From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Fri Oct 11 13:18:32 2002 Return-Path:From: James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Message-Id: <200210111918.PAA00556@mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU> Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 15:18:26 -0400 To: la Subject: Re: Status: RO There are a lot of possible interpretations. One is that it's easiest to generate answers if you have principles that answer all questions in advance. It follows that the most talkative people on the net are going to be like that. Also, if you're in a liberal environment, which we all are, it's hard to avoid being a liberal unless you have principles of that kind. Then too, marginalizing people as much as conservatives are marginalized corrupts them intellectually because nothing they say matters. And maybe everyone is corrupted that way today because nothing anyone says matters, to the extent public discussion is more or less a front and public issues are decided by institutions and their interests and by political manipulation rather than debate. Jim = = = Original message = = = What do you make of the fact that they display the very loss of rationality that you, more than anyone, have identified as the mark of liberalism? ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Tue Oct 22 10:13:20 2002 Return-Path: Received: by doc.Dartmouth.ORG (Blitz.Dartmouth.ORG) via SMTP from pool-141-157-214-158.ny325.east.verizon.net [141.157.214.158] for lawrence.auster@att.net,... id <16915784> 22 Oct 2002 12:08:14 EDT X-Mailer: ePrompter Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 12:08:00 -0400 To: la Subject: Re: What is Islam Status: RO Yes, I remember the conversation. I think at the time I said that even though Islam has bad tendencies it's a religion and not an ideology. The fact it has a holy book and an array of precedents (hadith) that those who promulgated them believed in wholeheartedly and modelled their lives on and the fact that it has actually sustained huge numbers of people for 1400 years means that it doesn't have the limitless logical inhumanity and intrinsic mendacity of a totalitarian ideology. Khomeini for example was not and could not view himself as being the ultimate standard in the sense that the communist party or the Fuehrer were the ultimate standards. For all that I agree that Islam does tend toward narrowness, inhumanity, aggression, extermination etc. in a way Christianity does not and that the tendency becomes particularly strong under stress. jk ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Thu Oct 31 10:20:03 2002 From: James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Message-Id: <200210311719.MAA23558@mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU> Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 11:47:20 -0500 To: la Subject: Re: Fw: more on America and tradition Status: RO To be pessimistic is not the same as not to care for something. You wrote an article proposing that America had died. I take the notion more to heart than you do. That doesn't mean I'm pleased by the idea. It seems to me though that the flaws that have led to the death of America--understood as a overarching concept that is also a concrete political order tied to a particular people, place, and culture--were intrinsic. That doesn't mean there was never anything good about America. It's just that she is not the highest standard. In particular, the public aspects of America--the Constitution and Federal Government--are not earthly absolutes. All men and institutions are flawed after all, and none of them last forever. Also, the formal political order doesn't outrank utterly the society it governs. I admire the Founding Fathers greatly. I do find them--and the Constitution--more admirable than lovable. Even so, there is a great deal of genuine good in ideals like liberty and equality when taken as they took them in a limited sense and with a background understanding of objective Christian and classical moral order. Those ideals call each of us to think about what he should do and pursue it actively, and to respect others and cooperate with them in pursuit of what all recognize as good. They inspired many good men including my ancestors to do many good things. They are what we have had. Still there was something missing, an explicit recognition of some concrete authoritative standard of truth and goodness. With that thing the system would not have been at all what it was but without it we've gotten--quite naturally I think--what we have now. So what now? Your proposal that America has died could of course be wrong, as could my notion that America as a formally particularist--confess ional or ethnic--state would not be America (I think a formally particularist America is also utterly unrealistic). Also, there's nothing at hand to replace "America" as a political ideal, standard and object of loyalty. So to me it makes sense politically to assume things can be turned around, that maybe the Republic or the real America or whatever can be restored with some reforms that supply or make up for what has been missing. You don't rush things that have been valuable into the grave. So a lot of the stuff on lewrockwell.com does seem destructive to me. I think though that one should also take seriously the possibility that the way things are is the way things will be and think about where to go in that event. So I suppose the direct answer to the question is that I am attached to America, among other things, but as to American public institutions and ideals when you stand back and look at things soberly the attachment is probably mostly in retrospect. Things die, and I think you have to live more by what is alive, what lasts and what is more important. jk ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Tue Nov 5 13:12:34 2002 Return-Path: From: James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Message-Id: <200211052012.PAA29676@mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU> Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 11:21:27 -0500 To: Sk Subject: Fwd: FW: Hello Status: RO Hello Derek, I don't think Confucius influences us in the West much at all except I suppose by standing for a different social ideal. Not many people care about though except as something to be explained away. Confucius is of course most influential in the East where people appeal to him no doubt for a variety of purposes. I think there he stands for an ideal of loyalty, integrity and consciousness of social obligations. No doubt his version of the Golden Rule enters into the understanding of what those obligations are, how they are justified, and how they should be carried out. jk ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Tue Nov 5 13:23:23 2002 From: James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Message-Id: <200211052023.PAA13218@mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU> Received: by doc.Dartmouth.ORG (Blitz.Dartmouth.ORG) via SMTP from pool-141-157-215-36.ny325.east.verizon.net [141.157.215.36] for mardilee_99@yahoo.com,... id <17548602> 05 Nov 2002 13:45:06 EST X-Mailer: ePrompter Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 11:28:00 -0500 To: ma Subject: Re: In regard to your anti-feminism article Status: RO Hi Mary, Thanks for your note. A lot of the favorable responses I get are from women. I think that's natural, since the thing feminism destroys -- human connectedness in line with how people are and without a lot of theoretical overlays -- is something women are usually more conscious of than men. I certainly agree that feminism isn't an isolated problem but is part of a package that includes the other things you mention. As for my other views, you can look at the stuff at http://www.counterrevoluti on.net/kalb_texts/. Best wishes, Jim Kalb ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Nov 14 07:34:53 2002 Date: 14 Nov 2002 09:34:45 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Reply-To: kalb@aya.yale.edu Subject: Re: Fw: more on America and tradition To: jkalb@nyx.net X-Spam-Status: No, hits=1.6 required=5.0 tests=FROM_ENDS_IN_NUMS,OUTLOOK_FW_MSG,SPAM_PHRASE_00_01 version=2.43 X-Spam-Level: * Status: O To be pessimistic is not the same as not to care for something. You said America had died. I take the notion more to heart than you do. That doesn't mean I'm pleased by the idea. It seems to me though that the flaws that have led to the death of America--understood as a overarching concept that is also a concrete political order tied to a particular people, place, and culture--were intrinsic. That doesn't mean there was never anything good about America. It's just that she is not the highest standard. In particular, the public aspects of America--the Constitution and Federal Government--are not earthly absolutes. All men and institutions are flawed after all, and none of them last forever. Also, the formal political order doesn't outrank utterly the society it governs. I admire the Founding Fathers greatly. I do find them--and the Constitution--more admirable than lovable. Even so, there is a great deal of genuine good in ideals like liberty and equality when taken as they took them in a limited sense and with a background understanding of objective Christian and classical moral order. Those ideals call each of us to think about what he should do and pursue it actively, and to respect others and cooperate with them in pursuit of what all recognize as good. They inspired many good men including my ancestors to do many good things. They are what we have had. Still there was something missing, an explicit recognition of some concrete authoritative standard of truth and goodness. With that thing the system would not have been at all what it was but without it we've gotten--quite naturally I think--what we have now. So what now? Your proposal that America has died could of course be wrong, as could my notion that America as a formally particularist--confess ional or ethnic--state would not be America (I think a formally particularist America is also utterly unrealistic). Also, there's nothing at hand to replace "America" as a political ideal, standard and object of loyalty. So to me it makes sense politically to assume things can be turned around, that maybe the Republic or the real America or whatever can be restored with some reforms that supply or make up for what has been missing. You don't rush things that have been valuable into the grave. So a lot of the stuff on lewrockwell.com does seem destructive to me. I think though that one should also take seriously the possibility that the way things are is the way things will be and think about where to go in that event. So I suppose the direct answer to the question is that I am attached to America, among other things, but as to American public institutions and ideals when you stand back and look at things soberly the attachment is probably mostly in retrospect. Things die, and I think you have to live more by what is alive, what lasts and what is more important. jk ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Nov 14 07:35:27 2002 Date: 14 Nov 2002 09:35:22 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Subject: Re: (forwarded from James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org) To: jkalb@nyx.net X-Spam-Status: No, hits=2.5 required=5.0 tests=FROM_ENDS_IN_NUMS,SPAM_PHRASE_05_08 version=2.43 X-Spam-Level: ** Status: RO I'm not sure "concrete historical America" is the right expression. I think I value the formal political aspects of the American union less than you do. I don't view those things as the whole of America or of the traditions that people have lived by in America. So for example if the North and the South have come to be essentially opposed societies that loathe each other, and the only way to keep things together would be for one or the other to demolish and remake the social order of the other by force, then to my mind if one side tries to separate by procedures that seems consistent with the understandings on which the common government was founded in the first place, it seems to me they shouldn't be forced to stay in. ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Thu Nov 21 05:55:32 2002 From: James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Message-Id: <200211211255.HAA17248@mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU> Received: by doc.Dartmouth.ORG (Blitz.Dartmouth.ORG) via SMTP from pool-141-157-212-132.ny325.east.verizon.net [141.157.212.132] for lawrence.auster@att.net,... id <18453270> 21 Nov 2002 07:55:19 EST X-Mailer: ePrompter Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 7:17:19 -0500 To: la Subject: Re: america more Status: O As I think I've said, my view is that as a matter of theoretical analysis, America looks dead. As a practical matter, (1) the analysis might be wrong, (2) you shouldn't rush to turn off life support, and (3) you need some focus for action. Therefore your letter to Warner makes perfect sense to me. On the other hand, it also seems to me right to think about what it makes sense to build toward if it's true that America has decisively become a universal polyglot empire. jk ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Sun Nov 24 07:37:33 2002 Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 9:37:07 -0500 To: usn_pr@msn.com Subject: Re: How is all this possible? Status: RO Hello! The answer I think is that what controls and limits what the government does is less anything written like the Constitution than the general understanding among influential people what makes sense. As to living a normal Christian life I think people have to find a niche somewhere. They can't just go with the flow. jk ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Sat Nov 30 05:29:16 2002 From: James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 1:58:45 -0500 To: la Subject: Re: Status: O Pre-60s liberalism mostly had to do with redistribution of income, post-60s with redistribution of other aspects of social position. Both propose comprehensive bureaucratic administration as the way to achieve fairness and rationality. There was a lot of overlap -- Brown v. Board was pre-60s, the War on Poverty post-60s. Also, antidiscrimination measures are commonly justified as a way to redress economic inequalities. jk ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Dec 1 06:36:58 2002 Date: 01 Dec 2002 08:36:55 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Reply-To: kalb@aya.yale.edu Subject: Re: Anything for December 1 issue? To: da Status: RO Anyway -- I think the idea on immigration is that self-government and good social order are difficult to achieve. They require common habits, attitudes, loyalties, memories etc. that enable people to trust each other, deliberate together reasonably, make common decisions and work together freely and productively toward worthwhile goals. As a result, good government, a good society or whatever can't be just a matter of abstract principles that any random group of people can sign on to and put into effect. Another way to put it is that if you want a free and tolerably well-run society you have to have a common culture. Culture isn’t a set of principles that can be stated and taught though, it’s mostly something people take for granted because they’ve grown up with it and it has made them what they are. It requires particular loyalties and attachments and a sense of “us” and “them.” Such things are part of a normal human life and are therefore good. As to immigration, what all this means is that economics isn’t the key. What’s important -- especially today, when the tendency is toward dissolution anyway -- is the effect on Americans as a people, on our habits, common understandings, mutual loyalties, and so on. Too many different people from too many backgrounds, especially when maintaining ties to the old country is easy and the idea of common culture is in disfavor, and we won’t have an American people at all. What we’ll have will be a conglomerati on that can’t possibly rule itself and will inevitably become the clients and subjects of some small ruling class that dominates the government bureaucracy. I think something like the foregoing is viewed as a sort of pons asinorum for understanding the present situation. If you’re wrong about it you’ll be wrong about a lot of other things, because you won’t understand basic principles. Jim From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Sun Dec 1 18:41:37 2002 From: James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 14:15:22 -0500 To: da Subject: Re: Anything for December 1 issue? Status: O Hi Dawn, I don't think the idea is that ethnic homogeneity guarantees anything, there are many possible problems, but that radical continuously shifting ethnic heterogeneity makes well-developed social standards of any kind, and therefore free public life, impossible. The claim isn't that ethnicity is everything or even the most important thing, but only that it plays a role that can't be overlooked. It is the latter claim that current attitudes toward immigration deny. Jim ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Tue Dec 3 05:04:10 2002 From: James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Message-Id: <200212031204.HAA07046@mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU> Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 23:46:09 -0500 To: dawneden@panix.com Subject: Re: Home o'genius Status: O Nihilistic right-wingers seem often to become alarmingly racist and antisemitic. Still, speculation is no way to settle anything. More to the point, I think it's a mistake to try too hard to ferret out racism, antisemitism and whatnot. It seems to me that there aren't many people in the world who aren't bigoted in one way or another, and focusing on one style of bigotry as a sort of supreme moral pollution, thereby giving all other styles a free pass by comparison, strikes me as distorting. It seems to me better to go directly to the question of what's good and bad, what leads to a better life for people generally and what doesn't. Also, it seems to me that some sort of preference for what's familiar and what's one's own seems to me a necessity for normal political and moral life, and that kind of preference can count as racism these days. jk ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Tue Dec 3 05:47:01 2002 From: James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 0:27:26 -0500 To: jg Subject: Re: Status: RO I read it. The facts he mentions are well worth publicizing. It seems to me a mistake though to take the UN human rights documents as an ultimate standard. There are a lot of odd things in them that I think deserve to be ignored, interpreted away or whatever. Also, I think there can't help but be problems with a set universally compulsory code because such a code can't be based on any particular social or cultural understanding and so will likely proclaim the viewpoint of a self-regarding elite that thinks it should run everything. As to Islam I think it is enough to publicize the acts -- e.g., cruel punishments, religious oppression, jihad, threats to assassinate UN rapporteurs, etc. and then make critical remarks about them, including commenting on their gross deviation from international standards and the actual practice of other countries. I would use the human rights documents in a symbolic way in accordance with their persuasiveness, as one sign among others of what's accepted internationally, and not in a way that suggests they're authoritative in themselves. jk ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Fri Dec 6 15:58:01 2002 Return-Path: From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Reply-To: kalb@aya.yale.edu Subject: Re: To: J Status: O Hello! Thanks for your note.I certainly agree that dissipation and loss of moral freedom are basic problems. I'm not sure you can get by them though by trying harder let alone legislating austerity. It seems to me the basic problems are metaphysical - what kind of world are we in and what can we know about it. Because if nothing's available to us beyond the objects and methods of inquiry of modern natural science then it's really true that appearances are all there is and all we can do is try to manipulate them for the sake of any purposes we happen to set for ourselves. jk From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Tue Dec 10 05:14:45 2002 From: Jim Kalb To: woodst@sunysuffolk.edu Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 07:13:11 -0500 Status: RO Hi! Glad to see you continue to raise the issue of the universal state vs. multiple partial authorities. I think it's THE political issue today. That and God I suppose -- the universal state substitutes for the cosmos, so you really can't have multiple authorities and no final human despot unless people think that there's already a cosmos with binding moral principles even if there's no despot to create one by his fiat. The neocons, Neuhaus and whoever, sometimes talk about the importance of "mediating institutions," "civil society" or whatever. They conceive those things as purely contractual though, which reduces them to the level of individual wills. To say there can't be any discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, sex and whatnot is to say that in civil society only voluntary contractual arrangements among interchangeable individuals are going to be allowed. Pure contract can't stand up to the absolute state and absolute individual will though. It's not enough. Hope all is well with you and yours. Jim From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Dec 12 14:31:47 2002 Date: 12 Dec 2002 16:31:36 EST From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69) Reply-To: kalb@aya.yale.edu Subject: Re: Nice To: Cog Status: RO Thanks for the note! It seems to me we should stay in the UN but object to things we find objectionable and say forthrightly what our objections are. That was basically the conclusion of the human rights article. The UN as an organization is dangerous because it mostly represents the interest of (1) its constituents, who are mostly a collection of tyrants, and (2) itself, which is tyrannical as well because there's really no one for it to be answerable to. Still, it's somewhat of a forum, and we should make our pitch where there's a forum. jk From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Dec 13 17:17:15 2002 To: la Subject: Re: Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15; format=flowed From: Jim Kalb Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 19:15:38 -0500 User-Agent: Opera M2 7.0 build 2349 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=EMAIL_ATTRIBUTION,QUOTED_EMAIL_TEXT,RCVD_IN_OSIRUSOFT_COM, SIGNATURE_SHORT_DENSE,SPAM_PHRASE_00_01,USER_AGENT, X_OSIRU_DUL,X_OSIRU_DUL_FH version=2.43 X-Spam-Level: Status: O > Well, the Catholics could be as anti-national as the Jews, and there are > a lot more Catholics. > They can certainly be anti-nationalist in the sense of rejecting the nation state as a supreme and unique earthly authority.They can't consistently be anti-national though in the sense of melting everything down into one, because they don't have a comprehensive law for all aspects of life. For that reason they need human authorities other than religion - the family, particular culture, various political groupings etc. All those need to be limited and relative though so the Church can exert some sort of general supervisory influence. A world state would be worse from their point of view than the nation-state. -- Jim Kalb From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Sat Dec 14 08:28:06 2002 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) From: James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Message-Id: <200212141528.KAA27910@mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU> Received: by doc.Dartmouth.ORG (Blitz.Dartmouth.ORG) via SMTP from pool-141-157-216-101.ny325.east.verizon.net [141.157.216.101] for upstream-list@cycad.com,... id <19702085> 14 Dec 2002 10:28:00 EST X-Mailer: ePrompter Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 10:28:01 -0500 To: upstream-list@cycad.com Subject: Re: [Upstream] Trent Lott did enormous damage X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=6.9 required=5.0 tests=FROM_ENDS_IN_NUMS,MSG_ID_ADDED_BY_MTA_2,NO_REAL_NAME, RCVD_IN_OSIRUSOFT_COM,SPAM_PHRASE_03_05,X_OSIRU_DUL_FH, X_OSIRU_SPAM_SRC version=2.43 X-Spam-Flag: YES Status: O = = = Original message = = = Americans will remember Lott because he will be the majority leader at the time of the next election, and the news industry will make sure Americans don't forget this incident. Yes, people have a short memory, which is exactly why the news industry will remind them about Lott's statement. Lott's statement is like giving gasoline to an arsonist. ----- Original Message ----- It doesn't depend on whether he remains majority leader and we won't have to wait until the next election. This will be a reason for not only the Democrats but for everyone with an ax to grind to demand convincing proof of good faith on racial issues from the Republicans. No amount of proof will be enough because everyone on some level knows good faith is impossible. So it'll be the same prove-you're-not-a-racist treadmill as before only squared. I wouldn't blame Lott too severely. On this issue all public figures have to live a lie and it's hard to live a lie year after year. The consequences of faltering aren't the same for everyone of course. So it's less like giving gasoline to an arsonist than it is like striking a spark in a world permanently soaked with gasoline in which eventually a spark is inevitable. jk ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Dec 15 06:38:45 2002 Return-Path: To: upstream-list@cycad.com Subject: Re: [Upstream] Sex Cannibals Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15; format=flowed From: Jim Kalb Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 08:38:34 -0500 Status: RO I'm not sure why Reuters thinks it can just assume that this should be treated as a crime. Assisted suicide is the coming thing, and if a woman has the right to control her body the same should apply to someone who kills himself. I doubt that Reuters would object to any of that. But if those things are accepted, the victim had the right to choose death, the perp had the right to help him, and once the victim was dead his remains could be disposed of in accordance with his final wishes. So where's the problem? Why shouldn't the perp be treated as a hero of human rights and free expression and get a MacArthur "genius" award? jk On Sat, 14 Dec 2002 18:50:34 -0800, Jim Boyd wrote: > News from the German branch of the Democratic Party: > > > Police Scan Alleged Internet Sex Cannibal's Videos > Thu Dec 12,10:01 AM ET -- Jim Kalb From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Dec 16 16:49:46 2002 Return-Path: Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 18:49:06 -0500 To: Je Subject: Re: What's Wrong With Human Rights Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15; format=flowed References: From: Jim Kalb Message-ID: Status: O Thanks for the note! I don't know the detailed answer to your question but you're not completely off-base. The failed Bricker Amendment of the early '50s was intended to deal with the problem you point to. The Senate has been comparatively reluctant to ratify human rights treaties, and when they do ratify one they normally insert reservations intended to preserve US constitutional principles. Still, courts try to preserve the coherence of the law, and US courts have some sympathy for left/liberal causes, so you have to expect that one way or another the more international human rights law there is the more it will affect American law. jk -- Jim Kalb From kalb@aya.yale.edu Thu Dec 19 05:35:17 2002 Return-Path: To: ro Subject: Re: IF's advice to DH about criticizing Christianity References: <005f01c2a70a$d05afa50$b9081342@IanFletcher> Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15; format=flowed From: Jim Kalb Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 07:34:50 -0500 In-Reply-To: <005f01c2a70a$d05afa50$b9081342@IanFletcher> User-Agent: Opera7.0/Win32 M2 BETA2 build 2577 X-Spam-Level: Status: RO The normalization of homosexuality, or rather the abolition of the concept of sexual normality, reflects a view of material existence as raw material to be used for whatever purposes we happen to have. Things have no meaning other than the meanings we put into them. The Incarnation -- God made flesh -- requires that flesh be able to express deity in a way that is recognizable to us. For that to be possible the human body must have meaning and purpose that we recognize rather than create. Otherwise flesh could express only our own arbitrary interpretations. Sexuality is central to the expressiveness of the human body. If *sexuality* does not have meaning and purpose that precede our choices it's hard to see how the human body could. The "progressive" view of sexuality, that it's a free human construction, is thus at odds with the Incarnation. It reflects a view of material reality that makes it impossible for material reality to express anything but what we choose to view it as expressing. jk -- Jim Kalb From James.B.Kalb.69@alum.dartmouth.org Thu Dec 19 17:25:17 2002 Return-Path: To: la Subject: Re: =?Windows-1252?Q?Re:_=5BView_from_the_Right=5D_New_Comment_Posted_to_'Is_?= =?Windows-1252?Q?segregationism_=93bigotry=94=3F'?= X-Spam-Level: *** Status: O I think the facts are as I have stated them. My understanding (from my recollection of Epstein's book) is that even in the South there was no particular bump up in the rate of black advance after the 64 CRA except in certain areas. Epstein suggests that the reason for the improvement in those areas was that making discrimination illegal undercut the practice of suppressing black enterprise and enforcing separation through extralegal violence. Obviously things weren't great in 1948 or 1963. Things aren't great today either, and part of the reason for the serious problems we have today is the direction the civil rights movement took. To my mind the question is what the best way to go forward would have been. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to think a continuation of the Booker T approach might have been best -- retaining voluntary separation and conceivably some separation in public facilities as required by custom, combined with more support for black education, police protection for blacks, and continual reduction in the more insulting aspects of segregation. Maybe all that would have been impossible or bad for one reason or another. But the integrationist approach -- saying blacks and whites are the same and we're not going to allow them any separation and say all differences are illegitimate and due to racism -- has very serious problems as well. And people who look at the statistics have a hard time showing it had any special economic benefit. jk ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Feb 11 17:59:23 2003 Return-path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.11.6+3.4W/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h1BHxMq05319 for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 17:59:22 GMT 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 MAA29202; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 12:59:19 -0500 (EST) From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Message-ID: <200302111759.MAA29202@mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU> Received: by doc.Dartmouth.ORG (Blitz.Dartmouth.ORG) via SMTP from pool-141-157-214-221.ny325.east.verizon.net [141.157.214.221] for paleo-right@yahoogroups.com,... id <22713493> 11 Feb 2003 12:59:17 EST MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 12:59:17 -0500 To: paleo-right@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [paleo-right] Roger Scruton on conservatism Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15; format=flowed References: <1B5DAB9E.76817030.374EB743@aol.com> <200302040545540974.3BA242C7@smtp.naxs.net> <200302040837390100.090BE18A@smtp.naxs.net> <200302040943150990.0947F404@smtp.naxs.net> Status: OR <200302110839080156.052BC5AE@smtp.naxs.net> From: Jim Kalb Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <200302110839080156.052BC5AE@smtp.naxs.net> User-Agent: Opera7.0/Win32 M2 build 2637 On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 08:39:08 -0500, Seth Williamson wrote: >> ...And as to the third sentence, it seems he thinks the cultivated >> reasoner has no reason to do what he does not please to do... > > Well, all I can say is, I can't see how this follows. I think your cast of mind and mine are too different to discuss these issues productively, at least by email. > I think I disagree with you about the extent to which we reason our way > to moral action. We KNOW things are right or wrong--we don't reason our > way toward them. And that's all we need. Agreed that by and large in practice explicit reasoning plays a subordinate role in deciding how to act morally as it does in deciding how to do other practical things. I do think though that if we believe some line of conduct can't be justified at all but must be viewed simply as something some of us sometimes feel like doing it loses authority for us and that affects what we do especially if contrary motives are in play. -- Jim Kalb View from the Right: http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/ From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Feb 11 22:55:04 2003 Return-path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.11.6+3.4W/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h1BMt3T09048 for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 22:55:03 GMT 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 RAA06427; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 17:55:02 -0500 (EST) Received: by doc.Dartmouth.ORG (Blitz.Dartmouth.ORG) via SMTP from pool-141-157-214-221.ny325.east.verizon.net [141.157.214.221] for paleo-right@yahoogroups.com,... id <22735988> 11 Feb 2003 17:54:59 EST MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 17:55:00 -0500 To: paleo-right@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [paleo-right] Roger Scruton on conservatism Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15; format=flowed References: <1B5DAB9E.76817030.374EB743@aol.com> <200302040545540974.3BA242C7@smtp.naxs.net> <200302040837390100.090BE18A@smtp.naxs.net> <200302040943150990.0947F404@smtp.naxs.net> <200302111759.MAA29202@mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU> <1044991768.3280.24.camel@libranet> From: Jim Kalb Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <1044991768.3280.24.camel@libranet> User-Agent: Opera7.0/Win32 M2 build 2637 Status: OR On 11 Feb 2003 14:29:27 -0500, Seth Williamson wrote: >> Agreed that by and large in practice explicit reasoning plays a >> subordinate role in deciding how to act morally as it does in deciding >> how to do other practical things. I do think though that if we believe >> some line of conduct can't be justified at all but must be viewed simply >> as something some of us sometimes feel like doing it loses authority for >> us and that affects what we do especially if contrary motives are in >> play. > > You can always show that it's at least reasonable to do the right > thing. To that extent it can always be justified. If the other guy > accepts the same axioms you do, then you can prove it. You seem to suggest that axioms are simply arbitrary though. Why should that be? And why think that all reasoning can be reduced to axioms? It seems to me that not much besides mathematics can be fully formalized. For other things no conclusions that matter can be drawn without the help of judgment, experience, common sense and the like. Those things don't have axioms worth mentioning -- remember Pascal's distinction between the spirit of geometry and the spirit of finesse. Does that mean that outside mathematics nothing can be justified, because it can't be based through clear logical steps on universally obvious axioms? (The best writer on the spirit of finesse, although he doesn't call it that, is J.H. Newman in his Grammar of Assent.) > It seems to me that your line of reasoning, though, breaks down when > confronted by--for example--the Nietschean umbermensch. At least as far > as "proving" anything goes. If the superman's interior life truly > surpasses our own in some sense, then we a) couldn't know it for a fact, > and b) he might reasonably claim to be beyond good and evil as we know > it. You can also break down reasoning by confronting it with Cartesian doubt. Maybe I'm just a brain in a vat with electrodes supplying all my sensations. Maybe you're just an AI program. Maybe (from your point of view) it's the other way round. Maybe anything. Are all these assumptions equally reasonable? Certainly if I were convinced it was all so you'd have trouble proving the contrary to me. > It is considerations like these that have made me believe that attempts > to "prove" the rightness or wrongness of given actions have, at the very > least, a limited utility. The great majority of human beings know > what's right and wrong in most situations that life presents. We sense, > whether we can prove it or not, that the weightiest ethical demands of > life are rooted objectively somehow in a transcendent order. Limited utility is not the same as no utility. If you hold, as Scruton apparently does, that there's literally no justification for common moral standards from the standpoint of the actor, I think you have very serious problems. That doesn't mean that I want to make actual morality depend wholly on demonstrations. -- Jim Kalb View from the Right: http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/ From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed Feb 12 02:08:16 2003 Return-path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.11.6+3.4W/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h1C28F307938 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 02:08:16 GMT 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 VAA22674; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 21:08:16 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 21:08:16 -0500 (EST) From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Message-ID: <200302120208.VAA22674@mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU> Received: by doc.Dartmouth.ORG (Blitz.Dartmouth.ORG) via SMTP from pool-141-157-214-221.ny325.east.verizon.net [141.157.214.221] for paleo-right@yahoogroups.com,... id <22745356> 11 Feb 2003 21:08:13 EST MIME-Version: 1.0 To: paleo-right@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [paleo-right] Roger Scruton on conservatism References: <1B5DAB9E.76817030.374EB743@aol.com> <200302040545540974.3BA242C7@smtp.naxs.net> <200302040837390100.090BE18A@smtp.naxs.net> <200302040943150990.0947F404@smtp.naxs.net> Status: OR <200302111759.MAA29202@mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU> <1044991768.3280.24.camel@libranet> <1045011905.4818.21.camel@libranet> Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15; format=flowed From: Jim Kalb Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 21:08:14 -0500 In-Reply-To: <1045011905.4818.21.camel@libranet> User-Agent: Opera7.0/Win32 M2 build 2637 On 11 Feb 2003 20:05:04 -0500, Seth Williamson wrote: > You complained--am I > remembering this right?--that it was his position that we can not KNOW > some moral propositions to be the truth? I believe strongly that we can > KNOW such things--but not that we can prove them. It seemed to me that > Scruton went no further than this. My complaint against Scruton is that in the essay you posted he says repeatedly and quite specifically that there is no first person justification for accepting (e.g.) ordinary sexual morality. As to the actor, they are simply matters of habit and prejudice. > Is this what Scruton is saying? That there is no justification for > moral standards? I took him merely to say that our "prejudices," as he > used the Burkean word, could not be justified with an iron-clad chain of > logic of the sort that would satisfy everyone. The latter is not what he says. He says "no first person justification." To the actor, they simply can't be justified at all although an external observer might notice that there are benefits to other people having such prejudices. He's a professional philosopher and it's a mistake to assume he's saying anything normal. -- Jim Kalb View from the Right: http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/ From kalb@aya.yale.edu Thu Feb 20 19:42:52 2003 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU [129.170.16.6]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.11.6+3.4W/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h1KJgp105486 for ; Thu, 20 Feb 2003 19:42:51 GMT 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 OAA01776; Thu, 20 Feb 2003 14:42:49 -0500 (EST) Received: by doc.Dartmouth.ORG (Blitz.Dartmouth.ORG) via SMTP from pool-141-157-217-214.ny325.east.verizon.net [141.157.217.214] for paleo-right@yahoogroups.com,... id <23266368> 20 Feb 2003 14:42:46 EST MIME-Version: 1.0 To: paleo-right@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [paleo-right] Re: Kalb, Tradition, Gottfried--Terminology, etc. References: 248901c2d542$e88a49d0$5f29fc80@generalissimo <200302180014.h1I0EpL11391@andros.alumniconnections.com> <008301c2d861$f9aa7380$5a29fc80@generalissimo> Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15; format=flowed From: Jim Kalb Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 14:42:45 -0500 In-Reply-To: <008301c2d861$f9aa7380$5a29fc80@generalissimo> User-Agent: Opera7.0/Win32 M2 build 2637 Status: OR [The quotations marked "DMcC" are from Daniel McCarthy, the rest is mine.] DMcC: "Institutions have been designed and redesigned along abstract formal principles from time immemorial. Chivalry, slavery, and marriage, to name three institutions, were all designed or redesigned in accordance with abstract principles such as valor and charity during the Middle Ages. Those abstract principles were all informed by Christian tradition; in an analogous way notions of freedom and equality today are informed by Enlightenment-Jacobin tradition (to put it crudely and in oversimplified terms). " It's certainly true that changing interests, conceptions, ideals and whatnot have led to changes in warrior codes, slavery, and marriage. It's harder to think of those institutions as "designed and redesigned" in the sense of modern attempts at social and cultural reconstruction. Some differences: 1. The means at the disposal of reformers. The modern bureaucratic state and its agents (e.g., bureaucratic corporate employers) have much more ability than previous governing institutions to force people to act in ways at odds with their own habits, attitudes and perceptions. The modern system of public education and modern mass communications also vastly increase the control of social life by reforming elites. 2. The extent and nature of the changes intended. An attempt categorically to abolish sex roles as a legitimate principle of social organization seems to me far more radical than an attempt to get rid of polygamy or divorce. The same could be said about multiculturalism, which is the demand -- backed by force of law -- that all particular cultural standards be deprived of public authority and replaced by rational universal standards defined by experts and bureaucrats. 3. The nature of the ultimate standards imposed. The standards of modern social constructivism are things like freedom, equality and efficiency. What's notable about them is their absolute abstraction and disembodiment, and so their liberation from every concrete image or tradition of the good life. What they tell us is that there are no objective substantive goods, only human desires, so what is desired must be taken to be what is good. Further, since all desires are equally desires their objects must be viewed as equally valid goods. The point of politics and morality then becomes the maximum equal furtherance of human desires. Such a standard is radically at odds with allegiance to any tradition. It demands total continuing reorganization of human life, with only market and bureacracy as legitimate principals of order. Nothing like that has ever been undertaken before the modern period. DMcC: "Though I'm not entirely sure that fundamentals, whatever they may be, cannot be fully articulted. The fundamentals of Christianity seem to be pretty well articulated and have in the past and are today used in constructing social and moral worlds." I don't think the fundamentals of Christianity can be fully articulated so that all you have to do is read the text that articulates them, grasp its meaning, and apply the principles rationally to whatever questions and situations come up. That seems closer to a description of fundamentalist Islam. I suppose there are forms of fundamentalist Protestantism that go pretty far in that direction too. I agree that people try to construct social and moral worlds based on such notions, but don't think the attempts are well-founded or successful. The view of most Christians, and of all Christendom during most of Christian history, is that articulations of principle are partial and incomplete ("we see through a glass, darkly") so there have to be an authoritative tradition, interpretive community, and teaching authority. Also, Christianity typically respects the relative autonomy of various aspects of social life. It recognizes a distinction between Christ and Caesar, for example, and unlike Islam doesn't have a universal comprehensive code of law. So except in special cases like monasteries or corruptions like liberation theology it tends to avoid social constructivism. DMcC: "Political fundamentals of various kinds have been articulated and used as a basis for designing and re-desiging nations, usually to terrible effect but in some cases -- maybe the US Constitution, maybe the Articles of Confederation -- to tolerably good ends." I think the reason the American efforts were more successful than more utopian attempts (for example, the French, Russian and Iranian revolutions) is that in America the principles applied extended and formalized previous practices, and they were not at all comprehensive. They allowed most social and political practices and attitudes to continue functioning on lines already established and to develop outside the direct control of the central power, which had quite limited responsibilities. DMcC: "what I wrote defends "specific tradition"-qua-"specific tradition," in that it is precisely the specific attributes of a tradition on which its worth and strength depend. So I would say that "specific tradition" in the abstract is more useful than plain "tradition" in the abstract, because the usefulness inheres not in the characteristics of tradition -- in which both abstract tradition and specific traditions necessarily share -- but in the characteristics of specificity." It sounds like you may be saying that tradition has no systematic relation to the good, beautiful and true, so that a particular tradition is worthwhile or not in the same way something you happen to hear on the radio might be. In other words, "tradition" (unlike say the market or expert consensus) should not be viewed as a social process through which various perceptions, experiences, enduring concerns etc. accumulate and become organized, concrete and usable in social attitudes and habits that make for a better life. Do I understand you correctly, or does that go too far? (In some ways I'm not sure of the exact nature and extent of our disagreement.) DMcC: "Part of the problem with favoring traditionalism over constructivism in the abstract is that the day may come when the only traditions left are those of the Left. We're more than half-way there already; for example, the consolidated welfare state is a living tradition in a way that old-fashioned federalism is not. " I don't see this as a basic problem. The Left characteristically wants to suppress habitual ways of doing things in favor of something rationally designed to promote equality and the fulfillment of human desires. Saying "hurrah for tradition" is therefore essentially antiLeftist and reactionary. Also, the traditions of the Left are always parasitic, and a society in which the only traditions left were those of the Left couldn't exist at all. Most of the traditions of any actual society will always be non-Leftist and even at odds with Leftist understandings and goals. As an example, the welfare state can't work unless most people are reasonably honest and most families are on the whole functional. That won't happen unless people accept and pass on informal understandings that they feel to be authoritative of what it is to be a good person, what family members and others owe each other, and so on. Such understandings are always traditional and particular, and they always have anti-PC aspects that from the viewpoint of the Left pollutes them and means they should be abolished. A tradition of honesty, for example, denigrates some people as "dishonest." Since "dishonesty" is the defense of the weak against oppression, such a tradition "blames the victim." Also, to avoid dishonesty requires some ideal of individual moral integrity. Such an ideal is essentially elitist, and for it to be concrete enough to be usable it must have some connection to a particular cultural background and so be racist as well according to the Left. DMcC: "To institute or re-institute federalism, even if done in the name of the dead tradition (which, while not quite the same thing as an "abstract formal principle," is close), would be closer to constructivism than to traditionalism." I agree that attempts to resuscitate dead traditions have a constructivist aspect, and my essay didn't deal with them. I said "The fight for tradition is not a matter of creating it or putting it on life support but of opposing the things that disrupt it, strengthening the things that support it, and providing ways for it to defend itself so it can grow back when it has been weakened. It is facilitating the natural functioning of human society." So I was treating "tradition" as a general constituent of any reasonably functional society rather than with the question of what to do about a particular tradition that's died or been suppressed. I would agree though that attempts to bring back something that has mostly died or to set up something new are sometimes necessary. It seems to me that in such cases one should respect what we know about how the world works, including the necessity of tradition. Federalism on the whole does so, because it limits central authority and so lets autonomous informal social authorities go their own way. DMcC: "My predisposition is to oppose conscious reconstructions of social institutions; I give tradition the benefit of the doubt over most princples. But there's a strict limit to how far one should go in that direction: the content of traditions and principles ultimately matters more than the mere fact they are either traditions (good) or abstract, quasi-rational principles (bad)." There are limits to everything, but in this case the limit seems difficult to describe strictly. Tradition in the end has to be justified by reference to truths that exceed it, but we can't know the truths at all well except through tradition and with its aid. jk From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Mar 2 00:37:19 2003 Return-Path: Received: from mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU (mailhub.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.6]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.11.6+3.4W/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h220bIw13831 for ; Sun, 2 Mar 2003 00:37:18 GMT 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 TAA30266; Sat, 1 Mar 2003 19:37:26 -0500 (EST) Received: by doc.Dartmouth.ORG (Blitz.Dartmouth.ORG) via SMTP from pool-141-157-215-205.ny325.east.verizon.net [141.157.215.205] for paleo-right@yahoogroups.com,... id <23804798> 01 Mar 2003 19:37:23 EST MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 19:37:17 -0500 To: paleo-right@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [paleo-right] Roger Scruton on conservatism Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed References: <1045332561.6214.91.camel@libranet> <1046558605.29093.48.camel@Xandros> From: Jim Kalb Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <1046558605.29093.48.camel@Xandros> User-Agent: Opera7.02/Win32 M2 build 2668 Status: OR On 01 Mar 2003 17:43:25 -0500, Seth Williamson wrote: > "And Burke’s provocative defense, in this connection, of 'prejudice'--by > which he meant the set of beliefs and ideas that arise instinctively in > social beings, and which reflect the root experiences of social > life-—was a revelation of something that until then I had entirely > overlooked. Burke brought home to me that our most necessary beliefs may > be both unjustified and unjustifiable from our own perspective, and that > the attempt to justify them will lead merely to their loss." > > The key phrase here seems to be "from our own perspective." As an Orthodox Christian you have a perspective to rely on that is not your own. I don't think that's true of Scruton. He's a "Godless conservative." (I should say that as a non-EO I have a higher opinion of our ability to know natural law etc. than you do.) The phrase I particularly notice is "the attempt to justify them will lead merely to their loss." He doesn't suggest that there can be a recovery from the fall, a Paradise Regained. If that's right then the only thing that suggests itself is to keep people from thinking about things. That solution he obviously does not apply in his own case. We read him differently though. I've been startled by interpretations people have put on things I've written, so it's quite possible that I could be misreading Scruton as well. [Hope you've bounced back from illness, by the way!] -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Mar 2 02:28:14 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: paleo-right@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [paleo-right] Discussing civil rights in the classroom From: Jim Kalb Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 21:28:22 -0500 On Sat, 1 Mar 2003 19:50:20 -0500, TW wrote: > How (if at all) is it possible for a professor of our > persuasion to discuss the civil rights movement in the context of a > college > course on American history in such a way as not to violate his > conscience? > In other words, is it possible to cover this material in something other > than the triumphalist good-versus-evil mode with which we are all > familiar? I suppose there's the value-free social science thing. If you put it in technical form you can say most things. Richard Epstein wrote a whole book saying civil rights laws stink and got away with it because he put the argument in value-free technical economic terms. So make no judgements, suggest no judgements, just mention things that favored the victory of the movement like the advent of TV, the growth of the welfare state and rationalizing social policy generally, elite concern with positions that will play well abroad, etc. I suppose one could also mention some of the costs of the movement, the abolition of local autonomy, the erection of a comprehensive supervisory bureaucracy, state reconstruction of social relations and the human soul and so on. -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Feb 18 02:32:04 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: paleo-right@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [paleo-right] Re: Kalb, Tradition, Gottfried--Terminology, etc. From: Jim Kalb Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 21:04:04 -0500 In-Reply-To: <200302180014.h1I0EpL11391@andros.alumniconnections.com> > I do not think it is possible to > defend tradition-qua-tradition in the abstract. Only specific traditions, > even those do not frame themselves as traditions, have any hope of > commanding anyone's loyalty. But saying that is defending specific-tradition-qua-specific-tradition in the abstract. Such defenses do have some utility. One must start with the intellectual and social world that actually exists and deal with it. That world has a very strong and destructive streak of constructivism, the belief that social institutions can and should be designed and redesigned in accordance with abstract formal principles like freedom and equality. Saying "you can't construct a social and moral world because fundamentals can't be fully articulated, ways of life can only be lived and understood from inside, and standards worth relying on can only grow up over time" doesn't solve all problems but it's at least a beginning dealing with some problems. If someone says other things are needed too I agree. jk From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon May 12 20:04:22 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: jbk@vectra.kalb.ath.cx To: gj Subject: Russell Kirk From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 12 May 2003 16:05:29 -0400 Hello! Just read the piece on Kirk. Some interesting stuff in it (apart from the Tyranny of Liberalism quote). The bits on the reception of Kirk's book were good, also the stuff about imagination. My own inclination is to say that imagination can't be promoted directly but if you get concepts and basic orientation right then imagination will follow and clothe everything in a fitting way. I don't know if that makes me Kirkian or non-Kirkian or anti-romantic or what. Maybe an example would be the Tridentine mass. It's just a text with some instructions, and a low mass is really quite sober, but the physical arrangement of the worshippers, priest and servers, the sounds and silent parts etc. make it possible to feel that you are coming into the presence of something enormously important and eternally unchanging. Another example would be traditional sexual morality (the stuff about Santorum etc. has me thinking about the subject). The rules as recognized e.g. by the Catholic Catechism just seem like a bunch of arbitrary restrictions to people today but they make it possible to understand men and women and their relationship as something with a specific nature and function that give it great importance in defining what we are. In both cases the imagination can be understood as something that supervenes on a collection of rules and practices and to constitute a world that has the weight and transcendent dimension needed for life to become tolerable and human. Another way to understand the process is that the imagination, rather than constituting something, becomes a sort of mode of perception of the transcendent realities to which e.g. the old Mass and traditional sexual morality are ancillary. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Thu May 8 15:32:28 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: jbk@vectra.kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [kalb@aya.yale.edu] Malignant narcissism From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 08 May 2003 11:33:29 -0400 --=-=-= Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline A very interesting suggestion from Leon Podles on the conduct of the bishops and a possible tendency among them toward malignant narcissism. The goal of malignant narcissists, it seems to me, is to redefine reality their way. As M. Scott Peck says, they are "the people of the lie." Such people would naturally be drawn to religious institutions that have accepted the liberal/modernist view that reality is something we construct, while nonetheless retaining something of the hierarchical spirit. If their position is such that they represent Christ to their people, and "Christ" is whatever they make Him to be, then they define spiritual reality. They have everything they want. I should say that this isn't just speculation on my part. Experiences in the Episcopal Church, including a rector who might have stepped out of Peck's book, convinced me it's a real problem there. So what Mr. Podles' comment suggests to me is that it's a problem in the Catholic Church as well. Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Thu May 8 13:01:24 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@vectra.kalb.ath.cx To: Ha Subject: Re: Eugenics - and other evils From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 08 May 2003 09:02:25 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20030508094832.56338.qmail@web21010.mail.yahoo.com> Hello! As the introduction to my page says, it's not intended to set forth a position. That ought to be clear. The page includes links to people who are hopelessly opposed to each other -- Catholics, protestants, Jews, national bolsheviks, the unabomber, etc. It should be obvious I don't agree with all of them or even think they're all good people. What the page intends is to be something like a bibliography of materials regarding (1) conservatism, (2) tradition, and (3) issues the dominant rationalized utopian liberal outlook can't digest. The last are important because the dominant outlook intends to extirpate tradition and conservatism, not to mention God, morality, human nature and much else. It's therefore important to bring out all its weaknesses and to show that there are many alternatives to it. In addition, it seems to me a traditional outlook can handle all these issues much better than any rationalized view since tradition does not intend to reduce the whole world to a single system under human control. So by mentioning the biological human differences that the eugenicists emphasize I am bringing up issues that the dominant outlook can't handle but traditional viewpoints can. It is true of course that that the eugenicists intend to respond to biological differences by bringing them under human control, and that is objectionable. My reason for including the link is that their site documents the extent and importance of the differences, and the way the dominant view suppresses discussion of them. It's possible there's another site that does the same thing equally well without the propaganda for eugenics, but I don't know what it is and so can't include it instead. Perhaps I should add that the page predates my conversion to Catholicism. I don't see anything on it that urgently needs to be changed in line with my conversion, since as I have said it's intended to be simply a sort of bibliography, a list of links to sites that raise issues the dominant view can't handle and collectively (although not necessarily in each case) point toward a more traditional and conservative view. As such it states no position and is simply put forward as an aid to investigators. Still, it seems likely that as time goes on it will change in line with my own changed outlook. Just how I don't know at present. Best wishes, jk -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Thu Mar 6 12:41:03 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 07:40:52 -0500 To: Er Subject: Re: From: Jim Kalb In-Reply-To: X-MailScanner: No virus detected by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU Hello! Thanks for your notes. The traditionalist conservative page includes a lot of stuff I don't agree with and some that isn't traditionalist or conservative. The idea is to include things that help in the development of a type of thought. That can include contrary things that need to be taken into account and are useful in one way or another. The biology/eugenics sites usually take a materialist reconstruction-of- humanity-through-technology view of things. I don't include them because I agree with their slant but because biology and genetics are real and because liberals and the left find them toxic. In a way it's like including bug spray in a site on garden parties. It's not that it's pleasant in itself but it has to do with realities and it gets rid of pests. As to postmodernism, there are various ways to construe it. Certainly there are respects in which Catholicism and traditionalism can turn it to account. Basically, it seems to me the postmoderns have realized that you can't construct a world out of logic, science etc. as the moderns wanted. The Catholics and trads could have told them that all along. The pomo response is to say that there is no truth, that "truth" is whatever you make of things. So it's easy enough to point out that there's more to truth than that, that to the extent it's somewhat constructed it's a social construction through tradition rather than an individual constructed, and that since we can't help but view it as *true* then we have to believe that whatever community we belong to is somehow revelatory. Then that leads us to comparison of the claims of various communities to be bearers of revation which ends by making the Catholics look rather good. jk On Thu, 6 Mar 2003 01:20:12 -0500, Er wrote: > First, I noticed you had some links to some biology/eugenics websites. I > have not reviewed them yet, and I will look at them to be fair to you, > but are not these types of things actually based on liberal and > evolutionary views of mankind? > > Now, I do want your academic feedback on something. > > What do you make of postmodernism. First there is the question of the > postmodern condition. As a Catholic Traditionalist, I would be the first > to admit that there are many viewpoints today, and I would add many > dissenting viewpoints from the truth. > However, postmodernism, as a philosophical framework, posits a > pluralistic type approach. I guess here I am speaking of much of > continental philosophy such as existentialism, phenomenology, and the > like. Do you have any thoughts on this matter or any academic sources to > suggest? I know there was a recent article in Intercollegiate Review on > this type of thing. Intercollegiate Review is an ISI publication, and I > am sure you are aware of it. From jkalb@anubis.nyx.net Sat Mar 8 23:50:42 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 From: James Kalb Subject: mail To: jkalb@freeshell.org Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 16:50:57 -0700 (MST) There are a lot of possible interpretations. One is that it's easiest to generate answers if you have principles that answer all questions in advance. It follows that the most talkative people on the net are going to be like that. Also, if you're in a liberal environment, which we all are, it's hard to avoid being a liberal unless you have principles of that kind. Then too, marginalizing people as much as conservatives are marginalized corrupts them intellectually because nothing they say matters. And maybe everyone is corrupted that way today because nothing anyone says matters, to the extent public discussion is more or less a front and public issues are decided by institutions and their interests and by political manipulation rather than debate. Jim = = = Original message = = = What do you make of the fact that they display the very loss of rationality that you, more than anyone, have identified as the mark of liberalism? -- Jim Kalb View from the Right: http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/ From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Mar 24 23:36:30 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 18:34:30 -0500 To: In Subject: Re: Davies hand-out From: Jim Kalb In-Reply-To: <002c01c2f24c$388a01c0$b319f7a5@e5dq2> X-MailScanner: No virus detected by mailhub.Dartmouth.EDU Hello! I think people are crazy not to write letters. Even if His Eminence is a free to be you and me kind of guy you might catch him in a mood in which he's willing to let Latin mass types have the Latin mass. Besides, the Pope has this need to reach out to everyone, and he'll probably get along with the Eastern Orthodox better if he treats traditional liturgies as if they were more than tolerated vices in the Latin Church, so maybe he'll do the right thing. On the grand issues I guess I'm sort of a moderate foaming-at-the-mouth right-winger. Meaning that I think Vat II was a pastoral council aimed at the modern world that's worked out badly because a lot of the new directions were misconceived. Which means that the Pope is a Pope, Fr. Cullen is a priest, the new mass is a mass etc. but I don't feel any need to kowtow to all the innovations. People didn't suddenly become smart in the mid-20th c. after having been dumb all those years. Anyway, I'll tack on my draft letter. Comments welcome. The argument -- "the Church needs the Tridentine mass to do outreach" -- is probably unusual but it worked for me so why not say so. It'll give him something to goggle at if he reads it. Jim -- Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu) From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri May 16 20:39:37 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: jbk@vectra.kalb.ath.cx To: "La Subject: Re: further response to your point on race From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 16 May 2003 16:40:56 -0400 In-Reply-To: <002001c31be3$9511be40$1d118d0c@worldnet.att.net> I agree there's something odd and a bit unsavory about the neocon habit of saying "I oppose AA because it's bad for blacks" when all significant black leaders think it's a do-or-die cause. It seems to me the thing to say would be something like "I oppose it because it's unjust, it puts government in a role it shouldn't have, it makes for lies and bad human relations, and it's not really a benefit for the intended beneficiaries." So the concept that it doesn't really benefit blacks should stay in but at the end. Since black leaders favor AA it has to function more as a response to an objection than a primary reason. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri May 16 20:44:42 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@vectra.kalb.ath.cx To: "( Stephen )" Subject: Re: link story From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 16 May 2003 16:46:06 -0400 In-Reply-To: I'm so happy I don't have anything to do with the Anglican Communion any more! The "and became fully human" is an outrage. The Nicene Creed is an absolutely fundamental formulation and to make the Incarnation more astract -- which is what is being done -- for the sake of appeasing people who will never be appeased anyway is, to put a charitable interpretation on it, unbelievably stupid. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun May 18 12:44:13 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: jbk@vectra.kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic] Re: The problem of evil From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 18 May 2003 08:45:40 -0400 "Charming79" == Charming79 writes: Charming79> It is logically impossible to believe that both evil, and Charming79> a good and powerful God exist in the same reality, for Charming79> such a God certainly could and would destroy evil. We have Charming79> evidence of so much evil that is seemingly pointless and Charming79> of such horrendous intensity. For what valid reason would Charming79> a good and powerful God allow the amount and kinds of evil Charming79> which we see around us? The obvious answer to the logical point is that toleration of evil may allow still greater good. For example, free will is a good but its existence means that evil can and (if the free will is real) no doubt will be chosen. So on the face of it toleration of evil is necessary to a greater good. More generally, the existence of anything that is not God, and has some relative independence and autonomy, means that something will exist that does not participate fully in God's perfection. The respects in which that thing falls short will involve evil. All that assumes that "omnipotence" doesn't include impossibilities, that God can't make a rock that's too big for him to move, he can't create a truly free being that is certain always to make the best choices, and so on. (We have no way of knowing how far the "and so on" extends.) The real issue I think is how to explain a world in which there is both true good and true evil. I don't think it can be done without assuming that purpose is a basic aspect of how things are, which seems to require God. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon May 19 16:48:20 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@vectra.kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Subject: Re: Can you get the church to mary you spiritually but not legally? bcc: From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 19 May 2003 12:49:48 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences In-Reply-To: "Randy" == Randy writes: Randy> How does not wanting to be penalized by taxes have anything to Randy> do with the centerpoint of our relationship??? We are looking Randy> to get married, we're looking for the church to do it. If there Randy> was a law that married people had to get poked in the eye every Randy> year, would we be less commited to each other for trying to Randy> find a way not to get poked in the eye??? It's an interesting question you raise. I don't think the "centerpoint of our relationship" is the whole story. "Relationship" sounds like it has to do with your feelings, attitudes, intentions etc. The whole point of marriage though is that it's an institution that's not altogether dependent on those things. Once you're married you stay that way even though your feelings, attitudes and what not change. Also, the instititution is not purely a religious one -- it's also natural and social. If two atheists get married in a civil ceremony they're married, even in the eyes of the church. It seems that what you want to do is separate the personal, religious and natural side of marriage from the social side -- to have a marriage recognized as such by the parties and the Church but not society at large. Can you pick and choose in that way though in the case of something so basic? One thing that makes the situation complicated is the current attempt to abolish marriage as a social and legal institution. If the arrangement the law calls "marriage" is simply a contract between any two persons terminable at the will of either that establishes some sort of relation between the two during its duration I'm not sure how seriously anyone need take it. Sorry for such a vague response. Summary: 1. In general, it seems wrong, for the sake of avoiding a moderate financial obligation, to try to be married from a personal, natural and religious standpoint but not a general social standpoint. 2. On the other hand, if the general social standpoint is getting to be that there really isn't any such thing as marriage, then maybe it's not so bad. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 20 08:53:25 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic] Re: A bit more on the Tridentine Mass From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 20 May 2003 04:54:57 -0400 "Doug" == Doug writes: >> The granting of indults,on the suggestion of Pope John Paul II, has >> been relaxed to the point that the only ones who cannot get it are >> those who would try to force all to see things their way and their >> way only. That may have been his suggestion but it hasn't happened that way. In many dioceses, the bishop won't go along at all and in others he only allows the old mass at great intervals. Until their recent meeting with the Pope, for example, the Scottish bishops only allowed 4 indult masses a year for the whole country. Other bishops make things difficult in various ways. In one very large American diocese for example, in which Voice of the Faithful is allowed to meet on church property, the local Latin Mass congregation is allowed one mass a week at an awkward time and location and nothing else -- e.g., no coffee hour, no ability to use the space for meetings, no nothing. All this may change though -- it's apparently quite likely that Rome will grant a sort of universal indult this year that lets any priest who so wishes offer the old Mass without going through his bishop. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 20 08:54:07 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [kalb@aya.yale.edu] Re: Sullivan From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 20 May 2003 04:55:39 -0400 Homosexuals like to play act and turn things into other things. Subversion is no doubt on some level a goal. And, the claim to be a conservative, a Catholic etc. adds to his saleability -- the gay English Catholic conservative who doesn't say anything against the things liberals really care about and subverts the things they hate is obviously a marketable item. He's not a must read. I don't think he puts a lot of thought into what he writes, that's how he's able to write a much as he does. He does have a point of view though. So I think if you do read him you have to be aware of what that view is, what's behind it, and his untrustworthiness. You have to hold him very much at arm's length. jk -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 20 08:57:48 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [kalb@aya.yale.edu] Re: Is Bennett a bourgeois bohemian? From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 20 May 2003 04:59:21 -0400 Does anyone know the facts? Bennett claims he mostly broke even. If "lost $8m" really means "lost 100K over a 10 yr. period" with no huge swings when the gains are netted, and it really didn't interfere with his duties and obligations, I'd be inclined to view it as somewhat hazardous rich man's hobby but not a serious vice. Whether it's the right thing for a virtuecrat to be doing is another question jk -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 20 19:01:24 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [kalb@aya.yale.edu] Re: No Subject From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 20 May 2003 15:02:56 -0400 "TomMcW" == Tom McWhorter writes: TomMcW> Somehow, I don't remember lack of pressure as being part of TomMcW> the deal when I was growing up. If I did not get good grades, TomMcW> or I misbehaved, or was "out of line" in any of a variety of TomMcW> ways, I was made to "suffer" mentally, physically, or both. I TomMcW> suspect that was true of most. It seems to me the "pressure" today has to do with lack of a stable setting rather than external pressure as such. If you think the world's basically pretty settled and you have an OK place in it, and your old man yells at you because you got a D on your report card, it might bother you but life goes on. If everything's up for grabs, and the idea seems to be that if you don't get into a top college then you really won't exist because nothing exists unless it can make a special place for itself that others have to recognize, then you'll feel the pressure is intolerable when someone mildly hints that you might do a bit better. In the latter case everything about you is being called in question. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org ^ From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 20 19:02:15 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [kalb@aya.yale.edu] Re: No Subject From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 20 May 2003 15:03:48 -0400 "TomMcW" == Tom McWhorter writes: TomMcW> I can see that lack of stability in the social environment TomMcW> could result in anxiety. But why is that worse now than it was TomMcW> in the 50's and 60's? The only thing that I can think of that TomMcW> appears to have gotten worse is the stability of the family. TomMcW> Everything else has changed, but is not necessarily worse. The TomMcW> *rate* of change does not seem so different. The family's the most basic part of the social environment though, especially for children but also I think for the rest of us. And people say that jobs and careers are much less stable and much more of a perpetual scramble than they were then. We're talking about two different levels of stability though. Things could be completely stable in a gross overall social sense, with nothing in public life changing much ever, and still be completely unglued in everyone's private life. In fact that seems to be the direction we're going. The kids are all raised by MTV, they hang around in packs because closer personal ties are untrustworthy, their parents are all divorced and getting sex changes, but the music they listen to, the styles and the notions about what life is about haven't changed much in 35 years. (OK, I'm exaggerating slightly.) jk From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 20 19:06:18 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [kalb@aya.yale.edu] Re: not that simple From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 20 May 2003 15:07:51 -0400 "la" writes: la> It's nt that simple or understandable. If you have discretion in la> the way the rule is enforced, that would result in disparate la> impact on different classes of students, and if you don't have la> discretion, that would also result in disparate impact on la> different classes of students (since some classes of students la> would violate the rule more than other classes of students). So I la> don't follow your argument. Your position is enormously simplified and improved by a per se rule though. Disparate impact by itself isn't against the law, it just puts the presumptions against you. If it were a problem in and of itself then you couldn't have laws against murder. The best way to win when there's disparate impact is eliminate all issues other than the rule itself. That way you don't have to battle the presumption against you on issue after issue. You talk to your lawyers, find out what other districts have done and what's recommended as "best practice," choose the rule that seems likely to stand up in court, and then apply it absolutely blindly. That way there are no factual questions about what happened in the particular situation. Everything reduces to a pure legal question about whether rule X is OK. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 20 19:06:48 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [kalb@aya.yale.edu] Re: not that simple From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 20 May 2003 15:08:21 -0400 "la" writes: la> Interesting. Now, just to make sure I understand you, are you la> saying that the practice of zero tolerance is due to the presence la> of blacks, to lessen the appearance of disparate impact of la> disciplinary rules vis a vis blacks and whites? The presence of blacks is enough, and the clearest case in which mindless per se rules are necessary. There are more general reasons as well. Once discretion is suspect because there is no common good but only power, and once equality of treatment has become the crucial point because there's no substantive goods and formal criteria are everything, then everything must be made explicit and public so it can be reviewed and checked for rationality and compliance with standards. That means per se rules. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 20 19:07:16 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [kalb@aya.yale.edu] Re: not that simple From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 20 May 2003 15:08:49 -0400 "la" writes: la> Again, very interesting. I had not previously picked up, however, la> that racial disparities in punishments was the reason for zero la> tolerance. I thought zero tolerance came about as a result of la> horrendous things happening, like mass murders in school and so la> on. And those things were themselves the consequences of the la> general permissiveness. Have you seen article specifically making la> the connection between race disparities and zero tolerance la> policies? Can't think offhand of an article other than a few newpaper comments about things like the moral necessity of picking up prepsters for truancy if problems with youth gangs make stricter enforcement seem advisable. It's obviously necessary though. Racial disparities mean that *everything* has to be formalized, documented and made defensible, so if you crack down because you're worried about Columbine, if you decide that buying people off and looking the other way aren't enough any more, the only way you can think of doing so is through mindless per se rules. It's the style in which things are done now. In a way of course it's artificial to separate all these things. Racial disparities are only the most dramatic instance in which the demand for formalization seems justified to people. Once the trend of thought gets started it pops up everywhere. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 20 19:18:49 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic] Re: Would Jesus weblog? From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 20 May 2003 15:20:22 -0400 "rlm" == R L Measures <2@vc.net> writes: rlm> Jesus spoke Aramaic, which is used in the Qumran scrolls. They rlm> contain a first century account of his lectures. They were rlm> discovered between 1946 and the early 1950s . The RCC fought for rlm> over 3-decades to suppress 80% of the documents found in Qumran, rlm> cave-4. Do you have a reference for that? I was under the impression the scrolls had little to do with Christian origins except general background, and that the RCC made no attempt whatever to suppress them -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed May 21 12:00:51 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic] Re: Irish Mass (wasRe: the Rosary) From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 21 May 2003 08:02:25 -0400 "Ockisard" == Ockisard writes: Ockisard> While it's true that the current Missal is likely closer to Ockisard> early Christian Eucharistic celebrations than those in the Ockisard> Missal of Pius V To my mind that's not a recommendation. An archeological reconstruction is interesting to visit but it's not something one lives in. Also, reconstructions always get things wrong and usually show as much about the person doing the reconstructing as actual practice way back when. Besides, there's legitimate development. When Christianity was an illegal minority religion, and everyone believed in unseen powers anyway, it was easy for people to believe that when they attended mass something very important and special was going on. Today we're in a different situation. I think something like the old Mass is needed to bring out the reality and significance of what is happening. As least as presented I think the new Mass blends too much into the everyday. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed May 21 12:37:20 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: TD Subject: Re: great idea for a website From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 21 May 2003 08:38:55 -0400 In-Reply-To: <1e1.94fd81a.2bfb8614@aol.com> It's hard to know what to call things. To my mind "paleo" suggests something somewhat sectarian. It's a term that arose and has mostly been used in the setting of rather bitter disputes among people all calling themselves conservatives. The advantage of "traditionalist" is that it's not much used and it emphasizes the need local stability, maintenance of ties, and opposition to universal rationalization, all of which I think are key points. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed May 21 15:55:07 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Subject: Re: Irish Mass (wasRe: the Rosary) bcc: From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 21 May 2003 11:56:40 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences In-Reply-To: "Ockisard" == Ockisard writes: Ockisard> And, of course, it has been argued that the Resurrection in Ockisard> itself is not a neccissity for the salvific nature of Christ Ockisard> (that's heretical, of course, but I find some good reasons Ockisard> to mull that over occassionaly). It seems to me the Crucifixion tells us more than the Resurrection. If God happened to find himself dead for some reason it seems obvious he'd make himself alive again. What's surprising is that he'd become man and take part in human life to the extent of allowing himself to be tortured to death. One of the things that drew me to the Church (I'm a convert) is that they always had the crucifix front and center. That told me that these were people who knew there are serious problems and thought they had something that could deal with them. Ockisard> I don't think we will ever see a return to the pre-Council Ockisard> Mass It would be unusual for something to be restored just as it was. We'll see what happens if this rumored "universal indult" actually comes down. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed May 28 12:37:43 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@vectra.kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic] Re: poses a question From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 28 May 2003 08:39:32 -0400 --=-=-= It sounds like the complaint is that the Church exists at all as something other than what the people who happen to be present at any particular time want it to be. To the extent that's so then I agree that a very basic need is catechesis -- telling people what the Church is and stands for, and why. "Ockisard" == Ockisard writes: Ockisard> This isn't what I think, but... Ockisard> ...in surveys that I've seen, the major concerns - the major Ockisard> crises - voiced by laity and clerics, globally, that are Ockisard> said to need addressing, are: Ockisard> 1. the democratization of the Church (power to govern in the Ockisard> hands of all, particularly at the parish (not diocesan) Ockisard> level; elimination of any hierarchy not 'elected'); Ockisard> 2. allowing priests to marry - and the ordination of women Ockisard> would 'naturally' follow; Ockisard> 3. freeing the liturgy to be particular to a community - not Ockisard> necessarily a national conference, but on the parish level Ockisard> by a parish liturgical counsel (one comment I read - "Church Ockisard> should be exciting and fun"); Ockisard> 4. completely rethinking the theology of the Sacrament of Ockisard> Marriage and reconciling that 'new theology' with divorce Ockisard> and alternate sexual lifestyles; Ockisard> 5. Inculturation, inculturation, inculturation; Ockisard> 6. Sexual inclusiveness and de-sexualization (God the Ockisard> Person, not the Father; Christ the Person, not God and Man, Ockisard> etc.). -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org --=-=-= -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org --=-=-=-- From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed May 28 19:28:42 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@vectra.kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: alt.politics,alt.religion,alt.religion.christian,alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Subject: Re: More Bush religion funding. From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 28 May 2003 15:30:21 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences In-Reply-To: "Stephen" == Stephen writes: Stephen> If it remains an active Church then the Fed. government Stephen> should remain away as they are supposed to stay separate from Stephen> Churches according to the principle of the separation of Stephen> Church and State. It's not obvious why making government funds available on the same terms with regard to both secular structures and houses of worship constitutes an "establishment of religion," which is what the 1st amendment is concerned with. To the contrary, it seems free exercise violation (also in the 1st amendment) if the government says "we'd give you the money if you used the building for anything but religious purposes, but that's what you use it for so tough luck." -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed May 28 23:31:54 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: jbk@vectra.kalb.ath.cx To: Ia Subject: Re: Wittgenstein From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 28 May 2003 19:33:45 -0400 In-Reply-To: <594HebwWH2160S01.1054162087@uwdvg001.cms.usa.net> I agree the argument can't be taken straight (which is why I back off from it in my blog entry). As you point out it's part of an attempt to make sense of language without reference to a transcendent standard and so simply as a collection of practices. Still, the argument is an interesting one. The difficulty it suggests -- the impossibility of distinguishing correct from incorrect applications of a word and so of knowing what's being asserted -- does seem to apply when someone claims he has a personal identity that others must respect that consists in having idiosyncratic feelings. When someone says "a homosexual is what I am, because I feel that I am, and other people should recognize that to criticize me for acting to realize my true being is to attack what I am" he's saying something that no one can evaluate. The current convention is that he therefore wins. The W argument suggests a response, that since no one can evaluate the claim it's not a claim anyone can make sense of. I suppose actually the W argument suggests a very strong response, that the claimant can't know himself what he's talking about. But I think there's something to that, at least when very strong assertions like claims of essential personal identity are based on private feelings. Otherwise people wouldn't agonize so much and so fruitlessly over issues of identity. I don't think the CBOL-3 analogy works. A computer language isn't a language in the absence of a human being to interpret it. Incidentally, I was glad to see you resurface at TAC after your departure from FP. jk if> Wittgenstein's private language argument is wrong. There is only if> one computer left in the world that runs the language known as if> CBOL-3, and it works fine. Worse, his argument is relativistic, if> because it implies that if other people aren't around to judge my if> language use, there is no standard, because it is impossible to if> have a transcendent standard. He is one of the enemy if> philosophically; he is not one of us. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jun 10 19:18:30 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Subject: Re: just an idle thought bcc: From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 10 Jun 2003 15:20:50 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences In-Reply-To: <3ee03c19$0$4227$a04e5680@nnrp.fuse.net> "bardi" == bardi writes: >> I'd add that Humanae Vitae is one of the reasons I became Catholic. >> It wasn't at the top of the list, but it helped the situation come >> into focus. "Why is it," I asked myself, "that the only man in the >> world who has an idea how to make human sense of sex is an aged >> celibate?" bardi> I am curious..in what way? Sex is overwhelming, intensely focused on the other person, and dissolves boundaries. It involves a sort of mutual nakedness (psychological as well as physical) and self-giving. It makes people say things like "this is bigger than both of us" and believe that what they feel trumps normal good sense. So the question is what kind of setting would enable someone to make sense of such a thing and make it part of the pattern of a good life. It seems that sex requires an enduring connection between the lives of the parties that once established no longer depends on changeable things like current feelings. If sex isn't part of an objective union of the two persons, if it's just a "relationship" as people talk about such things today, then it's a matter of current dispositions and feelings so there is no real self-giving. A sexual "relationship" that is simply an informal connection attempts to turn sex into an arm's length thing. The attempt fails because arm's length is exactly what sex is not not. Each party in such a relationship acts as if he's giving himself, but is in fact keeping all options open. That introduces an element of radical dishonesty into something very basic. It's corrupting. So sex must be integrated with a permanent connection to which one could sensibly give one's all. Also, the sexual act must itself by its nature contribute to that connection and its permanence. Sex is too vivid an experience and the impulses involved are too strong to let us interpret it into something other than what it forces itself on us as being. If it feels like an act of self-giving then it must somehow objectively be just that. Otherwise it won't be part of a comprehensible life. Normal non-contracepted sex between a man and a woman is a functional union of the bodies of the two that by its nature invokes enduring serious responsibilities and points beyond the immediate feelings and interests of the two, because it is the sort of thing that produces new life. Since its nature, by the constitution of the human body, is to produce new life, it naturally calls for a union of lives. That call for union makes the self-giving implicit in the sexual experience reasonable and in fact obligatory. So it seems that if you carry on your sex life in the way Paul VI and JP II (not to mention just about all Christians before about 1930) say you should it'll make sense. Your understanding of your situation and your relation to your spouse will reflect what the sex act expresses. If you don't then either you'll be living a lie (as in the case of a non-marital "relationship") or you'll be trying to force an interpretation on sexual acts (e.g., contracepted acts) that doesn't come out of the nature of the acts themselves. In both cases you'll be trying to make your will or interpretation dominate the situation and that won't work. Basic things like sex have their own way with us. [Sorry I took so long to get back to you. I was away for a few days.] -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed Jun 11 12:10:44 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Subject: Re: just an idle thought bcc: From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 11 Jun 2003 08:13:08 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences In-Reply-To: <3ee69c4c$0$3912$a0465688@nnrp.fuse.net> "bardi" == bardi writes: bardi> To me the act of sexual congress between married people bardi> involves a great deal more than procreation. Agreed. The issue is how much of the "great deal more" will be there if sexual congress is intentionally closed to new life. The problem with contraception etc. is that it turns sexual congress into a different sort of thing. By the intention of the parties it becomes an act that by its nature has no real consequences. Since the parties have intentionally deprived it of consequences they're making it an act that has only the significance they choose to give it. The result is that the union of the parties becomes unreal. It becomes a matter of the interpretation they decide to put on their acts, and everyone knows interpretations change. So the act can't involve real self-giving. It feels like it does, and the parties may tell themselves it's so, but it's play-acting. An analogy might help. Someone might say "joining the army isn't just a matter of getting yourself killed. There's a lot more to it. There's patriotism, loyalty to comrades, devotion to duty, the feeling of being part of something bigger that has a high purpose, etc., etc., etc. And everyone knows actual fighting wrecks armies. Besides, even in wartime lots of soldiers don't die so getting killed can't be essential. So what I'll do is set up something I'll call an army that can never be sent into battle. That way I can get all the good things without the disadvantages." It won't work though. Eliminating the risk makes the other stuff pointless. Another analogy: a group of friends might enjoy having each other over for dinner. For them it's not just a matter of physical nourishment. There's also the pleasure of seeing each other, the companionship, the mutual generosity, the interest of new dishes, etc., etc., etc. There's the problem though that if you eat too much you can't eat any more and besides you get overweight. So one of them might suggest having a bottle of Ipecac around so after eating everyone could take some and go off and vomit. After that they could eat some more or maybe go off to another dinner. It seems to me that would be a bad idea. Even though physical nourishment isn't the only thing going on at a meal it's a necessary part of what a meal is. Take it away and you get something quite different that won't have the same significance. bardi> And that extra can be impacted negatively. Even more in this bardi> day and age more than previous times when the economy was bardi> geared toward a single parent household. Not just financially, bardi> but emotionally. Large families may have their strong points, bardi> but they can also cause a great deal of stress. Today as always there are a variety of ways to live, some which better fulfill human nature than others. We should all choose the better and avoid the worse. One issue you raise is the legitimate use of natural family planning -- refraining from sexual intercourse during fertile periods. It seems to me a couple isn't obligated to have sexual intercourse on any particular day or have as many children as possible. On the other hand, if they intend to have no children or treat children as lifestyle accessories it's not much of a marriage. I don't have a grand theory just now as to where to draw the line. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed Jun 11 14:04:04 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: "St Subject: Re: enjoyed your sites and article recommendation From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 11 Jun 2003 10:06:25 -0400 In-Reply-To: <205E107579497E409CD8D159942B92FA0186C793@fs-mail.fsllp.com> Thanks for the note, and for the link. The "Discipline of Place" was well written in many ways and takes an interesting approach toward the issue of traditionalist concreteness v. liberal abstraction. I hadn't thought of liberals as wanting eternity before, although it's true of course that abstractions are not dependent on time or place. I suppose one could develop a comparison of liberal eternity, which is the unchangingness of formal abstractions like liberty and equality, and traditionalist eternity, the presence within changing things of something real and substantive that does not change. I wonder though how one would make place a discipline. Simply by choosing to make it such? Or by some reorientation that makes rushing about seem pointless? But in the latter case it wouldn't be a discipline, exactly. It would be something you accept and come to see things in. I can think of disciplines of time -- use your time thus and so -- but the only disciplines of place I can think of are monastic rules that require monks to stay on the premises. I suppose "gadding about" has a bad name. There's also Pascal's comment that man's basic problem is that he can't stay quietly at home, and the Englishman who complained that the problem with California is that there's no *there* there. Interesting points. I will look at your other articles also. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed Jun 11 15:25:51 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Subject: Re: just an idle thought bcc: From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 11 Jun 2003 11:28:14 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences In-Reply-To: <3ee72695$0$3901$a0465688@nnrp.fuse.net> "bardi" == bardi writes: bardi> I would have to disagree. The union of the parties remains bardi> quite real..as a tangible expression of their love for each bardi> other. The situations are quite different though. A non-contracepted act of normal sexual intercourse creates a profound objective union between the two parties, because it gives the couple's bodies a functional unity of a kind that is basic to the existence of the human species. It's an essentially serious act, not at all the sort of thing one can shrug off or reinterpret into something different from what it is. A contracepted act doesn't create that kind of objective unity. You say it is nonetheless a tangible expression of love. To my mind though sex doesn't seem like a social observance, a greeting card or whatever, to which we can give the meaning our sentiments suggest. What it naturally expresses -- unity and mutual self-giving -- is intertwined with its natural function. Sex is not something we control. It goes its own way in accordance with what it is and creates a situation to which our feelings adjust. I suspect that we will continue to disagree on all this at least for now. The issues are too basic for a few arguments to bring anybody around. To me though it seems that you're not treating sex unequivocally as a basic constitutive principle of human life. You're treating it as something we can control and mold as we wish. You want to get the benefits of sex while controlling its consequences, even though the benefits depend on the seriousness of the consequences and therefore of the act itself. bardi> To carry this argument to its conclusion would mean to suggest bardi> that sterile couples were imperfect in their relationship to bardi> each other. And contrary to popular mythology, sterile couples bardi> are actually more likely to remain married. Not familiar with the popular mythology. It does seem to me though that a contracepted act and an act that will in fact be sterile because of age, time of month or some physical disability are different. In the former case the sterility is part of what the parties are choosing to do and so if (as in this case) it's radically at odds with the natural function of the act it changes the nature of the act altogether. In the latter case the sterility is accidental and so seems much less intrinsic to what the parties are doing. All of which may seem like a fine distinction. Still, lines must be drawn and this line seems to me one that becomes more persuasive with familiarity. Part of the idea is that you can't willfully interfere with something as basic as sex to defeat its natural function for the convenience of the parties without radically changing its role in human life. The fact that sometimes its natural functioning fails doesn't have at all the same effect. bardi> There is a difference between being a volunteer in an army and bardi> being drafted into the same army. Draftees are just as likely bardi> to be killed as volunteers,but they have been given no choice. Agreed. Consent is essential to the validity of a marriage. Without that requirement it becomes much less likely that the goods of marriage will be achieved. bardi> It would seem to me that your [dinner party] analogy actually bardi> supports the converse argument. One cannot use ipecac to create bardi> further children. Don't understand your remark, but if the analogy isn't helpful to you there's no need to pursue it. The thought was that Ipecac is like contraception, something one uses to deprive acts that support various personal and social goods (as sexual intercourse supports marital unity and eating supports conviviality) of essential natural consequences that sometimes become inconvenient. bardi> Sexual congress,imho,is not an obligation. Rather,it is a gift bardi> of the Spirit. And to say that people must not accept that gift bardi> because they do not have the financial resources for an endless bardi> supply of children, is to me somewhat abrupt. I recognize -- as the Church recognizes -- that at some point natural family planning becomes legitimate. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed Jun 11 19:14:27 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: "St Subject: Re: enjoyed your sites and article recommendation From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 11 Jun 2003 15:16:50 -0400 In-Reply-To: <205E107579497E409CD8D159942B92FA010BE70A@fs-mail.fsllp.com> "cs" == St writes: cs> Insofar as I've been able to discover, the notion of the necessity cs> of place as an anchor for a soul rightly oriented towards cs> transcendent truths is very old. In _Paradise Lost_, Milton gives cs> voice to the archetypal egophanic revolt of Liberal modernity cs> through Satan's "glorious" challenge to God: Still, for us Eden is now lost, and life is a pilgrimage. Man is said to be an exile on this earth whose true country is Heaven. One answer maybe is that Eden and Heaven are more definite things than the abstract liberal Ego that creates its own world in accordance with its fluctuating desires. Also, the doctrine that God created all things gives place a reality that matters. It's not simply what we make of it, it's what God made it, however fallen it is now. We can't treat it -- in the manner of Satan -- as something of which we are altogether independent. It tells us something about our limitations and what God is. cs> The editors cut out my discussion of PL in the essay as too cs> esoteric for their readers. How annoying. Editors should never be allowed to cut. cs> I think there can be a discipline of place, but less in the sense cs> of a "self-discipline" to do certain things, and more in a cs> horticultural sense: a discipline of growth; allowing the cs> orientation of our souls to be tempered and directed by the cs> particular. Though I didn't get to it in the essay very clearly, cs> this would manifest itself in local cultures of care which develop cs> truly independent (and interdependent) rituals, artifacts, and cs> ceremonies which arise out of the time and place and erect a hedge cs> of protection around the health of the community, which is its cs> fertility. This is what the "traditionalist" fights for ... those cs> cultural hedges around families and food and energy use, etc. I agree something like this would be part of a good society. Some other possible examples of a discipline of place: the Amish are agricultural by choice, don't use TV, telephones, high-wire electricity etc., and only go as far as horses will carry them. Orthodox Jews have to live close enough to each other to be able to make a minyan and on the Sabbath can only go on foot. The former more parochial organization of Catholic worship would be another. You worship with the people you live among. cs> I think Stein was an American. That's right, it was Gertrude Stein. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Thu Jun 12 12:35:21 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,alt.religion.christian,alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic,talk.religion.misc Subject: Re: Where is God? bcc: From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 12 Jun 2003 08:34:51 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences In-Reply-To: "tmgt" == TsatskeMitGroysseTsitskes writes: tmgt> Is there any way to reach God these days? A good question. Mostly I think God reaches us rather than the reverse, so what we can do is give up or get rid of the things that interfere with that. Examples would include almost any obsession or obsessive feeling -- hatred, resentment, greed, and what not. It also helps to realize how self-centered we are and unaware of the reality of other people and other things. Then I'd suggest reading or talking to people who seem to know God. I'm curious, BTW -- what's a "tsatske mit groysse tsitskes"? -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Thu Jun 12 17:47:50 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Subject: Re: just an idle thought bcc: From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 12 Jun 2003 13:47:48 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences In-Reply-To: <3ee8ab6c$0$3911$a0465688@nnrp.fuse.net> "bardi" == bardi writes: >> To me though it seems that you're not treating sex unequivocally as >> a basic constitutive principle of human life. You're treating it as >> something we can control and mold as we wish. You want to get the >> benefits of sex while controlling its consequences, even though the >> benefits depend on the seriousness of the consequences and >> therefore of the act itself. bardi> I ,like most people, do not appreciate being told my reasons as bardi> to why we will. I intended the "To me though it seems that" to apply to each of the following sentences. It seemed clumsy to repeat it in each case. I am sorry my failure to repeat it made the subsequent sentences seem disrespectful. bardi> Firstly a point,.I do not want to get the benfits of anything. bardi> As mentioned before, it is all an academic discussion to me, bardi> being a celibate. I should have said "To me though it seems that you want the benefits of sex to be available while its consequences are put under control." I'm sorry I spoke the way I did. bardi> hmm..there are species which engage in courtship rituals. There bardi> are even more species which engage in family raising. But so bardi> far the human species is the only one which gets emotional bardi> satisfaction fron the act of sexual congress. With a bardi> provisio...assuming there is an emotional bond to begin with. The issue between us, I think, is whether that emotional bond is independent of the physical function of sex. bardi> There is a difference between being a volunteer in an army and bardi> being drafted into the same army. Draftees are just as likely bardi> to be killed as volunteers,but they have been given no choice. >> Agreed. Consent is essential to the validity of a marriage. >> Without that requirement it becomes much less likely that the goods >> of marriage will be achieved. >> bardi> my point had to do with parenthood..not the marriage itself. My point then would be whether marriage remains the same sort of thing once it's thought legitimate for the parties to choose or not at will whether it will include children. To my mind the decision that a marriage will not include children deprives it of any reality that goes beyond the (inevitably fluctuating) desires and interests of the parties. The self-giving implicit in sexual congress that is the soul of marriage thereby becomes impossible. How could one give oneself to something that is dependent on one's own will? How could it be right to give oneself to the mere will and interest of another equal adult? To make the self-giving possible and legitimate marriage must be something more extensive. Openness to new life supplies the missing factor and integrates marriage even physically with the whole of human life throughout time. bardi> It is the means that HV was arrived at more than any bardi> conclusionsthat I disagree with. For me the means are an argument in favor. It seems to me that the tyranny of experts is a big problem today. Not only do they tell us what to do but they say we can't even criticize them or talk back because that would just show ignorance on our part. We're not smart enough to have an opinion. Since there are experts on everything we all as a practical matter get treated as knowing nothing. Paul VI rejected what all the experts said and followed tradition. Tradition is the possession of a whole people rather than a few experts. It summarizes the perceptions and experience of a lot more people and a lot more sorts of people than formal expertise ever could. The idea that formal academic expertise with its highly dubious claims of neutrality and reliability should be our guide to how we should live and what we should believe on fundamental issues is outrageous. In 1968 Paul VI took an almost solitary stand against that idea. The whole world owes him a debt of gratitude for that. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Thu Jun 12 20:31:30 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: cdleo@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [cdleo] From Tragedy to Farce From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 12 Jun 2003 16:31:29 -0400 In-Reply-To: <01a701c33116$75b31ce0$7e8afea9@sarto> The groaning about a cultural catastrophe always seemed odd. Looters of priceless art treasures aren't likely to destroy them, these were durable objects that had already survived millenia of neglect, and the market for them would be in the West. So it seemed likely that most of them would be recovered shortly and almost all the rest within a few decades. R Kimball> Now playing: the saga of weapons of R Kimball> mass destruction. Plenty of those, I predict, will be R Kimball> found, and then we'll be treated to long analyses of R Kimball> exactly why the media got that wrong, too. Stay tuned. I think he's going too far here. It's a couple of months since Saddam fell, there are a lot of people in Iraq who hate the guy and his regime, and I'm sure there are rewards available for info on stockpiles. How significant could a WMD stockpile be that nobody in Iraq knew about except a few diehard loyalists who care nothing for money? -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Jun 13 15:55:14 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Subject: Re: just an idle thought bcc: From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 13 Jun 2003 11:55:13 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences In-Reply-To: "trifold" == trifold writes: trifold> I see two possibilities: If God opposes contraception, God trifold> wants us to have as many children as possible; or God wants trifold> us to not have sex as often as we want to, even within a trifold> committed, monogamous, even "sanctified" relationship (why trifold> God gave us a sex drive, you will have to explain). Those are indeed the possibilities. It seems to me that we think things (like one's wife or the sex act) are real and important if we have to respect them, and we have to respect them if we can't act however we want to around them without consequences. So I don't see anything odd in having to refrain from sex during fertile periods if for some reason having a child would be a bad idea. It's part of what gives substance to taking one's wife and one's physical relationship to her seriously. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sat Jun 14 11:11:25 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Subject: Re: just an idle thought bcc: From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 14 Jun 2003 07:11:27 -0400 Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences In-Reply-To: <31dd8bee.0306131613.15842bcb@posting.google.com> "jb" == Joe Blow writes: jb> All birth control is artificial including "abstinence". Periodic jb> abseinence is designed to allow us to have sex without jb> consequences. Natural family planning is in some sense artificial, since it involves decisions based on knowledge of the workings of the body. However, the effect of the "artifice" is simply a decision not to engage in sexual intercourse on certain occasions. That looks much less like something that transforms the nature and implications of the sexual act than say oral contraception or use of a condum. In the case of NFP each act of sexual intercourse is just what it would have been without NFP. The same isn't true in the other case. >> The popular myth is that ABC has "liberated" woman. Nothing could >> be further from the truth. The truth is that it has enslaved women, >> turning them from cherished life partners into objects for men's >> enjoyment. jb> I guess you believe that women do not enjoy sex? Do you believe that the feelings and attitudes of men and women toward sex are identical? jb> Except life is not created at this point. Two living organisms jb> combine into a single organism that grows into a person. Life has jb> been an unbroken chain for millions of years. *A* life is created, even if life as such is not. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sat Jun 14 13:42:07 2003 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic] Re: Mel Gibson movie star or bigot? From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 14 Jun 2003 09:42:10 -0400 "dwjones" == dwjones writes: dwjones> i wonder if mel believes like his dad in that the holocaust dwjones> never happened. after all he has never been critical of what dwjones> his father has said over the years. instead he tries to dwjones> shield him from the media. What would you do if your dad were in his 80s and had some pretty dotty ideas (along with some good ones to which you owe everything), and you thought that people might go after him because of your own fame as a way of getting at you? Would you publicly criticize him and distance yourself from him, or would you try to shield him from attention? -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jun 16 12:33:41 2003 Return-path: Received: from vectra.kalb.ath.cx (pool-68-161-170-30.ny325.east.verizon.net [68.161.170.30]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.12.9/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h5GCXdfY019532 for ; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 12:33:40 GMT Received: from vectra.kalb.ath.cx (IDENT:1000@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by vectra.kalb.ath.cx (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h5GCXkv6020249 for ; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 08:33:47 -0400 Received: (from jbk@localhost) by vectra.kalb.ath.cx (8.12.8/8.12.8/Submit) id h5GCXjnB020246; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 08:33:45 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Subject: Re: just an idle thought References: <3edcc9a3$0$8438$a0465688@nnrp.fuse.net> <31dd8bee.0306131613.15842bcb@posting.google.com> <87u1asq5gg.fsf@vectra.kalb.ath.cx> <31dd8bee.0306141036.1952956e@posting.google.com> <874r2spk81.fsf@vectra.kalb.ath.cx> <31dd8bee.0306150631.69e01359@posting.google.com> <87he6ro0vk.fsf@vectra.kalb.ath.cx> <31dd8bee.0306150914.14640d4e@posting.google.com> From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 16 Jun 2003 08:33:44 -0400 Message-ID: <87wufmmcbb.fsf@vectra.kalb.ath.cx> Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 58 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 In-Reply-To: <31dd8bee.0306150914.14640d4e@posting.google.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Status: OR "jb" == Joe Blow writes: jb> I must quibble with you claim that birth control other than NFP jb> changes the nature of the act. I think any form of birth control jb> changes the act if we include factors such as relief from the jb> worry of producing a child and the intrusion of the birth control jb> procedure into the act. I don't see worry as part of the act. If I sign a check or get married whether I'm worried or not doesn't change the act. It does change the act if the check is drawn on the East Bank of the Mississippi or the "wedding vows" are simply lines in a play. In the latter case acts whose essence and human significance is that they are functional have intentionally been made nonfunctional. That makes them quite other than what they were. The claim I'm making really is that the place sex holds in human life depends on the physical function of sex, on its potential to create new life. That doesn't mean that the physical function of sex has to be fully realized through every sexual act. Sex is too expressive to be viewed simply as a means to an end. On the other hand what it expresses is something definite and serious, a union of two persons that has an essential physical aspect. For us intentionally to change that physical aspect so that it does not serve the function that makes sex and the union it expresses serious does I think change the nature of the act. jb> I also maintain that an act not taken is a changed act. Quite true. There is a difference between engaging in sexual intercourse and not engaging in sexual intercourse. My point is that NFP (unlike ABC) does not change any act of sexual intercourse that actually takes place. jb> I agree that a couple who submits to NFP experiences its jb> complications, but just because a process is complicated and jb> intrusive doesn't improve the desired outcome. I agree. Inventing complications need not make things better. Nor need complications make things worse. If I exchange wedding vows in reality it creates many more complications than if I say the words as part of a skit at a party. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad idea actually to get married. jb> All of the information necessary to produce another human is jb> present is all cells. We can now make an embryo from a stem cell. jb> It won't be that long until any cell would do, I imagine. I do jb> think that cloning must complicate your view of what a human life jb> really is. Don't see why. From a biological standpoint I suppose a human life is a certain sort of self-regulating functional system. Even if you are right that someday it will be possible to derive such a system from a skin cell the same distinction between will remain between a skin cell and a human life. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jun 16 17:57:24 2003 Return-path: Received: from vectra.kalb.ath.cx (pool-68-161-170-30.ny325.east.verizon.net [68.161.170.30]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.12.9/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h5GHvNFS029938 for ; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 17:57:23 GMT Received: from vectra.kalb.ath.cx (IDENT:1000@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by vectra.kalb.ath.cx (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h5GHvWv6020848 for ; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 13:57:33 -0400 Received: (from jbk@localhost) by vectra.kalb.ath.cx (8.12.8/8.12.8/Submit) id h5GHvWbW020845; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 13:57:32 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Subject: Re: just an idle thought References: <3edcc9a3$0$8438$a0465688@nnrp.fuse.net> <4p7vdvcfp9ruu6djiinc9n4eugsv7s8209@4ax.com> <87wug045vj.fsf@vectra.kalb.ath.cx> <3ee03c19$0$4227$a04e5680@nnrp.fuse.net> <87smqhwxgt.fsf@vectra.kalb.ath.cx> <3ee69c4c$0$3912$a0465688@nnrp.fuse.net> <873cigx163.fsf@vectra.kalb.ath.cx> <3ee72695$0$3901$a0465688@nnrp.fuse.net> From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 16 Jun 2003 13:57:30 -0400 Message-ID: <874r2pj46t.fsf@vectra.kalb.ath.cx> Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences Lines: 21 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Status: OR "trifold" == trifold writes: trifold> "Enslaved" is a very strong word. And it would better trifold> describe the state of women in the period before artificial trifold> birthcontrol than before it. You might also want to consider trifold> the possibililty that insisting women run the risk of trifold> becoming human incubators every year or giving up their sex trifold> lives (the practicial consequence of your so-called "rythm trifold> method) is itself an objectification of women. To my mind these claims are highly characteristic of the modern liberal attitude toward human life and morality: for a woman to have the body she does, one that functions naturally and healthily in accordance with a design that should be respected, is slavery. For a woman to be pregnant is to be a "human incubator." And simply to argue that an act is wrong and degrading is an attempt to dominate and use another for one's own ends, and so to "objectify." -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jun 17 16:23:45 2003 Return-path: Received: from vectra.kalb.ath.cx (pool-68-161-170-30.ny325.east.verizon.net [68.161.170.30]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.12.9/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h5HGNhMR011539 for ; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 16:23:44 GMT Received: from vectra.kalb.ath.cx (IDENT:1000@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by vectra.kalb.ath.cx (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h5HGNtv6022599; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 12:23:55 -0400 Received: (from jbk@localhost) by vectra.kalb.ath.cx (8.12.8/8.12.8/Submit) id h5HGNt9P022596; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 12:23:55 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: cdleo@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [cdleo] Some Journalists Just Won't Give UpDiscredited Myths About Partial-Birth Abortion References: <006401c334c6$f159a9a0$7e8afea9@sarto> From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 17 Jun 2003 12:23:55 -0400 In-Reply-To: <006401c334c6$f159a9a0$7e8afea9@sarto> Message-ID: <87y900fzac.fsf@vectra.kalb.ath.cx> Lines: 34 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Status: OR jl> Some journalists (and some others) are so attached to comforting jl> myths about partial-birth abortion that they just won't let them jl> go -- even after they have been thoroughly discredited by other jl> journalists, and even after they have been forcefully repudiated jl> by leading spokespersons for the abortion industry. jl> Worse, some of the offenders, when they are challenged for jl> disseminating long-debunked misinformation, simply restate the jl> misinformation without in any way addressing the substance of the jl> challenge, or fail to respond at all. This is an interesting article, and we can speculate why these things are as they are. Some possibilities: 1. Politics is the epic of the triumph of good over evil. All abortion is good, so it's out of place and a little bizarre to raise nit-picking factual points when the universal right to abortion is at stake. 2. When it's a political question people are careful about facts only if they think someone they respect might make an issue of it. Pro-lifers are weirdos from another planet, though. So why worry about what they say? 3. Experts are always on the side of the liberal left. We all know what sort of thing is going to come next when the New York Times says "Scholars say ... " So it follows that nothing that goes the other way can possibly be true or rational. I'm sure there are other explanations as well. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed Jun 18 00:22:27 2003 Return-path: Received: from vectra.kalb.ath.cx (pool-68-161-170-30.ny325.east.verizon.net [68.161.170.30]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.12.9/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h5I0MQTr025237 for ; Wed, 18 Jun 2003 00:22:26 GMT Received: from vectra.kalb.ath.cx (IDENT:1000@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by vectra.kalb.ath.cx (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h5I0Mdv6023225 for ; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 20:22:39 -0400 Received: (from jbk@localhost) by vectra.kalb.ath.cx (8.12.8/8.12.8/Submit) id h5I0Md1k023222; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 20:22:39 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic] Re: just an idle thought From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 17 Jun 2003 20:22:38 -0400 Message-ID: <87he6ofd4h.fsf@vectra.kalb.ath.cx> Lines: 27 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Status: O "trifold" == trifold writes: trifold> I don't believe you or anyone else can assert that some trifold> Design requires that every woman who is able to should have trifold> babies or give up sex. That's nice, but you haven't commented on any of the arguments (which incidentally depend on the role of sex in human life rather than on a priori claims about design). I should add that to treat woman's equality as the issue is odd since men are also involved in sexual congress and whatever obligations flow therefrom. trifold> It is objectifying in the sense that it insists the essential trifold> nature of women--their very humanity--is defined by your trifold> sense of them (in your case, apparently, their biology), when trifold> in fact, their potential is broader than this, and it is for trifold> each woman to fulfill it. Don't understand. Men and women, among other things, have bodies. Sex is, among other things, a biological function. You seem unable to distinguish the view that we should respect those features of human nature and of sex from the view that that those features wholly define human nature and sex. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed Jun 18 00:23:07 2003 Return-path: Received: from vectra.kalb.ath.cx (pool-68-161-170-30.ny325.east.verizon.net [68.161.170.30]) by sdf.lonestar.org (8.12.9/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h5I0N6Tr025708 for ; Wed, 18 Jun 2003 00:23:06 GMT Received: from vectra.kalb.ath.cx (IDENT:1000@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by vectra.kalb.ath.cx (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h5I0NJv6023236 for ; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 20:23:20 -0400 Received: (from jbk@localhost) by vectra.kalb.ath.cx (8.12.8/8.12.8/Submit) id h5I0NJM7023233; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 20:23:19 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: vectra.kalb.ath.cx: jbk set sender to kalb@aya.yale.edu using -f Sender: jbk@kalb.ath.cx To: jkalb@freeshell.org Subject: [alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic] Re: just an idle thought From: kalb@aya.yale.edu Date: 17 Jun 2003 20:23:19 -0400 Message-ID: <87d6hcfd3c.fsf@vectra.kalb.ath.cx> Lines: 28 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Status: O "maf1029" == maf1029 writes: maf1029> I'm saying that the Church sanctions marriages for sterile maf1029> men, women with hysterectomies, and post-meopausal women, maf1029> despite the Church's own prescription that "marriage consists maf1029> of a sacramental bond between a man and a woman open to the maf1029> possibility of children." The man has a male human body, the woman has a female human body, they are capable in uniting in the sexual act, the natural function of which is procreation, and the parties do nothing to interfere with that function. That should make the union open to the possibility of children in the necessary sense. It's a union of a kind that naturally leads to conception, and the fact that age or bodily defect will in fact prevent conception is an add-on that the parties might not even know about. It's an added circumstance that doesn't change the essential nature of what they're doing. In contrast, if they had been fertile and used contraception it would change their intent and thus the nature of their act. Their intent wouldn't be to engage in sexual intercourse, and accept the natural consequences if they should came about, but to but to engage in an act they had modified to eliminate its natural function. That does seem different to me. -- Jim Kalb http://jkalb.freeshell.org
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