Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From christ-and-culture-return-728-jk=PANIX.COM@returns.egroups.com Fri Feb 26 09:08:21 1999
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199902261408.JAA10442@panix.com>
To: christ-and-culture@egroups.com (Christ and Culture discussion list)
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 09:08:16 -0500 (EST)
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Subject: [C&C] More on turning on, tuning in, dropping out
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On cultural withdrawal --
It seems to me society is always based on something thought more
important than society. That point ought to be acceptable on this
list. So unrestricted commitment to cultural engagement is advance
acceptance of other people's fundamental views.
The monastics and for that matter the pillar dwellers of the Egyptian
desert expressed a sense that Christ counted more than anything and
thus the vigor of Christianity rather than cultural retreat. More
recently, the uncompromising nature of the '60s Left has led to
cultural supremacy.
Maybe the point is that strategy isn't everything. If you don't have
something of transcendent value why should anyone bother with you? If
you do, you'll act as if you do, and that means conduct that sometimes
doesn't look politic to other people and in fact may be quite at odds
with ordinary notions of prudence, sociability, good sense, what have
you.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From christ-and-culture-return-801-jk=PANIX.COM@returns.egroups.com Mon Mar 1 17:48:11 1999
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for christ-and-culture@egroups.com; Mon, 1 Mar 1999 17:48:23 -0500 (EST)
From: Jim Kalb
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Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 17:48:23 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Prof. Byron Curtis" at Mar 1, 99 10:47:52 am
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Subject: [C&C] Re: Bypassing the Institutions; Racism
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> racism is the combination of prejudice with power.
This is an odd definition, since "power" is so complex. If you want to
exert power over someone you can usually find a way to do it, if only
by punching him in the nose. Criminals exert power over their victims,
and black criminals are not unknown. One can also be more subtle.
People who are relied on exert power over those who rely on them. So
even someone in a very subordinate position can exert power, and thus
it seems display racism, by a display of "attitude."
Possibilities can be multiplied _ad infinitum_. Man is a social animal
and men affect each other in all sorts of ways. Almost any of those
ways can reasonably be characterized as "power." And then too, there
are blacks who are in positions of power and authority in a perfectly
ordinary sense.
> Racism is racial prejudice on the part of a privileged group, a group
> that has the political or social means to exclude members of the
> targeted race from privilege.
This is more specific. Here's an example. The law grants very
impressive power backed with guns and prisons. So if ruling elites --
whoever they may be -- establish laws that exclude members of a
targeted race from participating in some benefit on equal terms with
others then it seems we have an example of racism. On this line of
thought it appears that affirmative action is ruling class antiwhite
racism. To the extent it's established to mollify blacks or get black
votes then it would be black antiwhite racism as well.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From jk Wed Feb 24 21:45:47 1999
Subject: Re: you are a genuine asshole
To: h
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 21:45:47 -0500 (EST)
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Fantasies that grow out of hatred and bigotry don't become folk tales.
They wash out, because people get tired of them and don't like to hear
them or tell them. Small-mindedness doesn't last. It doesn't
illuminate life. I could go on and on with reasons why you won't find
the following in Grimm's.
>
> Once upon a time, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess
> happened upon a frog in a pond. The frog said to the princess: "I
> was once a handsome prince until an evil witch put a spell on me.
> One kiss from you and I will turn back into a prince and then we
> can marry, move into the castle with my mom, and you can
> prepare my meals, clean my clothes, bear my children and forever
> feel happy doing so."
>
> That night, while the princess dined on frog's legs, she laughed to
> herself and thought, "I don't fucking think so."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From jk Fri Feb 26 14:25:44 1999
Subject: Re: let me understand
To: l
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 14:25:44 -0500 (EST)
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> I would like to know if what you are saying is that equal rights for
> men and woman is a mistake?
The slogan's a mistake. It's based on a misunderstanding of social
life, that rights can be the basic concern.
I don't have a special objection to equality under the law, as long as
government and law are limited. The political point the page makes is
that the current attempt to use the law to abolish socially accepted
sex roles, for example through antidiscrimination laws, is destructive
and should be ended.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From jk Sat Feb 27 07:26:47 1999
Subject: Re: let me understand
To: l
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 07:26:47 -0500 (EST)
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> So you do or do not support equal rights.
"Equal rights" is a slogan. Depending on interpretation I could
honestly say either yes or no. The answer I gave is more detailed than
yes or no. What further question is there?
> And do you mean by socially accepted sex roles that men are providers
> and women care givers for their husbands and children?
Men have primary responsibility for providing, protecting and public
affairs generally, women for household management and childcare.
> How do you feel that the anti discrimination acts are destructive?
They attack a basic principle that has organized social and personal
life in all times and places, the understanding that men and women are
different and at least somewhat different expectations and
responsibilities are appropriate. That has to be destructive in lots
of ways.
For example, if there are no complementary roles for men and women
marriages are going to be less stable. Bad for all involved.
Relations between men and women are going to be less cooperative, less
trusting, more marked by suspicion and manipulation. Also bad. All
these things have happened.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From jk Sun Feb 28 19:20:11 1999
Subject: Re: Psychopathic Prez II
To: e
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 19:20:11 -7700 (EST)
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> It does seem likely that he will slip...but what do you think will
> happen? How can Hill be equally evil? I would think at a certain
> point someone would say...sstop!!
There's enormous resistance to recognizing what kind of guy he is. It
would upset too many things. As to Hill, she's strange and it's a
strange relationship. Who knows how much she admits to herself about
him?
I agree he probably relies on other people too much in his acts as
president to do anything seriously catastrophic. He can blow up a few
Sudanese or whoever but there's a limit. His disorder doesn't seem to
take a directly political form as in say Hitler's case and our
constitutional development as a world empire doesn't seem to have
reached the point at which he could literally become another Caligula.
Jim
From jk Tue Mar 2 07:01:19 1999
Subject: Houellebecq
To: p
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 07:01:19 -0500 (EST)
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News of Houellebecq has finally reached America. There was a lengthy
article in the arts section of the New York Times today on the man, his
work and the controversies. Most likely the article was prompted by
the translation into English of one of his books.
The discussion seemed factual enough, although naturally the writer
didn't take it very seriously (these are foreigners, they're Frenchmen,
they're intellectuals, it has to do with something that is neither
economics nor the demand for equality, so it can't matter much).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Mar 3 04:56:25 EST 1999
Article: 13579 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
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Subject: Re: The long march of PC into criminal law
Date: 3 Mar 1999 04:54:55 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <18441-36DC7BF6-56@newsd-121.bryant.webtv.net> Nordicblonde@webtv.net (Greta Johannson) writes:
>What surprises me is any of these laws against "hate speech" are
>obeyed, I would have expected them to be ignored, especially in Canada
>and the western European countries that have a strong tradition of
>free speech.
How about academia? Free discussion and all that. For that matter why
don't academics all protest equal opportunity laws, a gross violation
of academic freedom? Freedom is OK when it breaks down traditional
institutions and hierarchies but that's it or so it appears.
To my mind these things are a sign that people care more about equality
than freedom, and that's been true all along. It's got lots of
advantages over freedom. It doesn't have the same uncertainties. It's
easier to define. It's a much bigger moral principle, and it's
something you don't have to do anything to get the benefit of. More
people can benefit from it fully in their own lives. Other people can
take care of it for you, and all you have to do is complain when they
don't do their job. So it's not surprising it wins out in case of a
conflict.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From paleo-return-44-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Fri Mar 5 04:47:00 1999
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From: Jim Kalb
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In-Reply-To: <2293d5a3.36deb923@aol.com> from "CraigPreus@aol.com" at Mar 4, 99 11:47:31 am
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CraigPreus@aol.com writes:
> What can we do to make things look at little less like South Africa or
> Bosnia in the future and more like the old republic?
I suppose some specific policies would be nationalism or at least anti-
internationalism (restrictions on immigration, foreign trade and
participation in the emerging transnational regime), particularism
(opposition to multiculturalism, affirmative action and other aspects of
radical egalitarianism), devolution, rejection of cultural radicalism
when relevant, and so on. All those things have a lot of basic popular
support.
Beyond specific policies, intellectual work and advocacy is enormously
important. If you don't have the grip on things you get by thinking
them through and if people are unable to understand what you're saying
because it sounds like doubletalk or they don't see how it ties into a
general conception of the public good you're not going to get anywhere
even if you have a great deal of inarticulate support.
Since we've been losing badly for a very long time, the intellectual
questions are quite basic. Where are we? How did we get here? What's
keeping us here or moving us on? What do we want, anyway? More
specifically, what is the significance of the Old Republic -- worthy
ideal or Lockean Trojan Horse? What is there in America's history and
the world generally that paleos can connect to? What has turned out to
be a bad idea that must be downplayed? Above all, what's the vision
for past, present and future?
It's my impression that right wingers like other people have less
culture, less intellectual subtlety, less speculative power than in the
past. Where are the great thinkers? If that's right it's a basic
problem that's not easy to fix.
Apart from basic intellectual work we need more forceful and widespread
public advocacy. Confront the statist libertines in all fora. Speak
truth to power. Let people know there are alternatives to
left/liberalism. Etc. So there's plenty to do.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From paleo-return-45-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Fri Mar 5 04:49:50 1999
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In-Reply-To: <36DF37FE.91A1CAE@execpc.com> from "Kate Scot-Bryson" at Mar 4, 99 07:48:46 pm
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> Given he really means it, and gets elected. Then goes to Washington
> and all the advisors and bureaucrats fill him in on why he can't do
> it. he continues to make conservative noises but 4 years later we
> can't *really* tell the difference. Seems like a waste of time to me.
Do you really know it's useless in advance? One thing Bill Clinton can
teach us is that persistence pays. Admittedly he has the advantage of
going with the flow.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From owner-confucius@lists.gnacademy.org Wed Mar 3 18:12:40 1999
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To: confucius@lists.gnacademy.org
From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Confucius: A Man for all Seasons
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Status: RO
Robert Rosenstock writes:
> Jim also noted that "... China [is not] the same as Confucianism. At
> times it was. When the Confucianists were in charge - and they were
> on more than one occasion - they had the opportunity to put a
> "philosophy" in action - what an opportunity!! But their actions
> bespoke something else.
I know too little to identify or discuss the instances to which you
refer. It does seem to me that the thought of Confucius is not the
sort of thing you can put into effect by forcing it on people, so
putting men claiming allegiance to Confucius in charge of a universal
centralized empire based on regulation and punishment would not
necessarily lead to reform. You may be talking about quite a different
sort of thing though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From christ-and-culture-return-806-jk=PANIX.COM@returns.egroups.com Sat Mar 6 08:14:48 1999
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From: Jim Kalb
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In-Reply-To: from "Paul C Duggan" at Mar 5, 99 12:33:41 pm
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Paul C Duggan writes:
> We're talking about the definition of racism as defined to only apply
> to the opressors. I'm saying I don't see much wrong with focusing on
> the misdeeds of those with power in a context where many of those who
> have power don't even realize it or it is second nature to them.
What concrete demonstrable power and oppression do you have in mind?
Differences between groups in average wealth and occupation -- the
things you notice if you compare Jews to others for example -- are not
oppression. Fraud is oppressive but doesn't appear to be a major
factor. Specific violent crimes -- murder, rape, robbery and so on --
are oppressive, but far more such crimes are perpetrated by blacks
against whites than the reverse. Actual slavery is oppressive but not
an issue, so I don't understand the point of the reference to Hebrew
slavery in Egypt. If whites as a class exploited blacks as a class I
would think racist whites would want to have lots of blacks available
to exploit. Pharaoh after all did not want the Hebrews to leave Egypt.
So racist exploiting whites should favor nonwhite immigration and stay
away from places like Idaho where they would have to get their own
breakfast. That doesn't seem to be the case though.
In this century tens of millions of innocents have been murdered in the
name of stamping out exploitation. What is called a passion for social
and economic justice has been the greatest of all sources of
oppression. Churchmen have been complicit, and should learn from the
experience. "Racist" and "oppressor" are no less inflammatory than
racial epithets. They are the kind of words that kill, or at least
stir up hate, so they shouldn't be used loosely or tendentiously.
Also, there is actual clear-cut demonstrable oppression in the world,
and we shouldn't confuse categories.
> > Jesus did not particularly emphasize the misdeeds of the rich and
> > powerful.
I'm not quite satisfied with the wording. Jesus thought that riches
are a problem, since they are a distraction, and that bad conduct by
someone with a lot against someone who doesn't have much is
particularly objectionable. It also tends to be easy and therefore
common.
On the other hand his basic concern was certainly not economic justice
-- how could it have been, when he thought that economic issues were so
grossly overemphasized? When two men came to him to ask him to divide
an inheritance he said that wasn't what he was there for. His central
concerns were not economic or managerial or political in any common
sense. Otherwise supreme political power together with the solution of
all economic and technological problems would not have constituted his
Temptation.
> Enemies of Jesus: Scribes, Pharisees, Priests,
He didn't like academics, the PC crowd, or functionaries in respectable
national religious bureaucracies. No doubt understandable, but what
reason is there to think those people had lots of money in comparison
with say rich landowners and merchants, who Jesus doesn't talk about a
lot, at least not as such? In any event their offenses had to do with
misuse of religious authority rather than socioeconomic position. I've
been told the Sadducees were richer than most, and he hardly talks
about them at all except to disagree with them about resurrection.
> Herodians, Pilate, Herod,
Government administrators and representatives of transnational
bureaucracies, the NWO of the day. Pilate is basically portrayed as
clueless, by the way, rather than someone who for reasons of his own
became an enemy.
> Rich Young Ruler
The one who asked how to be perfect? Hardly an enemy. He and Jesus
plainly liked each other.
> Devourers of Widow's Houses, Tax Resiters, (rich & powerful)
He disagreed it's true with those who felt obligated to resist the
financial demands of the colonial occupying power. I don't see how
that manifests a special opposition to wealth and power.
> Friends of Jesus: Harlots, fishermen, lepers, demoniacs (poor and
> powerless)
What about the ruler whose daughter he raised from the dead? For that
matter how about Joseph of Arimathea, who seems to have been the first
man to raise his head after the Crucifixion? And how do you know
lepers and demoniacs as such were poor? Members of rich families could
suffer such afflictions. There are examples in the Old Testament. And
the Gospels represent at least some as under the care of their
families.
> Tax collectors, centurions
Foreign oppressors and their greedy brutal extorting agents.
> samaritans (possibly rich, but social outcasts)
Provincial rednecks and religious reactionaries. They hadn't moved
with the times. Who is it today who would most object to having such
people over for dinner?
> And the prophets do focus on the sins of the powerful agianst the
> "powerless".
The question is what to infer from the prophets. One could define
"oppression" as "retention of power by the powerful," the continued
existence of social distinctions, and so interpret the prophetic demand
as one for creation of an absolutely egalitarian society. If so, it
seems likely to lead in fact to tyranny, universal slavery, destruction
of civilization, and other bad things. You could also interpret the
message as a denunciation of specific evils that aren't necessarily the
same in every age.
If you have an extremely diverse economy and job market, universal
instant communication, ready mobility, enormous and widespread
prosperity, general security of person and property, extensive popular
influence on government, etc., etc., etc. it seems to me the situation
becomes rather different than in Palestine 700 B.C. or so. There will
still be evils and abuses in high places but they won't be exactly the
same. Local landowners for example won't have the power they did at
that time. Others will have far more power -- Jesus had only scribes
and Pharisees to worry about, while we have a much larger and more
ubiquitous symbol-manipulating and -abusing elite.
> most of his public pronoucnements had the effect of making those
> comfortable with their lives "uncomfortable". He treats the sins of
> the "sinners" as well, but quite often the powerful believe "they
> have no need of a doctor"
Absolutely. So if we carry him over unaltered and assume problems now
are just like problems them, he would presumably attack comfortable
academics and religious bureaucrats and the moral demands they invent
and try to force on everyone. That would apply double if the demands
served the purposes of powerful ruling elites.
On that line of thought it seems to me that bureaucratic egalitarianism
-- including contemporary antiracism -- is a candidate for attack.
After all, judging by experience since the late 60s it does little or
nothing for its alleged greatest beneficiaries, the most badly-off
blacks. For that matter if you compare trends before and after the
civil rights laws and especially their affirmative action enhancements
were put in place it's not clear it does much for most other blacks
either.
Bureaucratic egalitarianism does do something for its comfortable
supporters though. For one thing, it makes them better than other
people and licenses them to tell others what to do. Even better, it
costs no personal effort, since all they have to do is adopt political
positions that normally don't much affect them personally (they've
already made it) and they can be as abusive in their personal lives as
they want and remain among the elect.
Further, it enhances the power of the powerful classes that support it.
It delegitimates and undermines the autonomy of all institutions other
than the state, since they are considered untrustworthy and even evil
because implicated in traditional bigotries. It thereby promotes the
triumph of a centralized formal bureaucratic order that (oddly) favors
the interests of comfortable academics, who supply the expertise
centralized bureaucracies run on, not to mention the interests of
politicians, government officials, lawyers, and so on, all notable
among the powerful. It promotes media interests as well, since their
power is enhanced to the extent social life becomes subjected to
rational formal systems that define situations as social issues
requiring public action. (The opponents of universalistic bureaucratic
egalitarianism are not among the powerful, by the way. That is why
affirmative action and large-scale immigration survive in spite of
enduring large majorities opposed.)
Bureaucratic egalitarianism -- prominently including modern antiracism
-- is also at odds with the coherence of specific cultures, since
actual cultures all have ethnic and therefore racial overtones. If you
try to root out all the effects of race you root out a lot of other
stuff as well. All culture is specific. It follows that bureaucratic
egalitarianism destroys culture as such, and thereby makes life more
crude, brutal and stupid. So the conjunction of egalitarianism and
barbarism post-60s is no accident.
> We are specificly told in the Law to care for and not oppress the
> "stranger" that is within our midst.
"Stranger" seems to mean immigrant rather than member of a native
minority, so the issue you're raising is what the example of the Old
Testament Law tells us about treating immigrants. It's a good issue
that deserves discussion. Oppression doesn't seem to be the issue
though since disinclination of a private person to deal with someone
might be good or bad but it's hard for it to be oppression.
There are obvious differences in circumstances that seem relevant. A
society in which most economic activity, education etc. takes place
within the household, and what public life there is is governed by
either the king or religious law, seems different from a society where
public life is far more extensive and pervasive and governed by
consensus and common understandings. Immigration seems to raise issues
in the latter it does not in the former.
Also, Old Testament religion wasn't unequivocally pro-stranger.
Miscegenation was frowned on and sometimes vigorously proscribed. That
in itself was enough to exclude strangers from participation in most
aspects of Jewish society. Foreign religions were very definitely
opposed. The Law had different provisions for treatment of Jews and
outsiders, and the ones I can think of favored Jews. And the
extermination of the inhabitants of the Promised Land must play some
role in considering the issue.
> I didn't ask about all the variations. I asked about the specific of
> where it is clear that race is a primary factor in hiring.
The examples I gave were intended as situations in which in one way or
another race made the difference.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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In-Reply-To: <4.1.19990306115250.0092a7f0@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> from "Russ P. Reeves" at Mar 6, 99 12:55:25 pm
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"Russ P. Reeves" writes:
> Many Jews were wealthy in Weimar Germany - in fact, it was their
> wealth which in part (along with a strong racist element) made them
> targets for oppression.
True, but I'm not sure of the relevance. Many aristocrats and
industrialists were wealthy in Czarist Russia. They also became
targets and mostly ended up dead. What follows?
> Surely you can see a difference between a violent attack on someone
> for financial gain and members of one race tying a member of another
> race to the back of their car and dragging him to his death for no
> gain other than the thrill of killing a "nigger."
Sure. What makes you think crime of the latter sort is distinctively
white on black? There are about 3 times as many whites killed by
blacks as blacks by whites, which leaves room for all sorts of
motivations. They're not all profit-making ventures when engaged in by
blacks. The Jasper killing got more publicity than the Yahweh
killings, but the latter occurred as well.
Maybe this would be a better presentation of the issue as it now
appears to me:
The proposed definition of "racism" requires identification of whites
collectively as "the powerful" and blacks collectively as "the
powerless". A problem with it is that whites as such are not the
powerful. Our ruling elites do not define themselves in ethnic terms.
They define themselves in professional, educational, functional, and
ideological terms. It may happen that most of them are white, but they
are a small minority of whites and do not represent white interests as
such. For evidence, consider elite solidarity in defense of
affirmative action and the transformation of the ethnic nature of
American society through immigration, both quite unpopular among the
population at large.
If the foregoing is correct, then those professors who adopt the
proposed definition are in fact showing solidarity with the powerful
rather than the oppressed. They are performing the usual function of
an established clerical order, to provide theoretical support for the
powers that be. They get paid with social respectability and, to the
extent their activities cause the social service state to expand,
additional position and power on account of their role as professional
trainers, experts and indoctrinators. Current ideology requires the
powers that be to represent themselves as defenders of the oppressed,
and therefore to identify a group of oppressors. I don't see why
either their pose as defenders of the weak or their theories of
oppression should be taken seriously.
> I'm much more concerned about the kind of racism which denies a black
> man a job because of his race than the racist complaints the man
> might make in his home about white people.
I agree action is likely to cause more problems than grousing about
things in the privacy of your own home. Some whites grouse, some
blacks act.
Putting comparisons aside, it seems to me that under present and
foreseeable circumstances (extremely diverse economy and occupational
scheme, easy communications and movement, varied employers, far-flung
enterprises, world markets, widespread opposition to racism, no legal
requirement of discrimination) job discrimination is unlikely to cause
serious economic problems for those subjected to it even if it is
common. If there are 1000 employers and 800 won't hire you you'll
probably end up in about the same place with one of the remaining 200.
It's interesting in that regard to look at stats on overall black
economic progress before and after the civil rights laws of the 60s and
the affirmative action programs of the early 70s. (Look at Historical
Statistics of the United States and the United States Statistical
Abstract.) If anything black progress on the whole was slower after
than before. One exception (I understand) is areas in the South where
a uniform system of discrimination had been compelled through a
combination of law and extralegal violence, where the destruction of
that system in the 60s gave blacks a immediate one-time boost.
> The real problem with the wording was that it focused exclusively on
> money. Jesus associated not only with the poor, but also the
> powerless, social outcasts (tax gatherers, for example - wealthy, but
> social outcasts).
Tax gatherers also had power -- they needed it to shake money out of
people.
I'm sure the discussion has been unbalanced and wording imperfect --
it's all been a tangent from something else. The original issue I
think was whether the best approach is to speak of bad attitudes and
conduct in common human terms or to define your language so the most
opprobrious terms only apply to certain classes of people. It seems to
me Jesus took the former approach.
> Amos 2:7"They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of
> the ground and deny justice to the oppressed." Ez. 22:29 "The people
> of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the
> poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice.").
It's certainly outrageous when the rich and powerful commit theft and
violent crime. Does that show that the rich and powerful should be
denounced or that theft and violent crime should be denounced
especially when successful and shameless?
> Luke 6:24, "Woe to you who are rich..."
Where they're in the same category as people who laugh and people who
have a good reputation. Then he tells us to turn the other cheek and
submit to oppression. The whole passage is remarkable and deserves
study and thought.
> You mean Jarius the synagogue ruler? I guess it's possible that like
> most churches today which seek out elders who are successful
> businessmen and big givers, synagogue rulers may have been wealthy.
He was certainly respectable. He seems to have been non-poor, non-
powerless, non-outcaste, and what Jesus did for him was more amazing
than most. The incident confirms my point that Jesus did not define
good and bad by class but concerned himself with every human soul with
which he came in contact.
> As for the rest of the post, surely it's possible to show the
> hypocisy of bureaucratic anti-racism without denying the reality of
> racism today?
It's not really hypocrisy that's my objection. It's more the
understanding of society that bureaucratic antiracism represents and
the effect of political decisions based on that understanding. I agree
that men of different races sometimes suspect, dislike, fear or hate
each other and should not, and that racial frictions and hatreds
sometimes cause very serious problems. Other things do as well though,
for example envy and resentment of those who have more and attempts to
create utopias. The status of racism as a sort of superproblem or
superevil seems odd to me, but I haven't thought it all through.
> "The community is to have the same rules for you and for the alien
> living among you; this is a lasting ordinance for the generations to
> come. You and the alien shall be the same before the LORD: The same
> laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the alien living
> among you.'" (Numbers 15:15-16).
Is it clear that applied accross the board, or only to the particular
item being discussed? The KJV makes it sound like the latter, I
haven't checked other translations.
More generally, do you know of a good discussion of the status of
aliens in Israel? My recollection is that the same rules did not
always apply, that in important respects aliens and Jews were treated
differently. For example, as I recall a Jewish borrower or slave was
not in the same position as an alien.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Mar 7 09:02:20 EST 1999
Article: 13583 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
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Subject: Re: the metaphysics of impeachment
Date: 7 Mar 1999 09:00:18 -0500
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In <36E2074B.A92CF4E5@msmisp.com> cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>> You seem to be saying
>You misunderstand.
There are several miscues which it might pay to sort out over a beer
but not in a newsgroup.
>I'm left thinking that your characterizations, which openly speak of
>connections to transcendence, do so in only a partial way...because
>those characterizations still keep open the possibility of a kind of
>'engineering' or a kind of return to an imagined purer past. I get
>this sense when you speak about 'tradition' as if it is a class, and
>not an individual.
The problem with speaking about transcendence or fundamental issues of
any sort is that anything you say will be misleading. On the other
hand, to set boundaries to speech is to constrict the world, which is
worse.
The advantage of the aquarium metaphor is that it shows how impossibly
difficult the situation is and how resistant to improvement through
manipulation. Pointing out as you do that we are in the aquarium helps
the metaphor. Impossible difficulty does not mean that there's nothing
we should do in view of the situation. It just means that the
means/ends component of what we should do will not be the whole or even
the largest part of it.
It will always be tempting to interpret in a technological sense
whatever language we use in speaking of "what to do". That's the
nature of language and the background assumptions that prevail today.
It's also a consequence of putting things in a form that will make
sense to people now. It's said that all roads lead to Rome. From the
modern technological outlook the road to Rome leads through the paradox
of attaining a goal where the necessary means include at least partial
abandonment of means/ends rationality.
As to "tradition in general" -- I think such an abstraction does have a
role in developing the paradox I just mentioned. Technological
rationality is not a complete formal system but rests on something
else, at least tradition in general -- the principle of relying on the
accumulated habits, understandings etc. of the community to which one
belongs. But tradition of any sort requires abandonment of
technological rationality since it requires faith and self-abandonment.
Thus begins the road out of the box we're in.
>Perhaps I am wrong to interpret questions such as 'What can we do?
>How can our message be more effective?' as necessarily making
>political prescriptions.
I don't think I've used the latter language.
>I think the only way one can call for the return to Tradition, is to
>be very specific about the Tradition one champions
I don't think so, any more than the only way to arrive anywhere is to
specify what the goal is and insist on it. Is there a process that
leads to truth? If there is, then you can arrive at truth by obviating
things that stand in the way of the process. To the extent one of the
things that stands in the way is allegiance to an abstract ideal of
technological rationality then it would help to show problems with the
abstract ideal that mean it won't work at all unless expanded, to
include say at least the principle of tradition in general.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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In-Reply-To: from "Paul C Duggan" at Mar 2, 99 12:54:04 pm
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Paul C Duggan writes:
> > > racism is the combination of prejudice with power.
> >
> > This is an odd definition, since "power" is so complex.
>
> Do the prophets by and large speak out against the bad attitudes of
> the oppressed poor? Or do they speak out against the oppression
> (misuse of power) of the wicked wealthy?
They didn't *define* bad conduct as something only the wealthy could
engage in.
The point of my discussion was that the redefinition of racism doesn't
make sense. It's suspicious when someone redefines inflammatory
language in such a way that it only applies to other people. The
apparent intention of the revised definition is to undercut objections
to affirmative action and so on. In general, the targets of AA etc.
are not wicked wealthy oppressors, and the beneficiaries are not the
oppressed poor. So I don't think the wicked wealthy etc. are the
issue.
I agree I didn't prove the sins of the weak are as bad as those of the
strong. My only point was that they equally constitute sins. The Ten
Commandments don't have any special connection with economic or social
status. Jesus did not particularly emphasize the misdeeds of the rich
and powerful. The concern about wealth seemed to have more to do with
its effect on the possessor than oppression of others. He said that
two women would be grinding meal; one would be taken and the other
left. There was nothing definitional about sin that meant only rich
people could do it.
As for prophets, it seems the issue is what aspects of life most need
to be turned around to make lives better. For my own part I don't see
that it's economics, at least within the United States. Too much
concern with the economic side of life is a big issue I think, but that
doesn't just affect the people with the most money. I don't think it's
race relations either, even assuming redefining "racism" would
contribute to better race relations.
> What should a Christian do if he seems to be being hired partially
> because of his shared race with the hirer?
What should he do if he's hired because of his different race, to
increase diversity? Is that better than hiring him for being the same
race, to keep things simple?
To me it depends on circumstances. Very different things can be
involved. Someone might hire me because we were simpatico, or because
he thought I would fit in and work well with the others. Most people
hit it off best with people with a similar cultural background, and
culture relates to ethnicity which relates to race. I might get hired
because the employer was satisfied my credentials hadn't been inflated
by AA, and that there was less likely to be a problem if things didn't
work out and I got fired. Or because of a past bad experience.
Possible situations and variations can be multiplied indefinitely. Is
there a unique Christian view that covers them all?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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In-Reply-To: <46cf7309.36e428ad@aol.com> from "MnnyMoNHak@aol.com" at Mar 8, 99 02:44:45 pm
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MnnyMoNHak@aol.com writes:
> >He didn't like academics, the PC crowd, or functionaries in
> >respectable national religious bureaucracies.>>
>
> There was a "PC crowd" in Jesus' day? Have you completely redefined
> "PC" beyond any known definition, or are you just that desperate to
> Americanize the Bible?
I was referring to the Pharisees. The thought was that both Pharisaism
and PC are forms of moralistic pedantry that has lost sight of basics
and mainly functions to maintain the authority of a class of supposed
experts.
If you don't like the analysis or think the comparison is too far-
fetched I won't insist on it. It was an off the cuff remark.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From christ-and-culture-return-813-jk=PANIX.COM@returns.egroups.com Mon Mar 8 19:51:39 1999
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199903090051.TAA13175@panix.com>
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Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1999 19:51:21 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Prof. Byron Curtis" at Mar 8, 99 03:18:49 pm
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"Prof. Byron Curtis" writes:
> OK, and then see what happens to that [member of oppressed race who
> commits a crime against member of dominant race or displays
> obstructionist "attitude"] in a political community dominated by
> racists. The vengeance is swift, incommensurate, and either "legal"
> or else blind-eyed by the powers that be.
> So, do we agree on racisms's definition?
I'm all but persuaded. If "racism" were used specifically to refer to
situations of the kind you contemplate it would greatly improve the
quality of discussion of race relations.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From paleo-return-74-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Wed Mar 10 15:47:22 1999
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Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 15:47:15 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <19990310170517.HRSC1437@localHost> from "Rhydon Jackson" at Mar 10, 99 11:05:00 am
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Rhydon Jackson writes:
> Plenty of people who have a sincere interest in reducing the size and
> scope of the national government will not brook the slightest
> disrespect for MLK nor countenance any lessening of the federal role
> in ensuring that anti discrimination measures are successful.
Give in on this point, though, and how much is left? I think it's
important to bear in mind how radical the antidiscrimination principle
really is. Since man is a social animal it's not just a matter of
looking beyond skin color to individual worth.
In order to eliminate racial discrimination it is necessary to eliminate
cultural discrimination, since culture is tied to ethnicity and
ethnicity to race. If it's not OK to hire people because of WASP
descent it's not going to be OK to hire them because of WASP culture.
If taken at all seriously, the antidiscrimination principle therefore
means that multiculturalism -- the principle that no institution or
practice of any substantial public importance may advantage one culture
over another -- is inevitable. Every culture must be denied public
authority, which means that all cultures must be abolished since if a
culture is not a stock of authoritative common understandings,
practices, etc. it is nothing. Abolition of culture means stupidity,
brutality, ersatz culture supplied by pop stars and therapists, anarchy,
despotism, etc., etc., etc.
> Fleming remarked in an editorial not too long ago that the advantage
> of being outside the pale is the freedom to ignore criticism from
> within the pale, a point that Justin stresses also. The problem is
> that such a stance is not likely to effect much within the pale.
The basic question is whether we have a fundamentally sound system that
just needs a few tweaks to point things in a better direction, all
consistent with what the dominant powers will accept, or whether the
problems are bigger than that. Have the Jacobins really finally won?
If the latter then the normal sort of political strategizing -- putting
together a winning combination based on the existing disposition of
forces -- is aside the point.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From paleo-return-77-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Wed Mar 10 22:57:21 1999
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From: Jim Kalb
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To: paleo@egroups.com
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 22:46:04 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <19990310231411.BTHY18356@localHost> from "Rhydon Jackson" at Mar 10, 99 05:14:00 pm
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Rhydon says:
> Well, I'm not sure. In the abstract, one can maintain the distinction
> between culture and race. Perhaps it evaporates at times in practical
> situations. On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't have been hired
> by my present employer if I didn't speak English.
It goes a bit beyond speaking English. Culture is among other things
an elaborate mode of cooperation. That's why diversity is the
wonderful challenge we keep hearing about. Also, the civil rights laws
are fanatically demanding -- you're not allowed to take anything
related to ethnicity into account *at all*, at least unless there's
some strong "business necessity" argument which there almost never is.
> What is clear is that no move toward allowing private individuals to
> make hiring decisions and the like free from government oversight
> will gain much sympathy. I'm afraid that only a tiny minority is
> dissatisfied by LBJ's civil rights legislation. Affirmative action
> opponents are rather plentiful, but that's hardly the same thing.
Startling changes can come with time, especially regarding things that
have something fundamentally wrong and unworkable about them. As to
the opposition to AA, I think the conventional liberal view is correct
that at best it's sort of weird once the antidiscrimination principle
is accepted.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From paleo-return-83-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Fri Mar 12 09:33:27 1999
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199903121432.JAA02243@panix.com>
To: paleo@egroups.com
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 09:32:03 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "T.E. Wilder" at Mar 11, 99 09:06:26 am
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"T.E. Wilder" writes:
> Is it generally true that people who believe in something frighten
> those with only vague ideas and commitments? If so, what are the
> people not frightened by the left? If not, does not this suggest that
> it is something other than vagueness, but rather some specific
> opposite commitment that makes Republicans oppose conservatives?
People are frightened by attacks on themselves and their world. What
they find alarming is a sign of what they really are.
Mainstream Republicans share the commitment of the Left to an economic
and hedonistic understanding of the Good and social management to
promote that Good. The important thing is to run things so people get
what they want as much as possible. The Left is more universalistic
but that doesn't mean mainstream Republicans have any real use for
particularism let alone any notion of a goal other than fixing things
so you'll have enough stuff to do whatever it is you feel like doing
and maybe the chance to get more.
Republican moderates are just that -- moderate leftists who don't like
to push their own basic principles to extremes. They're more impressed
than the Left with existing nuts-and-bolts practices, they have less
imagination and narrower sympathies so to some extent they simulate a
concern for the traditional and particular but that's an illusion. Any
real suggestion that the world can't be managed or that life depends on
things we can't control and aren't our choice or that there are basic
problems that more "progress" can't cure horrifies them.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From paleo-return-84-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Fri Mar 12 09:36:36 1999
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In-Reply-To: from "Sigma429@aol.com" at Mar 11, 99 11:49:23 am
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Sigma429@aol.com writes:
> while race is an importnat and legitimate part of social and cultural
> identity, it is not the whole f it and that while race plays an
> imncreasingly important role in non-white identity as a political
> bond, it is minuscule in current white identities. Moreover, I have
> also emphasized that the basic confluict in the country is between
> MARs and the managerial overclass and its struictures.
One aspect of this is that managers like people to have interests
rather than identities because they're easier to manage. Non-white
identities are OK to the extent asserting them eliminates the influence
of the majority identity. It's divide and rule. Also, to the extent
whites take the managerial view, as they're likely to if only because
whites created and mostly staff the managerial class and the most
prominent whites are managers or hangers-on, they'll be suspicious of
basing anything political on identity.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 09:48:48 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <19990311223045.NCJC7663@[166.35.145.36]> from "Rhydon Jackson" at Mar 11, 99 04:10:00 pm
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Rhydon Jackson writes:
[discussion of race and culture]
My point is not that race determines culture, but that when you enforce
nondiscrimination you will not be able to tolerate the importance of
culture. You can't make persons of black race treated equally without
making persons of black culture treated equally.
Race and culture are connected. Both have to do with what we are now
as a result of what people have done in the past. Culture develops as
a group of people deal with each and race as they intermarry over the
generations. So they arise under similar circumstances. That's why we
can speak of Chinese race and also Chinese culture.
There could be someone who was of Chinese race but not culture, or vice
versa. Race and culture do not *determine* each other. Nonetheless,
if Chinese immigration stopped and the Chinese here all intermarried,
neither their race nor culture would survive. On the other hand, if
there was no intermarriage then race would be preserved and presumably
there would be enough social distance to maintain some cultural
specificity. So the connection isn't accidental.
> Even more problematic is the fact that the ethnic categories Jim
> refers to are largely mythical.
That's not problematic, it's helpful. It's another reason why
abolition of the social relevance of ethnic categories means abolition
of the relevance of cultural differences. To the extent ethnicity is a
matter of habits, manners, attitudes etc. then barring ethnic
discrimination means barring discrimination on the basis of such
things.
> Many who voted for the original act in 1964 would surely be appalled
> at what they have wrought.
Sure. When wishes are granted people don't like it. They don't think
things through in advance. How long did it take for affirmative action
to appear after the 1964 act? Do the timing, circumstances and people
involved make AA look like a betrayal or a natural development?
> Given the fact that even D'Souza's common sense discussion of race
> relations meets with outrage by the circles that implement and direct
> civil rights litigation, it is difficult to expect anything else.
I never read him. He proposes abolition of antidiscrimination laws,
doesn't he?
> We may snicker at Bush II and his attempts at 'diversity', but he
> might be elected. Should we also snicker at Buchanan? Both make an
> effort to appear race neutral. The difference is that Bush makes such
> an effort a primary focus.
Actually I don't know that much about Buchanan. "Race neutrality" can
mean a lot of things. For example, it can just mean equal rights under
the law, which I haven't criticized.
> is permenent, racial solidarity is the only way to deal with the
> situation. Maybe this is what Jim means by suggesting that the
> problems are bigger than the existing system can rectify.
What I had in mind was more the technological understanding of society.
Race is not the fundamental problem. Also I don't much like the idea
of permanent racial solidarity if race is supposed to be clear-cut and
fundamental, unified within and displaying a common front without.
Life and for that matter race, ethnicity, culture are more complex than
that.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: My Boss on Buchanan
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <014801be6cd0$46c3ff80$f485c898@default> from "Chris Stamper" at
Mar 12, 99 01:35:39 pm
Status: RO
"Chris Stamper" writes:
I don't know that much about Pat Buchanan. Still, Katz talks about
this as a basic division, one of general importance, so maybe I don't
need to know much about him in particular in order to comment.
> And that's where Pat Buchanan still sounds suspect-especially when he
> talks about immigrants to America, people from other nations and
> other cultures who long to taste the same grace and goodness so many
> of us have enjoyed so lavishly in this society.
This seems to me a repellently self-satisfied comment on American
society. Does Katz really believe America is a special place for
Divine Grace and for goodness as understood by Christians, which is
what he claims to be concerned with? Other countries may have problems
that are sometimes worse but entering America is not entering paradise.
Money and license to do what you happen to feel like doing in your
personal life are not the same as grace and goodness enjoyed lavishly.
As I understand the matter the main motivation for immigration at this
point is economic and most of those who immigrate are not down and
outers. If something is an economic benefit and getting it is a major
effort and costs something, why expect it to accrue to people who don't
have anything?
Further, America can not appreciably affect world poverty by taking in
poor people, there are just too many of them. The solution has to be
local development, which isn't likely to work unless the locals who are
doing the developing can keep what they produce. That means excluding
others. So the basic enforceable legal rule has to be responsibility
for one's own rather than universalism. Local development also may be
less likely to work if the goal of the ambitious is to move someplace
else.
It seems to me there are important considerations other than what
prospective immigrants think would make their lives better. A self-
governing society is in some ways quite fragile since it depends on the
complex of common habits and understandings that make self-government
possible. These things include common memories and loyalties, mutual
trust and understanding, consistent ideas of good and bad, and common
understandings of the roles of government, other social institutions
and the individual. To the extent cultural coherence is lost such
things become impossible to maintain. That's true even though the
newly-introduced cultural complexes are in themselves wonderful things.
It seems to me the grand question of political morality etc. is whether
all things considered the world would be better with a regime of free
immigration. Law after all is an ordinance of reason for the public
good. It's not obvious to me the answer is yes.
> And so he calls on the federal government to set up vast systems of
> trade regulation to monitor and manipulate what he apparently thinks
> the market system cannot do on its own. He may not call this
> "statism"-but it is.
What does Buchanan want to do? If Katz wants to call protectionism a
newly set-up vast system of statist manipulation he can, I suppose,
especially if likes talking to himself.
To my mind the advantage of protectionism is that it's a way to
moderate the effects of world markets without a vast system of
regulation and manipulation. You simply put up walls so that people
will tend to deal more with those with whom they have a multiplicity of
connections. Also, the actual system of world trade against which
Buchanan protests is notable for the role given transnational
bureaucracies. It seems to me protectionism should be less offensive
to antistatists.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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> Nietszche might have been right about Christianity being inherently
> suicidal. Your boss's views being a case in point.
If so, it's taken a lot of years. The man just died who was the first
RC theologian to say racism is a sin. The discovery postdated WWII.
Presumably the religious opposition to immigration restrictions simply
as such is of similar vintage.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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In-Reply-To: <19990315173016.ZTM5455@localHost> from "Rhydon Jackson" at Mar 15, 99 11:30:00 am
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Rhydon Jackson writes:
> It is my point that ethnicity is not a matter of habits, manners,
> attitudes etc., despite the fact that who one's parents are effects
> such things.
Do you believe the two can be utterly separated, so that one could
establish a system of laws that effectively eradicates discrimination
based on ethnicity but lets people discriminate as much as they want
based on habits, manners, attitudes etc.?
I would have said that ethnicity necessarily has a cultural component,
and that much of culture is a matter of habits, manners, attitudes etc.
I'm not quite sure what it means to deny that. By "ethnicity" do you
mean "race," as a strictly biological category, so that Serbs and
Croats, or Scotch and Irish, do not in your view differ in ethnicity?
> I'm not sure what the term 'black culture' would refer to.
People believe it exists. I'm not sure why you think they're all
wrong. Do you believe (1) in places where both blacks and whites live
there is typically no discernible difference between the two groups in
predominant habits, manners, attitudes etc., or (2) differences in
predominant habits, manners, attitudes etc. between two groups with
different histories should not be called cultural differences?
> If Chinese immigrants settled here and maintained some cultural
> specificity, the specificity would not long remain Chinese, but
> develop into some variant thereof.
Don't see the relevance. It still seems that if someone wanted a
system of laws that utterly eliminated discrimination based on
membership in the group it would have to forbid discrimination based on
the variant culture.
> In addition, it seems to me that a culture which feels itself to be
> an isolated minority will not have the same self understanding as one
> which feels itself to be the majority.
So it appears that in order to abolish discrimination against isolated
minorities you would have to abolish discrimination on the basis of
self-understanding -- more concretely, on the basis of attitude, habit,
etc.
> I am not sure what Jim means by "the technological understanding of
> society," and would welcome any clarification he cares to offer.
Society as a rational system designed to organize all resources to give
people as much as possible what they want. One of the many
consequences of such a view is that traditional loyalties, for example
to one's people and way of life, make no sense.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Mar 16 10:43:10 EST 1999
Article: 13606 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: European commission
Date: 16 Mar 1999 08:31:39 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Does it mean much they all resigned?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From jk Tue Mar 9 07:12:34 1999
Subject: Re: The First Psychopath
To: en
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 07:12:34 -0500 (EST)
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> But why do we have to keep on suffering through it? For us, the
> public, there are scattered glimpses, which over these 6 years have
> merged into a hideous picture (that I wish someone would turn off!!)
> but what about all those secret service agents and drivers, and his
> handlers...how could they keep their allegience? It's mystifying.
> It's not supposed to happen. Where were they? Where are they?
Best analogy I can think of is the E. German woman athletes who
obviously visibly were getting massive testosterone treatments. Until
the fall of the Berlin Wall people who looked at them and said "hey,
there's something funny going on" were dumped all over because if they
were right then it would be too unpleasant so they can't be right and
must be a bunch of crazies who probably look for commies under their
beds every night. R gives the example of Joe Biden and the Russian
antimissile radar which he could hear when he took a tanker up the West
Coast -- they called it the Russian woodpecker from its sound. Biden
simply could not recognize that it existed until the fall of the Soviet
regime.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From jk Wed Mar 10 08:05:14 1999
Subject: Re: Houellebecq
To: pe
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 08:05:14 -0500 (EST)
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> There are no more intellectuals in the classic interpretation of this
> word, opening peoples eyes allowing them see things they haven't been
> able to see earlier. The modern intellectual caste sounds more like
> megaphones for the political correctness. But does it not seem as
> Europe is a bit ahead of the New World thank's to Houellebecq and
> Helen Fielding?
I think the world's becoming too uniform, too much a single system of
production, marketing, administration and consumption, for there to be
a place for thought. Instead of thought we have rhetorical
manipulation.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From jk Tue Mar 16 08:17:55 1999
Subject: Re: Race, Culture, etc.
To: jc
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 08:17:55 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <01bd01be6f4b$03d566a0$16115b80@logos> from "John Carney" at Mar 15, 99 08:19:09 pm
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> Willmoore Kendall used to rail that the difference between Equality
> of Outcome and Equality of Opportunity was illusory, since the
> distribution established at generation 1 would always lead to
> inequality of opportunity for generation 2. The only way to equalize
> opportunity, then, was to equalize outcomes.
Sure. If equality is the great overriding goal formal equality isn't
going to do it. Man is a social animal. It's not as if what he is in
society is something that can be peeled off so he can be considered in
isolation from it. That's what the conception of equal opportunity
including antidiscrimination demands. The only way to even approximate
such a goal would be to equalize social positions. That can't be done
either though. For starters, who will equalize the equalizers?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From jk Wed Mar 17 05:23:35 1999
Subject: Re: On color and culture
To: Rh
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 05:23:35 -0500 (EST)
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> The issue I have been trying to address is whether or not a decision
> to avoid discrimination on the basis of color implies an avoidance of
> discrimination on the basis of culture.
I don't why that question is important. Antidiscrimination laws are
never so narrowly focused. If someone puts up a sign saying "no
Mexicans or dogs admitted" he's going to be in trouble even though some
Mexicans are of pure European blood and therefore it's not a color
standard. If someone announces his refusal to hire "niggers" (as he
calls them) he's not going to get off by showing that he goes to a lot
of trouble to ferret out those who are passing for white and thus is
clearly not basing his refusal to hire on color but rather on a
biologically arbitrary cultural definition.
It seems to me that the relevant conception is ethnicity, which refers
to the constellation of things that go to make a people -- common
history, common culture, common descent (often mythical to at least
some extent), mutual loyalty at least in the face of outsiders, even
attitudes of others. It is ethnicity and not color as such that
normally occasions conflict and therefore it is what is of interest to
the antidiscrimination laws. Under those laws a "no Irish need apply"
sign would be illegal even though Irish and WASPs are pretty much the
same color.
> It is thoughts like those above which make me suspicious of the term
> 'black culture'.
The term can obviously be misused, and maybe it usually is. On the
other hand, accent is a cultural matter and I can usually tell a black
person from a white person on the telephone simply by accent. "I
didn't hire him not because he was black but because I never hire
anyone who speaks English the way American blacks do and by the way I
don't like West Indian or African accents either" would not be a
defense against a claim of racial discrimination even if accepted as
true.
> Your point seems to be that discrimination on the basis of culture
> will, as a practical matter, entail a collateral difference in the
> treatment of color.
Not really. It's that no one really cares about discrimination simply
on the basis of color. It's not what the laws are about. They are
concerned with ethnicity which has a necessary cultural component.
> But, it seems to me, that to the extent he is motivated by plain and
> simple color, he is motivated by the confusion of history with
> biology.
How many people are motivated by plain and simple color?
> My point is that it is entirely believable that her sense of who she
> was, what her culture was, where she belonged, was intact as long as
> she remained ignorant of her mother's color. It seems to me that this
> indicates that color is not intrinsically related to culture.
But if she thought she was white then her mother was probably fairly
white in color too, so to me this story doesn't show much about color.
What it shows is that people take blood relationships seriously in
determining who they really are. That's altogether natural. If you
find out that someone's your cousin you'll probably be inclined to do
more for him than for any Tom, Dick or Harry. If Jews believe that
having a Jewish mother makes you a Jew then you'll find that hard to
shrug off even if you think the rule is atavistic superstitious
hogwash.
I agree it would be possible to have a law against discrimination on
the basis of some purely genetic definition of race. Such a law could
be applied without reference to discrimination on the basis of culture.
I don't think such a law would do much though, since purely genetic
definitions don't matter much to people. So the law would relate to
something that doesn't play much of a role in conduct. Someone facing
a claim under such a law could almost certainly truly say something
like "I wasn't discriminating against X because he's genetically a
black person. I had independent purely cultural grounds for
discriminating against him -- he sounds black on the telephone, and I
don't like that, and besides that my culture defines him as a member of
a group of people I don't like."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From owner-telos-forum@www.ithaca.edu Thu Mar 18 17:00:21 1999
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199903182156.QAA21124@panix.com>
Subject: From_telos-forum: 113 - "Liturgy and Modernity"
To: telos-forum@www.ithaca.edu (Telos list)
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 16:56:57 -0500 (EST)
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Status: RO
>From Jim Kalb
Paul Piccone suggested that untested, semiformed and perhaps
questionable ideas are acceptable in this forum. With that in mind,
here are a few questions and comments on Pickstock's "Liturgy and
Modernity" in issue 113:
1. Pickstock's vision of everlasting hell on earth (pp. 28 ff.) seems
to draw a rather clear line between the order of nature and the order
of grace. The former can get along completely evacuated of the latter,
in the form of a successful evil technological utopia. Is this
apparent belief in the radical independence of this world a
specifically modern view, like the fact/value distinction? And is the
view that there is something self-defeating about evil, in the end even
as a purely pragmatic matter, Hegelian or Marxist, or is it just a
rejection of Manichaeism?
2. I was interested in the reference to "cyber-intelligences" and to
the system at some future point sustaining itself "in a cybernetic
fashion", partly because of one of my own hobby-horses. It seems to me
that the sustainability of liberalism is tied to the possibility of
strong AI (artificial intelligence). If the latter is possible then
intelligent human conduct can be fully mechanized, so technology can
make up indefinitely for any lapses due to human weakness, cultural
incoherence, collapse of traditional loyalties and standards, etc. The
only question will be whether the new machines decide to scrap the old
(i.e., us) as outmoded and inefficient. If strong AI is impossible,
then formal rules are insufficient, human society has an essential
element that is forever incalculable and unaccountable, and it seems
liberalism must abandon part of its defining goal or destroy itself.
3. How would Pickstock deal with the clash of civilizations, say
Catholic and Muslim? Although those who posit transcendent realities
believe the clashes are not ultimate, in the here and now they are
troublesome. Is there any way to have a _ius gentium_ that is kept in
its place? Surely Catholicism at least must have resources for dealing
with the issue, since it spent its early and most formative years in an
anti-Christian universal public order the legitimacy of which it
accepted.
Any comments, explanations, references etc. would be welcome.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Mar 19 06:22:30 EST 1999
Article: 13611 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: counterrevolutionary postmodernism
Date: 18 Mar 1999 04:39:43 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <7cpbv7$i2u@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net> "James Sweeney" writes:
>Try this: When you get a piece of information think about how that
>compares with everything you have ever learned in your life. Try to
>make it fit, and if it doesn't fit then try to actively disprove it.
>This is not the same as dismissing out of hand everything that defeats
>your doctrine and gathering only evidence in support of your doctrine.
That's fine but still sometimes it's possible to make a pretty good
judgement that something's nonsense without spending a lot of time on
it. If you think, you'll be able to come up with some examples you
accept yourself, situations in which you think it's right to address
someone as "bonehead" because of a few sentences he wrote.
The point of the posting I think was that even something that's
nonsense overall is unlikely to be nonsense through and through. If
someone thinks it's plausible it's likely to resemble truth on at least
some points. So if you are in a world where people accept a mostly
nonsensical position the public-spirited thing is to figure out the
perspectives and situations in which it is true, and show how those
bits of truth lead to greater truths.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From jk@panix.com Fri Mar 19 07:29:22 1999
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Status: O
Re: Re: Re: Re: Tradition and the net
Friday, 19-Mar-99 07:24:18
166.84.1.66 writes:
The basic issue seems to be whether a moral view can work that
forbids only those things that directly harm another person, and
enjoins respect for everything else.
I don't think it can. Man is a social animal. One thing that means
is that we carry on our lives through extensive systems of
cooperation. Language is one example, science, law and economic
activity others. Human life requires that attitudes and
conduct that would destroy those systems be judged wrong even if
there is no definable victim. Examples include tax evasion,
skilled counterfeiting, and theft or destruction of moderate
amounts of fungible property belonging to large institutions.
The point of the Sexual Morality FAQ is that sexual morality --
non-contractual standards governing relations between the sexes --
is part of a necessary system of cooperation. The FAQ presents
arguments on the matter. There are of course people who believe
that sexual morality is oppression. There are also people who
believe that property is theft, money the root of all evil, and
government organized violence.
The issue is not whether some particular person will have the
power to invent a system of government, or economic exchange, or
relations between the sexes, and enforce it on everyone else. I
agree that would be tyrannical and would fail. The question is
whether it is good for an existing system to be preserved,
restored and enhanced when both experience and reason show that
seriously weakening it has very bad effects and when some such
system has been a common feature of all societies and in societies
broadly like our own major features have been similar.
I've already replied to your claim that the net dooms maintenance
of anything like traditional sexual morality. People have made the
same claim with regard to taxation and government generally. I've
already responded to it. Social life is extremely
flexible, responsive and inventive over time. What needs to be
done will be done. So if a strict free market approach is grossly
at odds with what is necessary for men and women to join in stable
functional unions for the raising of children, and if
successful social reproduction requires such things, something
else will arise. I've suggested a likely line of development,
emphasis on very small scale social order as the public order
becomes evacuated of substantive moral content and therefore
eventually nonfunctional. There may be other possibilities. Who
can predict the future?
Jim Kalb
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Re: Anti Feminism
Thursday, 18-Mar-99 04:24:45
166.84.1.66 writes:
Your way of thinking about things is much too schematic.
Life isn't all fantasies. In addition to fantasies of business
success and feminist fantasies of what non-feminism must be, there
are the very practical problems involved in developing a way of
life that lets men, women and children live together in a stable
and rewarding way.
The antifeminist point is that feminism makes those problems
impossible.
Jim Kalb
From jk@panix.com Fri Mar 19 07:33:33 1999
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From: Jim Kalb
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Status: O
Re: Re: Tradition and the net
Thursday, 18-Mar-99 19:58:33
166.84.1.66 writes:
The influence of enduring face-to-face social ties and settled
attitudes embedded in them had declined so much already that I
don't think the net added much to the tendency.
In many ways it helps counteract the tendency, since like
Gutenberg it undercuts the established church, which today is
left/liberalism. It creates easily-accessible public fora in which
other possibilities can be discussed. That undermines the
ideological power of ruling elites whose power rests on market and
bureaucracy and therefore don't much like traditional
arrangements. It is those elites who dominate public discussion
through their control of the mass media, the educational system,
the academy and so on. Like talk radio, the net creates problems
for them.
Obviously the net can be only a small part of a society in which
traditional arrangements play a dominant role. The tendency of
electronic communications is to separate people from each other,
to make everything a matter of individual choice, to promote
technological rationalization. So the long term issue is the
extent to which people can live happily and reproduce themselves
and their society successfully if those tendencies are given free
reign. I think they lead to insuperable problems, so one way or
another limitations will grow up. Society is adaptable, and what
needs to be done gets done.
Very likely the responses will emphasize very small-scale local
social organization. Homeschooling, home business, gated
communities, and so on are I think a sign of what is to come.
Those who participate in such things are heavy users of the net
because it enables them to circumvent established public
authorities and procedures.
Naturally I reject many of your comments, on inflicting pain on
innocents and so on. You don't present an argument, so I won't
discuss them much. If you're interested my Sexual Morality FAQ has
some relevant discussion.
Jim Kalb
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In-Reply-To: from "sschaper" at Feb 26, 99 09:43:09 am
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sschaper writes:
> > So unrestricted commitment to cultural engagement is advance
> > acceptance of other people's fundamental views.
>
> Hardly. It is an advance commitment to 'win their souls for Christ.'
Some people may be able to engage in all conversations on terms
acceptable to those already participating while steadily maintaining an
contrary purpose. It seems to me impossible for a community as a
whole, for example the Christian community, to maintain that degree of
steadiness and heroism day in day out.
So far as I know the early Christians did not produce epic poems,
chariot races, theatrical productions and so on in order to give them a
Christian slant. Nor did they try to secure positions at the Academy
in hopes of taking part in the debates there on professionally equal
terms. I'm not even sure there were Christians who became students
there.
What do you make of Paul's insistence on excommunication in a proper
case, proposal that Christians have a separate judicial system to
handle their disputes, and comments on unequal yoking and on evil
communications corrupting good manners?
> > The monastics and for that matter the pillar dwellers of the
> > Egyptian desert expressed a sense that Christ counted more than
> > anything and thus the vigor of Christianity rather than cultural
> > retreat.
>
> It was heretical and didn't help Christianity at all.
Kick out all of monasticism and you kick out a lot of Christianity for
a lot of years. This seems unreasonable, although I'm sure many are
ready to tell me I'm wrong. It does seem to me that people have very
different gifts, and if many love God deeply some will choose solitary
contemplation. It also seems to me the value of what they do should
not be judged by project management criteria. The "communion of
saints" must be able to do something for us.
As to pillar dwellers, you may know more about them than I do. I don't
see that it necessarily involves a judgement that the created world is
evil. It's certainly an extreme measure and extreme measures arouse
suspicion. However that may be, the basic thought is that
disengagement from B, C, D, and so on may be more to free you to
concentrate on A than to avoid other things as categorically evil. And
there will be many people who go wrong in any event. If there are some
people who go wrong by discounting the world too much in comparison
with God it need not show that Christianity is in worse shape or less
likely to affect The Culture than it is when there are no such people.
> Look at the Fundamentalist Debacle. Christians withdrew from culture
> in the early decades of this century due to pietistic errors, and the
> entire culture was lost.
It seems to me the problem today is not that the world is too little
with us. Maybe if they hadn't withdrawn the Evangelicals would have
zeroed out all the sooner.
It seems to me you start off with what you think is best and you try to
come as close to it as you can. If your effort engages your whole life
and being it eventually finds persuasive cultural expression. Culture
can't be rushed or made to order. And you can't convert others unless
you convert yourself and the conversion leads to a visibly better way
of life.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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Paul C Duggan writes:
>> It does seem to me that people have very different gifts, and if
>> many love God deeply some will choose solitary contemplation.
> where in the Bible does anyone engage in "solitary contemplation".
Jesus went off into the desert for 40 days and nights of prayer and
fasting. Moses went into the desert or to a mountaintop and spoke with
God. John the Baptist went off into the desert too, and gave up all
material comforts although wearing camel's hair and eating locusts and
wild honey admittedly doesn't go as far as pillar-sitting. I imagine
he spent his time thinking and talking to God although maybe he was
doing something else.
They all came back but then maybe they could get more done more quickly
and thoroughly than those who spend their whole lives as monks,
hermits, what have you. It seems to me that going off to speak to God
shouldn't be thought of as something done just for the sake of
something else. It's not a bad thing to do in itself, and different
men have different callings, different strengths and limitations. If
the Church really is a community then it's OK for different members to
make different contributions.
> And at least the monastics have some idea of "community" don't deny
> that to them in their defense.
Why do they need defense? To be consciously a member of the Church is
to have some idea of community. The center and point of the community
though is not within the visible community and its functioning can't be
fully understood through B-school studies. It's quite true that
monastics etc. routinely end up having some sort of demonstrable
practical social function. People went out to the desert to get advice
from pillar-sitters, and the solitary contemplative Julian of Norwich
wrote things people still read. My point is that it's OK if you don't
set out to have a demonstrable practical social function, reform other
people, etc.
> But they are also held up as an ideal.
As an ideal I suppose they dramatize the transcendence of God. The
last thing we have to worry about in pragmatic democratic consumerist
America in 1999 it seems to me is that someone is going to lay too much
stress on the transcendence of God. Also they seem demonstrably to be
doing something quite radical for the sake of God. Maybe others do
something better and more complete but it's less simple and obvious and
so could be less suited to serve as a popular ideal. The function of
popular ideals after all is not to be followed literally but to
dramatize a principle that would otherwise be too little taken into
account.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From jk@panix.com Fri Mar 19 20:36:23 1999
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From: Jim Kalb
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Re: more about tradition and the net
Friday, 19-Mar-99 20:28:18
166.84.1.66 writes:
Not sure of your point on the Hasidim. They're an example of how
strict communal authority in moral and religious matters can be
maintained even though a Hasid could plunge into a wholly
inconsistent way of life by walking a few blocks and maybe
visiting a barber. How their example is consistent with the view
that the net makes communal discipline in sexual matters
impossible escapes me. They certainly don't make up their own
little individual moral codes on such things.
As to the likely social equilibrium, I think "equilibrium" is
misleading since it assumes a constant structure and then looks at
the relative weights of this and that to guess where it will all
balance. Your comments on global society and what that would
have to be, in which you assume homogeneity down to the level of
individual lives, take that line of thought a bit further since
they assume a greatly simplified structure and ask where *that*
would balance. Such a structure very likely *would* (as you
suggest) have to be altogether formal and lacking in substantive
moral content. On the other hand, I don't see why such a structure
would ever exist or if it existed endure.
My approach is different, to ask what people need, what they can't
very well get by without, at least on the whole and in the long
run, and then assume that rather than a balance among existing
elements being struck new or revised and strengthened forms will
arise so people get what they need. On such an approach the
immediate results of sudden changes don't much matter. They're
more likely to represent the problem that necessitates new forms
than the long-term position.
As to sex, in the FAQ I touch on what I think people as a general
thing need for tolerable personal and social life. Basically, what
are needed are fundamental understandings and presumptions that
mean men and women will reliably form durable and
functional unions, so they won't end up mistrusting and hating
each other and they and their children will have a home they can
count on. For that I think you need sex roles and severe
restrictions on sex outside marriage. Since those things can play
their beneficial role only as fundamental principles of social
interaction I have no idea why they should be a matter of private
conscience any more than say the rules of property.
How will it come about? The Hasidim certainly show one way. There
may be others. I could put my argument in Darwinian form: the
groups with qualities that offer most of their members a
satisfying life, so they will stick with it, and that emphasize
things that promote family life -- having children and raising
them properly so the group's way of life continues and remains
healthy -- are the groups that will eventually be dominant. A
fundamental problem with liberalism including its libertarian form
is that it deals poorly with family life as with loyalty and
binding personal ties generally. Therefore it will disappear.
You also comment in effect on the need for the people in
Massachusetts to let the people in Madagascar do what they want. I
don't see what that has to do with the relation between the people
in either place and what's going on locally in their own lives.
Even within a single town a Morman could buy his wedding ring from
an Orthodox diamond merchant without either supervising the
other's morals. That doesn't mean either is free from his own
people's system of supervision.
Jim Kalb
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Re: Re: Re: more about tradition and the net
Saturday, 20-Mar-99 08:52:39
166.84.1.66 writes:
Hasidic communities have public moral standards. They have written
laws and commentaries, and publicly recognized authorities. The
power of a Hasidic Rebbe is enormous.
Hasidim maintain their separateness -- the boundaries within which
their standards have unquestioned public validity -- through a
number of devices. They have special dress etc. that dramatically
sets them off from other people. Many groups maintain a
language different from that of those around them. Like Orthodox
Jews generally they have religious standards, such as dietary
rules, that make social interaction with outsiders awkward, and
others, like the requirements of a minyan, ritual bath,
whatever, that require close physical proximity to a community of
their fellows. They do not marry outside the community. They have
their own education system and do not go outside for education
except for strictly technical subjects. They don't have TV. And so
on. What they certainly do *not* have is morality as a "function
of personal identity."
As for social engineering, I never suggested it. The FAQ
explicitly refuses to deal with legal matters, which would be
involved in any attempt at social engineering, on the grounds that
the relations among law, morality and society have lots of
complications that are important but not at all unique to sex.
An explanation of how something works socially is not the same as
a social engineering proposal. It can play other roles. It can be
a response to objections from social engineers, public school sex
educators say, to some traditional moral institution
that they want to abolish. It can also aim to inform people what
they are doing as a practical matter in rejecting such an
institution. Public understandings of what certain behavior
amounts to have an effect on public standards. I don't see why
that effect amounts to social engineering. An explanation of how
certain things (cigarettes, alcohol, saturated fats) affect health
can change how people feel about those things, their views on what
should be served and offered for sale, school curricula,
what people do in movies, whatever. In time changed public
attitudes are likely to lead to changed views on what's acceptable
and what's outrageous and eventually there will probably be legal
changes of some sort. That doesn't mean the whole thing was an
external imposition. And what legal response etc. you think
appropriate isn't a specific consequence of how you feel about
food -- there are also general considerations about the role of
government etc.
You talk again about the global community. The obvious issue is
the extent to which people will live in that community if it is as
you describe. The best model I can think of would be traditional
Middle Eastern society, in which cultural diversity made the
general public sphere of life morally vacant. As a result, people
carried on their lives within inward turning walled-in xenophobic
communities and generally met others only in the bazaar, where the
rules of the market prevailed, or in their
encounters with the state, which did very little governing and
generally consisted of a ruling clique maintaining a crude sort of
order by force and mostly interested in extracting taxes for
themselves. Something like that may indeed be what we end up with.
(For some speculations that are somewhat related, you might look
at my article "The Amish, David Koresh, and a Newer World Order".)
As to the rights of conscience, when the British arrived in India
they were faced not only with suttee but with castes of hereditary
thieves, who viewed their thievish ways as a religious duty, and
Thugee, which involved worship I believe of Durga through murder
of passers-by. Was it wrong of them to suppress such things?
Jim Kalb
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Re: The challenge of a global society
Sunday, 21-Mar-99 07:25:16
166.84.1.66 writes:
The ethics of a bazaar have very little to do with respect for the
person. They're simply standards that facilitate peaceable pursuit
of self-interest. One can wrap them up in idealistic rhetoric of
course by calling acceptance of the legitimacy of self-interest
"respect for the person." It's a rather empty conception, though,
certainly not enough to order much of personal or social life.
As to freedom, it won't seem desirable to people except as part of
an overall pattern of things that facilitates a good life. Since
we are social animals we can't create our own world. We can
choose, but we can't choose what there is for us to choose. Even
intellectual freedom means nothing after Babel. So the issue as to
a particular conception of freedom is not simply whether it
minimizes immediate concrete obstructions to the will but whether
it's consistent with a world in which there are things available
that are worth choosing.
The issue as to sexual freedom and morality is whether it's better
to have a world in which one can securely choose family life,
because family life is supported by an array of accepted standards
and expectations, or a world in which one can choose whatever he
wants in sexual matters, free from all public pressure, but other
people are continuously free to do so as well so trust is absurdly
imprudent and long-term stability hard to come by. Which situation
better permits realization of what is best in human life?
So what to do? Social engineering is not a possibility and not
much of the future is predictable. Darwin does I think provide
some guidance -- things that make too many messes for those
involved don't last, things that allow a satisfying way of life
that continues and grows into the next generation do. So I am
confident that somehow or other the future will look more
traditionalist than libertarian.
The best I can do is ease the transition to that future, to
promote understanding of the necessity of tradition and of
substantive moral order and awareness of what is wrong with
attempts to base social order purely on universal formal
principles. If people understand what is wrong with something they
are less likely to push it to the point of catastrophe and better
prepared to deal with the consequences of failure.
As to Wiccans, I don't take them seriously any more than I take
seriously the Religion of Bob propounded by some guy named Bob.
The whole thing is just too invented, too much a matter of
self-expression. No doubt their consciences deserve as much
respect as the Thugs' consciences, whatever that amount is. If
they went off and lived on an island somewhere to take the
consequences of living among people who share their views I
wouldn't much object.
Jim Kalb
From christ-and-culture-return-901-jk=PANIX.COM@returns.egroups.com Mon Mar 22 08:39:59 1999
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In-Reply-To: <63f89b2a.36f563f1@aol.com> from "GEVeith@aol.com" at Mar 21, 99 04:26:09 pm
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> Taking a slightly diffferent spin on an earlier topic, what worldview
> issues need to be treated in a book?
Here are some issues that seem important to me. Whether there's a book
that makes sense or for that matter whether the book has already been
written and I'm the only one who doesn't know about it I'll leave to my
betters.
1. Strong AI (artificial intelligence). If it is possible then
intelligent human conduct can be fully mechanized, so technology can
make up indefinitely for any lapses due to human weakness, cultural
incoherence, collapse of traditional loyalties and standards, etc. The
only question will be whether the new machines decide to scrap the old
(i.e., us) as outmoded and inefficient. If it is impossible, then
formal rules are insufficient, and human society has an essential
element that is forever incalculable and unaccountable.
2. The NWO and tribalism. There seems to be a tendency toward One
World, nonracist, nonsexist, nonhomophobic, non-what have you, ordered
by world markets, transnational bureaucracies, human rights treaties,
etc., etc. There also seems to be a tendency toward dissolution of
social bonds leading toward anarchy and primitivism (mindless blood
ties intensified by fear and aggression or whatever). How do
Christians pick their way through this? Is there a distinctive Idea of
a Christian Society?
3. Is there an intelligent summary of considerations regarding
Darwinism in its various strengths and forms?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From paleo-return-117-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Mon Mar 22 15:16:37 1999
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In-Reply-To: from "Paul Shetler" at Mar 20, 99 04:42:09 pm
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Paul Shetler writes:
> In Italy, groups like the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale (as
> well as the MSI-FT, etc) cannot be delegitimated in the same way;
> they are viewed as authentic national forces (whether the nation is
> defined as the Italian nation or the Northern nation) Those political
> groups have had tremendous success and effectively condition the
> political discourse in a way that the National Front has not been
> able to. To a large part I believe that that's due to the fact that
> their intellectuals and publicists are grounding themselves in a
> still deeply felt tradition.
Interesting. Much of the American right is also grounded in
deeply-felt traditions, but the more it's grounded in actual American
traditions (property-based individualism, minimal government, states'
rights and local control, isolationism, populist Protestantism,
puritanical morality, RKBA, native-born white solidarity) the more it's
considered worthy solely of eradication to the point of being viewed as
a sort of mental disorder.
Why is that? A lack of substantive content in the traditions that made
them only a compromise between residual particularism and the
fundamental secular universalism of the American regime? Or something
less grandiose and abstract, maybe a conflict between old-stock
Americans and newer immigrants better able to play the big-government
game? And what sense can "conservatism" have when American government,
which is essential to American national identity, is the deadly enemy
of particularistic traditions, and vice versa?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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> I thought that Penrose' _The Emperor's New Mind_ laid that [strong
> AI] to rest?
Great book, but the other side laughed at the arguments. For all I
know it's been laid to rest in principle but apparently intelligent and
competent people still seem to take it seriously.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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In-Reply-To: from "T.E. Wilder" at Mar 22, 99 02:40:31 pm
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"T.E. Wilder" writes:
> The reason is that moral authority in society is held by those who
> are ideologically motivated. And the ideology that is in control
> calls for the extermination of "actual American traditions".
Sure. But the authorities don't drop from the moon. What is it about
American life that makes authority as it is?
The ideal seems to be centrally managed egalitarian hedonism. Give 'em
what they want, as long as it's non-political. If you're specially
sensitive morally you can emphasize equality of shares.
There is lots of support for that outlook. The democratic impulse that
makes ordinary satisfaction of ordinary impulses of ordinary people the
summum bonum. Industrialism and the technological approach to things
generally. The influence of John Locke, who identified the good with
what individuals happen to want, and justice with formal rules designed
to emancipate arbitrary wills to the extent possible consistent with
avoidance of conflict.
Maybe it's a mistake to look for the answer in anything specific to
America since the new order is worldwide. Is its ubiquity a sign of
American imperialism, or does it just show that America happens to be
the most modern country so when others enter the new age it looks like
Americanization but really isn't?
All respectable opinion agrees that things are just what they should be
only not enough so. The obvious question if you don't agree is what
basis there is for something different. An act of will to change the
course of events? A salvation-bearing class who will arise and change
everything? A new ethical philosophy for the ruling class, the modern
and western equivalent of Confucianism? Presumably the current
situation will not last forever, although some argue the contrary.
Will moral vacancy in the public sphere lead to radical tribalism and
sectarianism, so that the accepted view of the danger of "hate" to the
established order is perfectly correct?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From: Jim Kalb
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Status: RO
Re: Re: Re: The challenge of a global society
Monday, 22-Mar-99 18:07:12
166.84.1.66 writes:
It's hard to carry on a discussion based an libertarian
triumphalism that I do not share, for reasons I've suggested. This
exchange may be dying a natural death.
"Respect for the person" in the liberal and libertarian sense,
acceptance of the self-interest of other people, does not have a
central position in almost every system of ethics. Most systems I
know of judge things by reference to substantive goods rather than
the universal right to pursue what you want to pursue.
No social system whatever can survive without public moral
standards. You want what you call "respect for the person" to be
accepted as a public moral standard. I suppose you would be
prepared to use force to impose it. If so, I don't understand why
you claim to object to public moral standards and their
enforcement as such.
Man is a social animal. One consequence is that his relations to
his fellows depend not just on individual decisions but on more
general social factors -- stereotypes as to what sort of
relationships are legitimate and natural, common understandings as
to obligations in relationships and for that matter life in
general, etc.
Do you really think friendship, marriage, the relations among
relatives etc. are the same in all times and places? Marriage has
essential public aspects. That's why it's publicly defined and
marked with a public ceremony. I have no idea why you think it can
simply be created by two individuals willing it into existence.
I also fail to understand of your contempt for Thugee. You don't
like ritual murder. So what? If someone thinks it worship pleasing
to Kali who are you to say he's wrong? Why should he sacrifice his
religion to your culturally-bound belief that it's terrible for
someone to die at time T instead of time T+10 or to your view of
what the public good requires?
Jim Kalb
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Re: Coercive morality and the global society
Tuesday, 23-Mar-99 08:22:08
166.84.1.66 writes:
It seems to be your view that moral environment has no effect on
conduct, since after all people are always free to choose
anything. Thus, public understandings of what a man is, what a
woman is, what marriage is, what sex is for, have no effect on
long-term relations between men and women. Do rethink that. Or if
public moral understandings have no effect on human life, why
bother with this conversation?
In particular, libertarianism can't hang in the air. Respect for
property, individual rights etc. depends on a whole network of
shared assumptions and standards, very few of which have much
direct to do with prevention of immediate harm to individuals.
Read Hayek on tradition, there's some useful stuff in that trilogy
he wrote in the '70s.
I don't see much to justify libertarian triumphalism. In morals
the obvious trend is toward a centrally administered and
universally compulsory conception of "tolerance and
inclusiveness", enforced by propaganda, thought control and public
shaming rituals, the evident function of which is to promote not
freedom in any normal sense but the destruction of centers of
power that compete with money and bureaucracy.
The likely effect of that simplification of the social landscape
is to reduce effective freedom -- the freedom to make choices that
matter and are part of a life that can reasonably be judged good
-- and to make despotism more likely. Vast multicultural empires
have invariably been despotic, because in the absence of powerful
public standards it is impossible to hold rulers to account.
Making direct harm to identifiable individuals the moral standard
is not a serious proposal. Even apart from the difficulty of
defining "direct harm" (affront to the senses? to the
sensibilities? failure to eliminate certain risks? to pay my
living expenses? forcing me, a Bulgarian, to live in an
anti-Bulgarian environment?) there are obvious examples to the
contrary, for example undetected counterfeiting, most bribery, and
stealing small amounts of money from large institutions.
For that matter, how about voting for political measures one knows
to be evil simply to satisfy malice or greed? One man's vote is
extremely unlikely to have any direct effect on anyone even if the
measure itself would do so. I don't see much difference between
voting for bad measures and supporting by my actions the
destruction of beneficial moral institutions like traditional
sexual morality. Both are instances of participation in collective
action where the conduct of the individual participant may not
have much immediate effect but cumulative effects are enormous.
Jim Kalb
From jk Mon Mar 22 18:01:07 1999
Subject: Re: On color and culture
To: Rh
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 18:01:07 -0500 (EST)
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> One of the things I was taught as a child was a distaste for
> discrimination on the basis of color.
If you accept radical individualism then ethnicity becomes
incomprehensible and can only be understood as utterly irrational
discrimination on the basis of things like color that clearly don't
matter.
> I understand that the subject of your discussion is not segregation
> laws, but how well can you analyze the CRL if you ignore its
> antecedants? In fact, aren't the Jim Crow laws precisely a pledge to
> make future decisions on the basis of "plain and simple color?"
The CRL weren't necessary to do away with Jim Crow, the development of
constitutional law had already done that. The view the laws took I
suppose was that Jim Crow was only one manifestation of established
social inequalities that were altogether irrational. People thought
that since discrimination made no sense at all it could be quickly and
easily abolished without affecting much else.
The JC laws turned on "color", but color meant race and not literally
color. An albino Negro was subject, a Negro who could pass for white
was subject, a deeply suntanned white was not.
> But it seems to me that Bradford and other paleos have failed to come
> to terms with the persistent problem of color in American history.
That may be, I haven't thought it through and don't know enough about
what various people have said at various times.
One point that strikes me is that people think of discrimination as
indiscriminate, an absolute yes-or-no sort of thing. That's part of
the presumption that it's utterly irrational. They when they try to
enforce the CRL there are problems and they talk of tokenism, subtle
barriers, institutional racism, built-in headwinds, what have you. The
CRL say you can't take ethnicity etc. into account *at all*. That's
what's unreasonable about them, that and the circumstance that
ethnicity is such a complex of things, some of which are clearly
relevant to decisions to associate.
> Is this effort reasonable as a response to America's history or
> simply another 'shortcut to paradise'?
I think it was based on an overly individualistic and mechanistic
understanding of social life and an overly rationalistic understanding
of what goes into decisions to associate. So I don't think it was
reasonable
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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In-Reply-To: from "T.E. Wilder" at Mar 23, 99 10:03:41 am
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"T.E. Wilder" writes:
> Calvinist culture -- which is what American originally had for the
> most part -- bases social values on belief systems, and it places
> emphasis on the conscience of the individual, i.e. his integrity in
> assenting to and following the belief system.
Is this already a problem, in that it demands making a comprehensive
understanding of things explicit and demonstrable and causing it to
prevail through a discipline? The demand can't be satisfied in the
case of actual good and justice because we don't fully possess such
things but the dream of pragmatically creating heaven on earth
survives. In an attempt to achieve it the good is degraded to
satisfaction of impulse, justice to equality of satisfactions, and the
necessary discipline to some combination of therapy and bureaucratic
regulation.
> the more libertarian inclined people want a society that arises
> spontaneously from the self-seeking activities of individual social
> atoms (in contradiction to Christian ideas about the nature of man
> and of social order). Others seem to talk in very vague terms of
> tradition. Ever since the guillotine ended royal absolutism, Roman
> Catholocism has not had an historically constructed (as opposed to
> something invented by theoreticians) social order
If social order can't be constructed it must somehow arise through
acceptance of a wisdom greater than our own. Liberty and tradition
stand for acceptance of a wisdom greater than any that can be
articulated and fully possessed, the composite wisdom implicit in all
aspects of social life that grows out of a people's dealings with each
other in the present (liberty) and over time (tradition).
So it seems to me libertarianism and traditionalism are at least
fragments of what is needed. They point in the right direction. In a
technological age libertarianism is often badly theorized, as a utility
machine, but we're not forced to think of the principle of liberty that
way.
> So the conservatives can't produce a generally compelling normative
> vision for ethics and society, and secondly, they are bound to the
> historically real.
On the other hand loyalty, personal ties, adherence to what is settled,
religious acceptance that the good can't be reduced to what we want and
know about are all natural human inclinations. Fabricated visions and
rejection of what is and has been eventually grow tiresome. So
conservatism has some intrinsic advantages.
Rather than fabricating another vision it seems the role of
conservatives is to restore health, a state in which the world overall
looks after itself although there may be principles adherence to which
is important. So the issue in this regard is how to dissolve
fantasies, encourage the natural, restore contact with reality, and
make health rather than the Bionic Man or GI Joe the normative ideal.
All rather vague, but we're talking about general orientations so maybe
that's inevitable.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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In-Reply-To: <36F7820F.6CA34719@msmisp.com> from "Carl Jahnes" at Mar 23, 99 06:59:12 am
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cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
> Isn't it that Americans as well as all moderns crave material goods
> and 'equality' at the expense of liberty?
The meaning of "liberty" is uncertain unless it is known what goods one
is free to pursue. Liberty to take part in self-government has fallen
out of favor. A certain sort of liberty is still very important,
though, the liberty to follow impulse, whatever it happens to be,
within a system that maximizes equal satisfaction. Freedom of
self-indulgence is now more important than material goods as such, I
think, although material goods are of course an important part of
self-indulgence. We're in Plato's democratic and not his oligarchic
state.
The current conception of liberty resembles at least somewhat the
traditional liberty to do what one chooses with his own as long as he
does not infringe on others' equal liberty to do the same. Is the
current conception is the natural generalization and fruition of the
traditional one? Maybe a better view is that it arises from an attempt
to make principles that have a legitimate but limited use absolute.
> Did you read Molnar on "The Emerging Atlantic Culture" (I think that
> title's right...if not, at least its similar)? He says that American
> so-called culture is simply decadent European culture
Haven't read it. I understood him to hold a "Great Satan" theory of
America, in which Americans are the only true egalitarians and everyone
else has to go along because America is the top country.
> Doesn't the left so fear the right's prescriptions of 'salvation' and
> the 'salvation bearing class' because we've seen political saviors
> before, and they accept the 'breaking of a few eggs' to make an
> omelette?
Something of that. The Left thinks of things technologically, so that
if you say "the social order reflects the common religious
understanding" they understand it as a demand for thought control
machinery to enforce a religious system designed by the National
Directorate of Religion. On the other hand, most of the Right thinks
of things technologically too.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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"T.E. Wilder" writes:
> If something has been gained, worthy of being preserved, why can't
> more be gained in the future? What do conservatives have to say about
> that? Not much, as far as I can see.
The point I think is that at each stage what is gained isn't likely to
be gained by an overall plan or gratuitous decision, or to be fully
understood for a long time. Also, it is likely to be less important
overall than what is to be retained. So the public agency responsible
for establishing explicit formal rules and backing them up by force
should be concerned much more with preserving existing goods and when
needed encouraging restoration of past and therefore known ones than
creating new goods. In other words, the state and thus politics should
be conservative.
Also, conservatism sees politics as ministerial and not sovereign. One
consequence is that it does not view existing goods and the social
arrangements in which they exist as designed and to be redesigned.
Another is that it does not believe the state should try to maintain a
rigid status quo. It couldn't do that without comprehensive control of
social life which would be utopian and thus anticonservative.
Simone Weil says somewhere that we shouldn't make virtuous resolutions
and act on them, we should do good acts only when we can't do anything
else. However, by attending to things under their true aspect, looking
at them as God does, such situations will increase and we will become
more at home in them.
Politics is somewhat like that, only more so, since a society is less
coherent than an individual, with less of a unified active principle,
so virtuous resolutions that represent a grasp of the situation
combined with a good will and so can actually be virtuous and effective
are far less likely. Under such circumstances maintenance of existing
good habits, a.k.a. resisting temptation, and direction of attention
toward goods that transcend the social are the best policies. The
latter by the way seems to require some sort of established religion,
at least one like the informal one finally knocked in the head by the
Supreme Court in the early '60s.
> Therefore, by default, the left owns the future.
Conservatism is recognition that the future can't be owned. What we
have is the past, and the aspect under which we live in the present.
The principles of conservatism are loyalty and faith. Those are also
human principles upon which all social order depends. The future
therefore will be conservative somehow or other.
> Christianity, for example, has a view of progress, of bringing in the
> Kingdom of God, which makes is non-conservative.
Conservatism is opposed to Leftism but not its opposite. It doesn't
posit a well-defined goal and design means for getting there. It
doesn't have to think it has everything settled forever. So it's
consistent with a notion of a future Kingdom that comes not by the will
of Man but by obedience and acceptance. For that matter it's
consistent with radical change as when hedonistic utopianism is the
established principle of government and public morality, and
conservatives therefore become countercultural.
> Rather, "kingdom arises against kingdom", that is God in the midst of
> history divides the Kingdom of Man against itself, keeping it from
> every uniting on goals and reaching them.
So it seems that as citizens of the legal order of this world
Christians should reject utopianism of every sort, including theocratic
utopianism that would make the Kingdom of God a human project. So far
as I can tell, principled rejection of utopianism as such means
conservatism, respect for experience and for what exists as the form
that good now takes for us.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Mar 25 11:28:39 EST 1999
Article: 13618 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Imperial Successions
Date: 24 Mar 1999 18:40:21 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
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In <922315147snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>This is a question for Louis Epstein and other monarchists who
>read this group.
While we're at it, here's a question that came out of a family
discussion during an immensely long drive through Quebec last summer:
The French crown, as we understand the matter, can't go to a female.
If some cataclysm killed all human males other than those _in utero_,
and all males not _in utero_ of all species more closely related to
_homo sapiens_ than the housecat, and there was then a restoration in
France, could our cat Jumper potentially become King of France? What
specifically would stop it? Is there some law of necessity that would
override the usual rules in such a case?
Also, Jumper was neutered before reaching sexual maturity and so will
have no issue. If the answer to the first question is "yes," after
the death of the King would the crown then have to go to the male cat
most closely related to Jumper through the male line, or is there some
way it could revert to a human heir?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Mar 25 11:28:41 EST 1999
Article: 13619 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Balkans
Date: 25 Mar 1999 09:17:12 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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To keep in touch with rightwing opposition to this latest undertaking,
see
www.antiwar.com
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Mar 25 17:59:06 EST 1999
Article: 13622 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Serbian bombing again
Date: 25 Mar 1999 17:57:52 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Just a note to any American readers who don't like Clinton's latest.
You can get in touch with members of Congress through
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/. Here's an email I sent to my
senators and congressman -- nothing wonderful about it, but it might be
something to start with:
Dear
I strongly urge you to do all in your power to stop the unprovoked
United States aggression against Yugoslavia. Whatever particular
explanations may be put forward are plainly insufficient in view of the
recent attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan. The stories are
different, the bombing the same, the evident fundamental motives
imperial.
Why should the United States become a worldwide empire? How suited is
our country to ruling other peoples against their wills, and how likely
is it that we will be able to bomb the Balkans into good behavior? Our
policy is especially reckless with respect to Russia. If the United
States had been having serious internal problems 15 years ago, what
would our attitude have been to extension of the Warsaw Pact to Brazil
and Canada followed by Russian military intervention on behalf of a
successionist movement in Mexico?
Sincerely,
[Name, address, telephone]
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Mar 26 08:50:47 EST 1999
Article: 13625 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Imperial Successions
Date: 25 Mar 1999 21:45:45 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <922402633snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>Human males _in utero_ would override Jumper's claim, as the
>posthumous John (Jean) I overrode those of his uncles.
And if the males _in utero_ died as well, so that the future of the
human race depended on the Royalist Sperm Bank, the idiosyncratic
charter of which requires it to turn away patrons other than donors
until visited by the King of France?
(Sorry to pursue this, but I'm answerable to others for getting an
answer.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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From: Jim Kalb
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Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 12:57:45 -0500 (EST)
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Theory has its place even in time of war. When paleos take part in
antiwar actions, especially in cooperation with leftists and such, they
are most likely to advance their cause if they are clear why their
views are the ones least likely to lead to war and tyranny.
Some thoughts:
I understand the paleo view to be acceptance of objective universal
order, together with rejection of all attempts to treat that order as
something men fully possess. The moral order is transcendent; that
means that although it is somewhat knowable it is not fully so. Such a
view seems to me ordinary good sense.
Nonetheless, it has definite consequences. It means paleos are
suspicious of attempts to rationalize society. They accept the
authority of tradition, since things that cannot be fully analyzed
rationally must be known through symbol and experience, and they are
open to that of revelation, since if the transcendent is the final
principle of things what it is or does can't be limited.
Paleos emphasize loyalty to their own people and ways, because that is
how social beings participate in a universal order that can't be fully
known or instituted, and also respect for other peoples as bearers of
other manifestations of order. Respect need not mean equal respect; no
actual people is either perfect or altogether evil, but the objectivity
of moral order means some come closer than others.
Paleos oppose views that deny either universal objective moral order or
the ways in which it transcends and eludes us. Specifically, they
reject:
1. Theocracy, which treats order as a divine creation that is fully
known. Everyone seems to agree theocracy is oppressive.
2. Radical multiculturalism and Naziism, which treat order as a human
construction, and therefore deny that there is a single universal order
that includes everyone. Some obfuscate that conclusion with a
combination of impenetrable jargon and mysticism, some accept it and
treat outsiders as alien raw material to be used by The People as they
choose. The former approach is unlikely to endure the shocks and
strains of political life, while the consequences of the latter are
notorious.
3. Liberalism and the traditional Left generally, which also treat
social order as a human construction but lay it down that it is to be
the same for everyone. Since social order is constructed and subject
to human mastery, they say, it is susceptible to indefinite improvement
through conscious reconstruction, and such reconstruction therefore
becomes the highest moral obligation. The practical consequences of
the insistence that social order be the same for everyone and that it
be consciously and continuously reconstructed are obvious.
Since the paleo view allows different peoples to live together in
mutual respect, and since that view follows from two principles, denial
of either of which makes that desirable consequence impossible in
principle, all antiwar, anti-oppression, and anti-imperialist people
should immediately become paleos. Q.E.D.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. (St. Augustine)
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