Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Nov 7 13:11:22 EST 1999
Article: 14117 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
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Subject: Re: Gary Wills' "Necessary Evil"
Date: 5 Nov 1999 08:33:37 -0500
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In <1e0qobf.1gw6ttw1705ea4N@[192.168.0.2]> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>There is, in Wolfe's analysis, no room for dissenters to propose any
>positive alternative politcs; they are merely "anti-government".
This seems to me a fundamental problem. The attempt to make liberalism
the basis of government makes it impossible to justify some of the
things government necessarily relies on, like inequality, force,
decisions that cannot be justified by reference to perspicuous
universal standards of reason etc. As a result the established social
order comes to depend on certain issues not being noticed. Today the
government doesn't persecute heretics and schismatics, it goes after
extremists and separatists, but the words mean the same.
>I never dreamed I would hear someone call the government the "only
>significant manifestation" of our country.
Get used to it. To claim the United States is something other than a
legal order is to be a bigot because it excludes people who don't
participate in whatever the something other is.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Nov 8 14:11:56 EST 1999
Article: 14123 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
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Subject: Re: Gary Wills' "Necessary Evil"
Date: 7 Nov 1999 13:52:22 -0500
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raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
> > The attempt to make liberalism the basis of government makes it
> > impossible to justify some of the things government necessarily
> > relies on, like inequality, force, decisions that cannot be
> > justified by reference to perspicuous universal standards of reason
> > etc.
>
> It's not clear that this is true at all. The present (neo)liberal
> ideology simply advocates privatizing all government functions, and
> at the same time justifies, by invoking the absolute rights of
> private owners on their property, precisely those things which you
> list and which it forbids in the public sphere. [E.g. if you have a
> drunk in a public street in the town centre (downtown) the police
> have to allow him due process, but if the town centre has been
> converted to a private shopping mall the security guards can evict
> him without being obliged to give any rational grounds for their
> action.]
I don't see how what you say shows what I say is not true. To the
extent standard neoliberal/libertarian ideology works it works by
saying that exercise of private property rights is justified by
reference to the perspicuous universal standard that a man can do as he
likes with his own, that in so doing he is exercising a right held
equally by all property owners, who include all of us, and that it is
interference with that right and not its exercise that constitutes
force. Your complaint then is that the whole system depends on an
obfuscutory view of private property rights as natural, non-political,
and comprehending the whole of human relations, and thus on certain
issues not being noticed. Which is my point, that liberalism can't
justify force, especially arbitrary force, and therefore must obfuscate
and suppress discussion of certain issues.
Where we differ, as we have discussed before, is on the destiny of
liberalism. You think it ends in what you call (neo)liberalism. I
think it aspires toward a universal centrally-administered state, but
realization of its aspirations is limited by (i) concessions to
efficiency, which necessitate a role for markets that is larger than
liberals would otherwise prefer, and (ii) corruption, including both
the crude corruption that say the Clintons and their cronies exemplify
and more subtle things like (neo)liberal deformation of liberalism. To
see that (neo)liberalism is a corruption from the standpoint of
fundamental liberal principles ask whether liberals feel prosperity or
equality to be the greater moral imperative. "Thou shall not steal"
simply does not have the same moral force for liberals that "thou shall
not discriminate" does.
Incidentally, American law at least tends to impose a variety of
requirements on owners of shopping malls. Last I looked free speech
rights tended to apply there on some "functional equivalent of the town
square" theory, and antidiscrimination rules have the effect of forcing
proprietors to set up procedures that show they apply equal standards
-- in effect a due process requirement. It seems to me current
liberalism strives for a complex interweaving of bureaucratic and
market rule rather than a simple regime of private property, contract
and markets.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
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Re: Pat Buchanan, Conservatism, and Grace
Monday, 01-Nov-1999 04:46:33
166.84.0.226 writes:
It seems to me on the merits open borders are a bad thing and that
we would be better off with more restrictions on immigration and
transnational business. The basic reason I say that is that free
institutions and more generally a tolerable social life require a
certain degree of cultural coherence, sense of common history and
destiny, common loyalties and understandings, etc. Such things
don't have to be utterly uniform and rigid but rigid
monoculturalism doesn't seem to be the danger just now except
maybe the monoculturalism of mass commercial culture that the
undermining of particularism promotes.
As to Buchanan personally I don't know, partly because I haven't
seen or read that much of him (I don't watch TV or read any
publications in which he regularly appears.) The current political
culture is such as to put him in a bad light.
Jim Kalb
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Re: Re: Pat Buchanan, Conservatism, and Grace
Thursday, 11-Nov-1999 07:11:34
166.84.0.226 writes:
The Chamberlain comparison seems inept. Foreign policy is not a
matter of facing up to one Hitler after another. The attempt to
make it seem so is I think part of the demagoguery and for that
matter extremism of what passes for mainstream political life.
The Bill Bradley/Pat Buchanan comparison is an interesting one. I
know too little about either man to comment much though -- I'm not
big on current events.
It does seem to be a problem that since an important part of
ordinary everyday human virtue is being social and teachable, and
since what is socially taught today isn't so great, ordinary human
virtue in some ways has become the road to perdition and
perversity and belligerence the road to salvation. Life has its
complications.
Which right-wingers do have grace? A lot of them seem pretty
crabby. A lot of the ones who aren't crabby make things easy for
themselves by making compromises that really can't be justified.
Jim Kalb
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Re: Anglo-Catholicism
Monday, 25-Oct-1999 09:22:59
166.84.0.226 writes:
Glad you liked the essay.
Compliments aside, I agree with most of what you say and also love
Anglicanism and Anglo-Catholicism. The problem to my mind is that
it's the religion of a civilization, the civilization of England,
that is now dead. Go to England and see what's happened, read
Honest to God for the state of the post-60s C of E, or go a few
blocks from where I live to the Brooklyn Museum and see Sensations
to check out the current state of English culture.
When problems are very basic it seems more important to go for
whatever is most central in Christianity and seems to offer most
hope of stability than for particular cultural connections. You
may see all those central things in APCK, with the specific
cultural connections too, and there's no telling what bones will
live. From my standpoint though there are problems in continuing
Anglicanism that make me doubt the solidity of what it represents.
Jim Kalb
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Re: Re: Anglo-Catholicism
Monday, 25-Oct-1999 20:25:18
166.84.0.226 writes:
I agree that loyalty to something fragile and of value in bad
times is admirable, and that there is no telling in advance how
things will turn out. Each of us does what he can.
Also, I'm ignorant of many of the specifics of non-ECUSA
Anglicanism in the US and wouldn't be surprised if I misconstrued
important points.
Jim Kalb
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Re: Re: Re: Conservative Resources on Homosexuality - Where?
Friday, 15-Oct-1999 06:57:52
166.84.0.226 writes:
You're right that I should check the links -- it's been a while,
and a lot of them are sites put up by individuals as a hobby and
so can come and go.
It might be useful to put together a collection of resources on
sexual morality that rely only or at least mainly on secular
reasoning, social science, natural law or whatever. There are a
number of examples in the resources section of my FAQ but they're
not separated out. Another example is Robert George's A Clash of
Orthodoxies. I'm not sure why that side of the argument isn't
better developed. I supposed one reason is that organized secular
expertise today is an integral part of the bureaucratization of
social life and so opposes traditional sexual morality. Another is
that people willing to accept a traditional moral system that
touches them as close to home as sexual matters aren't likely to
object to religious authority either.
Jim Kalb
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Re: Will Christendom Return?
Monday, 20-Sep-1999 09:17:41
166.84.1.66 writes:
> In the Old World, Christendom presupposed general public
agreement
> in matters of faith and polity.
If we don't have that today, how is PC possible? It seems to me
there's always general public agreement on fundamentals. In the
absence of such agreement there's no "public." So the task is to
identify what the presumptions are upon which public discussion
and policy are based and how to persuade people holding those
assumptions. The task may be an impossible one, but you can't know
that in advance.
Jim Kalb
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Re: Current political race
Friday, 10-Sep-1999 07:49:39
166.84.1.66 writes:
TV's certainly a problem. Instead of a sacred hearthstone our
homes now have a box through which the NWO and every corruption
imaginable floods into our domestic life. Instead of the world
created by our own experience or the history of our people we live
in one created by TV.
There are speculations that the multiplication of channels and
user selectivity will change things. I haven't done the analysis
to have an opinion on that. Thoughts, anyone?
I have nothing special against a "sacred Christian monarchy",
which I suppose means the general form of government that
prevailed in Europe before modern times. How much sense does it
make as an immediate goal though? Treating it as such suggests the
priority of the political and thus of means/ends thinking, which
is the basic problem we have now.
If sacred Christian monarchy is the great goal now how come the
prime goal of the early Church was not the conversion of Caesar?
Jim Kalb
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Re: Television, politics, et al
Monday, 20-Sep-1999 09:20:21
166.84.1.66 writes:
> As far as television goes, there are problems for
> traditionalists not only with content but with the
> medium itself.
Agreed. Tradition depends on a network of enduring ties and that's
what modern electronic communications destroy. It's a big problem.
It's not insoluble, because groups like Hasidic Jews and the Amish
solve it, but it's hard to think of solutions that are less
radical. Time will tell. To the extent tradition is necessary,
ways of conserving it will evolve. In the meantime we can only do
our best.
> But I'm an American, and think we need something that is
> consistent with America's best cultural and political
> traditions.
It seems that whatever that is will have to be a radical break
from what America is now. After all, American nationality depends
on the American legal order, and the American legal order is now
resolutely dedicated to the abolition of any authoritative
American culture and for that matter of a coherent American people
capable of having a culture.
Jim Kalb
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Nov 17 16:27:26 EST 1999
Article: 14136 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
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Subject: Re: Man of the Century?
Date: 16 Nov 1999 14:04:56 -0500
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In <3830EED5.2DDF16B7@law.upenn.edu> John Carney writes:
>Perhaps we can nominate Pol Pot as the man most representative of our
>century.
I always had a soft spot for his predecessor, the only palindromic head
of state (Lon Nol).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
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On Craig's "deep question":
It seems to me that public life necessarily has some sort of religious
base.
Common deliberation requires a reasonably coherent common understanding
of what things are good and bad and in general what the world is like.
In a political society it is quite difficult to limit the things that
require common deliberation. Philosophical liberalism tries to do so
but I don't see how it can be done. Think of questions of life and
death (war, abortion, euthenasia, capital punishment), crime and
culpability, education of the young, family relations (welfare, family
law), requiring sacrifies and so on.
How can such things be dealt with publicly without an extensive common
understanding of man and the good? And how can they be avoided? The
attempt to draw a line between that kind of common understanding and an
established religion seems artificial to me.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
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> Lacking an established Church, America has used other public cults.
> The cause of "Union" for the North, for example. Today, I propose the
> state religion is Education, the only road to salvation.
The religion I think is egalitarian hedonism, human desire as the
source of all value and human skill as the means of recreating the
world. Education is valuable because it furthers that religion and
carries out its mandate of creating the new man, equipped to get what
he wants within a system that gives all wants equal dignity.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
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From jk Mon Nov 29 15:29:44 1999
Subject: Re: Time presents Jesus Seminar view of Christianity
To: la
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 15:29:44 -0500 (EST)
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> What follows is a publicity release by Time magazine at their web
> site concerning their cover story presenting the "factual" Jesus, who
> is really great, unlike the actual religion of Christianity, which is
> violent, hateful, imperialistic, etc.
They seem to be using "great" mostly in a rather nonevaluative sense to
mean "great power."
> Nevertheless, as predictable as it is, it still takes one's breath
> away to see the Jesus Seminar view of Jesus and Christianity, which
> is of course nothing other than an open attempt to destroy
> Christianity, lauded on the cover of a leading establishment
> newsmagazine.
Everything is normal. Everything is always normal. That's a basic
principle of keeping the people quietly in line when government is
formally democratic.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
From jk Tue Nov 30 08:58:40 1999
Subject: Re: Time presents Jesus Seminar view of Christianity
To: la
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 08:58:40 -0500 (EST)
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> It's not just that the system promotes outrages. More importantly,
> it presents each of these outrages not as an outrage, but as
> "mainstream," since America's self-understanding is as a
> commonsensical, moderate, democratic society, and it wouldn't accept
> a radical self-image. This need to present evil as normal and
> unquestionable leads to the historically unique perversities among
> which we live today.
One strategy for right-wingers would be to study how the definition of
"mainstream" is constructed and maintained and how it can be broken up.
It seems that the current definition has depended on the centralization
of information and discussion through TV and mass publications like
Time, and also on the emphasis on expertise, the growth of formal
education and professionalization of educators, the rise of the helping
professions (which technologize moral life) and so on.
I suppose the internet can help break up the information monopoly and
homeschooling suggests increasing resistance to the role of experts.
More thought is needed though. What particular weak spots does the
current system have?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
From jimkalb@webmail.ny.freei.net Tue Nov 30 16:37:48 1999
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>It is only natural that one would look to Jefferson, who was a
>contemporary of Madison, the primary author of the First Amendment, for a
>correct interpretation of the amendment.
This is puzzling. Madison had millions of contemporaries and Jefferson's views on
religion were idiosyncratic. The letter was written well after the adoption of the
amendment - I think after 1800 - which would also greatly reduce its value as evidence.
Also, I'm not sure why Madison's personal views would be so crucial. Wouldn't the
views of those who made the First Amendment law matter more? Their views were best
shown by the practices of the time, which the Bill of Rights was not intended to reform
but to protect from federal attack.
>It is also worth noting that Madison, who was president after Jefferson
>wrote his now famous letter, never once repudiated Jefferson's opinions
>expressed in the letter
Why does the failure of one president publicly to repudiate the views of another which
were expressed in a private letter and related to a matter not particularly relevant to the
public duties of the president show that he agrees with those views?
>The Supreme Court, in hundreds of cases, have ruled that the Constitution of
>the United States applies to state government as well as the federal
>government.
You mean the Bill of Rights perhaps. Until well into the present century the rule was that
the first 10 amendments did *not* apply to the states. The establishment clause was a
particularly clear case because of its language ("congress shall make no law ... ") Then
starting in the 1920s the court began to apply the Bill of Rights to the states under
the "incorporation doctrine," the claim that the 14th amendment requirement that no
state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law really
meant that the first 10 amendments applied to the states. Eventually all the first 10 were
incorporated into the 14th amendment except I think the requirement of jury trial in civil
cases. As I recall the establishment clause was first applied to the states in the 1940s.
Jim Kalb - jimkalb@ny.freei.net and http://www.panix.com/~jk
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Response to Jim Kalb
Tuesday, 30-Nov-1999 22:14:50
209.156.88.31 writes:
Think of what modernists have done to Christianity. You'd have
thought it couldn't be done, but it happened. Why shouldn't
traditionalists do the same thing to Americanism? The project
would be far better founded, since it would be a search for the
things by which America has actually been able to exist for so
long and from which whatever good things we have had and done and
been have sprung.
Why accept that America is the same as the modernist theory of
America? America is made up of hundreds of millions of men over a
period of centuries. Do you think that modernism is adequate to
the lives of so many for so long?
Pascal says that anything that is possible to be believed is an
image of the truth. Why not find the truths of which stated
American ideals are the image and call those true Americanism?
Jim Kalb
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Re: Re: Response to Jim Kalb
Sunday, 28-Nov-1999 16:17:03
209.156.91.76 writes:
But America is not a project, it is a country. It has often been
mistaken for a project, it's true, but since the project has been
destroying the country why continue the mistake?
No political society could last 225 years without tradition and
order. The fact they have not been made explicit may have
distorted things and in the end led to disaster but that does not
mean they have not been present.
(For more on the same line of thought, see my "Traditionalism and
the American Order," which is on my web page.)
Jim Kalb
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From paleo-return-654-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Fri Dec 3 12:27:46 1999
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From: Jim Kalb
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In-Reply-To: <199912021635020250.139E17A5@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Dec 2, 99 04:35:02 pm
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Subject: [Paleo] Re: Stephenson on culture, more context
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> I'm amazed that a contemporary science fiction writer has thought
> this deeply about culture. I read "Snow Crash" by this guy, but
> probably not as closely as it deserved.
I read The Diamond Age on someone's recommendation. He's a talented
writer and he's thought about things, although overall he fudges things
and takes shortcuts to produce something slick and marketable.
> The global anti-culture that has been conveyed into every cranny of
> the world by television is a culture unto itself, and by the
> standards of great and ancient cultures like Islam and France, it
> seems grossly inferior, at least at first. The only good thing you
> can say about it is that it makes world wars and Holocausts less
> likely--and that is actually a pretty good thing!
Is this really so? It seems to me that if you get rid of the
transcendent in morality, which is what the global anti-culture does,
then Naziism is a reasonable way to go. After all, the moral world is
socially constructed, so what wins is what's valid, and in the absence
of an objective good then the most convincing way for A to demonstrate
that he's won is to conquer, torture, exterminate etc. B, C and D.
There's also the emphasis on spectacle and the reconstruction of
reality through control of the mass communications media.
I really don't know though. If you're dissolute maybe you won't
undertake anything strenuous. On the other hand even dissolute people
sometimes have outbursts of energy.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
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From jk Mon Nov 29 15:57:04 1999
Subject: Re: Time presents Jesus Seminar view of Christianity
To: la
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 15:57:04 -0500 (EST)
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Making things look normal is an essential role of the mass media. The
view that Christianity is oppressive, misogynistic, racist, antisemitic
etc. is now the normal mainstream view. The function of the article is
to drive that home.
> I like your point about normality, but what is its connection to my
> comment about Time touting the reductionist view of Christianity?
>
>
> >Everything is normal. Everything is always normal. That's a basic
> >principle of keeping the people quietly in line when government is
> >formally democratic.
>
>
>
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
From paleo-return-662-jk=panix.com@returns.egroups.com Sat Dec 4 10:40:34 1999
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From: Jim Kalb
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> Why is there no active, well-funded Right in the US between the
> nonconservative neocons and those who are truly rightwing racial
> nationalist extremists? Unlike France and Italy, for example, there
> is in the US no thriving New Right. The paleos are, for the most
> part, aged and burdened by quite limited financial resources. From
> where I stand, their prospect seem dim and continue to grow worse.
Why is there no sane and serious right wing in America? For that
matter, warum gibt [gab?] es kein Sozialismus in den Vereinigten
Staaten? One possibility is that theoretical boldness gets nowhere in
a society based on consent. After all, if what is real is what most
people think, and the only limitations are self-evident truths,
self-interest, and immediate practicalities, it's not clear what the
function of grand speculation could be. And the ENR seems to be into
grand speculation. It's a necessity I think if you're at odds with the
general trend of things.
I suppose someone might say that feminism for example is theoretically
bold. It seems to me more an impulse than a theory though, more or
less on a level with racial nationalist extremism, but with the
advantage of favoring the overall interests of those in power. Extreme
slogans and provocations aren't the same as grand speculation.
Some questions from an innocent -- how much difference does money make?
Is it cause or consequence of the ability to draw support? Is the
French New Right well-funded? Also, today it costs nothing at all to
make arguments, images, texts, whatever you like immediately available
to anybody in the world with a computer. Does that change anything?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
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From: Jim Kalb
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In-Reply-To: <38493103.3022@groupz.net> from "Louis R. Andrews" at Dec 4, 99 10:19:31 am
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Subject: [Paleo] Re: ENR vs. Paleo - Was no subject
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> My own opinion (perhaps just held by a consensus of one) is that
> religion is at the core of conservative's problems, both on the paleo
> "traditionalist" side and on the "religious right" side with the
> neo-cons.
To my mind this is a sign of the fundamental nature of current
political problems. To deal with them you have to go to basic issues,
and the difficulty with truly basic issues is that you can't handle
them technically, by defining what you want, devising a strategy for
getting there, lining up support, etc. They demand all you have and
are and you can't step back from the situation in which you find
yourself to make estimates of profit and loss, assess likelihood of
victory, etc.
To act as if all things can be handled that way is I think already to
concede the game to the Left, since the fundamental principle of the
Left is that morality etc. is a human construction for human purposes
so that "what do I want" and "how do I get it" become the fundamental
questions beyond which there are no others.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
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From: Jim Kalb
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"michael smith" writes:
> But modernity relegates such questions of ultimate meaning and
> metaphysical truth to individual experience and choice.
I'm inclined to think that can't be done, that any public order is
based on a common understanding of what the world is like, what man,
the good, the basis of moral obligation are, and so on. Liberalism,
which is another name for the thing you are calling modernity, doesn't
avoid such questions, it pretends to so they can't be discussed. It
nonetheless answers them.
To act rationally at all you have to have a conception of the good. To
do so jointly, and thus to have non-despotic politics, you have to have
a common conception of the good. A political theory that "relegates
ultimate meaning to individual choice" doesn't relegate ultimate
meaning to individual choice, it identifies ultimate meaning as
something individuals create by their choices. Liberalism ideally
would have me respect your ultimate meaning, and conversely. That is a
particular theory of ultimate meaning and one that claims to bind
everybody. To identify the good with individual desires, which is what
relegation of ultimate meaning to individual choice does, is a theory
of the good like any other.
> But, given the present condition of our culture, the answers that you
> come up with will not have universal appeal or find general
> acceptance.
I don't think you escape the problem by adopting the liberal view that
such issues can be avoided, or that every man's answer is valid for him
and thus that the objective universally-binding good that government
should enforce is that each man should get what he sees as good for
himself. That answer doesn't have general acceptance either. Why
should it? For one thing it's opposed to every known religion and
rational ethical philosophy. For another, if made socially
authoritative it makes many important goods, those involving loyalty
for example, difficult to realize. For yet another it doesn't even
reach its own goal. It claims to give us what we want but doesn't
because men don't want to be hedonists or relativists. They want what
they do to be part of a greater scheme of things that doesn't depend
simply on their own desires.
> when you are to act politically in the public sphere you can't give
> metaphysical and ultimate questions the kind of emphasis or
> significance in public action that they may have in your private
> speculations.
Sure. Some don't come up, some no-one understands very well, some are
too contentious, some are too refined for penal codes. I believe in
moderation. Insisting that metaphysical and ultimate questions can be
avoided altogether strikes me as extremist, and unconvincing besides.
To say that when one acts practically, fixes dinner for example, one
doesn't put more ultimate issues like the nature of nutrition, dining,
sociality, etc. constantly front and center doesn't mean that one can
act without taking a position on such issues.
> Hillsdale has been very much in the news lately. How is this tragedy
> to be interpreted? At first it might seem to be a warning against
> charismatic "secessionist" or "rejectionist" communities, but one
> could also consider Roche as Machiavellian manipulator who was always
> fully a part of the wider world.
I think it's a warning that such things can go wrong easily enough. I
think it also shows what happens when you put success first.
Presumably everyone in a responsible position at Hillsdale knew there
were big problems but Roche was bringing in the bucks.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
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From: Jim Kalb
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In-Reply-To: <384B526D.D33B49C2@law.upenn.edu> from "John Carney" at Dec 6, 99 01:06:37 am
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John Carney writes:
> "Immigration restrictionists, in advocating for closing the U.S.
> borders, often proclaim that today's immigrants, unlike those of
> generations past, refuse to assimilate. The underlying assumption is
> that immigrants of the modern era are identical to the White ethnic
> immigrants of the 1800s. As history teaches, however, immigrants of
> color often have had vastly different experiences than their White
> predecessors. Anglo society has often accused them of the crime of
> failing to assimilate."
>
> Doesn't this get things exactly wrong? Isn't the underlying
> assumption of restrictionism is that immigrants of the modern area
> are different from immigrants of the 1800s?
The background thought may be that the basis for restricting
immigration is always a judgment that the immigrants are evil,
threatening, criminal, whatever, which in turn is always based on
narrowness, lack of imagination, ignorance, prejudice, psychopathology,
etc. To understand them, to be able to see things from their own
specific point of view, would be to welcome them.
The point is that *you* don't like immigrants and want to keep them out
because you assume they're just like yourself, you just can't imagine a
reasonable human being who's different, so when they do something you
find outrageous like not immediately adopting your language, values,
way of life etc. you immediately assume they're perverse, criminal,
subversive, etc. In fact of course the reason nonwhites don't
assimilate is partly their attachment to their uniquely valuable
cultures which would enrich us all if we would only let them, partly
the experience of prejudice and exclusion which makes white culture
unavailable to them in any case. You'd see all this if you could
understand and accept difference, which you can't or won't for a whole
raft of reasons.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
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From: Jim Kalb
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In-Reply-To: from "michael smith" at Dec 6, 99 03:23:18 pm
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"michael smith" writes:
> I expressed my concerns because of a fear that ideas "which demand
> all that we have and are" could become a form of all or nothing
> "identity politics," which overwhelms the more practical questions
> which are so common in politics and the possiblities of co-operation
> amongst people with very different views.
Day to day we mostly deal with practicalities and it's a bad idea to
raise the stakes unnecessarily. I suppose my point though is that not
everything can be compromised. There has to be some purpose to all the
activity aside from being part of what's going on. At some point it
really is better to go down fighting, choose death before dishonor,
become a hermit, whatever. Ideas, loyalties etc. that demand all we
have and are are necessary even though they shouldn't always be front
and center.
Besides, if you start with the view that everything can be compromised,
which I think is unfortunately the basic conservative view, you're sure
to lose in the long run. There are of course lots of cases in which
you can compromise things, keep situations somewhat at arm's length,
etc., all up to a point. Most of social life consists of such things.
You can't always do that though.
> It's very true and unfortunate that contemporary political life
> excludes religious and cultural concerns
It seems to me it really doesn't though since all those questions get
answered somehow or other. We do in fact have a public culture and
religious outlook that's presumed in public discussions, proclaimed by
recognized authorities, taught to children in school, etc. Public life
can't exist without it, without an accepted understanding of what man,
the world, the nature of the good etc. are.
Liberalism pretends to avoid issues but really doesn't, it just
forecloses discussion. The issues get resolved anyway but you aren't
supposed to notice. That's why "diversity and tolerance" come to mean
thought control, "human rights" aggressive war, "getting government out
of our bedrooms" training children to use condoms. Liberalism pretends
to leave everyone alone and let them do what they want but it doesn't.
For starters it forms the social world we live and that has a dominant
effect on our lives because we are social animals.
I suppose my basic point here is that saying "you really can't get
agreement on ultimate issues these days so government should avoid
them" doesn't mean government avoids them, it means government resolves
them as liberals want. Why should that outcome be privileged?
> Political life ought to reflect our deeper concerns, but I'd like to
> clarify just where this will involve conflict and where it involves
> commonality and cooperation.
An excellent proposal. Both poles must be taken seriously though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
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From: Jim Kalb
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In-Reply-To: from "T.E. Wilder" at Dec 7, 99 08:55:30 am
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> >_The Scorpion_ (as has Paul Gottfried) and _pinc_ (where I am the
> >book review editor). The first is ENR, the latter politically
> >incorrect. Some of the content of _The Scorpion_ is on the web and
> >all back issues are available on a CD-Rom. _Pinc_ is entirely
> >e-zine.
Also both appear very rarely. Is there something about opposing the
modern managerial state that makes snappy management and moving the
goods out the door impossible? I should mention for the benefit of
anyone interested that the new issue of The Scorpion should come out
this month -- it's done, but the editor was trying to get someone to do
the cover.
> I get about 20 megabytes a day downloaded from my primary website,
> ... It certainly suggests to me that it is worthwhile to put material
> on the web.
A lot of basic materials are out of copyright or hopelessly out of
print, and are often quite hard to get hold of. Scanners are cheap
now, computers have CD drives so you can listen to music while you're
doing the scanning, and with good OCR software and a good editor it
doesn't take that much longer to prepare a text than it would take
anyway to read it closely. Also, web space is free. So it's easy to
become a publisher these days and make things available to the whole
world.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
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From jk Mon Dec 6 16:21:55 1999
Subject: Re: Times admits the truth
To: la
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1999 16:21:55 -0500 (EST)
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I suppose admitting the truth is a good thing but it seems that this or
that particular admission never goes anywhere when the fundamental
orientation is wrong. It becomes a special case, or another way of
looking at things when you're in a particular mood, or something that
might be true on some level but not another, or a victim of
the hermeneutics of hope, or whatever. Still every drop wears away the
stone a little.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
From jk Tue Dec 7 07:56:53 1999
Subject: Re: your website
To: ts
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 07:56:53 -0500 (EST)
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> I have been corresponding with Fr. Richard Neuhaus and Fr. James
> Schall, SJ both neo-cons. Claes Ryn is right, they are Jacobins.
> They are the problem.
Agreed they are liberals. I wonder though what their basic orientation
is. It matters that they intend to be orthodox Roman Catholics. Are
they a bridge from the right to the left or from the left to the right?
Maybe it depends on what their fundamental loyalty really is. Remember
how they outraged the other neocons with that First Things symposium a
couple of years ago. There has to be a way for someone to start with
what he's presented growing up in America in 1999 and then step by step
reach something fundamentally different and better and I think they
might be part of that.
Buckley I think is a different matter. His problem has always been
self-indulgence, the personality cult of himself. He'll go with what
flatters him most. He can't be taken seriously. Still, who knows his
inner soul or ultimate effects? Who knows the ultimate effects of the
senior Kristols and Podhoretzes? (The younger ones are greatly
inferior.) Even a little bit of truth has consequences.
I agree with your view that the basic problem now is a religious
problem and the most important things are concrete religious
developments, including those in the lives of particular men.
Also, thanks for your kind words. I'll look up the Claes Ryn article
you mentioned. He is someone with integrity.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
From jk Tue Dec 7 08:03:57 1999
Subject: Re: Times admits the truth
To: la
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 08:03:57 -0500 (EST)
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This is one reason I think I'm on the right track thinking that
contemporary liberalism in its essence is extremely clear simple and
logical. If there's no administrative apparatus but everyone knows
what to do, how do they do it? It's not just a matter of a few clever
Jews running everything.
Back to the question whether antiracism means "down with whites" or is
really antiracism. The Times has been running occasional articles
about Japanese racism and bigotry (foreigners suing shopkeepers etc.
who kick them out simply because they're foreigners, Brazilian/Japanese
facing discrimination because they aren't really Japanese). Also
yesterday I think it was they had a front page article about
multiculturalist soul-searching in Israel that seemed to suggest
diversity and tolerance might apply there too.
>
> Jim, you're exactly right. I was just discussing this with someone the
> other day with regard to the difference between totalitarian and
> quasi-totalitarian. In a totalitarian society, the truth of things is
> never let out, except perhaps among selected groups of elites who need
> to know the truth of a certain issue in order to function. In a
> quasi-totalitarian society, the truth is let out occasionally, but in
> such a way that it never threatens the dominant orthodoxy. Either it is
> stated with a total lack of affect, or it is buried on page 16, or it is
> published months after the respective controversy is over, so it has no
> effect in counteracting the lies that were trumpeted at the time; and so
> on and so on.
>
> >I suppose admitting the truth is a good thing but it seems that this or
> >that particular admission never goes anywhere when the fundamental
> >orientation is wrong. It becomes a special case, or another way of
> >looking at things when you're in a particular mood, or something that
> >might be true on some level but not another, or a victim of
> >the hermeneutics of hope, or whatever. Still every drop wears away the
> >stone a little.
>
>
>
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
From jk Fri Dec 10 16:02:16 1999
Subject: Re: Naziism--left or right?
To: se
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 16:02:16 -0500 (EST)
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To leftists it looks rightist, to rightists it seems in the same
category as the Left.
I think of Naziism as an alternate form of modernism, the view that
there are no transcendent goods, just things men happen to want. The
left/liberal inference from modernism is that since all equally have
wants the wants of all equally constitute goods and the summum bonum is
maximum equal satisfaction. A problem with that view is that it
doesn't deal with conflict adequately - if good means "wanted" and
wants conflict you can't say what the good is. The usual answer on the
left is to claim that conflict is illusory or that if you want
something that doesn't fit into the leftist scheme of things then
there's something wrong with you and you don't count.
The Nazi view does takes conflict seriously, and to that extent is more
realistic and rationally satisfying. It observes that if we're being
as concrete and this-worldly as possible, so that we identify the Good
with what particular men happen to want, then it makes sense in case of
conflict to identify the authoritative good with what those men want
who in fact get their way. "Hail Victory!" therefore becomes the
ultimate principle of morals.
As a refinement, one might observe that who has won and therefore who
has become the ethical standard is clearest when the winner tortures
and kills the loser. Otherwise some wiseguy might claim he really got
what he wanted even though you did too, and therefore his good is just
as victorious as yours. He's much less likely to say that while he and
his family are being starved, beaten, gassed etc. and certainly won't
continue to say it afterwards when he's dead.
A rightist, at least a traditionalist or religious conservative, will
view Naziism as a twin of the Left if not part of it because it is just
another logical way to develop a purely this-worldly morality.
A leftist thinks Naziism is rightist, and in fact thinks all rightists
are at bottom Nazis, because he can't take seriously the possibility
that there are transcendent goods and so believes that if you take
conflict seriously you can't help but view whatever wins as authoritive
and so accept "Hail Victory" as the ultimate principle. Since
rightists accept inequality, evil, and therefore conflict as
inevitable, to the leftist they are all Nazis.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
From jk Sat Dec 11 07:14:41 1999
Subject: Re: Naziism--left or right?
To: se
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 07:14:41 -0500 (EST)
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Another way to look at it -- you have the traditional view of the world
as multilevel, with rocks, plants, animals, man, angels, God, all with
different sorts of souls (except the rocks I suppose), or with physical
necessity, impulse, personal habit, social convention, law of a people,
natural law, the will of God.
Each sequence displays a range of levels of transcendence ending in the
absolute transcendence of God. The modern and leftist tendency is to
eliminate transcendence and say that everything is all on a level, man
is the measure of all things. The modernist right, the fascists and
Nazis, don't think that works but they go along with eliminating
absolute transcendence so they substitute for it a this-worldly
transcendent -- some social formation, the state or the race.
The foregoing I think makes advanced liberalism the most perfect
representative of the left and Bolshevism a sort of half-way house
between the modernist right and the ideal left. The Bolshevik
proletariat is a lot like the Nazi Volk but it's only temporary and
will dissolve in simple humanity when communism is attained.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "Whilst we are
waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with
crimes." (Emerson)
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
Back to my archive of posts.