Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jun 1 14:00:40 EDT 1997
Article: 9848 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 1 Jun 1997 13:50:16 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <5mhksj$jbb$2@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (Andy Fear) writes:
>: Furthermore, one can be a "mainstream" libertarian without really
>: striking at the heart of modernism and the therapeutic state. I've
>: known plenty of libertarians in my time who have no qualms about
>: abortion, feminism, gay rights, etc.
>Why should they - this is all perfectly consistent with Lib ideology.
>these people are at least sincere rather than those who grasp at
>libertarian economics as a stick to beat socialism with but quietly
>ignore the rest of its dogmas. In for a penny, in for a pound....
I don't understand this. Presumably the libertarians like everybody
else in the world are right about some things. Why not accept whatever
truths they have, even if they themselves often misconstrue and
misapply them and also have other beliefs that are false?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Jun 2 14:42:07 EDT 1997
Article: 9851 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 2 Jun 1997 05:48:37 -0400
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In "James C. Langcuster" writes:
>> >at least sincere rather than those who grasp at libertarian
>> >economics as a stick to beat socialism with but quietly ignore the
>> >rest of its dogmas
>I've known quite a number of C-R types who cut their teeth on Mises
>and Hayek
It's more than a matter of personal biography, though. Arguments that
comprehensive central administration of economic activity and welfare
is impossible outside a slave state and that partial attempts at
central administration do not achieve their ends are I think of
permanent value. The vision of securing and maximizing hedonic
satisfaction through a universal bureaucracy is still extremely
influential. It offers a clear target and if it can be demolished
through clear arguments so much the better.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jun 3 07:55:29 EDT 1997
Article: 9857 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 3 Jun 1997 02:39:19 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 42
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In Chris Faatz writes:
>> Perhaps Friedrich von Hayek's notion of the spontaneously ordered
>> society would provide not only a philosophical justification for
>> particularism but perhaps even a suitable environment under which
>> various forms of particularism could co-exist.
Human tradition is I think a form of spontaneous ordering. It's not
designed or administered.
>Would it, though? The real question, at least in my mind, regards
>"classical liberalism's" emphasis on the free market as the Motor of
>All Things. I fear that the spontaneous order that might arise from
>the above would be a spontaneous order of mis-rule by giant
>corporations, etc.
To have a government that does little except protect person and
property and enforce contracts is not the same as viewing economics as
the Fountain and Motor of All Things. If you already have the latter
view then of course you will interpret a proposal to so limit
government as a proposal for the deification of the free market.
To get slightly more specific, it seems that CRs, distributists etc.
tend to think private ownership including private ownership of the
means of production is OK, that private bargaining and contract is in
general OK, and that central bureaucratic ordering of society is
troublesome. So it seems that the preferred economic system is one
based on private property and the free market, but with limitations.
What are those limitations and how do they come about?
One that comes to mind is tariffs and other restrictions and burdens on
cross-border transactions, to foster the coherence of local society.
Others might include Sunday or other closing laws, to break the
universal dominance of trade, and restraints of some sort on paid
advertising. For some reason we have restraints on aggregate paid
political advertising but no other kind even though free speech
concerns are stronger in politics than elsewhere.
Other suggestions? Overall principles?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Jun 5 18:01:33 EDT 1997
Article: 9864 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 4 Jun 1997 07:38:09 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 37
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wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>Even so, talking about altering premises makes me queasy. I feel I'm
>falling into Left hubris, "let's change the nature of reality and all
>will be just". Nonetheless, premises do change. The current popular
>vision of Economic Man did not always exist.
Most people seem convinced by the older Left view that the ideological
superstructure is an expression of economics, which in turn depends on
technology. That view seems wrong, since economics is based on
preferences which in turn are based on judgements of good and evil.
One can't simply decide though to change men's judgements of good and
evil in order to bring about some desired social goal. That's the
currently favored mode of social engineering. One problem with it is
that loyalty vanishes when men realize their rulers hold them in
contempt and rule most fundamentally by manipulation. People say that
another problem is that central control of communications is
disintegrating. That's the "hate speech on the Internet and talk
radio" issue. We will see how real that problem turns out to be.
>But the point to be remembered is that, yes, markets really do work as
>laissez-faire proponents describe, but markets do not (rightly) make
>their own foundations. To say that people who have Strange Belief X
>cannot have free markets is not correct.
The consequences of putting something outside the market varies with
the thing. It seems for example that forbidding all foreign trade
would do less damage to markets than giving workers a property right in
their jobs. As to the first, even a world market is finite in size.
As to the second, it seems it would result in a two-tier system in
which some have secure and undemanding jobs while others scramble to
get by on self-employment, part-time or casual labor, the dole,
charity, crime, cadging from family members, whatever.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Jun 5 18:01:34 EDT 1997
Article: 9866 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 5 Jun 1997 17:56:31 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 28
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"James C. Langcuster" writes:
>In the end, though, nationalism, rather than socialism, carried the
>day.
>I think this holds all kinds of implications for "universal nations"
>such as the United States, which must increasingly rely on appeals to
>hollow terms like "diversity," "tolerance," and "multiculturalism."
As you suggest, those appeals aren't likely to arouse much solidarity,
willingness to sacrifice, etc. in the long run, and the intention is to
eliminate common ethnicity, culture, shared history, etc. and therefore
the possibility of appeals to such things. So what can be done?
One possiblity is reducing the ability of the people to combine to any
purpose so they'll be easy to control. Social and especially civil
rights legislation helps on that score. We are all to be equidistant
>from each other and as dependent on abstract bureaucratic and market
institutions as possible. Another is _panem et circenses_, or anyway
TV and consumer goods. Another is the fabrication of enemies. Still
another is accentuating the solidarity of the ruling class. That's
been one of the effects of the expansion of the role of the elite
schools.
All these things are happening. Ain't it great?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Jun 5 18:01:36 EDT 1997
Article: 9867 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 5 Jun 1997 17:58:40 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 44
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wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>> economics is based on preferences which in turn are based on
>> judgements of good and evil.
>
>And "fashion". Does judgement of "good and evil" include aesthetics?
Evaluative judgements generally. The Good, the Beautiful, the True.
Maybe "good and bad" would have been better than "good and evil" for
what I had in mind.
>We are skeptical of macro-engineering attempts, but neither do we have
>confidence that micro changes in preferences have specific macro
>results. I mean that if a bunch of people begin to value X, we have no
>way of knowing whether or how the larger community will be influenced.
Is micro-engineering often attempted? People usually don't engineer
their own preferences for the sake of some social goal. Or maybe that
is what it is to have a social conscience. Most changes in micro
preferences arise though because thought and experience make the world
look different to people and if the world looks different what they
think is good changes.
>The point is that if some Strange Belief X (such as worker ownership of
>jobs) were common in a society, it would be wrong to overturn it from
>arguments of efficiency, or from appeal to abstract free-marketism.
If people knew that in protecting worker ownership of jobs they were
shoving marginal workers more forcibly to the margins it might affect
that Strange Belief. Job tenure wouldn't look like such a good
institution, at least in general. I agree it's odd to make abstract
efficiency the standard for all things. If people don't like doing
that, and "efficiency" has to do with giving people what they want, it
seems it would be self-contradictory to do so.
>I'm not aware of any science that attempts to explicate this two-way
>relation between preferences and economy.
There are cyclical accounts of history based on the mutual effects of
the moral character of a people and institutions. Books viii and ix of
Plato's _Republic_ and Ibn Khaldun's _Muqaddimah_ are examples.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Jun 5 18:01:39 EDT 1997
Article: 9868 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 5 Jun 1997 18:01:00 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>Well, the Kalb Doctrine does seem to say that any purposeful action is
>tantamount to violating irreducible human nature, squaring the circle
>and possibly worshiping false gods. Do we imagine that the people of
>[some admirable traditionalist society] didn't actually _do_ anything
>apart from flowing in harmony with their given environment? Or that
>their strivings were necessarily destructive?
There does seem something odd though about consciously establishing or
greatly revising fundamental social institutions. After all, rational
collective action is based on those institutions. That's one reason
people tend to think the state must have a divine origin and the human
founders of a state must be prophets or demigods.
As to the effects of striving, the best I can come up with is the
traditional view that if you strive for the one necessary thing all
else will be given you but in a way you couldn't possibly foresee. So
the question becomes what the one necessary thing is.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!panix!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-feed2.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!rutgers.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Fri Jun 6 05:29:34 EDT 1997
Article: 96892 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Using the Book of Common Prayer?
Date: 4 Jun 1997 22:36:44 -0400
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In <5mdhn3$jr@geneva.rutgers.edu> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>If anyone's interested there's a discussion of the '79 changes at:
> http://www.episcopalnet.org/TractsForOurTimes/Politzer.html
>The writer of the discussion doesn't like the changes but since the
>discussion consists largely of quotes from an essay by one of the men
>involved in making them it ought to be useful whether one likes the '79
>BCP or not. It seems clear that the changes were not simply formal or
>linguistic, but involved very substantial changes in theology.
I was puzzled by responses to what I wrote, checked again, and found
that I gave the wrong cite. The correct cite is:
http://www.episcopalnet.org/TractsForOurTimes/HowEpiscopaliansDeceived.html
I'm very sorry for the confusion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From jk@panix.com Tue Jun 3 07:57:06 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
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Subject: Re: Moslems
To: rsutter@du.edu
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 07:52:15 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: anglican@du.edu
In-Reply-To: <3393076C.3AD0@du.edu> from "Fr Richard L. B. Sutter" at Jun 2, 97 11:48:28 am
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> I remember Dr Lammin Sanneh, a missiologist and convert to
> Christianity from Islam say that "the only proper dialogue a
> Christian may have with a Moslem is one intended to convert him."
If the Christian outlook is better then a dialogue with the immediate
goal of promoting mutual understanding would in the end tend to
convert.
It's a tricky matter of course. "Promoting mutual understanding" is
sometimes thought to include "recognizing the equal validity of each
point of view" and thus to include a denial that there is truth in
religion. So there are dialogues that are not proper dialogues.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From neocon-request@abdn.ac.uk Fri Jun 6 15:27:13 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
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Subject: Re: News from the Cato Institute
To: BillR54619@AOL.COM
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 15:30:05 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
In-Reply-To: <970606045124_1524243937@emout03.mail.aol.com> from "BillR54619@AOL.COM" at Jun 6, 97 04:51:25 am
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> "Many of those who have complained most often about judicial activism
> are distracting us from the real issue-legislative activism on the
> part of Congress," says Roger Pilon, a senior fellow and director of
> the Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute.
>
> Conservatives, according to Pilon, are wrong to assail judges for
> overruling the will of the people on questions of fundamental
> liberties: "In our legal system, judicial review often requires a
> judge to do just that,"
This is an expression of the split in the American right between (1)
"economically conservative, socially tolerant" libertarians who favor
radical individualism and the market protected by a national state
striving toward internationalism and a world without borders, and (2)
social and traditional conservatives who like federalism, local
community standards, family values etc. Cato and Pilon are of course
in the first category.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Jun 7 11:34:30 EDT 1997
Article: 9871 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 7 Jun 1997 07:39:36 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <5n930u$n9v$1@nadine.teleport.com> Chris Faatz writes:
>Virtue, which is only virtue when freely chosen... is made
>inaccessible to the coerced citizen, whereever and to the degree that
>the state compels his action. His actions may look like virtuous
>actions, but they are the actions of an automaton and cannot be truly
>virtuous, because being unfree to reject virtue, he is unfree to
>choose it."
This would clearly be the case if there were a minutely enforced
tyranny of virtue. That doesn't seem to be the issue today though if
you put aside the demands of feminists, multiculturalists etc. The
legal and social supports for traditional morality have been weakening
for some time. Have men therefore become more virtuous? I would have
said the contrary.
We are free but never wholly. That is part of what it means to say we
are social animals. To live spiritually apart from other men one would
have to be either a god or a beast. The quoted language suggests a
"god" standard for virtue, which doesn't suit us. Evil communications
corrupt good manners, while education and virtuous companionship help
us to become free and virtuous ourselves.
It therefore matters for our moral life what things are publicly
acceptable and customary in our society. While law can not directly
make us virtuous it can affect what is publicly acceptable and
customary and therefore has its own contribution to make. So talk of
"coercing virtue" slides over a complex situation.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jun 8 05:58:04 EDT 1997
Article: 9880 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 8 Jun 1997 05:35:27 -0400
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In <100219506wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> accentuating the solidarity of the ruling class. That's been one of
>> the effects of the expansion of the role of the elite schools.
>Which elite schools are you thiniking of? At what educational level?
>And in which country or coutnries?
I was thinking of the elite universities in the U.S. In a
bureaucratized mass society they confer the equivalent of "good
family". Going to those places alters the way people think about
themselves. Graduates immediately recognize each other as members of a
superior class.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jun 8 05:58:05 EDT 1997
Article: 9881 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 8 Jun 1997 05:56:46 -0400
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In <559032118wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> If people knew that in protecting worker ownership of jobs they were
>> shoving marginal workers more forcibly to the margins it might affect
>> that Strange Belief. Job tenure wouldn't look like such a good
>But the above is also a Strange Belief: it is only true in certain
>conditions, notably those which encourage strong protection of certain
>other kinds of property rights (such as the preservation of
>pension-owners' rights above those of producers). Where, as in Japan
>until ten or twenty years ago, the rights of people as pension-owners
>are given rather less protection than their right to job security, it
>doesn't necessarily have that effect.
Actually Japan was one of the examples I have in mind. My
understanding is that if you work for one of the big established
companies there you have great job security and good pay but other
people have to scramble. When one thing or another has to be cut back
it's the small suppliers who get the ax.
If conferring a status on someone (Full Time Permanent Employee or
whatever) means you're stuck with him forever you're going to favor
other relationships or at least need convincing. The marginal workers
I had in mind are the people who for one reason or another have trouble
convincing employers it would be a good idea to agree up front to keep
them on the payroll for the next 40 years.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jun 8 21:23:57 EDT 1997
Article: 9882 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 8 Jun 1997 08:07:56 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 33
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References: <5n0e6n$cfg@panix.com> <19970603100705917783@deepblue2.salamander.com> <5n3k31$nll@panix.com> <5n7cmf$gst@panix.com> <100219506wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <100219506wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> We are all to be equidistant from each other and as dependent on
>> abstract bureaucratic and market institutions as possible.
>The instititutions (or rather absences of institution) of the
>fictional market, of course, not those of real markets, which are not
>abstract.
My rush to disagree with Mr. Cardenas on another point caused me to
skip over this one.
More and more, modern electronic communications are making every
person, place and thing equally present to every other person, place
and thing. As a result all situations involving contractual exchange,
even those carried on at a distance between two parties (which Mr.
Cardenas would call fictional markets), take on the characteristics of
what he would call real markets.
The reason economists like to assimilate all bargaining and exchange to
"real markets" is that while they are concrete their abstract
characteristics (minimal transaction costs, full knowledge, multiple
possible participants on each side of a transaction) determine a great
deal of their behavior.
The point of my "abstract market institutions" comment up top is that
widely diffused abstract characteristics of situations are determining
more and more of our social world. Today's thought tells us that to
exist is to exist socially, and more and more our social existence lies
in the characteristics taken into account by bureaucracies and markets.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jun 8 21:24:00 EDT 1997
Article: 9885 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 8 Jun 1997 21:22:38 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 18
Message-ID: <5nflsu$881@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <339AF592.517E@gstis.net> FELIX writes:
>Our anti-syndicalist laws were purchased in the legislatures by the
>capitalists specifically to prevent any challenge to their power.
>We would have far more employee ownership of jobs if the free market
>had been allowed to function.
What do you see as the legal barriers to employee ownership of jobs? A
partnership is I suppose an example of an enterprise in which employees
own their jobs. It is legal to do business as a partnership in the
United States. It is even legal for firms that are not partnerships to
give workers contractual rights to tenure of employment, participation
in running the business, etc.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Mon Jun 9 19:17:56 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: From Norway
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Status: RO
A Swedish correspondent sent me the following, which I thought I'd pass
on.
> A friend of mine has done this translation of the 14 century
> Norvegian cronicle Kongespeilet, meaning the kings mirror and/or
> mirroring the kings.
> If years of famine get into the people, this is worse than years of
> famine in the country. A country can be helped, if it is on friendly
> terms with the neigbouring countries and competent men are arranging
> for necessities of life to be supplied from there. But if years of
> famine get into the people, in respect of its customs, immense harm
> may be inflicted, since no one can buy customs or common sense from
> other countries, if that which previously existed in the country is
> destroyed or dissipated.
>
> Most of the people get depressed as a result of the depressive
> message and they do not remember either what was good or wrong. But
> you ought to know with certainty that this is not the right heritage
> of man; man was created to be a treasure in the world and a treasure
> in the next world. The question is only whether he wants to gain the
> heritage, for which he was created.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jun 10 05:39:30 EDT 1997
Article: 9888 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 9 Jun 1997 19:51:58 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 11
Message-ID: <5ni4uu$8ig@panix.com>
References: <5lm8s3$uak@r02n01.cac.psu.edu> <5mb8kk$3n4$2@nadine.teleport.com> <5mdc0q$f64@panix.com> <5mhksj$jbb$2@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> <5mscoo$1s0@panix.com> <5muqv3$i5e$1@nadine.teleport.com> <5n0e6n$cfg@panix.com> <19970603100705917783@deepblue2.salamander.com> <5mumei$r72$1@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk>
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cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (Andy Fear) writes:
>Socialism which at least accepts the notion of community is closer to
>Conservatism that the vision of the Libertarian.
It's worth noting that American socialists (e.g., John Rawls) tend to
be liberal in rejecting the notion of community among other things.
They have a very strong moral-libertarian streak.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!panix!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!ais.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Wed Jun 11 05:43:35 EDT 1997
Article: 97112 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: I am not religious, but I am a Christian
Date: 9 Jun 1997 23:51:14 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 50
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Nathan.Scott.Stewart@linus.mitre.org wrote:
> I love the Lord, Jesus Christ, with all my heart and soul.
> However, I do not consider myself a Christian in the sense that the
> majority of people believe a Christian to be. I do not attend
> church; I do not have a set of standards to live by in order to "get
> to Heaven," because the standards vary from church to church, and in
> many respects, are arbitrary.
Suppose someone said "I love music with all my heart and soul, but I
don't call myself a musician because I've never studied any particular
instrument or style of music. Instruments and styles differ and a lot
of the differences are arbitrary. What I want to do is love and know
music, and all those arbitrary differences just get in the way. Also,
I don't make music with other music lovers or even associate with any
in particular because if I did I'd just pick up their prejudices and
limitations." Would that make sense?
> Religion tends to separate people, one church against another church,
> and this is contradictory of the teachings of Christ. Jesus wants
> unity, and unity is a product of love.
If everyone avoided churches would that unite them?
God became man, so the things of this world are important. The things
of this world are particular, so living in love in this world means
doing particular things. We learn from experience and from each other
what things to do and how. Since people have different experiences and
learn different things, and since the people they live with and learn
>from are different, different religious traditions grow up.
Since adherents of each tradition have only partial knowledge and
incomplete love of God traditions conflict. One way to eliminate the
conflicts would be to make knowledge and love complete, which we can't
do but we can work on it. Another way, which seems to be the one you
suggest, would be to eliminate religious traditions. But that would
mean eliminating learning from experience and other people, which seems
a bad idea.
> Spirit and religion are two different things.
Sure, just like musical beauty and particular compositions, styles and
instruments are two different things. Ditto for truths and particular
statements of truth. You can't have the first without the second,
though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!panix!news.eecs.umich.edu!news.radio.cz!europa.clark.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-feed2.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Wed Jun 11 05:43:37 EDT 1997
Article: 97132 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: I am not religious, but I am a Christian
Date: 10 Jun 1997 22:34:48 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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NNTP-Posting-Host: geneva.rutgers.edu
In <5nij08$84v@geneva.rutgers.edu> 00213762@ysub.ysu.edu writes:
>However, I do not agree to the idea that a single group of people
>dictates to a congregation what or what not to believe. At this very
>moment, for example, I could create my own set of standards, backed up
>by actual verses of the Bible, on how to be a true child of God, and
>the standards that I choose may in many respects contradict the very
>nature of Christ.
But in order to follow Christ concretely you have to have some sort of
standards. You can't just think vague pleasant thoughts or act
randomly or assume the Holy Spirit will give you a special revelation
every time you have to make a decision.
The question is how to have the best standards. Saying "I'm not going
to let anyone tell me what to do because he might be wrong" is all very
well, but what it means is "I think I'll create my own set of standards
based on my own understanding." Is that the best way to learn something
difficult?
If you want to become the very best cook you can, you could make up
your own techniques and recipes, choosing something here and something
there, or you could seek out the best cook in the world, become his
student and assistant, and follow what he does and do what he tells you
until you've mastered what he knows. I think the second approach works
better, and becoming a Christian is at least as difficult as becoming a
cook.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Jun 13 13:19:16 EDT 1997
Article: 9910 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Crossposting
Date: 12 Jun 1997 10:25:16 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 13
Message-ID: <5np0sc$f8s@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
I think it was Jim Bowery who started the current round of crossposting
to a.r.c. If you think that crossposting stuff on inflammatory topics
to a dozen newsgroups is likely to degrade discusssions here, please
email him and other crossposters (I have already done so) and request
them to stop.
I have nothing against discussing Bowery's theories here or elsewhere
so long as discussions can be kept coherent. The issue is whether
a.r.c. would be helped or harmed by a flood of the crossposted slop
that typically deluges the rant groups on usenet.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Jun 13 22:37:50 EDT 1997
Article: 9931 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Revolutionary Vanguard
Date: 13 Jun 1997 20:25:46 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 53
Message-ID: <5nsoea$bnj@panix.com>
References: <5nflsu$881@panix.com> <339E0D14.7668@gstis.net> <19970611090328633428@deepblue1.salamander.com> <5npc94$3lc$1@suba01.suba.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <5npc94$3lc$1@suba01.suba.com> rcarrier@suba01.suba.com (Ronald M. Carrier) writes:
>And why would the difference in preferences involved in ownership and
>use not be the case with respect to employees once they become owners?
The form of employee ownership would matter.
If the employees collectively owned the company, but each employee's
interest lapsed when he left his job, then presumably each employee
would find it in his interest for the company to generate and
distribute to owners as much cash as possible over his period of
employment. That probably wouldn't be a good idea from the standpoint
of maximizing overall profitability and therefore overall benefit to
employee/owners over the life of the company. Also it would put the
interests of different employee/owners in flat contradiction to each
other in a way you usually don't find in a public company but often
find in a family business.
If employees earned an interest in the company they could keep when
they left that grew with their years of service then in effect the
youngsters would be working for the oldsters and the retirees and their
transferees and heirs. I imagine in this case the owners' preferences
would be more like those of outside shareholders, but to the extent
that's true I'm not sure why would employee ownership would be that
much of an improvement.
Another possibility would be to require new employees to put in a
capital contribution that they get back adjusted for profits and losses
when they leave. That would make taking a job an expensive
proposition, and might make leaving one difficult because the long-term
employees would probably demand restrictions on withdrawals to prevent
a capital crunch if too many decided to leave at once.
None of these possibilities seem particularly utopian to me. Whether
they make sense at all probably depends on the industry, the kind of
concern, who gets included in the ownership group, etc. The last is
the way law firms run, for example, but in those only a small
percentage of the workers are employee/owners.
My guess is that whatever the original purpose and effect of
anti-syndicalism laws the law existing today don't much restrict
substantive economic arrangements the participants in an enterprise
would otherwise agree on among themselves. If they did I think we
would have heard about it. Usually employees of large companies would
rather have cash than an ownership interest anyway. After all, if you
work for IBM and you really want a piece of the action you can take
part of your salary and buy IBM stock.
Is there any particular place anyone wants to go with any of this?
--
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 Thu Jun 26 08:43:19 EDT 1997
Article: 9981 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 25 Jun 1997 10:21:07 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 60
Message-ID: <5or9gj$hnn@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
My apologies to those who think the world already has too many
rhetorical strategies, but at some point one has to think about dealing
with the world somewhat on the world's terms. Unless he's Simone Weil
or Saint Francis or somebody I suppose.
Presumably opponents of contemporary liberalism should make an issue of
contradictions of liberalism, so I decided to make a list.
1. The demand for free speech, together with the need to control the
terms of discussion so that the only positions that can be articulated
and defended in public are liberal positions. PC is a manifestation of
this, as is the PC viewpoint that it is "hate speech" and not PC that
is the problem. The enormous growth and centralization of formal
education and the electronic media in recent decades have helped
liberals square this circle, but new developments (e.g., the Internet)
may make it more difficult for them to maintain control.
2. The denial of the principle of authority, together with the need to
centralize all significant political decisions in a small elite. The
first principle implies the second; if the political order denies
authority to all members of society then decisions have to be made by
men who are not really subject to that order although they may claim to
speak for whatever lies at its basis -- by a priestly caste of judges
who claim to speak for the Constitution, for example.
3. The claim to free people to pursue what they want, when most of
their deeper wants have to do with the nature of the social world they
live in, and liberalism takes decisions regarding that issue out of the
their hands almost completely. For example: has it made people happy
to be able to define and express their sexuality as they choose when
contemporary liberalism has made changes in social customs and
attitudes inevitable that make it far more difficult to choose marriage
and family with any assurance that the parties will be able to rely on
each other?
4. Multiculturalism -- every culture is to be equally honored by
equal deprivation of the authority intrinsic to its existence, and
therefore by equal destruction. Liberalism is thus the common enemy of
all peoples, and so (since humanity is composed of peoples) of humanity
itself.
5. The emphasis on tolerance and reason, together with bigoted and
ignorant moralism. Contemporary liberalism has a large and vigorous
vocabulary of fear, contempt and hatred, including (oddly enough) words
like "hatred."
6. The emphasis on modern natural science, together with the
subordination of science to ideology when it is a question of human
differences or social functioning.
Beyond finding fault with liberalism itself, opponents should draw
attention to good things that can grow back only if liberal ideology
weakens -- faith, family, community, what have you. To do so they will
have to rehabilitate what liberals dismiss as "nostalgia."
Any comments, additions, other ideas?
--
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 Thu Jun 26 08:43:21 EDT 1997
Article: 9985 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 26 Jun 1997 08:40:17 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <5otnvh$np3@panix.com>
References: <5or9gj$hnn@panix.com> <35043115wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <35043115wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>One may add that contemporary economic liberalism ... also makes it
>far more difficult to choose marriage and family, because the
>upbringing of a family is a long-term economic commitment which
>requires a reasonably secure income prospect.
This doesn't seem the problem, though. People feel insecure, but so
far as I can tell there aren't that many cases of stable married people
who have attained relative comfort and stay married falling into
long-term poverty. Certainly far fewer than say a hundred years ago --
think of all the biographical accounts of children growing up in
families that had fallen into poverty, or were living "in greatly
reduced circumstances," or of men at one time notable who died paupers.
>It is precisely when there are economic difficulties for the family
>unit that one spouse is most likely to cut and run.
That doesn't mean that an environment in which families sometimes have
economic difficulties is an environment in which families are unstable.
"What does not kill me makes me stronger" applies to things other than
emersons and nietzsches. If something doesn't have a serious function
it disappears.
>A recent survey showed that whereas one in six couples in the UK chose
>not to have children, among university graduates, who are better
>informed and putatively a little more likely to think about the
>long-term future, the figure was one in four.
The purpose and effect of formal education in 1997 is to fit people, in
their habits, attitudes and skills, for full integration into the the
universal rational market and universal rational bureaucracy. The
aspects of human life that interfere with the integration naturally
tend to wither.
I suppose one effect of economic liberalism is to hold out glittering
prizes for material ambition, and one effect of treating it as the
fundamental organizing principle of society is to make those prizes the
highest and almost the sole socially recognized goods. Since the
_summum bonum_ is that to which all else is rightfully sacrificed in
case of conflict the sacrifice of family to material success would be a
natural consequence. I'm not sure though whether the effect should be
attributed to a legal regime of private property and free contract, or
to other circumstances that make that regime and the state the only
things a people has in common.
--
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 Thu Jun 26 15:09:01 EDT 1997
Article: 9986 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 26 Jun 1997 09:29:19 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 36
Message-ID: <5otqrf$4bg@panix.com>
References: <5or9gj$hnn@panix.com> <199706251028011089866@deepblue7.salamander.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
> Without explicit instruction, several generations have absorbed the
> notion that ethics are entirely subjective, but that somehow right
> and wrong are inherent in "the facts".
The two go together. If ethics are entirely subjective you can't
discuss them, and agreement on principles must be presumed before the
conversation can begin at all. So the only thing left to talk about is
what the facts are to which the principles are to be applied.
> > Any comments, additions, other ideas?
>
> How about: Establishment of Anarcho-Tyranny: criminals are
> unstoppable and new crimes are invented for the law-abiding.
Not bad. It makes sense though. If you want results you'll get more
results telling law-abiding citizens what to do than telling bums and
crooks not to be bums and crooks. In _Chronicles_ I think they
complain about this from time to time.
Speaking of _Chronicles_, why does the esteemed Editor devote almost
two pages of the most recent issue to a detailed account of his
unsatisfactory dealings with American Express?
> > Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
>
> Who is this REALLY? Jim Kalb always has a palindrome.
I got tired of palindromes and have been reading Emerson so I thought
I'd have a series of Emerson quotes instead.
--
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 Thu Jun 26 15:09:03 EDT 1997
Article: 9990 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Radio Free Amerika!
Date: 26 Jun 1997 15:08:33 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <5ouenh$gev@panix.com>
References: <00001FF300001403@nashville.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
radiofree.amerika@nashville.com (Radiofree Amerika) writes:
>Disney is helping people in close, loving, stable relationships
This is plainly not the Disney policy. If it were, how would they tell?
If a couple got into a fight would they cut off benefits because it
didn't look close and loving any more? If they split would they have to
repay benefits because it turned out the relationship wasn't stable
after all?
>The Disney boycott is being declared to *deny* freedom and human rights
>to a segment of our society.
What freedom and rights are being denied? You might have a point if
sex were irrelevant to social organization, but the role it plays is
fundamental because the family and having and rearing children are
fundamental, and sex is basic to both. That being so, social standards
regarding sex and sexual relationships are part of what constitutes
society and flouting them is not a human right.
>Here, let me quote a letter from today's paper:
>
>*"Toward the end of this past school year, I approached my 11th grade
>American Studies teacher
Wisdom from high school juniors. It can happen, of course, but more
often the things they find easy to articulate and editorial page
editors find heartening to print, especial regarding topics of which
they have no personal experience, are simply the things they've been
fed all their lives.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Whilst we are waiting we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with
eating and with crimes." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Jun 27 09:50:09 EDT 1997
Article: 9992 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 27 Jun 1997 07:20:11 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 71
Message-ID: <5p07lb$ss8@panix.com>
References: <5or9gj$hnn@panix.com> <35043115wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5otnvh$np3@panix.com> <895615929wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <895615929wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>> so far as I can tell there aren't that many cases of stable married
>> people who have attained relative comfort and stay married falling
>> into long-term poverty.
>Perhaps not in the US, where unemployment has been relatively low in
>recent years, but certainly here in Europe I can think of individual
>acquaintances to whom that's happened.
A consequence I would imagine of the comprehensive worker protective
legislation.
>the very high levels of personal mobility in search of work which
>modern liberal economists expect people to put up with
I'm not persuaded they need that expectation. A notable feature of
current economic life is how easy it's become to move *work* around.
Until not so long ago the population of some American states was
declining. No more.
>No, but in an environment where family commitment is a personal thing
>not supported by the state or community values, economic difficulties
>can be disastrous.
And unrelieved and secure prosperity makes family commitment all the
more a subjective personal matter by reducing the practical need for
it.
>Moreover the commitment nowadays has to be for a longer period than in
>the past: in the 19th century children often went to work or some form
>of apprenticeship at 12, earlier in poor families, whereas today a
>college education requires sustaining them, at higher cost, until 22
>or so.
Assuming first and last children are now 5 years apart, that means the
period of responsibility for children is 27 years. Is that longer than
in pre-contraception days?
>All that is required is private property, free contract, and easily
>available and safe contraception. The cutural attitudes changed very
>rapidly once the third became available.
An interesting issue. The notion seems to be that if people are free
to pursue their own interests, so that for example childbirth becomes a
choice, and glittering prizes are available, there are going to be
problems. We'll end up with radically self-seeking individualism as
the dominant outlook.
So maybe the Pope is even more right than anyone thinks, and
contraception means the end of any tolerable moral order. On the other
hand, would a more radically libertarian legal order help? Or at least
a more minimal government, if there's a distinction? If there were no
welfare or social security system, and state support for education were
abolished, then it seems family ties would regain their obvious
practical day-to-day necessity in each of our lives and cultural
attitudes would adjust. It would be much harder to make radically
self-seeking individualism the basis of an apparently successful life
plan.
Or maybe the answer once again is that amoralism leads to a new
morality. Radically self-seeking individualism will eventually destroy
the public order that makes it possible, and rather than a rational
universal cybereconomy and cosmopolitan bureaucracy, which depend for
their functioning on a degree of mutual trust they cannot sustain,
we'll have barter among groups (clans or what have you) whose
solidarity is based on prerational ties such as blood.
--
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 Sat Jun 28 08:44:29 EDT 1997
Article: 9995 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 28 Jun 1997 08:44:04 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 87
Message-ID: <5p30uk$g17@panix.com>
References: <5or9gj$hnn@panix.com> <35043115wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5otnvh$np3@panix.com> <895615929wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5p07lb$ss8@panix.com> <419962853wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
rafael cardenas writes:
>But what are people supposed to do when 'work' is moved away from them?
>Aren't they supposed to up sticks and follow it?
The basic point I thought is that work is less tied to place -- the
confluence of navigable rivers, fertile soil, the presence of coal and
ore, whatever -- than in the past. It seeks out the social settings
and people among whom it can be carried on efficiently. If that's so I
don't see the necessity of moving. Instead of going to Singapore,
where workers offer more and demand less from people who need things
done, they could offer more and demand less where they are.
That situation creates lots of problems but also offers possibilities.
The ideological libertarians want to treat it as a pure good, which is a
mistake, but other mistakes are also possible. The situation should be
understood soberly.
For example, the "offer more and demand less" could be dealt with in a
number of ways. One would be radically to reduce what is offered to and
demanded from the world economy, through autarky or at least strong
protectionism. Another would be to offer the world something other than
managerial and entrepreneurial skills, engineering, and efficient
performance of engineered functions. Craftsmen still exist, and there's
demand for what they offer, although it's no way to get rich. So
products could emphasize design and craftsmanship. The workers' lives
would be better, so the idea would be, even though cash compensation
would not be as high.
There are problems with such approaches of course. In the end though
the decisive issue is what kinds of lives people find tolerable and
rewarding in the long term, and worthy of being passed on to the next
generation. It is such patterns of life that survive. If small
adjustments within the existing order are insufficient to establish them
there will be bigger changes.
>Life expectation was below 49 years at that time.
At birth. At time of marriage people could expect to live to a more
advanced age than that.
>A welfarist system which subsidizes marriage and the family at the
>expense of the unmarried or childless may partly counteract the effect
>of contraception.
Some measures might help marginally. Lower taxes on families
especially those with children might be an example. The problem with
welfarist systems in general though is that they take on responsibility
for the well-being of individuals and so supplant the family.
>If there is no welfare, but a modern economy that allows free
>investment anywhere, then the sensible life-plan is to rely on one's
>savings and avoid having long-term dependants, and certainly avoid
>having children for whose education one must pay.
The question is not which individuals will end up living comfortably in
big houses but which forms of life will prevail. DINKs leave no
posterity. Contraception together with the abolition of the welfare
state and eventually public education in neoliberal society may be
evolution's way of getting rid of people who are not committed to a
form of life emphasizing family ties and specific intergenerational
obligations.
Since as an economic and technological matter family has become choice
rather than destiny, and since left to themselves most men choose what
is convenient, it seems that the future belongs to religious groups
that sacralize those ties and the correlative obligations, reject
contraception, and retain their young people. Such groups exist. If
they do, what can stop them from taking over a world otherwise
populated by DINKs?
>The only way for employers to get round that sort of resistance, if it
>spreads, would be to lower wages to the point where most people's wages
>can barely support their individual subsistence, so there can be no
>savings to cushion periods of unemployment.
Employers compete with each other. They have no mechanism for deciding
collectively to set wages at some particular level. With the coming of
the world economy it's become harder than ever. One might as well
expect the retail industry to solve its problems by fixing producer
prices at some very low level. Also, "individual subsistence" means a
kilo of bread a day and a corner of a shed to sleep in. Is that where
wages will be set?
--
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 Sun Jun 29 15:28:39 EDT 1997
Article: 9999 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 29 Jun 1997 15:22:09 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 108
Message-ID: <5p6cl1$a9r@panix.com>
References: <5or9gj$hnn@panix.com> <35043115wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5otnvh$np3@panix.com> <895615929wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5p07lb$ss8@panix.com> <419962853wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5p30uk$g17@panix.com> <175365991wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
rafael cardenas writes:
>Do they 'demand less'? Singapore has a higher income per capita than
>London (though, as it happens, London's GDP per capita is, or was last
>year, higher than Singapore's). Despite, collectively, offering more
>and demanding less than Singapore
The intended meaning of "offer more and demand less" was "offer more for
what they demand." Why do you believe London offers more for what it
demands than Singapore?
>Moreover Singapore's ability to 'offer more' results to a large extent
>from State activity
You just said though that London offered more.
I don't think I've presented any general theory about government
involvement in economic life. I *have* said that direct government
responsibility for the overall material well-being of individuals is
socially destructive especially in the long run. That claim might not
hold in a society sufficiently different from those of the West, and in
any case does not seem relevant to the discussion.
>> One would be radically to reduce what is offered to and demanded
>> from the world economy, through autarky or at least strong
>> protectionism.
>
>This assumes that the demanders and offerers are the same people. In
>practice, protection must be geographical, and because some people in
>each locality wish to demand things from the world economy, others in
>that locality who are compelled to 'offer more' go unprotected.
I had territorial autarky and protectionism in mind. I'm not sure what
we're arguing about. My claim is not that government can never do
anything that works as intended, although I have argued against attempts
by government to establish comprehensive administrative control of
society.
>> what can stop them from taking over a world otherwise populated by
>> DINKs?
>
>Migration, or tyranny, or (if the strong AI people prove right after all)
>robots, could all or any of them prevent it.
If strong AI is successful all bets are off. Presumably the robots
will prevail and any surviving human beings will be put in sideshows.
DINKs seem too self-involved to be effective tyrants in any normal
sense.
More generally, the effect of migration, easy and instantaneous
communication and the world economy seems to be the equalization of
conditions world-wide. So the DINKs will be everywhere (Lee Kuan Yew
worries about the failure of educated and prosperous Singaporeans to
reproduce), and from China to Peru the question will be whether theirs
is the way of life that will triumph as individually safer and more
gratifying in a society that treats individual safety and gratification
as the _summum bonum_, or whether other ways will triumph as better able
to reproduce themselves. There won't be any insulated third-world
source of new bodies to make up for the failure of first-world DINKdom
to reproduce itself.
>Moreover unless the religious groups can use force to retain their
>young people within the group, they experience a steady haemorrhage of
>people to the DINK ethic, and that may counterbalance their higher
>birthrate. Where such religious groups control the state, as in Iran,
>they may be more successful, but we can only wait and see in that
>particular example.
>
>Where they do not control the state, the groups need a sense of active
>persecution by the outside world in order to retain their cohesion. The
>history of Jews in China is not encouraging.
On the other hand, the Amish and Hutterians, who aren't persecuted and
don't use force, and whose young are not subject to religious discipline
until they are baptized in their early-to-mid 20s, retain 80% or more of
their young people. The _Haredim_ (strictly orthodox Jews) seem to be
doing very well too now that enlightened modernity has lost some of its
glamour. All have *very* large families.
It seems to me my argument is a strong one. I don't need every
religious group that likes family values to be able to maintain itself
and its ways and hold on to its members in the face of modern
individualistic self-seeking. It's enough that there be even one such
group and then Darwin will do the rest. In fact, of course, if there is
one there will be others -- methods of survival get around. DINKdom
isn't likely to be that pleasant a place to live for most people so any
workable alternative is likely to spread and attract imitators.
>Cough. Excuse me.
>Cough again...
Extreme compression can be rhetorically effective, but only if others
understand what you're talking about.
>> Also, "individual subsistence" means a kilo of bread a day and a
>> corner of a shed to sleep in. Is that where wages will be set?
>
>That is already a higher level than that where wages are set in 'zero-
>hour contracts' here.
An obscure reference. Also, your suggestion seemed to be that wages
generally would be set at such a level.
--
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 Sun Jun 29 15:28:43 EDT 1997
Article: 10000 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Holes in distribution
Date: 29 Jun 1997 15:28:27 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 8
Message-ID: <5p6d0r$bal@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Recently a number of messages various people have posted to a.r.c. seem
to have been bottled up somewhere and not distributed throughout the
net. Is that a problem on the net generally? Any theories as to what
might be causing it?
--
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 Sun Jun 29 18:14:46 EDT 1997
Article: 10001 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 29 Jun 1997 17:53:45 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 161
Message-ID: <5p6lh9$2iq@panix.com>
References: <5or9gj$hnn@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
[The following, from stuart.n2@ukonline.co.uk (Stuart), was received by
email after usenet apparently choked on it. Maybe reposting from
panix.com will work.]
>My apologies to those who think the world already has too many
>rhetorical strategies, but at some point one has to think about dealing
>with the world somewhat on the world's terms. Unless he's Simone Weil
>or Saint Francis or somebody I suppose.
>
>Presumably opponents of contemporary liberalism should make an issue of
>contradictions of liberalism, so I decided to make a list.
>
>1. The demand for free speech, together with the need to control the
>terms of discussion so that the only positions that can be articulated
>and defended in public are liberal positions. PC is a manifestation of
>this, as is the PC viewpoint that it is "hate speech" and not PC that
>is the problem. The enormous growth and centralization of formal
>education and the electronic media in recent decades have helped
>liberals square this circle, but new developments (e.g., the Internet)
>may make it more difficult for them to maintain control.
It is certainly true that the Internet opens up important possibilities
for us, but I feel we shouldn't overstate its significance.
Unfortunately, I see only scant evidence that there is a vast body of
opinion just wating to burst forth once freed from the shackles of
liberal media control. Most people are so brain-numbed by decades of
liberal propaganda that they are content to use the 'net for purposes
which liberals can either condone or control.
On PC: One of the key distinquishing features of PC is its
manipulation, redefinition, and thereby control, of the English
language. The classic demonstration of this (which pre-dates PC itself)
is the expurgation of the neutral word 'racialism' (which simply means
one who takes cognicence of racial/cultural differences and recognizes
their significance) and its merger with 'racism' which by definition
includes an element of racial supremacy and hatred. Furthermore,
'racism' has been modified (although this has not yet seeped into the
dictionaries) by adding the clause that racist must have the social
means to enforce his racism. This gets liberals out of the problem of
black racism - because (in the liberal worldview) a black who hates
white people doesn't have the power to enforce his prejudice, he isn't
a racist. Ditto sexism, heterosexism, Eurocentrism, etc.
In the UK, a recent spin-off to the race relations industry is the
'discovery' of the new disease of 'Islamophobia', which can be extended
to virtually anyone who even mildly objects to this country being
turned into a second Iran. (We'll leave aside the inconsistency of
liberals supporting some very illiberal Muslim views!) The symptoms of
Islamophobia are fairly predictable, right down to the catch-all:
"people who fail to see Islamophobia as a problem." One has to admire
the nerve of this! It hardly needs pointing out that it is a circular
argument.
Note also the clever use of the word 'phobia'. A 'phobia' is, by
definition, an *irrational* fear. If I am arachnophobic, my fear is not
only unjustified but actually slightly comic. Likewise with homophobia,
Islamophobia, etc. It also naturally follows that it is I, as the
phobic, who has the problem, and that I can be *cured* of it - perhaps
by extensive and compulsary exposure to that which I most fear.
>2. The denial of the principle of authority, together with the need to
>centralize all significant political decisions in a small elite. The
>first principle implies the second; if the political order denies
>authority to all members of society then decisions have to be made by
>men who are not really subject to that order although they may claim to
>speak for whatever lies at its basis -- by a priestly caste of judges
>who claim to speak for the Constitution, for example.
If we start using words like 'authority' coupled with the implication
that liberals have usurped it, we have to ask from whence that
authority derives. And this leads us into a much broader debate.
However, counter revolutionaries would presumably agree that the
concepts of 'good' and 'bad' from which social authority stems are
absolutes and not subject to the relativism which is another key
characteristic of liberalism. This would apply whether or not, as
individuals, we recognize that moral authority is ultimately divine in
origin. Once, however, we reject the divine and assume that it is up to
men to define the rules, the inevitable question 'which group of men?'
rises to the fore. The two great atheistical systems - Communism and
liberalism - have both concentrated social authority in the hands of
small elites 'who know best'. Communists claimed to do so in the name
of the people: some of them may even have believed it. I do not think
that liberalism makes the same claim!
indeed, 'the people' are regarded as pretty scary by liberals, who
after all don't get out much. The 'majority' - white, heterosexual,
middle class, racist, sexist - is something liberals treat with deep
suspicion; particularly when those poor innocent minorities need
sheltering.
>3. The claim to free people to pursue what they want, when most of
>their deeper wants have to do with the nature of the social world they
>live in, and liberalism takes decisions regarding that issue out of the
>their hands almost completely. For example: has it made people happy
>to be able to define and express their sexuality as they choose when
>contemporary liberalism has made changes in social customs and
>attitudes inevitable that make it far more difficult to choose marriage
>and family with any assurance that the parties will be able to rely on
>each other?
One of the best criticisms of liberalism, taking it at its own
materialistic level, is that it simply doesn't deliver the goods. Is
our society any happier now it's more liberal? Certainly liberals don't
think so! Nowhere is this truer than in sexual relations. Liberals
claim that sexual unhappiness stems from 'Victorian' repression. So how
do they explain the widespread sexual misery in a society which for
decades has been awash with liberal 'anything goes' views on sex?
>4. Multiculturalism -- every culture is to be equally honored by
>equal deprivation of the authority intrinsic to its existence, and
>therefore by equal destruction. Liberalism is thus the common enemy of
>all peoples, and so (since humanity is composed of peoples) of humanity
>itself.
Agreed. The other facet is liberal egalitarianism - the logic which
states that because men are equal, therefore they have to be the same.
(And which also argues that the validity of their moral worldwiew must
be equal)
>5. The emphasis on tolerance and reason, together with bigoted and
>ignorant moralism. Contemporary liberalism has a large and vigorous
>vocabulary of fear, contempt and hatred, including (oddly enough) words
>like "hatred."
One of the many criticisms, and by no means the least, is that liberals
are downright rude. If I burst into someone's house and subject him to
an endless diatribe on my views, this would rightly be considered a
discourteous act. Yet this is in effect what liberalism does all the
time. The conventional liberal defence of the gratuitous offensiveness
of modern 'art' is that 'some people deserve to be shocked.' What
affrontery! If I attach electrodes to Jim's testicles, he will be
shocked. Similarly, if I go around exposing myself to young girls, they
will be shocked (OK, they might just laugh - bear with me). Although
the severity of the offence may differ, in both cases I would rightly
be regarded as a criminal. But the liberal santimoniously turns his
offence into a virtue.
>6. The emphasis on modern natural science, together with the
>subordination of science to ideology when it is a question of human
>differences or social functioning.
The latter (ie the subordination of science to ideology) is surely the
more important element of the two. Science does have this annoying
habit of throwing up inconvenient facts - for example on IQ and race -
which liberals don't like.
Beyond finding fault with liberalism itself, opponents should draw
attention to good things that can grow back only if liberal ideology
weakens -- faith, family, community, what have you. To do so they will
have to rehabilitate what liberals dismiss as "nostalgia."
Stuart A. Notholt
Essex
From: stuart.n2@ukonline.co.uk
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/stuart.n2/nbhome.html
--
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 Sun Jun 29 18:14:47 EDT 1997
Article: 10002 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 29 Jun 1997 18:04:27 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 52
Message-ID: <5p6m5b$3oq@panix.com>
References: <5or9gj$hnn@panix.com> <5p6lh9$2iq@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
stuart.n2@ukonline.co.uk (Stuart) writes:
> It is certainly true that the Internet opens up important
> possibilities for us, but I feel we shouldn't overstate its
> significance. Unfortunately, I see only scant evidence that there is
> a vast body of opinion just wating to burst forth once freed from the
> shackles of liberal media control. Most people are so brain-numbed by
> decades of liberal propaganda that they are content to use the 'net
> for purposes which liberals can either condone or control.
It does give people much easier access to materials contrary to the
established order. So if someone thinks there's something odd about
the official line on say ethnicity he can easily look further. If
there are questions he wants to raise he can raise them. He can see
other people questioning things one doesn't question. That sort of
change has to have a cumulative effect even if it doesn't much affect
most people immediately.
It's hard to know just what the ultimate effects will be. Maybe it
will promote increased local social incoherence and international
homogeneity, which will strengthen the NWO. My hobby-horse is that
we're headed toward a sort of nonterritorial neotribalism, and the
Internet would fit into that sort of thing easily enough.
> Furthermore, 'racism' has been modified (although this has not yet
> seeped into the dictionaries) by adding the clause that racist must
> have the social means to enforce his racism.
It's all so artificial. I suppose that's the point of PC -- it's a way
of speaking that is designed and has to be consciously maintained and
policed.
> The two great atheistical systems - Communism and liberalism - have
> both concentrated social authority in the hands of small elites 'who
> know best'. Communists claimed to do so in the name of the people:
> some of them may even have believed it. I do not think that
> liberalism makes the same claim!
Liberals simply refuse to recognize the necessary elitism of their
outlook. They can't deal with it.
> The 'majority' - white, heterosexual, middle class, racist, sexist
> - is something liberals treat with deep suspicion; particularly
> when those poor innocent minorities need sheltering.
Where's the problem? All you need do is eliminate them as a majority
through immigration and various subsidies to those who declare
themselves members of minorities.
--
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 Thu Jun 26 09:23:18 1997
Subject: Inclusive language
To: x
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 09:23:18 -0400 (EDT)
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Length: 1261
Status: RO
What would life be without a bee in one's bonnet? So here's one of
mine:
> If you know a prisoner who would like to receive FC, send his/her
> details
Don't use "inclusive" language! "His" and similar words have been used
for hundreds of years in an inclusive sense with no misunderstandings.
The campaign against that inclusive sense (using "his" for "his or
her") is based solely on an understanding of the history of the
relation between the sexes as one of male oppression of women.
To give in to that campaign is to buy into that understanding and more
generally to the understanding of sex and gender as somehow external to
the human person. The latter of course is what gives rise to the
liberal view of "homophobia" as pure bigotry.
During the fascist period in Italy it was bad form to use "lei" instead
of "voi" as the polite second person pronoun because "lei" is basically
a feminine pronoun. The effect of substituting "voi" was to give a
fascist salute. That may have been a good thing, from FC's point of
view at least, but why should FC be giving feminist salutes?
--
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 Jun 28 18:59:18 1997
Subject: Re: The Last Ditch
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 1997 18:59:18 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.2.32.19970627193809.006c7d60@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Jun 27, 97 07:38:09 pm
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> FYI, here is the manifesto of a journal called The Last Ditch, whose
> web site I just found tonight. Looks interesting.
They used to run little ads in _Chronicles_. I subscribed for a little
while -- you can or could get a 3 months subscription. It's
well-written and intelligent. I just stopped subscribing as part of a
general cut-back.
> "First: we might as well forget about fomenting a cultural and
> intellectual revolution in our time. It's too late. Our adversaries
> are completing their revolution; we are out of time. But whatever
> happens to American civilization in the near term, people will go on
> inhabiting this land for centuries, even millennia. We must -- in
> Orwell's words -- "extend the area of sanity little by little," from
> individual to individual, in hopes of reaching out to that posterity.
> Those "post-Americans" -- perhaps living under a regime weaker than
> ours -- might derive a timely warning from our legacy, assuming it
> survives the memory hole of our regime. In any event, leaving such a
> legacy is an act of loyalty to the human future."
It's odd that this outlook seems to be less common than it was 50 - 60
years ago. I'm thinking not only of Orwell but of say Simone Weil and
"modernists" like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. I seem to recall Pound
predicting somewhere that literature would disappear by the 1990s.
--
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 Sun Jun 29 08:47:56 1997
Subject: Re: Comments
To: schmoore@shentel.net (Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 08:47:56 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <01BC83DC.3061F0A0@ns01a13.shentel.net> from "Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore" at Jun 28, 97 03:58:40 pm
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Good morning, Andy --
>TO ME IT DOES SEEM THAT PURE REASON DEMONSTRATES THE CONCEPT OF 'FREE
>WILL,' AS USUALLY EMPLOYED, IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE, MAKES NO SENSE.
We experience our wills as free, though. Why go with concepts over
experience? It can be a form of insanity to do so.
Part of the difficulty of "free will" is that there seems to be no space
for it to operate. The past is wholly fixed, and the future doesn't
exist, which leaves only the present instant, which doesn't seem big
enough for us to do anything.
Still, that line of thought can be extended. The past no more exists
than the future, one might say, so all existence must be confined to a
vanishingly brief and continually disappearing present instant. How
then, one might ask, can anything at all exist? Consider subjective
experience -- it seems that one could not have a literally instantaneous
feeling, but to avoid being merely instantaneous a feeling must at all
times include states of affairs which at those times do not exist
because they are past. So in order to exist a feeling must consist
almost entirely of things that do not exist (i.e., at each instant it
consists mostly of what it has been at other instants).
So I agree that lots of things are hard to understand. The question of
course is what to do about it.
>DO TELL ME WHETHER YOU WISH TO BE SENT THE LATER PIECES
Yes, do.
>I STILL HAVE THE POLICY OF CHOOSING, WHEN THERE IS A COMPREHENSIBLE
>ANSWER VERSUS AN INCOMPREHENSIBLE ONE, OF CHOOSING TO GO WITH WHAT
>MAKES SENSE, RATHER THAN WITH THE MIRACLE/MYSTERY/MAGICAL ANSWER.
But if the world has incomprehensible features then in order to deal
with it as it is you have to accept incomprehensible features.
The alternative is to reject the world, that is to consider it all
illusion. That would I suppose be an answer that avoids swallowing
things that seem impossible. Occam says not to multiply entities
without necessity. Does "necessity" define itself? One might say
"recognize no necessities whatever, because then you'll be freed from
the illusions of existence." Some have actually said that, and devoted
their lives to the extinction of desire.
If that seems too austere we might compromise. Since we aren't Indian
sages living in the forest and we like our comforts we might accept only
those parts of the world that seem practically necessary to achieving
our material ends. If doing so means we're stuck with some
incomprehensible stuff like the Big Bang and quantum indeterminacy, not
to mention Time and Space and the existence of something rather than
nothing, well that's better than doing without consumer electronics and
modern medicine. But maybe accepting incomprehensible stuff like free
will that isn't necessary for modern technology and economic life goes
too far, or so we might tell ourselves.
Is that kind of compromise intellectually defensible? Is there a golden
mean between the Hindu view that the world is illusion and the Christian
view that the world as we experience it, material objects, subjective
experience, genuine good and evil and all, is real and must be taken
seriously in its entirety? For my own part, I don't see one, and the
Hindu view seems hard to live by.
>I CANNOT SEE HOW THIS ELITE SMALL GROUP IS IMPLIED IN ANYTHING I SAID.
>I WOULD SAY THAT THE 'DEVISING' SHOULD BE A PROCESS WHICH EMPLOYS AS
>MUCH OF THE WEALTH AND RICHNESS OF OUR HUMANITY AS POSSIBLE, WHICH
>INCLUDES AWARENESS. IT INCLUDES SOME 'MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS' PROCESSES,
>AND SOME LEGISLATIVE PROCESSES (THE SMALL GROUPS), AS WELL. IT
>INCLUDES OUR LOGIC, AND OUR PLUGGING INTO THE REALMS OF MYSTERY AND
>MYSTICISM, AND OUR EMOTIONAL LIVES AS WELL, AS WELL AS OUR SENSE OF
>BEAUTY, AND PERHAPS MUCH ELSE THAT DOES NOT COME TO MY MIND AT THE
>MOMENT.
Discovering morality could include those things as well.
The problem as I see it is with an understanding that views morality as
devised rather than discovered, especially one that rejects the reality
of free will.
"Devised" means that a moral rule is necessarily at least in part the
product of the mere will of some decisionmaker. All the exploring this
and drawing on the richness of that aren't enough to get to the bottom
line. Otherwise the rule would be discovered rather than devised. So
an essential part of morality if morality is devised turns out to be
obedience to the will of the decisionmaker.
In order for blaming to serve the function suggested in your book it is
necessary for those blamed to believe they had real freedom to do
otherwise than they did. The senselessness of their belief in free will
must therefore be kept a secret.
It seems to follow from the foregoing that a devised morality based on
a viewpoint rejecting free will is necessarily a matter of some people
giving orders to other people and obfuscating the situation. (If that
way of putting the objection is insufficiently provoking, be sure to
let me know!)
>I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING IF THIS CONVERSATION GOES TO INTERESTING
>PLACES FROM HERE.
I find it interesting, as I find all our discussions, even though it may
not seem so to you.
--
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 Jun 28 19:18:19 1997
Subject: Re: Great page!
To: z
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 1997 19:18:19 -0400 (EDT)
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> Feminism is like a perpetual motion machine, the laws of reality will
> cause it to fail no matter what you do to try to make it work.
> Society requires certain things to able to maintain itself. Civilized
> behavior is learned at home, and in my opinion requires a mother
> present to teach it. As mothers leave their kids in pursuit of career
> and power, civilized behavior disappears from that next generation
> and the one thing that makes feminism even a consideration goes with
> it. When life is easy and civilized, women can walk freer and live
> freer. When civilization crumbles women fall into the category of
> chattel and slaves. That is where we are heading today in my opinion.
I agree on the whole. Feminism is part of a complex of things making
the world more stupid and brutal, and stupidity and brutality aren't
good for women. Not that good for anyone else either, but somehow
women and children seem most exposed.
> Keep up the good work! I am glad to see the Internet is finally a
> place where this subject can honestly be discussed. Hopefully it will
> be more so in the future.
It's really shocking how little discussion there is of what seem like
obvious points. Millions and millions of educated people and
university professors and scholars and huge expenditures of time and
money and the result is mindlessness.
--
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 Sun Jun 29 18:13:59 1997
Subject: Re: Great page!
To: z
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 18:13:59 -0400 (EDT)
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> What do you suppose will do the trick here?
I don't know. Maybe it's more the one-horse shay than the emperor's
new clothes. There's a whole system of concepts and attitudes that
supports feminism. There's the ideology of liberty and equality, the
notions of inclusiveness and tolerance, which mean that human
differences can't be recognized as significant, the reconstruction of
history as the history of oppression and the fight against it, the
attack on the very idea of human nature, the nonstop propaganda on all
these things. If you argue against any of them even a little you
probably think the Holocaust was a good idea since it's all
discrimination and oppression, or so the idea seems to be.
--
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 Sun Jun 29 20:18:33 1997
Subject: Re: Socialism, social order, etc:
To: y
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 20:18:33 -0400 (EDT)
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Hello!
> Man and the advent of man, which got an enormous albiet erroneous
> boost from Darwinianism, seeks to perfect man as he "evolves".
I wonder whether this tendency is now outmoded, since the postmodern
tendency is I think to take not man as the standard of man but
everyvbody and everything as the standard of him, her, it, or hirself.
"Perfect man" suggests a single human ideal deviation from which means
inferiority, contrary to tolerance and inclusivity. Maybe that means
we now have pantheism or Buddhism or something rather than the
deification of man.
> an anthropocentric religion that does not deny God, but uses generic
> religious and moral principles to build the City of Man (a la St.
> Augustine).
I suppose another way to make my point is that man has been abolished.
The word "man" suggests an intolerably oppressive essentialism.
Progress has therefore taken us beyond the City of Man.
> However, the standard is set nonetheless by enlightened thought an
> the principles that underlie freemasonry. IT IS the religion, and
> the organizing principle.
But man cannot exist without God, enlightened thought without a
traditional and religious setting, or perhaps freemasonry without the
Church. So the triumph of liberalism has meant its disappearance with
the disappearance of any possible concept of human nature or
enlightenment. It follows that freemasons are fuddy-duddies dealing
with a situation that no longer exists.
> Christ has gone to numerous Saints since the 1200's to tell them of
> the need to warn monarchs to remain faithful to Him (even up to the
> last century), and persist in the faith.
Assuming that's right the point remains that even if monarchs are
faithless and you get a government for example like the one we now have
in America Christianity still recognizes it as a government we are
obligated to obey except on specific points. The encyclicals you
appended confirm that view by denying the right of revolution.
--
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 Sun Nov 10 14:02:40 1996
Subject: Re: Carrying on in Politcal Theory
To: a
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 14:02:40 -0500 (EST)
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> Living in a complex, interconnected modern world, there has to be a
> bit of give and take between us global residents which may involve
> negotiating out who gets to use what and when.
What is the basis of the negotiation though in the absence of a prior
assignment of property rights? People usually negotiate based on what
they already have and so are able to offer the other party. Other
possibilities are threats of force or other extralegal pressure
(boycotts or whatever). Moral suasion is also a possibility that
sometimes works. None of that seems to be what you have in mind,
though. So is what we're really talking about administration by the
government rather than negotiation of any kind?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From jk Wed Nov 20 20:55:56 1996
Subject: Re: "Reason in the Balance"
To: b
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 20:55:56 -0500 (EST)
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> >> I didn't find a response to my question ("If, tommorrow, all
> >> biologists were to disavow evolution, what difference would it
> >> make in our society?")
> Do you have an answer for the question?
If that happened I suppose it would result from rejection of the view
that the world is best understood mechanistically. Rejection of *that*
view would I think be enormously important. For example it would
undermine the view of value as something purely subjective and
therefore relative to individual feelings, and also radically transform
the understanding of politics, which now depends on notions of social
policy, economic and bureaucratic rationality, etc.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Wed Jan 8 07:05:42 1997
Subject: the first things flap
To: c
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 07:05:42 -0500 (EST)
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> Even St. Thomas would argue, a regime that although perpetuated an
> evil but one not intrinisic to that regime, was none the less a
> legitmate form of government that which christian subjects owed their
> just obedience to.
I think part of the difficulty is that the regime has repeatedly said
authoritatively, through the Supreme Court, that abortion rights *are*
intrinsic to it. The written Constitution doesn't say anything about
them but evidently it goes without saying they are part of our
fundamental law. That's so simply from consideration of the
fundamental moral commitments of the regime, not from any specific
support for abortion rights in social consensus or tradition which
doesn't exist. So either the Supreme Court, our governing class and
all respectable institutions are simply wrong about the legal status of
abortion and (given further developments regarding euthenasia) getting
more wrong all the time, or our regime is intrinsically evil. The same
problem would not exist in a country where the legalization of abortion
is a legislative matter.
It does not of course follow from a judgement that a regime that has
protection of abortion rights as part of its essence is evil that every
regime that denies abortion rights is legitimate.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm.
From jk Thu Jan 9 03:46:17 1997
Subject: Re: public schools and crime
To: d
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 03:46:17 -0500 (EST)
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> Contemporary political scientists could offer a welter of
> explanations for this drift toward consolidation, most of which are
> plausible. I personally am rather sympathetic to John Adam's notion
> that elites are pretty much an inevitability and the most we can hope
> for is a relatively benign elite that, for purely selfish reasons,
> will be motivated to rule with a spirit of impartiality.
Still, consolidation hasn't been the universal rule throughout history.
There has often been a tendency for the center to lose power at the
expense of local or regional authorities. There must be scholars who
have dealt with that sort of thing comparatively, but I don't know who
they are.
> Furthermore, I don't necessarily think that federative principles and
> universalism are mutually contradictory. Federalism -- true
> federalism, that is -- would have a tendency to force consensus.
It's a balance of forces. I'm not sure why federalism would force
consensus. Maybe *successful* federalism would because among people
who are all part of an overall political structure that is successful
sympathy and exchange of ideas may lead to a tendency to agree on
things. On the other hand, federalism suggests that there are
differences that have an institutional way to express themselves and
that may lead to further differences. We had something like true
federalism during the period ending 1861 but it didn't force consensus.
> I'm convinced that a polity based on federative principles, flawed as
> it is, simply is the only solution that offers any prospect of
> success.
My inclination as I think I've said is to believe that what we'll end
up with is a communally-based society rather than one based on
geographical federalism. Physical propinquity is simply less important
as a principle of association than it once was so something else will
be found. In the former kind of society it is unfortunately far more
difficult than in the latter to make the overall government responsible
to anyone but itself.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm.
From jk Tue Jan 14 13:45:23 1997
Subject: Re: WHY AND HOW AMERICA MUST COLLAPSE
To: d
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 13:45:23 -0500 (EST)
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There's always some form of established religion, now as at other
times. "Man posits values, each for himself" is a statement of
transcendent faith like any other. We're constantly being drilled in
the catechism whether we like it or not.
Mixing liberty and order is an art that can't be carried on
dogmatically as the Supreme Court etc. would like. Therefore tradition
is necessary -- that's the way arts develop and are refined. Since
tradition is particular and local, federalism of some sort is needed as
well.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego!
From jk Tue Jan 14 18:20:38 1997
Subject: Re: Resource lists
To: d
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 18:20:38 -0500 (EST)
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> Precisely. It's the "constant interference" that bothers me.
Something basically self-operating is needed. Possibly basic human
forms of association keep reasserting themselves. Big corporations
will get regulated too extensively and lose their efficiency and esprit
de corps. There was an article in the _New York Times_ yesterday about
how effective the 1991 civil rights legislation has been in encouraging
litigation by groups of employees -- a great triumph from the
standpoint of the writer. No doubt that will encourage the trend.
Also, an overly formal and rationalized not to mention multicultural
social organization means less social cohesion. Eventually people
can't rely on each other enough for large organizations to function at
all. The result perhaps would be radical familism, as in Italy or
China, or sectarian communalism as in the Middle East. Each family or
community takes responsibility for setting its members up in business.
In those places commercial societies with irresponsible rulers existed
for a long time, and those are the forms social life has taken.
> > What have you read by Molnar that you like?
>
> _Counterrevolution_. Having acquired Methodism fairly early in my
> life, I found his views on the legacy of Protestantism, especially
> mainline Protestantism, very revealing.
I have found most of his books interesting. One oddity is his
nothing-can-be-done attitude. How unAmerican. I say it's odd because
in person he tends to be quite contentious.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego!
From jk Wed Jan 15 22:28:32 1997
Subject: Re: Resource lists
To: d
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 22:28:32 -0500 (EST)
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> Francis Fukayama, the "neo-Hegelian neo-conservative, explores this
> theme in great depth in his most recent book, _Trust_, which I
> heartily recommend. In fact, it probably should be included
> somewhere in the a.r.c resources list. If you're interested, I'll
> send you a short synopsis of the book.
I haven't read the book but looked through his previous one. My own
view is that "the end of history" really means the end of the overall
cohesiveness of the social world, so the overall line of development
called "history" won't be there any more. Trust will be found only
within inward-turning groups. It's a situation that has existed before
-- Ibn Khaldun describes the social and political dynamics. Personally
I find it depressing -- I like Europe better than the Middle East --
but you have to do the best you can under the circumstances.
I'm grateful to him actually for leading me to read Kojeve. An
enormously exciting writer even though I don't understand him.
> Several months ago, the _NYT_ ran an article on the "walled enclave"
> phenomenon sweeping the country.
As I understand it almost all new housing built in the Sunbelt is now
taking the form of special interest communities, with lots of
restrictive covenants, government by a board representing property
owners that provides a lot of things that used to be municipal
services, etc. The walled enclaves just take it one step farther.
Again, this is what cities in the traditional Middle East were like --
walled and gated quarters with very little connection with each other
or overall structure.
> In the height of integration twenty-five years ago, I remember my
> father predicting all of this grand social experimentation would
> prove futile in the long run because people will always find some way
> to get around them.
It's remarkable -- the leftwingers were right about what was going to
happen, the rightwingers about what the consequences would be.
Something for everyone, I suppose. My own view is that the civil
rights laws in the end are inconsistent with a tolerable society. They
are too much of a denial of particularism. Culture is concrete and has
to do with the specific way of life of historical communities. We
can't live without it, but it can't be rationalized without destroying
it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego!
From jk Sat Jan 18 11:27:29 1997
Subject: Re: Lukasc Book
To: d
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 11:27:29 -0500 (EST)
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> Lukasc argues that the two world wars, fought over nationalism, were the
> watershed events of the twentieth century and that Adolph Hitler, rather
> than Lenin or Mao, was the most radical revolutionary of the century.
Interesting. It does seem to me that Naziism has an extraordinarily
powerful logic to it, if you accept social relativism in ethics limited
only by universal recognition of extreme evils such as torture and
death. That's why liberals are obsessed by it and believe everone who
disagrees with them must be a Nazi. It's what their own fundamental
beliefs lead to if ethical altruism is denied, and it's hard to justify
the latter from the standpoint of scientific materialism and hedonistic
individualism to which in general they are committed. Sade is
interesting on he point.
I'll add the Fukuyama and the Lucasc.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego!
From jk Tue Jan 21 13:28:20 1997
Subject: Re: The Judiciary
To: e
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 13:28:20 -0500 (EST)
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Hello!
> What arrogance these people [the Supreme Court] have! Clearly, when
> they push God out of public life, they aspire to replace Him with
> themselves.
It's hard to know just what to make of it. It seems that in order to
have public life when consensus can not simply be assumed there has to
be someone who defines true doctrine and has the power to make the
definition good. You have to have a Pope, and if there is no God then
the Pope has to be God. I don't think what the Court does is personal
arrogance so much as a combination of the requirements of their
position and the antireligious outlook of our governing classes. Put
the two things together and it leads to autodeification.
> Somewhere I recall reading that Thomas Jefferson opposed the
> concept of judicial review, as it would give one branch of the central
> government the right to set the limits of the power of the central
> government itself.
The only formal way I can think of to limit the power of the central
government is to guarantee the right of secession.
> Another revealing behavior trait of the courts in recent years is
> their tendency to limit the topics on which the electorate is allowed
> to vote, as I think you've mentioned.
It's no surprise the specific issues in California and Colorado were
the ones they were. Multiculturalism means an end to popular rule,
because it refuses to recognize a people that can make decisions and
call officials to account. Instead we are to be governed by a
supposedly disinterested elite of arbitrators and therapists in the
persons of judges and bureaucrats.
> As Burnham might have said, we have here a clear indication of the
> divergence between the formal role of the judiciary (i.e.,
> disinterested umpires poring over a divine document), and its real
> role, which is to support and extend the power and control of our
> beloved liberal managerial elite.
It does seem rather clear. Hence the hysteria about extremism.
Keep warm!
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego!
From jk Fri Jan 24 09:24:53 1997
Subject: Re: Philosophy of Traditionalism
To: f
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 09:24:53 -0500 (EST)
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Lots of writers and lots of questions!
My own inclination is to think that man is naturally religious and
naturally traditionalist. The transcendent is not dispensible. So the
current attempt to construct everything rationally for the sake of
furthering whatever goals we happen to have will continue to fail and
eventually will disappear, if only because the social order required
for the project to be carried on will no longer exist. A great many
good things may be destroyed before that happens of course.
In the mean time what we should do is to understand the things that are
left out of current ways of thinking, to live by that understanding,
and make clear the relationship of that understanding to those ways of
thinking, so communication with people who are dissatisfied but
uncertain what should replace the currently dominant viewpoint becomes
possible. Truth is more important than power; the most important
realities are not socially constructed and can be approached only in
humility.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego!
From jk Fri Jan 24 17:31:04 1997
Subject: Re: Comments
To: g
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 17:31:04 -0500 (EST)
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Thanks for your comments, Joakim!
>I perceive a problem in seeing our time - the era of change - as
>especially decadent and destructive.
There are bad things at all times. That does not make it less important
to understand the specific evils of our own time.
One difficulty is saying where the changes are taking us. A point of
traditionalism is that any change for the better will have to preserve
what has already been achieved, which requires respect for the past as
such.
>And when I study history, I see a feature that is typical of mankind
>and which seems to be better overcome today than erarlier: that is
>cruelty, which has been common and even accepted im most societies.
We believe we are less cruel but it's hard to say whether we are right.
The Second World War was horrendously cruel. My own country was far
from the worst offender, but we openly waged war on innocent
noncombatants, blowing them to pieces or incinerating them with no
military goal other than making the Germans or Japanese feel their war
goals didn't justify such losses. More recently the Gulf War ended in
a horrible massacre of retreating Iraqi forces who posed no threat to
us. After frying 100,000 men alive our leaders lacked the stomach to
take Baghdad and get rid of Hussein; they took the matter seriously
enough to engage in butchery but not seriously enough to make decisions
that were politically difficult. And that was under George Bush, who I
think is a more decent man than most in public life.
It's true we're squeamish about suffering when it touches us -- recent
American military adventures have all depended on confidence that we
would sustain no serious casualties of our own, and modern men don't
like capital punishment because it's too much a part of the day-to-day
life that we imagine can be reliably controlled and ordered so that
middle-class ideals of comfort can become universal realities. As to
the realities of day-to-day life, in most of the West rates of violent
crime in 1997 are very high by the usual standards of recent centuries.
The violence is in the streets, and also at home -- disorderly sexual
life means high rates of domestic violence and child abuse, certainly in
America and I believe elsewhere as well. Our dream of control and
comfort is only a dream but we refuse to recognize it as such.
The biggest single problem specific to the present I think is that in
the absence of ingrained respect for what is established and habitual
limits on violence get lost. Hence the Nazi and Communist regimes, and
the nature of modern war. At present there are no such regimes or wars
but at a time in which old landmarks are losing their authority I see no
security for the future. So even if in general we are less cruel there
is nonetheless a specific problem relating to the weakening of tradition
that must be confronted.
>The 17th and 18th century which hunts involved absurd kinds of torture,
>like throwing the woman into the sea with a stone around her head, and
>if she sunk she was regarded as not guilty, but if she floated it was
>proved that she had a pact with the devil.
>
>The inquisition burned protestants, and if they publicly admitted that
>they were wrong they could be - no, not released - but killed in a less
>painful way.
Do check the facts here. Popular accounts of witch hunts and the
inquisition tend to reflect ancient propaganda. The Spanish Inquisition
for example might have killed 5000 people during its centuries of
existence. That's a lot of people absolutely but not comparatively.
>They may be governed by tradition, but they are nonetheless barbarious.
I should say that the point of tradition is not that it's infallible but
that it's a necessary part of the way we come to moral and political
knowledge and people today are far to ready to think they can dispense
with it.
>As far as I can see, a most important factor has been Christianity.
>When it was introduced several humane reforms were gradually enforced.
>Unfortunately Christianity was mixed and confused with Roman and
>Tutonic culture, and so it lost its sting. But when it reached the
>broader parts of society in the great awakenings of the 18th and 19th
>century, it was able to transform society in a far more profound way.
All that required tradition. It required the Christian tradition to
carry forward the Christian message in its fullness and develop its
concrete meaning, and it required the native traditions of Europe to
create societies with enough coherence to be capable of responding to a
transcendent principle while maintaining their continuity and ability to
function so that something durable could result. The point is not that
tradition is everything, only that it is utterly necessary.
>You write that if people generally strive to do good, tradition is
>useful, otherwise it is not better or worse than theory. This will
>provoke reactions from Christian readers, because the Bible teaches us
>that man is evil.
Otherwise neither helps us. The Christian view I suppose is that if our
efforts are guided by revelation and the Holy Spirit then through
experience -- and tradition is experience writ large -- we will come to
know more of God and his will for us and build a better way of life. So
I think Christianity also makes room for tradition and views it as
valuable to the extent it comes out of efforts to the good.
>If a divine providence leads the world, tradition can be expected to
>show something of His will, though it is not a revelation to be
>compared to the Bible.
In the FAQ I try to explain tradition in terms that are acceptable to
secular modern minds that are somewhat inclined to reject it. I
therefore present it as a kind of growth of social experience and try to
show why we must rely on it. Once one accepts it of course it appears
in a different light, as an authoritative vehicle of wisdom that
transcends our own and therefore a kind of revelation.
>I hope these comments are of some interest and value.
They were, and I thank you for them. I hope what I said has been
responsive.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: O, Geronimo -- no minor ego!
From jk Tue Apr 29 16:04:11 1997
Subject: Re: More comments
To: schmoore@shentel.net (Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore)
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 16:04:12 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <01BC5433.02362760@pm08a17.shentel.net> from "Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore" at Apr 29, 97 00:06:09 am
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> My question to you is: do you think that your observation about
> people's interest in, attention to, tendency to be affected by,
> ARGUMENT is something that was always true, or is it only recently
> become true?
>
> And if there has been a change, what is there to be said to interpret
> that change.
I think people are less moved by argument than in the past. Look at
Luther -- he started the Protestant Reformation by posting a challenge
to an academic debate about 95 propositions. For that matter, look at
the _Federalist Papers_ and the antifederalist writings. It's hard to
imagine politicians writing things like that today as a way of winning
over the voters even if they were smart enough.
Academic and high culture are connected to social life in general.
There seems to be a tendency in academic discussions to treat argument
as indistinguishable from rhetoric, just another way to dress up an
assertion of power to make it more effective. Then you have someone
like Samuel Beckett, who seemed to take the view that language isn't
really possible even though saying things is a process that somehow got
started and now might as well play out to the end.
Maybe people got tired of arguments. After the invention of the
printing press, and then cheap high-speed printing, and then radio and
TV there just got to be too many words to take any of them seriously.
Or maybe freedom of speech in a commercial society in which the
majority rules and orthodoxy is disestablished means that what will
pass and persuade rather than what is true becomes the purpose of
argument, and people stop taking arguments seriously.
In ancient China during the Warring States period something similar may
have happened. People began to wonder whether words meant anything.
The Mohists and Legalists solved the problem by having the ruler define
what meant what, the Confucianists by calling for a rectification of
names in accordance with traditional meanings, and the Taoists by
saying "yeah, it's true, words really *don't* mean anything."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Dog, as a devil deified, lived as a god.
From jk Thu May 8 06:42:28 1997
Subject: Re: Is Distributionism counter-revolutionary
To: g
Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 06:42:28 -0400 (EDT)
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> I am a libertarian, and generally non-counter-revolutionary. But I
> can have fun with counter-revolutionism, however dangerous it is in
> my opinion. But I question your inclusion of Distributionism and
> populism in the catagory of counter-revolution, right along with the
> notion of a community of individualists (that's my territory) and the
> Montgomery Constitution which was as much revolutionary as
> counter-revolutionary. These are generally pro-Enlightenment, or at
> least pro-modernist. If you are counter-revolutionists, are you
> certain of the direction the counter-revolution will take, or would
> the counter-revolution be ultimately as upsetting to the traditional
> order as the revolution was? please clear up any confusion.
The "revolution" I think consists in the establishment of a fully
rational social order that can be known to be such by inspection.
Distributivists believe in family and widely distributed property
ownership, both of which make full rationalization impossible. They
don't like the sovereignty of either the bureaucracy or the universal
market. They are therefore reactionary.
Populists like family, locality, and accustomed ways of doing things,
and don't like world markets, bureaucracies, or rule by experts and the
academically accredited. They're reactionary as well -- obstacles to
social rationalization.
The Montgomery Constitution as I understand it was intended to preserve
a decentralized agrarian social order marked by landed property that
supported some mixture of local social hierarchies and the independent
families and local communities the distributists like. It was
established in opposition to Northern industrialism and national
centralization, both of which were part of the process of
rationalizing the social order. It was therefore reactionary as well.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard.
From jk Thu May 8 18:03:47 1997
Subject: Re: Is Distributionism counter-revolutionary
To: g
Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 18:03:47 -0400 (EDT)
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> > Distributivists believe in family and widely distributed property
> > ownership, both of which make full rationalization impossible.
> > They don't like the sovereignty of either the bureaucracy or the
> > universal market. They are therefore reactionary.
>
> Are these not the goals of the Enlightenment social theorists, from
> Paine to Proudhon? The only way I can see these as reactionary is if
> there would be a revival of the patriarchical clan system, or a
> system in which property was no longer the issue in matters of
> political power.
An attempt to return to the political thought of 150-200+ years back
would I think plainly be reactionary. The aspirations of men like
Paine had further implications that became clearer in the subsequent
development of liberal and left-wing thought. The revolution
progresses, and to attempt a return would be to attack it in its
essence.
The earlier stages of liberalism/leftism were not stable the first time
around and they wouldn't be stable if the revolution were reversed and
they were recreated. For example, men need to feel they are at home in
the world, that they live in a world that somehow has an essential
connection to their well-being. That means that something like a
notion of providence must be part of the basis of any social order not
based on extended families, clans, tribes or the like. A fully secular
state that accepts any sort of individualism must therefore be a
welfare state. So in getting rid of the welfare state you will in the
end find that you get the rest of the program of the radical religious
right as well.
> I guess I won't argue there, except to wonder if "populism" is not a
> strangely egalitarian concept for traditional conservatism
Sure. A distinguishing feature of populism is that it doesn't really
work for anyone, not even itself. That's why I treat it as related to
but not part of traditionalist conservatism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard.
From jk Sun May 18 03:55:38 1997
Subject: Re: Gays in the church
To: h
Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 03:55:38 -0400 (EDT)
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> Gardeners know that a rosebush will thrive best only after it is
> properly pruned. So too, will the church.
A good point, no doubt, but it does seem to underline the oddity of
"inclusiveness" as a goal. What inclusiveness has to mean is that you
intend to change the fundamental principle of unity, so the former
reasons for excluding people no longer apply but there are of course
new ones.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard.
From jk Fri Jun 13 07:57:40 1997
Subject: Re: Email received from PBS website)
To: i
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 07:57:40 -0400 (EDT)
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> Of course you are right in what you say but the questions to ask in
> terms of a public liturgy are: what was intended by the commission
> whichproduced the text in the 1970s? What primary use has the text
> been put to by the hierarchy of the ECUSA? Did Bap[tismal services
> before the 1970s in the historic Churches ever use such language? Is
> the language of peace and justice a slogan language of the 60s and
> 70s?
And you are right as well.
I suppose the reason for my comment is that at least in respectable
mainstream religious circles silence seems to concede the point that
the sloganeering meaning of "peace and justice" is appropriate. Since
those are good and necessary words that refer to things that Christians
ought to work for it seems to me ownership of the words by revisionists
ought to be disputed.
My own view is that if you hold anything like the usual left/liberal
views on social justice you'll have a hard time remaining a
traditionalist in religion. The view of social justice common today is
based I think on denying that there is a very large element of the
given and uncontrollable in human affairs. Such a denial makes it
unnecessary as a practical matter to recognize one's dependence on God
or on tradition of any kind. The eventual consequence is that "God"
becomes a way of talking about the thing that is ultimately decisive
and upon which one ultimately relies, collective human will and
technological skill.
Maybe the issue I'm raising is whether once the politically dominant
forces have announced that everything is political then _ipso facto_
everything really *is* political. Can a view that makes politics the
essence of religion be dealt with without adopting a particular theory
of political life so that politics can be shown to have only a limited
place among man's ultimate concerns? My inclination is to think that
it will be hard to maintain the understanding of God, man and the world
that makes one a traditionalist in religion without also becoming some
sort of traditionalist in politics. In a politicized age it may be
necessary to develop those connections and make them clear to oneself
and others in order to engage opponents and the undecided.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Egad, a base life defiles a bad age.
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
Back to my archive of posts.