt and numerous very well-placed sympathizers etc. Saying all that may put things again in the wrong light, though, since the point is not that it is in itself evil to prosecute people for distorting important historical events but that the human rights movement can not coherently do so. The latter is not my main point but it is a point, and as such worth including. Thanks for the comments btw. They made me rethink specific relevance and presentation. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 08:47:06 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5BC4D487FE for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:47:06 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA03060 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:47:06 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876459@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 08:45:15 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: further thoughts on institutions, the transcendent, and what destroys both (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: >[Another name for what you're calling pure rationality is technological >reason.] Well, that's a little high fallutin' for what I'm trying to say. Isn't there a more common term for the type of rationality that is reductive, rationalistic? Rationalism I guess. --- end of quote --- Rationalism means that now because people think reason means formal logic plus modern natural science or some such. I'm not sure what the best term would be if you wanted both to be comprehensible and also hold open the possibility of an expanded conception of reason. Flattened rationality? Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 08:48:18 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id AF44290D9 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:48:18 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA03314 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:48:18 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876466@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 08:46:27 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: Comment on Shelby Steele article (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- "LA" wrote: It is remarkable and fascinating that W, an unprepossessing, non-intellectual, easy-going fellow, would turn out to be not just a president but a major historical figure. I think that is going to happen. While I like him as a person, and probably some good things will come out of his new politics, we must oppose him. --- end of quote --- My current theory about W is that he accepts high class advice from reasonable well-situated experienced men, which means that whatever he presents will not reject the established order but attempt to integrate concerns about the way things have been going and whether advanced liberalism can really work into the way things are. So that's what we're seeing now. I don't think the integration can work because the logic of equality and the administered society are too strong but when everyone's comfortable it's hard to do anything as a practical politician other than integrate whatever it is into what they're comfortable with. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 08:49:23 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A9A8F90D9 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:49:23 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA00210 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:49:23 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876470@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 08:47:32 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: people don't care about facts (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: How is it that in the public sphere there is this total absence of the minimal degree of rationality and interest in facts, but just passive acceptance of empty slogans that NO ONE would ever stand for if, say, someone came into his business and said, I think you need to run your business like this instead of like this. Does this relate to what Jim Kalb says about the difference between the public order and the private sphere: that just as transcendence and order have only been rejected in the _public_ sphere, not in the private sphere, so also rationality and concern about facts has only been rejected in the public, not the private sphere? --- end of quote --- Good quote from Pierce. Whatever problems the guy's got stupidity isn't one of them. I'm not sure what the relation is to public rejection of transcendence. One thought: the mind has to end its reasonings and come to rest somewhere, and the normal ultimate resting place is paradoxical statements accepted on faith because that's where you end up when reason reaches its limits. Maybe if transcendence is rejected a false transcendence grows up that must consist of statements that are self-contradictory and groundless because otherwise one could easily go beyond them and so there would be no final resting place. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 08:50:05 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5519190D9 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:50:05 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA04273 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:50:05 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876475@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 08:48:13 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: people don't care about facts (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: I think (though I'm not sure, I'm writing this too late at night) that your point is different from mine. I was making an analogy between (1) loss of public transcendence combined with survival of private transcendence and (2) loss of public rationality combined with survival of private rationality. By contrast, you're saying the loss of public transcendence leads to the loss of public rationality. People need the experience of "just believing." Since they've been deprived of the experience of "just believing" in transcendent truth, they seek the experience of "just believing" in vicious (or comforting) transparent political lies instead. --- end of quote --- I think the points are closely related. I'm saying we need a complete structure of thought, so that an area of rationality, which must be finite because you can't have an infinite series of reasons and since reasons must start with something substantive, is anchored or bounded or whatever by something nonrational that we nonetheless grasp sufficiently to orient ourselves. So private reason, which extends to all things reason can deal with, is bounded and anchored by private understandings of transcendence, expressed in paradoxical propositions that point to the inarticulable. Public reason must have the same structure, but there's no transcendence, so it must be bounded and anchored by propositions that are self-contradictory and point to the meaningless (and thus parody transcendence, paradox and the inarticulable). Unfortunately the craziness infects the rest of public reason, so that it becomes irrational through and through. So your analogy is a strong one that reflects identity of formal structure between public and private thought. Or such is the theory. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 19 08:51:09 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id F15B748787 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:51:08 -0500 (EST) Received: from sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG (sneezy.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.23]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA02679 for ; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 08:51:08 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <12876478@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 19 Nov 2000 08:49:17 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: My shocked notes on Bloom circa 1987 (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: The philosopher is necessarily ambiguous and not honest, since he really does not believe in the gods of the city. His survival depends on a contingent who, though conventionally pious, still see something good in him despite his impeity and irony --- end of quote --- The East Coast Straussians seem to talk that way. I think it's cheap self-glorification. Strauss himself said he was a scholar and not a philosopher and didn't think the issue between philosophy and revelation could be decided by neutral rational means. Pascal would have said the same, and actually the thing by Strauss I read most recently seemed to echo Pascal in a number of places. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From jk@panix.com Tue Nov 21 21:20:15 EST 2000 Article: 126436 of soc.rights.human Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Newsgroups: soc.rights.human Subject: Re: Human Rights Must Become Non-Liberal Date: 20 Nov 2000 15:28:43 -0500 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 66 Message-ID: <8vc1hr$gkn$1@panix6.panix.com> References: <8v40ko$p7n$1@panix6.panix.com> <3a15fd72$0$9973$272ea4a1@news.execpc.com> <8v5ptl$8hi$1@panix3.panix.com> <3a194e3f$0$8052$272ea4a1@news.execpc.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix6.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 974752124 10191 166.84.0.231 (20 Nov 2000 20:28:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 20 Nov 2000 20:28:44 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.6 (NOV) Xref: news.panix.com soc.rights.human:126436 In <3a194e3f$0$8052$272ea4a1@news.execpc.com> ron_p@earth.execpc.com (Ron Peterson) writes: >: With regard to your first sentence, you might read the comments of Mary >: Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, linked at >: http://www.freespeech.org/antitechnocrat/news.html. >The URL isn't working. Sorry, the reference should have been to http://human-rights.20m.com/news.html >Other parts of your web site indicate that you >support the extreme religious right. Namecalling is not argument. Also, it seems odd that you think (1) "liberal" has no content, so people who use the word are just being abusive, while (2) "extreme religious right" is descriptive and includes the stuff on my website. >If someone robs me, they have committed a crime. Government makes laws >protecting me from that type of crime. Rights are what we need to protect >us from the government. Do look at Mary Robinson's comments. She's not a fringe figure. Also read some of the international human rights conventions and the like, not to mention academic rights theorists and for that matter the civil rights laws and their interpretations. Whatever might be true of usenet, most of the people who talk about rights in the world aren't at all libertarian. >: With regard to your second sentence, I favor local autonomy. >Do you feel that citizen rights guaranteed by the nation should be able to >be put aside by local government? The issue of course is what rights should be guaranteed internationally, nationally, locally. >"Liberal" just means change from the status quo, just as "conservative" >means to resist change. Obviously false. Some changes would be liberal, some conservative. The same is true of aspects of the status quo. Do you think it's impossible to think of changes conservatives would want to make? >Liberal and Libertarian refer to approximately the same ideas. Certainly not in American political discourse. >The powerful are usually against change and hence not liberal. What's the point of power if you don't do something with it - that is, make changes? If you have power, why not do things to entrench it - that is, make changes? Why shouldn't the people who get power tend to be the people who want power - that is, the capacity to make changes? >It would be >better for you to propose any rights that you are advocating one at a time >so that we can have a reasonable discussion free from political bias. I don't know what you have in mind. There are lots of specific proposals on my site, human-rights.20m.com. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://human-rights.20m.com From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 26 15:07:17 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 51F8D48983 for ; Sun, 26 Nov 2000 15:06:12 -0500 (EST) Received: from doc.Dartmouth.ORG (doc.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.27]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA04498 for ; Sun, 26 Nov 2000 15:06:12 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <664825@doc.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 26 Nov 2000 15:04:48 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: a anarchist view of conservatism (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: OR Hello! Thanks for the comments. My responses are in brackets. Lack of time keeps me from responding to everything. --- You wrote: Tradition is hardly the only thing that provides a "collection of useful habits" or "extensive experience and thought." many areas of tradition have opposed progress and advance. nontheless that the traditions that conservatisms draw upon are those that have served a historical role for oppresion, ie the state, capitalism, religion etc. [A "collection of useful habits" almost of necessity has to be a tradition, at least when it attains any sort of comprehensiveness. Ditto for "extensive experience and thought," when it's so extensive as to be social. Such things aren't planned out or fully understood. They can't be, because planning and understanding is always based on the system of thought, feeling, belief etc. that already exists - that is, on tradition. Useful habits and experience accumulates based on experience and observation, on things we pick up from other people, on fundamental purposes and commitments. In order to be comprehensive enough to establish a way of life they require more than one life to grow up, which means they must develop and be passed on as a tradition. As for oppression, anti-traditionalist societies that try to establish a New Order are normally more oppressive than traditionalist societies, which after all tend to accept the habits people have built up and are attached to - an approach to things that's as little oppressive as possible. There's nothing specifically traditional about the state or capitalism, although I suppose like all comprehensive practices they can't work without support of traditions.] Emperical investigation aka scientific methods is done injustice by simply saying "theory" in the case of science, medicine etc it was traditional knowledge that had to be eliminated for knowledge to be made. " Traditions" run unchecked by the scientific method or any other check, tradition almost by definition is a consensus of individuals in a community. for this reason "tradition" is an unreliable way to base any claim, nontheless politics which entails a set of complex sociological theories (where tradition and common knowledge is almost always wrong). [Scientific method doesn't have that much to do with politics or social and moral life generally. It's notorious that "social science" isn't science. And it's not true there's no check on tradition - things that don't work and don't satisfy decline as traditions.] Political systems are indeed increasingly complex, which shows demand for scientific analysis. to assume a society cannot be changed wholesale is a truth (though to a degree im confident Is less than what you think) however to make sure that a system "works" makes little sense. would it be the goal of conservatives to "make the system work" under a brutal dictatorsip? or under a communist society? I take the above quote as typical ahistoricism of conservative philosophies; "existing systems" have been set up for the select benefit of a few, ideologies for them (which eventually translate into tradition) do the same. the state has not been a product of tradition, but a institution which upholds class privelige. much the same can be said of organized religion when one looks from a historical viewpoint. it seems when conservatives talk about perserving "tradition" or "society" it is never taken into account for whom society (meaning the state) is organized for. [Social-scientific analysis is rarely of much use except maybe rhetorical use, as a way of confirming whatever it is that someone wants confirmed. As said, social science is not science. And if as you appear to believe all societies up to now have simply been instruments of class privilege why think anything better is attainable? The political movements that have take that view most seriously have murdered 100 million people over the past 80 years. Why not suspect there's a connection between their basic understanding of man and social life and their crimes? You reject tradition, that is to say the habits, attitudes, beliefs, loyalties that grow up as people deal with each other, because tradition is tainted, and you apparently want to substitute social-scientific analysis and suspicion. Who will do the scientific analysis? Who will be above suspicion? It seems to me your view inevitably leads to the dictatorship of a small self-righteous revolutionary party.] Would conservatisms support goverments such as the pre revolutionary france, or any other european imperial power because sweeping change is not appropriate? [Certainly pre-revolutionary France was better than the Jacobins or Napoleon. Ditto in Russia, China etc. Abuses can be dealt with short of revolution. In France everyone was ready to do so.] The current left demanding that the family be abolished is again a straw man, though one with a part of truth to it. [Don't agree it's a straw man.] It should be of note however the leftists postmodernists share quite a similar view of the world as conservatism (or at least represented in this FAQ) that knowledge is obtained by cultural traditions and "society" and that all cultures values are equal (I dont think conservatives accept that.) [The FAQ doesn't suggest all cultures' values are equal, and to say knowledge (of morals say) is attained through cultural traditions is not at all to adopt the pomo view that it's simply a social construction.] Yes all societies have engaged in sex role stereotyping, but does that make it something which is wanting? All (or most) societies have also engaged in war, racism, less womens rights etc. "stable functional units for the rearing of children" is also dubious, why should the purpose of males (or females) by to rear children and not live to their own wants? all of this besides the fact is contradicted by the evidence, as if men or women havehad "bad consequences" of more diverse sex roles? id be interesting if you could recite to me some. [If you don't like some fundamental feature of how people live, sex roles, hierarchy, private property, war or whatever, that's OK but serious attempts at abolition never work and generally lead to catastrophe. Obvious bad effects of weaker sex roles and consequent family disorganization include child abuse and other forms of domestic violence, badly-raised kids and consequent crime etc., and very low birth rates among responsible and capable people. For references look at the resources sections of my pages on antifeminism and sexual morality (http://www.freespeech.org/antifeminism.html and sex.html). As to living to one's own wants, you have to stand back and ask whether that view works if generally adopted. Is pursuit of self-interest enough for a tolerable social life? Also whether it even makes sense personally. Does it make anyone happy?] I take this up not because of the fallacies that a conservative society would be the "best way" to achive such results, but on what is claimed that a conservative society has emphasized. conservatism through history has supported regimes with the most high level goverment control, and drenched in bureacracy. Consrvative defensesof monarchy as "the true system" ring a bell, not to mention support of Reagan who greatly increased the role of the federal goverment in all areas but social programs. Again as probaly my main point with this FAQ is that the "traditions" of conservatism have been that of coercive states and unjust social orders. Something that needs alot of "conserving" to stay afloat! [Progressive and revolutionary regimes obviously need more central control and bureaucracy than traditionalist societies. After all if you want to abolish existing habits and attitudes and substitute something new and scientific you have to do a lot of managing. Consider for example the amount of bureaucracy in socialist countries. And do look at Hans-Hermann Hoppe's libertarian defense of monarchy (a web search ought to turn it up.)] What about market bureacracy? a corporation in essence is no diffrent from a goverment bureacracy, both are structured from the top dwn, and act for the benefit of a privileged minority and not their base. "Conservatives" have historicaly not een against central control but its largest supporters, imperial european powers, the US military machine, on and on and on have been most staunchly defended by conservatives. Indeed to "conservve" what is demanded by conservative ideologies requires a large level of force, direct or indirect. [To the extent a corporation starts displaying the vices of bureaucracy, so those who have dealings with it find their needs aren't met, it will normally lose ground to competitors. And it hasn't been conservatives who have expanded the size of government - number of functionaries, breadth of responsibilities, etc. Were FDR and LBJ conservatives?] The logic behind this is flawed, would people be 'relying on goverment instead of themselves" if it is goverment that controls the fire department, police department etc? why would this be any diffrent with welfare or any other social program? Besides the fact that those on welfare do not result from "moral chaos" but the dysfunction of the capitalist economy. On the last 35 years of "interventionist liberalism" leading in a reductin of poverty, education etc is another falsehood, do you have anything to back this claim? internationalist liberalism does have its terrors, lack of reform however is not one of them. [The difference between fire department etc. and social programs is the breadth of the interests in which govt is involved. Does government take care of a few specific points which it is specially qualified to deal with, or does it have bottom-line responsibility for the general well-being of every individual? On the last point look at the Statistical Abstract of the United States. There's also a volume on US historical statistics also put out by the government that compiles similar figures for much longer periods. They're interesting reading.] --- end of quote --- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Nov 26 15:07:19 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4F81B48A40 for ; Sun, 26 Nov 2000 15:06:55 -0500 (EST) Received: from doc.Dartmouth.ORG (doc.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.27]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA05346 for ; Sun, 26 Nov 2000 15:06:54 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <664828@doc.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 26 Nov 2000 15:05:31 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: Real-life illustration of technological reason (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: OR Rather nice that the two appeared back-to-back. The quotes are very suggestive. One thing they show is how in liberalism the self, for the benefit of which the whole liberal enterprise was undertaken, disappears. We already knew that values are not part of the active choosing self, since in liberalism they are to be freely chosen by the self. The quotes show that personality is not part of the self either, it's something the self constructs to present to others and so achieve its goals. In the end it seems the liberal self becomes at most a vanishingly small point of pure arbitrariness. On another front, I've revised the human rights pages and they've started to be listed by search engines and get hits. So if you had any comments on the revised versions I'd be grateful. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://human-rights.20m.com From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Nov 27 14:59:14 2000 Return-Path: Received: from msx3.delphi.com (msx3.delphi.com [199.93.4.213]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D3BC148B38 for ; Mon, 27 Nov 2000 14:59:03 -0500 (EST) Received: from PickupDirectory by msx3.delphi.com with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2650.21) id VCYB921V; Mon, 27 Nov 2000 14:44:05 -0500 From: To: Subject: New Page! Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 14:44:04 -0500 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Message-Id: <20001127195903.D3BC148B38@mail1.panix.com> Status: OR Thanks for your note. As to religious morality, it seems to me there are issues that can't be avoided. Any social order is going to be based on a common understanding of man and the world and is going to have ultimate principles that everyone accepts, at least everyone who is going to be treated as someone with something legitimate to say. If that's so - and I think it's as true of a liberal, libertarian, socialist or whatever social order as any other - I don't know how much is added by calling the common understanding "religious." Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu www.freespeech.org/antitechnocrat and pages.about.com/antitechnocrat From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Nov 29 12:49:00 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 21EAD48C2D for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:48:46 -0500 (EST) Received: from doc.Dartmouth.ORG (doc.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.27]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA23474 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:48:45 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <705337@doc.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 29 Nov 2000 12:47:17 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: [Paleo] Chronicles, RIP? (forwarded from paleo@egroups.com) To: jk@panix.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: O --- CP wrote: The statement of ownership in the current issue lists an average of 5,626 subscribers with a total distribution of 6,536. --- end of quote --- That's more than the New Criterion or Public Interest have, at least last time I looked, and Chronicles puts out more issues than either. It doesn't take that many subscribers to get ideas in play, depending on who the subscribers are. Naturally it would be nice if there were 10 or 100 times as many. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://human-rights.20m.com From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Nov 29 12:54:25 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1BE0A8F0E for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:54:25 -0500 (EST) Received: from doc.Dartmouth.ORG (doc.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.27]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA29096 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:54:24 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <705456@doc.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 29 Nov 2000 12:52:57 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: more on Gore (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: Gore himself said a few months back, to the effect that evil is coiled around everyone's heart and it has to be uprooted. He means, of course, not evil as we understand it, but that everyone is deep inside a racist, fascist etc. and it's his job to change that. --- end of quote --- This is a central point. I am reminded of the last ECUSA convention and the todo about how we are all recovering racists in need of further healing. Liberalism is at odds with human nature, because man does not live by hedonism and formal logic alone but also by particular beliefs and loyalties. Once liberalism is accepted though its opposition to human nature is a great strength because it makes all men and all human societies hopelessly sinful and in need of salvation through liberalism. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Nov 29 12:54:49 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 45CA48F56 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:54:49 -0500 (EST) Received: from doc.Dartmouth.ORG (doc.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.27]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA27555 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:54:48 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <705463@doc.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 29 Nov 2000 12:53:22 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: good newsmax column (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O Interesting comment on Cohen, and I think it's probably right that unruly Republicans had their effect. My own impression though is that what's probably at the back of his mind is not an effective self-organizing self-conscious rebellion of the white middle classes but rather unpleasantness, squabbling, delay and wasted energy in the inevitable advance of the liberal cause. I think the liberals are rightly confident in their ability eventually to control overall public understandings of events and to disrupt opposition before it becomes effective. Cohen just thinks that taking care is a necessary part of the process. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Nov 29 12:55:16 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id ADF1D90B3 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:55:15 -0500 (EST) Received: from doc.Dartmouth.ORG (doc.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.27]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA19587 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:55:15 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <705468@doc.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 29 Nov 2000 12:53:48 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: more on Gore (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: Here is the psychology of the Satanic rebellion against reality --- end of quote --- I think that's it really. The attitude of Clinton and Gore toward truth and their political success are related. The rule seems to be that whoever is best and most convincing at constructing reality wins, and pathological liars have a natural advantage in that game. The reason that is the game is that everyone wants a constructed reality, because they don't accept that there is anything good at the heart of what actually is. C and G are representative men. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Nov 29 12:55:52 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E4C58FDF for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:55:51 -0500 (EST) Received: from doc.Dartmouth.ORG (doc.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.27]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA25549 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:55:50 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <705483@doc.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 29 Nov 2000 12:54:24 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: the slickmeister takes the cake again (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: being impeached is like being a homosexual ... Thus according to Clinton, officials enforcing the basic laws of the land are equated with bigots, while the lawbreaker is like a discriminated-against minority. --- end of quote --- And thus according to NR Online those who object to homosexuality are bigots, and those who identify with it are a discriminated-against minority. Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Nov 29 12:56:06 2000 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by mail1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9D35E48976 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:56:05 -0500 (EST) Received: from doc.Dartmouth.ORG (doc.dartmouth.org [129.170.16.27]) by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (8.9.3+DND/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA31710 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:56:05 -0500 (EST) Message-id: <705487@doc.Dartmouth.ORG> Date: 29 Nov 2000 12:54:39 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: the slickmeister takes the cake again (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69) To: jk@panix.com Status: O --- You wrote: I think you've misunderstood. NR was characterizing Clinton's inference, not making that inference itself. --- end of quote --- It seems to me they rejected the inference but implicitly accepted the characterization of the situation regarding homosexuals. Admittedly it would have gotten complicated if they had tried explicitly to reject both the inference and the characterization. Suppose though Haider addressed Waffen SS vets and said "after what I've been through I know what it's like to be unfairly maligned." Would the other NR (New Republic) have said "Thus according to Haider, EU officials standing up for the basic commitment to human rights are equated with political bigots, while the antidemocratic extremist is like a discriminated-against minority"? Of course not, because the other NR thinks SS vets are bad guys too. Jim
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