Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Dec 9 06:35:48 EST 1994
Article: 3189 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: EUROPE V. UNITED STATES: Opposing Views of the Free Market
Date: 8 Dec 1994 07:57:13 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>What the free market does to the great majority of people when a) they
>don't directly own means of production adequate to support themselves
>and b) there are conditions of high unemployment is to force them to
>submit themselves to the arbitrary whims of another (the employer, not
>the consumer).
That would be true if (a) the high unemployment were mass longterm
unemployment with no cushions like unemployment benefits or other wage
earners in the household, (b) employers generally found workers equally
useable, and (c) arbitrary whims cost the employer nothing. I don't
think (a) has been true in any Western society recently, no one who has
had the experience of hiring people to do things thinks (b) is true, and
(c) is generally false because anything that makes it harder for an
employer to get the willing cooperation of his employees injures the
employer.
>The 'Libertarian' strategy is identical with the late-Communist
>strategy of (rather than shooting people like the Stalinists) depriving
>dissidents of their employment and then denouncing them for
>'parasitism'.
A decisive difference is that in the libertarian scheme there are a
great many potential employers in competition with each other. It's not
that easy to get and keep productive workers and keep them motivated.
To the extent one employer subjects his workers to arbitrary whims he is
handing his competitors an advantage in the competition. Certainly one
of the reasons private employment was illegal in Czechoslavakia was that
the competition would have made the task of social control much more
difficult.
To try to change the focus of the discussion: there are real problems
with markets that are worth discussing. One of them is their cultural
effect. It seems that the extreme productivity of the market economy
and the dominance of the mass media by advertisers tend to focus
attention on "consumer goods", understood as things that one can take or
leave at will, and therefore require no commitment, and that provide
gratifications that almost anyone can understand and experience
immediately. That seems like a bad thing. Any comments?
Also, I note that this thread is now restricted to a.r.c. I approve.
I'm much softer on libertarianism than most people in this newsgroup,
but it seems to me that floods of messages rehearsing arguments one can
follow in dozens of other newsgroups prevent this one from making the
special contribution it is capable of. So I urge everyone,
***DON'T CROSSPOST AND RESET FOLLOWUPS TO A.R.C. ONLY!!!***
Thanks.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Mad Zeus, no live devil, lived evil on Suez dam.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Dec 9 06:35:49 EST 1994
Article: 3201 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: the scope of government
Date: 8 Dec 1994 22:32:12 -0500
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In <608607924wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>I have seen
>Rothbard quoted as saying that he would shoot an infant if it strayed
>on his lawn and ignored or misunderstood his instructions to leave; and
>that he had the right to shoot it even without such an instruction.
Do you remember where? He can be a grouchy guy, but this is
extraordinary. (I assume you are referring to Murray Rothbard rather
than the villain in _Swan Lake_, who I believe has a different given
name.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Mad Zeus, no live devil, lived evil on Suez dam.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Dec 11 06:41:28 EST 1994
Article: 3215 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: a.r.c FAQ and resource lists
Date: 9 Dec 1994 20:37:34 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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vtnet@xs4all.nl (vtnet) writes:
>> e. Distributivism. Decentralize economically. Promote small
>> business. Build a nation of independent property owners.
>
>But what does this mean?
On the counterrevolutionary web page, listed in the FAQ, there's a short
essay by David Deane about distributivism. If you can't use the web
someone can send you a copy.
>As may be observed from history, wealth and its true source, power and
>knowledge, have a tendency to concentrate while populations expand.
Is that so? I would have thought wealth is more widely distributed in
Europe today than it was 300 years ago even though the population is
much larger. Maybe you're right about wealth if technology remains the
same; if nothing else changes more people means that each person is less
valuable economically. I don't think you are right about knowledge,
though. It seems to me that knowledge is more generally diffused in
more populous eras.
>So now that social structures are beginning to disintegrate, it may be
>expected that world production will decrease and power diffuse more
>than before while making the share of wealth in the West decline faster
>then in the rest of the world.
It does seem that under modern circumstances social chaos could lead to
catastrophes on a much vaster scale than in the past. People find such
possibilities unthinkable, but that doesn't mean they won't happen.
>a system that counters the tendency of societies to concentrate wealth
>in a degenerated oligarchy causing moral decline and making war and
>revolution eventuality necessary.
Is the problem we have today really the concentration of wealth? It
seems to me more the unification of society into a single
market/bureaucratic system rationally designed to satisfy people's
preferences to the maximum degree possible. In such a system individual
morality becomes irrelevant because it is the system that takes care of
everything and makes all the decisions that matter. From the standpoint
of the survival of the society it doesn't improve matters to make the
system egalitarian.
>Gerrit van 't Net -- vtnet@xs4all.nl
Does that mean "Gerrit of the Net"?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Mad Zeus, no live devil, lived evil on Suez dam.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Dec 11 08:26:45 EST 1994
Article: 3238 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: where have all the crs gone?
Date: 11 Dec 1994 08:26:28 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>I am beginning to conclude that the Libertarians are all rich men with
>private means, since they seem to have so much more time for
>newsreading and posting than anyone else.
They just have an unusually clear point of view that enables them to
formulate and state a short and snappy position on almost anything as
quickly as they can enter it at their terminals.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Mad Zeus, no live devil, lived evil on Suez dam.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Dec 11 08:56:01 EST 1994
Article: 3241 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: a.r.c FAQ and resource lists
Date: 11 Dec 1994 08:55:44 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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vtnet@xs4all.nl (vtnet) writes:
>I have read some work of Belloc on history in the past. I would,
>however, like to be informed of its practicality as a political theory.
So would I, actually. We've never had any actual distributivists
participate in the discussions here. That's unfortunate, because the
discussions of economics I've seen (not here, but in the world at large)
either:
1. Argue that you can't outwit or manipulate the market to any good
purpose, so _laissez faire_ is the way to go;
2. Propose ways of adjusting market outcomes through centralized
bureaucratic methods in the direction of equality; or
3. Outline schemes of neo-mercantilism.
The Distributivists wanted a legal regime that controlled the market in
a way that preserved and promoted institutions like personal integrity
and the family that are neither market nor bureaucratic in nature.
Obviously a crucial point for counterrevolutionaries.
There *must* be more on the issue than appears on our resource lists.
Any suggestions, anyone? Any volunteers to research the issue?
>(leisure classes who live of wealth they did not themselves accumulate
>I believe to be a pest in any social system.)
This need not be so. A leisure class with a great deal of self-respect
and some responsibility can be a source of cultivated and well-informed
men with independent minds. Even if only a small part of the class
turns out that way the social benefit might be enough to justify its
existence.
I should add that such a class may be unlikely to arise under modern
conditions because the unlimited and abstract nature of modern wealth
means that rich men who are inclined to be active can always devote
themselves to piling up more money, and because it is easier than in
the past for wealth to be anonymous and irresponsible.
>> It seems to me that knowledge is more generally diffused in more populous
>> eras.
>
>Fragmented knowledge yes. But knowledge of society -that is more complex than
>ever- no.
True enough. The vast majority may be like children in comparison with
the very few in a position to have an overall perspective. Actually, in
the United States I think we have gone beyond this, to a situation in
which no one has a good grasp of the overall situation and therefore
everyone is a child. The country's too big and should be split up or at
least radically decentralized.
>The paradoxical notion of the 'multicultural society' can only be
>attributed to an attempt of a secretive culture to unite lower cultures
>under its rule.
I would use the expression "self-seeking ruling class" rather than
"culture". The class is so secretive that it hides its nature even from
itself. Its attempt to raise itself to absolute and irresponsible power
will collapse, in part because of the chaos it induces among those it
rules and in part because it does not have the internal resources to
provide a complete culture for itself and so will be unable to maintain
its own coherence.
>It implies acting in the self-interest *rightly understood*. That is, in
>cooperation since man cannot live alone and in competition since that will
>make one's group stronger. *Within a society* the membership of all groups
>should be dependent on merit only since that furthers the cause of society and
>the culture on which it is based: Maybe education should be free, for example.
You seem to emphasize self-interest and merit as principles of social
organization. That seems too narrow to me. For example, family
relationships are important to social order, but family relationships
are based on neither self-interest nor merit.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Mad Zeus, no live devil, lived evil on Suez dam.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Dec 13 06:54:40 EST 1994
Article: 3242 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: IAQ #4 What motivates liberals to collaborate with reds?
Date: 11 Dec 1994 09:46:41 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Stuart writes:
>Apart from money, sexual favours or blackmail, what motivates the
>liberal to collaborate with Communists? Do they simply fail to draw a
>moral distinction between the Western values they despise and
>totalitarianism? And/or is it tied up with the deep neurosis we call
>the liberal guilt complex?
One reason is similarity of basic outlook. Both liberals and
Communists reject transcendental religious faith and loyalty to the
society into which they were born as fundamental principles of
obligation. Both view appeals to such things as either irrational
bigotry or a mask for more worldly and self-seeking motives. Both
believe the social order can be reconstructed through conscious
rational action to serve equally the real interests of all men, which
tend to be identified first and foremost with pleasure, power and
status, and material goods.
Another is the love of power and position that often motivates political
activity. One may become a leftist because by doing so he devalues
existing authority and associates himself with a group that claims to be
the bearer of rightful authority, true morality, etc. Breaking the law
is a way of making one's rejection of existing authority concrete and
real. The most extreme form of rejection of existing authority is of
course treason.
Another is the need for transcendence. People just don't feel that the
everyday embodies any self-sufficient good. The left rejects religious
transcendence, but the Divine Marquis and others have shown us how
limitless violence can serve as a substitute. Communism is a
combination of liberalism and limitless violence, and so has great
appeal to many natures.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Mad Zeus, no live devil, lived evil on Suez dam.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Dec 13 08:46:24 EST 1994
Article: 3269 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: IAQ #4 What motivates liberals to collaborate with reds?
Date: 13 Dec 1994 08:16:56 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> Apart from money, sexual favours or blackmail, what motivates the liberal
>> to collaborate with Communists?
>
>Gott, surely, is/was a socialist, or trotskyist, not a liberal, so the
>question does not apply to him.
Which raises a question: in ordinary American usage, "liberal" means
"on the left but in favor of legality". Stuart seemed to be using it
that way, which surprised me because I thought that in Europe the word
retained its old association with liberty and markets. Is the American
usage beginning to catch on?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Mad Zeus, no live devil, lived evil on Suez dam.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Dec 14 07:27:36 EST 1994
Article: 3272 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: IAQ #4 What motivates liberals to collaborate with reds?
Date: 13 Dec 1994 12:12:32 -0500
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cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>It is tolerable to be a communist academic here, whereas the idea of an
>academic openly espousing fascist views is unthinkable. Liberals I fear are
>not very tolerant.
I understand that in France people can hold a much wider range of views
and still be recognized members of the intellectual community. I seem
to recall, for example, that one of the members of the French Academy
was involved in right-wing terrorism relating to the Algerian situation
in the 50's and didn't get excommunicated formally or informally from
the republic of letters. I wonder why the difference?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Mad Zeus, no live devil, lived evil on Suez dam.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Dec 14 20:44:02 EST 1994
Article: 3284 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: a.r.c FAQ and resource lists
Date: 14 Dec 1994 10:13:51 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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vtnet@xs4all.nl (vtnet) writes:
>[ ... ] in pre-industrial nations where people breed irresponsibly so
>there is a constant shortage of consumer goods while the surplus from
>labour is very limited. Under such circumstances it is probably
>rational to breed a small body of superior men at the expense of the
>rest even if it produces a lot of 'slack' since the constant probing
>for talent among the deprived would awake hope that could easily result
>in civil strive. For 'wisdom' a considerable amount of study is
>required and one can either work or study but not both at once.
You seem to believe that wisdom and other excellent intellectual and
spiritual qualities are produced primarily by formal public
institutions that seek out talent and train it. It seems to me that
less formal sources--the ways of living, thinking and feeling a child
sees immediately around him and so participates in as he grows up--are
at least as important. Public institutions can't create those less
formal things and apportion them to the talented. They will exist if
at all principally in the family and immediate social environment in
which one happens to be born. It is therefore important to a society
to have at least some families and social circles in which the
qualities aimed at are realized to a pre-eminent degree and passed on
to those born into them. Conditions that make it more likely that some
such families and circles will exist (leisure and assured social
position for some part of the community) can therefore be beneficial to
society at large even though most of those who benefit from them do
nothing to justify their privileges.
>The basic necessities for sustenance and study can easily be made
>available to all since labour for its production requires only a tiny
>fraction of a population that does not (irresponsibly) expands;
Sure, but man does not live by bread alone. Among other things, man
wants a definite and respected social position. Until that is attained
no group of men will collectively turn to more disinterested pursuits.
So in a democratic society of equal and open opportunity the pursuit of
excellence for its own sake will remain the province of a few isolated
eccentrics.
>If the living conditions among man are fastly different, they start to
>look at each other as strangers and develop different (sub)cultures
>that inevitably start to prey on each other, especially since alien
>agents can and will exploit animosities.
All societies have had class distinctions, but not all have had
destructive class warfare. The former does not necessarily lead to the
latter.
>If sections of the population within a nation-state are excluded for no
>other reason then for their rank of birth, they will, as far as they
>are not tempted by revolution, have no other alternative but to seek
>pleasure since all other projects are bound to fail while TV makes the
>'good life' of the wealthy to visible for deluding them into a pious
>life in the hope of divine reward.
A society in which all goals are convertible into money is going to
have problems. Money is equally money, regardless of who possesses it,
and it carries with it no obligations. If social class and the good
life ARE money then the benefits of belonging to the upper classes will
be balanced by neither responsibilities nor by specific benefits of
belonging to other classes, and the connection between those benefits
and the persons who possess them will seem wholly arbitrary. Anything
but strict egalitarianism or some Rawlsian maximin scheme will seem
oppressive.
It's at least possible to conceive of a social scheme in which not
everything is convertible into money and the way of life of each class
realizes different values. To pick a clear though artificial example,
in Plato's _Republic_ a member of the guardian class would not want to
become a member of the populace. On the other hand, a member of the
populace, who gets (for example) to lead a normal family life, would
very likely not at bottom envy the guardians.
It's an interesting question whether under modern economic and
technological circumstances it would be possible to have a society in
which the convertibility of socially-recognized goals into money was
much less than it is among us now.
>>the United States [ ... ] 's too big and should be split up or at
>>least radically decentralized.
>
>I must disagree here to. Subcultures that are part of the same culture,
>should have a centralized body to represent their common interests such
>as the peaceful arbitration of internal conflicts and, if necessary,
>forceful assertion of interests abroad. Much can be learned here from
>the early organisation of the states of new England
Radically decentralized, then. It was local government that was most
important in the states of New England. Read Count de Tocqueville's
_Democracy in America_. Those states joined the Union under the 1787
Constitution, but the functions of the federal government were pretty
much limited to the ones you mention and were therefore *far* less than
they are today.
>Chaos at large is, for the reasons aforementioned, not entirely against
>the interests of the oligarchy. Rome lingered on for hundreds of years.
>More destructive is indeed the internal inconsistency that follows from
>the discrepancy between what is true and what must be said.
Chaos of course weakens an oligarchy's competitors. Nonetheless, modern
industrial society is far more interdependent than Roman society and the
modern centralized state far more pervasive. So I would expect chaos to
spread to the apparatus of state much more quickly now than then. Part
of the interdependence is the speed and facility of communication, which
makes it necessary for our current rulers to guard their tongues so
carefully.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Mad Zeus, no live devil, lived evil on Suez dam.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Dec 15 19:14:39 EST 1994
Article: 3297 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: a.r.c FAQ and resource lists
Date: 15 Dec 1994 07:13:12 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 40
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vtnet@xs4all.nl (vtnet) writes:
>The problem with advanced knowledge, not acquired through some kind of
>formal education, is that one is not introduced into the culture and
>nature in which it is discuses.
There are also problems when knowledge is overformalized. Those
involved tend to get overly concerned with issues of institutional
convenience and politics and their activities lose their connection to
the larger world. One advantage of a class over a bureaucratic
organization of society is that it makes knowledge less formal and more
connected with a concrete way of life that includes responsibilities to
the rest of society. One might contrast the understanding of politics
of someone who grows up in a family with a tradition of public service
with that of someone without such a background who takes courses in
political science.
>If one just acquires huge amounts of information by reading without
>being able to test arguments (except by thought-experiment), on is
>liable to introduce conceptual abberations into an early link of a
>chain of arguments that will only show much later when it has become
>very difficult to retrace it: the chain of arguments is, like a
>computer program, brittle; a mistake may or may not show, depending on
>the circumstances.
Knowledge has an important social component, so outsiders do have a
hard time of it. One answer is to concentrate on acquiring knowledge
that you can act on, so real-life experiment will reveal conceptual
aberrations. Another is to find some existing tendency of thought to
affiliate with, even if only by subscribing to magazines, so you can
see how lines of thought play out in discussion. A good way to
stress-test a line of thought is to think about how it could be stated
and defended in the language of its opponents. The internet ought to
offer an opportunity to develop almost any line of thought, but
unfortunately the "is/ought" gap is as real here as anywhere. At any
rate, posting on the internet is no worse than writing something in
one's private journal.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Stiff, O Dairyman, in a myriad of fits.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Dec 15 19:14:41 EST 1994
Article: 3298 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: a.r.c FAQ and resource lists
Date: 15 Dec 1994 07:15:14 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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vtnet@xs4all.nl (vtnet) writes:
>But the implication is that you now claim a large piece of cake not
>because of you are contributing to the welfare of the nation but simply
>because you think that you have the power to keep it or taking it away
>from others.
If people understand society simply as an arena for struggles for cake
then I agree that having an aristocracy isn't going to have any cultural
benefits.
>Your argument, in the words of De Tocqueville, that an "aristocracy is
>a firm and enlightened body that never dies", might not be accepted by
>the more enlightened members of the underclass. Or do you also want
>restrictions on the access to libraries and textbooks?
Why should enlightenment mean rejection of de Tocqueville's view by non-
aristocrats? I'm a non-aristocrat and I don't reject it. It's possible
that I'm not enlightened, but I do have access to libraries and
textbooks. Is it psychologically impossible to believe that privileges
one does not possess himself can be beneficial to society at large?
>Plato's republic resembled a communist state, especially with regard to
>education. Furthermore he proposed a kind of aristocracy, ruled by
>philosophers. There were no necessarily inherited posts.
I would describe his republic as a society ruled by something very like
a monastic order. He devotes his book to describing the internal
constitution of the order. Within it communism is the rule, but there
is no indication that he would have imposed similar austerities on the
populace.
>What is quickly developing now is an world plutocracy. And there is a
>lot to say for it: It will be rather stable
I have my doubts. A society is stable if it is difficult to take
position and power from those who hold them. A plutocracy is a society
in which position and power are the same as money. Money is equally
money, whoever holds it and however it is acquired. In a society in
which there is no other principle of authority, why should it show any
propensity to remain in the same hands? (Perhaps my point here is
related to points you make later in your post.)
>putting the blame with the victims by claiming that they all had a
>change in the free market. (even so this argument is increasingly
>undermined by modern insights in game-theory, most people are not
>impressed by mathematical models)
What insights?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Stiff, O Dairyman, in a myriad of fits.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Dec 18 09:36:52 EST 1994
Article: 3319 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: a.r.c FAQ and resource lists
Date: 17 Dec 1994 17:11:07 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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vtnet@xs4all.nl (vtnet) writes:
>Since most men strive to improve their own position and those of their
>families, there is a strong incentive to claim rationality and honesty
>while in fact playing on the sentiments of the others, thus being able
>to use them as instruments in one's own advancement.
This is precisely the argument for having an hereditary aristocracy--an
order of men with no need to strive to improve their positions--as an
element in the composition of society. I'm afraid we're not likely to
agree on the issue, though.
>to avoid people being constantly misled by others with lots of carrots,
>carrots should be distributed evenly throughout society.
If so, each carrot will count for very little and enterprising men
(demagogues) will acquire piles of them by promising benefits to the
contributor of each carrot. The contributors won't look very closely
into the demagogues' claims because they will have other things to do.
Each will view supporting the demagogue as equivalent to buying a
lottery ticket for a dollar--probably nothing will come of it, but
something might, and it's worth a dollar to be able to think that things
might suddenly become much better.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Stiff, O Dairyman, in a myriad of fits.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Dec 19 12:43:42 EST 1994
Article: 3320 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Kirk and the neos
Date: 18 Dec 1994 09:39:21 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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For those who follow such things, it's worth noting that in the current
(December) issue of _The New Criterion_ David Frum, Yale-educated
Canadian Jewish neocon Buchanan-basher, paleo-abuser, and quasi-
libertarian theoretician of government downsizing, has a pious article
about Russell Kirk ending thus:
Yet if Kirk's great work [_The Conservative Mind_] cannot be
counted as history, exactly, it ought to be esteemed as something
in some ways more important: a profound critique of contemporary
mass society, and a vivid and poetic image--not a program, an
image--of how that society might better itself. It is, in
important respects, the twentieth century's own version of the
_Reflections on the Revolution in France_. If Kirk was not a
historian, he was an artist, a visionary, almost a prophet. As
long as he lived, by word and example, he cautioned conservatives
against over-indulging their fascination with economics. He taught
that conservatism was above all a _moral_ cause: one devoted to
the preservation of the priceless heritage of Western civilization.
Laying it on a bit thicker than required by "de mortuis ...", I
thought. Is something going on or did Frum just write the article
because he loved Kirk alive and wanted to say nice things about him
dead?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Stiff, O Dairyman, in a myriad of fits.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Dec 19 12:43:45 EST 1994
Article: 3321 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: More on libs & CRs
Date: 18 Dec 1994 09:41:44 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 35
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References: <3d1hip$4tq@panix.com>
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A thought related to the recent transatlantic battles over
libertarianism.
Modern politics is based on a belief in social technology. The modern
belief in "social justice", for example, is the belief that every
unequal or uncomfortable state of affairs corresponds to a moral flaw
in the organization of society and therefore to a failure of
intelligent and active good will on the part of government. Such
beliefs make sense only if those in power can bring about anything they
choose; that is, if the government either possesses an adequate social
technology or would possess such a thing if it worked at it.
A basic feature of CR thought is the rejection of the notion of social
technology. CRs see social technology as theoretically incoherent,
practically impossible and morally inconsistent with the dignity of
man. For CRs the unity of society is moral rather than technical.
That fundamental position may have different consequences on different
sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, where government was traditionally
conceived as a constituent part of the moral and religious order, it
may be consistent with an active role for government in society. In
America, where government has always been seen as something established
by agreement for particular pre-existing purposes, the rejection of
social technology can not be separated from the rejection of big
government or therefore from something institutionally close to
libertarianism.
It seems clear that minimal government doesn't imply radical
individualism, hedonism, or the triumph of economics. In the Middle
Ages the role of the king was far more enforcing a stable system of
private rights held by individuals and autonomous institutions than
creating and implementing public policy. The issue for us today, it
seems, is what the system of private rights should be. Any comments?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Stiff, O Dairyman, in a myriad of fits.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Dec 19 12:43:47 EST 1994
Article: 3324 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 18 Dec 1994 19:45:11 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 40
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In <3d20ic$h9j@newstand.syr.edu> clstampe@rodan.syr.edu (Chris Stamper) writes:
>[D. Frum] did C-SPAN's booknotes segment and gave Chronicles
>about 10 menutes of battering
I gather he roundly abused the paleos, especially Tom Fleming, in
_Dead Right_ as well.
>and admitted to being an ex-Straussian
Interesting. I didn't know there were any ex-Straussians. I thought
it was always permanent.
>Kirkian
>conservatism is not ideology. Kirk tells you that over and over. Nor is
>it historiography. Kirk is doing a critical theory of the right.
>Someone still living with a more detailed version of a similar view is
>Roger Scruton. See his "The Meaning of Conservatism."
I find Scruton a much clearer and more vigorous thinker. Less piety
and more point. Also, he puts his thought into relation with other
current thought, which can be helpful.
>> He taught that conservatism was above all a _moral_ cause: one devoted to
>> the preservation of the priceless heritage of Western civilization.
>Note Frum's sentence. How one defines the "the priceless heritage" is a
>big dividing point between neos and paleos.
Just so. Frum's stated point was that Kirk said nothing that can be
taken literally. Perhaps his unstated purpose, implicit in the praise,
was to appropriate for his own ends the great man's resounding but
misty utterances. It's interesting, though, that he makes much of
Kirk's hierarchical and antidemocratic streak. Frum may hate paleos,
but he's not an adherent of the big government/global democracy school
of neo thought.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Stiff, O Dairyman, in a myriad of fits.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Dec 19 12:43:49 EST 1994
Article: 3326 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 18 Dec 1994 21:23:54 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <3d2qrq$90t@panix.com>
References: <3d1hip$4tq@panix.com> <3d20ic$h9j@newstand.syr.edu> <3d2l2n$ns2@panix.com> <3d2o9k$6qa@newstand.syr.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3d2o9k$6qa@newstand.syr.edu> clstampe@rodan.syr.edu (Chris Stamper) writes:
>What do you think of old Leo?
I like him very much, but North American yuppies shouldn't try to
imitate Middle-European Jews with a taste for the classics. They're
not going to get it right.
>Remember, Hilaire Belloc makes an
>appearance in the Book of Virtues.
Really? I hadn't looked at it. Walt Disney can take anything and turn
it into a mass-market theme park for the whole family, and no doubt
Bill Bennett can too.
>Yeah, but what hieararchy does Frum want?
I dunno. Neocon meritocrats?
>> Frum may hate paleos, but he's not an adherent of the big
>> government/global democracy school of neo thought.
>I dunno. Frum seems more like an angry quasi-libertarian version of the
>neo mold.
Who knows? The neos aren't monolithic. Things are unsettled now, the
political ground is shifting, and people will go their own way. If
Frum's annoyed with everyone in sight, and is obsessing about Tom
Fleming, and gets criticized by Bill Rusher and other National Review
types for not realizing that "big government is here to stay", there's
no telling where he'll end up.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Stiff, O Dairyman, in a myriad of fits.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Dec 20 18:49:21 EST 1994
Article: 3338 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 20 Dec 1994 09:57:59 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 12
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References: <3d20ic$h9j@newstand.syr.edu> <3d2l2n$ns2@panix.com> <3d2o9k$6qa@newstand.syr.edu>
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clstampe@rodan.syr.edu (Chris Stamper) writes:
>[Frum] argues that the Chronicles crowd is the multiculturalism of the
>right.
Perfectly accurate. On the other hand, the alternative to some sort of
multiculturalism seems to be universal monoculturalism blending into
technocratic tyranny, which by the way seems to be the unstated and
perhaps unconscious goal of the multiculturalism of the left.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Stiff, O Dairyman, in a myriad of fits.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Dec 20 18:49:23 EST 1994
Article: 3339 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 20 Dec 1994 09:59:46 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <3d2o9k$6qa@newstand.syr.edu> <3d2qrq$90t@panix.com> <3d44tg$1c8@meaddata.casenet.meaddata.com>
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upardjc@dsdprod.meaddata.com (John C Pardon) writes:
>Strauss, Strausian thought and Straussians are separate issues. We
>have east coast and west coast schools of s. thought. And the major
>element uniting them is reference to and continued study of classic
>political philosophy -- something that neos (IMHO) trot out
>periodically but really subordinate to their modern democratic
>enthusiasms.
Sounds right. As an aside, Straussians seem a modern equivalent of the
Bavarian Illuminati as a somewhat secretive group claiming esoteric
knowledge that provokes paranoid fantasies in outsiders. In _The New
York Times_ there was an unbelievably bigoted and stupid attack on
Strauss himself a couple of weeks ago. It was written by Brent Staples,
one of their affirmative action hires that they've been pushing lately.
They published it on the editorial page (not the op-ed page), I think
under the heading "Editor's Notebook", so the paper seems to stand
behind it to some degree. You might try looking it up if you're
interested in Strauss, Straussians, and the press they receive.
>|> Walt Disney can take anything and turn
>|> it into a mass-market theme park for the whole family, and no doubt
>|> Bill Bennett can too.
>That was good!
Thanks, I'm working on my insult style.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Stiff, O Dairyman, in a myriad of fits.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Dec 24 08:11:11 EST 1994
Article: 3354 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Chechynja
Date: 24 Dec 1994 08:11:05 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 15
Message-ID: <3dh6l9$q0b@panix.com>
References:
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Stuart writes:
>Everyone has the right of self-determination. Chechens have it.
>Ingushes have it. Balkan Orthodox Christians aka Serbs have it.
>Confederates had it once. Who cares?
>
>Dima
Does anyone have any idea how many minor nationalities there are in
Russia, and what the place would look like if they all declared
independence?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
("We enter the circle after dark and are consumed by fire")
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Dec 26 11:58:18 EST 1994
Article: 3355 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: a.r.c FAQ and resource lists
Date: 24 Dec 1994 08:14:41 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <3cvnlr$79l@panix.com> <3d597r$9vo@news.xs4all.nl> <3de4kn$71i@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>
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cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>I note with alarm a general lack of interest and ignorance of current
>affairs among my students which was not the case when I was an
>undergraduate and a remarkable lack of a student political life at
>Keele - again a very strong contrast to my own experience. Alienation
>from the political process seems very high indeed and students
>represent the top 10% of the population.
A large homogeneous society can't have much of a political life other
than occasional outbursts of passion among the populace and factional
disputes among the ruling elite. I think it unlikely that the
situation will turn around; as they say, it's easier to turn an
aquarium into fish soup than the reverse. So most likely the goods
available within the usual way of life will more more and more reduce
to public spectacle and private gratification. The alternative for
those who can't bear such a life will be to join a community practicing
a religion with a demanding moral code and a strong other-worldly
component. No doubt religions that originally developed in similar
circumstances will have an advantage.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
("We enter the circle after dark and are consumed by fire")
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Dec 26 11:58:20 EST 1994
Article: 3366 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 26 Dec 1994 11:48:07 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 46
Message-ID: <3dms47$hf7@panix.com>
References: <3d1hip$4tq@panix.com> <3d20ic$h9j@newstand.syr.edu> <3d2l2n$ns2@panix.com> <3dmlp5$6e1@balsam.unca.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3dmlp5$6e1@balsam.unca.edu> kepley@photon.phys.unca.edu (Brad Kepley) writes:
>>I gather [Frum] roundly abused the paleos, especially Tom Fleming, in
>>_Dead Right_ as well.
>Gosh, I always thought Chronicles was pretty good about dishing it out.
I agree they've become a pretty ill-tempered bunch of guys. The jolly
days of the "Letter from the Lower Right" have become the less jolly
days of "little lists".
>It's hard to believe that a magazine which is so (rightfully) proud of
>its fearlessness would be very hurt by anything Frum said.
I haven't read _Dead Right_. I gather his jabs toward the paleos
tended toward the personal. They'll survive, of course, but what's the
point?
>Disregarding the jabs at paleos that Frum makes, what is it in his
>program that you would disaprove?
The only things by him I've read are his anti-Buchanan piece in TAS a
few years ago, which struck me as a routine hatchet job written to
order, his "It's Big Government, Stupid" piece in _Commentary_, which I
thought very intelligent and helpful, and his very recent piece on Kirk
in _The New Criterion_, which in tone was obtrusively pious [that's a
pun on the man's name, all you Yiddish-speakers] but in substance
seemed intended to maintain the possibility of reinterpreting Kirk for
purposes to be disclosed in the future. This thread started with a
question: what are those purposes?
The direct answer to your question is that I don't have specific
objections to what I know of Frum's program. What I've read of him
indicates that he should have some sympathy with the paleos. He wants
radically to reduce the size and activity of the Federal government and
seems to have a great deal of sympathy with Kirk's cultural outlook.
But he hates the paleos and abuses them personally. Why? Is he in a
state of denial? Does he want to retain respectability by maintaining
affiliation with the neos and demonstrating his aversion to weird
reactionary nativists? Is the class and cultural gap between modernist
Yale-educated Canadian Jews and the Rockford Institute just too big to
bridge? Or do I completely misunderstand everything?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
("We enter the circle after dark and are consumed by fire")
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Dec 27 12:56:39 EST 1994
Article: 3367 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: More on libs & CRs
Date: 26 Dec 1994 12:50:25 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <3dmvp1$qqa@panix.com>
References: <3d1hn8$59p@panix.com> <3d6s7i$pm3@news.xs4all.nl>
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dmdeane@world.std.com (David M. Deane) writes:
>One could write volumes on the implications of the libertarian's fetish
>for individual liberty leading them to an open advocacy of the
>interventionist, civil libertarian mega-state.
Seems to me it's a recapitulation of the development of modern from
classical liberalism. If freedom to do what one chooses is what is
ultimately most important then there does seem to be something unjust
about a social order that facilitates the choices of some people more
than others. So why not openly advocate doing what has to be done to
put all preferences to the extent possible on the same footing?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
("We enter the circle after dark and are consumed by fire")
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Dec 28 07:35:20 EST 1994
Article: 3379 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Campus Follies #1, "ORIENTATION"
Date: 27 Dec 1994 14:16:29 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <144308Z27121994@anon.penet.fi>
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an101936@anon.penet.fi (Yggdrasil) writes:
> (Multiculturalism and the Decline of the West)
> LESSON ONE
> "Orientation"
>
>It would be inappropriate to begin any series entitled "Campus
>Follies" without first talking about that ritual, "orientation".
There's always a silver lining. The modern university has been part of
the enterprise of breaking the world into clearly defined components,
each governed by experts, and manipulating the components for some
pragmatic goal in accordance with rational centrally-designed plans.
The disintegration of the university is part of the end of that
enterprise. Not altogether a bad thing from a CR perspective.
>But it's not only English departments that have become politicized. In
>fact, scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum have followed the
>trail toward an activist curriculum.
> Few have done so with more dogged determination than art historians.
Indeed. Art exhibitions in mainline institutions can be a real hoot
these days. My wife and I went to one recently at the Metropolitan
Museum on American proto-impressionists or some such thing, and the
next best thing to the paintings (some of which were very good) was the
obsessively left-wing explanatory material. If an artist painted a
tree it was to avert attention from the plight of the toiling masses
through a flight into rural nostalgia. If two well-dressed women were
having tea together the important feature of the picture was the
invisibility of the serving women who had undoubtedly prepared the tea
and more generally made leisured occupations like tea-drinking
possible. Etc.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
("We enter the circle after dark and are consumed by fire")
From alt.revolution.counter Thu Dec 29 07:34:53 1994
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: "The Economist" on the dangers of community
Date: 28 Dec 1994 20:42:58 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <3dt472$7vk@panix.com>
References: <3dsjos$i9f@insosf1.infonet.net>
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In dmdeane@world.std.com (David M. Deane) writes:
>Holmes begins with the false statement that these "anti-liberals" are
>irrationalists who resort to ad hominem attacks rather than reason, and
>that therefore they can't complain if he does the same to them! It was
>the most blatant fraud I have ever read.
I seem to recall that he says that analyses by certain non-respectable
antiliberals like de Maistre are remarkably penetrating and difficult
to answer. So his justification for making _argumenta ad hominem_
seems to be a structural feature of the book. On this reading, Holmes
prescinds from truth, presenting arguments that while admittedly not
good are (he says) good enough for the people he's discussing.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Creepy palindrome of the week: Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
[Presumably, the prayer of a heavy metal rock musician.]
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Dec 29 07:35:08 EST 1994
Article: 3384 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: "The Economist" on the dangers of community
Date: 28 Dec 1994 20:35:03 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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wmcclain@worf.infonet.net () writes:
>"What do Amitai Etzioni (sociologist), Alasdair MacIntyre (philosopher),
>Carl Schmitt (Nazi pamphleteer, deceased) and Sir James Goldsmith
>(plutopundit, Euro-politician) have in common? They are all
>communitarians. Their ideas are gaining ground, which may well be
>something to worry about."
I like the characterization of Schmitt. Another proof that liberals'
long suit is freedom from provincialism and bigotry.
>"High communitarians" (Michael Sandel, Charles
>Taylor, Chistopher Lasch, MacIntyre) readily dispute liberalism, but
>they have been harmless SO FAR because they are intellectuals without
>political ambition.
Taylor and MacIntyre are well worth reading (I haven't read the other
two, although I think Mr. Deane is a Christopher Lasch fan). They're
best on intellectual history (Taylor is particularly good) and on grand
aspects of the current situation. On specific current issues they are
too afraid of becoming Bad Guys in the eyes of their left/liberal
colleagues. That's most painfully obvious in the case of MacIntyre.
Taylor is less intense and more social and so can toe the line
smoothly, with fewer fits and contortions. He's a both/and kind of
guy, and so always finds it easy to come out on the right side of any
issue. MacIntyre prefers the prophetic mode and likes to denounce
things, which could lead him into trouble if he didn't constantly watch
himself.
>Luckily, their ideas have been demolished by Stephen Holmes in his book
>"The Anatomy of Antiliberalism"].
I didn't notice the demolition, but then I didn't read every page of the
book. Holmes notes that MacIntyre and other respectable antiliberals
are frightened of being connected with people like notorious Nazi
pampheteer Schmitt or fascist Gentile because the connection would _ipso
facto_ discredit them.
>[Is this a weak paragraph, or am I missing the point? How does positing
>a social nature for man imply that all social purposes are necessarily
>good?
It obviously doesn't.
>And if I am a social being, why am I unable to critique my own or other
>societies? Is it because self-sufficient, unroooted Individuals are the
>only ones with reliable intellects?
I suppose if man were *solely* a social being then it would be difficult
to critique one's own society. I don't think it's necessary to claim
that to claim that man is *essentially* a social being. A rock is
essentially something that has a particular weight and shape, but that
doesn't mean that weight and shape are everything essential about a
rock. Society is transcendent as to each individual and each individual
is transcendent as to society in some respects. You can reduce neither
to the other.
>"The principal beliefs of the Enlightenment were that human reason,
>freed from the impediments of tradition and prejudice, can and should
>emancipate man from the constraints of religion, history and the
>natural world. In other words, the Enlightenment sought to establish a
>morality detached from spiritual considerations and based exclusively
>on the rational. This, it was believed, would allow mankind to be
>liberated from everything that was impeding its progress."
Here the notion seems to be that society is simply a collection of
individuals who in principle could exist, form judgments, and determine
which things are progressive based on pure nonspiritual reason (whatever
that might be) without reference to any particular society. That's
obviously false, and one can assert it's false without saying that
individuals and their judgments are wholly explicable by reference to
the society to which they belong.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Creepy palindrome of the week: Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
[Presumably, the prayer of a heavy metal rock musician.]
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Dec 31 05:32:24 EST 1994
Article: 3391 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: No populism of the Left?
Date: 29 Dec 1994 16:49:33 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <3dv4tl$2f8@insosf1.infonet.net> wmcclain@worf.infonet.net () writes:
>I
>would like to know if she is correct on her point about populism: must
>serious leftism be the enemy of political decentralization? I've have
>always been told not so, that leftists can support distributed political
>authority.
I've always thought that a pipe dream. The Left believes in social
justice, which requires what happens to people to be determined by
reference to a coherent system of standards equally applicable to
everyone. How can the corresponding form of government be other than
centralized, bureaucratic, and all-pervasive? Her phrase "electoral
putsch" is the right one. If the electorate rejects social justice its
decision confers no legitimacy whatever in the eyes of the Left.
>If that is not true, then how have the mighty fallen! What
>possible appeal could the philosophy have hereafter?]
As Willis suggests, the appeal of the Left is to individualistic
hedonism. Everything else is illusion. All is not yet lost, since
individualistic hedonism has a lot of supporters and has been winning
battles for centuries. Social statistics and changing public attitudes
suggest that it may be close to dying of its own success, but who
knows?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Creepy palindrome of the week: Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
[Presumably, the prayer of a heavy metal rock musician.]
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Jan 1 20:45:00 EST 1995
Article: 3394 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 31 Dec 1994 07:05:56 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <3dug8u$8a4@balsam.unca.edu>
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If we were all at a bar together, would we be going at each other with
broken beer bottles over whose political views are more frivolous or
exactly how bad something is that a neo or paleo did or might do? There
are lots of objectionable people saying outrageous things on the net.
Some of them (I'm told) even think it's OK for Frum to attack Buchanan
or Jack Kemp to favor big government. Should we put the energy into
doing battle with the true heathen?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Creepy palindrome of the week: Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
[Presumably, the prayer of a heavy metal rock musician.]
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Jan 1 20:45:03 EST 1995
Article: 3400 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 1 Jan 1995 13:14:32 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 35
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In dmdeane@world.std.com (David M. Deane) writes:
>It's no accident that the neos are comfortable rubbing elbows with
>the political and cultural elite of New York and Washington, whilst the
>the paleos are happy to engage in friendly debate with disaffected
>intellectuals from other other movements (paleolibertarians, greens,
>Telos-style postmodernists and leftists, etc), who share their concerns
>over issues ignored by the neos and the establishment.
>In other words, to borrow Lawrence Dennis' terminology, what we have here
>is a struggle between in-elites and out-elites.
If all it is is an argument between ins who like being ins and outs who
don't like being outs, why bother with it? Also, revolutions succeed
through alliances with sections of the ruling class. Why reject in
principle any sort of alliance with people who are comfy in N.Y. and
D.C.?
>The old distinctions of
>left and right, conservative and liberal, are increasingly meaningless,
>in our post-Cold War world where alliances and attitudes are in a state
>of constant flux. What we don't need is more calls for an anchachronistic
>"unity". What is needed is a seperation of the sheep from the goats.
If everything's in flux, the last thing to do is declare that
everything that isn't clearly a sheep must be a goat. What you want to
do is be clear about your own sheepishness and and try to persuade as
many people as possible that their sheepish characteristics are more
important than their goatish ones. If you want to you can pick a few
scapegoats and abuse them for goatishness, but I think it's a mistake
to do it too quickly.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Creepy palindrome of the week: Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
[Presumably, the prayer of a heavy metal rock musician.]
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jan 2 16:24:05 EST 1995
Article: 3404 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 2 Jan 1995 05:13:25 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 13
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References: <3dug8u$8a4@balsam.unca.edu> <3e7naj$8kj@balsam.unca.edu>
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In <3e7naj$8kj@balsam.unca.edu> kepley@photon.phys.unca.edu (Brad Kepley) writes:
>Actually...it wasn't you who spoke of boredom, but Kalb. :) Something
>about being bored with his father's conservatism and wanting something
>more radical. I don't have the exact text.
I don't think so. In fact, unless you have a videotape of me typing
the words I won't believe it because it's out of character. I suppose
I should thank you for referring to me as a "gentleman", though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Creepy palindrome of the week: Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
[Presumably, the prayer of a heavy metal rock musician.]
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jan 2 16:24:08 EST 1995
Article: 3408 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 2 Jan 1995 12:13:18 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 12
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References: <3e7naj$8kj@balsam.unca.edu> <3e8jk5$8to@panix.com> <3e999v$3co@balsam.unca.edu>
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In <3e999v$3co@balsam.unca.edu> kepley@photon.phys.unca.edu (Brad Kepley) writes:
>Perhaps what you said was that your father's conservatism was not
>radical enough for you [ ... ]
I have a vague recollection that Mr. Deane may have said something like
that, or maybe it was about his mom. Something about a "you call that
conservative?" kind of conversation?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Creepy palindrome of the week: Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
[Presumably, the prayer of a heavy metal rock musician.]
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jan 4 17:10:05 EST 1995
Article: 3417 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Chechynja
Date: 3 Jan 1995 21:10:38 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <3dh6l9$q0b@panix.com>
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In Stuart writes:
>Jim, I bet you're sorry you asked!
The only thing I really wanted to know is what ever happened to the
"Tannu" in "Tannu Tuva". Any ideas?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Too far, Edna, we wander afoot.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jan 5 09:32:54 EST 1995
Article: 3429 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: REVIEW: A Pattern Language
Date: 5 Jan 1995 09:31:18 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <3eej07$h7c@insosf1.infonet.net>
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wmcclain@worf.infonet.net (presumably, Bill McClain) writes:
>Most utopian plans are presented by people I would not trust
>with a burned-out match. But now and then I see speculations
>that are both visionary and very wise, both startling and
>well-grounded. This book, nominally about planning and
>architecture, is one such.
Architects and urban planners tend toward utopianism. They design
something, and what they design has to fit a way of life, so why not
design something that fits the ideal way of life and in fact makes
anything else impossible? I've read some really frightening stuff
(unconsciously so) written by such people, mostly from the 30s. I
suppose Jane Jacobs started a countermovement.
> We do not believe that these large patterns, which give
> so much structure to a town or a neighborhood, can be
> created by centralized authority, or by laws, or by
> master plans. We believe instead that they can emerge
> gradually and organically, almost of their own accord, if
> every act of building, large or small, takes on the
> responsibility for gradually shaping its small corner of
> the world to make these large patterns appear there.
That's the way great cities have grown in the past. The problem today
seems to be that it's too easy to build on too large a scale too
quickly. Organic patterns don't get a chance to emerge. There's not
even enough time consciously to design anything pleasant. I'm not sure
what can be done about it.
>Do everything possible to enrich the cultures and
>subcultures of the city by breaking the city, as far as
>possible, into a vast mosaic of small and different
>subcultures, each with the power to create its own
>distinctive life style. Make sure that the subcultures are
>small enough so that each person has access to the full
>variety of life styles in the subcultures near his own.
A fundamental problem of intellectual communitarianism today. They want
lots of cultures and subcultures, but they also want each individual to
be able freely to choose among all the various life styles. It doesn't
work that way. Culture is less something chosen than the background to
choice.
>80. Self-Governing Workshops and Offices
>
>No one enjoys his work if he is a cog in a machine.
>
>Therefore: Encourage the formation of self-governing
>workshops and offices of 5 to 20 workers. Make each group
>autonomous--with respect to organization, style, relation to
>other groups, hiring and firing, work schedule. Where the
>work is complicated and requires larger organizations,
>several of these work groups can federate and cooperate to
>produce complex artifacts and services.
Another typical problem--workplaces are supposed to be free and
autonomous, and also meet standards as to size, relation to other
organizations, and no doubt (it would turn out) things like worker's
rights, nondiscrimination, etc., etc., etc.
I've been finding fault (sorry, I was in the mood), but the book sounds
like a real contribution to the general project of trying to figure out
something better than our current situation. Practicality is always an
issue, but you can't *start* by worrying about that issue. I'll look
for it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Too far, Edna, we wander afoot.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jan 5 09:33:56 EST 1995
Article: 3430 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 5 Jan 1995 09:32:46 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 31
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References: <3e999v$3co@balsam.unca.edu> <3e9c7e$im1@panix.com>
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dmdeane@world.std.com (David M. Deane) writes:
>I have a low opinion of conservatism as a mental habit in that it is
>simply mental laziness and uncritical acceptance of the status quo ...
There are different sorts of knowledge and learning. Some people learn
some things better with the help of a lot of explicit analysis and
theorizing. Others learn better by following a good model and refining
their understanding and skill through practice and intuition. Practical
arts (like cooking, sculpture, and morality) are usually learned better
the latter way. Politics is a practical art, so conservative mental
habits are not necessarily to be sneered at.
>This is not a bad thing; such unthinking "conservatism" is what enables
>a society to survive and remain stable. But it is not acceptable if one
>is serious about political thinking. And worse, given our present
>situation, unthinking "conservatism" results in the continuance of a
>very unConservative society.
A problem arises when there aren't any good models because the practices
in a particular society have fallen into disarray. If all people eat is
poorly prepared Chicken McNuggets then you're not going to become a good
cook by hanging around McD's and imitating what goes on there. You're
going to have to think about cooking a little more consciously and
critically. That's true even though the thing that caused cooking to
degenerate in the first place was the abuse of rationality, and even
though in a good society theorizing wouldn't play much of a role in
cooking.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Too far, Edna, we wander afoot.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jan 5 09:34:00 EST 1995
Article: 3431 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 5 Jan 1995 09:33:48 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <3e6re8$77e@panix.com>
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dmdeane@world.std.com (David M. Deane) writes:
>I am saying that this sectional/regional/class conflict underlies and
>fuels the paleo/neo feud. Hence, attempts to bridge the gap with
>political compromises or "fusionism" are unlikely to succeed.
Emnities can be dampened without fusionism.
>It's not clear to me that the neocon crowd is part of the ruling class.
Fair enough.
>The paleo attack on the neos is bitter because the paleos really have
>suffered at the hands of the neos, far in excess of anything they have
>done in return. Once burned, twice shy. A paleo/neo alliance is simply
>not in the cards, given this fact.
I suppose my concern is that the feud may consume too much energy (_RRR_
devotes a *lot* of space to it) and spread beyond necessity. Frum is
culturally and emotionally neo, and he says some stupid things, but he
never snookered the paleos out of anything. Feuds distort perception.
Fleming may have good reason to hate Neuhaus, but did he think he was
helping inform his readers by referring to _First Things_ as "a quirky
little newsletter"?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Too far, Edna, we wander afoot.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jan 5 20:48:52 EST 1995
Article: 3432 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 5 Jan 1995 09:38:14 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 59
Message-ID: <3eh08m$nom@panix.com>
References: <3e9c7e$im1@panix.com> <3e9etv$61j@balsam.unca.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
dmdeane@world.std.com (David M. Deane) writes:
>: In my opinion Mr. Frum has
>: an instinctive aversion to the paleos and I can understand that
>: myself.
>
>Gosh, then what on earth are we arguing about?
My question exactly.
To move from arguments in a.r.c. to the arguments in _Dead Right_, I got
a copy of it out of the library yesterday and paged through it. It
appears that substantively Frum's views have a lot of similarities to
Tom Fleming's.
Frum starts by observing that originally (until the 60s) most
intellectual American conservatives agreed that Western man had taken a
wrong turn when he decided that the world could be remade for his own
purposes. They didn't really expect to be able to do anything about
it, though. Then in the 60s liberals went bonkers and two things
happened: lots of ordinary guys enlisted under the conservative banner,
and conservatives began winning elections and so became subject to the
temptations of power and popularity. The eventual result was big
government conservatism which (Frum says) just doesn't work. It seems
that the original conservatives were right: the whole notion of public
policy remaking society for chosen ends is misconceived, and
conservatives aren't able to bring it off any more than anyone else.
Today Frum sees three kinds of conservatives: optimists (Jack Kemp),
moralists (Bill Bennett) and nationalists (Pat Buchanan/Sam Francis),
all of whom accept big government but want to use if for their own ends.
No cigar, says Frum. For starters, the people are corrupt. Bill
Bennett isn't going to be able to jawbone them into reforming, and their
national identity won't be a sufficient basis for politics. The
religious right won't be able to carry the ball either, because American
religion is based as much on gratification without obligation as
everything else American. The left-libertarian "small government,
social tolerance" approach won't work because "social tolerance" means
civil rights and other laws that grossly expand the extent of government
power. The best that can be done is yank the plug. Get rid of all the
government programs that prop people up and they'll have to get their
acts together at least a little. He doesn't think that's at all likely
to happen, but at least conservative intellectuals can be honest about
conditions.
Frum expresses his own attitudes and preferences only sporadically. He
identifies _Chronicles_ and paleos generally with Sam Francis, which
simplifies application of his "big government conservative" analysis. A
close reading of the book would no doubt make his views clearer. It
appears that he doesn't like paleos (Buchanan and Francis) because he is
very nervous about political movements that appeal primarily to ethnic
solidarity. He talks about the America First movement and pre-1960s
opposition to racial integration and doesn't seem to like them, although
he doesn't say "this is terrible". He says "paleos are
multiculturalists so they've swallowed the leftists' line" but doesn't
say why that is bad.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Too far, Edna, we wander afoot.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jan 5 20:48:56 EST 1995
Article: 3438 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: REVIEW: A Pattern Language
Date: 5 Jan 1995 18:21:15 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <3ehutb$k0a@panix.com>
References: <3eej07$h7c@insosf1.infonet.net> <3egvrm$m5s@panix.com> <3ehnbp$3k0@insosf1.infonet.net>
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In <3ehnbp$3k0@insosf1.infonet.net> wmcclain@worf.infonet.net (Bill McClain) writes:
>As Nisbet points out, once community is lost the "quest for community"
>becomes perilous because we will try a "social" (rule-making) solution
>which cannot work.
That's the appeal of libertarian legal institutions. You don't have
any formal rules except rules of property and restrictions on force and
fraud. These obviously aren't enough for life to go forward (most
libertarians think they are, but they're wrong), so people develop
informal patterns of obligation such as family obligations that they
view as absolutely essential.
One issue with that approach is the extent to which market arrangements
can replace the informal institutions that people would otherwise live
by under a libertarian legal order. If they did, we'd be back in a
world consisting exclusively of formal rules. I'm inclined to think
market institutions won't do the trick so that in a libertarian legal
order community would exist and be important. Most others don't agree.
Possibly one could have a basically libertarian legal order with a few
structural rules added to promote the development of community without
attempting to manage it. Obvious examples would be restrictions on
immigration and international trade. Maybe land use regulations would
be another example. The thing that very quickly causes problems, I
think, is the welfare state--direct government responsibility for
individual well-being.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Too far, Edna, we wander afoot.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jan 7 17:20:09 EST 1995
Article: 3448 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Kirk and the neos
Date: 6 Jan 1995 10:55:08 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <3ejp4s$sv7@panix.com>
References: <3eh08m$nom@panix.com>
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dmdeane@world.std.com (David M. Deane) writes:
>: It
>: appears that substantively Frum's views have a lot of similarities to
>: Tom Fleming's.
>
>On certain formal issues of the size and role of govt., yes; but I am
>sure that there are plenty of areas of polar opposition, as indicated
>below.
Those formal issues go a long way toward resolving political disputes
when you're talking about two guys who like small government. What's
left after those issues are settled is mostly the things that develop
outside formal politics.
>But clearly the state _has_ always been used for remaking society in
>some fashion;
Differences of degree and emphasis are everything in politics. At one
time it made sense to think of the king as the sword enforcing
"justice", understood as something that existed without reference to
the king. Today people think they freely create and realize their
nature as a society through government. The difference in perspective
matters.
>Buchanan and Francis have not always been clear on the details, but my
>reading of them indicates that they are still operating on a 19th
>century Whigish model.
My reading is different. Buchanan is a practical politician and Francis
is programmatically a realistic analyst of power. How to get what they
want and whether something seems clearly within reach are important to
them. Neither is averse to extensive state power; their concern is with
who holds the power and the purposes for which it is used.
>: No cigar, says Frum. For starters, the people are corrupt.
>
>If this is so, than big govt. is inevitable, because limited govt. is
>only feasible when people are disciplined and self-regulating. If Frum is
>right, than he has no grounds on which to indict the "big govt"
>conservatives.
Whatever you say about Frum here applies to Fleming as well.
>Well, if Mr. Frum is afraid of the "ethnic factor" than this rather begs
>the question, since people who share his perspective have been busy
>tearing down the American national identity to make sure there won't be
>"sufficient basis".
The drift of his analysis is against antidiscrimination laws and he's
clearly against leftist multiculturalism. He neglects to say where he
comes out on the former.
>: religious right won't be able to carry the ball either, because American
>: religion is based as much on gratification without obligation as
>: everything else American.
>
>Really? Is Frum a "religious right" basher too?
He says "religious right" bashing mostly arises from the left/liberal
consciousness of having injured religious and traditionalist people
through aggressive attacks on their way of life.
>Is it really all based on gratification? I'm no fan of the religous
>right, but surely this is not a fair or accurate characterization, at
>least generally...
He wasn't talking about the religious right as much as what lies behind
it, American religion. Apparently, he's listened to a lot of popular
preachers and heard a lot of "pray for a new Buick and God will give you
one" sermons. There are evangelicals who make the same complaint about
evangelicals generally.
>So then to be "honest", we must eschew politics and retreat to our
>ivory towers to await the barbarian hordes? Puhww.
Does the "puhww" go for Fleming as well?
>Naturally. He expects readers to share his acceptance of the prevailing
>political taboos and myths, and thus there is no need for him to
>explain, prove, or demonstrate anything.
It's unclear. On America First that's probably right. On the other
hand, the drift of his analysis is in favor of moralistic prejudices
(for example on sexual matters) and against antidiscrimination laws.
When someone presents such analyses without attacking the conclusions to
which they lead I usually assume his intentions are subversive.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Too far, Edna, we wander afoot.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jan 12 16:09:17 EST 1995
Article: 3462 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: ** Help the new Ways & Means chairman abolish federal income tax **
Date: 12 Jan 1995 05:28:50 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <3f3092$162@panix.com>
References: <3f13lt$n5q@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3f13lt$n5q@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>Why do people think that being opposed to
>egalitarianism means that you're in favour of the filthy rich?
What does the income tax have to do with the filthy rich? At least in
the United States the effective marginal rates on realized income
haven't been much higher for the filthy rich than for the moderately
prosperous. In addition, the filthy rich get a lot of their accretions
to net worth in the form of unrealized capital gains which aren't
taxed.
I think in other countries the filthy rich have also figured out how to
stay filthy rich even with income taxes. Such taxes are in fact aimed
mostly at the middle classes, because that's where most of the income
is.
People who want to abolish the income tax have no particular fondness
for the filthy rich. They're usually people who value personal
independence and don't like big institutions like the federal
government. The dislike of big institutions rubs off on
institutionalized fortunes like that of the Rockefellers.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jan 12 16:09:18 EST 1995
Article: 3463 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: benoist's Empires
Date: 12 Jan 1995 05:31:50 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 12
Message-ID: <3f30em$1du@panix.com>
References: <3eud6c$t3j@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>
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In <3eud6c$t3j@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>I've just finished this piece in Telos which is well worth reading.
Is that the Winter 1995 _Telos_? A couple of days ago I asked at the
library for the most recent issues and they didn't give me the right
one, so it would help to know just which one it was.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Jan 15 05:50:46 EST 1995
Article: 3467 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Hard Data on Interracial Births
Date: 13 Jan 1995 09:28:50 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <3f62n2$p2i@panix.com>
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In <3f2se9$5io@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>What has this to do with CR thought?
In an ethnically diverse and fluid society based on the whole on
secular and liberal ideals, like the United States, it seems inevitable
that CR movements will often base themselves at least partly on race.
They need to find something on which communities can be built that
resist liberal individualism, and the obvious two choices are race and
religion. Religion demands a lot, so race will be more attractive to
many people.
CR is based on particularism, which means that traditions and the
peoples who bear them have to be distinct from each other. As a
practical matter the distinctiveness has to be tied to something
visible, concrete and to at least some degree prior to choice.
All of which is very abstract. How the abstractions become more
specific depends on circumstances. The distinctiveness of a people
might come from long residence in a particular place under common
institutions. That may be the basis of English nationality. It might
come from adherence to common religious beliefs and discipline that set
the members of the community off from other people. Or it could come
>from blood relationship writ large, which is race.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Jan 15 16:10:08 EST 1995
Article: 3472 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Hard Data on Interracial Births
Date: 15 Jan 1995 07:20:06 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 54
Message-ID: <3fb3tm$8bo@panix.com>
References: <3f2se9$5io@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <3f62n2$p2i@panix.com> <3fa3dr$9ob@balsam.unca.edu>
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kepley@photon.phys.unca.edu (Brad Kepley) writes:
>> The distinctiveness of a people
>>might come from long residence in a particular place under common
>>institutions. That may be the basis of English nationality. It might
>>come from adherence to common religious beliefs and discipline that set
>>the members of the community off from other people. Or it could come
>>from blood relationship writ large, which is race.
>
>You're not likely to artificially create this anchor in my opinon. It's
>either there or it isn't and in this country it isn't. Nevertheless,
>the twentieth century makes it clear that nothing will stand in the way
>of the determined intellectual.
People need some sort of anchor so they can understand who they are and
what their lives are about. It seems that determined intellectuals in
alliance with a lot of other things have subverted the sufficient
anchors, so the obvious possibilities for society as a whole are
grabbing at an insufficient anchor or stumbling along somehow until a
new sufficient anchor develops. An historical example of the former
would be Nazism and of the latter the development of the Christian
community before Constantine. Of course, the "stumbling along" can
include more or less superficial attempts to appeal to anchors that
don't really work except as stopgaps.
>If a race concious counter-revolution ever does take place in this
>country it'll be predictably bloody and messy and my guess is that I
>will end up joining the counter-counter-revolutionaries.
Putting race at the center of politics is a mistake because it doesn't
tell us anything very definite and makes politics wholly a matter of
opposition between in-group and out-group. That's why things went as
they did in Germany 1933-1945. Ethnicity is considerably better
because it has some cultural content. That's why many ethnically based
states (e.g., Norway, Finland and the Baltic republics) have been
successful. Loyalty to a particular civilization is no doubt better
yet. On the other hand, civilization, ethnicity and race can't be
altogether divorced from each other so treating race the way the
Victorians are said to have treated sex seems a mistake.
You seem to think I'm sympathetic to determined intellectuals who try
to construct something artificially. I should say that my comment that
race would likely be an element of an American CR movement was meant
analytically rather than as part of a plan of action. As you suggest,
situations could arise in which the dependence on race would be such as
to make joining the CCRs the better choice. My own practical political
views on racial matters are basically libertarian: get rid of
antidiscrimination laws and let people build up the way of life that
works well for them in cooperation with the people with whom they find
it rewarding to cooperate.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jan 17 20:18:41 EST 1995
Article: 1942 of alt.politics.nationalism.white
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.correct,alt.politics.nationalism.white,soc.culture.african.american,soc.culture.usa,alt.activism.d,sci.psychology,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Great Society (was: Review of 'Bell Curve' in Scientific American)
Date: 16 Jan 1995 05:42:21 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 52
Message-ID: <3fdiid$rp7@panix.com>
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Xref: panix talk.politics.misc:233706 alt.fan.rush-limbaugh:214736 alt.discrimination:27047 alt.politics.correct:31557 alt.politics.nationalism.white:1942 soc.culture.african.american:85228 soc.culture.usa:50258 alt.activism.d:17097 sci.psychology:30228 talk.politics.theory:40020
In <3fcua4$bat@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com> lsd@ix.netcom.com (Lane Singer) writes:
>>And what prongs of the Great Society have been cut? There have been
>>no real cuts in the federal entitlement programs, which now constitute
>>more than 60% of the budget. While you might want to point to a handful
>>of programs that have been cut, I'll be able to show you a dozen more
>>for each example you give which have been increasingly expanded
>>since LBJ.
>Care to discuss low-income housing?
According to the _Statistical Abstract of the United States_, from 1970
to 1990 public social welfare expenditures in America went from $2219
to $4116 in constant 1990 dollars per capita. Over that period, public
expenditures on housing went from $10 to $77, education expenditures
went from $776 to $1020, public aid (e.g., AFDC, SSI, Food Stamps) from
$251 to $575, and health from $146 to $246, all in constant per capita
dollars. It's worth noting that public expenditures on housing changed
in kind during the Reagan years, from public housing to housing
vouchers. As a result of the switch from multiyear construction
projects to payment of current expenses of welfare clients program
commitments although not actual outlays for housing dropped sharply
during the early Reagan years. (I don't have figures handy on the last
point.)
As to the effect of the War on Poverty, it appears from an article
("The Two Wars on Poverty") in the Fall 1982 _The Public Interest_ (the
article gives further references for those interested) that the long
postwar drop in poverty rates began to turn around when the Great
Society programs came in. Between 1949 and 1952 the poverty rate fell
>from 33 to 28 percent, under Eisenhower to 22 percent, and under
Kennedy/Johnson to 18 percent in 1964, just before the War on Poverty.
I believe by 1973 the rate had further declined to its all-time low of
11%, so progress continued at about the same speed before and after the
War began.
The continued progress may have been only apparent, though, since at
the time the War on Poverty got up to speed, in 1968, the poverty rate
before government transfers bottomed out at 18.2 percent and started to
rise (it was 22 percent by 1980--I don't have subsequent figures
handy). After 1973 the large increases in public welfare expenditures
referenced in the previous paragraph did not keep up with increasing
severity of the underlying problems.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jan 17 20:18:58 EST 1995
Article: 3474 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Hard Data on Interracial Births
Date: 15 Jan 1995 17:05:51 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 45
Message-ID: <3fc67v$o24@panix.com>
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cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>I think Mr Kalb has more or less get this right.
What a relief! I thought we were going to keep on disagreeing about
everything forever.
>The problem with anti-racialist legislation, apart from creating a
>group of professional witchhunters and increasing antagonism among the
>majority population is that it promotes tendencies which want to
>ghettoise racial minorities.
Another problem is that it makes it more difficult for people to work
together in an unselfconscious manner. Presumably an Italian workplace
functions somewhat differently from a Finnish workplace even in the
same line of work because people's habits, attitudes, expectations and
so on are different. If "equal opportunity" laws require hiring half
Italians and half Finns, there'll be friction, misunderstanding and
suspicion because the employees won't share a common stock of the
habits that facilitate cooperation in a community.
The result: less work will get done, what's done will be done worse,
people will be less happy, multicultural consultants and sensitivity
training will be needed to help meet the challenge of diversity, extra
bureaucratic procedures will have to be put in place to make sure each
side gets a fair shake, etc., etc., etc. Why bother with all that stuff
unless people decide for themselves that the benefits of a multiethnic
and multicultural workforce are worth the costs?
>An idle thought one US neo, I'll try to find out which one tonight once
>saw Conservative culture as a transnational and liberalism as a
>national phenomenon, any comments?
As one US neo said in his salad days, "Like, weird!"
I suppose you could say that liberalism has always been connected to
national states and conservatism looks back to the days of Christendom
when there was a transnational and in principle universal society that
had local particularisms, but none of the particularisms had the
privileged statue of the modern nation-state. But who knows what he
had in mind?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jan 28 06:18:49 EST 1995
Article: 3497 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Murray Rothbard, RIP
Date: 27 Jan 1995 07:09:34 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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wmcclain@worf.infonet.net (Bill McClain) writes:
>I read that Murray Rothbard died of heart attack on Jan 7, age 68. WF
>Buckley had a very negative obituary in National Review.
I read it. "A pleasant guy socially, but I'm glad he croaked because
that means he's out of the picture politically." To be somewhat fair,
Rothbard and his buddies in the _Rothbard-Rockwell Report_ had been
abusing Buckley mercilessly. Buckley may deserve some abuse, but you
can't expect him to see it that way.
>His emphasis on the natural law tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas put
>him a cut above other libertarians ideologues.
I never read any of Rothbard's extended works, and was never clear on
the relation between his views on economics and the limits of political
authority and his cultural outlook. The former seemed fundamental for
him, which in itself seemed odd to me.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindromic insult of the week: Tulsa nightlife--filth, gin, a slut.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jan 28 07:40:38 EST 1995
Article: 3505 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Murray Rothbard, RIP
Date: 28 Jan 1995 07:22:43 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <3gdcuj$dqd@panix.com>
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wmcclain@worf.infonet.net (Bill McClain) writes:
>Can you give a review of the _Rothbard-Rockwell Report_? I have seen a
>couple of issues but do not subscribe. The content seemed to be gossipy,
>and $50/year is a bit steep.
I've subscribed for a year at an introductory $27/year price which is no
longer available. I'm inclined to let the subscription lapse although I
don't at all regret subscribing.
_RRR_ mostly consists of pieces by R & R themselves, with some stuff by
their younger sidekick Justin Raimondo and at one point a few things by
Joe Sobran. I don't know what they will do now that Rothbard is gone.
They also have a gossip columnist, Sarah Barton.
The content consists largely of attacks on the Clinton administration
and on left/libertarians, and analyses of the gathering right-wing
populist revolt. For some reason there's a fair amount on NY politics.
There's also a "P.C. Watch" section at the back. It's generally
intelligent and well-written. My major criticisms are that the focus is
narrower than I would like and they put too much energy into non-
substantive things like inventing colorful epithets and telling stories
about evil (a word they use often) Clintonoids and establishment
libertarians and conservatives. Some of the epithets are admittedly not
bad.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindromic insult of the week: Tulsa nightlife--filth, gin, a slut.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jan 28 07:40:39 EST 1995
Article: 3506 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Murray Rothbard, RIP
Date: 28 Jan 1995 07:27:35 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <3gdd7n$e9v@panix.com>
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wmcclain@worf.infonet.net (Bill McClain) writes:
>Finally, a question for all natural rights theorists: Does "natural"
>imply "good"? Rothbard says it does. (And this is a recent push from gay
>rights advocates which I think many conservatives take seriously). But,
>for example, if _my_ nature makes me a murderer, is it right that I
>should be one? Aquinas says not, because we have a transcendental source
>of divine law apart from the natural law which we know by reason alone.
>I don't know how secular advocates deal with the problem. Unless "human
>nature" is known in the aggregate and not in the individual?
I think there's an Aristotelian theory still kicking around that there
are "natural kinds" (man, for example) and something belonging to a
natural kind can be a defective member of that kind. A man born
without legs or with an innate pattern of responses to environment that
leads him to act in a way that thwarts human flourishing would on this
view be a defective man. Presumably it would mitigate his
defectiveness at least somewhat if he were fitted with prosthetic legs
or chose not to act in the way his innate inclinations pointed him.
My impression is that one argument for natural kinds is that it's hard
to figure out how language can work or how we can discuss biology (let
alone ethics) if they don't exist. One might interpret "natural kinds"
as ideas in the mind of a transcendental God, or one might think they
are simply constitutive features of the world knowable by reason like
other features of the world.
Any philosophers around who can explain any of this better than I can?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindromic insult of the week: Tulsa nightlife--filth, gin, a slut.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jan 28 20:46:37 EST 1995
Article: 3510 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Murray Rothbard, RIP
Date: 28 Jan 1995 19:04:19 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 11
Message-ID: <3gem23$elv@panix.com>
References: <3g94ai$583@insosf1.infonet.net> <3ganpu$j7p@panix.com> <3gb9g4$o56@insosf1.infonet.net>
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In <3gb9g4$o56@insosf1.infonet.net> wmcclain@worf.infonet.net (Bill McClain) writes:
>Can you give a review of the _Rothbard-Rockwell Report_? I have seen a
>couple of issues but do not subscribe. The content seemed to be gossipy,
>and $50/year is a bit steep.
They're offering it at $39 a year, at least to some renewal
subscribers. If interested, call them at 1-800-325-7257 days (Barbara
will answer) and see if that price is generally available.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindromic insult of the week: Tulsa nightlife--filth, gin, a slut.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jan 31 05:49:36 EST 1995
Article: 3511 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Campus Follies #8, "DATE RAPE GUIDELINES"
Date: 28 Jan 1995 22:02:51 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <3gf0gr$g4u@panix.com>
References: <153400Z23011995@anon.penet.fi>
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Stuart writes:
>There has always been a strange Victorian puritanism about the
>feminist/PC left which assumes that all men are beasts and that women
>don't really enjoy sex (unless with another woman, of course). It is
>based on a broader inability to understand the deeper human
>relationships which probably speaks volumes about the sexual
>pathologies of the supporters of this viewpoint.
I view the puritanism as a consequence of the extremely abstract notion
of the human person that liberals have, which makes it impossible for
them to deal sensibly with sex and gender. Since s. and g. aren't
constitutive of the liberal person they become external things to be
independently defined and evaluated by each individual and dealt with
socially under the categories of equal rights and individual
preference. Lefties (whatever their flaws) think more deeply about
social life than liberals, so they know something is wrong with that
picture, but their outlook doesn't allow them to see what. The
consequence is weird theories that recognize differences between the
sexes and moral content to sexuality but only in a distorted and
monstrous form.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindromic insult of the week: Tulsa nightlife--filth, gin, a slut.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jan 31 05:49:37 EST 1995
Article: 3512 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Belloc vindicated (book review)
Date: 28 Jan 1995 22:04:21 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 12
Message-ID: <3gf0jl$gg2@panix.com>
References:
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Stuart writes:
>Review by Anthony Cooney
>The indigenous population remained; indeed their departure would not
>have been permitted. They were working for new landlords and finding it
>advantageous to adopt their language customs and paganism, that is all.
If so, it's surprising that so few Celtic words made it into English.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindromic insult of the week: Tulsa nightlife--filth, gin, a slut.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jan 31 05:49:38 EST 1995
Article: 3520 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Belloc vindicated (book review)
Date: 31 Jan 1995 05:22:12 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 13
Message-ID: <3gl30k$bak@panix.com>
References: <3gf0jl$gg2@panix.com> <3gfv7t$gr2@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3gfv7t$gr2@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>As regards Celtic words, quite a lot of
>English toponyms are Celtic, but linguistic anihilation can happen - very
>few Iberian words made it into Latin or Spanish.
In America we have lots of Indian toponyms even though the Indians were
largely driven out. Also, in the case of Spain there was continuing
Roman rule and various tendencies making for linguistic unity in the
Western Empire. Was there anything similar around the North Sea?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jan 31 05:49:49 EST 1995
Article: 14736 of sci.philosophy.meta
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Nietzsche and Dostoevsky
Date: 29 Jan 1995 04:45:14 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 11
Distribution: inet
Message-ID: <3gfo3a$cne@panix.com>
References:
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In pshe@netcom.com (Pat Shelton) writes:
> I would be very interested if you could find a reference that
> Nietzsche ever read Dostoevsky.
I thought the story was that N. picked up a book by D. in a bookstore
and got interested, and later commented that D. was the only (person?
novelist? contemporary?) who ever taught him any psychology. I don't
have a reference, though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindromic insult of the week: Tulsa nightlife--filth, gin, a slut.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 3 20:29:20 EST 1995
Article: 3524 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: alt.society.conservatism FAQ
Date: 2 Feb 1995 21:52:07 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 18
Message-ID: <3gs5on$fef@panix.com>
References: <3g94ai$583@insosf1.infonet.net> <3ganpu$j7p@panix.com> <3gb9g4$o56@insosf1.infonet.net> <3gdcuj$dqd@panix.com> <3gddrc$evr@panix.com> <3gr21m$edm@insosf1.infonet.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3gr21m$edm@insosf1.infonet.net> wmcclain@worf.infonet.net (Bill McClain) writes:
>"What is the difference between conservatism and Republicanism?" (In the
>sense of the Republican Party image: pro-business, anti-labor,
>internationalist, etc. Might apply to the UK Conservatives also).
>"I thought conservatives were the old-money country-club class. Now
>there seems to be a populist reaction. Is conservatism more properly
>populist or elitist?" (The answer would be something like "They are a
>bit schizo on the issue.")
I've had a nagging feeling that the "what is mainstream conservatism"
question should be expanded, to tie the FAQ more to the stuff that
people read about in the newspapers. Maybe giving answers to these
questions would be a way to do it. Thanks for the suggestion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Feb 7 06:49:58 EST 1995
Article: 10573 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 5 Feb 1995 20:51:53 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 60
Message-ID: <3h3vbp$643@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:10573 alt.discrimination:28854 alt.politics.usa.republican:46276 talk.politics.theory:41052
The Republicans and others want to cut back on welfare. Will civil
rights be next? If so, will that be good or bad?
The foremost moral goals of American politics in recent decades have
been ensuring the material well-being of each individual and eliminating
the relation between social standing and such attributes as ethnicity
and gender.
It appears that the former goal, that of the welfare system, is in the
long run unattainable by government, and that attempts to attain it have
made things worse. Open discussion of the problems has recently become
possible, although whether the necessary radical shrinkage of the
welfare state will come any time soon is an open question.
The latter goal, that of the civil rights laws, still can not be
questioned in public by anyone who expects to be taken seriously. That
is unfortunate, but it will change because there are fundamental
problems with the whole enterprise those laws stand for.
The problems relate to the moral connection between individual and
society. The civil rights enterprise calls for that connection to
change from one based on loyalty to particular persons and groups by
reference to which one knows what he is and should do to one based on
individual freedom of choice conditioned only on support for an overall
system ensuring equal freedom for all.
Thus, the civil rights enterprise calls for us to become less distant
>from members of out-groups but also less close to in-group members. If
all men are to be brothers, then my brother can mean no more to me than
any other man. Experience bears out this relationship; the radical
decline in prejudice related to race, religion and gender has in fact
been accompanied by a radical decline in intimate affiliation as
revealed by such measures as household size, percentages of cohabiting
couples who are unmarried, age at first marriage, and the divorce and
illegitimacy rates.
The problem with these developments, of course, is that close personal
affiliation has far greater importance for human life than equalizing
the status of sociological categories. Problems that arise where it is
lacking have recently been discussed most extensively in connection with
illegitimacy, but they arise in other settings as well.
It appears that an adequate response to such problems (for example, to
failure to socialize children adequately) would lead to weakening or
abandonment of the commitment to civil rights as now conceived. A
society can not both root out prejudice and maintain general allegiance
among its members to personal ties on which they will stake all they
have. If we construe "hate" to include basing social organization to
any material extent on gender roles and stereotypes and ethnic ties,
then it is simply false that hate is not a family value.
Because of the way our national ideology has evolved, and because of the
shakiness of social peace in America, an abandonment of civil rights
would be a messier affair even than the current effort to end the
welfare state. It may be impossible to carry off; if so, the long run
prospects for the United States look yet messier. So in this respect,
as in others, the future unfortunately looks very interesting.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Feb 7 06:49:59 EST 1995
Article: 10582 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: a.s.c. reading list
Date: 6 Feb 1995 16:30:00 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 6
Message-ID: <3h64co$kcu@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
At one point someone compiled an annotated bibliography of conservative
reading matter from things suggested by readers of this newsgroup.
Does it still exist? Could someone post it?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Feb 7 06:50:00 EST 1995
Article: 10601 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: M. L. King and conservatives
Date: 7 Feb 1995 05:22:00 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 16
Message-ID: <3h7hk8$i51@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
What should be the attitude of conservatives toward Martin Luther King?
The established public view, with which mainstream conservatives
publicly agree, is that there is something wrong with anyone who
doesn't deeply admire the man and his legacy. On the other hand, what
he stands for (putting aside his personal strengths and flaws) is
government enforcement of radical egalitarianism. As a practical
matter, the meaning of his legacy is that the state is to ensure that
none of the constituents of personal identity other than will and
possibly technocratic merit have a material effect on one's place in
the world.
What can conservatives possibly do but reject such a legacy?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Feb 7 19:36:56 EST 1995
Article: 10605 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 7 Feb 1995 09:59:12 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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warrl@blarg.com (Donald Edwards) writes:
>"The foremost moral goals of American politics in recent decades have
>"been ensuring the material well-being of each individual and eliminating
>"the relation between social standing and such attributes as ethnicity
>"and gender.
>
>This is assuming that American politics has moral goals.
All politics short of absolute tyranny has moral goals. It's impossible
to carry on any activity involving discussion and voluntary cooperation
if there is not sufficient agreement on what things are worth pursuing
or avoiding. Also, if you reviewed all the pronouncements in recent
decades from people publicly recognized as having special expertise and
authority on public morality (leading academic theoreticians, mainline
churchmen, educators, jurists, newspaper editors, politicians who are
trying to be statesmanlike, etc.) I think you'd find that those two
goals hold a very prominent position. I don't think that the reverence
people profess for them is cynical.
>A friend of mine frequently references what he calls the Law of
>Institutional Decay, which says that the goals of any institution
>rarely match the goals of the founder for detectably longer than
>the founder continues to run the organization. The founder's
>goals are then superseded by the goals of preserving, defending,
>and enlarging the organization.
A founder who knows his business devises goals and institutions that
reinforce each other. For example, the effect of establishing welfare
rights and the sort of rights protected by civil rights legislation is
to make people less dependent on family, friends and neighbors and more
dependent on government bureaucracies and other large formal
organizations. Since such organizations thereby become more powerful,
it's natural for our national managerial elites and their allies and
apologists to promote such rights.
>"The latter goal, that of the civil rights laws, still can not be
>"questioned in public by anyone who expects to be taken seriously.
>
>I question whether equal civil liberties is indeed the goal of
>the civil rights laws. In fact I seriously do not believe it.
I said that their goal was "eliminating the relation between social
standing and such attributes as ethnicity and gender". That is of
course different from establishing equal civil liberties.
>"The problems relate to the moral connection between individual and
>"society. The civil rights enterprise calls for that connection to
>"change from one based on loyalty to particular persons and groups by
>"reference to which one knows what he is and should do to one based on
>"individual freedom of choice conditioned only on support for an overall
>"system ensuring equal freedom for all.
>
>The classical liberal position, with minor modification. The classical
>liberals identified this behavior as *mandatory* for government and
>law but merely *desirable*, not enforceable, for individuals.
>
>Unfortunately, the modern liberal position directly contradicts this.
>It calls for identifying people by the groups they are members of,
>not by their own attributes, and picking certain groups in preference
>to others -- and it by preference makes this behavior enforceable
>on individuals, with government included as an afterthought.
The modern liberal position is the natural development of the classical
one. The overriding goal is a system that maximizes equal individual
freedom of choice. The classical liberals took private property rights
for granted, so for them such a system was one in which every man could
do whatever he wanted with his own property.
Thereafter private property rights became viewed as subordinate to the
ultimate goal of equal freedom, a change that I think promotes the
coherence of the theory. As a result, we got first the welfare state,
which redistributed private property to give each person a more equal
share of the economic means of exercising his freedom, and then the
multicultural state, which attempts to redistribute other attributes of
social position. As a practical matter one's social position determines
what one can choose to do, so attempts to reduce the social status of
(for example) whites and enhance that of blacks seem to me no less
designed to promote equal freedom than taking money from the
Rockefellers and giving it to sharecroppers.
My own view, by the way, is that liberalism has reached a dead end
because it has become visibly destructive of its own ends, freedom and
equality, by becoming the ideology of ruling elites with less and less
connection to those they rule. I don't think it can reform itself
because it is ultimately incoherent: making freedom and equality the
ultimate guiding principles of politics makes self-governing
institutions impossible, but the alternative to self-governing
institutions is tyranny.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Feb 8 06:04:01 EST 1995
Article: 10625 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 7 Feb 1995 22:00:15 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 95
Message-ID: <3h9c3v$5m0@panix.com>
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griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>The decline in predjudice occured over a period when a plethora of
>undeniably atomising forces were in play.
Sure. The point was that the two (the decline in prejudice and the
atomizing forces) were essentially connected, not that civil rights
legislation is what initiated atomization. I do think that such
legislation reflects a moral point of view characteristic of an
atomized society and further promotes the development of atomization.
>Thinking that a rollback of much of the body of civil rights law will
>do anything to alleviate these problems, however, requires a credulity
>that I just cannot fathom.
Plainly as an isolated move it wouldn't, any more than cutting off
welfare for a particular unwed mother with no skills and no one she can
rely on for support would alleviate much of anything. I intended to
make the more indirect point that in the long run atomization causes
problems that are far worse than anything the civil rights laws are
aimed at, and that any reversal of atomization would involve things
inconsistent with those laws.
Atomization exists to the extent people feel they have no essential ties
to others. It disappears to the extent people have ties to particular
other people that they view as part of what makes them what they are.
It seems to me that the things on which such ties could reliably be
based (gender, kinship and ethnic identity are the obvious examples) are
things the civil rights laws attempt to eliminate as functioning social
categories.
>On more basic equal protection and rights issues, I'm certain that a
>rollback would only compound the atomisation, if only by civil
>violence.
It's hard to be certain about the future. As you comment in response to
my own worries about shaky social peace:
>Doing serious damage to the social peace of America would require
>distortions so extreme as to defy imagination.
So quite possibly my worries about the future are silly. On the other
hand, you also talk about "a hundred Bosnias" and say I'm being
sinister, so maybe you really aren't quite so confident.
If there is validity in both your concern that a rollback of civil
rights laws would lead to civil violence and my concern that civil
rights laws are at home only in atomized societies and such societies
don't last, then civil violence is indeed a possibility. I don't see
why that would compound atomization, by the way. It would mean
disintegration of the larger society, but the resulting fragments would
likely be more coherent internally than our present society.
>If maintenance of order requires the US turn it's back on the most
>basic of the classical liberal principles on which our great experiment
>has been based, then our troubles are far too great to be solved
>through mere appeal to child, kitchen, and church. A nation of our
>heterogeniety would splinter into a hundred Bosnias if we attempted to
>turn our backs on the path of Locke and Jefferson.
The problem, as I see it, is that liberalism evolves. Locke and
Jefferson would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
subsequent implementing measures, but it seems to me that those things
are legitimate developments in the tradition they symbolize and (as you
point out) can not easily or perhaps at all be reversed.
The fundamental viewpoint from which the article was written was that
liberalism eventually evolves into something unworkable. I spoke about
the civil rights laws to be able to make that point concretely. The
claim in essence was that such laws are an essential feature of an
advanced liberal society, and they are inconsistent with the conditions
for long-term social survival. I could have made the same point by
reference to other features of advanced liberal society; there's
nothing unique about civil rights laws. On the other hand, why not
talk about them? Everything else gets bad press now and then, so why
shouldn't they?
The view that liberalism eventually becomes unworkable of course does
not commit me to the view that there is any solution to the problem.
There may of course be solutions. I can imagine technical advances
making productive processes flexible enough so that the libertarian
approach becomes the most workable way to organize society. That would
provide an escape: the legal system would be Lockean, but since the
government would provide few social services and protections the social
system would be based on family and kinship loyalties and the like and
so would be decidedly non-liberal. There is, of course, nothing like
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Libertopia.
You found my article outrageous. Why? Do you think liberal society
will surely last forever? That people who doubt the value of civil
rights legislation are bad people? What bad thing do you think I'm
saying?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Feb 8 08:09:34 EST 1995
Article: 10644 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 8 Feb 1995 07:55:56 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 60
Message-ID: <3haf0s$17b@panix.com>
References: <3h3vbp$643@panix.com> <3h6t8n$eig@crl10.crl.com> <3h9c3v$5m0@panix.com>
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Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:10644 alt.discrimination:29075 alt.politics.usa.republican:47169 talk.politics.theory:41185
jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>I could have made the same point by reference to other features of
>advanced liberal society; there's nothing unique about civil rights
>laws.
It is nonetheless extremely interesting to reflect on the attitudes
behind civil rights laws. So far as I know, laws of general
applicability forbidding private discrimination on grounds such as
ethnicity and gender are a wholly recent development. In other times
and places no one considered such discrimination categorically wrong.
It was accepted as part of the fundamental order of society. In
contrast, today the accepted view is that there is something horribly
wrong with it and with people who engage in it.
What happened? One theory is that our society has taken a decisive step
forward in moral insight. That seems unlikely to me. I would expect
there to be something morally remarkable about times in which
revolutionary moral advances are made, and our times don't seem to
suffer less than others from moral self-satisfaction, triviality and
slackness. Also, I would expect great advances in social morality to
have general cultural benefits and result in improvements in the way
people deal with each other in daily life. So far as I can tell,
nothing of the sort has happened.
So the theory I'm left with is that the moral demand for civil rights
laws is not a generally applicable moral insight but rather a
consequence of a particular view of the social world and our place in it
that is at home in post-WW II society because of specific features of
that society. As I suggested in the previous post, those features seem
to be the same as the ones leading to what Dave Griffith calls social
atomisation. To the extent such atomisation exists--that is, to the
extent people feel they have no necessary connection to anyone in
particular--any attitudes and institutions that lead others to lump them
together with some particular group of people will seem arbitrary and
oppressive. Since under such conditions the sole necessary connection
among men is the legal order, they demand that the legal order be
revised to eliminate attitudes and institutions leading to
discrimination.
On this view, the moral claim that the principles of the civil rights
movement represent an enduring step forward in our society's moral
consciousness turns out to be pretty much the same as the social science
claim that henceforth atomisation will be the permanent condition of
society. Those who doubt that atomised societies will last will also
tend to doubt the moral claim.
Another issue is why the moral fervor people feel in connection with
civil rights is so intense and why opposition to civil rights seems so
monstrous. I'm inclined to explain that by reference to the moral
emptiness of an atomised society. Equality becomes compelling as a
moral conception when there are no substantive values recognized as
authoritative and so there seems to be no alternative to equality but
moral and social chaos. So it is natural for someone who accepts
equality as the fundamental moral principle to view those who reject it
as evil or crazy men who want to cast the world into a hell of
unrestrained aggression and violence.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Feb 8 14:56:47 EST 1995
Article: 10655 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 8 Feb 1995 12:12:34 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <3hau22$9pq@panix.com>
References: <3h3vbp$643@panix.com> <3h6t8n$eig@crl10.crl.com> <3h9c3v$5m0@panix.com> <3haf0s$17b@panix.com> <3haohu$1bu@blarg1.blarg.com>
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Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:10655 alt.discrimination:29089 alt.politics.usa.republican:47236 talk.politics.theory:41199
In <3haohu$1bu@blarg1.blarg.com> warrl@blarg.com (Donald Edwards) writes:
>It occurs to me that in this discussion, "civil-rights laws" are
>assumed to advance civil rights.
I was using the expression to mean "laws designed to eliminate the
relevance of ethnicity, gender and similar categories to the choices
and opportunities available to individuals".
It's difficult to avoid the slide from that definition into affirmative
action if human equality is presumed. You can't see opportunity (what
might happen), you can only see results (what actually does happen).
So if two groups of people are presumed equal and results are different
it's hard to avoid the conclusion that opportunities were also
different in some fashion and that equalization of results will
contribute to equalization of opportunities.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Feb 8 21:04:46 EST 1995
Article: 10671 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 8 Feb 1995 19:44:42 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 71
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Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:10671 alt.discrimination:29128 alt.politics.usa.republican:47428 talk.politics.theory:41229
griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>What you refer to as moral emptiness, I see as freedom. Not freedom in
>the sense of doing what one whims and grabbing for the goodies, but
>freedom in the sense of being truly allowed, as never before, to claim
>responsibility for one's own actions. The non-atomized societies rob
>the individual of the amazing, humanizing experience of true moral
>agency. Moral chaos? Certainly.
To be responsible is to be answerable. But to whom and by what
standards? It seems to me that a man can be responsible only if he
accepts the obligation of justifying his actions by reference to
standards he did not invent himself. Otherwise responsibility seems to
reduce to saying, "yeah, I did it and at the moment it happens that I
feel good [or bad or indifferent] about it". That doesn't strike me as
a kind of moral agency that much matters.
>But a profound and productive chaos, in which moral heights (and, yes,
>depths) can be found with no equal in the more the regimented and
>compartmentalized societies.
In chaos, how can heights be distinguished from depths be distinguished
>from trivia? It is hard to characterize chaotic events clearly enough
even to say what they are let alone judge them, and they're always
changing into something else anyway.
Moral heights presumably are reached in the same manner heights are
reached in other activities. Heights of painting, cooking, or
basketball playing are typically reached in situations in which those
activities have acquired considerable social coherence that is
maintained over time so that a tradition can grow up and be
strengthened and refined. I'm not sure why morality should be
different.
>Equality as the fundamental moral principle? Only because I know my
>fellow man is as capable as I of experiencing the literally
>transcendent impact of true freedom.
Now it appears that you believe there are moral principles that bind us
all after all, and that equality is an example of such a principle.
Your view seems to be that it is the capacity to experience freedom
that is the source of man's moral worth. Am I free to take the
dissenting view that it is the capacity to promote my personal
experience of pleasure that is the source of the moral worth of other
people, and act accordingly in all cases, or does freedom not extend so
far?
Also, you seem to believe that all your fellow men share equally in
capacity to experience the transcendent impact of true freedom. Is that
so? Different people have differing inclinations toward close and
secure personal relations on the one hand and adventurous independence
on the other. You seem to be saying that society should be organized to
suit your tastes in the matter. Why not organize society instead to
suit the tastes of some grandmotherly lady who's not very smart but is
very affectionate and trusting and because of the way her mind and
sensibility are constituted finds it difficult to think of her own
feelings and wishes in distinction from those of others?
>The chains of arbitrarily imposed fealty that you champion seem little
>better than the blood and craziness of social collapse (which is why I
>am a minarchist, rather than anarchist). One deprives me of life, the
>other of the ability to find my own purpose for that life.
The society you favor is based on a moral principle like any other. Not
everyone likes that principle, but you want to force it on everyone
nonetheless. Telling the little old lady I just mentioned that the
society you like is the society she's going to have to live in it and if
she doesn't like it that's tough strikes me as oppressive.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 9 10:38:17 EST 1995
Article: 3544 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.politics.white-power,alt.revisionism,alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Europe Awake
Date: 8 Feb 1995 21:11:20 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 17
Message-ID: <3hbtk8$mv5@panix.com>
References:
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix alt.activism:79292 alt.politics.white-power:2254 alt.revisionism:25210 alt.revolution.counter:3544
gwilson@earthlight.co.nz (Graeme Wilson) writes:
> The religious prop of the Old Order has been Judaeo-
>Christianity, a= n alien dogma of weakness and universalism which has
>rotted the soul of Europ= e for a thousand years.
This sort of claim seems odd to me. Christendom had a remarkably
splendid run for a very long time. It was an odd kind of rot.
>Organisation: The basic unit is the Lodge. At least 3 members may form
>a Lodge, and elect a Master/Mistress, subject to approval by the GM.
Master/Mistress? It almost sounds as if the Black Order has been
infected by the weak and universalistic doctrines of feminism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 9 10:38:26 EST 1995
Article: 10675 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 8 Feb 1995 21:13:28 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <3hbto8$ndi@panix.com>
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"chris.holt" writes:
>> So the theory I'm left with is that the moral demand for civil rights
>> laws is not a generally applicable moral insight but rather a
>> consequence of a particular view of the social world and our place in it
>> that is at home in post-WW II society because of specific features of
>> that society.
>
>I think you're taking a particular extension of these kinds of rights
>and making it seem more of a qualitative change than it is; it's part
>of a general trend
General trends have distinct stages. The French Revolution can be seen
as a continuation of a lot of things that had been going on for a long
time, but it was also the dramatic beginning of a new age. Ditto for
most major historical events.
People do feel the American civil rights movement and its aftermath as
a revolution. At the same time as that movement and essentially
associated with it a great many other things happened that transformed
American society in ways that are quite striking even from crude
indications like social statistics (e.g., those regarding crime, family
structure, sexual customs, trends as to wealth and poverty). I think
of "civil rights" as an idealization of certain aspects of that overall
change. Such things seem to me well worth discussing and analyzing as
constituting collectively a separate event.
>Just as extended families used to be needed to overcome the hardships
>thrown up by economic change in the past, some kind of neo-extended
>family structure will arise, in which small groups of adults will band
>together to form child-rearing units. That these will not be based on
>genetic similarity doesn't seem to me to matter very much; and in fact,
>it will be a consequence of the idea of universal civil rights that you
>seem to bemoan.
I'll believe it when I see it. Child rearing seems to me a problem for
liberalism. Children need to be taken care of by people who are devoted
to them and can be relied on to stay devoted to them to a degree that
liberal accounts of interpersonal relations can't account for.
Another issue is how lively the idea of universal civil rights will be
in the future. That idea seems to me to a large extent a creature of
the television age, which brought everyone face to face as part of a
single centrally-controlled electronic community. The Information
Highway may do it in through fragmentation and decentralization.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Feb 9 10:38:28 EST 1995
Article: 10692 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: M. L. King and conservatives
Date: 9 Feb 1995 05:44:08 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 15
Message-ID: <3hcrlo$nmu@panix.com>
References: <3hbp2m$dev@tadpole.fc.hp.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3hbp2m$dev@tadpole.fc.hp.com> patm@fc.hp.com (Patrick Murphy) writes:
>: As a practical
>: matter, the meaning of his legacy is that the state is to ensure that
>: none of the constituents of personal identity other than will and
>: possibly technocratic merit have a material effect on one's place in
>: the world.
> What a curious interpretation of the legacy...
The description is unconventional. A few counterexamples would help me
see what's wrong with it substantively.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 10 07:23:51 EST 1995
Article: 10714 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: M. L. King and conservatives
Date: 9 Feb 1995 15:57:47 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 52
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patm@fc.hp.com (Patrick Murphy) writes:
>: >: As a practical
>: >: matter, the meaning of his legacy is that the state is to ensure that
>: >: none of the constituents of personal identity other than will and
>: >: possibly technocratic merit have a material effect on one's place in
>: >: the world.
>
> From whence does "the state is to ensure that none of the
> constituents of personal identity other than will and
> possibly technocratic merit have a material effect on one's
> place in the world" come from?
A textual reference (remember that we're talking about a prophet here)
is King's requirement that people be judged by the content of their
character rather than the color of their skin. Add to that the
interpretation of that requirement by the movement at whose head he
stands and his readiness to call on the power of the state to secure
compliance with it, and you get what I said.
The content of one's character is of course the state of one's will.
Such phrases should not however be taken in an intolerantly moralistic
sense that privileges middle class values. They should be understood
in conjunction with "choice" and "access", the two great watchwords of
the political movement of which civil rights is part, both of which
mean that people should get what they want. So judging someone by the
"content of his character" is best understood as letting him have what
he wants as long as he is tolerant and willing to let other people get
what they want.
As to identity, the civil rights movement and its allies have quite
reasonably come to treat all aspects of social identity that can not
readily be changed (national origin, alienage, religious affiliation,
sex, sexual preference, marital status, illegitimacy, disability) as the
equivalent of skin color. To the extent that such things bear a
relation to representation in particular social positions, any
underrepresentation is viewed as a high-priority problem that must be
corrected. To permit such underrepresentation would in effect be to
permit society to judge people and assign them rewards based on things
like skin color.
There is of course a debate as to the degree to which "technocratic
merit" (a person's fitness to advance pragmatic organizational goals)
ought to affect one's place in the world. Civil rights advocates
generally seem suspicious of notions of "merit", but are willing to
allow them some effect as long as they don't interfere with the greater
goals of inclusivity and equal representation.
Still stunned?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 10 13:43:02 EST 1995
Article: 10759 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 10 Feb 1995 09:50:28 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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dellb@gpu3.srv.ualberta.ca (Brian Dell) writes:
>A violation of civil rights does not arouse my ardor like the spilling
>of my brother's blood or the besmirching of my beloved's name.
It does arouse the ardor of many people, though. Sometimes the act that
constitutes a civil rights violation is felt as the equivalent of the
spilling of a brother's blood or besmirching of a beloved's name. Black
people seem to feel that way about violations of the civil rights of
blacks.
Many people also feel disinterested revulsion and horror at violations
of civil rights as such. I think such feelings arise from the sense
that equality is the only principle standing between us and unlimited
aggression and chaos. The feelings are thus an indication that the
sense of a common social good has been lost and so that very major
social problems are not far off in any event.
>the communitarian argument is *deductive*; that is, the statement
>"atomization causes anomie" is not synthetic (not based on observation
>of empirical history) but is analytic (the very definition of identity
>is such that the statement follows).
Statement like "atomization (and therefore anomie) is the social basis
and goal of civil rights legislation" do strike me as all but true by
definition. On the other hand, someone might ask whether the concepts
have much connection to the things people see around them, so empirical
history is important.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Feb 10 20:22:21 EST 1995
Article: 10778 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.discrimination,alt.politics.usa.republican,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Will civil rights follow welfare?
Date: 10 Feb 1995 15:00:24 -0500
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Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:10778 alt.discrimination:29343 alt.politics.usa.republican:48242 talk.politics.theory:41314
griffith@crl.com (Dave Griffith) writes:
>>To be responsible is to be answerable. But to whom and by what
>>standards?
>
>Surely this is a rhetorical question.
Not at all. To say "I'm answerable because I'm answerable to myself",
and really mean it in the radical way you seem to intend, is rather like
saying you're going to test a thing by seeing whether it measures up to
the thing itself. I can't make sense of the operation.
>To yourself, and whatever standards you consciously and willingly
>adopt. Now this may seem to be an open invitation to narcissism and
>licentiousness, but it is not. Such calls to degradation are always
>present, no matter how many armbands one wears.
You refer to "narcissism", "licentiousness" and "degradation" as if
third parties could rightly judge the plans of life people adopt by
reference to those things. I don't see how that can be if standards
exist purely as a result of their adoption by a particular actor, and
then only apply to that actor. If someone was narcissistic, licentious
and degraded, and didn't care, where would the problem be from your
standpoint?
>You cannot escape responsibility by choosing someone else's prepackaged
>morality.
Or by choosing someone else's prepackaged political moral philosophy.
If yours has no more objective validity than Pat Robertson's, why base
the laws on yours rather than his? If on the other hand you believe
yours has more validity than his, I don't see why he can't make the
reverse claim and try to change the laws accordingly.
Another thing I'm not sure about is what status you attribute to the
quoted language. It looks like it's intended to be a moral principle
binding on everyone that is nonetheless not a prepackaged morality.
Are there any other such moral principles? If someone thinks "do the
will of God" is such a principle, how do you show he's wrong?
>>Am I free to take the
>>dissenting view that it is the capacity to promote my personal
>>experience of pleasure that is the source of the moral worth of other
>>people, and act accordingly in all cases, or does freedom not extend so
>>far?
>assuming that you stay within the thin film of rules necessary to keep
>all of this from devolving into blood and suffering, I won't stop you,
>nor willingly allow others to do so.
Of course I'll stay within a film of rules that can keep things in
order. Why shouldn't I, when the particular rule I have in mind is
"everyone has to do what I say"? Blood and suffering would be much less
prevalent than it is now if everyone observed that rule, so I don't see
why it can't by itself constitute the necessary "thin film of rules".
>The grandmotherly lady is perfectly capable of acting responsibily, of
>experiencing true freedom, through the acting consciously and willfully
>in her own grandmotherliness, rather than allowing herself to be
>drugged into it because it is expected of elderly ladies of working
>class and that's just how things are.
You seem to think that if people don't make conscious and willful
decisions, but instead have a way of life that grows out of the half-
conscious effects of experience and out of attitudes and habits absorbed
>from people they love and admire, they are slavish or drugged. Why are
you willing to take people seriously only if their thought processes are
those of computer programmers? The difficulties of AI suggest that
whatever the effort to make all reasoning and decision conscious and
explicit may give us it won't be human intelligence and judgment.
>If, on the other hand, the old biddy takes out her tire iron and goes
>but to bash some (blacks|socialists|Norwegians), we'll come to sword
>point. If you say that this is enforcing a moral principle, I have no
>problem with that. I would argue, however, that it is the weakest and
>least onerous of moral principles which a livable society could
>conceivably impose, and that any other choice of moral principle to
>impose would lessen freedom, probably drastically.
You speak as if freedom were some objective thing identical for all
observers. Not true. For each of us the freedom that matters most is
the freedom to live a life he can recognize as good. If the legal order
you would establish would make it harder for Pat Robertson's followers
to follow the way of life they recognize as good I don't see why they
should view it as maximizing freedom.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Camus sees sumac.
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
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