Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From bit.listserv.catholic Sat Oct 15 21:32:59 1994
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Is Social Justice Part Of Ethics?
Date: 15 Oct 1994 16:41:32 -0400
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Paul Halsall writes:
>I am not sure what you mean by "liberal" though. Are you talking about
>classical liberalism or what most Americans now mean by "liberal" (eg
>Ted Kennedy and co).
I meant the current usage, with John Rawls as the reference point.
>[Let me note in passing that I think there is - despite appearences -
>some connection between the two].
I think the current version is a natural development of the classical.
The classical idea was that every man should be able to pursue his good
as he saw it within a common neutral framework, the law of property and
contract. After a while people began to complain that the law of
property and contract isn't really neutral, so liberalism became the
view that social institutions should be arranged to treat the goals of
each person equally as far as possible. The ultimate criterion--the
equal right to pursue what one values--is the same, but the standard of
neutrality has with experience and political agitation become more
demanding.
>In either case, I do not hink that a monolithic view of "liberalism"
>can withstand much scrutiny.
My own view is that liberalism follows a coherent line of development.
It's not monolithic, of course.
>"Social Justice", however, has no special link with liberalism ...
Part of my suggestion was that by "social justice" the professor may
have meant "liberal social justice", which is the kind people usually
have in mind in America.
>Christian discourse on usury predates by a millenium any society in
>which "liberal" ideas can be said to have existed. In the context of a
>discussion of "usury" the professor simply had no right (although he
>may, as Lance points out, have had a pedegogical reason) to say "social
>justice is not part of *morals*".
Here I went wrong because I did not see the post Lance was responding
to. I wasn't following the usury thread, and it didn't occur to me to
connect a discussion of social justice, which refers to the overall
distribution of benefits within society, to something like usury, which
relates to contracts between particular parties that are judged abusive
or extortionate. If by saying "social justice is not part of morals"
the professor meant "no contract can be overreaching" I am surprised as
well. I just looked at Dwayne's most recent posting, and I have to say
that I don't know what the professor's theory was. Possibly he might
want to identify "morals" with permanent rules applicable to human life
as such regarding which the Church doesn't have to defer to other
experts, and distinguish rules regarding economic life, which changes a
lot, from rules regarding human reproduction, which changes less. I
don't know, though, and what I said wasn't really to the point.
>The Torah is fairly egalitarian in its views. The Jubilee
>redistribution of wealth is notably ignored by modern fundamentalists,
>but is an aspect of OT law which seems clearly based on moral
>considerations (but perhaps not).
Sure, but it was part of a system intended to apply to the members of a
particular community organized by reference to a particular end. The
prophets didn't want Assurbanipal to come in and take all the land in
wealth in the Middle East and divvy it up equally among everyone. That
kind of central administration and control would have made it more
difficult for the Jews to maintain their integrity as a separate
community.
>Second: even if "social justice" had a purely liberal ring to it (which
>it does not), it would still be out of order in a class, or general
>discussion, to exclude liberal analysis - one of the great achievements
>of western civilization.
I would (speaking in a vacuum) have taken the professor's statement to
be the equivalent of "I think the liberal concept of social justice is
dumb". That's not excluding liberal analysis from the discussion, it's
taking a position on its validity and putting it to the side for the
time being. Certainly in America in 1994 a general discussion of
ethics that leaves out the claims of liberalism would be incomplete.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with what actually happened.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Oct 16 05:48:40 EDT 1994
Article: 2422 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter,alt.gobment.lones,alt.history.what-if
Subject: Re: Oldies But Goodies, the "Empire" Thread
Date: 15 Oct 1994 21:20:43 -0400
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In dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) writes:
>Chaining
>different regions together as an economic unit causes the smaller
>regions to get the wrong signals in the market, and they decline.
Is there an explanation in libertarian theory why this happens?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Oct 17 07:11:29 EDT 1994
Article: 2425 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: IAQ #1: Liberalism
Date: 16 Oct 1994 06:38:14 -0400
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Stuart writes:
>Are people happier under liberalism? Liberals would presumably claim
>that a more contented, wealthy, tolerant, nation are among the benefits
>of their policies.
I paged through a book a couple of years ago that compiled surveys
showing how reported happiness varied among different countries and
groups of people. As I recall, free political institutions made people
happier, increasing wealth made people happier up to a point, and
religious faith and stable marriages and the like made people happier.
So on the face of it, the earlier stages of liberalism that eliminate
authoritarian government and create the consumer society make people
happier, but when too much liberation starts seeping into people's
personal lives they get unhappy again. So maybe liberalism is a party
that's fun for a while but breaks up when people start throwing up in
the corner and getting into fistfights. It has no internal principle
of moderation so that's the way things end up.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Oct 17 07:11:30 EDT 1994
Article: 2426 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: IAQ #2: Haiti
Date: 16 Oct 1994 06:40:30 -0400
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Stuart writes:
>Does any real strategic imperative underlie the US invasion of Haiti in
>support of the past (and now present) president, an extreme left wing
>liberation theologist who hates the West and who is regarded by his CIA
>minders as mentally unbalanced? Is it purely because the US is troubled
>by the arrival on its shores of hundreds of unwashed Haitian refugees,
>many of whom are (whisper it gently) black, or is there something more
>to it than this?
Mostly it's keeping the refugees out and to some degree keeping the
Congressional black caucus and other black political supporters of the
administration happy. Black complaints are embarrassing to Democrats
because they justify the possession of power by the claim to use it on
behalf of the oppressed, and it's accepted doctrine that blacks are
oppressed. Also, there's a lot of sympathy among active Democrats for
extreme left wing liberation theologists. Hillary Clinton is said to
have a strong religious streak, and the President himself is reported to
have said at a speech in a black church recently that it was God's will
to pass the crime bill and that his goal was to build the Kingdom of God
on earth.
>What criteria are there for US, and indeed Western, military
>intervention in foreign states? The Haitian military regime was
>unpleasant, but it was certainly not unique in that. It did not,
>however, pose any strategic or commercial threat to anyone other than
>its own people. Were Haiti in the south Pacific or in Africa, there
>would be no question of intervention
The location of Haiti is a large part of it. The U.S. has always felt
rather free to intervene in the affairs of small nearby countries. One
interesting feature is that the Left has always believed that the U.S.
controls what goes on in other countries, and now that we have an
administration with a lot of leftists they tend to view the continued
existence of any government they don't like as proof that there is a bad
U.S. policy in place that should be changed however necessary to get rid
of the bad government.
>But what are we to make of a US administration that apparently cannot
>even knock off a dump like Haiti without cloaking its actions in a
>figleaf of internationalism?
They're leftwing lawyers who can't conceive of the legitimate use of
force except in support of some universal scheme of law and government.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Oct 17 07:11:37 EDT 1994
Article: 47912 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Is Social Justice Part Of Ethics?
Date: 17 Oct 1994 07:11:08 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <941015125807.204097b3@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU> Paul Halsall writes:
>The
>Jubilee redistribution of wealth is notably ignored by modern
>fundamentalists, but is an aspect of OT law which seems clearly based
>on moral considerations (but perhaps not).
Another comment, with a question not specifically directed toward Paul:
Leviticus xxv, which establishes the Jubilee year, essentially forbids
sale of a fee interest in land. You can lease land for a period as long
as the period until the next Jubilee and then it reverts. So like the
prohibition of usury Leviticus xxv forbids particular contracts that are
judged oppressive.
These Old Testament prohibitions differ from social justice. Social
justice holds that it is not enough for dealings between individuals to
be just. Otherwise *social* justice would be unnecesary. Social
justice requires the overall distribution of benefits resulting from
those dealings to satisfy some separate standard, in the liberal view
one based on equality. Traditionally, charity was thought to cover
situations in which just dealings between individuals did not prevent
bad things from happening. Social justice goes beyond charity by
creating definite and enforceable rights. The rights are rights
against society at large rather than against individuals, and they
can't be defined or vindicated unless society is able to act
collectively through a government that establishes social welfare
programs and the like.
Since the specific definition of social justice and the decision to
respect it must be made collectively or not at all, the primary moral
actor with respect to social justice is the government, and the
individual moral obligation is the obligation to support a government
committed to social justice and possibly to take part in the relevant
political debate. It seems to me that all this creates difficulties
for treating support for social justice (as opposed to support for
charitable activities) as a Christian virtue in a society that rejects
justifications for government actions based on specifically Christian
principles. If support for what is called social justice in a liberal
state is an essential part of Christianity, then it is an essential
duty of Christians to support the development and legal enforcement of
a non-Christian moral viewpoint.
So much for the comment, which I hope was at least comprehensible. The
question: what in Catholic teaching regarding social matters or
church/state relations clarifies this stuff?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!zip.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!mantis!mantis!not-for-mail Tue Oct 18 06:43:17 EDT 1994
Article: 5593 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 18 Oct 1994 10:25:30 +0100
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treeshrew@aol.com (TreeShrew) writes:
>>"Quantum mechanics is true, subject to the overriding principle that
>>every year after 1995 U-235 will be non-radioactive on Bill Clinton's
>>birthday"
>
>I do not observe the world to work that way.
What distinction has there ever been between observing the world to work
in accordance with the foregoing and observing the world to work in
accordance with quantum mechanics?
>You need to define what you mean by "aesthetic". You reduce all
>statements of fact to esthetic statements, and that requires a pretty
>loose definition that is simply not valid in the context of your
>argument.
All statements of fact, I have argued, depend on propositions that are
neither logically true nor statements of sensory experience. Such
propositions can't be demonstrated to be true, so one's judgment that
they are true seems to involve in the end reliance on one's sense that
they feel more true than their negations, which also might conceivably
be true. That sense of rightness can't be reduced to anything less
subjective, so it seems to be in the nature of an aesthetic evaluation.
>But the evaluation of the theory as "good" comes only with experience-
>-from repeatedly noticing the high success rate of similar theoretical
>assumptions.
The notion seems to be that one starts having theories without making
evaluations, and then with time develops the notion of "good" by
observing a lot of theories that have turned out to be better than other
theories. I don't see how that can be.
>My reference to self-opinion as the only internal motivation for
>leading a moral life meant that, in any line of justification, self-
>opinion is where the buck stops. Its the only end of the yellow brick
>road of "Why?'s" from within the person.
My point was that self-opinion can't be where the buck stops because
one can't form an opinion of himsself except by reference to standards
he understands as preceding the opinion.
>But are the following concepts acceptable: "the Tao is not humane, it
>has no concern with us, we are merely sacrificial dolls", "the Tao is
>without virtue, because the highest virtue has no virtue", "the Tao is
>equally with the bad man and the good man, the Tao does not have
>favorites", "the best ruler (i.e. Tao) acts without thinking, and has
>no need to be known, nor asks for recognition", "the Tao is without
>desire".
These statements sound to me like attempts to describe what God is in
himself and in absolute terms, which can't be done. I would think a
Taoist would agree as to the impossibility of the attempt.
>Good for whom?
Good categorically. To say that God is the creator is pretty much to
say that created things are good.
>Arguably, the ability to plan to kill someone and carry it out is a
>good thing, the physical skill in torturing prisoners is a good thing,
>and so on.
Quite possibly. I'm inclined to say that the ability to plan and act
effectively are good things. To the extent those abilities are limited
to destructive goals then the ability is missing something and to that
extent is bad.
>good is not only teleologically dependent and quite confusing as a
>result, but it is relative (what is good for one may be bad for
>another, like the guy that got my seat on the doomed flight).
You seem to believe that whether something is good depends on actual
consequences to particular persons and can be determined only from the
separate points of view of those persons. You also seem to believe that
if an act (spinning on one's toe) is described in a way that doesn't
specify consequences then the act is neither good nor bad. I don't
understand any of that.
>But you must at least grant that the traditional concept of God is
>*not* compatible with Taoist concepts of perfection.
The most basic point at issue seems to be whether God is best conceived
as separate from creation or as identical with the universe. Both views
lead to problems, but I can get farther with the former.
>I do believe that worms make observations, and develop increasingly
>accurate theories about their universe, and act on them, all without
>having or using any such concept as "good" or "bad" -- and there are
>now adaptive robots that can do the same thing.
Worms no doubt act in increasingly adaptive ways. If you say that shows
they implicitly have theories then I'll say that shows they implicitly
make evaluations.
>"X happens because Y happens" is all that you observe, and all you need
>to know?
No one limits his theorizing to ordering observable events.
>>> "Also, we have no reason to think that the world is invariantly orderly
>unless we are justified in treating the status of the "invariably orderly"
>theory as the best theory as evidence that it is true." <<
>
>That is correct.
I'm not sure why you haven't just given away the argument.
>Note that even throwing "God" in there does nothing to stop this. After
>all, why god?
In order to stop the infinite regress of explanations, and therefore to
have an explanation that explains, you need a necessary being that
somehow causes its own necessity. The attempt to form a notion of God
is from one perspective the attempt to form a notion of what such a
being would be like.
>It may very well be that no other universe can exist--making invariant
>orderliness a 100% probability, and thus not a "chance" event.
You are still talking about the possibility of other universes in a way
that seems odd given your apparent belief in the contingent and _a
posteriori_ nature of reason. One problem I have with your general
outlook, insofar as I understand it, is that it seems to require one to
restrict the things of which he speaks in a way I don't think can be
carried out.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Oct 18 06:43:31 EDT 1994
Article: 8572 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: More on the coming apocalypse
Date: 17 Oct 1994 16:14:39 -0400
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pajerek%telstar.kodak.com@kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>[theory previously made familiar by Mr. Kalb deleted]
Cheer up! I'm bored with discussing it here and if I continue to post
I'll most likely talk about other things.
>>Another possibility, of course, is an era
>>of political fragmentation and local war, tyranny and anarchy.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Fragmentation may very well turn out to be an orderly way to resolve
>stresses within 'liberal' societies. If a society is too big to
>accommodate certain conflicts, then why not break up into smaller
>units, each of which has a more coherent value structure?
On the whole, that's my practical suggestion wherever possible. That's
my reason for opposing antidiscrimination laws, rejecting the notion of
social justice, wanting to reduce the centralization of government
functions whenever possible, and so on.
Fragmentation, of course, is often disorderly and it's hard to control
the process because by hypothesis people's values aren't coherent
enough for them to cooperate very easily politically. Also, I'm not
sure why, if there's no good way within a political society to foster
coherence of values (which is what your language seems to suggest),
fragmentation shouldn't become more and more radical with time.
>The main problem, however, with this and many other of Mr. Kalb's
>articles is the basic opposition of a 'liberal' society, which has no
>values, and a 'conservative' society, which presumably does.
A liberal society plainly has values. I would say maximal equal
satisfaction of people's preferences is one such value and social
justice (adjusting the distribution of benefits in society so the
distribution conforms to a rational scheme) is another. One might even
say that a conservative society as such has fewer values, since there
are fewer clear master principles around to trump the values that evolve
among the members of such a society from their experience and dealings
with each other. My objection to liberal society doesn't have to do
with whether it has values but the nature of the life to which those
values give rise.
>The plain fact is that values cannot be forced on people; if someone
>doesn't believe in God, no amount of social coercion can make her
>believe. She may *say* that she does, in order to reduce the pressure,
>but the underlying lack of belief is still there.
The point of interest, of course, is how a group of people living
together can come to have reasonably coherent values that support a
generally stable, satisfying, and otherwise recognizably good way of
life. If you believe that people value whatever they individually
happen to value and that's all that can be said about it, and in
particular that a society's legal regime and generally-accepted
expectations as to how people will speak and behave ("coercion") have
nothing to do with the matter, then that view makes no sense to me. If
you don't believe that a little more explanation would help.
>A society in which everyone actually does subscribe to the same value
>system is a wonderful thing, but such a society cannot deal effectively
>with those who, in good faith, disagree, except by expulsion (or
>extermination).
That's true in the case of a society that tries to adhere to the
principle that each person's values be treated with equal respect. If
such a society ever existed I imagine that the process of fission you
describe would go on indefinitely. In other societies all that's needed
is social arrangements, which could be as simple as the force of settled
public opinion, sufficient to make particular values authoritative (that
is, capable of being presumed valid in public life). For people who
disagree it becomes rather difficult to make their voices heard and
taken seriously, but such people aren't normally expelled or killed.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Oct 18 06:43:39 EDT 1994
Article: 34452 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.radical-left,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.usa.republican,alt.politics.economics,alt.politics.greens,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Kings, social collapse, and republics.
Date: 17 Oct 1994 16:18:24 -0400
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Xref: panix alt.politics.radical-left:27364 alt.politics.libertarian:53334 alt.politics.usa.republican:16025 alt.politics.economics:8749 alt.politics.greens:3792 talk.politics.theory:34452
pajerek%telstar.kodak.com@kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>This, however, is changing, as technology makes it possible for
>individuals to be producers as well as consumers.
>
>Any future political system will have to operate in this climate, which
>is one reason why anarcho-capitalism is not an unreasonable forecast.
It's worth noting that it's healthy and well-educated adults who are
the best producers and are also best at defending their property and
asserting their contractual rights. Healthy and well-educated adults
don't create themselves, though. Accordingly, I would expect a society
that in legal form tended toward anarcho-capitalism and thus had no
state systems of child support, education or health care to tend
socially and culturally toward familism. (That's on the assumption
that social institutions generally evolve to maximize production.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Oct 18 15:56:01 EDT 1994
Article: 8579 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Crucial Issue in November
Date: 18 Oct 1994 15:52:03 -0400
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edrahn@gate.net (Ed Rahn) writes:
>The ruling class of any society will favor the accumulation of power in
>it's own hands, whether that class is the patricians of Rome, the
>nomenclatura of the late, unlamented Soviet Union, or the professional
>politicians of the U.S.
A comment that's rather tangential to the article:
Are professional politicians really a ruling class? An important
difference between them and the others you mention is that they stay in
power only if other people choose to support them. They're
market-driven--they spend most of their time and energy drumming up
support among people who aren't politicians and not ruling. So if we
have a true ruling class it consists of people who are in a position to
lend effective political support. It would also include people who are
in a position to influence the legal rules that professional
politicians don't make.
Such people include leaders of groups that tend to vote as blocs,
political contributors, judges, bureaucrats, legislative staffers,
political activists, and advocacy groups. They also include the people
who set the terms of public debate and package and distribute the
relevant information, such as media people, experts of various sorts,
and other people in the knowledge and communications industries.
"Ruling class" suggests a certain amount of cohesion and collective
action. So our ruling class, if we have one, can't include all the
people I just mentioned but only a subset among them who recognize their
goals as consistent enough to form an informal party and who
collectively are influential enough so that over time they can get what
they want.
The question of whether we have a ruling class and if so who that class
is upsets people, so I won't argue the point. It seems to me we do, and
that it's now the target of a lot of popular dissatisfaction that is
rather unfocused because our ruling class dominates the organs through
which public opinion is formed and expressed. It also seems to me that
the most important issues in American politics during the next couple of
years will be whether that dissatisfaction will continue and find
coherent expression, and if so what form that expression will take. It
should be interesting.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Oct 20 07:01:38 EDT 1994
Article: 2451 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Practical request from the trenches
Date: 19 Oct 1994 21:34:24 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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I received an email from someone who is active in local Republican party
politics and wants to read something that will help him make the
argument to his fellow Republicans, who evidently are rather libertarian
in their leanings, that government should promote some common good
beyond individual liberty and material prosperity.
I suppose one thing that would help would be arguments from American
history, for example an account of the Constitutional Convention that
emphasizes sources for the Constitution other than Lockean liberalism.
I know such things are available but I've never read any. Also, I
think Russell Kirk wrote something called _The Roots of American
Order_, which I've never read. Does anyone know whether that would
help? Any other ideas?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Oct 20 20:05:09 EDT 1994
Article: 22090 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: The Bell Curve/Race and IQ: Poor Science
Date: 20 Oct 1994 14:04:42 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 40
Message-ID: <386bfq$q2@panix.com>
References: <3864ho$7q8@tuba.cit.cornell.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
daa1@crux3.cit.cornell.edu (David Alcocer) writes:
>First, while differences in certain superficial characteristics (such
>as skin color) evolve quickly, changes in brain structure and cognitive
>capacity are known to take much longer--on the order of hundreds of
>thousands of years.
The issue is a difference of 15 IQ points in average intelligence. Why
do changes in brain structure that take hundreds of thousands of years
to develop have to be implicated? Differences of 15 IQ points are quite
common within families, I believe.
>Second, genetic diversity among the races is miniscule: more than 85%
>of the genetic variation found among individuals occurs among
>individuals within the same race.
Would it be inconsistent for (a) 85% of the variation of intelligence
found among individuals to occur among individuals of the same race, and
(b) race A to be on average a standard deviation more intelligent than
race B? (I don't know how variable the distribution of intelligence
would have to be for such a result.) It's worth noting that in spite of
the smallness of the genetic difference between the races there are
races (Tutsis and pygmies) that differ by more than a standard deviation
in height. So maybe this point really reduces to the first, that
intelligence for some reason is more stable than skin color or height.
>The most compelling part of Holt's argument, though, is that Murray and
>Herrnstein fail to control for a key, non-genetic determinant of IQ:
>prenatal fetal development [ ... ] He cites a 1961 study--the only one
>that controlled for this factor--of offspring of black and white US
>soldiers and German mothers during the Allied occupation.
In view of the importance of evidence that racial IQ differences are not
genetic in origin, it's puzzling that this study is the only one that
controlled for the factor. Aren't other studies comparing (for example)
prosperous and well-educated blacks with not-so-prosperous and not-so-
well-educated East Asians relevant?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Oct 20 20:05:11 EDT 1994
Article: 22116 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,alt.politics.correct,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: Deepest Genetic Division in Humanity (was Re: "Limited" race mixing)
Date: 20 Oct 1994 19:54:25 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 13
Message-ID: <386vvh$2uu@panix.com>
References: <386led$oem@chinacat.cwa.com> <386r9j$nh8@news.doit.wisc.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix alt.discrimination:22116 alt.politics.correct:21455 alt.fan.rush-limbaugh:167314
In <386r9j$nh8@news.doit.wisc.edu> johnson@whitewater.chem.wisc.edu (Art Johnson) writes:
>The deepest genetic division in humanity is between
>a couple of small African populations and everyone else.
Out of curiosity, what are those populations? Is the genetic division
reflected in any very noticable difference in characteristics?
Also, is Mr. Lathrop's original point valid if only the "everyone else"
branch is taken into account?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Oct 21 19:47:46 EDT 1994
Article: 2460 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Practical request from the trenches
Date: 20 Oct 1994 21:56:32 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <38774g$c32@panix.com>
References: <384hf0$p2j@panix.com> <1994Oct20.224644.29740@news.vanderbilt.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
rickertj@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (John Rickert) writes:
> My one-line reply to what libertarians advocate is, "What if people
>don't want to be libertarians?" What are they going to do? Force them?
>That would be a contradiction to their fundamental doctrine.
>
> The proper solution, as I see it, is to consider the municipality,
>town, village, community, or the like as the basic unit of political
>life rather than the individual.
Oddly enough, something seems to be evolving that should satisfy both
you and the libertarians. While rummaging around in the library last
week I ran into an article in _The Nation_ or some such publication
bemoaning the rise of condominium or cooperative communities with
provisions in the bylaws saying "if you do any of the following vaguely
defined stuff that the Board (elected by the residents) doesn't like you
get bounced". Many such communities apparently strike a deal with the
local municipality to provide many municipal services (protection,
garbage collection, streets and utilities, etc.) The result is the
equivalent of a municipal government that's not bound by the principles
of privacy, autonomy, due process and so on that our courts have been
evolving for the past 30 or 40 years. Apparently there are a *lot* of
these communities. Maybe the courts at some point will apply their
theory of what the Constitution requires to these communities, just as
they do to private shopping malls in the case of free speech, but who
knows? If things get bad enough in the cities maybe judges will
eventually permit people to establish public order elsewhere by
contract. After all, even judges need to live somewhere.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Oct 21 19:47:47 EDT 1994
Article: 2463 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Practical request from the trenches
Date: 21 Oct 1994 10:01:35 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 18
Message-ID: <388hjv$r82@panix.com>
References: <384hf0$p2j@panix.com> <1994Oct20.224644.29740@news.vanderbilt.edu> <38774g$c32@panix.com> <3883sc$qg6@nyx.cs.du.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3883sc$qg6@nyx.cs.du.edu> nmonagha@nyx.cs.du.edu (N.O. Monaghan) writes:
>From idle curiosity, what Constitutional provisions are applied to
>shopping malls?
>Is there something similar which applies to airports?
Courts have ruled that private shopping malls are functionally similar
to the marketplace, the forum, the agora, or whatever, and so "rights
of free expression" apply. The same applies to airports, only more so
because they're more likely to be publicly owned.
I should say that I'm not sure of the exact status of the law on this.
It's quite a while since I looked, and when I did look there was some
uncertainty on the matter.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Oct 21 19:47:48 EDT 1994
Article: 2464 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: New Republic's apologia
Date: 21 Oct 1994 10:11:35 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <388i6n$1bv@panix.com>
References: <380r26$18a@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <3884gb$qvi@nyx.cs.du.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3884gb$qvi@nyx.cs.du.edu> nmonagha@nyx.cs.du.edu (N.O. Monaghan) writes:
>> The notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in intelligence is
>> [is] an idea that has fueled the most monstrous
>> crimes in human history
>What were these so-called crimes - I have never heard
>of any based on the argument "We are more intelligent than you, so we
>deserve to kill you."
They're obviously referring to the stuff the NSDAP did. I suppose the
notion is "the Nazis wanted to do away with all the Jews, and people
thinks the Jews are smarter than anyone else, so that must have been
part of why they wanted to do it". Even if the comment's true, it's
silly. You might as well say "the notion that at some point someone
might have exploited and oppressed someone else is an idea that has
fueled the most mostrous crimes in human history".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Oct 21 19:47:53 EDT 1994
Article: 8608 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: What's your favorite conservative publication?
Date: 20 Oct 1994 21:59:00 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <387794$cqd@panix.com>
References: <386bdp$o4l@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
jlaplant@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (John R La Plante) writes:
>1. What is your favorite publication, and why?
Why stop at one? My fave right-wing rags are:
_Chronicles_. They put out theme issues that cover quite a range of
mostly cultural topics. On the whole they're interested in trends
rather than investigative reporting or current events. They're the
foremost paleo mag, but they publish quite a variety of writers, from
the Genoveses (Eugene and Elizabeth Fox-) on the left to Jacob Neusner
on things Jewish to various Serbs on things Balkan to assorted
Southerners grousing about the War of Northern Aggression. The editors
are grouchy and all sound like they have toothaches, and they *hate* the
neocons.
_The Public Interest_. On the whole, neocon social scientists writing
stuff that summarizes or is closely tied to empirical social science.
If you need some reac stats, it's the place to look. So far as I can
tell, it's a reasonably respectable mag from a scholarly standpoint
although it's not really a scholarly mag (no footnotes, which is too
bad) and it's written for public policy types rather than the masses.
Its circulation is less than 5000 copies. It's edited by Irving Kristol
and Nathan Glazer, and they have a distinguished editorial board that
includes Senator Moynihan, Charles Krauthammer, Charles Murray, James Q.
Wilson, and others.
> paleo, libertarian,
> neo, populist, eclectic? (and while we're at it, can someone
> tell me the difference between them, particularly what is a
> 'paleo?')
The neos are mostly a particular group of former liberals, mostly in New
York or Washington or at prestige universities, who tend still to be
like the liberals in their cast of mind and fundamental intellectual
loyalties. If someone writes for _Commentary_ he's a neo. The paleos
are other conservatives who mostly never were liberals and never got a
seat on the gravy train. The paleos basically think the neos aren't
really conservatives, they're too closely tied to the establishment, and
they hijacked the conservative movement and weaseled their way into the
good graces of all the sugar daddies. For anyone who's interested in
this sort of thing, I'm told that paleo Paul Gottfried put a lot of dirt
he dug up about neocon funding into the second edition of _The
Conservative Movement_.
The libertarians on the whole are doctrinaire classical liberals rather
than conservatives. A lot of them are quite proud of being culturally
"left" and fond of talking about how disgusting conservatives are. They
can speak for themselves, though--there are thousands of them posting in
every political group on usenet. There's a splinter group of
paleolibertarians that's rather aligned with the paleoconservatives.
Anyone who's interested can read about it in the _Rothbard-Rockwell
Report_ (Murray Rothbard and Llewellyn Rockwell), which features
energetic abuse of neocons, left-libertarians, and the Clintons and
sometimes interesting analysis as well.
Moving on from the directly political to more rarified intellectual
conservatism, _Modern Age_ and _The New Criterion_ are worth looking at.
MA, founded by Russell Kirk, is basically essays by paleos and paleo-
symps on literary and cultural topics. TNC, edited by Hilton Kramer, is
sort of a neo equivalent but with far more coverage of the performing
arts and current intellectual events in general.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Oct 21 19:47:55 EDT 1994
Article: 8612 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: What's your favorite conservative publication?
Date: 21 Oct 1994 15:18:00 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <389458$rkh@panix.com>
References: <386bdp$o4l@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In anderson@osl10a.erim.org (Rod Anderson) writes:
>National Review (paleo-, I guess) fairly erudite, eastern
>establishment brand of conservatism.
Since they're eastern establishment they're not paleo. They do try to
bridge the gap.
>First Things - (religious right) Very thoughtful articles dealing with
>religion in public life. Richard John Neuhaus is editor and
>contributor.
They're sort of the Romish or Romish-symp wing of the neos. Neuhaus
and Peter Berger, who also writes for them regularly, are also
contributors to _Commentary_ along with I think some of their other
writers. There's a great deal of personal bad blood between Neuhaus
and the _Chronicles_ crowd. When _Chronicles_ had occasion to refer
favorably to an article in FT recently they referred to it as a "quirky
little newsletter".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Oct 23 18:06:59 EDT 1994
Article: 2479 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Practical request from the trenches
Date: 23 Oct 1994 09:58:16 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 60
Message-ID: <38dq5o$kl7@panix.com>
References: <384hf0$p2j@panix.com> <1994Oct20.224644.29740@news.vanderbilt.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) writes:
>: My one-line reply to what libertarians advocate is, "What if
>: people don't want to be libertarians?" What are they going to do?
>: Force them? That would be a contradiction to their fundamental
>: doctrine.
>
>If you want to subject yourself to fascism, communism, feudalism or
>democracy, no libertarian will lift a finger to oppose you. It is when
>you claim that your neighbor has given some kind of transcendent
>consent to fascism, communism, feudalism or democracy, which trumps any
>explicit dissent he might make, that we object.
Have all your neighbors given their transcendent consent to
libertarianism? The libertarian answer may be that there doesn't have
to be transcendent consent since libertarianism is the requirement that
there be actual consent before a transaction can take place.
That answer leaves out a lot that's important. No one consents to be
born into and raised in a libertarian society, or to be educated to fit
into that society, which normally would mean indoctrination in the
libertarian viewpoint. Even as an adult, the consent of any particular
individual doesn't have much to do with the nature of the social world
in which he lives. That social world is the outcome of history and of
the interaction of myriads of actors, none of whom need specifically
intend to create a world of that kind.
The social world each of us lives in has a powerful effect on us. We
can announce we don't care about what other people think and that we
will make our own decisions, and on some particular points we can defy
convention and strike out on our own, but it's tiring and few of us are
able to do it on many points for long. Also, the decisions it is
possible for us to make are constrained by our social world, since most
of the things most people care most about have to do with their place in
that world. Individuals choose among the goods that exist in their
society, but it is rare for them to be able to choose that a good of a
particular kind *shall* exist. It's impossible to devote your life to
defending the honor of your king if there's no one with a generally-
recognized historical claim to be king and no definite and generally-
recognized conception of honor.
>What are political rights? How are they expressed if not through
>individual consent?
Political rights are rights to consider aggregate outcomes of people's
self-interested decisions that are not specifically intended and to
promote or inhibit them by law depending on whether they are judged good
or bad. They are expressed through the actions of whoever are the
accepted social authorities. They can not be expressed purely through
individual consent because they have to do with goods and evils that
need not be specifically intended by individuals.
>If you want to see how libertarianism would homogenize society, read
>Neal Stephenson's novel SNOW CRASH. :)
Count de Tocqueville's says a lot on the subject in his _Democracy in
America_.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Oct 25 18:42:39 EDT 1994
Article: 2488 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: AT Fears Chip Berlet Article
Date: 25 Oct 1994 08:24:51 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 6
Message-ID: <38itej$q4c@panix.com>
References: <214951Z24101994@anon.penet.fi>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Does anyone know whether the Pat Buchanan quotes in the article were
authentic? I haven't been keeping track of what he has been saying
lately, and I found the quotes surprisingly radical.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Oct 25 18:42:41 EDT 1994
Article: 2490 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: libertarians and Objectivists
Date: 25 Oct 1994 15:45:01 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 12
Message-ID: <38jn7t$skg@panix.com>
References: <1994Oct20.224644.29740@news.vanderbilt.edu> <384hf0$p2j@panix.com> <894544762wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) writes:
>[Randians] regard the Libertarian Party as evil because it lacks an
>Official Epistemology.
What do they think the cause of that defect is? If it weren't
something pretty bad, I suppose they would have decided that it showed
only that the LPers are on the right track but haven't gotten there
yet.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Oct 26 20:06:26 EDT 1994
Article: 46095 of alt.config
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.config,alt.admin.misc,news.groups,alt.skinheads,alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: **PROPOSAL** alt.white-power
Date: 26 Oct 1994 07:36:32 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <38lf00$gtp@panix.com>
References: <38f2o3$11g@thor.inlink.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Xref: panix alt.config:46095 news.groups:96909 alt.skinheads:13104 alt.revisionism:19801
In tlathrop@netcom.com (Tom Lathrop) writes:
>>This group would be for the discussion of white culture and ways to
>>preserve it. It also would discuss anything that affects the way
>>white americans live, such as affirmative action.
>However I think a much better name would be alt.nationalism.white.
I second the creation of the group, with the revised name. It seems to
me an alt.nationalism.* hierarchy would be useful, of which the
proposed group would be part. Even if they're not necessarily the wave
of the future, separatist movements of all sorts (white, black,
Vermonter, Quebecois, Welsh, Scottish, Basque, etc., etc., etc. have
become very important and it makes sense to me to have places set aside
for discussing them. It's true the group would likely be the locus of
flame wars, but they're taking place anyway and why not get them out of
other newsgroups?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Oct 26 20:06:29 EDT 1994
Article: 22422 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: The Bell Curve/Race and IQ: Poor Science
Date: 26 Oct 1994 07:13:23 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <38ldkj$drr@panix.com>
References: <38c8dm$j07@pipe1.pipeline.com> <38kojj$8lf@dockmaster.phantom.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <38kojj$8lf@dockmaster.phantom.com> verve@phantom.com (Johnny McCrory) writes:
>Leon Kamin conclusively showed that the data in the major studies
>indicating a correlation for IQ in twins--by Sir Cyril Burt, mainly--was
>faked. See his book, _The Science and Politics of IQ_ (Penguin Books,
>1977) for more detail.
On Burt, see Arthur Jensen's "IQ and science: the mysterious Burt
affair" in the Fall 1991 _The Public Interest_. It appears that the
case against Burt was trumped up by personal and ideological enemies.
In any event, I understand that since Burt's death a number of other
studies of twins have been carried out that substantiate Burt's claims.
I recall fairly recent news coverage of some such studies, although the
coverage concentrated on things other than IQ (e.g., identical twins
separated at birth who had the same job and hobbies, had the same pets
with similar names, etc., etc., etc.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Oct 26 20:06:32 EDT 1994
Article: 22425 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: The Bell Curve/Race and IQ: Poor Science
Date: 26 Oct 1994 08:21:26 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 58
Message-ID: <38lhk6$lv6@panix.com>
References: <3864ho$7q8@tuba.cit.cornell.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3864ho$7q8@tuba.cit.cornell.edu> daa1@crux3.cit.cornell.edu (David Alcocer) writes:
>A thoughtful rebuttal to this argument appears in a piece by Jim Holt
>in the October 19 New York Times[:]
>First, while differences in certain superficial characteristics (such
>as skin color) evolve quickly, changes in brain structure and cognitive
>capacity are known to take much longer--on the order of hundreds of
>thousands of years.
The issue is a difference of 15 IQ points in average intelligence. Why
do changes in brain structure that take hundreds of thousands of years
to develop have to be implicated? Differences of 15 IQ points are quite
common within families, I believe.
>Second, genetic diversity among the races is miniscule: more than 85%
>of the genetic variation found among individuals occurs among
>individuals within the same race.
In spite of the smallness of the genetic difference between the races
some of them (Tutsis and pygmies) that differ by more than a standard
deviation in height. So maybe this point really reduces to the first,
that intelligence for some reason is genetically more stable than skin
color or height. Also, would it be inconsistent for (a) 85% of the
variation of intelligence found among individuals to occur among
individuals of the same race, and (b) race A to be on average a
standard deviation more intelligent than race B? (I don't know how
variable the distribution of intelligence would have to be for such a
result.)
>The most compelling part of Holt's argument, though, is that Murray and
>Herrnstein fail to control for a key, non-genetic determinant of IQ:
>prenatal fetal development [ ... ] He cites a 1961 study--the only one
>that controlled for this factor--of offspring of black and white US
>soldiers and German mothers during the Allied occupation.
In view of the importance of evidence that racial IQ differences are
not genetic in origin, it's puzzling that this 33-year-old study is the
only one that controls for the factor. Aren't other studies comparing
(for example) prosperous and well-educated blacks with
not-so-prosperous and not-so-well-educated East Asians relevant?
It's worth noting that if the 1961 study shows that better prenatal
care would substantially increase the IQ of whole populations, its
importance dwarfs everything else in this whole discussion. Why spend
hundreds of billions on schools, prisons, welfare, etc., etc., etc.
when a small fraction of that spent on prenatal care would do far more?
I can't help but think that if the study had such importance more
would have been done with it.
>It's a terrific article. Too bad it will receive only a fraction of the
>attention given to "The Bell Curve" and other studies of its ilk.
Cheer up. Judging by the editorial page of the _New York Times_ and
other sources the anti-Murray hatefest is well under way.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Oct 26 20:06:35 EDT 1994
Article: 22440 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: The Bell Curve/Race and IQ: Poor Science
Date: 26 Oct 1994 15:24:14 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <38macu$jrh@panix.com>
References: <3864ho$7q8@tuba.cit.cornell.edu> <38lhk6$lv6@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In atai@ida.org (An-Jen Tai) writes:
>> >The most compelling part of Holt's argument, though, is that Murray and
>> >Herrnstein fail to control for a key, non-genetic determinant of IQ:
>> >prenatal fetal development [ ... ] He cites a 1961 study--the only one
>> >that controlled for this factor--of offspring of black and white US
>> >soldiers and German mothers during the Allied occupation.
>As described by Mr. Alcocer, the study's
>results provide some evidence that racial differences in median IQ may not
>be genetic in origin. It does not tell us anything about which
>environmental factor is likely to be important.
Holt's view on the point you address in your second sentence seems to
be the contrary of yours. I don't know enough about the study and
others that have been done to arbitrate the issue between him and you.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Oct 28 16:50:43 EDT 1994
Article: 22564 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: The Bell Curve/Race and IQ: Poor Science
Date: 28 Oct 1994 14:41:18 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <38rgke$hrj@panix.com>
References: <38rd6m$2e5@pipe2.pipeline.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <38rd6m$2e5@pipe2.pipeline.com> white@pipeline.com (James White) writes:
>>On Burt, see Arthur Jensen's "IQ and science: the
>>mysterious Burt affair" in the Fall 1991 _The Public
>>Interest_. It appears that the case against Burt was
>>trumped up by personal and ideological enemies. In any
>>event, I understand that since Burt's death a number of
>>other studies of twins have been carried out that
>>substantiate Burt's claims. I recall fairly recent news
>>coverage of some such studies, although the coverage
>>concentrated on things other than IQ (e.g., identical
>>twins separated at birth who had the same job and
>>hobbies, had the same pets with similar names, etc.,
>>etc., etc.)
>This is an outright lie.
What are you talking about? Anyone interested should look at the
article. It's a recent article in a reputable publication. If you
have reason to think there's something wrong with it, please let me
know.
As to subsequent studies, the one people talk about was done at the
University of Minnesota and no doubt is referred to in the Bell Curve
itself.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Oct 28 16:50:54 EDT 1994
Article: 2505 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: November Chronicles
Date: 27 Oct 1994 21:03:18 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <38pikm$pk0@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
What's going on at _Chronicles_? It used to be that Tom Fleming and Sam
Francis were only grouchy. Now Sam's writing articles bemoaning the
absence of a legitimizing myth of violence on the American right and
ending:
It is probably counterproductive now to start shooting federal
judges, bureaucrats, and politicians who lie their way from one
election to another, but it's certainly not too early to start
making a little list and letting them know who's on it.
For his part, editor Tom says he's never tired of quoting Jefferson's
proclamation that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to
time by the blood of patriots and tyrants" and allows as how
As frightening and destructive as Mao's cultural revolution must
have been, it was a very sensible, even necessary device to prevent
the revolution from becoming institutionalized.
All this in "a magazine of American culture". I suppose it probably
belongs there. But whatever happened to the jolly stuff they used to
have, like "Letter from the Lower Right"?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Oct 29 20:43:09 EDT 1994
Article: 49569 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Catholic Liberals
Date: 28 Oct 1994 20:24:27 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <38s4nr$gaa@panix.com>
References: <74325@rnd.STERN.NYU.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <74325@rnd.STERN.NYU.EDU> khalvers@rnd.STERN.NYU.EDU (Kimberly Halverson) writes:
>American capitalism (a la Ronald Reagan), which means laissez-faire economics,
>implies permissive libertine morality and vice versa. This is what both
>conservatives and liberals in this country refuse to see.
Depends on the relation between law and morals. If allowing people to
do things implies a moral judgement that those things are OK, you're
right, and it seems to be a consequence that Christians can't approve
of a liberal legal order.
One possibility is that a libertarian legal order, by making it
impossible for people to rely on legal entitlements to get them
through the practical difficulties of life, would lead people to rely
on each other and so promote the development of mutual responsibility
and small-scale institutions (the family comes to mind) that may be a
better setting for the moral life than the institutions characteristic
of the welfare state.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Oct 30 06:47:23 EST 1994
Article: 2525 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: IAQ #2: Haiti
Date: 30 Oct 1994 02:22:04 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <38vhis$rb3@panix.com>
References: <38avsq$cbi@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In dgard@netcom.com (dgard@netcom.com (!)) writes:
>In any event, breakup seems inevitable, as does the birth of a smaller,
>more powerful, but far less meddlesome European-American nation.
Are there any useful historical precedents to look to? My impression
is that when different peoples are jumbled together geographically then
a breakup on ethnic lines is usually a bloody mess. I suppose I'm
thinking mostly of the partition of India, the establishment of the
State of Israel and subsequent events, and the last 100 years in the
Balkans.
One possibility would be a looser political structure than we have now.
Something closer to the federalism and limited government of the former
American republic would be one pattern. Others might be the Swiss
cantonment system and the old Turkish millet system, neither of which I
know anything about.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Oct 31 18:47:41 EST 1994
Article: 2534 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Practical request from the trenches
Date: 31 Oct 1994 09:54:54 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <3930fu$64f@panix.com>
References: <1994Oct22.065855.3320@news.vanderbilt.edu> <1994Oct27.212551.26910@news.vanderbilt.edu>
dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) writes:
>The relevant question is not just "will there be externalities," but
>is their cost greater or less than the costs, both direct and indirect,
>of attempting to balance them?
What counts as a cost? If I think the entertainment industry degrades
public taste and you don't like my scheme for regulating it, would you
debate me about how much my scheme would improve public taste and what
the costs would be, or would your position be that degradation of public
taste can't be an externality because it doesn't keep people from
getting what they want?
Also, are there limits other than cost/benefit analysis on legitimate
means for dealing with externalities? Societies often deal with
externalities through informal standards of conduct that the government
takes into account and respects but doesn't create. For example, there
used to be strong stereotypes and moral prejudices that governed
relations between the sexes (don't do it before you're married, a man
should support his family, etc., etc., etc.) and their decline has had
lots of negative externalities. That decline has been promoted to some
extent by legal developments such as the rise of the welfare state and
various feminist and civil rights measures. If Pat Robertson led a
movement to restore the stereotypes and prejudices of the past, would
the degree to which government should cooperate and support such a
movement be determined by weighing costs and benefits? If so, who would
do the weighing?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Oct 31 18:47:43 EST 1994
Article: 2535 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: "In Defense of Elitism"
Date: 31 Oct 1994 09:56:27 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 36
Message-ID: <3930ir$6i1@panix.com>
References: <075318Z31101994@anon.penet.fi>
HARVEY C. MANSFIELD writes in the WSJ:
>His target is egalitarian nonsense in our treatment of blacks, women,
>Indians, children, readers, theatergoers, even voters [ ... ] And
>various categories of the oppressed, who are mostly spared criticism in
>our public discourse, less so in private, will see how they look to an
>unprejudiced and candid observer [ ... ] "Some people are better than
>others." That is the first in the series of "home truths" Mr. Henry
>delivers throughout his book, all of them devastating reminders that
>wishful theory must be adjusted to fact. Other examples: Black English
>"suggests that the speaker is ignorant or stupid"; "studying the
>quotidian existence of bygone peasants and kitchen trulls" will tell us
>little; "you could eliminate every woman writer, painter, and composer
>from the cave-man era to the present moment and not significantly
>deform the course of Western culture." [ ... ] It is ridiculous to
>allow a deaf-mute to enter an oratory contest; the result is to demean
>oratory and destroy the contest. [ ... ] What happens if blacks
>continue to score lower on most standardized tests, or if women never
>quite learn how to crash through the glass ceiling? If such
>difficulties appear, Mr. Henry's defense of elitism turns into defense
>of a certain elite--pretty much the one we have now. Either that elite
>will be flattened and conquered by the increasingly oppressive
>application of affirmative action, or it will survive all tests and
>thus vindicate the reactionary stereotypes that have been used in the
>past to deny equal opportunity.
Interesting--it seems that at Harvard as well as at _Chronicles_ the
reacs have decided there's no point in trying to remain respectable.
Better sooner than later, I think. Does anyone know anything about
Professor Mansfield's situation at Harvard? A great many people there
must find his views obscene, although the place may have too much
institutional self-respect to allow any very serious repercussions.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Oct 31 18:47:46 EST 1994
Article: 2538 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: IAQ #2: Haiti
Date: 31 Oct 1994 18:31:49 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 17
Message-ID: <393up5$8sd@panix.com>
References: <38avsq$cbi@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <38vhis$rb3@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In dgard@netcom.com (dgard@netcom.com (!)) writes:
>>My impression
>>is that when different peoples are jumbled together geographically then
>>a breakup on ethnic lines is usually a bloody mess.
>The break up of the old Soviet Union is one example. (Actually 9 or 10
>examples)
>The split of Czechoslovakia was peaceful.
But in those cases most people already lived in ethnic homelands.
That's not the case in the United States.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Nov 2 06:30:56 EST 1994
Article: 2546 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Left-wingers and CR (was IAQ #2: Haiti)
Date: 1 Nov 1994 13:16:35 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 43
Message-ID: <3960m3$n8v@panix.com>
References: <1994Oct31.212326.35418@hulaw1.harvard.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Adam Dylan Hefty writes:
>There's a sense in which all modern society can be refered to as
>"liberal," and in this sense both Maggie Thatcher and Bill Clinton are
>liberals. I don't know whether you folks would consider yourselves to
>be liberals in this broad sense (I suspect from what I've now read that
>you wouldn't), but at any rate, you won't find a stronger enemy of
>liberalism in this sense than a true leftist.
The whole point of speaking of counterrevolution is that the revolution
has won and liberalism has been thoroughly institutionalized in modern
society. Therefore conservatism isn't good enough any more--there's not
enough in modern society that isn't liberal to be worth conserving.
Leftists strike me as people who try either to carry liberalism one step
further (extending the demands of autonomy and equality in some way) or
to square circles (for example to combine inclusiveness, equality,
autonomy, and community).
>My sense is that there are some real, interesting commonalities between
>reactionaries (which is what I guess you are) and communitarian
>leftists.
I think that's so.
>I imagine that we wouldn't agree at all on the free market, which I am
>against and you seem to be for. Silly me. But maybe other differences
>would arise out of that.
The view of the free market among CRs is mixed. I don't think any of
them want to do away with it altogether, but none of them make
allegiance to it their first priority.
>While you're at it, if somebody has the time and wherewithal to
>explain, are you really counter-revolutionaries? If so, what
>revolution are you countering?
The French revolution and its progeny. The modern transformation of the
world into a universal rational machine to serve the ends of economics
and power politics. Have you looked at the FAQ?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Nov 2 21:11:02 EST 1994
Article: 2559 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: "In Defense of Elitism"
Date: 2 Nov 1994 14:44:51 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 110
Message-ID: <398q7j$ibc@panix.com>
References: <075318Z31101994@anon.penet.fi> <549279767wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>I was reading today of the chairman of a British company who is paid
>145 times as much as what used to be called his 'hands'.
>
>Given that it probably requires a minimum IQ of around 70 to hold down
>a job as a 'hand', what is the evidence that persons with an IQ of
>10150 exist?
>
>Conservatives and counter-revolutionaries cannot justify existing or
>desired social inequalities on the basis of natural inequality; the
>natural inequalities are far too small for that.
I'm not sure what your argument is. If you compare my ability and
Horace's ability to use language with that of a new-born baby you'll
find that Horace and I are more similar than different. On the other
hand, people who take an interest in the use of language pay infinitely
more attention to the _Sapphics_ than to anything I could ever write no
matter how hard I tried. Is that disproportion a social construct with
no sufficient basis in relative capacity?
Suppose it is most efficient to organize an enterprise in a strictly
hierarchical way, with one man at the top making all the major
decisions and everyone else carrying out orders with very limited
discretion. In that case what the man at the top did would have an
enormous effect on the success of the enterprise, much greater than
what any other single person did. Even very slight improvements in the
way he did his job would do far more for the organization than anything
any other employee could do. It would then be very important for the
enterprise to engage as good a man as possible for the top job. Under
such circumstances it seems to me that even a very slight difference in
native gifts could be worth paying a great deal for.
As I said, though, I'm not sure what kind of justification you're
looking for.
>They must rather be justified on the grounds that a society with
>unnatural inequalities is a superior organic system to one without, or
>that it benefits the mass of people at or near the bottom more than an
>egalitarian society would.
Leaving the word "unnatural" out, it seems to me that most people
(other than Nietzsche and property rights absolutists) who justify
inequalities do so on some such grounds. For example, in the example
of the chairman his high salary would be justified in the same way as
the payment of large sums for improved machinery, on the grounds that
the expenditure increased the profits of the enterprise as a whole and
so benefited all involved. That's an economic justification of the
sort that classical liberals and libertarians like. From what I
understand of the book its author seems sympathetic to such
perspectives. Conservatives and CRs are typically also receptive to
"organic society" theories.
>It is extraordinarily difficult to study the quotidian existence of
>bygone peasants, because there is usually very little evidence about
>it. For the same reason it is probably impossible to study that of
>kitchen trulls for most periods in the past.
I was under the impression that there was a great deal of scholarly
interest today in the daily life of ordinary people in the past. The
evidence includes things like archaeology, parish registers, stuff that
survived by chance like records of interrogations by the Inquistion,
and lots of theorizing and ideology. Is that impression a pure
misconception on my part?
>It is _impossible_ for a deaf-mute to enter an oratory contest.
You share Bill Henry's perspective, then. I believe the proposal was
for the deaf-mute to submit a videotape of himself giving a speech in
American Sign Language in substitution for the audio tape everyone else
was required to submit.
>> one might ask what happens if whole
>> groups prove to be inferior. What happens if blacks continue to
>> score lower on most standardized tests,
>
>But the whole group doesn't score lower on standardized tests; rather,
>the _average_ of the group members' scores is lower.
Presumably that was what was meant, since nothing in the discussion
hangs on the correctness of your interpretation. The issue, of course,
is whether the presumption in current American law and social policy
that disproportionate ethnic representation demonstrates discrimination
on some ground not related to fitness is a valid presumption.
>There are, of course, reasonable explanations or justifications for
>the social utility of women's not passing the 'glass ceiling'. Lack of
>ability is not one of them.
The issue raised by the reviewer was not "ability" but "inferiority".
One could have equal ability but be inferior with respect to willingness
to sacrifice personal relations to ambition or personal goals to
organizational and career ones.
>The origins of egalitarianism lie in Christianity, not in Marxism.
Christ didn't have much to say about politics apart from observing that
one could render unto Caesar what was Caesar's and still render unto God
what was God's. Most Christians, beginning with St. Paul, have not
thought that social distinctions and inequalities are inconsistent with
their faith. So it's not unreasonable to attribute radical secular
egalitarianism to something more recent and specific than Christianity.
>You can do better than this, Mr. Yggdrasill.
I'm sure we all can.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Nov 2 21:11:03 EST 1994
Article: 2561 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Sweating the Details
Date: 2 Nov 1994 14:45:58 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <398q9m$ik1@panix.com>
References: <044304Z02111994@anon.penet.fi>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
an101936@anon.penet.fi (Yggdrasill) writes:
>The embryonic model for the breadkaway state is the modern
>gerrymander. It is a POLITICAL district that twists and turns
>throught the countryside, taking in a house here, a neighborhood
>there, based on the particular voting characteristics of the
>household.
>
>There is absolutely no reason why a breakaway state needs to have
>straight borders or to be a contiguous land mass. In this age of
>modern electronic communications, a breakaway state can and
>should be a checkerboard that extends to neighborhoods sharing
>cultural traits.
I can't help but wonder if something like what the libertarians want
would be enough for your purposes. Some sort of overall political
structure to repel invasions and handle environmental problems might be
useful to you. Within that structure people could in effect set up
separate societies contractually based on whatever principles they think
will work. Should you and Anton Sherwood join forces?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Nov 5 15:28:59 EST 1994
Article: 2585 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: "In Defense of Elitism"
Date: 5 Nov 1994 09:22:11 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 90
Message-ID: <39g4ej$q08@panix.com>
References: <075318Z31101994@anon.penet.fi> <549279767wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <823600548wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> If you compare my ability and
>> Horace's ability to use language with that of a new-born baby you'll
>> find that Horace and I are more similar than different.
>
>But the arguments from 'natural' to social inequality are used to
>justify differences between adults, not between adults and new-born
>babies.
Sure, but you mentioned IQ and questioned whether A, who got paid 150
times as much, had an IQ 150 times higher. The zero point on the IQ
scale, as I understand the matter, indicates a mental age of zero.
>But he wasn't exceptionally well paid for writing them, was he?
Who knows how much he got from Maecenas and Augustus? I suspect he got
at least 150 times as much as the average poetaster. Besides, I thought
your point had to do with social inequalities in general, of which
differences in fame are certainly one.
>And much of the difference is due to differing interest and experience,
>not to relative capacity.
No doubt the same could be said as to other social inequalities.
>> Suppose it is most efficient to organize an enterprise in a strictly
>> hierarchical way, with one man at the top making all the major
>> decisions
>I doubt whether there is any real evidence for your protasis either.
I presented the extreme case to make the point clearer. I agree that
direct evidence as to which organizational structures are most efficient
is probably hard to come by. The fact that an arrangement is actually
accepted by self-interested people who have other alternatives is some
evidence on the point, and I'm not sure there's any other source of
evidence that's good enough to be worth basing decisions on. (I'm
assuming that economic efficiency is what's desired.) In the case of a
publicly-held company, if there were lots of greedy people outside the
company who thought that profits could be noticeably improved by
slashing payrolls at the upper levels the enterprise could become the
target for an unfriendly takeover.
>Companies in East Asia, where extremes of reward are far less than
>those in America and Britain, have in the long term been significantly
>more profitable.
Different business cultures have different advantages. I would expect
the most innovative companies, that make their way by decisions that
can't be based on consensus or made by committees, to be more dependent
on who the top man is and what he does than companies that emphasize
high quality and low costs in an industry that's already fairly well
established.
>> I was under the impression that there was a great deal of scholarly
>> interest today in the daily life of ordinary people in the past.
>
>There may be interest, but that's not the same as a glut of evidence.
What's the discussion about, anyway? The author said "all this stuff
about bygone peasants and kitchen trulls doesn't tell us much". You
don't seem to disagree.
>There is a long tradition of Christian social criticism and
>egalitarianism ranging from Salvian, through medieval radicals, through
>the Anabaptists of Munster and the 17th-century Levellers, to 19th
>century Christian Socialists. All precede Marxism. Without them, and
>without the underlying undercurrent of ideas of divine justice that
>they exploited, the Marxist appeal to egalitarianism would have had no
>force.
There's also a long tradition of Christian submission to the powers that
be and of placing one's hopes in another world. Truly new departures
are rare, so no doubt most things that happen in the West could be shown
to have a long Christian tradition behind them. That being the case,
pointing at Christianity isn't a good explanation of particular things
that happen, such as the "denial of nature" that Henry apparently
believes stems from Marxism. By "denial of nature" I suppose Henry
means grossly exaggerating the degree to which the world we experience
is socially constructed and therefore amenable to social reconstruction.
To me that seems an error more characteristic of Marxism than
Christianity.
Pointing to Christianity might explain something if Marxism had no
appeal in the non-Christian world. That hasn't been the case, though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Nov 5 15:29:02 EST 1994
Article: 50316 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Would I Lie To You?
Date: 5 Nov 1994 09:23:59 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <39g4hv$q9k@panix.com>
References: <9411050207.AA22723@acad.udallas.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Lance Simmons writes:
>It seems to me the purpose of speaking is to allow one's auditor to
>share in one's own grasp of reality, however limited that grasp might
>be.
If I think that the most important part of my grasp of reality is my
grasp of the Good, it seems to follow that I should always tell people
those things that tend to make them share my values.
>When the Nazis come to my door and want to know if there are any Jews
>in my house, what is it that I want to say to them? I want to say to
>them that, given what _they_ understand by the word "Jew," there aren't
>any Jews here, or anywhere else for that matter!
Suppose you invite them in for a cup of coffee so you'll have time to
figure out what to do and they confide in you. One of them says "I
really don't see why we're rounding up and murdering those people who
are generally referred to as Jews and who refer to themselves as Jews,
but a job's a job." Another says "Don't you see? The government has
decided that noble lies and myths are the basis of all social order, so
they've decided to create the myth of The Jew to promote social
solidarity and emphasize the virtues opposed to the vices they attribute
to The Jew. They plan to convince people of the validity of the myth by
tormenting and exterminating actual Jews, who (as you observe) are
simply those persons socially identified as such." The third says "Jew,
shmoo, the Oberst just said to round up the people on the list and we've
got them all except Anne Frank. You know where she is?"
What do you tell them?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Nov 6 08:27:08 EST 1994
Article: 50350 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Would I Lie To You?
Date: 5 Nov 1994 18:22:41 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <39h441$pik@panix.com>
References: <9411051823.AA20551@acad.udallas.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Lance Simmons writes:
>If my view of the Good was in no way one-sided, then it _would_ follow
>that I should always tell people those things that tend to make them
>share my values [ ... ] The crucial claim I am relying on here is that
>one's grasp of the Good need not have transcended all one-sidedness in
>order for one to be able to discern that _some_ perspectives already
>are rationally defeated.
I think I've lost track of the argument. Your original claim, I
thought, was that to lie is to use language in a way that reduces the
grasp of reality of the person to whom you are speaking. Thus, even
though Anne Frank was upstairs it would not be a lie to say "there are
no Jews here" to someone who by "Jew" meant "one who is essentially evil
by reason of ethnicity" because there would be in fact no one like that
in the house. Is your point that it would equally not be a lie to say
"Anne Frank isn't here" to someone who by "Anne Frank" meant "someone
whom I intend to kill" if you judge the person's reason to be patently
insufficient? If so, the line of thought has been stretched beyond the
point of comprehension, at least for me.
I suppose another question is whether your line of argument justifies
or rather defines out of existence pious fraud in general if one is
sufficiently convinced of the truth of the belief to be inculcated.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Nov 6 09:25:06 EST 1994
Article: 2598 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Italy
Date: 6 Nov 1994 09:24:56 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <39iovo$dah@panix.com>
References: <39h80s$2g7@news.panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Everywhere and Nowhere writes:
>Has anyone been following the news coming out of Italy lately? It seems
>that it might be instructive. Many of the disagreements at play here
>seem to be writ large there and are being worked on in practice.
For that matter, anyone know a good source of info? I get the _New York
Times_, and they don't deal very well with developments that don't fit
neatly into their scheme of things.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Nov 6 14:12:09 EST 1994
Article: 2599 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Left-wingers and CR (was IAQ #2: Haiti)
Date: 6 Nov 1994 09:26:04 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <39ip1s$dhd@panix.com>
References: <1994Oct31.212326.35418@hulaw1.harvard.edu> <3960m3$n8v@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) writes:
>: >what
>: >revolution are you countering?
>
>: The modern transformation
>: of the world into a universal rational machine to serve the ends
>: of economics and power politics.
>
>Economics mis- and narrowly understood, of course.
I agree with you on that point, although you may not agree with my way
of agreeing with you. Economics begins with the things individuals
want, and studies how they are aggregated and satisfied through
cooperation and exchange. As such, it is usually thought to be an
empirical social science that concerns itself with people's preferences
as empirically manifested. I claim that properly understood it concerns
itself with what people want when their wants are rightly construed,
which is the Good. Some might think this view of True Economics is
somewhat off the rails ...
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Nov 6 14:12:11 EST 1994
Article: 2600 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Sweating the Details
Date: 6 Nov 1994 09:27:22 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <39ip4a$dkv@panix.com>
References: <044304Z02111994@anon.penet.fi> <398q9m$ik1@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) writes:
>We claim that's a selling point of libertarianism: that non-libs can
>set up their enclaves far more easily in Libertaria than we can do
>anywhere else.
>
>Unfortunately, most people don't understand this selling point, so it
>doesn't sell. Jeff Riggenbach, Professor of Misanthropology and
>Curmudgeon-General of the Revolution, has a theory to explain this.
What's JR's theory? Mine is that people think social institutions and
culture model themselves rather directly on legal arrangements, so that
laws that don't specify much about what people should do will give rise
to a culture that values individual autonomy more than anything and
social institutions that promote the same. Most libertarians believe
that as much as anyone; when they describe Libertopia they present a
realm of unlimited individual choice.
My own view is that restraints must come from somewhere, and in a
society in which the laws don't provide the restraints other
institutions will arise to do the job. Tocqueville's discussion of the
role of religion, conventional morality, and public opinion in America
is illuminating on the point.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Lewd I did live, & evil did I dwel.
(the first recorded palindrome in English)
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Nov 7 03:55:30 EST 1994
Article: 50446 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Would I Lie To You?
Date: 6 Nov 1994 15:01:23 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <39jcmj$33n@panix.com>
References: <9411061834.AA21195@acad.udallas.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Lance Simmons writes:
>>Is your point that it would equally not be a lie to say
>>"Anne Frank isn't here" to someone who by "Anne Frank" meant "someone
>>whom I intend to kill" if you judge the person's reason to be patently
>>insufficient?
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Insufficiency would not be enough, since my own reasons for holding
>what I hold are often insufficient. The requirement is much stronger:
>I have to myself be in possession of a rational refutation of their
>perspective, and that refutation must already be "in place," that is,
>it must be something the person I'm talking to has or could have
>access to. Hence, it would be like someone coming up to me and asking
>if there is any dephlogisticated air in a particular container.
Your view seems to be that if someone asked you "is Anne Frank in your
house" and you believed he was going to kill her for reasons that had
been subjected to public rational refutation then you wouldn't be lying
to say "no". I really don't see the analogy to asking about
dephlogistated air, and personally need a little more explanation before
I will be able to recognize your definition of "lying" as legitimate.
Suppose it isn't even a Nazi, it's just a census taker who's asking for
the names and (among other things) ethnic and religious affiliations of
the people in the house, and the info will be used for many normal
purposes but the local Gestapo office will see it too. What do you
answer? Does it matter whether the census taker knows the info will be
reviewed by the Gestapo?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Sex at noon taxes.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Nov 7 06:38:54 EST 1994
Article: 50500 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Would I Lie To You?
Date: 7 Nov 1994 04:50:59 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <39kta3$3a0@panix.com>
References: <9411070158.AA23398@acad.udallas.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Lance Simmons writes:
>I guess I'm relying on a strong thesis of meaning holism: (1) we always
>interpret each others' utterances according to our best available
>knowledge of the others' whole web of beliefs, and (2) because beliefs
>cannot be essentially private, there is not an essentially-hidden
>private meaning to any utterance.
The thesis appears to assimilate utterances to a whole web not only of
beliefs but also of intentions, conduct and institutions. Linguistic
acts seem to become hard to distinguish from other acts, and to speak
truth seems to become a matter of dealing with people in a way that
promotes the greatest good. I know that's not what you said or want to
say, but I'm unclear why on your account such high standards (public
rational refutation) must be met before statements that most people
would call lies become truths on that account.
Another query--lying does not seem worse to me than intentional
homicide. People accept that intentional homicide is sometimes
justifiable. Why the inclination to be more strict in the case of
lying? Or could one say that what is usually called justifiable
intentional homicide is not homicide at all because an individual life
has no irreducibly private reality but rather must be seen as part of a
web of institutions and activities that determine what it is?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Sex at noon taxes.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Nov 7 07:19:28 EST 1994
Article: 2610 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: the nature of economics
Date: 7 Nov 1994 07:19:19 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <39l607$erc@panix.com>
References: <39ip1s$dhd@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) writes:
>Unfortunately, instinct and tradition suffer from a paradox in changing
>times. If a tradition is too new, it has not stood the test of time.
>On the other hand, if a tradition is too old, it may not fit the modern
>world, in which case it will soon be extinct - and we cannot know in
>advance whether it will go extinct.
What can you do? You make the best judgment you can and go ahead based
on that. I don't think the open-endedness of tradition is a greater
problem than the openendedness of the factors that bear on particular
practical decisions generally.
The point of paying attention to tradition is not that such attention
will finally permit the construction of a scientific decision-making
procedure. It's more a recognition that good decisionmaking and the
good life generally are a matter of having the right habits and
attitudes and such things can't easily be reasoned out but must evolve
through experience.
Congratulations on your endorsement by the _Examiner_, by the way.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Sex at noon taxes.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Nov 7 15:16:31 EST 1994
Article: 2611 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Sweating the Details
Date: 7 Nov 1994 07:23:56 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <39l68s$f8q@panix.com>
References: <39ip4a$dkv@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) writes:
>[In Libertopia there would be] Not unlimited but maximum individual
>choice: which is choice constrained by the social contract of
>nonaggression.
I'm not sure why that need be so. Suppose, for example, that the
absence of public education, Social Security, and other social welfare
programs in Libertopia means that people come to view the ability to
rely on family obligations as extraordinarily important (since not all
that stuff could be replaced with contracts). Further suppose that to
protect that ability strict standards regarding gender roles and sexual
morality evolve that make such obligations as clear, concrete, and non-
optional as possible, and it becomes the custom to enforce those
standards by non-legal coercion (if people suspect you of adultery they
ostracize you). Under such circumstances it seems to me that people
would have less individual choice in some important respects than they
do now. I realize that many libertarians would call the situation I
describe one of "maximum individual choice", but it seems to me they
are using words in accordance with special definitions.
>Have you read Bruce Benson's book "The Enterprise of Law:
>Justice Without the State" ?
I've seen it mentioned but haven't read it. Should I?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Sex at noon taxes.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Nov 9 06:52:15 EST 1994
Article: 50684 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Would I Lie To You?
Date: 8 Nov 1994 10:30:22 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 44
Message-ID: <39o5ie$jbr@panix.com>
References: <9411071816.AA22090@acad.udallas.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Lance Simmons writes:
>>I'm unclear why on your account such high standards
>>(public rational refutation) must be met before
>>statements that most people would call lies become
>>truths on that account.
>
>I believe that these particular standards have emerged as the best
>standards so far available, because they are internal to what I take to
>be the best account of the human good so far available -- namely, the
>one account I am familiar with that so far has survived all attempts at
>rational refutation, namely, the account of the human good articulated
>in the Catholic intellectual tradition.
Your view seems to be that if saying "two people are in the house and
one of them is a Jew" to a census taker in Holland in 1943 would result
in someone within the institutional order that the census taker
represents acting on the information from a perspective that has been
rationally refuted publicly then it wouldn't be a lie to say "no one is
here but me".
The idea seems to be that meaningful use of language requires moral
community. To the extent people act on perspectives that have been
publicly refuted rationally they are decisively separating themselves
>from the community ordered by the Good, which is the community to which
man by nature owes allegiance. Under such circumstances an utterance
directed toward such people regarding the matters with respect to which
they have split off from the community is not meaningful language that
could constitute a lie but rather an act that should be judged by non-
linguistic standards.
Possibly a reconstruction of the way we use the word "lie" and related
terms like "meaning" and "truth" could be based on some such theory.
Presumably the reconstructed terminology would contain expressions that
distinguish between utterances that people up to now would have called
"lying to the Gestapo to get them to go away" and those that people
would have called "misleading the Gestapo by telling them a half-truth
to get them to go away". Until the general reconstruction is carried
out in a convincing way, though, it will be easier for me to understand
your principle as specifying the conditions on which lying is justified
rather than defining "lying".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Sex at noon taxes.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Nov 10 04:55:09 EST 1994
Article: 2621 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: An Advantage for an Idea
Date: 9 Nov 1994 08:45:03 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 50
Message-ID: <39qjov$mmv@panix.com>
References: <025347Z09111994@anon.penet.fi>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
an101936@anon.penet.fi (Yggdrasill) writes:
>The liberals have resorted to racial quotas in university admissions
>and in hiring. In the process, they have abandoned the notion of a
>"color-blind" society, an abandonment with enormous potential
>consequences.
>
>But the liberals did not impose these quotas because they think they
>were morally right, or because they thought that they constitute any
>"vision" of how society could best operate. They did it simply to buy
>peace and votes from specific racial groups. They did it for an
>expedient practical advantage. The same is true for their advocacy of
>state run health care, or any other position.
>
>The truth about liberals is that these policy positions or programs are
>intended to keep them in power. There is no other aim.
There's more to it than that. Liberals have rightly felt that the sorts
of things they wanted have been in line with fundamental long-term
political, social and cultural trends. As a result they've been able to
keep their ultimate vision rather fuzzy while supporting whatever new
developments seemed likely to contribute toward doing away with things
that were clearly inconsistent with their ultimate vision. Thus, they
could consistently support free speech and the color-blind society in
the 50s and 60s and prescribed speech and affirmative action in the 80s
and 90s. The means were different but the goal was the same.
The goal, I think, has always been to move away from a society
predominantly ordered by a transcendent conception of the good and
particular obligations among individuals (e.g., contractual and family
obligations) to one ordered by uniform abstract rules designed to
maximize the equal satisfaction of actual individual preferences.
Whatever destroys traditional social institutions and religious and
moral conceptions and increases reliance on the administrative state
advances that goal. It's true that as a practical matter the sort of
society liberals want must be run by a small and all-powerful elite and
therefore their political activity has in fact been an attempt to
confer godlike powers on themselves. I don't think it aids
understanding to say their activity has had no other aim, though.
Perhaps your point is that once it has become clear that the liberal
vision of society is unworkable the only remaining purpose they can have
for participating in politics is to maintain and increase their own
power. That might be so. Nonetheless, they cling to their vision and I
don't think that's purely a matter of self-interest. (I don't say the
foregoing to praise liberals but only in an attempt to illuminate the
actual situation.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Sex at noon taxes.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Nov 10 04:55:17 EST 1994
Article: 50772 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Would I Lie To You?
Date: 9 Nov 1994 08:48:15 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <39qjuv$nah@panix.com>
References: <9411090244.AA29022@acad.udallas.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Lance Simmons writes:
>> To the extent people act on perspectives that have been
>> publicly refuted rationally they are decisively separating themselves
>> from the community ordered by the Good, which is the community to which
>> man by nature owes allegiance.
>
>That may also be true, but it may be possible to arrive at the same
>conclusion without assuming that there is only _one_ such community.
I was thinking of the "community ordered by the Good" as federal. The
constituent communities are united by the allegiance of each to
something best understood as a conception of the Good and the consequent
possibility of discussion. The common allegiance requires rejection of
perspectives that have publicly been rationally refuted.
>If I were to speak most bluntly, I think I'd want to say "if you think
>through your question, you'd realize that people who want to succeed at
>hiding Jews can't go around telling others about it, and since you want
>people to succeed at hiding Jews yourself, you shouldn't go around
>asking about it." I might compress this into a simple "no,"
Suppose there's an argument a rational person might accept that it would
be beneficial to tell the person, but in your view by far the better
argument is that it would not. Could you still say no? (Discuss this
question only if you find it interesting.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Sex at noon taxes.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Nov 11 05:21:26 EST 1994
Article: 2639 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Dangerous Christian Right? - Help Me Out!
Date: 11 Nov 1994 05:14:08 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <39vg5g$9l3@panix2.panix.com>
References: <033904Z11111994@anon.penet.fi>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com
In <033904Z11111994@anon.penet.fi> an101936@anon.penet.fi (Yggdrasill) writes:
>How could someone get the idea
>that religious fundamentalists are full of hate? (No, this guy is
>not jewish!)
If you think your view of things on moral issues is patently correct,
and someone else disagrees with it and you don't at all understand the
basis of the disagreement, and you can't attribute the disagreement to
ordinary self-interested motives, there's a tendency to attribute it to
hatred of humanity, the Good, the Beautiful, the True, etc.
Also, "hate" has a technical meaning for liberals. It means "any
principle of social order other than self-interest and bureaucracy",
and so includes particularistic loyalties, acceptance of gender
distinctions and religious convictions, to the extent those things play
an independent public role.
>What percentage of our elites would you say share similar
>feelings?
"Religious fundamentalists are full of hate" and other such theories
may be intended as prolefeed to some extent. I may be overestimating
the astuteness of our rulers in thinking that.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Sex at noon taxes.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Nov 12 10:07:13 EST 1994
Article: 2650 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: An Advantage for an Idea
Date: 12 Nov 1994 09:57:23 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 39
Message-ID: <3a2l4j$3ca@panix.com>
References: <025347Z09111994@anon.penet.fi> <3a10nd$cc8@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <3a10nd$cc8@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>: However, it is my view that libertarians, as a rule, do not
>: understand how to win political battles. (I would be delighted to
>: have your election results today prove me wrong!).
>I wouldn't I would be horrified. The notion that all society is a group of
>atomised individuals is totally alien to CR and Conservative thought.
I don't think that's Mr. Sherwood's view. He wants to draw a
fundamental distinction between political ontology (for example, what
the nature of society is) and political method (what powers and
responsibilities should be assigned to the state, at what levels, and
how the issue should be determined).
Maybe in the end that distinction can't be maintained as clearly as he
would like. Nonetheless, as political units become more and more
extensive most of us eventually become rather libertarian in our views.
Quite possibly you or people with whom you sympathize would want the
EEC to have strictly limited powers that permit the constituent
national societies to develop in their own way without external
administrative controls. Some people in the U.K. might like the
activities and powers of the government in Westminster reduced, giving
Scotland and Wales and maybe the regions of England more power to
develop their own political and cultural life.
One way of understanding the appeal of libertarianism in the United
States, at least for some people, is to view it as a recognition that
we don't have a national life worth preserving any more, and that
social order must be recreated from the ground up. The function of
libertarian political measures, on such a view, would be to keep our
bureaucracies from interfering with that process of social rebirth.
That's why a lot of the discussion between Mr. Sherwood and others on
this newsgroup has been directed toward means of establishing the
autonomy of municipalities and other small-scale communities within
some overall peacekeeping structure.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Sex at noon taxes.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Nov 13 09:42:12 EST 1994
Article: 51135 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Irrational Baptists and Rational Rapists
Date: 13 Nov 1994 07:21:30 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 53
Message-ID: <3a50ca$2pn@panix.com>
References: <9411121736.AA28906@acad.udallas.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Lance Simmons writes:
>I required that the person answering the door be in possession of a
>public rational refutation of the Nazi ideology
"Public rational" seems to require that the refutation be available to
the Nazis such that they are to be blamed for not accepting it. It
seems to follow that in your view there are standards of rationality and
goodness available to every human being regardless of tradition or
perspective that are sufficient for carrying on substantive moral
discussions. Is that correct? Or does the public rational refutation
require that Nazi ideology reject itself for its own reasons?
Also, in your holistic substantively rational view it seems that a
"refutation" would be a non-formalistic demonstration that a way of life
as a whole is not ordered by something that could reasonably be
understood as a conception of the good. Is there a difference between
saying "Nazi ideology has refuted publicly and rationally" in your sense
and saying "Nazi ideology has been discussed extensively and in detail,
and plainly it is evil to the core"?
>Given my "high standards" (Jim's words), I would indeed require the
>person answering the door to have considered, and in some depth, the
>best possible arguments _in favor_ of the Nazi ideology, as well as
>arguments against it. So, while she need not debate the Nazi at her
>door, she must already have engaged in such debates at sufficient
>length to determine that the only way the Nazi ideology can be held is
>irrationally. This is indeed a very high standard.
It seems that unless she's some kind of philosophical Wonder Woman she
has to tell the Nazis that Anne Frank is upstairs. You don't require
that the Nazi in question be Professor Heidegger, who presumably would
be capable of considering whether some history of discussion constitutes
a public rational refutation in your sense, or even that he be aware
that his action has something to do with the attempt to exterminate the
Jews (the case of the census taker). It's enough that the Nazi or
census taker be institutionally connected with irrationality. Why isn't
it enough that the woman who answers the door have the right sort of
institutional connections?
>>The rapist is evil and will not control his lustful and
>>sadistic urges. But he is not irrational.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>I believe the rapist is acting irrationally, because I
>believe that raping people is not a reasonable way of
>coping with lustful and sadistic urges.
In the case of Baptists the issue seemed to be whether their overall way
of life is rationally defensible while here the issue seems to be
whether the particular act is rationally defensible. Which is it?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Norma is as selfless as I am, Ron.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Nov 15 11:01:08 EST 1994
Article: 51159 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Irrational Baptists and Rational Rapists
Date: 13 Nov 1994 15:12:31 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 62
Message-ID: <3a5rvf$1rb@panix.com>
References: <9411131639.AA28760@acad.udallas.edu>
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Lance Simmons writes:
>the standards internal to the Nazi ideology are such that it must be
>rejected for its own reasons.
It seems essential to your conception of public rational refutation that
an ideology be shown to be self-refuting no matter how charitably it is
construed. Is that right? If so, what features of Nazi ideology cause
it necessarily to refute itself on its own terms?
It also seems that insoluble logical problems on fundamental issues are
not sufficient for self-refutation, or if they are I'm not sure why
Christianity wouldn't fail your test on account of the doctrine of the
Trinity.
Does "this ideology has publicly been rationally refuted" mean "it has
been publicly shown that this ideology necessarily defeats the things
that motivate it"?
>I must have had some attraction to the other person's view, and have
>understood it to some non-negligible degree from within.
It seems that if you find the other person and his views
incomprehensibly monstrous and utterly repellant you're obligated to
tell him what most people up to now would have called the truth.
>> It's enough that the Nazi or
>> census taker be institutionally connected with irrationality. Why isn't
>> it enough that the woman who answers the door have the right sort of
>> institutional connections?
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>The professionalization of philosophy is a very bad thing. The fact
>that you could ask this question suggests that you draw a distinction
>between an "intelligentia" who do the thinking for a community, and the
>mass of ordinary folk, who do not.
The question is whether it is enough for the woman to be a member of a
community in which the right sort of public discussion has gone on. On
your theory the issue seems to be what the woman means when she says
"there are no Jews here". You pointed out in connection with the census
taker that the meaning of an utterance is a matter of the
institutionalized understandings of a community rather than the private
intentions and knowledge of a particular speaker. Why shouldn't that
point apply to the woman as well as to the census taker?
>_yes_, she will need to have the right kind of institutional
>connections, but _no_, that will not mean passively receiving the
>refutation from the "intelligentsia" of that community. The
>popularization of knowledge is essential to its being real knowledge.
Sometimes the meaning of what we say depends on the knowledge of
experts. You seem to be denying that it is possible for someone to have
moral expertise that other people are entitled to rely on. Is that view
consistent with accepting the authority of the hierarchy of the Church
in moral matters? Suppose the woman tried to think through the issues
and found them confusing, but her priest had placed Anne Frank with her
and told her to keep it a secret even if she had to lie. Would she be
entitled to trust her priest's judgment?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Norma is as selfless as I am, Ron.
From tempaa Wed Nov 16 05:58:54 1994
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Article: 51216 of bit.listserv.catholic
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Irrational Baptists and Rational Rapists
In-Reply-To: <9411140231.AA07539@acad.udallas.edu> from "Lance Simmons" at Nov
13, 94 08:31:53 pm
Lines: 75
Lance Simmons writes:
> Like institutionalized Marxism, Nazism claimed to
> possess (or, more accurately, to be on its way to
> possessing) a completed science of human behavior that
> would make possible the technocratic management, in
> detail, of whole human societies.
Did Nazism claim to be scientific? I always thought of it as a sort of
radical perspectivism interpreted in a vigorously practical fashion.
The idea as I understand it is that there are no standards or truths
beyond those accepted by particular communities. The validity of a
standard within a community is measured by the degree of its acceptance
in word and deed. Therefore, regimentation is the road to truth. The
validity of the standards chosen by a community is measured by the
degree to which they prevail practically over those chosen by other
communities. The superiority of my community's standards, whose
validity consists in their being willed by my community, can thus be
demonstrated through the triumph of my community's will over the wills
of other communities. The extreme case of such a triumph would consist
in my community enslaving, torturing and exterminating other
communities.
Such an outlook may refute itself once it has been defeated in war, but
in the Anne Frank situation that hasn't happened yet. An internal
problem with it may be that it is based on the will struggling for
victory and too much victory would mean no more struggle. One might be
able to define the goal in such a way, though, that it could be
approached through constant struggle but never quite attained. For
example, a Nazi might accept that since there can be no completed
science of human behavior the perfect regimentation and tyranny that
would constitute perfect truth and justice will never quite be achieved
but rather will stand perpetually as ideals for which to struggle.
> Any Nazi who recognized
> that it was in her power to resist Nazi ideology
> _already possessed_ in her act of self-recognition a
> refutation of Nazi ideology.
Why couldn't she view the possibility of spiritual separation from the
community as something that through struggle could be progressively
reduced?
> >It seems that if you find the other person and
> >his views incomprehensibly monstrous and utterly
> >repellant you're obligated to tell him what most
> >people up to now would have called the truth.
>
> YES!
If Jeffrey Dahmer comes to the door with a gun and asks if there happen
to be any boys in the house, because he wants to kidnap them, abuse
them sexually, murder them, and eat them, and you're a rather stupid
and simpleminded mom who loves her sons very much and always tries to
do what's right but you find it really hard to arrive at a sympathetic
grasp of Mr. Dahmer's point of view in the few seconds you have to
respond, you're obligated to say "yes"?
> If she was not sure whether the government's treatment
> of Jews was wrong, she would be doing something wrong
> if she answered the representative of what she thought
> might be a just regime in any way other than he wished
> to be answered. The priest would be violating her
> conscience if she was unsure about the legitimacy of
> the regime and he told her to evade the government's
> questions.
If the priest tells her the regime is illegitimate would she be
justified in relying on what he says? She finds politics and most
other things confusing and someone told her the Jews were not going to
be killed, just deported because they had been plotting against the
Christians.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Norma is as selfless as I am, Ron.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Nov 17 05:34:57 EST 1994
Article: 2671 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: An Advantage for an Idea
Date: 16 Nov 1994 07:24:55 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <3a10nd$cc8@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <3a2l4j$3ca@panix.com> <3aao5h$sl6@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>
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cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>I would argue that it is the very dogma of individualism which has led
>to social disintegration in the US and that social rebirth is hardly
>likely to be helped by those who deny the very existence of society.
If you initially accept individualism, then "society" for you means the
aggregation of all individuals rather than something constituted by the
manner in which it is articulated. It seems to me that denial that
"society" in that sense exists could be a step toward creation of
something that conservatives and CRs could recognize as society.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Norma is as selfless as I am, Ron.
From bit.listserv.catholic Sat Nov 19 09:15:21 1994
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Irrational Baptists and Rational Rapists
In-Reply-To: <9411180115.AA21522@acad.udallas.edu> from "Lance Simmons" at Nov
17, 94 07:15:25 pm
Lines: 40
simmons@acad.udallas.edu (Lance Simmons) writes:
>The Nazi equivalent of apostolic succession was so weakly grounded in
>anything like reality that the people propagating the myth could not
>themselves believe it, even though they tried [ ... ] Ah, but are you
>considering how central to the whole project the propaganda machines
>were? That was clearly meant to be a kind of social technology, and was
>understood to be perfectible.
One possibility would be a very small elite that rules out of love of
domination and a desire to realize its arbitrary preferences, using
state power and the technology of propaganda and terror to inculcate in
the masses an ideology it finds servicable and to render silent and
powerless whatever can not be coopted. The elite would not have to
believe its own ideology, and it seems to me the technology would not
have to be literally perfectable, just functional and capable of
indefinite improvement.
I take it that you believe such a possibility is not a real one and that
in 1942 when the Gestapo came knocking a public refutation of the
possibility would have been available to the woman answering the door,
so that she could have known that Nazism (now charitably construed as a
system with both an exoteric and an esoteric doctrine) was self-
defeating on its own terms. Why is that? Pure propaganda/terror
machines don't work at all for long? Durable cooperation within
nihilistic elites is a fantasy? George Orwell seemed to consider the
contrary possibilities real ones. If Orwell had been hiding Anne Frank
while writing _1984_ and the Gestapo dropped by, how should he have
answered them assuming he thought he was writing about a real
possibility?
Also, it appears that in your view for social order to exist it must be
based on what people at all points in the social hierarchy understand to
be truths handed down from from some higher source (revelation, whether
or not mediated by tradition). The alternative is to attempt to base
social order on arbitrary will, which won't work even from a crudely
practical standpoint. Is that correct?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Norma is as selfless as I am, Ron.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Nov 21 06:45:34 EST 1994
Article: 2751 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.gobment.lones,alt.revolution.counter,uk.politics,uk.events,alt.politics.ec,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: the scope of government
Date: 20 Nov 1994 16:25:34 -0500
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References: <174@cornwick.win-uk.net> <3a9tts$h3g@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <3acn2d$frr@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <3adlr4$rd6@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>
Xref: panix alt.revolution.counter:2751 uk.politics:22689 uk.events:870 alt.politics.ec:1997 talk.politics.theory:36052
In <3adlr4$rd6@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>: I believe in society too. I believe society is a far
>: better decision-maker than the state.
>Clever word play - but what actually do you mean by "society" - nothing more
>than a collection of individuals.
What's necessary for a decision or action to be attributed to society
rather than to a collection of individuals? If some measure is adopted
by vote of the majority, does that mean society did it? What are the
actions and decisions that should be attributed to society rather than
to particular individuals in England in the year 1000? In Germany in
1944?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: O, I hope Ed 'n' I see referees in deep Ohio.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Nov 25 09:11:26 EST 1994
Article: 2912 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Multiculturalism: A new form of polytheism
Date: 25 Nov 1994 09:11:19 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Everywhere and Nowhere writes:
>Additionally, it is also the case that adopting a 'multicultural'
>stance as one's _own_ perspective means assuming a god-like viewpoint
>on the world and estranging yourself from the culture that made you --
>you cannot step outside yourself and all your cultural presuppositions
>and remain coherent.
There seem to be contradictory versions of "multiculturalism", most of
which are also internally incoherent. The most common one seems to be
[difference is good]=>[every institution and each of us should make room
for and incorporate as much difference as possible]. The consequence of
that theory, of course, is that difference loses its social function and
meaning. To celebrate difference turns out to be identical with
destroying it and replacing it with some universal abstract scheme as a
principle of social organization.
>Multiculturalism as an ideology falls into many of the same traps as
>any other type of relativism, in that it is apparently ignorant of its
>own intellectual roots and axioms and must accept as equally valid any
>strongly opposing cultural stance. As a movement it only makes sense in
>a world that has already been homogenized by global technology, where
>one can exalt 'difference' precisely because the difference between
>different cultures is so minor as to be non-existent.
Multiculturalism does seem incoherent as an ultimate principle. I can
imagine someone believing there is a single ultimate truth that is
better expressed in some cultures, religions, etc. than in others but
nonetheless viewing the existence and further development of separate
cultures and religions as a good because no one of them fully actualizes
the truth. On such a view one's loyalty would be not only to abstract
truth but also to his own people and their particular understanding of
truth.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: O, I hope Ed 'n' I see referees in deep Ohio.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Nov 25 09:13:51 EST 1994
Article: 2913 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: National Socialism Frequently Asked Questions
Date: 25 Nov 1994 09:12:40 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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dmdeane@world.std.com (david m deane) writes:
>It is high time for someone to deconstruct this pernicious notion of
>"mankind", "humanity", the human "race", etc., which has been the
>ruination of Western Civilization and which has spawned endless hordes
>of pseudo-intellectual idiots and armies of marching morons, all eager
>to "defend" something called "mankind".
You do need some sort of conception of "mankind", though, to explain why
it is OK to use piles of kelp but not piles of babies as raw material
for producing animal feed and fertilizer.
You can always deconstruct "mankind", "race", "society", "the
individual", or whatever. You can also take one of them and make it the
absolute reality and protagonist of whatever epic you want to write.
What's needed is an understanding that gives each the right amount of
weight.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: O, I hope Ed 'n' I see referees in deep Ohio.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Nov 25 12:13:33 EST 1994
Article: 2914 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Multiculturalism: A new form of polytheism
Date: 25 Nov 1994 09:13:41 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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dmdeane@world.std.com (david m deane) writes:
>Homogenization is occuring, but the remaining differences are still so
>great that they are tearing apart the non-Western world today (Bosnia,
>etc), and will tear apart the Western world tomorrow. True,
>homogenization results in alienation and calls for 'difference' but
>these yearnings are nevertheless real and potent no matter how
>'artificial' they may appear to a purely rationalist or functionalist
>point of view.
One problem is that if people become homogenized, and they find it
intolerable, then the simplest and surest way to establish meaningful
difference is a policy of rigid uniformity within the group and violent
aggression against outsiders.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: O, I hope Ed 'n' I see referees in deep Ohio.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Nov 26 05:45:15 EST 1994
Article: 2920 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Multiculturalism: A new form of polytheism
Date: 25 Nov 1994 20:01:22 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <3b5ssf$s7a@news.panix.com> Everywhere and Nowhere writes:
>Non-relativist multicultural ideology does not seem to be an existing
>category. People have always recognized cultural differences between
>themselves and members of other nations -- that has not necessarily lead,
>however, to a relativist stance. Since cultures embody different values,
>awareness of an _other_ frequently increases awareness of the
>separateness and _truth_ of one's own values.
I recently read an extract from the Pope's book, _Crossing the
Threshhold of Hope_, which seems to reflect a nonrelativist
multicultural ideology. It seems the book consists of answers to a
series of questions from an Italian journalist, one of which was "why
is there more than one religion?" As I understood it, the Pope's answer
is that even though Catholic Christianity is the best and sole adequate
way to truth, in its actual understanding and implementation by human
beings it's bested on some points by other religions. In other words,
the cultures associated with Catholic Christianity are imperfect and
other cultures are superior in some respects even in their religious
aspects. So from the Pope's point of view, it's very important that
varied cultures, even non-Christian cultures, survive and thrive, so
that no aspect of the truth be lost or its presence reduced among human
beings. Nonetheless he's not a relativist. (Any RCs who think I've
misconstrued what JP II said should say so.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: O, I hope Ed 'n' I see referees in deep Ohio.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Nov 26 06:46:51 EST 1994
Article: 2942 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Multiculturalism: A new form of polytheism
Date: 26 Nov 1994 06:42:34 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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dmdeane@world.std.com (david m deane) writes:
>: One problem is that if people become homogenized, and they find it
>: intolerable, then the simplest and surest way to establish meaningful
>: difference is a policy of rigid uniformity within the group and violent
>: aggression against outsiders.
>
>Such has been the natural state of humanity throughout history.
Are you exaggerating? Certainly a policy of rigid tolerance within the
group and strict nonviolence with regard to outsiders would be
unnatural, and a group adhering to such a policy wouldn't last long, but
some meaningful differences capable of evoking loyalty have actually
existed and have permitted groups to maintain their identity even though
they have allowed some internal freedom and been somewhat peaceable
abroad.
The point of the foregoing is that power politics can't be the primary
means of solving our current difficulties. That's not to say that
anything else will work either, of course. I suppose another point is
that the success of the current multiculturalist phase of our public
life may be measured by the degree of barbarism and violence that
follows it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: O, I hope Ed 'n' I see referees in deep Ohio.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Nov 26 08:19:18 EST 1994
Article: 2943 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: National Socialism Frequently Asked Questions
Date: 26 Nov 1994 06:48:41 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 28
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References: <3b4rco$e9m@panix.com>
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dmdeane@world.std.com (david m deane) writes:
>: You do need some sort of conception of "mankind", though, to explain why
>: it is OK to use piles of kelp but not piles of babies as raw material
>: for producing animal feed and fertilizer.
>
>Certainly; but this has always existed and we did not need the
>Enlightenment or the neocons to point out the existence of this entity.
It's difficult to leave the Enlightenment behind. Denying a particular
Enlightenment concept ("mankind") may be less likely to give you back
the pre-Enlightenment concept than to give you the clear, rational, and
readily manipulable Enlightenment world with that concept removed. The
consequence more than once has been the use of human beings as
industrial raw material and the like.
>Every act of creation necessarily involves a simultaneous act of
>destruction; two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
>One must deconstruct in order to construct.
The deconstruction should be an aspect of the construction, which should
be primary. One way of doing that might be to keep the word "mankind"
but transmute it. Claim to be 10 times more in favor of "mankind" than
anyone else. Start using their words your way. For one thing, it will
make it harder for them to assert their positions.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: O, I hope Ed 'n' I see referees in deep Ohio.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Nov 26 08:21:38 EST 1994
Article: 2946 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Multiculturalism: A new form of polytheism
Date: 26 Nov 1994 08:21:24 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 44
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References: <3b698h$7jn@news.panix.com>
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Everywhere and Nowhere writes:
>Homogenization may lead to violent uprisings, or it may not.
>Regardless, the dominant culture's values are deeply nihilistic: rather
>than leading to separation (which implies some cohesive cultural
>grouping) it appears to lead to disintegration. I agree that there is
>seeming a contradiction between the spread of McDonald's and the rise
>of nationalisms; I am not clear on _how_ precisely contradictory those
>two develoments are.
What do you think the possibilities for the future are? Mr. Deane
suggests breakup on ethnic and religious lines, which you find doubtful
because of the effectiveness of the forces bringing about
homogenization. I suppose another possibility is a more diffuse kind
of breakup, in which people's lives gradually become more and more
chaotic until our social arrangements don't work at all, when they fall
apart with vast loss of life and are succeeded by neo-savagery based on
small wandering bands living hand-to-mouth. Yet another is that social
technology actually can be made to work, so that an enduring society
can be based on arbitrary will and technical inventiveness rather than
on a cohesive system of values oriented toward some source of value
beyond experience. If so, it seems likely that the arbitrary will that
rules will be the determinable and so effectual will of some very small
group rather than the will of the world's population at large, whatever
that might be.
It seems to me that apocalypic speculations may not be pure fantasy.
Advances in productive, organizational and communications technology
have made it far more possible than in the past for social processes to
go to their logical conclusion. Technological progress has truly
liberated the spirit of man. In Hellenistic times Plato's prediction
that the democratic consumer society would lead to limitless tyranny
because of the absence of an ordering principle was falsified because
day-to-day economic survival required a great deal of individual and
family discipline, and in ancient China the totalitarian state
established by Shih Huang Ti failed because the technology of
organization and control was not sufficiently advanced. This time
around we may do far better. Hitler and Stalin may have represented a
false dawn, rather like 19th century feminists, and failed by being in
advance of their time rather than on account of any defect in their
prophetic vision.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: O, I hope Ed 'n' I see referees in deep Ohio.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Nov 26 20:19:15 EST 1994
Article: 2947 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: An Advantage for an Idea
Date: 26 Nov 1994 09:34:45 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 50
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NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) writes:
>: . . . . Libertarian dogma is merely
>: radicalized liberal thinking that has failed to take into account the
>: pervasiveness of advertising and marketing tools to create consensus.
>
>Fine. If you're right, my individualist methodology - i.e. asking
>each person's consent - will reach collectivist conclusions and
>prove me wrong. What harm would be done?
Individualist methodology asks consent only at the margin. It asks
"shall I make this trip by car or by bus?", but not "shall I live in a
world in which the system of public transportation is developed at the
expense of facilities for private transportation?". Won't the answers
to the two sorts of questions often conflict? (That's a different issue
>from the one Everywhere and Nowhere raised.)
>How do you determine the society's interests without asking the people?
A couple of somewhat random thoughts:
One determines the meaning of words, the implications of particular
turns of phrase, and the merits of a literary composition without
running a poll. Neither the judgments of a single individual nor the
stated views of the majority are determinative. Even if we assume that
a society's interest is a pure social construction rather than (say)
something determined by God, biology, or the Form of the Good, the
determination of that interest (the thing that gives maximum meaning and
value to life in that society) might be somewhat like the determination
of the meaning and fitness of the words used in a story. It's an
evaluative determination, and might be expected to have something in
common with other evaluative determinations.
Also, people often find it difficult correctly to articulate their own
theory of value, especially in response to questions posed by other
people designed to elicit particular responses. The way they live is
likely to indicate what they value better than what they say when
polled. Applied to society in general, it seems to follow that that the
interests of a society as felt by its members are best understood
through consideration of the durable institutions of that society. (I
am using "institutions" as broadly as possible to include almost any
pattern of conduct and belief.)
The foregoing suggests a broadly hierarchical traditionalist
conservatism as the correct political position. (If there are some
people I haven't converted, I'd be glad to change the foregoing to all
caps, add a GOT IT?????!!!!! after every sentence, and repost ... )
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: O, I hope Ed 'n' I see referees in deep Ohio.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Nov 27 07:00:45 EST 1994
Article: 2961 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Society vs Man
Date: 26 Nov 1994 20:38:45 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <3b8nv5$3u7@panix.com>
References: <3b7h25$j6v@panix.com> <3b8g4q$pss@news.panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
dasher@netcom.com (Anton Sherwood) writes:
>: Societies determine their interests through their histories and
>: traditions, all of which transcend any individual living at any
>: point in them. Societies are organic beings with their own history
>: and memory. They are not collections of individuals: they are
>: entities that _inform_ the individuals born into them, not the
>: other way around.
>
>You have said little here with which a libertarian would disagree -
>you've described the Invisible Hand, though this conception of it is
>broader than Adam Smith's narrow economic view. Since Society
>transcends its members, how can any member know better than the
>Invisible Hand what society's interests are, and (more importantly) how
>can other members know that this wise member is right, more right than
>what Society tells them directly through the I.H.?
Why shouldn't Society and the Invisible Hand divulge themselves through
things other than the market? For example, if people have generally
felt and continue to feel that the free availability of pornography is a
bad thing, perhaps (when they reflect upon it) because they feel it
undercuts the appropriate attitudes toward relations between the sexes,
why wouldn't the true locus of the Invisible Hand that cumulates and
crystalizes the myriad desires and perceptions of Society be the
legislature that illegalizes pornography rather than the market that
makes it freely available to those who at the moment want it?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: O, I hope Ed 'n' I see referees in deep Ohio.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Nov 30 06:20:01 EST 1994
Article: 3039 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy
Date: 29 Nov 1994 18:04:49 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <3bgc2h$jth@panix.com>
References: <3bg0vc$qq@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) quotes:
>Accordingly, it may rightly be
>asked whether Libertarianism
>is in fact anarchism. Exactly
>what is the relationship
>between the two?
Does anyone know enough about nonLibertarian anarchism to say
specifically what the contradictions are with the real McCoy? Sabatini
talks a lot about history and class analysis, but doesn't say much about
doctrine. If Murray Rothbard and Prince Kropotkin both want to get rid
of the state, what separates them? If the difference is thought to be
their theory of how people would behave if the state were abolished,
would Murray Rothbard object if the liberated populace decided to
organize themselves in a manner pleasing to Prince Kopotkin? If the
difference is thought to be their moral theory, would it bother Murray
if the Prince successfully persuaded everyone to do it his way? My
impression is that the answer to both questions is "no". Austrian-
influenced economists try to make their theories extremely formal, so
that ideally they could handle any system of values whatever. Maybe
they don't succeed, but comment on where they fail would be helpful.
Also, would the objections people make against libertarianism have less
force in the case of real anarchism?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Nov 30 15:58:33 EST 1994
Article: 3049 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: the duty to pay tax
Date: 30 Nov 1994 07:33:30 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <858917677wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> There are many examples in our economy where people (industry
>> and agriculture) exploit valuable natural resources, including the air
>> and water, that really belong to all the people of the earth, but whose
>> exploitation benefits only a select few.
>
>Why shouldn't they be arbitrarily privatized, as land has been? Would
>you redistribute land? If not, why not?
One issue with public ownership of land and mineral rights is that
they're not worth much unless developed so you're not likely to favor it
if you think that direct participation in ordinary economic activity is
in general inappropriate for government. The same applies to water in
some circumstances, for example when it is to be used for irrigation.
Does anyone know anything about Henry George's single tax (on land
only)? I believe that was intended as a way of dealing with the matter,
I have no idea how successfully.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus.
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
Back to my archive of posts.