Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Apr 4 03:55:03 EDT 2000
Article: 14530 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
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Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ
Date: 2 Apr 2000 07:19:38 -0400
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In <8c5v6l$i8q$1@nnrp1.deja.com> Napoleon Bonaparte writes:
>I wonder if this label should be changed to paleoliberalism. Was not
>the old republic a liberal regime when liberalism is properly defined?
>Were not Locke and Jefferson liberals?, in the classical sense of the
>word. Isn't a republic a liberal idea in and of itself? Is
>individualism a liberal idea?
It seems to me the OR was explicit liberalism in an implicitly
traditional setting with traditional limitations. What happened, as
People for the American Way would tell us, is that the country began to
live up to its explicit ideals more thoroughly. So what
paleoconservatism stands for is restoration of what was implicit. It
is thus traditionalist in tendency. The obvious difficulty is that
it's hard to make the implicit a goal.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Apr 5 12:24:31 EDT 2000
Article: 14532 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
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Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ
Date: 5 Apr 2000 06:58:20 -0400
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In <8cesk5$4b4$1@cfs2.kis.keele.ac.uk> Andy Fear writes:
>It would now take a cultural revolution a la Gramsci. The problem is
>that the forces of commercialism will make that extremely difficult,
>if not impossible, to achieve. Unfortunately what we see now is the
>logical outcopme of liberalism. To change eras I suspect Mill would be
>horrified at where his philosophy has led, but the path is the
>rational one. It must be hard being a rebel colonist and a
>conservative...
No harder than being a conservative and loyal to a local political and
ecclesiastical order that long ago proclaimed itself an empire,
complete and entire of itself. All we did in 1776, really, was
restrain appeals to England.
We've all got major problems. I don't see there's much difference
between where the US and where other Western countries have ended up.
We have Clinton, you have Blair. As you say it's all been
extraordinarily logical. I agree that there is no plan or policy that
can turn things around. Still, I might be wrong on the point, and all
any of us can do is try to go in the right direction.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Apr 5 12:24:31 EDT 2000
Article: 14534 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ
Date: 5 Apr 2000 12:13:02 -0400
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In "bugz" writes:
>If our present and continuing state of political and social
>degeneration is following a logical path based upon the underlying
>foundations of the current order, and I agree that it is, then it is
>not merely hard but impossible to be a conservative and be loyal to
>the current order. The solution, of course, is to reject Cromwellism
>and most specifically the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, since
>when the English speaking world has been operating without benefit of
>the rule of law.
Is it so clear that's the solution? In my reply to Andy Fear I alluded
to the Act in Restraint of Appeals, by which England declared
independence from Christendom. I take it that's OK by you as long as
the oligarchy doesn't think it can make and unmake the sovereign. Some
would say that's simply a continuation of the same trend by which
arbitrary power is moved farther and farther down the ladder. If you
like logic, and judging by how things have turned out it seems the
world does, there's no stopping short of the sovereignty of immediate
individual impulse.
To me it seems most sensible to think of the current order as defective
but worthy of some degree of loyalty. After all, if it weren't mostly
good it couldn't exist at all, just as if a man weren't mostly healthy,
if most of his vital processes weren't carrying on normally, he'd die
instantly. The current order of things includes your connections to
friends and family members, ordinary standards of honesty, whatever
concern actually exists for the public good, etc. Such things are its
most important and functional features. Why not be loyal to them?
We can't create something out of nothing, all we can do is try to
reform what's already there. Of course, if accepted public social
theories grossly misconceive things and have a pinched and tendentious
view of what constitutes "the current order" it might look to those who
accept them as if we were rejecting the existing order in toto.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Tue Mar 21 19:36:56 2000
Subject: Re: Liberalism-Transcendent-Restoration II
To: Re
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 19:36:56 -0500 (EST)
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> <"Species" I suppose refers to the qualities that constitute our
> human nature. Some are social, some are not. For example, having
> subjective experience is not a social quality but it is a quality
> essential to human nature.>
>
> This definition of "species" is circular, species are humans and
> humans are species.
You don't always choose words carefully. We were talking about human
nature, so I took "species" to be simply another word referring to the
same thing, to the qualities that make us human. If you did mean the
biologist's notion of species that's OK but I'm not sure of the
relevance. Also, I don't see anything circular about what I said.
> Having subjective experience is strictly an individual being's
> attribute, regardless of species.
It is a specific difference between rocks and human beings. I don't
see why you think it is not part of man's essential nature, of what
makes a man a man. You speak as if some rocks and some men might have
subjective experience and others not.
> I believe I said "we then form our judgments," since we are not all
> conventional, aesthetic judgments are not wholly conventional.
Sure. That being the case aesthetic experience is not a purely social
matter. Since man is capable of aesthetic experience and quartz is
not, part of human nature -- the qualities that distinguish man and
make him man -- is not social. Namely, the part of the capacity to
have aesthetic experience that is not just social.
> In point of fact, their truth is a purely social matter, no theory
> lasts very long in history, they are always revised by future
> scientists.
If the truth of scientific theories is purely social, why bother with
all those test tubes and things?
> But with free will, which you could consider to be radical
> multifunctionality, and with our technological ability to alter our
> environment in more and more plastic ways, "best" becomes
> problematical because the number of ideals a being can aim is so
> large. Who sorts out what end "best" refers to?
If "best" or I suppose "better" or "good" don't mean anything why does
free will matter? If I can choose X, Y and Z, but none is better than
the other, how important can the choice or even the capacity of
choosing be? It's wholly arbitrary anyway -- might as well flip a
coin.
> Rationality never can include the choice of goals. It means doing
> things for a reason.
But if no goal is more reasonable than any other goal then nothing is
ever done for a reason. What on your view would be an example of an
action not done for a reason?
> There are correct choices, to orient oneself toward the transcendent
> source of coherency, and there are incorrect choices, to orient
> oneself away from this. This is not rationally done
I would think that rationality is what enables us to make correct
choices. You seem to say that rationality does not distinguish correct
from incorrect. I do not understand that.
> The scientists working on the Manhattan Project truly did not know
> what would happen with their fission experiments and bombs
> beforehand.
Then why was it a priority project in wartime? Seems irresponsible.
> breakthrough.
>
> That can't be done.>
>
> It is less frequent than plodding incremental breakthroughs is all.
They happen, they can't be planned or foreseen.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis!" -- Tully
From jk Wed Apr 5 12:23:06 2000
Subject: Re: Your thoughts
To: hj
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 12:23:06 -0400 (EDT)
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> Please comment further on paleoconservatism.
In what respect? It's an assortment of people who don't like the
neoconservative deformation of conservatism. They favor particularism
and oppose the managerial welfare state. Personally they're mostly
rather ill-tempered, a result I think of losing badly and continuously
and being professional outcastes and not having enough theoretical
perspective to know how to take it.
> P.S. Have you read AFTER LIBERALISM: Mass Democracy in the Managerial
> State by Paul Gottfried? You would enjoy it.
I read about half of it. (I would have read the other half but was in
a research library and had to leave.) His analysis of the current
situation is good. My chief quarrel with him is that he holds to the
"it's really just a bunch of different things that happen to have a
common name" theory of liberalism while I think of it as more a
continuous logical development.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Apr 6 09:00:48 EDT 2000
Article: 14536 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
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Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ
Date: 5 Apr 2000 17:55:47 -0400
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In "bugz" writes:
>Our public link to virtue itself was severed. The principle of
>loyalty was replaced by unbridled self-interest, the rule of (the
>common) law replaced by, at first mob rule through legislation, and
>now faceless bureaucratic dictat.
>Any restoration of a just and Godly political order must explicitly
>renounce the Proclamations and Acts of 1688 onward which established
>the supremacy of parliament(s) over, it now seems, all the Universe.
You seem to set the King in a cosmic moral order in which he has a
definite office regardless of what anyone else thinks about the matter.
It just seems hard to me to think of the King of England that way after
1532 and the Act in Restraint of Appeals. I'm not sure why a king with
an individualized divine right, nothing between him and God, is better
than say Tom, Dick and (nonroyal) Harry with the same.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Apr 6 09:00:49 EDT 2000
Article: 14540 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ
Date: 6 Apr 2000 05:55:30 -0400
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In "bugz" writes:
>Seriously, the alternative seems to be mob rule or more realistically:
>arbitrary rule by gangs of thugs which the Puritans, who hold just
>such theological views about the relationship of the individual to
>God, were.
I keep mentioning the Act in Restraint of Appeals. It seems to me an
alternative to the King as political sovereign and head on earth of the
Church on a section of an island that is understood as an Empire,
complete and entire of itself, would be the King as part of a larger
and in principle universal order which necessarily would have some
visible institutional manifestation. The Act in Restraint of Appeals
said Henry VIII didn't want any part of that. He wanted to be a
sovereign individual. The whole world has since followed him.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Apr 6 12:42:17 EDT 2000
Article: 14547 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ
Date: 6 Apr 2000 12:41:12 -0400
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In <8ci35t$m0r$1@cfs2.kis.keele.ac.uk> Andy Fear writes:
>The absolutist dogma of the Stuarts was an early modern invention in
>itself. One could argue that the English Revolution was in someways a
>Conservative revolution against an innovative and centralising power.
Ditto for the American Revolution. The Americans had fairly good
common law arguments for their position based on their claim that the
innovative and centralising British Parliament had no authority in the
colonies. At least the arguments were good under the common law as it
stood when the colonies were founded. As I recall they cited some
cases involving Lord Coke and the consequences of the accession of
James I. If Parliament had no authority in America then George III was
acting as a tyrant, and the Americans were at least initially simply
acting to prevent the overthrow of the whole of their constitution.
Later it got more radical of course, but the revolutionaries of 1776,
unlike those of 1688, weren't in a position to appoint a new King of
England who would act like a legitimate king and not a tyrant. All
they could do was declare their independence. 1776 had Tom Paine, but
1688 had John Locke, so both revolutions had a radical side as well as
admitting a more conservative explanation.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Apr 7 08:33:29 EDT 2000
Article: 14556 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
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Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ
Date: 7 Apr 2000 08:32:55 -0400
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>One could argue that the English Revolution was in someways a
>Conservative revolution against an innovative and centralising power.
For similar reasons libertarianism is considered a conservative
tendency in the United States. The question is always the nature of
the authority to whom one does not want to be subject.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From news.panix.com!panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Apr 24 15:16:26 EDT 2000
Article: 14564 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Posner, CR?
Date: 24 Apr 2000 10:36:50 -0400
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subnet@my-deja.com writes:
> Is [Posner] an erratic, instinctively atheistic counterrevolutionary
> or is he the protagonist of a revolutionary classical tragedy in the
> making (his fatal flaw being his habit of truth-telling). On the CR
> side, he really skewers the moral superstructure of America's current
> parasitical ruling class. On the revolutionary side, he seems wedded
> to the idea that a money-guided legal bureaucracy is best fit to
> rule...or so I suppose.
Certainly not counterrevolutionary, although as you suggest he's a
useful critic. Like O.W. Holmes Jr. he's an American Nietzschean, a
smarter and more subtle Ayn Rand.
It seems to me that the essence of the counterrevolution is recognition
that fundamental issues like the nature of good and evil and for that
matter the nature of the universe can be neither managed nor ignored.
Hence the need in the end for submission and acceptance -- concretely
speaking, for tradition, faith, acceptance of particularist loyalties,
etc.
Posner is smart enough to realize that in order to deify the power of
individuals he has to avoid such issues. The moral philosophers he
attacks want to manage them; he notes that's impossible so his solution
is to ignore them. It's nice to have someone say that what the moral
philosophers are doing can't work. The fact that what he does in
response is even more plainly irrational may advance the game. It
doesn't mean he himself is CR.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Sat Apr 15 06:46:34 2000
Subject: Re: Typology of political thought?
To: jo
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 06:46:34 -0400 (EDT)
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> am looking for a typology/chart delineating the differences between
> liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, neoconservatism, etc. Can
> you recommend any?
The only one I can think of that I like is one I made up myself a few
years ago to classify the participants in a usenet discussion.
The thought was that the difference among (traditionalist)
conservatives, libertarians and (contemporary) liberals at least as
represented in the discussion was the means each preferred to
accumulate, organize, formulate etc. social perceptions, desires,
beliefs etc. and turn them into something useable.
What the chart consisted of was a triangle with "tradition" at one
vertex, "market" at another and "bureaucracy" at the third,
corresponding to conservatives, libertarians and liberals. When I
posted it with names of participants stuck here and there someone
complained so I stuck in a fourth vertex marked "voting" and turned it
into a tetrahedron. It seemed to me the addition didn't help classify
anyone, though. I suppose one could add a fifth vertex for "leader" or
"cohesive ruling class" and put the whole thing in hyperspace.
I'm not sure where to put the neocons in the scheme. That might show
limitations on my scheme. It also might show that the neocons are
unprincipled, or an aggregate of thinkers and activists in transition
rather than a cohesive outlook, or grand sythesizers, or whatever.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Sun Apr 16 13:53:38 2000
Subject: Re: Typology of political thought?
To: jo
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2000 13:53:38 -0400 (EDT)
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> Your chart sounds good. Could you possible send me a hard copy?
It never existed as a hard copy, just a usenet posting.
On reflection, if I were to add something to the tradition, market and
bureaucracy vertices it would probably be a fourth vertex (making the
figure a tetrahedron) for "personal authority," which would include any
decisionmaker that need not justify its decisions by reference to t.,
m. and b. -- for example, the majority, an aristocracy or other
recognized ruling class, the king, a charismatic leader, or whatever.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Sun Apr 16 18:42:07 2000
Subject: Re: Paul Elmer More
To: dr
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2000 18:42:07 -0400 (EDT)
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One comment -- the OtR! page isn't intended to be orthodox.
Metaorthodox, if that makes sense. It's aimed at people who are caught
in the modern world and think the whole scenario doesn't make sense,
and is intended to suggest to them that the social order has to be
based on a stable and useable relationship to the transcendent, and
that the only way that can exist is through acceptance of the authority
of tradition and some sort of religious orthodoxy. It's aimed to
provoke thought. If users do come to accept the view that tradition
and orthodoxy are necessary they naturally have to go somewhere further
with it but the page doesn't take them all the way. How useful it will
be to how many people I don't know. It seemed worth trying.
I agree that Affirming Catholicism as I understand it is not in fact
pointed toward tradition, orthodoxy and the transcendent. It basically
dresses up liberalism in catholic fancy dress. Ekklesia seems a
different matter. What I say here is based on very little knowledge
though.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Sun Apr 23 15:21:55 2000
Subject: Re: Elian
To: la
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 15:21:55 -0400 (EDT)
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Happy Easter!
I didn't comment because the Elian case is not one of my major issues
-- I don't watch TV or pay much attention to day-to-day news, and that
I think makes a difference -- and because you felt so vehemently about
it and my inclination was to take the other side. You can take your
pick whether I was wisely conservative of energy and attention or just
lazy. Since you ask though I will try to pull my thoughts together and
present them.
Did you know that I am a lawyer? Training and profession make a
difference. My basic concern in this is family law. Family law
matters because it settles the relationship between family and state.
If the family precedes the state then the approach of the law to
custody has to be formalistic, just as the approach of one government
to jurisdictional claims by other sovereign governments with respect to
its own citizens has to be formalistic. In one of Dickens' novels
Bumble the Beadle comments that if the law believes he can control his
wife then the law is an ass. Family law *should* be an ass, though,
because if it tries to look much at all into circumstances then the
state and not the family becomes the basic authority.
So in cases like this I think the law should avoid getting into
questions of policy -- what the child's best interest is -- because it
is the parents and not the state who determine that. It would be like
France deciding it doesn't like American family policy and sending an
ultimatum demanding changes. Things rather like that happen today, but
I don't approve.
My basic thought then is that since mom's dead the kid goes with his
dad. All principles have exceptions, so it seems the argument is
whether some exception applies. Since I'm a lawyer my concern is what
effect acceptance of the particular kind of exception would have.
Here's my understanding of the reasons people have proposed for
deviating from the general rule of parental custody:
1. The father doesn't really want the kid back, or we have no good
reason to think he does, because he's coerced. I don't see a good
reason to accept this if the basic presumption is that what the father
says goes, especially since the father is now in the US and could claim
asylum if he felt like it. There has to be at least some strong and
concrete reason to believe the father doesn't want to take the kid back
or is really unable to speak for himself. General suspicion isn't
enough.
2. Life is bad in Cuba. In general, so what? Are we better off
having judges rather than parents decide what life is best for a kid?
Enlightened people including enlightened judges believe a Roman
Catholic upbringing is bad, for example. If in extreme cases we let
judges make the decision, and a bad political system is something on
which judges' views override those of parents, the political views of
the judges become highly relevant. What are those likely to be? Also,
Cuba today doesn't seem to be like Russia in 1938 or Cambodia in 1976.
Castro's getting old and won't last forever. The universal triumph of
the NWO means I think that people like Castro are not the main
long-term threat, even in Cuba.
3. The mother wanted Elian here. Fine, but she's dead, and someone
has to have custody and authority to make decisions for the child on
things like residency, and the fact that a dead mother disagreed with a
living father on such a point doesn't seem to me enough to deprive the
father of custody.
4. Your point seems to be that Elian himself will be subjected to bad
treatment. Not physically injurious, I should think, since communist
poster children get special food, housing, medicine etc. So the worry
is moral or psychological reprogramming and the like. I am not sure
that communist propaganda is worse in general than what kids get in
American public schools. The latter seems on the whole to strike
closer to home and be to that extent worse. It's intended for example
to root out attitudes and habits that support gender and ethnicity as
social institutions. It is not I believe radically less antifamily and
antireligious than in communist countries. It's taken more seriously
than seems to be the case in aging communist tyrannies, at least
judging by reports from Russia. And I can't believe Cuban TV and pop
culture are as bad as American. (I should say I could be wrong about
the nature of indoctrination in Cuba. I'm simply ignorant of the
specifics. For that matter I don't really know much about the
day-to-day life of the Cuban people.)
As to "special treatment" of Elian when he gets home, to expunge the
effects of exposure to capitalism or whatever, I doubt anything very
invasive would be thought necessary in the case of a 6-year-old.
Certainly the case doesn't seem clear enough to deny a father custody.
I wonder how a parent's decision to send his kids to parochial school
will eventually be treated if the principle gets established that
likelihood of indoctrination is enough to override parental rights of
custody.
I've been going on and on about the law, but I have to admit I don't
know what the legal situation really is. The two sets of rules that
seem relevant are the federal rules on immigration and the state rules
on family law. My comments have all been on the latter. If you tell
me that from an immigration standpoint Elian should be allowed to stay,
assuming someone here properly has custody, so the administration's
actions (which presumably were based on immigration law) are
outrageous, I won't argue with you. My claim is that the state should
rule the father has custody and that ought somehow to be enforced. It
seems to me Janet Reno ought to defer to the state on the matter.
There are of course other points people make. They all seem political,
though, and I think family law *clearly* should be a matter of
principle that on the whole is applied automatically and not politics.
So much for general thoughts. Some comments on what you wrote:
> The problem is that in this case, Elian would not be in the custody
> of his father, who is not a free and responsible individual but a
> helpless creature of the Castro regime.
This may suggest that the right of custody of parents who are citizens
or subjects of tyrannies should not in general be respected. That
seems wrong. It's hard for a tyranny to be hyperactive and easier to
let things run themselves, especially with regard to something like
raising children that is very difficult and expensive for the state to
undertake at all seriously, so in general even in tyrannies parents are
in fact in custody of their children. It's not the law, because there
is no law, but it's the practice and that by necessity.
> No, Elian would be in the custody of Castro, who has already stated
> that the boy would be placed in a hospital, presumably to "deprogram"
> him. Even if Elian is not subjected to harsh treatment, as an
> "infected" person who has spent several months living with his
> anti-Castro relatives, he would probably be forced to be some sort of
> mascot of the Castro regime, a very public symbol of its legitimacy.
> The Communist state would make him play this role for the rest of his
> childhood, maybe the rest of his life.
As stated, I doubt much deprogramming will be thought necessary in the
case of a 6-year-old. The "hospital" statement sounds like a
propagandistic assertion that the kid's being abused so when he gets
back he'll have to be hospitalized. As to Elian's possible public
role, it seems it would most likely involve favored treatment compared
with other Cuban children and the requirement of making public
appearances and saying things favorable to the Cuban regime. Rather
like Chelsea Clinton's situation when younger. Not great, but if
that's what the kid's father chooses for him by taking him with him
back to Cuba should the government interpose? And what would the rule
justifying government interposition look like? Is it worth setting up
such a rule for a speculative harm when any possible application of the
rule would be drenched in politics and politics should be kept away
from family law? To the extent the rule is that citizens of bad
regimes aren't allowed custody I think I can predict what kinds of
regimes are most likely to be declared "bad" in the coming years.
Elian wouldn't be a mascot for the rest of his life, by the way,
because the Cuban regime won't last the rest of his life, certainly not
in anything like its present form.
> To hand Elian ov er to Castro, under the transparently false pretence
> that we are returning him to a normal family life with his father, would
> be monstrous. It would signal, if it is not clear already, that America
> has become a leftist state.
That shouldn't be the pretense or claim, it should be that we're
releasing him to his father, and if his father then chooses (as he
presumably will) to go back to Cuba, a place where he won't have much
in the way of rights, so be it. Parents do stupid things that
sometimes deprive their children of a normal happy family life but what
they do is for them to determine. That's barring something really
clear, obvious, concrete, immediate, judicially determinable, etc.,
which doesn't seem to be the case here. And letting Elian go may in
fact signal that America is a leftist state, because that's really in
substance what's behind the decision, but from my standpoint following
the right principles in this kind of situation is more important than
sending the best political signal.
You no doubt believe that I've overlooked or slighted something crucial
and obvious, so I turn it over to you.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Mon Apr 24 04:22:09 2000
Subject: Re: Paleo List and Elian
To: jc
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 04:22:09 -0400 (EDT)
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> Isn't this paleo split over Elian interesting? I wonder if there is
> some deep rooted cause for the split. It doesn't seem to be trads
> vs. libertarians. Where are you on the Elian thing?
It is interesting. I'm not sure what the reason for the split is.
Maybe it's partly a matter of whether one looks for the principle that
seems dispositive and sticks with it or inevitably slides into weighing
all factors and preferring the picture that seems more pleasing. That
difference is probably a matter of brain function.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Mon Apr 24 17:32:29 2000
Subject: Re: Elian
To: la
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 17:32:29 -0400 (EDT)
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> Since I cannot look at this issue with dispassion I hope you will
> forgive any argumentative tone on my part.
Don't worry. It's awkward though because it makes things somewhat one-
sided. I'm not likely to put the effort into it that you would think
appropriate. It's just not a hot issue for me. So you must pardon me
as well if you think it appropriate.
> I hope the coercion and implied threat involved in the situation
> doesn't need to be spelled out further.
The issue for me is not one of overall assessment of the situation but
of something concrete, demonstrable, immediate, outrageous, unusual,
judicially determinable enough to justify saying "no" when a father
shows up to collect his 6 year old son. Overall gestalts aren't
enough.
> I did not make this argument to you or anyone.
Much of what I wrote developed my thoughts in general -- I hadn't done
so anywhere until then -- and was not intended as a specific reply to
your points.
> one must consider the likelihood of the special propaganda and
> brainwashing he would be subject to.
If it were appropriate for the government to make an openended
assessment of exactly how free an agent his father is and of the
goodness of the life his father is taking him to that would be right.
I suppose one could say the same of the Branch Davidians and their
children.
> If there is any reasonable basis to think this may be true, isn't
> that something that needs to be looked at in a family court?
If something had happened to make the family court the one to decide
the child's future, the answer would be yes.
> Are you aware of the fact that Reno took the issue away from the
> family court?
My impression is that the feds have acted badly. There are two
questions: what do I think the result should be if a father shows up
and says he wants to collect his son and take him back to Cuba, and how
well have the people involved have acted. I've commented only on the
first.
> So, (1) do you believe there is reasonable basis to believe he will
> live a life not under the normal custody and care of his father, but
> as the special puppet of Fidel Castro? (2) If your answer is yes,
> are you still going to say that the basic principle at issue is the
> father's custody?
(1) there may well be, (2) yes.
As to (1), I should say that it's hard to know just what the mixture of
paternal custody and care and Castroite puppetry would be. I would
think it would be easier for the Cuban authorities to manage the
situation by keeping the father involved and cooperative. I don't see
why brutal or extreme means should be necessary to that end. As to
(2), if the father's act (showing up, claiming the kid, taking him
back) can be treated as the father's act -- and the standards for
treating a man's act as not his act should be rather stiff -- then the
father can send his kid to commie boarding school in some other country
if he wants. If crossing the border ipso facto constitutes sending the
kid to boarding school he can do that too, or so it seems to me.
Especially if the other country is the father's own and the one the kid
is from. My basic point is that permission for this stuff is not
fundamentally ours to give or withhold. You basically want to talk
substance, I want to talk jurisdiction with substance relevant only to
the extent it's so clearly extreme and horrible that normal standards
don't apply.
> By your reasoning here, is there any situation you can imagine that
> would supercede parental rights?
Sure. If the kid were actually being seriously mistreated, starved,
beaten to the point of injury, whatever. A child can be protected from
criminal acts. Or if the kid were being sent someplace where it was
known such things would or very likely would happen. Here the likely
mistreatment seems to be less physical or even psychological in a
grossly abusive sense than moral. I don't think the threat of
political and moral misindoctrination and compelled public support for
bad causes should be grounds for termination of parental rights. Is it
relevant that such a principle would far more likely be applied to
fundie children than to Chelsea Clinton?
The general format I have in mind is that parents have custody of their
children and are responsible for the decisions relating to them except
where something concretely and immediately criminal is going on. That
means that Florida of the U.S. government can't get much involved in
what's going to happen to a kid in another country when his parents
take him there unless it's really clear that it's going to be something
criminally bad in some unarguable way. Other people are resposible for
looking after that and we can't reform the world even if the world very
much needs it. I suppose they could also get involved if it were clear
the father's acts were in fact coerced so as not to be his acts.
> when it comes finally to my real arguments, your replies are very
> weak.
They don't have to be strong because the arguments the other way -- in
favor of terminating parental rights -- have to be so strong. To the
extent the future is speculative that supports my position.
> I am concerned about a manifest wrong that we are doing to a human
> being, and that will light us down in infamy.
We are doing the wrong if we are the ones with basic authority to
decide what happens to Elian offshore.
> They said that Elian has an interest as an individual in pursuing
> asylum, which the Clinton government had denied. They reproved the
> Clinton government for not allowing the asylum case to go foward. I
> guess you would disagree with the 11th circuit decision pretty
> strongly on the basis of everything you've said.
It seems to me giving a 6-year-old child the right to claim political
asylum or make other major life decisions independent of his parents is
a bad move. The 11th circuit may be right about immigration law as it
stands.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Mon Apr 24 20:10:45 2000
Subject: Re: splendid article by Jonah Goldberg
To: la
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 20:10:45 -0400 (EDT)
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> He expands on the fraudulence of the Clintonites' "rule of law"
> argument.
I agree the argument sounds very odd. I don't see how the rule of law
requires the feds to do much of anything since their interest in the
matter is immigration law and I thought the 11th circuit said the kid
had some claims that should be heard under immigration law. I
certainly don't see how the feds get involved in determining and
enforcing a right to custody. What Reno etc. have done doesn't look at
all like the rule of law to me. None of the foregoing affects anything
I have said though.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Wed Apr 26 09:38:15 2000
Subject: Re: Elian dialogue
To: Ca
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 09:38:15 -0400 (EDT)
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Thanks for the note. I wanted to avoid getting into this because it
raises so many issues and I have other things I'm worrying about but
since you and L. have strong views on the subject I suppose I should
seize the opportunity. I suppose the downside is that L. at least
may never speak to me again.
Your comments all have to do with substance, what's best for Elian. As
I mentioned to L. the issue seems to me juridiction rather than
substance. The basic principle is that a child is his parent's
responsibility. Unless we know that the father isn't really saying his
own words when he says he wants to take Elian back with him, or that
Elian's treatment in Cuba will be plainly criminal in some crude way
and no sane father could choose it for his son, the father should get
Elian and if he then takes him someplace where life is bad and normal
legal rights -- including his own rights with respect to his son --
don't apply then that's his choice however wrong it may be.
It also seems to me demonstration rather than suspicion or general
background is needed to show that the "unless" applies since on the
face of it what we're considering is the state interfering with a tie
that precedes the state. We are also I suppose talking about an
imperialistic power -- the powerhouse of the NWO -- interfering with
the affairs of a small nearby country that poses no threat to others.
Jurisdictional issues -- who has final say on what -- aren't
emotionally engaging but they're fundamental. They include things like
the right of families to self-government. A tolerable social order
depends on taking such things very seriously. Since it's a basic issue
the considerations become abstract and not very interesting for most
people. To say the Good is transcendent, and that every individual,
family, people has its own irreducible moral value, is to say the Good
is not the simple possession of any person or agency, and that
responsibility for determining what it is and what to do about it must
be distributed. As an organizational matter that requires
jurisdictional lines that are respected. Otherwise whoever has most
power will end up with all power and decide everything, because he'll
claim an open-ended right to supervise others based on his physical
ability to stop whatever he judges bad, and what he wants will
eventually become the supreme law. Once the supreme law is what one
man or agency determines there is no further room for God or human
dignity.
I don't think the foregoing is just a crazy theoretical possibility,
it's what's happening all around us right now. The central and
soon-to-be-universal state has grown by finding abused children,
suffering Kosovars, impoverished single moms, discriminated-against
whatevers, and announcing that the local independent institutions are
weak, corrupt, malicious etc. and something has to be done, central
controls have to be instituted and so on. In many cases the children,
Kosovars, whatever really *are* suffering. The advantage TV gives
liberals is that it enables them to bring individual cases into our
living rooms so they become personally urgent and "it's really not our
business" becomes "something must be done." If you want a good society,
though, the justice that you aim at politically can't be a matter of
ensuring good substantive consequences in every case but of following
known and settled rules that in general promote the good, in part by
dividing power and making many things unreviewable.
So in the Elian case our basic concern I think should be what our
government does rather than what the Cuban government does. That after
all is the point L. raised with me. I'm not sure what the known and
settled rule would be that justifies giving Elian to his Miami
relatives when his father says he wants custody. What enduring
principle would work? You and L. seem to be arguing from necessity.
Arguments from necessity do work at times, but I'm not convinced this
is one of the times. Maybe I could become convinced but I haven't been
paying attention to the case or to Cuban affairs and don't want to
spend the time. Would it be enough if I agreed not to support letting
dad have Elian, at least not publicly, without first informing myself
better?
Some reasons for doubting the argument from necessity include the
following:
1. The Castro government has lasted 40 years. Radically and
comprehensively criminal governments that in fact as well as in
principle abolish the family don't last that long. In order to keep
things going at all you have to cooperate with human nature and act in
routine and dependable ways to some extent.
2. To the extent the Cuban government is an exception to principle (1)
it is because Castro's still there. He's not immortal. L. thinks a
change of government in Cuba is speculative. I don't agree.
3. It appears that the Cuban government has a great deal of support
from ordinary Cubans in this case, who after all know what life is like
there.
4. If Elian's dad doesn't really want to retrieve Elian because life
is so bad there, why didn't he try to flee Cuba himself?
5. The obvious thing for Castro to do with Elian is to turn him into a
Potemkin kid. He's 6 years old, so the "ideologically polluted" theory
doesn't seem persuasive. If dad is going to give Elian that life by
taking him to Cuba does that make dad an unfit father? On what
principle that a court could apply? Life as a Potemkin kid for Castro
doesn't seem good but life as Chelsea Clinton doesn't seem good either.
You aren't likely to be persuaded by 1-5. Remember though that I think
there's a very high standard for ruling against Elian's father and I
mention these points to suggest why I don't see that the standard has
been met.
> The child belongs to the parent only insofar as this attitude is
> properly instilled. Children are also encouraged to report to
> authorities anything their parents say that goes against state
> attitudes. Parents must be very careful about imparting religious
> ideas to children especially; if the children are heard expressing
> such ideas, it can be used against the parents. One would have to be
> especially careful with small children, who might repeat something to
> be especially careful with small children, who might repeat something
> guilelessly that might get the parents into trouble. So as long as
> the children are small, one would have to teach them lies. Then
> later one would have to be careful in other ways. It's a nightmare.
> If people want him to go back, fine, but they shouldn't pretend it's
> about family.
I have no desire for him to go back but it's not my decision. The
basic way government can support family is by limiting itself. It's
not often capable of supporting family directly. If Elian's father
wants to take him someplace where both of them are going to have to go
along with official antireligious and pro-Castro views that seems like
a bad decision but I don't think he should be deprived of Elian for it.
Otherwise it would be child abuse for anyone who leaves Cuba with a
child not to defect, which seems unworkable.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
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In-Reply-To: <000b01bfaf0b$0e3c5800$8ea68bd1@olimu2> from "John Derbyshire" at Apr 25, 0 04:07:40 pm
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> I think Kipling would have proved receptive, in the end.
I know Kipling had a feeling for brutal realities, but the view seems
out of keeping with say the last couple of stanzas of "Recessional."
I'm adding nothing to what you already know though.
--=20
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
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In-Reply-To: <200004261249470720.05F84172@mail.naxs.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Apr 26, 0 12:49:47 pm
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Seth writes:
> Is there ANYBODY on this list who truly believes that the main
> concern of Reno and Clinton is slowing immigration or the inviolab
> ility of the family? I think we may assume there is no one here who
> is tha t naive. So I believe we may safely rid ourselves of the
> notion that letti ng the kid stay here threatens some kind of
> overarching paleoconservative p rinciple that's at stake.
I don't see the connection between the first two sentences and the
third. R. and C. do not determine overarching paleo principles. If
o.p.p. demand X that isn't changed by what Bill and Janet think about
the matter.
> The wielders of power in this nation will draw no lesson from their
> victory that any of us would agree with.
If we can't spin events so that the people in power draw the right
lessons, and we obviously can't, then it seems to me best simply to be
principled. Right principles may have an effect in the long run, and I
don't see what else we have going for us. You don't act in a
principled way by figuring out what you opponents want and demanding
the opposite.
--=20
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
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In-Reply-To: <000001bfad90$33bd40c0$3e46adc7@olimu2> from "John Derbyshire" at Apr 23, 0 06:55:44 pm
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> If Castro, or any other of those jerks, wants something, we should
> bend all our national will to denying it to him; to figuring out what
> the opposite of what he wants is, heating it up red-hot and ramming
> it up his ass.
Would Rudyard Kipling have agreed with this view?
--
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"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
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In-Reply-To: <200004261830440060.09F63B2A@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Apr 26, 0 06:30:44 pm
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Seth writes:
> I've assumed that those paleos who want Elian sent back must have
> envisioned some kind of practical good that would come of such a
> distasteful alternative.
The last thing to look for in dealing with someone else's custody claim
is some kind of general practical political good. I've assumed that
the paleos who want Elian sent back are less numerous than those who
have no desire at all for him to go back but think the father has the
right to custody because the paternal tie precedes the state and
therefore all considerations of general practical political good. If
the father then takes Elian back to Cuba where rights including the
right upon which he bases his claim for custody aren't respected that's
too bad but then I think what a lot of people do with their kids is
outrageous. Should returning home to a country where rights aren't
respected be treated as per se child abuse justifying termination of
parental rights? Training a kid up in atheism and communism? Choosing
to live in an impoverished and lawless environment?
> I.e., that it would reinforce the principle of family autonomy in
> this nation, that it would amount to a symbolic but genuine
> repudiation of illegal immigration on the part of the government,
> SOMETHING. If this is not so--if it's merely a devotion to dry
> theory bearing no practical fruit--then I'm afraid that what we have
> here is a foolish consistency (it also reminds me of the insane
> theoretical squabbles among libertarians).
Do you recognize a notion of acting on principle other than as a
rhetorical maneuver?
> It seems clear to me that you're ignoring the most important
> principle of all: fight your real enemy.
That is the most important principle of all only if power and pragmatic
success really are the final standards. My own view is that taking
them as final standards doesn't even work on its own terms. For one
thing it makes proclamations of principle pure rhetoric, which when
recognized deprives them of all force. Naked force then becomes the
standard.
> The New Class ruling elite in this nation--represented at the moment
> by the Clintons and Janet Reno--is the mortal enemy of the family,
> and it's committed to maximum illegal immigration until such time as
> it can get open borders. Furthermore, it believes it has the right
> to use deadly force to harrass, oppress and murder law-abiding
> Americans who hinder its purposes. The fewer bad consequences these
> people suffer from their illegal activities, the more emboldened they
> will be in the future in their continuing attacks on the family and
> in their brazen attempts to import foreign voters for the Democrat
> Party. They couldn't care less that a tiny handful of
> paleoconservatives supported them out of a deluded devotion to the
> very principles and institutions they are most determined to destroy.
You can vehemently oppose almost everything C and R have done and still
think that on the custody claim Elian's father is right. His being
right doesn't support C and R's views on the family, their support for
illegal immigration, the raid in Miami, or any illegality. If all you
have going for you is principle, and that's all paleos have going for
them, why attack C and R on the wrong issue when even in this situation
there are so many better things to attack them on?
> The overriding principle here is frustrate your real enemy to the
> best of your ability.
The real enemy is nothing so personal as Janet Reno or even the New
Class. The New Class let alone a dimwit like Reno or sociopath like
Clinton are manifestations of something much more general and difficult
to deal with. An aspect of the tendencies that constitute the real
enemy is the reduction of principle to rhetorical ploy.
> It is insane to believe that we're somehow striking a blow for the
> sanctity of the family by letting these thugs get away with illegally
> invading yet another peaceful home of law-abiding citizens.
I don't think anyone here has come out in favor of the raid.
If anyone's interested in reading farther I've appended something I
wrote on these issues to some friends who I am afraid are now upset
with me.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
Thanks for the note. I wanted to avoid getting into this because it
raises so many issues and I have other things I'm worrying about but
since you and L have strong views on the subject I suppose I should
seize the opportunity. I suppose the downside is that L at least may
never speak to me again.
Your comments all have to do with substance, what's best for Elian. As
I mentioned to L the issue seems to me juridiction rather than
substance. The basic principle is that a child is his parent's
responsibility. Unless we know that the father isn't really saying his
own words when he says he wants to take Elian back with him, or that
Elian's treatment in Cuba will be plainly criminal in some crude way
and no sane father could choose it for his son, the father should get
Elian and if he then takes him someplace where life is bad and normal
legal rights -- including his own rights with respect to his son --
don't apply then that's his choice however wrong it may be.
It also seems to me demonstration rather than suspicion or general
background is needed to show that the "unless" applies since on the
face of it what we're considering is the state interfering with a tie
that precedes the state. We are also I suppose talking about an
imperialistic power -- the powerhouse of the NWO -- interfering with
the affairs of a small nearby country that poses no threat to others.
Jurisdictional issues -- who has final say on what -- aren't
emotionally engaging but they're fundamental. They include things like
the right of families to self-government. A tolerable social order
depends on taking such things very seriously. Since it's a basic issue
the considerations become abstract and not very interesting for most
people. However, to say the Good is transcendent, and that every
individual, family, people has its own irreducible moral value, is to
say the Good is not the simple possession of any person or agency, and
that responsibility for determining what it is and what to do about it
must be distributed. As an organizational matter that requires
jurisdictional lines that are respected. Otherwise whoever has most
power will end up with all power and decide everything, because he'll
claim an open-ended right to supervise others based on his physical
ability to stop whatever he judges bad, and what he wants will
eventually become the supreme law. Once the supreme law is what one
man or agency determines there is no further room for God or human
dignity.
I don't think the foregoing is just a crazy theoretical possibility,
it's what's happening all around us right now. The central and
soon-to-be-universal state has grown by finding abused children,
suffering Kosovars, impoverished single moms, discriminated-against
whatevers, and announcing that the local independent institutions are
weak, corrupt, malicious etc. and something has to be done, central
controls have to be instituted and so on. In many cases the children,
Kosovars, whatever really *are* suffering. The advantage TV gives
liberals is that it enables them to bring individual cases into our
living rooms so they become personally urgent and "it's really not our
business" becomes "something must be done." If you want a good society,
though, the justice that you aim at politically can't be a matter of
ensuring good substantive consequences in every case but of following
known and settled rules that in general promote the good, in part by
dividing power and making many things unreviewable.
So in the Elian case our basic concern I think should be what our
government does rather than what the Cuban government does. That after
all is the point L raised with me. I'm not sure what the known and
settled rule would be that justifies giving Elian to his Miami
relatives when his father says he wants custody. What enduring
principle would work? You and L seem to be arguing from necessity.
Arguments from necessity do work at times, but I'm not convinced this
is one of the times. Maybe I could become convinced but I haven't been
paying attention to the case or to Cuban affairs and don't want to
spend the time. Would it be enough if I agreed not to support letting
dad have Elian, at least not publicly, without first informing myself
better or at least caveating that there could be factual issues I don't
know enough about to resolve?
Some reasons for doubting the argument from necessity include the
following:
1. The Castro government has lasted 40 years. Radically and
comprehensively criminal governments that in fact as well as in
principle abolish the family don't last that long. In order to keep
things going at all you have to cooperate with human nature and act in
routine and dependable ways to some extent.
2. To the extent the Cuban government is an exception to principle (1)
it is because Castro's still there. He's not immortal. L thinks a
change of government in Cuba is speculative. I don't agree.
3. It appears that the Cuban government has a great deal of support
from ordinary Cubans in this case, who after all know what life is like
there.
4. If Elian's dad doesn't really want to retrieve Elian because life
is so bad there, why didn't he try to flee Cuba himself?
5. The obvious thing for Castro to do with Elian is to turn him into a
Potemkin kid. He's 6 years old, so the "ideologically polluted" theory
doesn't seem persuasive. If dad is going to give Elian that life by
taking him to Cuba does that make dad an unfit father? On what
principle that a court could apply? Life as a Potemkin kid for Castro
doesn't seem good but life as Chelsea Clinton doesn't seem good either.
You aren't likely to be persuaded by 1-5. Remember though that I think
there's a very high standard for ruling against Elian's father and I
mention these points to suggest why I don't see that the standard has
been met.
> The child belongs to the parent only insofar as this attitude is
> properly instilled. Children are also encouraged to report to
> authorities anything their parents say that goes against state
> attitudes. Parents must be very careful about imparting religious
> ideas to children especially; if the children are heard expressing
> such ideas, it can be used against the parents. One would have to be
> especially careful with small children, who might repeat something to
> be especially careful with small children, who might repeat something
> guilelessly that might get the parents into trouble. So as long as
> the children are small, one would have to teach them lies. Then
> later one would have to be careful in other ways. It's a nightmare.
> If people want him to go back, fine, but they shouldn't pretend it's
> about family.
I have no desire for him to go back but it's not my decision. The
basic way government can support family is by limiting itself. It's
not often capable of supporting family directly. If Elian's father
wants to take him someplace where both of them are going to have to go
along with official antireligious and pro-Castro views that seems like
a bad decision but I don't think he should be deprived of Elian for it.
Otherwise it would be child abuse for anyone who leaves Cuba with a
child not to defect, which seems unworkable.
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From jk Thu Apr 27 16:54:38 2000
Subject: More Elian
To: la
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 16:54:38 -0400 (EDT)
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Response to your latest response:
> He didn't show up to collect his son. His son has been here five
> months. He came three weeks ago! Any normal loving father would
> have come immediately. Why didn't he come? Because he's not able to
> function as a father--because he's under the direct control of a
> cruel dictator who controls every move he makes, every breath he
> takes, and who will do the same to the son.
He's not allowed to leave his country at will and he lives in a
tyranny. The same is true of a large part of the world. Tyrants are
cruel, and in concept they have power to control every move and breath.
They don't in fact do so because they can't be that active. You can't
rule millions of people for 40 years without mostly letting immediate
everyday life go on as it goes on.
> I asked you if it should be considered by a family court, and you
> reply that if it were before the family court, then the family court
> ought to decide. But the family court being the one to decide was
> the very thing that was stopped by Reno.
I wasn't talking about what Reno did. That's an important issue but
it's not the one I was dealing with. By "were" I meant something like
"properly were or should be." I was discussing the principles I thought
should apply. The intended point was that if custody were properly a
matter for the discretion of the family court -- e.g., if the parents
split and a choice had to be made between them -- the best interests of
the child would be key. Otherwise the inquiry should be formalistic
barring something demonstrative and rare. I don't see how conditions
that affect a large part of the world for decades could qualify. If it
were Cambodia in 1976 or Elian were a special candidate for persecution
things might be different.
> Well, I'm stunned. You're saying that even if he is not going to be
> under his father's custody, you're still going to base your belief
> that he should return to Cuba on an appeal to the principle of the
> father's custody!
The rights of Elian's father should be determined by our law and not
Cuban law. If a man sends his daughter to a convent school to be
raised by the nuns that's an exercise of parental authority even though
it consists of consigning her to the authority of someone else and even
someone who thinks nuns and the Catholic Church stinks should recognize
it as such. Besides, I don't know why you're so sure Elian will not as
a matter of day-to-day practice be as much in his father's custody as
the children of many American fathers who are considered responsible
providers etc.
> You don't see why such extreme means should be necessary? What does
> your feeling about what Castro might find necessary have to do with
> it?
One possibility is that America treat all children whose parents live
in tyrannies as wards of the American government, to be placed in
accordance with what we believe are their best interests, because after
all their parents aren't really their custodians because their own
governments don't recognize their rights as such. If that's rejected,
and as a principle it seems rather messianic, then the key apparently
becomes not what the local government could do but what it evidently
will do. What the locals seem likely to find necessary then becomes
relevant.
> All I hear coming from you is some state of wishfulness. You don't
> want to think of how bad things will be for Elian, you don't want to
> face the cruelty of what we're doing to him, so you downplay all the
> factors that might make you uncomfortable with your position.
It's interesting to hear what others take one's unexpressed motives to
be, but it's hard to discuss the question productively.
> What I'm hearing coming from you now is the voice of every Western
> liberal who has ever blinded his eyes to and rationalized and excused
> the reality of Communism and the other evils that Western liberals
> don't want to face, because if they faced the reality of those
> things, that would require them to oppose them.
Should children be allowed to board airplanes to communist countries?
Will Elian be worse off than most Cuban children? (I know you believe
he will, but it's still not clear to me why that makes sense.) How
about Chinese women who are subject to forced late-term abortion? I
don't know specifically what the legal status of the family is in
China, but I suspect it ain't much, especially since they don't have
the rule of law there. There are also millions of people in all sorts
of countries, Haiti, Africa or whereever, who local political or social
circumstances put in a horrible position. Do all those people get free
entry?
> Besides, the brutal and extreme methods, which you imagine won't be
> "necessary," are already manifest! Look what they did and are doing.
The ones I know about the American government is responsible for. It's
important that the American government uses brutal and extreme methods,
but it's not a reason to deny Elian's father custody.
> How come don't you bring that factor into your evaluation of him as a
> father?
Is it my job to do a general evaluation of Elian's father as a father?
Nothing I've heard of that he's done sounds abusive to me unless saying
he wants to take him to Cuba is abusive.
> Now you're taking a new and radical tack, claiming that U.S. courts
> don't even have jurisdiction.
Not my intention. If there's a dispute over who has custody of a kid
who is physically in this country the U.S. courts plainly have
jurisdiction to deal with it in some way. I was using "jurisdiction"
in a somewhat figurative manner to refer to the distinction between the
sphere of authority of the family and the state.
> the Cuban state and the American state acting together--that has now
> truly interfered in coercive and violent ways to wrest him from the
> relatives who were properly seeking the legal right to have a court
> consider his right to asylum in the U.S. and to have family court
> consider what was in his best interest.
Outrageous conduct by the American government and the need to respect
proper procedure don't have much to do with the rule the family court
should apply, whether for example it should say "we look at what's in
Elian's best interest" or "Elian's dad says he wants to take custody
and we determine his paternal rights by our law which says he gets
custody unless there's a dispute with the mother or he's an unfit
father."
> Where is it in our legal tradition that only such extreme
> circumstances justify taking a child away from the parent's custody?
> I never heard of it. Children are taken away from their parents for
> all sorts of reasons.
The circumstances I'm aware of are disputes between the parents when
they split up and a determination that a parent is an unfit person.
> Now you really get to the core of your position. It turns out that
> you don't have to defend or explain anything, because the father's
> right is absolute and everything else is nothing.
I've mentioned exceptions to the father's right and why they don't seem
to me to apply. I've also I think suggested why the matter can't be
treated as one of general policy, of what makes most sense in the
circumstances.
> If the U.S. government sends stormtroopers into the house ripping him
> away from the woman who became his mother-figure after the searing
> death of his mother, probably emotionally scarring Elian for life,
> well, all these people have to do is say "father" and that makes it
> all ok.
I haven't said anything like this.
> I am concerned by the (I use the word in the same sense that Burke
> used it of the Jacobins) metaphysical extremism of your position.
"Courts shouldn't take custody away from parents except in a few clear
and narrow cases" doesn't strike me as novel, a private invention of my
own, or metaphysically extreme.
A background issue is what to do about tyranny. The basic view I've
been presenting is that parents make major choices for their kids
unless the parents disagree or unless they're clearly and demonstrably
unfit for the responsibility. That's not the whole of the story
though. In addition the law disallows some choices. For example
parents in this country have to see that their kids are vaccinated and
educated, and apparently (as they say) parents can't restrict their
children's "access to reproductive health services." One could put
together a list of other cases.
Normally there's no attempt to give these protections extraterritorial
effect. Looking after the local kids, to the extent the family doesn't
do the job, is the responsibility of the local government, although I
suppose the Convention on the Rights of the Child is intended to change
that. It seems that you want to say that some long-established settled
governments recognized as legitimate by most of the world nonetheless
do the job so badly that taking a kid there is per se child abuse.
Is that a misinterpretation? I don't think you would come out
differently if you were convinced Elian's father really did want to
take him to Cuba, and I'm not sure you would say the opinions of a
6-year-old or more remote relatives should control the matter. Most of
the arguments and articles you sent me have to do with conditions in
Cuba generally rather than Elian's particular status, which seems to me
likely to be more privileged than most.
So it seems what your position implies really is non-recognition of
Cuba as a legitimate state with a right to exist. They're a gang of
murderers, the enemies of civilization and all decency, and if we don't
invade to restore order by driving out the criminals it's not because
an invasion would be a violation of international order but simply a
matter of prudence. One of the articles you sent seems to suggest the
same would apply to China. I'm not sure whether mere brutality,
corruption and incompetence as in Haiti or unenlightened views on
family life as in Saudi Arabia would yield the same result but I'm sure
there are other examples.
So a background concern of mine in all this is how it fits together
with foreign relations if we officially -- just on our own, with no
support from anyone else in the world -- start recognizing other
governments as baby-eating child abusers. I suppose it's also a
question what you think the appropriate rule for asylum should be if
denying asylum basically constitutes child abuse.
On that I'll have to stop for several days. We're leaving very early
next morning to family weekend up at Dartmouth and I can't predict when
and whether I'll check email.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Sun Apr 30 19:53:35 2000
Subject: Re: Elian
To: Ca
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 19:53:35 -0400 (EDT)
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> Let me begin by saying that if you are interested in procedure, then
> you must object to the Gestapo like raid in the night!
I see no excuse for it. The federal interest in the case is enforcing
the immigration laws and since a court had ruled the boy had a present
right to stay there was no immigration-law reason for immediate extreme
action.
> You seem to forget that the other interests were not arising from
> state concerns making decisions for private individuals, but from the
> concerns of family, albeit extended family.
This is the argument that if the courts do it it's not really the
government doing it because of the need for a plaintiff. Some private
person is required e.g. to claim that the boy scouts shouldn't keep him
from being a scoutmaster because he's homosexual. The problem is that
government will not be limited unless private rights are clear cut. To
the extent the issues that can be raised and the class of those
entitled to raise them expands the government must arbitrate and the
result will be state ordering of private affairs in accordance with
state concerns.
> I am a believer in as you sow so shall you reap, so I feel much of
> what Juan Miguel has had to endure he brought on himself through his
> actions. Elisa was unhappy and lonely and she tried for a new life
> with the new boyfriend and Elian; say what you want about her
> choices, but I have sympathy for her.
It seems to me the issue you're raising is whether J.M. is an unfit
father or has abandoned paternal rights by his conduct, or something
like that. I don't know enough about the situation or the applicable
standards to discuss. One comment though is that to say the guy's
claim doesn't call for unmixed sympathy is not to say he should lose
unless custody is to become simply a matter of policy, of what the
judge thinks makes most sense in the circumstances. My objection to
that view is that it abolishes parental rights. Dad gets custody if
the judge finds him sympathetic and thinks it's what will work out best
but not otherwise.
Another issue your note raises is whether even if a single issue
(J.M.'s lack of agency because he's under the thumb of a tyrant, his
misconduct as a father, Elian's mother's evident intentions and
willingness to risk her life, the bad situation in Cuba, the interest
of other relatives, the passage of time, gross government misconduct,
etc., etc.) isn't enough to deny J.M.'s claim if you put them all
together it becomes enough to go on. My objection to that kind of
approach is that it seems once more to make custody in all cases a
matter of policy, of what the judge thinks best in the overall
situation.
> Very often, I find that we conservatives can be enlisted to fight
> against what is really our own interests, because some principle is
> hypocritically invoked that we believe in. But later on, we will
> find that when it doesn't suit the powers that be, that principle
> will be smashed. Thus the right of privacy was suddenly invoked in
> the Clinton sacandals, and many conservatives went on board with it,
> but the right to privacy was obviated by the law CLINTON HIMSELF
> SIGNED INTO EFFECT AS PRESIDENT.
It's hard to be principled in an age of soundbites. I think that's all
we've got to go on though. Being opportunistic may be OK if the
general trend of things is in your favor but that's not where we are.
> There were court orders, and they should have been worked through
> legally. At a certain point, the court appeals would have come to an
> end, and most likely, Elian would have had to go back, since his
> father seems to be a convicted communist and utterly loyal to Fidel,
> and his interest would have been the primary one. But other
> interests had been established legally and our government's obviating
> the court, and acting like the Gestapo, is doing much more harm to
> the rights of individuals and privacy and family and so forth, than
> the Miami relatives were doing. The government also managed to
> convey the intimidating idea that you had better not challenge
> authority and the state, something that had always been seen as
> heroic in America before! And let's not overlook the cynical
> invocation of "the rule of law" that they in true Orwellian fashion
> unembarrassedly called upon to defend the Gestapo raid.
Oh, I agree. My basic point is that a father's custody claim is a
matter of private right and not policy and politics, and the raid and
the rest of the interference with normal procedure is one result of
treating it as the latter.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Sun Apr 30 21:37:59 2000
Subject: Re: More Elian
To: la
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 21:37:59 -2800 (EDT)
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After your last I'm puzzled by the whole exchange:
> The reason I attributed motives to you was your repeated failure to
> reply to my principal arguments.
I thought I repeatedly replied to them. The replies may of course seem
quite inadequate to you but that's a different matter.
You wrote lengthy comments raising a great many issues, some of which
seemed extraneous to anything I said. I spent quite a lot of time
responding to them. It would have been helpful if you had shortened
your comments and concentrated on your central issue. If the following
was your whole point it was misleading for example to send me the
articles you did talking about the Elian case in connection with
general conditions in Cuba. One of the articles even said that China
is the same. If your whole point is that Elian's position is unique
then I don't want to have to deal with 200,000,000 other children.
> But he _is_ a special candidate for persecution! That's the whole
> point. Not necessarily in the sense of physical punishment, but in
> the sense that he will be the special object of brainwashing,
> monitoring and control. Whether he is shunned as the child of a
> defector, or gets special privileges as a symbol of the state, he
> will live a uniquely unfree live, experiencing what one observer has
> described as the rape of the soul. His "loving father" is serving as
> Castro's instrument in subjecting him to that.
A lot of your comments have related to other issues. If this is the
whole point I wish you had left the other stuff out.
Your specific point then is that there's something specially and
demonstrably horrible about Elian's fate that he doesn't share with
other Cuban children, Chinese children, North Korean children, children
of religious or for that matter antireligious fanatics, etc., such that
for a father to choose that for him would be guilty of child abuse
whereas other fathers choosing those other things would not. I have no
objection to someone trying to show that in a custody proceding. Do
you and I have a dispute? If we do, exactly what is it?
> >The rights of Elian's father should be determined by our law and not
> >Cuban law.
>
> This is a staggering statement. The argument is analogous to the
> proverbial Communist who openly wants to overthrow the U.S.
> government by force yet who claims his rights to political freedom
> under the very Constitution that he wants to destroy.
The rights of a Communist in America should certainly be determined
under American rather than say Cambodian law. Do you disagree?
> you are actually saying that Elian's circumstances will not be any
> different from those of lots of American children.
I don't think I intended that, just that a lot of the arguments could
equally well apply to many American children. That's why it's
important to concentrate on the key arguments, the ones that make this
case unique.
> I had said that he hadn't "shown up" for four months, and when he did
> "show up" he remained 1000 miles from the kid surrounded by Castro's
> agents. I was pointing out the obvious--that his failure to show up
> is relevant to your claim that his parental rights are absolute and
> not to be questioned.
My response was that it shows nothing about Elian's father and simply
shows Castro is a tyrant. It also shows nothing about what turns out
to be your whole point, since you don't want to let in all the hundreds
of millions of children living in lawless tyrannies that among many
other things generally don't permit foreign travel.
> "Is it my job to do a general evaluation of Elian's father as a
> father?"
And on your view it isn't. He's irrelevant. All that matters you tell
me is Castro's demonstrable intentions with regard to Elian. Elian's
father could be the most wonderful, caring guy in the world and it
wouldn't matter.
> What about cases in which one parent dies and grandparents feel the
> surviving parent is not a competent parent? Such cases are not
> uncommon.
"Not competent" = "unfit." Children can be taken from unfit parents.
> While my general, personal feeling is that he should stay, my
> position is to support Lazarro and the 11th circuit's opinion that
> Elian's case SHOULD BE HEARD.
I'm not quite sure what our disagreement is. I said based on my
understanding of things that Elian's father should get custody. I
don't think I suggested there should be no hearing. My concern was
that the standards applied should be specific and strict, not some
general principle of the best interests of the child. I also said it
would be very hard to treat "living in a communist country" as
equivalent to child abuse. I don't see how any of that conflicts with
what you say is your whole point. I know nothing specific about how
prominent kids are treated in communist countries generally or Cuba in
particular. I've never heard from anyone but you that it was specially
bad compared with the situation of other kids. Since we've had 80+
years of relevant experience it ought to be possible to come to a view
on the subject. You said some things that seemed quite heated on the
topic, among others, and I said they sounded doubtful which annoyed
you. I had no specific evidence to show they were doubtful but as I've
said I don't know much about Cuban affairs. If what you say can be
demonstrated in court why should I have an objection?
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Thu Apr 6 12:32:18 2000
Subject: Re: alt.revolution.counter FAQ
To: a
Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 12:32:18 -0400 (EDT)
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> : Is it so clear that's the solution? In my reply to Andy Fear I
> : alluded to the Act in Restraint of Appeals, by which England
> : declared independence from Christendom.
>
> Interesting. I think that the Anglican Church would dissent from the
> above interpretation. The line (if such a thing now exists because it
> has to be said that thought is a rare commodity in the Anglican
> Church) is that the breech was with Rome and not Christendom. Indeed
> one might develop this argument in an Orthodox line and argue that
> autocephalacy is a hallmark of christendom and that it was Rome which
> was the innovator. Actually Christendom raises an interesting CR
> question, namely can it be recovered and if so how. Certainly the ENR
> arguments for a European "Imperium" seem to lack the cement which
> Christendom could conceivably provide.
I'm not sure why autocephacy should be a hallmark for anyone except
radical protestants. I suppose the view would be that the supreme
universal visible authority is an ecumenical council, and if something
beyond that is needed, a day-to-day administrative authority for
example, it shows faith and tradition been abandoned. I don't know
enough to argue the question.
In any case the Anglican Church is not autocephalous but
heterocephalous, if that's a word, since its earthly head is the King.
The radical protestant question then becomes, if Harry can do it why
not Tom and Dick?
Incidently, the Americans had fairly good common law arguments for
their position based on their claim that Parliament had no authority in
the colonies. At least they were good under the common law as it stood
when the colonies were founded. As I recall they cited some cases
involving Lord Coke and the consequences of the accession of James I.
If Parliament had no authority in America then George III was acting as
a tyrant, and the Americans were at least initially simply acting to
prevent the overthrow of the whole of their constitution.
Later it got more radical, of course, but the revolutionaries of 1776,
unlike those of 1688, weren't in a position to appoint a new King of
England who would act like a legitimate king and not a tyrant. The men
of 1776 had Tom Paine, but those of 1688 had John Locke, so both
revolutions had a radical side as well as admitting a more conservative
explanation.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Mon May 1 15:38:35 2000
Subject: Re: Elian
To: Ca
Date: Mon, 1 May 2000 15:38:35 -0400 (EDT)
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> There's no point in idealizing parents, the way conservatives do some
> times. The reason so many custody cases are winding up in court is,
> partly, that parents are indulging themselves, cheating, abusing, and
> acting immaturely in a lot of ways, indirectly and sometimes directly
> demanding that a larger authority step in. My point about Juan Miguel
> was not necessarily any immediate unfitness to be a father, but that
> in a larger, spiritual, metaphysical way, the cheating on his wife
> had resulted in her being alone and vulnerable to wanting another
> life, a better life, she hoped, away from Cuba, which in turn
> resulted in the flight and all the rest. This happens all the time;
> if you look closely you will see that it is often the original
> fissure in the family that causes a problem to appear in the courts.
> If families were more united you would see less of this court
> interference.
I agree with all this, but the question remains what role the
government including the court system should play. It seems to me if
government including the courts sets out to ensure a sensible result in
each case in which there is disagreement, and on request it is ready to
take general responsibility for individual situations, the game is
over. That's true in family law, the welfare system and everywhere
else.
If government is to be limited and if responsibility of individuals and
informal traditional institutions (including the family and traditional
moral standards generally) preserved as something that matters what
happens has to be mostly a matter of clear private rights that make
individuals or anyway someone who isn't the government the final
arbiter except in unusual and clearly defined cases that don't include
the usual range of human screwups and cruddiness. Otherwise the state
becomes our custodian. I really don't see the requirement that someone
ask the government to step in as much of a limitation.
To the extent what you're saying is that free government requires
virtue among the people I agree. The difficulty is that unfree
government promotes lack of virtue, so it seems to me worthwhile to
resist responding to moral decline by making the people wards of the
state.
> Also, as a corollary to this, there were "state concerns" on both
> sides in this case
Sure, but if someone asks me how it should be resolved my answer is
that such concerns should not play a role. It is for that kind of
reason that Justice is depicted as blind.
> > It's hard to be principled in an age of soundbites. I think that's
> > all we've got to go on though. Being opportunistic may be OK if
> > the general trend of things is in your favor but that's not where
> > we are.
>
> In response to this I must say that I feel the reverse is how it
> works, but we can agree to disagree.
The thought is that our greatest problem is that our positions aren't
even intellectual possibilities for the general run of people who who
take an interest in politics etc. Conservative views on sex and family
life for example are thought simply irrational, nostalgic, unrealistic,
intolerant, weird etc. For conservative views to become a presence and
thus possible even to contemplate they have to be clearly and
comprehensively presented, which requires sticking to principle.
Maneuvering isn't going to get us anywhere when our own troops and
official leaders even don't have a grasp of what's going on.
> You say that a father's right is a matter of private right and not
> policy and politics, but surely you acknowledge that there are times
> when a father's right may be legitimately challenged.
Sure, just not on the basis of general policy or overall benefit. It
should be clearly defined and stable standards. "Private right"
doesn't mean "absolute right", it means something an individual can
claim that doesn't depend in the individual case on general public
considerations.
> One of the things we need to do is to insist on the importance of
> intact families and sticking together, even if mainly "for the sake
> of the children."
Agreed. All law can do by limiting itself is to leave space for
informal traditional moral institutions to do their work. It certainly
can't establish a machine that will go of itself.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Tue May 9 14:54:07 2000
Subject: Re: Sexual Morality Faq
To: re
Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 14:54:07 -0400 (EDT)
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> Don't you think we have enough regulations in this country? The last
> thing we need is more government spending... Spend less, tax less,
> and leave more $ in each community...
True but irrelevant.
Think about traditional standards as to honesty. They aren't basically
a matter of law, although in a few cases people do go to jail for
lying. Mostly they're a system of attitudes, expectations,
understandings etc. that we demand of ourselves and expect others to
abide by because we think they are part of being a good person and
because the world would be much worse if they weren't accepted. Among
other things, the world would be worse because government would be more
oppressive, because the worse the people the worse the government.
The case should be the same with sexual morality. That's what the faq
says, read it with that in mind. I have no idea why you think loose
sexual morals mean small government. It's the opposite.
> If you are upset with your children's education at a school, you move
> to another school district. Then on that line, we should allow the
> community to decide how it will judge, not the federals. If you
> disagree with the moral standards of your current community then you
> have the option to move.
Actually that's not true under current law because antidiscrimination
rules etc. make it impossible for community standards to be enforced.
So there's nowhere to go. And do point it out if I suggest anywhere in
the faq that more federal activity would help.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Wed May 10 06:07:16 2000
Subject: Re: Sexual Morality Faq
To: re
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 06:07:16 -0400 (EDT)
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> Oops... Also, if it was the community that decided its rules, who would =
> enforce them? And what would happen to the person that did break the =
> rules? You seem to forget that this country was based on free will. I =
> think that would include sexuality.
Think of how a community enforces its standards on ordinary honesty or
any other point of day-to-day morality. Any your second sentence has
nothing special to do with sex, it would aplly as much to honesty.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Thu May 11 09:36:31 2000
Subject: Re: Sexual Morality Faq
To: re
Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 09:36:31 -0400 (EDT)
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> It sounds as if your point is to push harder for many things that are
> already in place. Are you asking for harsher punishment?
What I'm asking for is more understanding and changes in attitudes.
If that happens then people can do what makes sense to them.
The accepted view today that all the experts etc. promote is that what
people do sexually is their own business, that as long as it's
consensual it's OK, that the threat to freedom and happiness is sexual
repressiveness. I find those views amazingly obtuse and destructive.
If they changed there would automatically be a great many changes.
> Protestants believe that the loss of morality (in the sixties much
> like you said) to be the effect of the banning of prayer in school.
> Even if you aren't religious, you can't discount the effect of their
> basic morals and ethics. I feel silly. I read far to much into the
> whole thing. I apologize. I think that everything starts with the
> community, and more specifically, the family. If the family teaches
> a child properly, and the child sees that same example from the
> community.... I got it now. Thank you for having patience with me.
I agree with everything you say here. The point of traditional sexual
morality is to help create a setting in which family relationships can
be stable and functional. That doesn't happen purely as a result of
idiosyncratic individual choices, any more than a setting in which
people can trust each other to tell the truth and come through on their
commitments comes about purely that way. There have to be accepted
public standards, for honesty in the one case and sexual morality in
the other, so that people can feel entitled to hold each other
accountable. I also agree that religion is important for accepted
public moral standards because it tells us that what I feel like doing
is not the final authority.
You don't have to be so apologetic, by the way. Your reaction is a
very common one. People today seem to have no conception whatever
about how moral standards function.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk Fri Jun 16 07:13:31 2000
Subject: Re: politically correct lexicon
To: la
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 07:13:31 -0400 (EDT)
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Status: OR
> I wonder if physicians still refer to a patient's non-sick condition
> as "normal," or if they've changed to some PC usage.
I assume "normal" is still normal in medicine. Medical language
somehow makes judgements of value scientific. Instead of saying people
are bad you can say they're sick, pathological, or need help. I
suppose it's true that the scope of such judgements changes. Sexual
oddities aren't "sick" any more, it seems, except maybe aversion to
homosexuality etc. On the other hand there's been discussion of
declaring racism a mental disease
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
Subject: Re: Ponnuru on Zakaria (a Hindu conservative criticizing a
Muslim conservative?)
Date: 05 Jun 2000 16:59:51 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
To: la
What do these guys stand for? Who do they represent? Who decided that
they're the pundits?
Conservatism does seem to be a decent career choice. Conservatism is
acceptance of what's durably established, whatever that happens to be,
and concern for its stability and functioning. So if ideology is
durably established the conservative tries to make it a bit more
practical and less single-minded, but only at the margins. He will
*never* put himself fundamentally at odds with the powers that be.
There's always a demand for people like this to add a few nuances to
established dogma and so make it work better.
jk
Subject: Re: Ponnuru on Zakaria (a Hindu conservative criticizing a
Muslim conservative?)
Date: 06 Jun 2000 06:23:55 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
To: la
The presentation was bad.
I first wonder why these are guys I'm supposed to listen to anyway.
Then I decide it's because the regime needs "conservatives" for its
better functioning. The influence of money and the political culture
generally will recruit and make part of the regime established
conservative institutions that have lost their original impulse and
smart ambitious young people with somewhat conservative inclinations.
Those institutions and people will become the most prominent
representatives of conservatism because they have acceptance and
backing from the political world generally.
--- "La" wrote:
Jim, I'm slightly unsure of your meaning. In your first paragraph you
seem to be questioning the legitimacy of the conservative pundits, in
your second paragraph you are supporting their role as upholders of the
current leftist regime, serving the indispensable function if giving
that regime a slightly more human and reasonable face.
From jk@panix.com Tue Jun 27 05:52:24 EDT 2000
Article: 14604 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Buchanan courts Muslim vote
Date: 26 Jun 2000 04:51:52 -0400
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In <8j72sf$mr8$1@www1.kis.keele.ac.uk> Andy Fear writes:
>Islam is probably the most credible opponent of globalisation on the
>planet, and B is against globalisation isn't he...
It it really? I thought Islam, unlike say Christianity, did not accept
the continued existence of the nations. There is to be a single
worldwide community with a single law established if need be by force.
Strikes me as a rival globalization, one no doubt superior to the
globalization now ascendent, but globalization nonetheless.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Jul 26 02:35:24 2000
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From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: RE: [Paleo] Smearbund Continues
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A nice concrete application of the rather abstract principle suggested, that
the Left likes making everything a matter of organized human decision.
--- John Derbyshire wrote:
The leftist personality is
just the one that feels at home in an organization-- issuing memos,
scheduling meetings, tabling resolutions, leading faction-fights. I have
participated in both left-wing and right-wing movements: the left have MUCH
longer meetings.
>Partly I suppose it's
> because the Left
> stands for the widest possible application of the principle that
> explicit human
> choice should determine things, as opposed say to tradition,
> habit, biology,
> the will of God, whatever
--- end of quote ---
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From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Jul 26 02:35:45 2000
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Date: 26 Jul 2000 02:35:08 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: RE: [Paleo] Smearbund Continues
To: jk@panix.com
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Status: O
--- John Derbyshire wrote:
Isn't what we have here merely an instance of (Robert) Conquest's First Law
of Politics: "Any organization not explicitly right wing sooner or later
becomes left wing."
--- end of quote ---
The question though is why that is so. Partly I suppose it's because the Left
stands for the widest possible application of the principle that explicit human
choice should determine things, as opposed say to tradition, habit, biology,
the will of God, whatever, so that almost any organization concerning itself
with public issues will simply by acting as such be acting in support of the
overall program of the Left.
Jim Kalb
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From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Jul 26 02:36:04 2000
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Date: 26 Jul 2000 02:35:30 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: [Paleo] Smearbund Continues
To: jk@panix.com
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--- You wrote:
><< Many people throughout the Western world have religious convictions that
>reinforce the prevalence of victimology. It is naive to think that this
>totalitarian control proceeds in the absence of a broadly based assent,
>which seems to me to have religious and cultural sources. >>
>
>This is a fascinating comment, and well worth elaboration. Problem: a
>generation or two ago, the West had the same religious tradition, even more
>so, yet no pc, or at least nothing like that which exists now. --Scott
>McConnell
--- end of quote ---
Whatever happened to "immanetizing the eschaton"? If you cut the
transcendental component out of the religious tradition, so that transcendent
unity in Christ becomes this-worldly inclusiveness and general abolition of
distinctions, and God-become-man becomes the divinity of man just as he is here
and now, so that human desire becomes the Will of God, it seems to me you get
pretty much what we see around us. So I think you're both right. In the West
we have religious convictions that reinforce the prevalence of victimology, and
we have just those convictions because the established religious tradition of
the West has lost something fundamental.
Jim Kalb
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From jk@panix.com Fri Aug 4 20:37:31 EDT 2000
Article: 14632 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix2.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
Date: 4 Aug 2000 04:53:12 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <8me09o$lj3$1@panix2.panix.com>
References: <20000724.2215.4297snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <8m1af6$l6f$1@weber.a2000.nl> <20000730.2204.4416snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <8m3ffl$7a0$1@weber.a2000.nl> <20000803.2215.4502snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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In <20000803.2215.4502snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>I had hoped that we might see inter alia a comment (perhaps from Jim
>Kalb) on Schumpeter's views on the family. He seems to have correlated
>the spread of rationalism with that of capitalism
It had just been too long since I've read anything by him. I don't
remember anything he says specifically on the family, but what you say
certainly fits the general tendency of his thought. I do think there's
a connection between capitalism and rationalism. I tend though to view
the the evolution of thought as more fundamental than that of economic
systems, and also to view capitalism, leftist ideology or whatever not
as independent actors but as aspects of a more fundamental process
(basically, the process described in books viii and ix of Plato's
Republic).
In the present context of course opposing capitalism in any of the
usual ways doesn't do anything for the family because the alternative
actually on offer is increased state responsibility for the details of
life, which is yet more rationalistic and antitraditional. The
administered society has no room for the family.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk@panix.com Fri Aug 4 20:37:31 EDT 2000
Article: 14635 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
Date: 4 Aug 2000 20:35:03 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 8
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References: <20000724.2215.4297snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <8m1af6$l6f$1@weber.a2000.nl> <20000730.2204.4416snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <8m3ffl$7a0$1@weber.a2000.nl> <20000803.2215.4502snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <8meggk$mlo$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
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In <8meggk$mlo$1@nnrp1.deja.com> OperationUSA.com writes:
>Hedonistic rationalism...hmmm...This sounds like an oxymoron to me.
Maybe, but that's modern thought in a nutshell.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk@panix.com Fri Aug 4 20:37:31 EDT 2000
Article: 14636 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
Date: 4 Aug 2000 20:37:04 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 11
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References: <20000724.2215.4297snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <8m1af6$l6f$1@weber.a2000.nl> <20000730.2204.4416snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <8m3ffl$7a0$1@weber.a2000.nl> <20000803.2215.4502snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <8me09o$lj3$1@panix2.panix.com> <8meidn$o37$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
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In <8meidn$o37$1@nnrp1.deja.com> OperationUSA.com writes:
>I wonder if any of the greedy CEO's of the world's MNC's
>(multi-national corporations) really care anything about the
>American family, or America in general.
I suppose not, except as a individual oddity. The actual forces
opposing the greedy CEOs care even less though.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk@panix.com Sun Aug 6 07:08:48 EDT 2000
Article: 14640 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
Date: 6 Aug 2000 07:04:04 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 41
Message-ID: <8mjgn4$4bd$1@panix3.panix.com>
References: <20000724.2215.4297snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <8m1af6$l6f$1@weber.a2000.nl> <20000730.2204.4416snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <8m3ffl$7a0$1@weber.a2000.nl> <20000803.2215.4502snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <8me09o$lj3$1@panix2.panix.com> <8meidn$o37$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8mfnjg$2l9$1@panix3.panix.com> <8mgrtb$crt$1@weber.a2000.nl>
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In <8mgrtb$crt$1@weber.a2000.nl> ocr610@hotmail.com (vtnet) writes:
>The nuclear family as an isolated and self-centered consuming unit in
>a global network of consuming units seems much more impressionable and
>malleable than either free individuals or moral communities;
But neither of the latter exist without the nuclear family. The
nuclear family may not be sufficient to provide an alternative to
despotism but it is necessary.
>and the 'national' (local) state seems the principle insulator for
>superior amoral power-structures from the need to project physical
>force directly.
Superior amoral power-structures like say NATO think they have a
monopoly on morality though. After all, they believe and everyone
seems to agree that the only principle for the separate existence and
authority of local power-structures is hate.
Maybe the NATO theory of peacekeeping won't work but that's what people
seem to believe in. To the extent it doesn't work, by the way, the
consequence may be various forms of illegitimate local power (like
mafia rule in Russia) rather than restoration of national sovereignty,
since the latter requires a public moral order recognizing the
legitimacy of particularity that has been very seriously damaged and
most likely abolished.
How do CEOs of multinationals act? They don't care about national
boundaries, sovereignty or independence, they support GATT, NAFTA,
etc., they're happy with feminism, antidiscrimination laws and
affirmative action, they have nothing against gay rights, family
benefits for homosexual partners, etc. On the whole they act like men
who would like to abolish all social authorities other than world
markets and transnational bureaucracies, because the former get in
their way and don't fit into their view of things. Maybe you think
that's impolitic but no one ever accused businessmen as a class of
being grand thinkers.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Jul 26 02:40:51 2000
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Date: 26 Jul 2000 02:40:18 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: summing up the transcendence-and-tradition versus technocracy issue
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
--- You wrote:
There are two basic ways of experiencing existence:
1. Life is experienced as participation in a larger order, or rather a set of
larger orders--natural, social, and divine--that precede the existence of the
individual. Change and progress are experienced as developing organically out
of those orders, not in rejection of them. True individual freedom and
happiness is experienced as a freedom within the larger order.
[Comments: From this view change as such is not good, and progress is not the
fundamental principle it has often been in the past few hundred years. Things
could just as easily or perhaps more easily get worse overall.
In a way progress as a grand principle is a substitute for transcendence. Some
things are clearly better than others, but we don't have a clear understanding
or firm possession of the Good by which they are better. The traditionalist
says that shows that the good is eternal and unchangeable and transcends our
present life, so of course we don't fully possess it. The modern doesn't like
that way of viewing things so he says that the good is totally this-worldly,
because everything real is totally this-worldly, and the reason we don't have
it fully just now is that it's evolving and exists in its perfection only in
the future of this actual world, maybe at some infinitely distant point. To
the modern to deny progress is thus a cynical denial of the good. There ain't
nothing else.
Freedom and happiness are conceived quite differently from a traditionalist and
a modern standpoint. From any standpoint freedom I suppose is unfettered
action in accordance with one's nature. To the modern, for whom one's nature
is arbitrary will, freedom is one thing. To the traditionalist it is something
quite other. If it is one's nature to be the image of God then perfect freedom
would indeed be willing and unfettered action in God's service.]
2. Life is experienced as an assertion of human will against an alien and
meaningless reality, reshaping that reality to one's own desires. Everything
must be constantly reconstructed. There is an unappeasable desire to remake
things, from sexual relations to the nature of man and woman to the very
characteristics of the races.
[Comment: The first sentence states the fundamental philosophical view. It
can also be stated as the fact/value distinction, the view that reality has no
implications for values. The next two sentences reflect I think the motives
behind the philosophical view -- the view that man's will is divine, the source
of all value, is not a disinterested conclusion from lofty philosophical
contemplation but rather something must be proven or rather forced to be true.
The natural consequence is destructiveness for its own sake, or rather for the
sake of making it true that there are no goods other than the things my will
makes good.]
Further note: After articulating this, I realized that the three orders I've
mentioned, plus man who is participating in them, correspond to the Voegelin's
opening statement in the Introduction of volume one of Order and History,
Israel and Revelation:
"God and man, world and society form a primodial community of being. The
community with its quaternarian structure is, and is not, a datum of human
experience It is a datum of experience in so far as it is known to man by
virtue of his participation in the mystery of its being. It is not a datum of
experience in so far as it is not given in the manner of an object of the
external world but is knowable only from the perspective of participation in
it."
A further note: I remember once asking you to define the transcendent, and you
said something like it's not an object of experience. This is a key insight
but needs to be expanded on more.
[It's the setting of experience, that which orients our understanding of
experience and makes sense of things so that uninterpreted and therefore
mindless experience becomes a world for us.]
--- end of quote ---
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 08:39:38 2000
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Message-id: <10335638@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 06 Aug 2000 08:38:50 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Steele article on W. (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- Steele wrote:
George W. Bush is the first conservative on the presidential level to
understand that he is in a culture war, that moral authority requires an
explicit social application of conservative principles to problems of
inequality and poverty. This kind of work has been a central mission in
conservative think tanks for some time. But the Bush campaign is the first
national showcase of this effort. And education will likely be its first
triumph.
In schools too numerous to name, the "conservative" focus on high expectations,
reasonable discipline, skill mastery and accountability through testing, has
brought stunning results to precisely the poor and minority students liberalism
has failed so abjectly. Conservative thinkers are now evolving a developmental
model of equality to compete with the representational model of liberalism. In
this model equal representation is a natural result of equal achievement.
--- end of quote ---
This is why in the comment I forwarded I suggested compassionate conservatism
wouldn't have much staying power as something different from liberalism that
people would support while retaining the fundamental commitment to equality
(which Steele accepts and thinks is inevitable and good).
What possible reason is there to suppose that emphasis on skills will ever mean
equality? It might be better than liberalism from the standpoint of giving the
poor and the stupid a better life, but it requires *acceptance* of inequality
because applying standards highlights inequalities and saying standards are
important says the inequalities are important and should be treated as such.
Even if it were true that in the end Blacks and Jews (for example) would be
equally represented at all levels in a skills-based developmental system, in
the mean time for that system to exist you would have to recognize and give
effect to the differences in skill that in fact visibly distinguish them.
The basic problem is that the proposed system would require integrity while
egalitarianism requires lying.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 08:42:30 2000
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Message-id: <10335649@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 06 Aug 2000 08:41:44 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: [Upstream] Partisan Review (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- Jim Boyd wrote:
"we can never have any
reason to think that a theory is true or, more to the point, that we can
never have any reason to think that one theory is more likely to be true
than another."
I also do not understand this criticism of Popper. We do not know why two
masses attract. Just because they have always attracted each other does not
mean they will do so tomorrow. I believe they will, that's why I don't jump out
of the sixth floor window to walk home like Mary Poppins.
--- end of quote ---
"Never have any reason" is *extremely* strong. If that is the substance of what
Popper believed it is indeed a criticism of him. Not to know why something
happens is different from not knowing it happens. And as for induction, if we
can't use it we can't act rationally, since rational action requires an orderly
world in which one part can be predicted from others. That is a reason for
using it and in fact for assuming that what it tells us is true.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 08:45:43 2000
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Message-id: <10335656@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 06 Aug 2000 08:44:56 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: [Paleo] Jeff Jacoby (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- Zmirak@aol.com wrote:
I don't see much to object to in this analysis, even from a paleo
perspective. Does anyone on the Right really believe that "scientific"
racialism, separatism, or an attempt to restore the unjust social conditions
of decades ago--all of which are inimical to the only religious values that
still infuse this culture, Christian ones--has any chance as a fighting
philosophy? (This leaves aside, of course, the moral issue--are we right to
be repulsed by racial hostility and inequity? I believe we should.)
--- end of quote ---
How does equality simply as such get to be a moral demand that trumps all
others, so that all things must be judged by reference to how well they promote
equality? It seems to me it's mostly by default: you can't distinguish the
value of things,and in fact nothing matters much, so the only objective moral
principle becomes the demand that things that can't be distinguished, which is
to say everything,be treated equally. So egalitarianism turns out to be
nihilism with some formal logic mixed in. If someone wants to construct a
"conservative" version of that OK, and maybe it'll get some favorable coverage
and sell for a while, but I'm not interested and I don't think it'll have much
staying power.
My real question though is why the choice is one between promoting equality and
promoting inequality ( "scientific" racialism, separatism, or an attempt to
restore the unjust social conditions of decades ago). Aren't there other
things with which one might be concerned? Some might be more concerned with
local self-government, or maybe particular traditional or religious conceptions
of a good life (which do require a certain latitude for particularism). Some
might think the health of a culture requires a certain degree of social
articulation, which is to say inequality. Egalitarian mass society does not
necessarily give everyone the best life. Do such considerations matter? Do
all inequalities simply amount to hostility and inequity? Do the Christian
moral values you mention have any connection with concerns other than equality,
or is that the only thing they care about?
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 08:46:08 2000
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Message-id: <10335659@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 06 Aug 2000 08:45:22 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: technocratic revelation (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- You wrote:
"Indeed an examination of great Islamic philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Ibn
Sinha reveals that they believed in reason and revelation as the two mechanisms
for discovering universal truths."
Reason and revelation are "mechanisms"? Yecch.
--- end of quote ---
Part of the problem is that he really doesn't care what words mean. To care
about language is already to leave technocracy behind.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 08:47:15 2000
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Date: 06 Aug 2000 08:46:29 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Chelsea Clinton as foreign policy advisor (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- You wrote:
See amazing lead article at Drudge on Clinton consulting his daughter during
mid east negotiations.
--- end of quote ---
Support for my dynastic despotism theory of the future. I suppose one could
say the same about the upcoming presidential election. If the public sphere
disappears or at least becomes utterly nonfunctional, because it's eviscerated
of moral content, then family ties become the basis of politics.
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 08:48:03 2000
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Date: 06 Aug 2000 08:47:14 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: major revelation concerning NY Times (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- You wrote:
Richard Berke of New York Times says three quarters of those who decide what's
on the first page of the Times every day are gay.
--- end of quote ---
Interesting and believable, both from the developing nature of the Times and
from the consideration that those with a special knack for constructing a world
based on style and appearances should be specially successful in the media.
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 08:49:02 2000
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Message-id: <10335670@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 06 Aug 2000 08:48:07 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Fw: your piece on Fred Barnes' article on California, the GOP and immigration (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- You wrote:
hat's the first time I've seen a source (maybe) for that famous and
oh-so-appropriate quote. I've always taken it to mean, a nation consists of so
much, that there's so much to be ruined. The greater the nation, the more
there is to be ruined, the more ruin we, its citizens, must endure. It should
be my epigraph, since that's what I am obsessively considering from a variety
of angles.
Now here's another question: you're always saying that people will find or
establish some kind of order whatever their circumstances, with the implication
that this basic and necessariy human instinct to order needs to be respected.
Then what happens in a country that has become, in large and increasing part,
criminal? Will people, looking for order, transcendence, and tradition, then
attach the qualities of transcendence and tradition to criminality? And is
that to be respected?
--- end of quote ---
I think actually it was attributed to Horace rather than Robert Walpole. The
attributor was Charles Black, a law professor at Yale, who as I recall used to
quote other things from HW as well. I'm not sure it would have been "a lot" in
the 18th c. though -- maybe "a deal"?
Anyway, I understood it as a response to people who were always saying that the
national debt or what not would be the ruin of England. Since England kept
prospering nonetheless that was his response. So my interpretation is that it
means that we exaggerate our knowledge of consequences, and things won't turn
out so badly because something else will happen or come into play. The one
comment I have on that line of thought today is that there's now a tendency
radically to simplify society, to make it more and more dependent on universal
abstract unified easily described things like world markets, transnational
bureaucracies, the liberal theory of human rights, etc. so that nothing is left
to chance and the only mistake is the big one.
Anyway -- it seems to me criminality like evil generally is parasitic, so you
won't get an essentially criminal society. If moral order disappears in
society at large what you're most likely to get is something like traditional
Middle Eastern society, in which there really isn't much of a public order,
just shifting dynastic empires that don't do much except hang on to power and
extract taxes, and life gets carried on in inward turning ethno-religious
communities. What would happen is that the social security system breaks down,
the education system becomes useless, public institutions that depend on trust
become unreliable, so people can only make their way through life by relying on
those with whom they have some special tie. Mafias try to seize money and
power and eventually try to stabilize their situation by becoming more like
governments. Eventually the mafias become something like dynasties and the
particular mutual aid networks become rather like the millets of the Ottoman
Empire. The basic point though is that good and evil are not equally
functional principles.
Jim
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 08:49:30 2000
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Message-id: <10335671@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 06 Aug 2000 08:48:44 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Fw: your piece on Fred Barnes' article on California, the GOP and immigration (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- You wrote:
>By the way, there's another reason that California has turned so liberal on
>abortion, guns, etc: by raising land prices, lowering wages, ruining the
>schools, etc., immigration has driven a big chunk of the stable,
>conservative, family-oriented working class and lower-middle-class out of
>California and into Utah and other conservative states. -- Steve
--- end of quote ---
It's an interesting issue. It does seem to me that the disappearance of a
public moral order means separatism, since life has to go on somehow or other,
and Darwin will make sure that the groups with nothing more to draw on than the
(nonexistent) public order will disappear. It's hard to know the timetable
though, or to weigh the effect of the various tendencies. As Robert Walpole (I
think) said "there's a lot of ruin in a nation."
Jim
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 08:49:52 2000
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Message-id: <10335674@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 06 Aug 2000 08:49:06 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: pinc (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- You wrote:
Just a note to say I enjoyed and learnt from your piece on anti-racism.
Ditto Ibn Khaldun in the Scorpion though I worry about this magazine
from time to time. One thing puzzles me - the state of anomie produced
by anti-racism seems to me exactly the same as that which would be
produced in a Libertarian utopia (or for me dystopia). How would you
disagree?
--- end of quote ---
Thanks for the note. I'm glad you liked the antiracism piece. I had horrible
organizational problems with it, partly because it's a subject no-one talks
about sensibly so I had no idea who my audience is or what their preconceptions
are. I do think there was some worthwhile material in it but am still very
much dissatisfied with the presentation. If you saw something in it to learn
from I'm pleased.
The Scorpion I think is one of the very few rightwing magazines that is not
insane or sectarian but still publishes intelligent but nonacademic and even
*speculative* stuff, not just complaints about how horrible things are, on
topics other than how to save democracy and capitalism and restore the true
vision of Martin Luther King. I do think some sort of radicalism is called for
under current conditions, and on the right there's not much on offer. Also I
rather like the connection to continental thought.
As to a Lib utopia, the thought is that -- pop libertarians to the contrary
notwithstanding -- radical reduction in the role of the state would no doubt
mean expansion of the role of the market but it would mean even more expansion
of the role of informal traditional authorities and arrangements. For example
if there were no social security, public education, welfare etc. then strong
family ties going beyond the nuclear family would be a necessity for getting
through life. Groups that lacked ways of inculcating them would dwindle and
vanish. People would realize they had to live differently and turn to
something else. In a lib utopia there would be no antidiscrimination laws so
particularist standards within communities of those who feel specially tied to
each other could be insisted on.
The problem with the present situation is that the state tries to take care of
everything, to make sure all things are OK for everybody, when there's no
common moral understanding to relate the practical side of life that the state
takes care of with an understanding of what things mean. The result of the
divorce of fact from value is of course anomie. So the state should not do
more than the common understandings it embodies enable it to integrate with a
tolerable comprehensive way of life.
Jim
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 13:06:48 2000
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Message-id: <10337152@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 06 Aug 2000 13:05:58 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: [Paleo] Jeff Jacoby (forwarded from kalb@aya.yale.edu)
To: jk@panix.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Status: OR
--- Craig Preus wrote:
Is Jacoby a plagarist?
--- end of quote ---
I find it easier to think of what he did as composing something in a known and
recognizable form than as plagarism -- passing off someone else's work as your
own. Plagarism seems to call for the intent to deceive, which I don't think is
present here. If there's no intent to deceive then maybe it's copyright
infringement but not I think plagarism.
Maybe I'm less sensitive to these issues than some though because I'm a lawyer,
and get worried when someone *doesn't* copy the way I do something. I'm not
sure what politics has to do with the issue.
Jim Kalb
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From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 13:07:11 2000
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Message-id: <10337156@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 06 Aug 2000 13:06:24 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: [Paleo] Jeff Jacoby (forwarded from kalb@aya.yale.edu)
To: jk@panix.com
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Status: OR
--- Seth Williamson wrote:
I never saw a Jacoby column on the battle flag, but if he regurgitated the
same old neo-con line, I have no use for the guy. The few columns I've
seen, though, seemed to articulate fairly commonsense positions on various
issues.
--- end of quote ---
But it's difficult to achieve orthodoxy. I've read several Jacoby columns that
seemed rather good to me. So far as I can tell defining a respectable
conservatism doesn't seem to be a major interest of his. If he seems to say
what he thinks, and that has more truth in it than what most people say, why
not support him even though on some points he's affected by his surroundings?
It seems to me the non-PC aspects are more important than the PC aspects of
what he says because by and large liberalism has come to rely on uniformity.
Jim Kalb
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From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Aug 6 16:25:16 2000
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Message-id: <10338700@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 06 Aug 2000 16:24:29 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Comment on Shelby Steele article
Status: OR
--- "La" wrote:
This Steele piece has obviously generated a lot of discussion. We've
spent some time reading it over and figuring out what he was saying. I
don't have time right now to read through all the things you sent me,
but I gather they are comments from a discussion group that you belong
to, which you then replied to, and then sent to me as well?
It is remarkable and fascinating that W, an unprepossessing,
non-intellectual, easy-going fellow, would turn out to be not just a
president but a major historical figure. I think that is going to
happen. While I like him as a person, and probably some good things
will come out of his new politics, we must oppose him.
--- end of quote ---
I sent you one thing I wrote just for you, one thing I wrote in
response to Z's comment on the paleo list, and one thing (the piece on
schools) that had been distributed by someone else on the upstream
list. The only further comments on the issue on paleo have been bits
on the use of Spanish at the GOP convention.
My current theory about W is that he accepts high class advice from
reasonable well-situated experienced men, which means that whatever he
presents will not reject the established order but attempt to integrate
concerns about the way things have been going and whether advanced
liberalism can really work into the way things are. So that's what
we're seeing now. I don't think the integration can work because the
logic of equality and the administered society are too strong but when
everyone's comfortable it's hard to do anything as a practical
politician other than integrate whatever it is into what they're
comfortable with.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Tue Aug 8 07:25:25 2000
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Message-id: <10371198@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 08 Aug 2000 07:24:34 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: my gloss on your reply to z (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- "Law" wrote:
"The absolute preponderance of a single political force, the predominance of
any over-simplified concept in the organization of the state, the strictly
logical application of any single principle in all public law are the essential
elements in any type of despotism.... It has been necessary, nay indispensable,
that there should be a multiplicity of political forces [in order to maintain
liberty]."
--- end of quote ---
My post was some days ago,and he hasn't said anything, so I don't think he will
reply. My guess, knowing nothing about his actual situation, is that the world
is too much with him. Rejecting the basic propositions of liberalism is a
constant struggle because everything around us presumes them.
The Mosca quote is a good one. Fundamentalism -- the notion that all that need
be done is literally and logically apply some small set of propositions -- does
mean tyranny. For one thing it denies transcendence, that truth is not
something we can wholly possess. It also denies tradition. Who needs
tradition when you have the set of propositions? It seems to me that when
advanced liberalism tries to be principled, and avoid simply turning into the
will of the ruling elite, it's always fundamentalist because anything less
literal-minded and logical would imply acceptance of a particular tradition,
therefore rejection of multiculturalism.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Tue Aug 8 07:26:23 2000
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Message-id: <10371205@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 08 Aug 2000 07:25:35 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: addition in response to W's new dispensation (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- You wrote:
Nor do the minimal standards of bourgeois conduct that are required for
economic prosperity define our culture. If that were true then the "bourgeois
behemians" and the culturally leftist white overclass would be the
representative Western men, and our culture would add up to little more than
hedonism, with a sprinkle of just enough rationality and propriety to keep the
social order from immediately falling apart.
--- end of quote ---
One comment: the neocons emphasize the position of secularizing Jewish
immigrants because "making it" leaves traditional culture behind while
providing discipline, direction, new support for the family (working hard so
the children will have a better life), and entry to a new world of high
culture. That's one reason immigrants are so wonderful and we should have as
many as possible, and why it's good for the old stock to have no kids and die
out. I suppose it's also a basis for the GOP weakness for immigrants and for
that matter the longstanding fondness for the self-made man, the poor boy who
makes good, etc.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Tue Aug 8 07:27:11 2000
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Message-id: <10371215@sneezy.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 08 Aug 2000 07:26:20 EDT
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Steele article on W. (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: O
--- "La" wrote:
The only way it could work is that if people viewed the goal not as group
equality, but as improving the performance of blacks _to the extent possible_.
Certainly it could be improved. If W's program is a cover for that more modest
goal, that would not be bad.
--- end of quote ---
That's not going to happen because it would require admitting differences in
ability to explain and justify the gaps that would remain and perhaps grow.
Emphasis on excellence may be good for everyone but it's especially good for
those with abilities that excel. The invincible moral high ground accorded
equality that Steele talks about and accepts would make admitting such a thing
out of the question. That's why Steele is able to accept his own position only
by asserting that the developmental approach would in fact lead to equal
representation.
I guess another point is that if it's W's point that this is the way to true
equality or whatever then the feds are going to have general responsibility for
education. A bad thing.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
From jk@panix.com Tue Aug 8 14:17:09 EDT 2000
Article: 14646 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
Date: 8 Aug 2000 14:15:55 -0400
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Xref: news.panix.com alt.revolution.counter:14646
In <8momt5$34s$1@weber.a2000.nl> ocr610@hotmail.com (vtnet) writes:
>While 'multiculturalism' (as in "we all live under the same rules
>playing the same game") is heralded on the one side, 'self-
>determination' (as in "whatever happens to you is your problem") is
>also vigorously advertised -- that's where the ballot-box-thing
>(euphemistically advertised as 'democracy' ) comes in.
The two combine in theory in the conception of a universal order without
substantive content that maximizes arbitrary individual satisfactions. Since
it's universal and lacks substantive content (e.g. its only conception of the
Good is letting people have what they want) it's multicultural. Since each
can do as he pleases within the system of world markets and transnational
bureaucracies that maximize economic satisfactions and abolish particular
cultural authorities (that after all interfere with individuals doing what
they please) it also claims to promote autonomy and self-determination. The
institutional guarantor of a. and s.-d. under the new order by the way is less
the ballot box than international human rights. Consider the case of Austria.
Naturally, I don't claim that's altogether the way the system works out in
practice, just that that's its justification, and as such affects practice.
>Between unequal partners, 'free trade' is thus seen simply the
>continuation of institutionalized looting by other means.
It seems to me more complicated than that. Small East Asian countries for
example have certainly profited by trade. One issue is who the players are,
whether they are national states as in the modern period generally or whether
other constellations of power, international managerial and financial classes
for example, are emerging.
>What seems to have changed however, is that being a superior power
>does no longer primarily involve the control over either territory or
>even physical (productive) capital, but rather the control over the
>(flows of) claims on (financial) capital. Thus the state has become
>subservient (an asset) to those who control these flows, and
>'international organizations' (ostensibly under the control of
>sovereign member-nations) are thus really just vehicles for making
>nations irrelevant on the international scene. NATO and GATT and the
>like are thus not representing their members nations, but exist beyond
>them -- representing more furtive centers of power.
Here we generally seem to agree that new power arrangements are establishing
themselves.
>NATO is probably not in the business of peacekeeping, but in the
>business of enforcing submission to the 'free' market. And submission
>is than celebrated as a state of peace and liberty. But the problem
>here seems that people, at least in an evolutionary context, subscribe
>ultimately to a given social order only for 'personal' (over
>generations) benefit -- that is, properly understood, a communal
>surplus that benefit all members.
An interesting feature of the emerging order is that it attempts to abolish
all collectivities other than the universal and to base itself on
self-interest plus loyalty to universal human rights. That's supposed to get
rid of the demands for communal surpluses that might lead to conflict. It
seems unlikely to me that it will work as a way to get people to subcribe to
the social order.
>So if benefits are no longer forthcoming because the cooperative is
>corrupted by interests alien to the people supposedly served, than the
>people will ultimately try to circumvent the rules of the cooperative which
>must lead to both crime and political upheaval.
Consider for example the really extraordinary rise in crime throughout Europe.
So far there hasn't been much political upheaval but the rulers are visibly
worried. How long can a system of payoffs be made to work? What are the
limits of thought control?
>But than this type of societal decay is not a feature of especially
>liberalism as you seem to imply. In the period running up to the French
>revolution there was an explosion in crime and immorality as well.
But that was a liberalizing period, the time of the birth of liberalism.
Everyone loved Locke, not to mention his less discrete admirers such as
Voltaire.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk@panix.com Sat Aug 12 20:36:39 EDT 2000
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
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Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
Date: 12 Aug 2000 20:25:04 -0400
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In <20000812.2204.94snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>Umm..Puzzle here. Surely the abolition of culture leads to an
>acultural or barbarous society, not to a multicultural one. If you
>mean that modern multiculturalism is bogus (i.e. a uniform culture is
>imposed on groups of diverse ethnicity, but minor cultural variations
>of a folkloric nature, like ethnic restaurants, folk crafts, songs,
>liturgies uncomplicated by belief, etc. are encouraged), then that's a
>different point, I would think.
It seems to me the point of multiculturalism is that no particular
culture has social authority, which is to say that no culture is the
basis of common life. A culture that cannot be relied on in common
life is not a culture at all though, it's a collection of private
hobbies. So it seems to me that what is called multiculturalism is in
fact the abolition of culture, or at least an attempt at it.
>Yet again, the use of such folkloric differences as badges which are
>then blown up to help invent a different 'culture' for some group,
>separate from the majority, in order to gain it some special privilege
>or other, is a different kind of multiculturalism from the merely
>tolerant variety.
I'm not familiar with any tolerant form of multiculturalism.
Everything called by that name involves vigorous government action to
abolish settled attitudes and ways of doing things among whatever group
is informally dominant. Hardly a live-and-let live attitude with
respect to the relations between ruling elites and the people of a
country.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk@panix.com Sat Aug 12 20:36:39 EDT 2000
Article: 14672 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
Date: 12 Aug 2000 20:26:38 -0400
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In <20000812.2148.93snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> > As far as I know the rise in crime in Europe is primarily an invention.
>>
>> Look at the statistics for almost any European country since say the
>> mid-50s. It's a different world now.
>Presumably you mean West European countries, where the rise in crime
>has been gradual. For East European countries there probably wasn't
>much difference between the 50s and the 70s or early 80s --indeed
>after allowing for the partial decriminalization of certain kinds of
>behaviour in the Krushchev thaw they might show a formal drop. But the
>rise in crime since the 80s, especially in Russia, has been very
>telling.
Is there any good way of knowing? In Russia at least official
statistics were entirely unreliable. My guess would be that loosening
the reign and general disaffection would have resulted in an increase
of ordinary crime, but that's only a guess of course. The situation
post-1989 etc. wasn't a pure consequence of events then.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From alt.revolution.counter Sat Aug 12 20:37:30 2000
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From: "Jim Kalb"
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
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Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
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"rafael cardenas" wrote in message
news:20000810.2211.62snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk...
> He hypothesizes therefore that the British (and perhaps US) neoliberals of
the
> early 70s, mostly people who had or thought they had a vested interest in
the
> survival of capitalism, decided that, to persist, capitalism must
> be made to 'fail' in at least some of these respects:
>
> that average economic growth must be slowed, fewer genuinely useful new
goods
> must be brought on the market, living standards for as many people as
possible
> must fall or cease to rise, inequality must be increased, and empirical
> rationalism must be undermined, in favour of scepticism, superstition,
> or dogma, in as many spheres as possible but particularly in public
policymaking.
Seems hard to manipulate things in such a direction, even assuming the
theory otherwise makes sense. It's true that social processes, like the
development of liberal society, have self-regulating aspects, otherwise they
would lack the coherence and continuity to become recognizable processes,
but I think they have to be based on some fundamental tendency that goes
very deep. I don't see what that would be here. (In the case of liberal
society I think the tendency is the abolition of transcendence, the
reduction of all things to a single fully-comprehensible system in which
everything is on a level with everything else.)
As to the undermining of empirical rationalism, it seems to me that's
implicit in a modern scientific outlook that can't make sense of knowledge
and reason because it tries to abolish formal and final causes in favor of
efficient and material causes, which after all are rather mindless. The
modern outlook depends on premodern residues that it undermines, so in the
end it loses functional coherence. That's what we're seeing now.
From alt.revolution.counter Sat Aug 12 20:38:22 2000
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From: "Jim Kalb"
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
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Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
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"M" wrote in message
news:8ms8a8$abi$1@weber.a2000.nl...
> I feel that 'multicultural society' (that is universal) is a oxymoron in
> that any society must have a culture to be a society. But a society
> with a multiethnic culture (which is certainly not universal but might be
> 'open') might just be feasible under the right conditions.
If the different ethnicities have different cultures it would be a
multicultural society; if not I'm not sure what the ethnicities would amount
to.
> But How comes that anyone can do as he pleases under free-market
conditions?
> Even free people need food and shelter, so what is comes down to is that
> only the rich can do as they please
The freedom is somewhat formal -- the theory is that you can do what you
like as long as you abide by rules designed to let different ways of valuing
things coexist, such as the rules of property and exchange,
antidiscrimination rules, rules designed to maximize economic output and
thus to maximize satisfactions without specifying what those satisfactions
are to be, etc. I agree that the attempt to carry out such a theory runs
into very serious problems even if made in good faith.
> Neither do I see how multiculturalism can be associated directly with
> individuality
Same sort of comment. My own view is that multiculturalism abolishes
individuality because man is a social animal and it abolishes too much of
society. For man to be an individual he must first be a fully-developed
human being, which the abolition of culture makes impossible. Nonetheless,
the theory that all cultural authority is to be abolished and individual
will (regulated by liberal rules that do not take sides on issues of
substantive value but are intended only to let each pursue his goals without
infringing on the ability of others to do likewise) is to rule intends to
exalt the individual.
> No human rights were ever violated in Austria under the FPO, nor was there
> any chance of this occurring because of the opposition. The Austrian
people
> were simply told by the EU that they couldn't have a leader that was
deemed
> politically too incorrect.
Sure. My point was the relative status of the two principles. A very weak
argument based on universal human rights was felt to trump a very strong one
based on the ballot box. (When I say "universal human rights" I don't mean
to praise them by the way.)
> As far as I know the rise in crime in Europe is primarily an invention.
Look at the statistics for almost any European country since say the
mid-50s. It's a different world now.
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Fri Aug 11 11:16:22 2000
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From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Lieberman and the pursuit of nothingness (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
--- You wrote:
In effect, we supply the procedure, they supply the content.
--- end of quote ---
It's hard to know. Those whose difference actually has enduring substantive
content, like the Hasidim, stay out of public life. For the others ethnicity
seems to become a matter of pure self-asserting, somewhat on the lines of the
collapse of German ethnicity into naziism and the triumph of the will.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
From jk@panix.com Sun Aug 13 14:47:20 EDT 2000
Article: 14676 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
Date: 13 Aug 2000 14:29:37 -0400
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In <8n5nc6$da8$1@weber.a2000.nl> ocr610@hotmail.com (M) writes:
>As for Western Europe, it seems that the rise in crime was both
>gradual and never reached American proportions. While you're probably
>right that (real) crime is (partly) a function of social control,
>social control in turn is for a considerable part a function of
>economic conditions
For the UK, I've read, rates of both violent and property crime are now
higher than in the US. There are difficulties of comparison, of
course, because definitions and reporting systems are different. Also,
the violent crimes in the UK still tend to be less violent than in
America -- there are many fewer murders for example. Before pursuing
this any further, if anyone wants to do that, it would most likely be
worth while to dig out the statistics and analysis.
>Considerable differentials in income and opportunities are likely to
>contribute to the incidence of crime as sections of the population
>feel they're no longer stakeholders in the system.
I don't think those differentials as such would have that effect.
There was much less crime in England 100 years ago than there is today
even though it was much less equal then. You don't need a lot or as
much as someone else to be a stakeholder. What you need is to feel
that what you have is yours, so that you feel responsible for it and
see it as something to defend. That is why the welfare state tends to
reduce the feeling of being a stakeholder while peasant farming and
small business tend to increase it.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk@panix.com Sun Aug 13 14:47:20 EDT 2000
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
Date: 13 Aug 2000 14:46:11 -0400
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>Can't cultures not, if not too different and/or emanating from the
>common base, be merged into a new (multiethnic) culture -- relegating
>the former autonomous cultures to subcultures while creating a new
>culture aggregating more people to counter attacks on the common
>cultural base while respecting (minor) internal differences?
That can happen -- I suppose an example would be the old American
melting pot, when the immigrants came from backgrounds more closely
allied to existing American society than is the case now. Maybe other
examples would be what happened in Germany and Italy after unification.
As I recall Buddenbrooks presents an unflattering picture of the
cultural consequences of German unification. It seems that such events
are likely to make culture cruder and lead to empty self-assertion as a
substitute for more substantial goods.
Naturally as you suggest sometimes that could be the best that could be
had. Conceivably there could be other larger examples -- maybe
hellenism, Roman history (from the beginning Rome was a city of
immigrants), and no doubt others as well.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk@panix.com Mon Aug 14 15:06:01 EDT 2000
Article: 14680 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
Date: 14 Aug 2000 15:01:33 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <8n98uc$soi$1@www1.kis.keele.ac.uk> Andy Fear writes:
>perhaps we shouldn't see "multiculturalism" as a total abolition of
>culture as it does distinctly aid the monoculture of globalised
>capital.
The monoculture isn't a culture since globalized capital is in
principle wholly formal and rational. It's just a collection of rules
that decide who is entitled to do what with what without reference to
the value of what is done. What looks like a monoculture is in fact a
stage in the process of the abolition of all culture in the interests
of total rationality as modern thought understands rationality.
Be that as it may I think globalized capital is only part of the
picture and I'm not convinced it's even the most important part in the
end. What multiculturalism aids is the combination of world markets
and transnational bureaucracies. A serious attempt to abolish all
culture and substitute a wholly rational way of life based solely on
arbitrary desire, formal logical principles and technology needs more
than property and markets since there are obvious aspects of life that
the latter don't deal with, like childhood, extreme old age,
catastrophic illness and accident, bad luck, incompetence, the desire
to feel that the world is governed, etc.
So in addition to markets there has to be a bureaucratic organization
responsible for the welfare of each individual; otherwise each of us at
some point in his life will have to rely on particular other persons
for support and that general necessity will call into being a variety
of socially recogized and enforced duties toward particular persons,
family values and the like, which imply a whole network of cultural
supports which from the modern standpoint are irrational and
oppressive.
In the end I'm not sure why the bureaucratic principle should not win
out over the capitalistic one. After all a notorious feature of modern
capitalism is the separation of management and control, so that it is
not the class of owners but the class of managers that tends to call
the shots. Also property interests tend to become intangible in modern
times and so dependent on the legal system and its administration,
which again strengthens the managerial class.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
From jk@panix.com Mon Aug 14 15:06:01 EDT 2000
Article: 14681 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Schumpeter?
Date: 14 Aug 2000 15:03:30 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <8n97l3$p7a$1@weber.a2000.nl> ocr610@hotmail.com (M) writes:
>I'm not sure about Italy, but German 'unification' was more a kind of
>occupation in which the eastern population was systematically deprived of
>whatever little it could claim under communism.
Sorry for not being clearer -- the unification I had in mind was 1871
and not 1989 or whatever the dates were.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu and http://www.counterrevolution.net)
"Rem tene; verba sequentur" -- Cato
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
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