Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sat Dec 2 06:30:33 2000
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Date: 02 Dec 2000 06:28:58 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Human rights movement -comment
To: l
Status: OR
Thank you very much for your note. I agree it's very hard to fight something
as widely supported and comprehensive as the new order of human rights,
transnational bureaucracies, world markets etc. that is emerging now. It seems
to me the basic impulse that supports it is the same as what supported
communism - the desire for a re-engineered, conflict-free world that is fully
rational and under human control, which in practice is the same as the desire
for a limitless universal tyranny. That's what people seem to want today,
certainly everyone with position and power. Still, conditions are always
changing, we can't know the future, and we should do what we can.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sat Dec 2 13:33:13 2000
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Date: 02 Dec 2000 13:31:35 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: From the Managerial to the Therapeutic State
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
Some random comments for whatever they're worth:
1. It's particularly important to emphasize as you do that the current
regime demands comprehensive and indeed totalitarian control of
thoughts, attitudes, social customs, etc. and that it has broad and
strong support.
2. A foreign example that can be put beside our own Susan Okun: UNHCHR
Mary Robinson, who thinks it's just wonderful that international human
rights law is abolishing the public/private distinction and the
government action/inaction distinction. I have a couple things by her at
http://www.human-rights.f2s.com/robinson.txt. Also, I seem to recall an
Austrian law, enacted within the past couple of years, that obligates
husbands and wives to do equal amounts of housework.
3. On the need for constant vigilance and intervention - there's a
conviction among advanced liberals that the Nazis are always about to
come out of the woodwork. I think that's in part an implicit
acknowledgement of their inner kinship to Nazism: they themselves are
convinced that if you deviate from their views just a little you become
a Nazi.
The connection I think is that both advanced liberalism and Nazism base
good and bad on will, the right to choose or the triumph of the will,
rather than some transcendent standard. So any deviation from equality
means that some wills are to be preferred to others, presumably (since
will is the source of value) simply because they choose their own
superiority. If strict equality is rejected life therefore becomes a
battle of will against will for supremacy, the victory of one will over
all others, and supremacy becomes the highest good, with conquest,
enslavement, torture, extermination etc. as its purest manifestation.
This line of thought may seem somewhat farfetched but I'm convinced
something of the sort is behind the mythic status of Nazism among
liberals and the strength of political correctness. Otherwise, why would
any deviation from radical egalitarianism inevitably suggest Auschwitz?
4. Why so much space on Bavarian crucifixes? I'm not sure the details
add much for an American reader not familiar with German political
culture. It seems like a less developed form of what we already have in
America, so it's interesting to the extent it shows PC human rights are
becoming dominant everywhere but less so as a demonstration of what PC
human rights are in themselves.
5. The Fox-Genovese view that "public control of entitlements sets up
the rest, including the abdication of self-government" is I think true
and important, but maybe a very short account of why that is so would be
helpful to the average reader, who after all is not used to looking at
things that way. My view is that a function of entitlements is to
undermine the importance of traditional loyalies and obligations, which
is part of an overall transformation in which markets and bureaucracies
become the sole principles of social order in a universal rational
system for maximum equal satisfaction of preferences. That
transformation means that self-government except for strictly individual
choice has to go, since it interferes with the perfect rationality of
the system, and that in turn requires among other things abolition of
the family and all traditional standards relating to sex and gender.
6. You say that what is being (has been?) abolished is the bourgeois
order. That's true just it was true that the 60s turned their back on
the 50s but I think it goes farther than that. It really looks to me
like the abolition of man. Possibly you put it as you do because of your
preference for historical concreteness.
7. The connection to liberal protestantism is an interesting point. What
in your view is the best treatment of the claim made by the European New
Right (and others like Nietzsche and Harvey Cox) that Christianity
itself is what ultimately leads to what we have now?
8. On the reasons for the absence of effective protest - one aspect is
the isolation of individuals and the difficulty of creating an effective
political movement without cooperation from the mass media. That's part
of the abolition of all local and institutional autonomy in the
interests of universal rationality. The liberal protestant aspect you
raise is an interesting one that I need to think about more.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Tue Dec 5 21:33:38 2000
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Date: 05 Dec 2000 21:31:49 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Religious_Foundations_o#2D8.doc (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
I'm still not convinced that PC fundamentally has to do with
late-Protestant religiosity although it does make use of it. Certainly
PC in America will tend to take a late-Protestant form. I can't help but
think though that it could find something in almost any tradition that
it could turn to its purposes. Certainly self-criticism sessions and
re-education campaigns have been features of some recent non-Protestant
and even non-Christian societies. I'm assuming here that PC basically
has to do with debunking traditional institutions, hierarchies and
standards in the interests of technically-rational egalitarian hedonism.
It does seem PC started in Protestant America and has done best there
and in the Protestant north and west of Europe. Maybe the two have a
common cause, for example both doing best in places where family and
local tradition are weaker and a sense of individualism on the one hand
and national civic community on the other stronger. Maybe rather than
Protestantism causing PC both are caused by some common underlying
condition, one that is at its height in NW Europe and decreases as one
goes south and east until it reaches its nadir in say Syria.
>From the standpoint of someone who (alas) attends an Episcopal church it
appears that the present public spiritual situation is more a matter of
church progressives taking their cues from the secular Left than the
reverse. It seems to me theologians like lawyers have developed
manipulative skills sufficient to make anything turn into anything else
in a couple of decades and seem completely normal as long as the right
people control the machinery of administration and communications and it
fits in with general cultural trends.
I should provide alternate theories on why PC is accepted by
"oppressors":
1. The class interests/sociology of belief theory. Certainly one reason
Southern Baptist guilt for the Holocaust is accepted by at least the
Southern Baptist leadership when it speaks publicly is that the national
media and expert classes think it should be. All public thought is based
on the knowledge and ideas those classes supply and carried on through
the institutions they dominate, and as it happens those classes benefit
from destruction of traditional arrangements that don't need newspapers
or psychologists to function. Therefore all public thought favors the
destruction of traditional institutions, which puts those who speak
publicly for those institutions in a very odd position and makes them
say odd things. Eventually the lack of articulate alternatives leads
people to believe the odd things they are forced to say.
2. The bizarre perversion theory. Pure hedonism is boring unless
suffering adds another dimension. Sade is authority for that, maybe
Nietzsche too. Actual suffering is too painful, though, so people prefer
vicarious suffering. Unfortunately, the suffering of another is overly
abstract unless a concrete personal connection is introduced. It's
therefore not unusual, as the word "sadism" suggests, for people to find
it rewarding to think of themselves as the cause of suffering in
another. And blaming yourself for victimization gives you a mild and
safe version of the concrete personal connection to the suffering of
another otherwise obtainable only through sadism. The small degree of
pain self-blame causes becomes on this view another benefit.
3. A more conceptual version of the bizarre perversion theory - in
current thought suffering and oppression are the only serious moral
issues. One obtains weight and dignity through connection to those
things. Therefore one must claim to be a victim, or if the social drama
that has grown up does not permit that, one must embrace his identity as
an oppressor. To fail to do so is to be inauthentic, unreal, irrelevant,
whatever. You cite comments of some German lady theologian that support
this view.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From jk@panix.com Wed Dec 6 05:33:51 2000
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Subject: Traditionalist Conservatism Forum
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Status: O
Thanks for your note, Sara.
There have been matrilineal societies but not, so far as I know,
matriarchal ones. For discussion and resources see Robert
Sheaffer's patriarchy page and especially the stuff by Steven
Goldberg. Ignore Mr. Sheaffer's style, there actually is a lot of
useful material there. The page is near the top of the list of
links on the antifeminist page.
Jim Kalb
From jk@panix.com Wed Dec 6 05:34:06 2000
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Status: O
The proposed revised declaration doesn't say there's a universal
obligation to be a member of a family, only that there's no
universal human right for family membership to be voluntary. The
revised declaration wouldn't prevent a particular society from
making it voluntary.
Actually, it seems to me family membership shouldn't be voluntary
- should parents for example be able to divorce their children or
children their parents? Brothers their sisters? Would making such
basic relations voluntary make the world a better place? It seems
to me that the freedom you gain from family entanglements would be
outweighed by increased dependence on the state.
The existing UDHR of course says that no one can be forced to be a
member of an association. As with so much in that document it's
not really clear what that means. Does it mean for example that I
could declare myself a citizen of nowhere and have it stick? Also,
it seems at odds with the statement also in the existing UDHR that
the family is natural, since "natural" seems to imply "not
voluntary."
Basically, though, my objection is that the statement that all
association is voluntary seems to me to make the anthropological
errors that define liberalism - it makes man fundamentally
non-social, and makes what he chooses the sole thing that
determines what he is. Unless "universal human rights" are to mean
simply "advanced liberalism" it has to go.
Jim Kalb
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Dec 6 08:47:50 2000
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Date: 06 Dec 2000 08:46:00 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Column at lewrockwell.com
To: joe@sobran.com?Subject=The.Silent.Revolution (Please forward to Joe)
Status: OR
Hello!
Just a comment - I don't think what's happened is really the rise of the
arbitrary rule of 9 justices, in part because they don't have enough in common
to be a ruling clique and in part because their influence depends so much on
opinion.
The justices normally act collectively on the basis of some statement of
principles - that is, by issuing decisions backed by opinions. They are not
however much of a collectivity. Each is there for life and owes nothing to the
others. Each attained his position independently of the others without
particularly aiming at it, through appointment and confirmation by different
presidents and senatorial majorities.
So to work together they have to emphasize principle of some sort. In the
absence of other common ground, for example substantive legal principles
recognized as binding, the principles they agree on will mostly be the ones
they think will preserve and promote the influence of the court. That means
they will try to act in ways that both make them look judicial and also get
support from enduringly influential, articulate and well-placed groups. The
effect I think is that the "living constitution" means the court is to
represent national governing elites collectively to make sure legal doctrine
and fundamental institutional arrangements work together to give them what they
think right.
You can criticize that situation on the grounds that it's not what the people
have agreed too, at least not formally, or on any number of other grounds, but
I think it's a mistake to emphasize the element of personal arbitrariness. The
latter criticism misses what's really at issue, which is whether the American
people should be governed by an elite, and by *this* elite for *these*
purposes.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Dec 7 09:01:39 2000
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Date: 07 Dec 2000 08:59:46 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re: George + Nietzsche/Derleth/K=9Dnig Artus?=
To: kshatriya-owner@listbot.com (Kshatriya)
Status: OR
--- You wrote:
Die Gefahr der Askese
um der Askese willen, die Evola bei Nietzsche diagnostiziert, scheint
heute gebannt - wo gibt es noch Askese? Die Gefahr der Kunst um der Kunst
willen, scheint noch virulent zu sein.
--- end of quote ---
These are interesting points.
It seems to me the place of pure ascetism is now taken by liberal guilt and
various forms of privileging the other - multiculti, animal rights, whatever.
As to art for art's sake, I think it's disappeared. What we have now is mostly
art for politics' sake or money's sake. That can be worked into a larger
analysis. Healthy art, art for the sake of something transcendent that can be
manifested no other way, corresponds to a religiously-based society. Art for
art's sake corresponds to a fascist society, one based on a self-generating
this-worldly form of quasi-transcendence like the Life Force or the state as an
aesthetic object. And in the current form of society in which appeals to the
transcendent have become rhetorical assertions for personal advantage art
follows suit.
Thanks for distributing your newsletter, btw. It's good to keep in touch with
doings in Europe. Also - this is a silly personal note - it's about the right
length for someone like me who reads German rather badly.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From fn
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To: jk@Panix.Com
Subject: Sex and Free Love / Liberation
Status: OR
Dear Mr. Kalb,
I've quoted a posting of yours below.
--------------------- Your article --------------------------------------
> Things have gotten slow in this newsgroup lately, even with religious
> arguments, so I thought I would say something about sex. After all, the
> latest issue of _Chronicles_, a leading paleoconservative publication,
> has a picture of a naked woman on the cover. (Some might call it a
> photograph of a female nude in bronze, but that art stuff cuts no ice
> with me.) What I wrote is long-winded and abstract enough to satisfy
> all you Spengler fans, but maybe not many others. If anyone wants to
> read it, though, I would be interested in comments.
>
>
>
> Liberation
>
> In this country the movements for women's liberation and for the
> relaxation of traditional sexual morality have made remarkable progress
> without serious opposition. Such success exemplifies the serious
> practical consequences in America today of the poverty of thought on
> morality and social issues and the progressive expansion of
> egalitarianism and hedonism.
>
> How men and women can live together happily and productively is a basic
> problem in social organization. The well-being of both sexes and their
> ability to raise children successfully depends upon the solution to this
> problem. If, as women's liberation demands, the relation between men
> and women is to be based on the elimination of socially-recognized sex
> roles, the problem becomes insoluble.
>
> If there are no set sex roles, so that a man and a woman as such have no
> special rights and obligations regarding each other, their relations are
> their private affair. They can have dealings with each other or not as
> they choose, and the terms on which they deal are determined by mutual
> consent. Traditional family arrangements, which brought with them
> extensive and unavoidable duties, are replaced by private agreements to
> cooperate as to particular aspects of one's life. In other words,
> something like a free market obtains in relations between the sexes.
>
> In such a free market, it is imprudent to stake much upon agreements
> regarding sexual matters because they can't be enforced. Agreements
> regarding economic matters are enforceable because the interests of the
> parties can be reduced to money, which provides a standard for
> determining the intent of the parties and the appropriate remedy when
> the agreement is breached. In sexual and family life, however,
> objectively determinable interests and purposes are so interwoven with
> those that are subjective and personal that determining what the parties
> agreed on and the appropriate remedy for a breach is usually quite
> difficult.
>
> The consequence is that that after liberation relations between men and
> women become distant. Since it takes a rare degree of faith to treat
> something wholly private as real, people in general no longer rely on
> such relationships. In the economic sphere the free market requires
> participants to deal with each other at arm's length and to exercise
> shrewdness and self-reliance to avoid being taken advantage of. In the
> sphere of sexual and family relations the free market requires yet more
> distrust, because the disappearance of the publicly enforceable element
> in sexual relationships means that such relationships last only as long
> as both parties wish them to last, and people's wishes change.
>
> The attachment between mother and child is an exception to the rule that
> family attachments disappear after liberation. Children are incapable
> of independence, and mothers have a natural attachment to their children
> that is reinforced by the child's dependency. Liberation causes this
> relationship to deteriorate, however. Since in an egalitarian society
> there is no social support for unconditional relationships with other
> people, a mother has no grounds for thinking that her child will
> maintain an attachment to her when he no longer needs her, and feels
> exploited because she is giving her love unconditionally and has no
> grounds to expect the like in return. She may react to such painful
> feelings by anger against the child, by withdrawal, or by attempting to
> make the relationship permanent (perhaps by incapacitating the child for
> independence). Each alternative is bad for the child.
>
> The difficulties of raising children are made worse by the distance or
> absence of the child's father, which will be the norm in a sexually free
> and equal society. A father's connection to his child is initially
> indirect. In the past a father might have been tied to his child by a
> web of social relations, or more concretely by his need for a helper in
> his business or desire for heirs; today the tie is through the mother.
> If that relationship is broken easily, for practical purposes the child
> will lack a father. If the child is a boy he will grow up without a
> model for how he can contribute to society. Whether a boy or girl, the
> child will not grow up in a domestic order embracing two adults and so
> will have no intimate experience of objective moral standards.
> Accordingly, he is likely to find it hard to participate in community or
> to form relationships based on mutual respect. As a result, relations
> between the sexes and between parents and children will sink over time
> into what one would expect among people who have no respect for
> themselves or others.
>
> The degradation of sexual life brought about by the circumstances of
> family life just discussed is aggravated by the ordinary effects of a
> free market. A free market is based on participants choosing freely in
> accordance with the tastes that they happen to have. To reject the free
> market as an ideal is to reject the view that all tastes are equally
> valid and therefore to reject egalitarianism. To accept it is to accept
> the tastes people have -- their consumer preferences -- as an ultimate
> standard that requires no justification.
>
> The natural effect of such an ideal is self-seeking hedonism. If my
> tastes, whatever they may be, are beyond criticism by others, they are
> also beyond my own criticism, and the only ground for my choices is my
> immediate pleasure. Also, the normal effect of a free market is to
> diversify tastes, to increase aggregate consumption, and to increase the
> importance placed on consumption generally, while making taste cruder
> and reducing the significance of particular acts of consumption and of
> the manner of consumption. Extended to sexual relations, the free
> market thus eliminates intellectually the categories of sexual license
> and perversion while fostering the conduct that would fall into such
> categories if they still existed. It makes sex incapable of functioning
> as a sustaining part of a durable bond between men and women.
>
> Since sexual liberation and egalitarianism damage or destroy the family,
> the repair of the family requires that relations between the sexes be
> governed by the principle that it is right to treat men and women as
> differing in nature -- that is, in accordance with authoritative sex
> roles -- and both social custom and legal institutions should conform to
> that requirement. Since sex roles are necessary for a tolerable
> society and in most cases correspond to the characteristics individual
> members of each sex in fact possess, by nature and nurture, the fact
> that they do not fit some people is not a sufficient reason for
> rejecting them.
>
> The details of such roles will vary in accordance with circumstances.
> Objections to truly outmoded sex roles can be accommodated, but the
> basic features will continue to be be the traditional ones based on the
> innate differences that in general distinguish the sexes. For example,
> women are generally better adapted to caring for small children. They
> carry and give birth to the baby, and in the natural course of things
> nurse it during the first months of life, and so have a necessary
> physical connection to the child. The emotional effect of this
> connection is heightened by women's diffuse sensuality, which is engaged
> by the baby and by the close physical contact of tending and nursing it.
> Women's responsiveness to immediate feeling and sensation and the
> vagueness of their sense of themselves as persons separate from those
> they love further enhances their sympathy for small children. This
> special relationship to small children readily grows into a special
> responsibility for the home in general as the setting for the immediate
> and intimate relations in which both women and children tend to feel in
> their element.
>
> Conversely, men tend to be more interested in the instrumental than the
> immediate, and their relations to others tend toward a mixture of
> competition and cooperation that suits the marketplace. Since it is
> less characteristic of men to take pleasure in immediate personal
> relationships than pride in protecting those who rely on them, they are
> more suited to be the ultimate authority in the family as well as its
> breadwinner and primary representative to the public world.
>
> Such a restoration of traditional sex roles has its difficulties. Sex
> presents vividly the contradiction in man's nature as animal and as
> rational agent, and the dogma of sexual equality eliminates the
> difficulty of thinking about sex by eliminating thought. Also, the
> decline in the immediate economic and social importance of family
> relationships makes it easier to avoid thinking about the difficulties
> created by sexual freedom and equality, and a democratic consumer
> society takes short views.
>
> Nonetheless, there are contradictions within the revolution against
> traditional sex roles that would facilitate their restoration. Like
> other people, feminists recognize that women are fundamentally different
> from men and this recognition has become increasingly explicit recently.
> Only feminist illogic and the difficulty of rational thought about
> questions relating to basic social organization have preventing wide
> recognition that different roles for men and women are appropriate.
>
> For example, we have seen that the well-being of mothers is inconsistent
> with formal equality of rights between the sexes and freedom in their
> dealings with each other. In addition, the rise of pornography and
> sexual harassment as feminist issues demonstrate an increasingly
> explicit awareness that such formal liberty and equality can hurt
> women. Monogamy, and sexual restraint generally, is more egalitarian in
> substance than sexual freedom but will not exist unless marriage is
> binding, which it can not be unless it is thought of as the union of two
> different sorts of person that need each other to form a complete whole.
>
> Moreover, the government can contribute to a restoration simply by
> ceasing to undermine traditional sex roles. Anti-discrimination
> measures, and the welfare state generally, are intended (among other
> things) to make women economically independent of particular men and
> therefore to help realize the goals of women's liberation. Abandonment
> of such measures would contribute to a better life for all by helping
> knock the props out from under the illusion of equality.
>
> The rejection of liberation in sexual matters may also be aided by
> popular rejection of egalitarianism and hedonism on account of their
> inability to give people what they really want. In addition to more
> direct effects the recognition of such inability may have, it is likely
> to prompt a search for and eventual acceptance of transcendental values
> as authoritative. If transcendental values are taken seriously, people
> will be less likely to view the working world -- the organized
> production and distribution of publicly recognized and transferable
> goods -- as the sole source of dignity, and something like their
> traditional and necessary roles are likely to become more palatable to
> men and women.
> --
> Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
> "Rem tene; verba sequentur." (Cato)
>
From jk Wed Feb 5 09:03:45 1997
Subject: Re: mailto:jk@panix.com
To: ma
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 09:03:45 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Georgie Stanford" at Feb 4, 97 11:46:15 am
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> And yes we talk among ourselves. But the professional organizations,
> just like the NEA, the unions and academia are heavily influenced by
> leftist elements. I'd guess APA membership in my home state is
> something like 50% of the shrinks, 'cause there is just no "forum"
> for dissent over such basic values in that organization any more than
> you'd see in the Teamsters.
The lawyers have the Federalist Society as an alternative to the ABA,
academics have the National Association of Scholars, and I think
they've organized a counter-Modern Language Association as well.
Still, the problem is that the people who believe most strongly in
grand schemes and national organizations with comprehensive social
goals are the leftists. Other people mostly want to do something for
whoever it is they're working with.
I think in the long run the internet and such things are going to have
quite an effect on all this though. People who dominate national
organizations will just have less influence on discussions.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From jk Thu Feb 20 09:31:57 1997
Subject: Re: reply to Jim Kalb
To: F
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 09:31:57 -0500 (EST)
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> GKC's style does take a lot of getting used to, but I find it very
> amusing and thought provoking.
For my taste it's a bit too much non-stop amusement and paradox. A
superficial complaint maybe since I admire the substance.
On the other point:
I can't help but wonder though whether it's a mistake to stress the
Jewish angle so much. It seems to me that if the Jews had all moved to
Mars 200 years ago we'd be in about the same position we are now
anyway. Secular Jews naturally like the New World Order because that's
what they placed their bets on when they abandoned their faith after
the French Revolution. Their existence doesn't *explain* the NWO
though. As it is, the NWO is destroying the Jews, except for the
strictly Orthodox who aren't much of a threat to anyone, just like it's
destroying all other peoples. Between intermarriage and low birthrate
in a hundred years there won't be enough of them to notice.
So to my mind rather than portraying the struggle as a struggle among
peoples it would be better to portray it as a struggle of all peoples
against certain principles and beliefs (materialism, rational hedonism,
etc.), the institutions based on them, and the elites that control and
benefit from those beliefs. The spiritual struggle is far more basic
than any ethnic struggle. The fact that the NWO uses immigration and
its version of "equal rights" to destroy a nation doesn't mean that the
national struggle is primarily against immigrants. It's against the
view of life that makes deracination look like a step forward -- it
wouldn't do much good to stop immigration if otherwise that view still
controlled things. The fact that lots of leading NWO fans are Jews
doesn't mean that Jews are the enemy -- if they all grew beards and
sidelocks tomorrow and moved to Madegascar they would simply be
replaced. There will always be enough eager applicants.
I'm sure you've heard these arguments before, so excuse the rant and
thanks again.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Rise, Sir Lapdog! Revolt, lover! God, pal--rise, sir!
From jk Tue Apr 22 21:57:03 1997
Subject: Re: Your page.
To: sd
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 21:57:03 -0400 (EDT)
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> Your page and the general concept of distributivism intrigues me,
> especially the connection to Chesterbelloc. And the balance with
> which you approach conservatism, with a Catholic/Christian context,
> is much more complete to me.
Conservatism seems to me to go well with catholic Christianity. Both
oppose sectarianism. Modernism is sectarian because it tries to reduce
everything to one or two principles that can be fully possessed by one
or a few men.
A difficulty with distributism I think is seeing how a legal order
could grow up that would promote it while avoiding general state
administration of economic and social life (which would destroy it).
> Have there been sweeping liturgical changes in the Episcopalian
> Church since the 1960's as in the Roman Church?
There was a new Book of Common Prayer in 1979 that was rather a break
from what preceded. I would say the changes have been less sweeping
though -- what was being changed was less distinctive than the
traditional Latin Mass, and besides Episcopalians tend toward
formalism.
> Second, would you consider yourself High Church/Anglican, or
> Low-Church?
Things are too much a mess within ECUSA to give a good answer. I like
my parish, and my immediate family and my sister are Episcopalians.
Otherwise I'm not sure what I'd do. I suppose by inclination I'm more
high churchy, because hierarchy and sacraments seem to me necessary,
but unfortunately the actual ECUSA hierarchy aren't what one would wish
so one finds himself relying on Christ's promise that he would be among
us whenever two or three are gathered in his name. My parish actually
is more charismatic than anything else, which isn't my own taste, but
it means they take their religion personally and seriously in a way
that's natural to Americans.
> I am not sure of this, but didn't a group of Anglicans get together
> last year and decide that hell doesn't exist?
I think some English bishops announced that their teaching was that
"Hell" is actually termination of existence or some such thing.
> It is an interesting thing to meet an Episcopal who is not a liberal
It's a liberal church because by origin it's a national established
church and so identifies with whatever the ruling group and conceptions
are. Also upper class respectable people don't like to be
inconvenienced or made uncomfortable or associated with anything that
isn't as respectable as they are. There's some stuff though about
Episcopalians who aren't liberal on the Traditionalism page.
> I hope these questions aren't off putting.
No. There are big problems in ECUSA. Still, Anglicanism has its own
gifts and beauties and can be understood as part of catholic
Christianity, a form it has taken in the English-speaking world. It
may be in its final decline now but if so that is horribly sad. Still,
other churches are having problems too, even (some say) the Roman, and
it's not over till it's over.
> I hope sincerely hope that this doesn't offend your protestant
> sensibilities, but Rich's counter-revolution is along the lines of
> the neo Counter-Reformation forming in Catholicism to deal with the
> rancid aftermath of Vatican II, which mainly exhibits itself with an
> ecumania in trying to reconcile Catholicism with Lutheranism and
> Anglicanism. No offense: our beliefs are certainly different, and I
> as a Catholic have not a great deal of interest in making the Church
> protestant.
The differences between classical Catholicism, Lutheranism and
Anglicanism seem to me minor in comparison with those between any of
them and religious liberals in any denomination. So if someone says he
wants pre-VII Catholicism instead of what's been going on lately that
strikes me as to the good.
> I have noticed the defining characteristic of liberalism is gross
> hypocrisy on almost every level of thought and action.
A lot of it is a remarkable lack of self-awareness.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do not start at rats to nod.
From jk Fri Apr 25 23:07:46 1997
Subject: Re: Tage Lindbom?
To: ku
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 23:07:46 -0400 (EDT)
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> I just wondered if your page (I really liked it) is representative for
> some kind of organisation, international or not(?), and why don't you
> mention Ren=E9 Gu=E9non.=20
I'm glad you like it -- praise is always pleasing. The page has no
organizational affiliation, it's just my own attempt to bring order out
of chaos.
I don't say anything about Guenon because I don't know enough about him
and because there's not a great deal about him on the web. I think
he's mentioned on the San Casciano page and in Denis Costales' Integral
Traditionalism bibliography both of which are listed on my page.
> If you know anything about it, it would be great to know how many
> American=B4s that agree with you in the basic ideas. And of course if
> Lindbom's writings are known to the American's more that "extremes" like
> you.
Not many agree with me or even know enough about my kind of position to
disagree, but I think the ideas have a future here. Liberalism is the
established outlook in America; what is called "conservatism" is an
older form of liberalism with some traditional morality and religion
tacked on. Liberalism is in crisis -- by its nature it can't survive
its victory, and people hate it even though they're always being told
how wonderful it is. No one can imagine what could replace it though.
I don't think the attempts to save liberalism (e.g. communitarianism,
neoconservatism) are going to get anywhere.
Lindbom isn't well known in America. As I understand the matter it's
quite uncertain whether his recent book on modernism will get published
here -- apparently it depends on how _The Myth of Democracy_ sells.
Speaking of numbers, how many Swedes are Catholic traditionalists or
anything like it?
> Do you think something going to happen to the world soon?
Things will happen. What depends on where. The situation in Europe
for example seems to me unstable -- it is harder for you than for us to
deal with immigration, your unemployment is very high, and the welfare
state (which is turning out to be unsustainable) is far more a part of
the moral basis of your social order. Also it seems that nothing much
can change, which means that when changes come they will be fast and
uncontrolled. As to America, it's hard to predict. It's a big country
in which the people increasingly find they have no respect or
confidence in their rulers and not much in common with each other. On
the other hand the political and economic systems seem more flexible
than those in Europe so we may last longer without radical changes.
> PS. I am so sorry for my language, or spelling. If I have misunderstood
> your position totaly I appologies...
Any problems with language and spelling are very minor and I see no
misunderstandings.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do not start at rats to nod.
From jk Sat Aug 2 08:15:13 1997
Subject: Unworthy ministers
To: mi
Date: Sat, 2 Aug 1997 08:15:13 -0400 (EDT)
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>>Article XXVI--Of the Unworthiness of the Ministers, which hinders not
>>the effect of the Sacraments.
>Would a polite traditionalist mind communicating with me in private
>email (if this is an old-news type of topic) explaining why female
>priests would not be acceptable under this article?
I don't come up to the level of being a traditionalist or much of
anything else, but I think I can respond.
The article is irrelevant, because the objection to ordaining women is
not that women are unworthy or evil but that they have not been
commissioned and authorized by Christ to be priests. The same of
course is true of the great majority of men. Me, for example. Also
St. Joseph, St. Stephen, and many other worthies.
To say to a traditionalist "Bishop X went through a form of ordination
with this woman, so she's a priest" is somewhat like saying "Bishop Y
went through a form of ordination with the Boy Scouts of America, so
the BSA is now a priest" or "the Vestry appointed this man to preside
over the Eucharist, so he's our priest." The woman and man may be
saints and the BSA a splendid organization that is full of saints. All
three may to all appearances be able to do everything a priest does
superlatively well (the BSA of course through appointed agents). None
of that matters, though, and Articles XXVI doesn't tell us anything to
the contrary.
The arguments on women's ordination are I think mostly historical (the
priesthood has been male from the earliest times; bishops and their
representatives the priests are successors to the Apostles, who were
male; Christianity as a religion of the Incarnation should take such
concrete realities seriously; the male priesthood is a fundamental
enough point to be part of the constitution of the Church, and the
Church isn't something we made and can reconstitute).
There are also of course backup discussions of why what is taken to be
the fact of male priesthood makes sense (e.g., the male priesthood
supports the divinely promulgated image of God the Father and the
historical reality of God who became a man, that image is important
because neuter images of God make him an abstract principle and female
images end up blurring the distinction between God and his creation too
much, the male priesthood preserves a masculine element in a religion
that tends toward the feminine, what have you.)
I think in the background is a feeling that recent developments in the
view of sex and gender, although they've swept all before them in
public discussions, are unsound because they trivialize things that are
fundamental to human life. Therefore they should not be taken as a
guide.
I've rambled on, mostly for my own purposes. I wanted to clarify my
own thoughts and made your request an occasion to do so. I hope this
has been at least somewhat helpful.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Mon Aug 4 19:08:15 1997
Subject: Re: Unworthy ministers
To: mi
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 19:08:15 -0400 (EDT)
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> Thank you very much for your response on women's ordination. It's
> such a tough issue. I'm not sure I support it, but I certainly don't
> oppose it -- it seems sort of... well, I'd definitely leave the
> church if it tossed out Jesus or the Trinity, but I'm not sure female
> priests are a condemned-to-hell compromise, a _necessary_ to the
> faith.
It's not the sort of thing a layman ought to have to worry about. I
have my own problems. The difficulty is that I don't trust the
higher-ups in ECUSA. Maybe that shows I ought to be someplace else,
but I like my parish and I've got bigger worries than female priests
which my parish doesn't have anyway.
If forced to decide I suppose I'd be against. The cause seems too
closely tied to too many things which seem to me clearly wrong, for
example current understandings of sex and gender and the tendency to
identify some combination of psychological therapy and
late-20th-century conceptions of political justice as the content of
Christian faith. The ECUSA hierarchy doesn't remind me very vividly of
the saints and prophets I've read about. Also, the historical argument
combined with suggestions as to why things *should* be that way seems
persuasive.
I agree that in itself it doesn't look like a do-or-die issue.
It occurs to me than an argument I left out is the "priest as an icon
of Christ" argument. Like the others that seems to me an add-on to the
historical argument and the "who are these guys anyway who are suddenly
making all these changes" argument.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Tue Sep 16 22:03:40 1997
Subject: Re: NYC Right
To: r
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 22:03:40 -0400 (EDT)
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> You're right in the ultimate sense. However, people like Sam
> love this civilization. The love is only this-worldly but it is real.
> These materialist defenders of our world can't see past this vale of
> tears. True enough. But they can love and fight for the same
> this-worldly manifestations of Truth that we do together with us,
> don't you think?
I do think it's possible to love something without seeing the
presuppositions and implications of the thing you love. Also, I favor
finding all possible common ground. What inspired my comment I suppose
is that in what little I've read by Sam Francis (just his pieces in
_Chronicles_) there's been less love visible than analysis of power and
strategy. Not that the love may not be there or that he's required to
put everything he thinks and feels into everything he writes.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Fri Jun 4 21:08:48 1999
Subject: Re: Hi
To: tw
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 21:08:48 -0400 (EDT)
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> Thankfully, it looks as if I at least have a community college job
> for now, which pays surprisingly well and which will give me a base
> from which I can get my own dissertation published, and then go out
> and get a real job.
Congrats. Seems like a horrible grind. Be strong etc. Where will you
be?
> I'd be very interested in your thoughts on an article
Seems like a good review of the situation. The Catholic Church's
position on contraception is a strong reason to take their claims
seriously. Creation and the Incarnation mean the body and its natural
functioning have to be taken seriously or it's not clear what reality
they can have for us.
The issue as I see it is that man is not just an abstract individual,
the locus of sensation and will. That's what contraception, the modern
attitude toward sex and marriage, for that matter modern ethics
generally, the moral status of the civil rights laws for example, make
of him. According to those views particularities, our bodies for
example, fundamentally don't touch us. If modern moral views are
correct I don't see how a God who is both transcendent and concretely
present in the world can come into the picture. Why should God be more
concrete than we are?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a
19th-century idea, and we're trying to transition into the 21st century, and
we're going to do it with multi-ethnic states." (General Wesley K. Clark)
From jk Mon Jul 5 06:06:25 1999
Subject: Re: French Jew to run Kosovo
To: la
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 06:06:25 -0400 (EDT)
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> It's the same total surrender of identity and existence, across the
> board.
All so odd. It's not purely political in a narrow sense. It seems
everything today is biased against stable conceptions of identity.
Possible reasons:
1. Individualistic and economic understanding of life. The former
goes back a long way. The Icelandic sagas have a very strong
individualist streak and Christianity makes much of the individual
soul. The economic outlook seems to follow from radical individualism
that denies the transcendent -- two men who don't have much in common
can nonetheless make deals that further the goals each happens to have.
2. Technological outlook. You analyze things and think of inventive
ways to put them back together to get what you happen to want. Nothing
is sacred.
3. Pragmatic and antiplatonic outlook. There are no essences or
preordained universals, just classifications determined by the goals we
happen to have.
4. Public life is carried on through TV. That means the public order
loses all complexity. Everything between the immediate individual
situation and the all-knowing universal vanishes. All that remains is
impulses and their fulfilling or thwarting and the demand for a
universal rational order to organize their fulfillment.
I'm writing an essay on antiracism that goes into causes and
presuppositions. I'll email a copy fyi when I'm done with the current
revision.
As to the Jews, I wonder:
1. Younger generations seem to me inferior to those who grew up in
the pre-TV rights days before antisemitism was thought so inconceivably
monstrous. Less cultured certainly, even if their formal education is
much more impressive.
2. Destruction of identity seems to affect them also. They have low
birthrate and high intermarriage. Can the life of a community really
be built on the religion of the Holocaust?
3. The effect of extreme social rationalization is to leave basic
impulses unaltered while destroying the habits and attitudes that
civilize them. That's why relations between the sexes are bad now and
why the Soviet Union by trying to eliminate economic self-interest
brought about mafia rule. Perhaps something similar will happen in the
case of race.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous
(hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets to have
nuclear weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be
aliens, children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?"
From jk Wed Oct 6 16:29:48 1999
Subject: Re: Nixon and the Jews
To: la
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 16:29:48 -0400 (EDT)
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It's such an odd thing, the ability to take an eccentric position
(i.e., there's something super-special about Jews, and one feature of
their super-specialness is that it's unbelievably wicked to think their
specialness is not an absolute benefit to everyone) and make it stick.
One could ask how the "antisemitic" statement would sound if
"Catholic," "fundamentalist" or whatever were substituted for "Jew." Or
how about "peasant"? It's a term of abuse, and modern tyrannies have
exterminated many more peasants than Jews.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk) "If the treasonous
(hence alien), childish, mentally ill felon in the White House gets nuclear
weapons to play with, why can't the rest of us who happen to be aliens,
children, mentally ill or felons possess assault rifles?"
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Dec 7 10:34:17 2000
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Date: 07 Dec 2000 10:32:24 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Column at lewrockwell.com (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
It was just that, a column about how the constitution has disappeared and now
it's just the arbitrary whim of judges.
I think part of the problem is that conservatives don't put enough effort into
understanding how liberalism works, why it's successful, how it looks from the
inside. Another part is that it's hard to present arguments that can't fit
into a newspaper column and be understood without effort or attention. You can
present them I suppose but who will print or read them?
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Dec 7 15:39:38 2000
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Date: 07 Dec 2000 15:37:44 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Religious_Foundations_o#2D8.doc
To: go
Status: OR
--- You wrote:
I am not convinced that a regression into the past is possible. What must be
done is to prevent more evil from occurring by continuing to move in a bad
direction.
--- end of quote ---
A straightforward regression isn't possible I agree. Still, a more positive
goal is needed than putting sand in the gears.
It seems to me advanced liberalism denies fundamental human needs, things
ranging from immediate connectedness to others to authoritative symbols of the
transcendent. If I'm right, and those really are fundamental needs, and
society becomes impossible without them because no one will defend it or for
that matter have children and raise them properly, advanced liberalism won't
last. Something nonliberal will follow, and I think a vision of what that
might be is needed even for effective resistance today.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
Re: Human rights
Friday, 08-Dec-00 09:24:23
151.202.52.208 writes:
Human rights declarations don't find common ground, they make advanced
liberal standards universally binding. I go into the issue in the
discussion page on my human rights site and in my essay on The Tyranny
of Liberalism. The consequence is that the dominant culture among
ruling elites - egalitarian technological hedonism, a.k.a. advanced
liberalism - crushes everything.
What you've done - which is quite interesting, actually - is point to
a respect in which a basic liberal proposition, that man is not
essentially social, works to the advantage of groups that deny their
social ties to the larger society and enforce their principles
internally by breaking social ties with offenders and treating them as
nonpersons. So while liberal human rights destroy all cultures that
include public life as an essential component, which includes all
Confucian, all Islamic, all Roman Catholic and all except the most
extreme Protestant cultures, because they deny those cultures
authoritative public expression, one might argue that they give
security to inward-turning strict separatist cultures. So you could
have a world much like the traditional Middle Eastern world, with
inward-turning etho-religious communities living and running their own
affairs in separate villages or walled urban quarters and minimal
government that does little but collect taxes and enforce crude public
order.
The problem with that vision is that liberal human rights, which is
what we have, are not radical libertarian human rights. The convention
on discrimination against women for example requires governments to
take whatever action is needed to eradicate cultural or
religiously-based sex roles. For commentary you might look at what the
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has to say on the subject. If I
were a strict Orthodox Jew or Amish I wouldn't feel my way of life had
that much legal security under a human rights regime.
You seem to think that the alternative to universal rule by the
principles dominant among ruling elites is a regime based on universal
human rights. I claim those two are in fact the same. What I would
prefer is local autonomy, which means that if people in Bhutan believe
in male primogeniture outsiders should not prevent them from
establishing that as the legal rule even though the Muslim or advanced
liberal view is different. If the Bhutanese can work out an
accommodation to let minority communities do things their own way,
that's great, but I don't believe that there should be some universal
legal principle that makes the advanced liberal view compulsory in
Bhutan or even tries to define just how accommodations will be worked
out.
Jim Kalb
Re: Anti-feminism
Friday, 08-Dec-00 09:33:31
151.202.52.208 writes:
Thanks for your note.
I think people today are bombarded by propaganda from all directions
and it's important for them to try to get clear on what they think is
good and why. If they do then what feminists or masculinists say will
matter much less.
The feminist and masculinist complaints are based on the same error,
that men and women are just separate individuals pursuing their
separate interests, so any differences in role are unfair, abusive,
oppressive, whatever.
In fact we are naturally social and the family is naturally the basic
social unit, so sex role differences are also natural. Each sex
contributes, but not exactly the same thing. If you don't like that
you don't like human life, or so it seems to me.
Jim Kalb
Re: Public moral standards
Saturday, 09-Dec-00 08:10:22
151.202.52.208 writes:
I don't see why it's easier to choose a reaction to two men kissing - I
assume you mean plainly sexual kissing - than to soda cans and burger
wrappers by the highway. To me it seems more difficult to do so, since
sexuality touches us and our relationships to others more deeply than
candy wrappers lying around on the grass or whatever.
As to leaded gasoline, the point is that if one person uses it it make
no difference at all to anyone. So whether an act can be forbidden can't
be a matter of the direct consequences of the particular act. It can
bring in considerations of how things would be if that kind of act were
generally accepted.
Back to public homosexuality - man is a social and a cultured animal.
Part of what that means is that his life mostly has to do with
participation in systems of common understandings and practices. As a
general thing, and subject to lots of other considerations, acts that
break down such systems can be regulated or forbidden. Such acts include
public indecency. I don't think it's a novelty that threatens to send us
down a slippery slope to treat public homosexuality as indecent. It
didn't lead to catastrophe last time it was tried, which was pretty the
whole of our past history.
An advantage of tradition, by the way, is that the considerations
regarding social relations and the human good are infinitely complex,
and we can't know where we are if we abandon longstanding systems of
practice and feeling and try to reduce the considerations to clear
explicit universal principle as liberalism does.
Jim Kalb
Re: Human rights and minority communities
Saturday, 09-Dec-00 08:27:19
151.202.52.208 writes:
But my proposal does uphold cultural federalism, local autonomy, the
right to move someplace else, etc. See the final point of item 2 and
items 4 and 6 of my proposed system and articles 1, 13 and 23 of the
revised declaration.
The point of the proposal, by the way, is to investigate what could be
part of a universal code. I say several times in my pages that I think
some such thing is probably inevitable in the modern world, so the issue
becomes what it should include.
This thread began when I said that the universal code should not insist
that family membership be voluntary. If you're down on universal codes
you should approve that exclusion and demand even more exclusions. Your
complaint should be that I'm still buying too much into the liberal
system of universal human rights.
Jim Kalb
From jk@panix.com Thu Dec 7 09:12:46 2000
Return-Path:
Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 09:12:45 -0500 (EST)
From:
To: jk@panix.com
Subject: Traditionalist Conservatism Forum
X-URL: http://www.InsideTheWeb.com/messageboard/mbs.cgi?acct=mb414560&MyNum=976126772&P=Yes&TL=976050196
Status: OR
Re: Re: Re: Human rights
Wednesday, 06-Dec-00 13:19:32
151.202.55.190 writes:
You're demanding universal principles that require that all legal
systems everywhere be equally suited to all possible religions and
cultural practices, that law have no moral content, because if it
did the moral views of some people subject to the law would be
disadvantaged.
That can't be done and shouldn't be tried. Why should public
recognition of family ties, for example enforcement of obligations
of support, depend on what the Amish want? Would you require
similar universal indulgence in the case of groups that practice
infanticide, human sacrifice or whatever? What is the point of
federalism if local law isn't allowed to reflect local values?
If the Amish can work out some arrangement with their host society
that lets them live as they want that's fine, otherwise they are
free to emigrate. I don't think the arrangement and its terms can
sensibly be compelled from outside, though.
In any event it will be impossible to keep the law from having
moral content and infringing on someone. Advanced liberal legal
systems attempt to avoid value judgements and let everyone do what
he wants. The result is a PC requirement of public neutrality that
tyrannizes over everyone except egalitarian hedonists. But why
should egalitarian hedonism get preferential treatment? The
attempt to treat all moral views equally ends in
self-contradiction.
Jim Kalb
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Mon Dec 11 08:03:38 2000
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Date: 11 Dec 2000 08:01:31 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: excerpt from Stevens' dissent and my comment (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
--- You wrote:
Seems like something of a leap. You seem to be saying that any lying political
statement is to be understood as a manifestation of advanced liberalism and its
denial of transcendence, rather than as just a lying political statement.
Could you show the connection between your general idea about the denial of
transcendence and this particular lie (i.e. the lie of describing dimpled
ballots already counted as non-votes, as "legal votes")? Remember, I'm a
forest-and-trees man!
--- end of quote ---
The thought was that when as the basis for a proposed resolution to a dispute a
judge uses language visibly devised by one of the parties to encode an answer
to the point in question he's given up on language as a means for common
discussion of a common moral world in favor of language as manipulative
rhetoric.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Mon Dec 11 08:04:03 2000
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Date: 11 Dec 2000 08:01:56 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
Thanks for sharing!
You might reflect, by the way, that the view that human nature can be
transformed politically, that it's not something we just have to live with, has
led to the murder of scores of millions of innocents in the past 80 years or
so. Makes sense - if "man" is a social construct, so it only has the meaning
and importance those in power put on it, why shouldn't the same be true of
particular men?
All the best,
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Mon Dec 11 08:04:31 2000
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Date: 11 Dec 2000 08:02:24 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: excerpt from Stevens' dissent and my comment (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
It's a problem. Advanced liberalism arises as part of a process in which
language loses meaning and principled action becomes impossible. All there is
that language and principle can manifest is will after all.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From jk@panix.com Tue Dec 12 19:53:08 EST 2000
Article: 14916 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: New website on human rights
Date: 11 Dec 2000 17:26:07 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <912f25$nvo$1@doppler.a2000.nl> psychrophiles@hotmail.com (Maarten) writes:
>The fallacy behind your draft seems to me that on the one hand you suggest
>universal negative and even some positive human rights, but on the other
>hand you want to relegate responsibility for enforcement away from the
>center by stressing subsidiary. It seems however, that rights deemed
>universal can only be enforced by some universal ('central') power.
I don't think that's so. There can be commonly accepted ways of
thinking and even statements of principle commonly accepted as
authoritative without a central power to enforce them. Think of the
Bible among Protestant churches or the Bible plus lots of other stuff
among the Eastern Orthodox. I suppose other examples would be
scientific method, the grammar etc. of languages, the rules of many
games, etc.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From jk@panix.com Tue Dec 12 19:53:08 EST 2000
Article: 14920 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: New website on human rights
Date: 12 Dec 2000 06:48:21 -0500
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In <3A37D2AA@MailAndNews.com> "S.T. Theleis" writes:
>But maybe he should have said that the rights are only
>_meaningful_ when enforced by a central power. Otherwise the sorts of
>universal assents to authoritative principle you cite can mean almost
>anything
You seem to take the view that everything is a matter of power, that
common commitments and understandings last only as long as they point in
the same direction as one's interests anyway and so have nothing
additional to contribute, in effect that man is not fundamentally
social.
All that seems wrong to me. More to the point from your standpoint,
perhaps, is that it's a losing outlook since cooperation among those who
accept it will be so unstable. They will never for example be willing
to sacrifice for a common cause.
>I'll admit though that I'm not much interested in the idea of making
>moral pronouncements or grand declarations about such things.
People do make such pronouncements and feel compelled to do so if only
because otherwise their world seems unfurnished. It seems to me they
have influence and serve a function. That being so, their content is
naturally a matter of concern.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From jk@panix.com Tue Dec 12 19:53:08 EST 2000
Article: 14921 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: New website on human rights
Date: 12 Dec 2000 06:57:02 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <914675$1nm$1@darwin.a2000.nl> psychrophiles@hotmail.com (Maarten) writes:
>But you obviously did not attempted to describe or codify an existing
>state, but rather a state that you suggest should exist and should
>therefore be enforced. And this implies a (new) mechanism of enforcement.
I described and criticised an existing state of affairs, the existing
human rights regime with its innate tendencies. That state of affairs
seems dangerous to me, so I suggested how it could be improved by
cutting human rights theories down to size and leaving more room for
other understandings of social life.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From jk@panix.com Tue Dec 12 19:53:08 EST 2000
Article: 14926 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!panix6.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: New website on human rights
Date: 12 Dec 2000 19:48:22 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <20001212.2325.2193snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>What I found interesting is that you still feel that it is necessary to
>have a declaration of human rights at all, and the resemblances,
>rather than the differences, bwteen your draft and the existing declaration. It's
>as if one can choose between Complex Instruction Set and Reduced Instruction
>Set, but can't go back to hand calculations, as it were.
Actually, I'm not quite sure what to do with the UDHR. For reasons I
mentioned in the website here and there it seems to me that some sort of
worldwide conception of the principles of legitimate government is
inevitable. Such principles would include how governments treat their
people, and where we're starting right now is with the UDHR and its
various progeny. So I tried to cut the UDHR back to something more
reasonable, which meant crossing out the parts that seemed wrong, and
then denouncing human rights fundamentalism, which means taking the
language of such proclaimations literally, viewing them as eternally
valid, etc.
>But one needs an optimistic outlook in which we expect that certain kinds
>of behaviour will become unthinkable among civilized people, just as it
>would no doubt be unthinkable for Mr. Theleis to eat a Jew. It was precisely
>the weakening of that optimism from the late 19th century onwards, and
>especially after 1914, that encouraged the promulgation of normative
>declarations (the U.D. having been added to an existing and slowly
>developing framework of international law, including Geneva Conventions and
>the like). Yet the normative declarations assume that there is still a
>reasonable majority among nations.
Oh, there will always be atrocities. The issue I think is the actual
effect of various systems proposed to prevent atrocities. Claims that
goals are noble, morally compelling or whatever don't do away with the
necessity of thinking politically.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From jk@panix.com Wed Dec 13 11:44:59 EST 2000
Article: 14930 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: New website on human rights
Date: 13 Dec 2000 08:31:57 -0500
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In <916hr2$pej$1@boile.a2000.nl> psychrophiles@hotmail.com (Maarten) writes:
>The point being that the drafting
>of some code, especially a universal one, should, at least among free men,
>be at the end of a process of reconciliation rather than being the basis
>for it.
Oh, I agree. That's why the page with the suggested language describes
it as a means of focusing discussion.
>why should one further insist on a corruptible universal code based on
>these principles rather then directy cooperate the principles in local
law
>-- unless of course there's some central institution with sufficient
>authority to test local code against higher principles in a systematic
>manner?
Nonbinding proclamations of principle aren't that rare. International
law has typically consisted of agreements and proclamations without
specific means of enforcement. Such things serve a function if they
stand for general consensus and a system of cooperation that people
actually value. If they don't they're just forgotten.
I'm glad you and Raphael raised the issue though. There are real issues
with having "human rights" as part of international law since such
things aren't obviously part of a system of international dealings in
the way commercial law or the law of war and peace are.
To some extent they are or might be part of the normal course of
international dealings and not something superimposed by a central
authority. Country A might not want to buy or sell things to country B
if country A finds the setup in country B utterly disgusting. If
Country A's moral sensibility is sufficiently widespread
generally-accepted standards could arise regarding such things. There
are also standards of honor or respectability. Such things are
particularly common and useful in free societies, and if you oppose
imperialism you want world society to be a free society. Human rights
standards could be part of a system of honor or respectability applied
internationally. In fact, that's mostly what they are today although
there are grounds for worrying about the future.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From jk@panix.com Wed Dec 13 11:44:59 EST 2000
Article: 14931 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: New website on human rights
Date: 13 Dec 2000 08:53:54 -0500
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In <3a36fd5e$0$1502$2a0ee87e@news.tdin.com> "Tony W. Frye" writes:
>It is already taking place--only it is not centered around the UDHR, but
>on the globalization of the U.S.'s Uniform Commercial Code. Human
>rights legally does not exist at the international level.
Not true - the UDHR has been followed by various treaties and
conventions that have binding legal status at least among signatories.
And there is increasing talk of customary international human rights law
that binds states that haven't signed anything. The Balkan war for
example was justified by an emerging right (or obligation) of
humanitarian military intervention said to be part of customary
international law.
Binding international human rights law has been around for a while,
actually - it was behind the Nuremberg trials for example. The
international criminal court when it becomes effective will be a
permanent tribunal for human rights crimes that will be subject to
prosecution regardless of what the state involved thinks or has agreed
to.
>I don't hold out their eventual elevation to legal
>status, but globalization and the creation of a global community depends
>too heavily on institution building, which in this context serves the
>interests of the stock holders (as the Multilateral Agreement on
>Investment illustrates).
Human rights law is part of the process of building One World, billions
of individual worker/consumers organized and managed by world markets,
and transnational bureaucracies. I'm not sure why stock holders as a
class should object.
>And there will always be murder and rape. That doesn't mean we should
>ditch our criminal codes
Sure. The only point is that saying X is anticrime does not
automatically justify X. One must think through what it would be like
to live with X as an institution and what its actual effects and
implications would be.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From jk@panix.com Wed Dec 13 11:44:59 EST 2000
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: New website on human rights
Date: 13 Dec 2000 11:44:46 -0500
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In <917tod$1jm$1@panix6.panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>the page with the suggested language describes
>it as a means of focusing discussion.
I just revised the proposal page to make it clearer what the status of
the suggested pronouncements is intended to be. Thanks much to Raphael
and Maarten for their comments.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Dec 13 11:46:04 2000
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Date: 13 Dec 2000 11:44:19 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Ledeen replies. You're not going to believe this ... (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
--- You wrote:
the point is not to change the world but to understand it.
--- end of quote ---
I grow more and more impressed by how important fundamental philosophical
issues are, like whether comtemplation is the highest form of life as
premoderns thought or an impossibility as moderns think. Is man at his best a
knower or a maker?
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Dec 13 11:46:53 2000
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Date: 13 Dec 2000 11:45:08 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Remember These 'Terrible People' (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
Is it just my imagination, or something very temporary due to the mess in
Florida, or are rightwingers really getting more radical? Not so much as a
matter of program, but in the sense that they understand more and more that
that the Left has breached the social contract, that leftist principles in fact
deny the very possibility of a social contract, that it really has been a war
but one so far carried on only by one side.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Dec 13 11:48:16 2000
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Date: 13 Dec 2000 11:46:29 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: a neocon responds ... (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
--- You wrote:
I refuse to give the Left a monopoly on "revolution." Since they are trying to
undo the victories of the American Revolution, they are counterrevolutionaries.
--- end of quote ---
It's not clear what to make of it. Strikes me as mostly as unprincipled use of
language, due possibly to indifference to history or trying to seize a
rhetorical advantage. Of course if you're unprincipled and mostly look for
advantages and don't much care what happened in the past you're unlikely to
reject whatever fundamental views are currently dominant.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Wed Dec 13 11:48:46 2000
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Date: 13 Dec 2000 11:46:56 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: more on Ledeed (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
--- You wrote:
Ledeen's reply "I refuse to give the left a monopoly on revolution," is similar
in its personalistic form to many statements Norman Podhoretz has made over the
years. That is, Ledeen doesn't refer to what he believes is objectively true,
or to what the common understandings of the word "revolution" are, but rather
to the drama of his own willfulness: "I refuse to give ..."
With the neocons, it always comes down to THEMSELVES.
--- end of quote ---
I think it's true that the neocons take the career as the fundamental ethical
reality. Think of of N. Podhoretz's
_Making It_. In part also it's taking a manipulative approach to language and
ideas - they're all part of a personal campaign.
You could also view it as a solipsistic collapse of middle-of-the-road
conservatism. The view used to be that settled social views and practices were
the standard; now it's one's own settled views and practices.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From jk@panix.com Thu Dec 14 08:33:05 EST 2000
Article: 14937 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: New website on human rights
Date: 13 Dec 2000 18:20:00 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <3A409655@MailAndNews.com> "S.T. Theleis" writes:
>Truly idiotic gibberish, making nonsense of your supposed stand
>for freedom and "particularism". If everyone must be bullied into
>agreement with the same standard
Some common standards are inevitable, because man is social. A free
society, and a society of nations that respects particularism, relies
mostly on standards that arise through growth of common understandings
and commitments and are "enforced" through preferential dealings based
on affinity. Like supporters of the antidiscrimination laws you
identify the latter with coercion and bullying. That's only one of the
fundamental positions you share with the Left.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From jk@panix.com Thu Dec 14 08:33:05 EST 2000
Article: 14942 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: New website on human rights
Date: 14 Dec 2000 08:29:58 -0500
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In <3a38a3ae$0$1509$2a0ee87e@news.tdin.com> "Tony W. Frye" writes:
>Nowhere in international law is a declaration legally binding.
Just so. However, since the UDHR there have been a number of human
rights conventions that have a different status.
>Humanitarianism was merely
>the diplomatic-propaganda rationale by which NATO (or US since the US
>provides over 60% of its military budget and an American is always the
>Commanding General) utilized to excuse the bombings.
"Human rights" often and to a large extent have to do with something
else. What else is new? The argument regarding an emerging obligation
in customary international law of humanitarian intervention was
presented and taken quite seriously by leading PC regimes and
commentators. Why claim it has nothing to do with the human rights
institutions and principles those same people are pushing?
>If you are a stockholder in Nike and some NGO
>starts complaining about child labor, you'd see why they would quickly
>object to any accountability.
I don't see the problem for shareholders or large transnational
financial institutions generally. What deprives Nike of a competitive
edge gives the advantage to someone else. Also, international standards
help large international enterprises, since they are concerned with
image and public relations and would rather not have to worry about
competition from say Chinese enterprises if they get pressured into
complying with minimum standards to which the latter are not subject.
Big corporations in the US *like* affirmative action etc. Why should
such attitudes stop at the water's edge?
More generally, international standards facilitate a more standard
worldwide way of doing business, which is a genuine gain in efficiency
for transnational business organizations. And most generally, "human
rights" as now understood promote a uniform worldwide individualistic
consumer society without borders. The ultimate reason they do so, I
think, is that they posit rational economic man - the rational
self-seeking pursuer of individual satisfaction - as the standard for
human nature. It should be obvious that "human rights" express the same
philosophical and institutional tendencies as world markets and
contemporary transnational bureaucracies generally.
--
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
Re: Re: Re: Public moral standards
Saturday, 16-Dec-00 14:05:51
151.202.98.249 writes:
Comments:
1. Nobody is really willing to live with a scheme whereby only those
acts that cause direct physical harm to human beings are subject to
regulation. It wouldn't cause direct physical harm to anyone if I
scattered newspapers and burger wrappers along the highway, or never
paid my taxes, or put up billboards everywhere decorated with images
from some of Sade's more imaginative scenes, or tortured cats to death
for fun, or launched a campaign of slander against someone who annoyed
me, or locked my children into their bedrooms for years on end (but fed
them etc.)
2. I'm not sure how the principle would apply to public activities other
than criminal law and national defense. Do you think education is
legitimately addressed in the public sphere? If it is, then *all* moral
issues become legitimately part of the public sphere, since education
necessarily includes moral education.
3. One source of confusion is the technological outlook people have
today. If someone says something is a public concern people think he's
proposing that a program be engineered to deal with it comprehensively.
Not so. Honesty for example is a public concern because (like - to
choose an arbitrary example - sex) it is one of the basic things having
to do with people's relations with each other. That doesn't mean there
must be a comprehensive program to define what honesty calls for and
stamp out everything that doesn't fit the standard. It does mean that
some kinds of dishonesty are illegal, that when the issue comes up it is
treated with disfavor, that people who are annoyed by dishonesty aren't
automatically thought of as bigots and busybodies (although it would of
course be possible for someone to be a busybody about honesty), that
teachers praise honesty and are expected to set an example of it, that
when popular entertainment presents dishonesty in a neutral or favorable
light people complain, etc., etc., etc.
Overall, I would say that the view of traditionalist conservatism is
that it's very hard to exclude something categorically from public
concern, but there's a limit to what regulation, public administration,
etc. can achieve. That's why social moral customs are so important.
Jim Kalb
Re: transcendence, carts, and horses
Wednesday, 20-Dec-00 15:30:53
151.202.52.144 writes:
By "transcendence" I understand aspects of the world that we don't and
can't fully understand but are nonetheless implied by our judgements of
what is good, beautiful and true.
Since we don't and can't fully understand them our access to them
involves reliance on faith and tradition (tradition being accumulated
habits, attitudes, understanding, practices etc. that can't be fully
articulated or specifically justified but seem concretely to embody the
good, beautiful and true).
Social order necessarily involves judgements of what is good, beautiful
and true. That's because man is social, and such judgements are
essential to being human. Social order therefore necessarily involves
reliance on faith, tradition and the transcendent.
Your point seems to be that faiths, traditions and conceptions of the
transcendent differ. True enough, and so do systems of law, conceptions
of justice etc. It's as realistic to think that a social order can be
equally hospitable to all of the latter as to all of the former. The
reason is that (since man is a social being whose body and soul cannot
be altogether separated) the former and the latter implicate each other.
Liberalism of course claims to provide a conception of law and justice
that abstracts from conceptions of the good, beautiful and true and
treats them all, and therefore all faiths and traditions, equally
favorably. The claim is obviously false. Liberalism is certainly no more
neutral and tolerant than say Roman Catholicism. It seems to me less so.
If you're interested I discuss this kind of issue in The Tyranny of
Liberalism.
To summarize, you seem to want to claim that a public order based on
faith and tradition is impossible today. I'm not sure why the same
objection would not lie against a liberal public order.
Jim Kalb
Re: Re: transcendence, carts, and horses
Wednesday, 20-Dec-00 17:29:42
151.202.52.144 writes:
What about those whose consciences are affronted by liberal beliefs?
That includes most people who have ever lived. So what happens to people
who live in a state based on liberal beliefs?
You seem to be confusing a state's understanding of human and moral
reality with the degree to which the state demands that its subjects
agree with that understanding. You also seem to be stretching the
conception of theocracy beyond recognition, so that every state becomes
a theocracy of some kind.
It is necessary that a state have a particular understanding of human
and moral reality. Otherwise it could not act at all, at least not
coherently. On that point liberalism seems to claim neutrality but the
claim to the extent it is really made is plainly fraudulent. You have I
think in effect admitted as much, in your observation (I think it was
yours) that liberalism establishes strict public moral standards.
So as to tolerance the real issue is the extent to which the state
demands consent to its view of things, the view on which it bases the
laws when it acts in a principled way.
On that issue Christian states can afford to be tolerant, since they do
not think consent is necessary for political obligation. In contrast,
liberalism bases authority on its claim to have the consent of the
people. It must therefore view a citizen who does not consent to
liberalism as dangerous, and in fact alien to the social order. Hence
for example the emphasis in liberal states on public education.
I don't believe I have anywhere argued for religion as a means to public
order. I have asserted that some religious understanding, some
understanding of ultimate things, is behind every public order. Such a
view might motivate someone who started with an interest in politics to
look more seriously into more basic things. It does not mean that those
things are not more basic.
I don't suggest abolition of the private. I just say a strict
distinction of public and private is impossible. You seem to admit as
least as much in your apparent view that the only way to guard private
freedom is strict public neutrality. To the extent the public/private
distinction is workable it would not be that hard to combine a
confessional public square with private liberty. If it's not workable
then public "neutrality" wouldn't be neutral either, since it would
pressure private life to become "neutral" as well.
Jim Kalb
Re: Re: Human rights and minority communities
Wednesday, 20-Dec-00 17:42:33
151.202.52.144 writes:
We are speaking of the extent to which there are to be worldwide
standards applicable to every political society everywhere. I weaken
those standards on one point.
Some jurisdictions would no doubt allow parents and children to divorce
each other, but I would permit other jurisdictions not to allow such a
thing. On the face of it, weakening universal standards in that way
would permit more variation among societies.
You seem to want extensive protections. Extensive protections mean
extensive controls, though, and so normally less diversity. I don't see
why this case should be different.
Jim Kalb
Re: Re: transcendence, carts, and horses
Thursday, 21-Dec-00 15:41:48
151.202.105.111 writes:
You seem to believe that a liberal public square need not infringe on
private belief and practice, while a confessional public square must do
so to a greater extent. I don't see why.
I don't see what it is about putting all one's hope in the things of
this world and denial of divine providence that would lead people to let
things take their own course. Nor do I see what it is about individual
freedom, universal equality, inclusiveness, nondiscrimination, social
justice, etc. that make for limited government.
It seems clear to me that such views have the opposite tendency. They
present a comprehensive view of how things should be that extends right
down to the day-to-day lives of every individual and his relations to
coworkers, family members and everyone else he has dealings with, and
makes the achievement of that state of affairs an imperative that
overrides everything. What aspect of morality can those who accept such
views leave alone?
I have read major liberal theoreticians, for example, who claim that
children should be given a liberal education regardless of the views of
their parents. I don't know of major Christian theoreticians, past or
present, who have claimed that (for example) Jewish and Muslim children
should be given a Christian education against their parents' wishes.
Which is more tolerant?
Look at the major human rights conventions and proclamations. They
demand, among other things, that gender distinctions be abolished as a
significant principle, and that governments do what's needed to change
social and cultural views and practices that stand in the way of that
goal. Given that kind of demand, how much room is left for private life
As for disfavored communities - if the Anglican religion (for example)
is accepted as the basis of the state then those who reject it will
probably be allowed only very limited participation in political life.
On the other hand, if liberalism is the basis of the state then those
who fundamentally reject liberalism are also going to be excluded. In
Europe they tend to do that directly - look at the thousands who are
fined or imprisoned in Germany for speech crimes, or the response to
Haider's very minor deviation from correctness. In America we rely more
on national habits of conformity, and on civil rights laws that demand
"good faith efforts" and creation of an inclusive environment, and so
supervise attitudes.
You seem to believe liberalism is intrinsically more tolerant than say
Roman Catholicism, so that if the public square is liberal RCs will be
OK but if it's RC liberals won't be OK. Why is that? It seems to me
clear that a political outlook that makes political obligation disappear
if there is no consent is going to be less tolerant of dissent than one
that thinks political obligation has nothing much to do with consent. In
the former case the existence of dissent in and of itself strikes at the
root of the regime.
Jim Kalb
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Dec 21 14:44:27 2000
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Message-id: <977376@doc.Dartmouth.ORG>
Date: 21 Dec 2000 14:42:16 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: W's legitimacy (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
--- You wrote:
One of the fatal flaws of Republicans is that they tend to keep mechanically
repeating their OWN position, while failing to respond to or refute the beliefs
of their opponents.
--- end of quote ---
It's a problem, imagination isn't their strong suit. There's an assumption
that everyone's going to be reasonable and public spirited as they understand
those things. If they understood how deep the problems and divisions went they
wouldn't be able to imagine that they're part of a mainstream that includes
almost everyone. They'd have to ask what their own views are and what the
basis of those view is other than believing in America. In other words they
wouldn't be Republicans.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Dec 21 14:44:52 2000
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Date: 21 Dec 2000 14:42:33 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Cuomo and the degradation of language (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
The problem I think is that he really does want to be a serious man and a
Catholic, and also part of the respected admired moral mainstream. If you try
to do all that lying and distortion of language are inevitable.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Thu Dec 21 14:55:47 2000
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Date: 21 Dec 2000 14:45:35 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Re: Liberalism (forwarded from James B. Kalb 69)
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
Thanks for your thoughts. It's a big question whether Christianity has failed.
It seems to me it answers the big questions better than any other outlook, that
glorious though Islam may be it tries to avoid problems by oversimplification
so that Islamic thinkers have to smuggle back in by way of Sufism the parts of
Christianity Islam cut out. So it seems to me what we have is a corruption of
Christianity, as of the rest of the Western heritage, and not the necessary
outcome of those things except in the sense that corruption is necessary. The
problem is to restore what has been lost. The point of the conclusion of my
essay is that the solution is not completely up to us.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://www.counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sat Dec 23 19:48:31 2000
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Date: 23 Dec 2000 19:45:54 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: RE: Nazis
To: jk@panix.com
Status: OR
--- You wrote:
I think if anything the Nazis
were more vehement about eliminating the friend/enemy distinction
than others (the "fraternity" in liberty, equality, fraternity), and
came to the practical conclusion that in order to eliminate the f/e
distinction you have to eliminate liberalism's enemies.
--- end of quote ---
You can't be a militarist though without the friend/enemy distinction. Like
other Godless voluntarists (I'll have to think of a snappier name, I feel
compelled to retain the "Godless" because Muslims are voluntarists too except
they think it's God's will that arbitrarily makes things good or bad) the Nazis
couldn't deal sensibly with the friend/enemy distinction and so required
absolute unity within society and merciless war against those outside. I think
it's the situation within society that you are referring to. I think they
explicitly recognized the necessity of outsiders though, otherwise they
wouldn't have been the Herrenvolk.
Liberalism proper denies that necessity. In fact of course liberalism requires
outsiders as well (bigots or whatever), and views them as Untermenschen, but it
refuses to recognize the fact. That refusal is I think the distinction.
Liberalism recognizes that the principle of inclusiveness is what distinguishes
it from Nazism, which is why it believes that "discrimination" leads straight
to Auschwitz.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sat Dec 23 15:16:46 2000
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Date: 23 Dec 2000 15:14:25 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: Nazis
To: ma
Status: OR
As I think I said at dinner it seems to me liberalism and Nazism have a great
deal in common. Both abolish the transcendent and so make choice - the Triumph
of the Will - the basic moral principle. That has consequences. Since all
wills are equally wills, and it's simply their being wills that is the source
of their authority, and since for a will as such there is no standard other
than getting its own way, both liberalism and Nazism naturally tend to appeal
to equality and freedom as ultimate moral principles.
I think your argument could be improved by referring to that common ground.
Just quoting Hitler invites the response "well it's notorious he consciously
used lying as a political technique." Develop the notion that there's a reason
freedom and equality were the principles he found helpful and his potential
supporters found appealing. You say there must have been such a reason but you
don't develop what it is.
I think it's confusing to refer to Nazism as a form of liberalism. Both are
forms of something bigger, a sort of Godless voluntarism.
So looking at things that way I suppose the question is whether the distinction
between liberalism and its evil twin Nazism is one that stands up and makes
liberalism as reliably good as Nazism is evil. I suppose the difference
between the two is that liberalism claims to abolish the friend/enemy
distinction. Since Godless voluntarism abolishes any common human nature
transcending manmade differences it tends to make the f/e distinction go to
extremes and in fact become downright Nazi in character. If that's right the
question becomes whether abolition of the distinction is possible and whether
it has its own horrible implications.
I don't think it's possible. Think of how liberals, Hollywood stars for
example, talk about Republicans, racists, 'phobes, etc. And its implications
are horrible. With no f/e distinction there are no politics. There can be no
moral disputes and therefore no moral life. The notion of self-government
becomes absurd. Humanity become a mass of manipulated consumers and
functionaries. Luckily it's hard to force mankind into that mold. Unluckily
the effort is necessarily tyrannical and is unlikely to remain nicely so.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sat Dec 23 15:23:19 2000
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Date: 23 Dec 2000 15:20:53 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: liberalism discussion
To: jk@panix.com
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Status: O
First comment:
"Liberalism has become the modern embodiment of the Tower of Babel."
This is an enormously important point I think. We learn from others, and in
particular we learn our limitations by dealings with others. At Babel there
were no others because there was a universal world society ( all were of the
same tongue). Therefore man collectively confused himself with God and tried
to abolish the transcendent (built a tower to heaven). The situation rectified
itself through its necessary consequences. Language lost meaning, because
without reference to the transcendent meaning doesn't exist. So humanity
became divided again and relative humility and sanity were restored.
From James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG Sun Dec 24 07:56:38 2000
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Date: 24 Dec 2000 07:54:11 EST
From: James.B.Kalb.69@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (James B. Kalb 69)
Subject: RE: Nazis
To: ma
Status: OR
--- You wrote:
I don't understand the justification of the idea that liberalism
is not militaristic.
--- end of quote ---
Nazism had the explicit notion of the Herrenvolk which liberalism does not.
Liberalism may have the notion of superior and inferior groups implicitly but
explicitly it rejects it indignantly. It doesn't even have a proletariat to act
as the bearer of the new order. It therefore doesn't foresee permanent
struggle, which the Herrenvolk notion requires, or even necessary armed
struggle. It has an ideal of ultimate peace, brotherhood and equality that it
expects actually to be realized. Also it tends toward legalism, toward this
idea of abstract order realizing itself through reason.
I agree that by pushing incoherent ideas here or there you can end up anywhere.
But Nazism, Bolshevism and liberalism all agree that liberalism differs from
the other two along these lines. Each denounces the other two bitterly. The
difference is not merely one of situation. John Locke had plenty of
traditionalist residues to deal with but he didn't look for a Leader as the
embodiment of the will of the English nation. In Germany there were liberals,
Nazis and Bosheviks battling each other simultaneously. Liberalism believes
that if it rejects inclusiveness it becomes Nazism and if it rejects reform
through law it becomes Bolshevism. Why not accept that these are differences
among the three? Their unity as forms of voluntarism may be more fundamental
but there are distinctions as well.
Jim Kalb (kalb@aya.yale.edu)
http://counterrevolution.net and http://www.human-rights.f2s.com
Let me know if you have comments of
any kind.
Back to my archive of posts.