Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sat Mar 6 16:29:28 2004
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 16:29:28 -0500
From: Jim Kalb
To: R
Subject: Re: The Problem of Nietzsche
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Nietzsche is a very provocative writer and is sometimes good at exposing
instances in which people wanted to avoid difficulties but I don't think
he has anything coherent to say. It seems to me Pascal dealt better with
the basic issue of skepticism in the modern world.
jk
On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 01:14:03PM -0600, R wrote:
>
> Greetings. What do you think is Nietzsche's role in Traditionalism?
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Apr 19 06:58:11 2004
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 06:58:11 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: K
Subject: Re: Discussions
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On Mon, Apr 19, 2004 at 01:17:53AM -0700, K wrote:
> I came across your Anti-Feminist web page in an attempt to find
> discussions from a "male chauvinist" viewpoint on the origins of the
> current feminist aspects of society.
>
> If you can point me to any such discussions, either current or
> archived, I would appreciate it.
I reference the best discussions I know of on the Anti-Feminist page.
There are others of course -- I haven't been pursuing these issues
actively the past few years although I've been updating the page to
reflect things I happen to run across.
> However, my thought is that advocating "tradition" is self-defeating,
> since "tradition" is simply the society of the past, and the past led
> to our current feminist society.
>
> In other words, an alternate definition of "tradition" is "that
> society of the past that inevitably contained all the seeds of today's
> society".
>
> If we consider the current situation to have significant problems,
> then the last thing we want to do is to return to those conditions of
> the past that have clearly been shown to inevitably lead to those
> problems.
"Tradition" is of course a slippery word. It can for example mean "all
the habits, attitudes and beliefs of a population," in which case it
means "things just as they are right now." I go into some of the issues
in a 3-part draft essay at http://jkalb.org/work-in-progress. The second
part of the essay is most relevant.
Basically, my response to your point is that taking "tradition" as a
principle gives you a way of sorting out healthy and unhealthy
tradition. The reason to take tradition seriously is that it represents
a process through which people come to know things that would otherwise
be very difficult to grasp and make them concrete and useable. Not every
tradition or development of tradition supports that function. For
example, the health of tradition requires enduring close human ties and
small groups (like families) so if things appear in a tradition that
severely injure such things (like feminism and whatever is tied up with
it) then a rational traditionalist will view those things as wrong,
unhealthy etc.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Apr 25 14:01:00 2004
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 14:01:00 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: P
Subject: Re: Hej Jim
Message-ID: <20040425180100.GA6649@vectra>
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I'm doubtful on the second point. Ethnocentric anti-Christian Jews would
never in a billion years regret the passing of Christian Europe, which
is what the piece is mostly about. Still, they did publish it. It's
basic to the NY Times view of things that mosques, immigration and
religious diversity is good, because it means weakening the dominance of
white Christians, and because mixing the Islamic world with other
societies will drive things in the direction of redefining Islam (like
all other religions) as a colorful poetic version of liberalism. It's
big news if they're weakening on that point because it's so closely tied
to the rest of their outlook.
jk
On Sun, Apr 25, 2004 at 07:35:28PM +0200, P wrote:
> I think they publiched it beceause of US wars against the muslim world (in
> Irak and other places). An other reason might be that the article promote
> jewish interests. Thay can have found out that it not is good for them
> selves if Europe becomes muslim?
>
> Ragards
> P
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 11 07:15:40 2004
Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 07:15:40 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: B
Subject: Re: Christian guilt on ethnic preference
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I'm not sure what the problem is here, although I recognize that people
believe there is one.
The basic question in immigration policy is not whether someone who
wants to immigrate is more or less worthy as a human being than some
other person but what policy best promotes the well-being of the country
and its people and whether that policy is at odds with the well-being of
the world at large. If the way people organize themselves socially means
that there's more social trust and cooperation and a healthier culture
if there aren't a lot of new members, and the new members that there are
have many of the same historical connections, loyalties, memories etc.
as the old members, then limiting immigration and tying admittance to
ethnic background makes sense. What's un-Christian about it?
jk
On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 10:04:56PM -0400, B wrote:
> Dear Mr. Kalb,
>
> I enjoy your site and I would like your opinion on a matter I believe is
> central in understanding why a Western Renaissance is so difficult these
> days.
>
> How does a Christian not feel guilty after preferring his own ethnicity
> in matter of immigration? That is, how can a Christian Icelander keep a
> clear conscious as he prefers whites to settle in his country rather
> than Turks and Blacks, who may nonetheless speak and respect Iceland
> culture? As Christians, aren't we all called to see the person and soul
> rather than the skin?
>
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 11 08:49:31 2004
Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 08:49:32 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: B
Subject: Re: Christian guilt on ethnic preference
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But human society can't operate as an undifferentiated blob that
includes everyone in the world in everything. It depends on picking and
choosing -- including and excluding -- on some basis or other. If an
employer wants to hire someone does it have to hire everyone who says he
wants the job, because if it doesn't it'll be glorifying something or
other and denying the humanity of those who aren't hired?
jk
On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 08:14:40AM -0400, B wrote:
> Dear Mr. Kalb,
> Thank you for your response. I think what may be un-Christian is the
> fact one is perhaps glorifying flesh? After all they are denying
> someone the ability to be with them just because they are not white.
> Aren't Christians called to see beyond race?
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 11 11:37:58 2004
Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 11:37:58 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: B
Subject: Re: Christian guilt on ethnic preference
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On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 10:33:07AM -0400, B wrote:
"But I suppose the employer can discriminate on anything but race. For
instance discriminating on ability has more merit than race. I guess I
don't see how the Christian can use race as a legitimate form of
discrimination, as it's not the same as ability."
Why is race radioactive, so it can't have anything to do with any
legitimate human connection? What's so special about it?
Suppose an employer hires A because he's family, B because he's an old
friend, C because he went to the employer's old school, D because D
really needs the job, E because he happens to like the guy, and F
because F has the same ethnic background as other employees. The
employer thinks that common ethnic background eliminates one possible
source of suspicions, misunderstandings, and conflicting habits and
expectations, and makes it more likely that natural informal productive
working relations will develop based on common habits, attitudes,
values, loyalties, interests, etc. He's been told that diversity is a
"challenge," and so far as he's concerned he already has enough
challenges to deal with.
Is it your belief that what the employer did in cases A - E is OK, but
what he did in case F is absolutely unacceptable? If so, why?
"I cannot help but feel God would prefer a heterogenous population, than
one that discriminates based on flesh?"
Does God prefer social gatherings of people with no previous connection
to each other over family celebrations? Does he actively dislike family
celebrations, because family connections are fleshly?
Does God dislike the existence of distinct countries, peoples and
cultures? Does he believe that every country, city, neighborhood,
organization and activity should feature a random assortment of people
from all possible backgrounds, so that distinct peoples and cultures
can't exist? Why would he believe that? Why wouldn't he view that as
destructive?
"Shouldn't the Christian hold himself to a higher standard than natural
law? Even if natural law says we must exclude, pick and choose?"
Sure. The question though is what constitutes a higher standard in what
connection.^
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue May 11 16:33:13 2004
Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 16:33:13 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: B
Subject: Re: Christian guilt on ethnic preference
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On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 03:15:31PM -0400, B wrote:
> You stated:
>
> "Does God prefer social gatherings of people with no previous connection
> to each other over family celebrations?"
>
> I think you may be confusing family with ethnicity. Families are social
> structures that can feature adopted children from different racial
> backgrounds. Is seems to me what is important to God is how well the
> family provides for itself and walks with God. People of the same
> ethnicity aren't automatically my family, they are strangers.
How am I confusing the two? Families are one sort of human connection,
ethnicity is another. As you point out, it's possible to share common
ethnicity with a person of different family background and it's possible
to share family ties with a person of different ethnic background. Both
connections are natural and both have functions. Neither has much to do
with the abilities or moral worthiness of the persons to whom one is
connected. Nonetheless, both can help provide a setting in which a good
life becomes possible. A man without a family finds it harder to connect
to the social world and so live a good life, and a man without a
particular ethnic culture is in a similar position.
You (and many others) seem to believe that taking ethnicity into account
in choosing associates and building a common life denies common humanity
while taking family and other qualities not directly related to merit
into account doesn't. I don't understand why that's so.
> Why is race so special you ask? I think because it's the only criteria
> that provides a solid glass ceiling without compromise. At least with
> nepotism, an adopted person from a different racial background may
> benefit. But with race, unlike nepotism, merit, ability, there is no
> compromise or room to advance.
Why is there such a difference? One might as well say that as least with
ethnic ties a person from a different family background may benefit. I
don't see why the one has to be treated as more of an absolute than the
other. I thought the question was whether ethnicity is a legitimate
consideration, not whether it's a consideration that has to trump all
other considerations in all circumstances.
> Yes, diversity may present special unique challenges, but doesn't every
> generation face new challenges? This is no excuse to not try to make it
> work, if indeed it is more moral to allow coloreds into Scandinavia,
> than to keep them out based on pessimistic predictions.-- Predictions
> that really may be driven by less than honorable prejudice.
But why is large scale ethnic mixture a good thing that we should
struggle to make work? What benefits does it confer? The costs seem more
obvious to me.
> I didn't say God wouldn't like distinct cultures, but when it comes down
> to do what is moral in these times of rapid population migrations, how
> can a Christian look 2 men in the eye, one white like himself, the other
> black. Both hard working and Christian even, but choose to not allow
> the black man in? My conscience would eat me up. It would tell me I
> should do my best to make it work because even though tough, it's the
> Christian thing to do.
Do you believe all countries should have open borders? If not, then if
you allow any immigration at all you'll have to let some in and keep
some out. Why not base the decision on what seems most likely to be
beneficial overall? And why wouldn't ethnic issues enter into that?
Don't they make a difference to social life?
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri May 14 08:14:29 2004
Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 08:14:29 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: w
Subject: Re: VDARE Article Sent to You...
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Hello, and thanks for the article.
I think SF is stretching a bit -- part of the reason the Catholics think
immigration is great is no doubt the additional parishioners it brings
in, but in the case of the mainline prot denomination I think it's a
matter of the ideology they've adopted as a substitute for religion.
They want to be multicultural basically because it's a way of washing
out the guilt of particularity and thus of existence. Claims that there
are great opportunities for expansion in that direction are mostly
makeweights. Or so it appears to me.
jk
On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 02:53:37AM -0400, w wrote:
> The VDARE article at http://www.vdare.com/francis/liberal_churches.htm
> is worth reading!
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri May 14 16:04:15 2004
Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 16:04:15 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: A prayer for our country
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Thanks for forwarding -- I had seen it.
I was thinking about why this is so much more radical than the abortion
decision. I suppose part of it is that civilized countries have had
abortion and even infanticide, but no-one has ever claimed that a
homosexual connection should be treated like marriage. It's far more at
odds with human nature. Sexual differentiation and the natural function
of sex have existed for 1,000,000,000 years. If you claim that
government can abolish them, and people who object are just vicious
people who should be ignored, there's really no limit on what government
can do.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon May 17 07:04:48 2004
Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 07:04:48 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: C
Subject: Re: Rodgers '70 elected as trustee
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Hi,
Interesting comments about "study." It seems to me the problem is
overdevelopment of one side of things, the part that's been written down
in a limited number of particular connections, and devaluation of
everything else. The result is that people think goodness or truth or
whatever consists in suppressing certain aspects of human life that are
as real and necessary and potentially good as anything else, and
thinking about things and responding to them in an artificial way.
[The following responds to comments and may go down a line no one else
much cares about. If so, my apologies.]
People have to think about things in their own way in accordance with
the whole situation. To my mind an advantage of Catholicism is that it
can respect that because it presents believers more with a world than a
text. The world it presents includes doctrines, ceremonies etc., not to
mention the Bible, and all those things are authoritative and have to be
respected, but nonetheless there's a lot else too. All the particular
things have a complex setting to a greater extent than elsewhere, so the
overall result seems much roomier and more livable to me than the
alternatives.
Secular modernity for example seems to me horribly featureless and
closed-in. I think modern education trains people to look at things from
the standpoint of means-end rationality -- there are subjective desires,
and techniques for satisfying them, and certain logical principles, and
everything else is illusory or a private taste or prejudice or whatever.
That outlook doesn't do justice to the world or ourselves and it's not
the way anyone actually thinks about things.
Glad you found the website worth looking at. The most user-friendly
account of my general views on politics etc. (if you're interested) is
probably the 3 part 2blowhards interview linked near the top of my main
page, http://jkalb.org.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Thu May 20 13:38:18 2004
Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 13:38:18 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: B
Subject: Re: Christian guilt on ethnic preference
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On Thu, May 20, 2004 at 09:50:38AM -0400, B wrote:
> You say we are struggling to make "large scale ethnic mixture work."
> Does that mean you are for accepting small amounts of colored immigrants
> (so as not to bring about a large scale ethnic mixture)? If so, then
> perhaps I misunderstood your position. What I was hoping to find was
> sound moral reasoning on how one can defend segregation or ethnic
> separatism. Even a mainstream conservative is for reducting immigration
> and opposes open boarders. How do you differ?
I meant to say that there are obvious big problems with large scale
ethnic mixture especially of very different groups and so there need to
be very good reasons for undertaking such a thing. I've never heard what
those good reasons are. I didn't comment on smaller mixtures. Sometimes
they might be troublesome and sometimes not. E.g., in Japan or Korea or
I suppose Iceland you can assume that everyone has the same background
and that ability would be lost even with a rather small amount of
immigration. So that would be a reason for them not to want any
significant immigration. I have no universal theory on the subject that
applies to everything.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri May 21 21:14:28 2004
Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 21:14:28 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: B
Subject: Re: Christian guilt on ethnic preference
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On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 10:39:20AM -0400, B wrote:
> I'm in limbo. I'd like to support policies that aim to cultivate and
> make vibrant culture. I believe race is integral to culture, but I just
> can't seem to bring myself to support discriminatory policies
> because...well...where would my rock be? The Church certainly wouldn't
> support these policies, so what's a Christian to do?
Why is categorical opposition to "discrimination" such a rock when it's
completely novel as a supposed Christian virtue and its arrival on the
scene in the late 50s and early 60s was obviously connected to general
abandonment of the Christian faith as anything other than the liberal
version of social betterment?
The current opposition to "racism" is based on the idea that it's purely
malicious. If at least some recognition of race makes life better for
people, why is it malicious?
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sat May 22 10:26:29 2004
Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 10:26:29 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: B
Subject: Re: Christian guilt on ethnic preference
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On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 10:03:19PM -0400, B wrote:
> I'm surprised to hear you say that. Surely opposition of
> discrimination is not a new or "completely novel" concept in
> Christianity. Christians were on both sides of the slavery and
> segregation debate. It's nothing new.
Slavery and the notion that it's OK for someone to prefer to live with
people with whom he has more connections and more of a common background
aren't remotely the same thing. And the idea that segregation is a
horrible moral evil instead of an accommodation to social custom and the
difficulty of two peoples with different ways living together is
basically post WW II.
> What I was saying is that even if it is, in fact, ok to practice
> discrimination with regards to race, virtually all Christian churches
> oppose this idea. We would be outcasts. So where is our emotional and
> spiritiual support supposed to come from? I'm not being selfish, I
> believe most people hesitate to support these ideas for this very
> reason.
If you don't buy into current fantasies people get annoyed it's true.
You can't change everything completely all at once but you can try to
understand what's best and work toward it as seems possible.
jk
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Jun 4 19:42:13 2004
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 19:42:13 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: B
Subject: Re: Christian limits on race
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I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for. I think we should look for
an overall final understanding of things that is not racially or
ethnically centered or slanted to anyone's special advantage. Having
done that I think it's legitimate to let particular ties and interests
have an important role in daily life because that's how it's possible
for finite human beings to get themselves organized personally and
socially. The legitimacy of private property is one example of that, the
legitimacy of the family is another, the legitimacy of ethnic ties is a
third. Murdering people for money or for family advantage or -- as the
Nazis did -- out of racial aggressiveness is plainly not legitimate. I
suppose the test is whether in good faith and based on your best
understanding of how things work you can defend the rules that you think
should govern racial relations on the basis of the general good of the
world at large.
jk
On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 10:40:31AM -0700, B wrote:
> Where would you draw the line then as a Christian, between race idolatry and legitimate love for one's own ethnicity/race? German theologians in the Nazi era struggled with this.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Jun 6 05:20:27 2004
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 05:20:27 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: B
Subject: Re: Christian limits on race
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How do you know in other situations, the institution of private property
or the family or the general right of a man to choose his friends,
associates and projects or secular authority generally? All those things
are at odds with the immediate universal concrete application of
Christian principles. Why do you treat race as so extremely special?
jk
On Sun, Jun 06, 2004 at 01:20:16AM -0700, B wrote:
> Dear Mr. Kalb,
> So it sounds like you're against Christian universalism in the kingdom of Man realm, to use Luther's analogy of 2 coexisting kingdoms: God's and Man's realm.
>
> I guess I'm just confused as to how one knows which one to operate under. For instance, segregationists supported their position based on adhering to the Kingdom of Man realm, while clarifying they spiritually see everyone as equal before God.
> Isn't this dichotomy a recipe for relativism and rationalization?
> Thank you.
-- Jim Kalb Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jun 7 17:25:12 2004
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 17:25:12 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: B
Subject: Re: Christian limits on race
Message-ID: <20040607212512.GB22618@vectra>
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On Sun, Jun 06, 2004 at 10:55:26AM -0700, B wrote:
> Great question, and perhaps the heart of the matter: why is race to be
> treated so specially?
> And my answer is because every Christian church I've attended
> (Catholic and Protestant) seems to preach the new revelation of
> universal brotherhood in both kingdoms/realms. I don't know any other
> Christian way. Doesn't your church subscribe to this belief as well?
It's the sort of thing that's taken for granted now, although not
everyone has much devotion to it. I don't think anyone's very thoughtful
about on the topic. It's brand new though -- the first Catholic
theologian who promoted racism, segregation etc. to the rank of major
sins died only a few years ago, for example. For my own part I don't
feel obligated by new revelations that are never explained except by
saying "hatred is bad," and are obviously connected with the post WWII
collapse of mainstream Christianity and the radical secularization of
life generally. The best thing I can do, it seems to me, is explain just
what I think the new revelation is and why I think there's something
wrong with it.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org/tab/
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jun 15 06:37:45 2004
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 06:37:45 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: H
Subject: Re: Culture of Critique
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Dear H,
The same thing applies to the books mentioned in the resource lists as to other materials:
"I have attempted to include references that will be informative. Since
mainstream people aren't willing to talk about the issues, the material
on some sites is of varying quality and even rationality. Readers can
pick out what is useful."
If you look at any of my pages with long lists of links -- the Trad
Conservative Page is an example -- you'll find things wildly at variance
with each other and sometimes not very sensible. The point is to include
things relevant to understanding the issues and not to list the right
answers. I'd rather err by inclusion than exclusion, at least with
respect to things that don't get a lot of mainstream play.
I haven't read McDonald's trilogy. It got respectful reviews from people
I respect, including Jews. It seems to go through a huge mass of
material, and the topic's important because Jews are important, both for
the history of their relations with other groups and for their
prominence in the development of the ideology currently in favor on
inclusiveness issues. In the context of the resource list the book
doesn't have to be right on either point to be worth listing.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jun 29 08:30:54 2004
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 08:30:54 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: root of the unprincipled exception
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It's odd and interesting Strauss should say that. He's apparently saying:
1. Reason can't evaluate values to the extent of telling us which ones
are better than others.
2. It can nonetheless evaluate values to the extent of telling us
they're all equally good.
Is there a rational concept of reason that makes sense of such an
outlook? Purely formal reason can't evaluate values to any extent. So
Strauss's reason is not purely formal. It's substantive enough to tell
him something about the value of values, just not substantive enough to
distinguish the value of one value from that of another.
He's not alone in holding such a concept of reason, of course.
jk
On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 08:55:03AM -0400, L wrote:
> At VFR I have frequently referred to your comment to me in conversation (something like, "Being a liberal, or being an American, requires a person to be irrational") that led to the formulation of the concept of the unprincipled exception.
>
> But I just came upon a similar statement, on page 6 of Strauss's Natural Right and History: "In order to live, we have to silence the easily silenced voice of reason, which tells us that our principles are in themselves as good or as bad as any other principles." He's speaking of relativism rather than liberalism, but the idea is the same.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jun 29 17:44:32 2004
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 17:44:32 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: computers and the transcendent
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Thanks for the thought! It's an interesting point for analysis. Some
immediate thoughts:
1. The artificial computer world isn't really controllable, at least not
in any simple way. It, and things within it, grow up the way they grow
up.
2. How much does the world created by computers differ from other
artificial worlds -- the Republic of Learning, the world of baseball,
financial markets, the court of Louis XIV?
3. I actually wrote a book review that touches somewhat on the issues,
http://jkalb.org/node/view/27. The review concluded that "emergent
behaviour" of complex systems involving connections among human beings
could be better accounted for by classic discussions of man and society
than by current fancy theorizing.
4. The real question is whether artificial intelligence is possible. I
don't think it is.
The issue is worth some thought.
jk
On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 03:00:52PM -0400, L wrote:
> Since you have this vision of liberalism or modernity as the attempt by men to create a fully self-sufficient human-created system which becomes a substitute for the given world in its transcendent, social, and biological dimensions, I wonder if you have any thoughts, that you may want to develop in an article, about how computers fit into this scheme. Computers are the most spectacular human achievement, they offer an alternative reality in which people?not just technicians and elites, but ordinary people?can experience themselves as the creators and controllers of their own cosmos. Even on the ordinary level of popular usage and such phenomena as computer and internet addiction, the computer becomes a substitute for the real world.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jun 29 17:52:21 2004
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 17:52:21 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: R
Subject: Re: Is liberalism the natural conclusion of Christianity?
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Hello,
I agree you can't just enlist Christianity as it is at this point in an
anti-liberal coalition. I do think though that liberalism is a
corruption of Christianity and to the extent Christianity returns to
itself it will become decisively anti-liberal.
jk
On Sun, Jun 27, 2004 at 11:55:42AM -0500, R wrote:
> Is liberalism the natural conclusion of Christianity?
> QUOTES: outgrowth of Christianity, and many have argued that the same is true of modern natural science and therefore of modern rationalistic secularism.
> rebellion against Christianity - the desire to reduce it to something that could be managed and controlled - and by the pragmatic success of scientific rationalism
>
> Mr. Kalb: It seems to me that liberalism depends on Christianity to prepare the ground for its success or at least that it uses certain elements in Christianity to its advantage. At this point even most "conservative" Christians are infected with contemporary aspects of leftism. There are of course elements of Christianity that go against leftism/liberalism, but they are the most difficult to use in support of either a popular movement or an intellectual elite. Its interesting to note that in most ex-communist states Christian identity has been nearly extinguished with the exception of Poland which is unique in the connection between national and Christian identity. My conclusion is that it will be difficult to use Christianity to resist the present direction of things. Not that it isn't worth trying.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 10:28:03 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 10:28:03 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Freedom
Message-ID: <20040712142803.GA2129@vectra>
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Is that really so? Confucius, as represented in the Analects, believed
in "Heaven," which had many of the qualities of God (intention, moral
concern, general guidance of human affairs). Later Confucianists seem
often to have had an atheistic streak but they didn't have to provide
social order, they could depend on an already-existing imperial order in
which the emperor was the Son of Heaven and stopped being emperor when
he lost the mandate of heaven.
jk
On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 06:44:55AM -0700, I wrote:
> Utter nonsense. Entire civilizations, like China, have lasted for millennia without a concept of God.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 10:40:42 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 10:40:42 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Freedom
Message-ID: <20040712144042.GB2129@vectra>
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But the people who say left/liberals are relativists are getting at
*something*. It seems to me that left/liberals want to make the right
rather than the good the basis of morality because they're relativists
as to particular goods -- what's good is simply what someone desires, so
pushpin is in essence as good as poetry. Nonetheless, they're not really
relativists because getting what one wants simply as such is an absolute
good, and the right to have one's desires treated on an equal footing
with other desires is an absolute right. That's why it's such a horrible
violation of all liberals hold sacred to put homosexuality in a less
honored position than the normal development of sexual connectedness.
jk
On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 06:42:47AM -0700, I wrote:
> I agree. The idea that these fanatics are relativists is ridiculous.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 10:55:11 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 10:55:11 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Freedom
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It seems to me that the foundation is what we think the world is like,
including its basic moral order. We make sense of our acts by reference
to their setting, so the ultimate setting of all our actions is the most
important thing. I don't understand how that setting could be history,
which apart from reference to something more fundamental and enduring is
I suppose the sequence of observable events to the extent we can figure
out what they've been. The sequence of observable events is of interest
to the extent it points to something that isn't the sequence of
observable events.
jk
On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 07:39:16AM -0700, I wrote:
> But that just proves my point, as our sort of society is OURS, and has the religious character it has, for Burkean, historical reasons.
>
> Since this is the foundation of our caring about God, it seems to be that God is a secondary factor, and history is the foundation.
>
> Our rights come from our history, and the unfolding of the relations of our ancestors to each other within the political societies they made.
>
> I
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 12:00:54 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 12:00:54 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: P
Subject: Re: Freedom
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I'm not sure what Paul's point is here. I agreed with him that
"relativism" is not the right name for the liberals' overall outlook.
People who aren't liberals though do see something they call
"relativism" in liberal thought, and liberal theoreticians say there's
an important distinction between the right (which they say is obligatory
as an ultimate moral standard) and the good (which they tend to view as
subjective or anyway not to be given public recognition). So it seems
that an account of liberalism should include an account of just what the
distinction is that everyone finds important and the role it plays in
liberal positions.
jk
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 12:08:38 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 12:08:38 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Freedom
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If a man has a concept of objective moral order and thinks of it as both
universal and as concrete enough to do particular things like fire a
ruling dynasty or recognize a particular man as a divine sage, in both
cases giving signs of its intentions, then in the context of a
discussion that puts Nietzsche on one side it doesn't seem seem
laughable to put that man on the same side as religious believers
generally.
jk
On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 08:34:39AM -0700, I wrote:
> The equate the Confucian concept of heaven with God is so loose an analogy as to be laughable. Confucius was also the man who said,
>
> "I have so much to worry about on earth; why would I concern myself with heavenly things?"
>
> I
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 12:17:14 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 12:17:14 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Freedom
Message-ID: <20040712161714.GC2414@vectra>
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It seems to me my family and civic obligations come both from past
events and from a more general setting, what the world is like in which
the events took place. The general nature of the world may be revealed
by events but it isn't altogether caused by them.
I agree that the sequence of events is not of interest *solely* to the
extent it points to something that isn't that sequence. Perhaps I should
have said "the sequence of observable events is of interest only if it
also points to something that isn't the sequence of observable events."
jk
On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 08:52:13AM -0700, I wrote:
> I don't understand how that setting could be history. The sequence of observable events is of interest to the extent it points to something that isn't the sequence of
> observable events.
>
> History is more than data about the eternal nature of things. Human existence is, in the language of economics, "path dependent."
>
> Just as your family obligations are what they are because of the accidental facts of your parentage, so are our obligations to each other. I have a different moral relation to you, Jim, because we are both citizens of the same country. This fact is derived from our personal histories that brought us here and from the national history that created that country.
>
>
> I
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 12:19:49 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 12:19:49 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: Freedom
Message-ID: <20040712161949.GD2414@vectra>
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I mispoke. I should have said "only if it also points" instead of "to
the extent it points." Because I was focusing on one issue I forgot
about another.
jk
On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 12:05:57PM -0400, L wrote:
>
>
> "The sequence of observable events is of interest to the extent it points to something that isn't the sequence of observable events."
>
> I'm surprised Jim would be saying this.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 12:54:40 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 12:54:40 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Freedom
Message-ID: <20040712165440.GA2761@vectra>
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We were talking about "if there is no God then nothing is forbidden."
People mean all sorts of things, locus of ultimate concern or whatever,
when they talk about God. If you have a loose enough understanding of
God, for example if you understand God to mean "moral order that
transcends one's own will," then "if there is no God then nothing is
forbidden" becomes true. So I suppose the real question is how loose the
understanding has to be for the sentence to become true.
The point of mentioning Heaven is that Chinese civilization doesn't give
reason to think that a civilization can get by with an understanding of
moral order that's too abstract and philosophical to constitute an
entity capable of deciding and doing particular things.
jk
On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 09:40:11AM -0700, I wrote:
> No, we were talking about God.
>
> i
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 13:40:46 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 13:40:46 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Right vs. Good
Message-ID: <20040712174046.GA2891@vectra>
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I'd be inclined to say that leftists and liberals like equality, which
subsidized housing is intended to promote, because from their
perspective equality is right (or "just," as a social democrat would
say). Equality is the refusal to allow some people and their desires to
be subordinated to other people and their desires, and it's that refusal
that constitutes left/liberal rightness or justice.
Part of the difficulty of talking about these things is what is meant by
"good." The word seems to refer to whatever general quality it is that
makes a thing something that we should want, but on that view
"rightness" seems to become a "good" and the distinction between the
right and the good makes no sense.
So maybe one could say that leftists and liberals tend to be relativists
about particular substantive goods (pushpin or poetry) but absolutists
about abstract formal goods that in substance consist in the denial of
objective differences in value among particular goods. The "formal"
goods recognized by leftists and liberals would include liberty,
equality, choice, satisfaction of desire, and "justice" as the
combination of all of them.
Any other formulations?
jk
On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 09:57:57AM -0700, I wrote:
> The left does not consistently prefer the right to the good. Social Demcrats historically have prefered social goods like equality and public goods like subsidized housing to the hypertrophic individualism represented by individual rights, the form that "right" must inevitably take in a modern Western society.
>
> i
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 13:53:27 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 13:53:27 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Freedom
Message-ID: <20040712175327.GB2891@vectra>
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I agree that both are needed, and that the standard can't normally be
known or given a definite forumulation in complete abstraction from
history. Still, it seems to me that the standard has to be understood as
more fundamental than the experience it orders even if we have no clear
knowledge of it without regard to that experience. It seemed to me you
were making the standard purely secondary.
jk
On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 10:30:24AM -0700, I wrote:
> Obviously, one needs a standard by which to determine what particular obligations one's personal and community history enmesh one in. But that standard on its own is not enough any more than the history on its own.
>
> I
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 15:41:12 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 15:41:12 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Right vs. Good
Message-ID: <20040712194112.GA3163@vectra>
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I agree of course that people can adopt grand principles for
opportunistic reasons and then find themselves betrayed by the
implications of the principles they adopted.
Still, there are movements that define themselves by standing for grand
principles. There are people who like particular goods because they fit
into a general perspective as well as the reverse. I don't think social
democrats were betrayed by the desire to defend the concrete
historically-situated goods of "freedom," "equality," and "progress"
into dangerous abstract commitments. I also don't think those were just
random goods that for some reason large numbers of people picked up on
and decided to devote themselves to for contingent personal and social
reasons, and thereafter invented a theory to justify.
Commitment to the open-ended authority of abstractions like equality
that are wholly formal, and so continually debunk the specificities of
existing society and demand ever more comprehensive and fundamental
reforms seem to me fundamental to the leftist movement in general. It
seems to me that to understand that commitment you have to understand
the fundamental views regarding how things are that make it plausible
and make all other views seem like manipulative obfuscation. So in this
case at least very basic and abstract questions aren't an add-on.
They're fundamental.
So it seems to me that to understand left/liberalism you have to
understand what's involved in the distinction between the right and the
good, why the first might seem absolute and the second subjective,
arbitrary, relative etc., and why the distinction is considered so
important. To understand why left/liberalism has been so successful you
have to understand why the understanding of justice based on that
distinction seems so irrefutable to so many people, which in turn
requires thinking about the system of basic moral concepts they've
adopted.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 12 19:16:55 2004
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 19:16:55 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: P
Subject: Re: Right vs. Good
Message-ID: <20040712231655.GA3570@vectra>
References: <20040712174046.GA2891@vectra> <20040712175558.63135.qmail@web51503.mail.yahoo.com> <20040712194112.GA3163@vectra> <002301c46851$8383a920$146010ac@paul>
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Multiculturalism does have a cultural and historical connection to the
Christian world, and so does modern natural science. Both can have
universal implications though in spite of particularity of background.
Once something has come into being it can go forward on its own
principles if it is comprehensive enough and well enough defined.
Multicultural liberalism is determined to do just that and it hates the
historical background from which it arose. Since it's been so
wonderfully successful, maybe it's on to something and is worth
understanding by reference to its aspirations and implicit logic.
I suppose my basic thought is that if what you think what there is is
the world described by modern physics and also sensation and desire,
both somehow just there and related in a way that people can't
understand or agree on but for that very reason can't play much of a
role in collective moral understandings, then there won't be any
particular organized understanding of what's good that's thought to
apply regardless of particular happenstance desires or what anyone
thinks. Instead there will just be stuff various people want from time
to time. So there won't be any real reason to do anything other than
wanting to do it. On the other hand, wanting to do something will in
fact be accepted as a reason for doing it. So there will be a sort of
relativistic definition of the good -- if it rings your bell go for it
-- but that definition will be thought objectively true.
I think that's how people in the modern West are educated to think
things really are. That's been the tendency for some time now. I agree
that such an understanding of things leaves a number of possibilities
open. Which of the possibilities is realized depends on:
1. The relation between the good and technological reason. Is the good
doing what you want most immediately and intensely or is it determined
by calculating what satisfies the most desires most reliably over time?
So you can be a romantic or you can choose bourgeois prudence instead.
2. The relation between individual and society. There are social
intentions and desires as well as individual ones. So you can be a
individualist or a collectivist depending on which you choose as the
standard.
3. The relation between sensation and self. In addition to wanting
particular sensations we try to achieve a particular understanding of
who we are. So you can choose between hedonism or existential
self-definition.
4. The relation among conflicting wills. Depending on whether you
ignore, give equal status to, or achieve pleasure and self-definition by
crushing the wills of others, you can be a egoist, a universalist, or a
sadist.
So, for example, the Nazi ideal I suppose was the romantic collectivist
existential sadist. Ayn Rand at least in her ideals was more the
romantic individualist existential egoist. The current mainstream
American ideal tends toward the bourgeois individualist hedonistic
universalist, with maybe a touch of prudent existential self-definition
added to give his career and consumer choices a bit more zip. Pre-60s
the existential aspect ("make something of yourself") was I think more
pervasive. The Europeans are perhaps closer to the social democratic
ideal, which is the same as the current American ideal but collectivist
instead of individualist.
So to me the various moral possibilities and their metaphysical
presuppositions seem to constitute a system that's rational in its way.
The most stable setup seems to be something between the European and
American ideals for society at large, with other moral possibilities and
in particular enhanced romanticism and existential self-definition
floating around the margins to provide vicarious thrills and so mitigate
the boredom of bourgeois hedonism. I think the latter is what leads to
the drooling over perverts among academics and the media.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jul 13 06:11:59 2004
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 06:11:59 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Right vs. Good
Message-ID: <20040713101159.GA4650@vectra>
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Another point regarding the influence of grand principle in history is
that who wins is determined not just by who's pushing how hard for what
but also by the rules of evaluation, which are a matter of the commonly
held scheme of conceptions regarding what's right, wrong, good, bad,
real, unreal, likely, unlikely etc. An accepted common scheme of
evaluation always has a large abstract and logical component just as an
accepted common language always has a large abstract and logical
component (rules of grammar etc.) Without that component a complex
system can't be held and applied in a consistent and reliable way by
large numbers of people and so can't be functional.
jk
On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 05:18:15PM -0700, I wrote:
> You are right that there exists a certain class of person that falls in love with grand abstractions because they are grand. Such people indeed do not endorse such abstractions for lowlier purposes.
>
> But although such persons are over-represented among the really top players in history, they are not the majority of men, or even the majority of political figures.
>
> I
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jul 13 06:45:30 2004
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 06:45:30 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: W
Subject: Re: NYT on Traditionalism
Message-ID: <20040713104530.GB4650@vectra>
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Didn't see the article. Yes, I would say that Guenon, Evola and Schuon
are well worth reading if not following. They have very grand and
illuminating theories, so grand they usual don't seem to have much to do
with politics in any concrete sense. Evola is the most political. Oddly,
Guenon's theory seems very similar to Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic
of Enlightenment only much clearer.
jk
On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 09:44:36PM -0500, W wrote:
> Perhaps you saw this. If you know, is there substance to these people? I've heard of Evola, not of Guenon. At times the journalist makes it sound like mysticism rather than political philosophy.
>
> WW
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/arts/10CONN.html?pagewanted=print&position=
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jul 13 10:10:15 2004
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 10:10:15 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: P
Subject: Re: Right vs. Good
Message-ID: <20040713141015.GA7046@vectra>
References: <20040712194112.GA3163@vectra> <20040713001816.40821.qmail@web51501.mail.yahoo.com> <20040713101159.GA4650@vectra> <000901c468e0$19c1a2a0$036010ac@paul>
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Agreed that such investigations must be secondary. The bottom line is
what we've got now. That's why the longish piece I sent around yesterday
sketching a taxonomy of modern moral views explicitly rejected any
genealogical approach and looked only at understandings dominant among
educated intelligent people today. There's an edited and possibly
slightly more comprehensible version (lacking the intro that says "who
cares about genealogy) at
http://jkalb.org/book/view/1060
jk
On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 09:48:35AM -0400, P wrote:
> In looking for why things are now happening as they
> are, it may be useful to avoid very distant causes that require
> archeological explorations in order to be related to the present situation.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Jul 16 07:21:21 2004
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 07:21:21 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: T
Subject: Re: problem with turnabout
Message-ID: <20040716112121.GA21980@vectra>
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Liberals don't see liberalism as a view to be considered on a par with
other views. It's a precondition of all discussion, and if you don't
accept it or if you don't want to describe it the way they describe it
that just means you don't understand it so of course there's no point
talking to you about it.
Hadn't seen the Rawls or Fish essays. Agreed that the Rawlsian outlook
is a problem -- it seems like you're not agreeing to anything very much
but in fact you're giving up everything. The essay seemed to personalize
it more than I would, although maybe that's a useful approach with a
general audience.
It seems to me Rawls become prominent by articulating the logic of what
everyone was thinking. I think he was able to do that without becoming a
particularly bad man because of personal oddities. I met him once, and
he struck me as very self-consious and ill at ease with people. It may
have been natural for him to think of abstract-respect-at-a-distance as
the best one could hope for in human relations. With other liberal
thinkers contempt and the desire to dominate or justify bad conduct
usually plays more of a role I think.
Jim
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Jul 16 10:18:37 2004
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 10:18:37 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Article on "Anti-racism";
Message-ID: <20040716141837.GB22239@vectra>
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What do you have in mind? When black/white racism was widespread and
open lots of other social distinctions including ethnic and religious
distinctions were recognized and quite important. Were all those things
examples of the racism you're talking about? Also, there were parts of
the country and indeed whole states where there wasn't much racial
diversity so racism couldn't have had much to do with the way things
worked in those places. Or so one would think. So in what way was racism
needed as glue?
jk
On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 06:26:10AM -0700, I wrote:
> The cold fact is that America was founded on racism, racism is the glue that held American society together, and America cannot survive without it.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Jul 16 11:17:25 2004
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 11:17:25 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Article on "Anti-racism";
Message-ID: <20040716151725.GA23011@vectra>
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I would have thought that getting lots of uncultivated and almost-empty
land for free or nearly so has its own appeal and didn't need racial
feeling to explain it.
Agreed that "white" was part of being "American." I would have thought
though that Protestant British identity played more of a continuing role
in what's needed really to be an American than you suggest. Also there
were regional identities that mattered. In 1861 they trumped American
identity for many people.
Your view seems to be that the color line substituted for more complex
and historically-based understandings of identity. Does that imply that
as the latter declined with industrialization and immigration of
Southern and Eastern Europeans, Jews, Catholics etc. the color line
became more strict? I don't know a lot about these things but it seems
to me that the color line wasn't as strict in the NE where there were
big cities and lots of industry and immigrants and so apparently more
need for a constructed identity than in the rural South where things
were more settled (or such is my impression).
jk
On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 07:29:29AM -0700, I wrote:
> Let us begin with the brute fact that this country was founded upon an act of imperial conquest and voluntarily chose to continue that program. Van Alystyne's The Rising American Empire is the key text for this. People look at America on a map and think that its borders somehow just happened. They didn't. They are the product of an explicit agenda of conquest against Red Indians and rival European imperialisms.
>
> For a second, you have the fact that a nation whose origins are within historical consciousness, (indeed within a recognizable precursor of the present political regime) rather than in prehistory, is forced to make the construction of its identity an explicit act, rather than an historic datum that can be presumed. Because America chose early on not to maintain its British-based ethnic identity, it had to define new parameters of that identity. It was the law, and the public consensus, for most of our history that to be an American meant being white.
>
> The evidence of this is so long as to defy enumeration. The immigration laws, the segregation laws, (or de facto practices) the racial citizenship requirements in state constitutions, etc. etc.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 19 18:35:47 2004
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 18:35:47 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Article on "Anti-racism";
Message-ID: <20040719223547.GA6217@vectra>
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I suppose "identity" is usually some mixture of the evolved and the
constructed, with less of the constructed in earlier times since social
order had less to do with formal structures and more to do with elective
affinities and local habits, attitudes and informal connections. The
possibilities or maybe fantasies of social engineering were less
developed.
Anyway, it seems to me that American society was mostly a congeries of
local societies and arrangements, very predominantly British in origin
but with local developments and modifications, rather than something
that was conjured into existence by drawing a line that excluded the
black Other.
Blacks and various other others were of course excluded, but I don't
think the exclusion constituted "the glue that held American society
together." Rather it was mostly a consequence of the nature of the glue
that was already doing the job -- existing informal and largely
inherited principles of cohesion. The exclusion reflected a recognition
that blacks and others were very different peoples with different
habits, attitudes and qualities who didn't mix in any very easy,
informal and productive way into the network of mutual recognition and
dealings that constituted the local version of American society.
Later on, when constructed identity became more important, it was
constructed mostly on the basis of the American public philosophy that
tended toward the the individualistic and universalistic and so had
increasing difficulty justifying a color line that in earlier times and
in settled rural regions wasn't seen as needing any particular
justification but was simply an aspect of how people naturally and
habitually acted. That constructed identity that eventually turned
radically antiracist corresponded to more formalized, urban and
industrial forms of social organization.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 19 18:41:26 2004
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 18:41:26 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: K
Subject: Re: Article on "Anti-racism";
Message-ID: <20040719224126.GB6217@vectra>
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Do you need that much racial feeling? Suppose the whole of the US West
of the Appalachians had been inhabited by a few hundred thousand white
hunters, trappers, fishermen and wandering slash-and-burn farmers
without deeds to the land but some sort of traditional rights of use. Do
you think they would have ended up owners of vast estates?
jk
On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 05:35:43PM -0400, K wrote:
>
> Just to be PC about it, you do need a racial feeling of some kind to
> blur the distinction between "almost-empty" land and completely empty
> land.
>
> >I would have thought that getting lots of uncultivated and almost-empty
> >land for free or nearly so has its own appeal and didn't need racial
> >feeling to explain it.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 19 19:40:39 2004
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 19:40:39 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Article on "Anti-racism";
Message-ID: <20040719234039.GA6639@vectra>
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Sure. All I'm saying is that the case of the Indians doesn't show that
race had profound significance.
jk
On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 03:45:35PM -0700, I wrote:
> No, but you'd need some excuse to expropriate them. If they're the same color you are, you can't use race, but that's not the only possible excuse.
>
> i
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jul 20 05:13:15 2004
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 05:13:15 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Article on "Anti-racism";
Message-ID: <20040720091315.GA8934@vectra>
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Changed my mind as to the need for an excuse. If I don't have much, and
someone has customary hunting and fishing rights in an unsettled area
that will become useless if enough people farm it, I probably won't feel
the need for any particular excuse for moving in there and trying to
farm it. The fact that from my point of view the land is basically
unused will be enough. Then when enough people move in and the hunters
and fishers get annoyed and kill some of them I'll probably feel very
annoyed myself -- "we built up this area" -- and demand protection. Then
since there are many more of us and there isn't any more game the
hunters and fishers will move away, drink themselves to death, try to
eke out a living among the farmers and not do it very well, etc.
Tocqueville's account of how white occupation of new lands for the most
part took place is very much like that.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jul 20 05:21:48 2004
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 05:21:48 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: K
Subject: Re: Article on "Anti-racism";
Message-ID: <20040720092148.GB8934@vectra>
References: <20040719204635.24817.qmail@web51506.mail.yahoo.com> <40FC3EAF.AEB11F64@sympatico.ca> <20040719224126.GB6217@vectra> <40FC879E.BDE26F89@sympatico.ca>
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Hi,
See my most recent note. If you're a farmer you're likely to think of
land used the way the Indians generally used North America as unused. If
so then settling it and reducing it to cultivation becomes an admirable
activity regardless of whether it's Indians or the King of England or
the French nobility who hold the hunting rights. You simply won't take
their mode of ownership and occupation seriously. It will be invisible
for you and to the extent they try to enforce the Forest Laws,
necessarily in a bloody fashion, you'll think they're acting
outrageously.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jul 20 06:57:48 2004
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 06:57:48 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: worship of the Other and worship of sin
Message-ID: <20040720105748.GA9095@vectra>
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I'd say "formal similarities to God" instead of "traces of God." Thus,
persons who are wholly different from us substitute for God because God
is a person wholly different from us. The Other has a sort of horizontal
transcendence, and the more other he is the more horizontally
transcendent.
Putting that aside, you raise an interesting line of thought. God is the
infinite and One, he creates and destroys, he blesses things and brings
them to nothing. If you translate that into horizontal concepts it
becomes something like the abolition of all distinctions, sex and
murder, the extremes of pleasure and agony. So the prophet of the new
improved religion turns out to be the divine marquis.
jk
On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 05:37:28AM -0400, L wrote:
> The other day I asked you about how the cult of man leads not only to worship of the Other, but worship of sin. It had something to do with traces of God being in the world, but not God himself. This didn't click with me, so I put the idea aside. Then just now, this came to me. I don't know if this works or not. What do you think?
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jul 20 07:01:30 2004
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 07:01:30 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: Fw: worship of the Other and worship of sin
Message-ID: <20040720110130.GB9095@vectra>
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It's a general truth I think that if you don't have God you seek the
abolition of the self. You see that in oriental religions. To be drawn
to the alien is a way of seeking the abolition of the self.
jk
On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 06:54:08AM -0400, L wrote:
>
> I don't even know if this is true--that since God is our true self in whom we find perfect harmony, therefore a person oriented toward God will naturally be drawn to things and people harmonious with himself, while a person oriented toward Godless man will be drawn to things disharmonious with himself. Why do liberals love Frank Gehry? Why do the NY Times and contemporary movies have a cult of ugliness? Rebelling against order and harmony, they make disorder and dissonance their God. Therefore they also seek diversity.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jul 20 11:55:43 2004
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 11:55:43 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: 1924
Message-ID: <20040720155543.GA10205@vectra>
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It's hard to know just what heis saying. At first he seemed to be
saying that America had rejected ethnic identity and so constructed an
identity based on exclusion of the nonwhite other. Now he seems to be
saying that America did have an ethnic identity although one that over
time had absorbed non-English people to the extent they seemed
compatible (not "obviously ethnic"). But to the extent America had an
ethnic identity, or was a congeries of local identities, then the notion
that racism is primary -- "was the glue that held the country together"
-- loses its point. "Racism" becomes secondary, a matter of excluding
those who don't seem to fit into the thing that is one's real locus of
concern.
jk
On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 08:38:54AM -0700, I wrote:
> On the contrary, in 1924 there was a consensus that America was not only a white but an Anglo-Saxon nation.
>
> However, the term "Anglo-Saxon" was, in the words of one immigration commissioner, "a term of art." Within its strict definition were included all sorts of people, like the Dutch of New York, whose ancestors never set foot in England. Within its loose definition, it included any white person who wasn't obviously an ethnic.
>
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jul 20 12:13:59 2004
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 12:13:59 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Article on "Anti-racism";
Message-ID: <20040720161359.GB10205@vectra>
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"FACT" (all caps) seems to mean that something's the final reality of a
situation. Is that so though? The whites represented a radically
different relation to the land, so it wasn't pure and simple
displacement -- the substition of some persons for others in a
continuing relationship.
Also, does the presence of more Indians occupying American land than in
1492 and getting more economic benefit from it than they did then enter
into the existential facts? Numbers and wealth strike me as existential
even if other things matter too.
jk
On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 06:59:03AM -0700, I wrote:
> And the existential FACT underlying them all is the displacement by one biological breed of Homo Sapiens by another.
>
> Ian
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Jul 20 18:15:16 2004
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 18:15:16 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: Fw: worship of the Other and worship of sin
Message-ID: <20040720221516.GA11980@vectra>
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I suppose sin creates a counter-reality and so is godlike from that
point of view. Think of Milton's Satan.
jk
On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 04:54:43PM -0400, L wrote:
> But that leaves me still without a satisfactory formulation of why the
> cult of man treats sin as a god. It came to me once, but I lost it.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed Jul 21 08:23:43 2004
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 08:23:43 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: How to expose liberal intolerance
Message-ID: <20040721122343.GA15302@vectra>
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It gets into a question that's hard to deal with, the extent to which
liberals and others hold their views in good faith. The argument it
pursues is that the contradictions of contemporary liberalism (e.g.,
bigoted tolerance) aren't simply stupid but result from taking basic
liberal principles like equal freedom seriously. But if that's so it's
not clear who is acting in worse faith -- the liberal liberals who e.g.
censor in the name of "opening up the discussion to excluded voices" or
the conservative liberals (a.k.a. conservatives) who say "we too are
totally committed to universal inclusiveness as the highest conceivable
value" but always drag their feet on the practical necessities of
implementation.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed Jul 21 09:46:02 2004
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 09:46:02 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: How to expose liberal intolerance
Message-ID: <20040721134602.GC15629@vectra>
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The survey showing a sudden radical decline in protestantism, which just
came out, strikes me as remarkably indicative. Something really did
happen.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From jbk Fri Jul 23 07:12:11 -0400 2004
From: Jim Kalb
To: l
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"Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites
hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to
lead to a breach of the peace" -- I wonder if that would apply to Pim
Fortuyn, whose statements did in fact lead to a breach of the peace (his
own murder).
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Jul 23 20:09:57 2004
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 20:09:57 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Liberalism and the Majority
Message-ID: <20040724000957.GA6235@vectra>
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Yeah, there are a couple of obvious advantages to ethnic and religious
hodgepodge combined with multiculturalist ideology. Since there can't be
any particular cultural standards with any authority:
1. Money and bureaucracy -- the sort of people who'll be associated with
any top institution -- have uncontested control of everything since
nothing else can be functional, and
2. In private life you can do anything you want and nobody can criticize
you for it, which has certain advantages for the well-placed, esp those
who like our ex-pres got there with the aid of a lack of justice and
temperance.
I go into anti-white sentiment and whether it's really essential to
antiracism in my pinc piece on the topic,
http://www.cycad.com/cgi-bin/pinc/apr2000/articles/jk_antiracism.html.
jk
On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 04:16:45PM -0700, I wrote:
> Liberals don't so much hate the white majority -- though they do --
> and they hate the very concept of a majority, because majorities are
> normative and they have this restless itch, predicted by Plato, that
> makes them chafe at the slightest bridle of normativity.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Jul 23 20:20:04 2004
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 20:20:04 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Liberalism and the Majority
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That wouldn't have any effect unless people with much more on the ball
than resentful colored folk, and in a position to set the terms of
discussion in a managed and centralized world, found it to their
advantage to get rid of ethnic ties and particular culture as legitimate
principles of social organization. "Black rage" wouldn't matter unless
other people found it useful.
jk
On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 05:12:17PM -0700, I wrote:
> Another large cause is simple jealousy.
>
> Huge numbers of colored people go through life wishing they were white, whether they'll admit it or not.
>
> i
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Jul 23 20:36:50 2004
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 20:36:50 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Liberalism and the Majority
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Agreed that it's not simply a matter of practical advantage. Radical
violation of social norms as a means of self-assertion goes back at
least to Sade, and destroying one's own society as a society is
a sort of wholesale version of that.
jk
On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 05:26:50PM -0700, I wrote:
> For hyper-individualists, society is a burden on the individual ego.
>
> Therefore, treason to their society is a form of self-assertion, as is treason to their race.
>
> i
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Jul 23 20:54:59 2004
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 20:54:59 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Liberalism and the Majority
Message-ID: <20040724005459.GA6685@vectra>
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That's a very interesting point and it's hard to know how to
characterize the situation. Maybe what happens is this:
1. Taking nature in and of itself as normative is taking whatever
happens to happen as normative.
2. A norm has to have an absolute and transcendent quality to be felt as
a norm.
3. The most accessible way for us to achieve a wholly this-worldly
transcendent is through extremes of pleasure and pain.
4. The latter is easier to bring about, so why not choose that and
better yet combine it with pleasure?
So if nature is the norm, then you'll rebel against what is typical in
nature in favor of what is extreme and therefore has the clearcut and
compelling quality a norm should have.
jk
On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 05:41:27PM -0700, I wrote:
> Interestingly, Sade is ultimately grounded in a critique of Rousseau, without whom he has nothing philosophical to say.
>
> And liberals love Rousseau, or as much of him as they think they know, i.e. not the sexist stuff in the Emile.
>
> So may we take it as inevitable that if one tries to take nature as normative, one ends up rebelling against it?
>
> i
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sat Jul 24 16:04:19 2004
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 16:04:19 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Liberalism and the Majority
Message-ID: <20040724200419.GA10972@vectra>
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I thought the idea of Sorelian myth was to have a collection of stories,
images etc. adopted to guide and motivate action without regard to their
truth. The cause is the thing, the story is the means. What's intended
is something that functions like transcendent authority in that it
trumps individual and day-to-day interests but without anything thought
to be genuinely transcendent (and therefore more important than the
practical cause to which the myth relates).
If that's what the Right's up to then Sade and the joy of the knife are
very much to the point. Because the obvious way to create an ersatz
transcendent that trumps lesser interests and so can ground social order
is through the integration of a mysticism of violence into the governing
philosophy. Otherwise everything's still on a level with everything else
and why shouldn't everyone just do what he feels like doing.
I suppose another possibility is the liberal approach, treating formal
logic and neutral expertise as things that transcend legitimate private
interest and somehow manage to have enough content to tell everybody
what to do without losing their purely formal and therefore neutral
quality. But the Right rejects that because it's obviously fraudulent
and not very soul-satisfying.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sat Jul 24 18:22:48 2004
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 18:22:48 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: P
Subject: Re: Liberalism and the Majority
Message-ID: <20040724222248.GA11409@vectra>
References: <001101c4718b$e3bfb0c0$4f1afea9@h6l3p> <20040724181805.78157.qmail@web51505.mail.yahoo.com> <20040724200419.GA10972@vectra> <000f01c471c2$114bf040$066010ac@paul>
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A question P raises is the relative influence of (1) subjective
motivations and (2) conceptions of justification and reality in the
triumph of advanced liberalism.
From the standpoint of motivation I agree that blind hatred etc. is
mostly what drives things. But then you have to ask how it is that blind
hatred etc. has come to have such unquestioned public authority and such
a reputation for being reasonable, caring, etc.
It seems to me that people always have a huge variety of motivations,
many of them unsavory but some of them not, and tendencies that given
half a chance could become leading motivations. Without regard to
accepted conceptions of what's real and valid the mind is a blooming,
buzzing confusion. The issue that impresses me is which motivations and
tendencies get to crystallize into the dominant public standards to
which everyone feels compelled to defer and children are trained to
revere and which have to remain private sentiments or things that have
to be hidden.
I think that what determines that question in the end at least in a time
like ours in which so many things are organized so formally is the
educated man's understanding of what's real. I think it's enormously
important that what educated men today think is real when you get right
down to it is basically the world according to modern physics with
desires and sensations arbitrarily tossed in nobody knows quite how.
That picture makes hierarchy of values incomprehensible -- morally
speaking, all that exists is desires and ways of satisfying them -- and
therefore makes neutral expertise the most rational final standard for
public authority if you reject mere domination of some wills over others
as the basis for social life. As time goes by the demands of that final
standard grow and subvert more and more inherited habits and
understandings until you get to the BBC today forbidding the words
"husband" and "wife" as discriminatory.
jk
On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 05:06:17PM -0400, P wrote:
> Contrary to Jim, I do not believe that the Left advocates neutral expertise
> as much as other values, such as blind hatred for Western civilization and
> traditional gender roles and relentless sensitivity for the designated
> victims of what the Left is rejecting.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sat Jul 24 18:38:59 2004
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 18:38:59 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: P
Subject: Re: Liberalism and the Majority
Message-ID: <20040724223859.GA11729@vectra>
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Forgot to say -- on P's second point I don't think it's generally
helpful to abstract from the question of truth. If you don't think your
"myth" is actually true with a truth that goes far beyond the particular
struggle you're involved in, and worse if you're a modern who's
skeptical of the whole idea of truths regarding transcendent realities,
then I do think some sort of mysticism of violence is likely to creep in
to give the myth an ersatz of the validity that overwhelms personal
considerations that's needed to ground social order.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sat Jul 24 22:08:41 2004
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 22:08:41 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Liberalism and the Majority
Message-ID: <20040725020841.GA11916@vectra>
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People at least in the humanities are less likely to believe it
explicitly now, although there are still plenty of philosophers etc who
take science seriously and take physicalism as the standard and puzzle
over qualia. I think it's still the implicit operative outlook for most
educated people when they're being serious and dealing with practical
issues. People's esp academics' actual beliefs are normally a lot less
sophisticated than what they put forward in theoretical discussions. You
have to believe something or other about how things are that's definite
enough to work with.
And to the extent you believe reality is a social construction then if
you want to avoid the simple dominance of will over will as the
principle of social organization you're all the more likely in practice
to insist on the ideal of bureaucratic neutrality as the authoritative
principle since it seems to come closer than anything else to avoiding
the necessity of forcing A's constructions on B.
jk
On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 06:38:27PM -0700, I wrote:
> Actually, in my experience the scientism you refer to is believed in today only by the half-educated and a shrinking minority of people, like my 88-year old botanist grandmother, that was educated back in the days when scientism could still be taken seriously intellectually.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Jul 25 06:09:26 2004
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 06:09:26 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Scientism
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Agreed that intellectual discipline is declining, and that qualia
demonstrate that scientism is false. As to the situation in general I
suppose I'd say:
1. The fundamental scheme of belief people mostly accept and go by is
that there's the world of modern physics and also sensations, desires
etc., and nothing besides those two things. Those two things are both
somehow just there.
2. That's an extraodinarily incoherent form of dualism, so when people
try to think a bit theoretically they want to turn it into a monism by
taking the side either of modern physics or of sensations, desires etc.
3. Therefore on the one side a scientism that struggles to get rid of
qualia and on the other various claims that everything including the
world science describes is somehow just a construction of human thought.
4. None of that makes much sense so people more and more go easy on the
discipline when thinking about the world in general and say whatever you
think is OK. That tends to be a victory for the "human thought
constructs our world" side.
5. That side however gives practical support to the dominance of neutral
expertise and therefore scientism. People still accept scientism in
practical ways because science delivers the goodies and the world can't
be run on shifting private fantasies. All these theories tell people
there can't be a hierarchy of values, and that the choice for organizing
principles for social life is either (1) neutral expertise or (2) mere
unprincipled domination of some wills by other wills. If you belong to
the "free to be you and me because what you think makes things what they
are" school of thought, and you don't like conflict and difficulty,
you'll choose the former and therefore in effect scientism.
6. So the attempt to resolve the dualism into one side or another
doesn't work, and overall we're basically back where we started.
jk
On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 08:10:11PM -0700, I wrote:
> I agree these are the lazy lies people tell themselves about what they believe.
>
> But the real test of whether people believe in something is whether they believe in it when this is unpalatable, and I sense so real discipline about accepting the scientific worldview under such circumstances. Real scientism requires an unsentimental intellectual self-discipline that is incompatible with, say, New Age religion or the conviction that all races have the same IQ.
>
> As for qualia being something believers in scientism puzzle over: it is not only that, it is the gaping hole and indisputably dispositive refutation of scientism.
>
> I
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Jul 25 11:34:17 2004
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 11:34:17 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: P
Subject: Re: Liberalism and the Majority
Message-ID: <20040725153417.GA14317@vectra>
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Things have become more differentiated and more evidently incoherent but
I think the basic elements -- scientistic super-objectivity on the one
hand and unbridled subjectivity on the other -- are still there and both
are still needed to give society as a whole an operative view. The NY
Times still treats "experts" and "scholars" as the final authority
determining what counts as truth, rationality, and legitimate policy.
"Therapy" is a supposedly neutral value free managerial technique.
Judges still appeal in making up rights to means/end rationality viewed
from a bureaucratic standpoint as well as to the equal right of each to
define the meaning of the universe. The official creation myth you're
absolutely required to agree with is still neo-Darwinism.
Division of society into designated victims and evil oppressors is not
arbitrary. "Victims" and "oppressors" are well-chosen from the
standpoint of discreding and destroying the authority of everybody
except neutral expert therapists who are needed to bring the chaos of
conflicting impulses, all at bottom equally legitimate, into order
supposedly without violating the integrity of any of them. The
requirement we slobber over sexual minorities means that all
configurations of sexual impulse and connection have to have equal
status, so the family gets abolished and only the market and the
supposedly neutral bureaucracy, which includes the therapists, are left
standing to order things. Slobbering over ethnic victims means that no
particular cultural standard can have authority, with a similar ultimate
result.
I agree the present situation is far more totalitarian. The older
approach required people to internalize both sides, the
scientific-rational and the subjective, because it expected them to be
somewhat self-governing. The current approach gives the
scientific-rational side to experts and the system itself and wants the
people to be mindless and therefore passive except to the extent they
internalize whatever fragments of rationality are needed for them to be
usable as economic units.
jk
On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 09:22:57AM -0400, P wrote:
> I think Jim is beating up on eighteenth-century straw men and the ghost of
> the kind of "scientific" public administration that I discuss in After
> Liberalism. By now we've moved beyond the self-contradictory
> value-relativism and appeal to objective norms into something far less
> appetizing and far more totalitarian, and it does not base itself on
> "science" but on a therapeutic variant on Nietzsche's slave morality.
> Multicultural ideology requires us to slobber over designated victims while
> allowing the victims to vent their hate on members of the erstwhile majority
> society
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Jul 25 18:18:44 2004
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 18:18:44 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Abolition of the Family
Message-ID: <20040725221844.GA15563@vectra>
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It's worth saying that it's not necessary consciously to intend a goal
for one's actions systematically to bring the goal about. In concept
"equal opportunity" means (among other things) "family background
shouldn't matter," which in turn means (among other things) "the family
should not play a significant role in the transmission of culture or the
formation of character." So if people take "equal opportunity" as an
ultimate social standard the particular policies etc. that seem right to
them will work together over time to abolish the family as a significant
functioning institution.
I'd interpret Ian's "cunning" somewhat in the sense of the "cunning of
reason," a kind of rationality implicit in historical development of
which the actors need know nothing. He may view it more concretely.
jk
On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 01:33:23PM -0700, I wrote:
> Well, clearly this is a) such an extreme agenda that it produces a gut reaction of common sense in all persons not depraved and b) an agenda that is pursued bit-by-bit, not all at once.
>
> The liberal strategy is, rather than destroy the family directly, pick it apart by destroying things that serve to hold it together as a building-block of society. I.e:
>
> 1. Remove the stigma of cohabitation.
> 2. Remove the stigma of bastardy.
> 3. Make the welfare system a surrogate husband so real husbands become obsolete.
> 4. Destroy parental authority over their children by having schools teach things that belong at home, like sex ed.
> 5. Destroy the concept of childhood by lowering the age limits of various cultural depravities.
>
> We are well-aware you boys are cunning enough not to stage direct assaults that wake up the peasants and trigger resistance.
>
> I
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Jul 25 19:06:20 2004
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 19:06:20 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Cunning
Message-ID: <20040725230620.GA16035@vectra>
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I just don't think those things explain why the Left has been winning.
If things are going your way everything you do looks wonderfully clever.
jk
On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 04:00:27PM -0700, I wrote:
> You're telling me that after the Gramscianization of the Left after the failure of '68, they don't consciously employ cunning?
>
> Have you read Saul Alinksy's Rules For Radicals?
>
> I
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Jul 25 21:31:39 2004
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 21:31:39 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: K
Subject: Re: Abolition of the Family
Message-ID: <20040726013139.GA16263@vectra>
References: <41040AED.E5B59B04@sympatico.ca> <20040725203323.70119.qmail@web51504.mail.yahoo.com> <20040725221844.GA15563@vectra> <410442EF.110FB8B5@sympatico.ca>
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It's extremely hard for me to think of liberal social programs as the ad
hoc response of people who happen to be on the spot to obvious pressing
problems with which they are immediately confronted.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Jul 25 21:44:48 2004
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 21:44:48 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Cunning
Message-ID: <20040726014448.GB16263@vectra>
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An excellent question. Things have been going the Left's way for a long
time. It looks to me like you can put what's happened in order by
viewing it as the working out of a fundamental change in what's
ultimately thought real and reasonable in the direction of saying that
what's real is the world according to modern physics plus sensations and
desires and what's reasonable is for people to figure out how the world
works pragmatically so they can arrange things to get what they want.
Once that change in ultimate standard has taken place then almost any
sort of maneuver, provocation, upheaval, rebellion, crackdown or
whatever will have the net effect of breaking down inherited ways based
on older ideas of what ultimately makes sense and bringing attitudes and
practices more in line with the new basic understanding.
jk
On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 04:57:07PM -0700, I wrote:
> Agreed that they don't only win because of their own effectiveness.
>
> So why do you think they win?
>
> I
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Jul 26 06:44:20 2004
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 06:44:20 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Abolition of the Family
Message-ID: <20040726104420.GA18123@vectra>
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Sure. People are constantly planning all sorts of things. Some plans
succeed and some don't. I think it's more common for the tendency of
circumstances to pick out the plans that succeed than for plans to give
circumstances their tendency. F. Piven wasn't any more diabolically
clever than anyone else.
One of the ways liberalism and soft leftism so their work BTW is by
hiding their real tendency even from most of their adherents (although
maybe not from Piven). Emerson: "Every reform is only a mask under cover
of which a more terrible reform, which dares not yet name itself,
advances."
jk
On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 06:50:34PM -0700, I wrote:
> The idea that such things were unplanned is absolutely laughable.
>
> And the presence of a sinister ideological agenda is clear. Look at Frances Piven and Mayor Lindsay, for example.
>
> BTW, a case of WASP guilt if I ever saw one.
>
> i
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Thu Jul 29 10:53:07 2004
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 10:53:07 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: K
Subject: Re: Abolishing the Family
Message-ID: <20040729145307.GB9055@vectra>
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Motives are never simple or pure except in the case of a few saints or
idiots. For moderates the issue topmost in their minds is most likely
solving some particular problem. I'm sure that's how they explain things
to themselves. One's sense though of what the world is like, what's
appealing, what's taken seriously, etc. is much more complex than
simple-minded practicality and always involves metaphysics,
unacknowledged attachments and aversions, etc. Those things enter into
the definition of problems -- how for example did "sexism" become a pure
evil that must be eradicated in all its infinitely ramified forms?
Surely not through concern for practical problem-solving. The view is
blatantly and crudely ideological. And does a simple desire to make
schools "safe places for all our children" etc. really justify attempts
to eradicate any sense that some organizations of sexual impulse and
connection are better than others? The former is an excuse for the
latter and doesn't at all explain it. The fact many people consciously
believe the excuse doesn't show their motives are simply a matter of
problemsolving, it just shows they don't like to think systematically
about their basic commitments and what they imply. The reluctance to
recognize either the legitimacy of the Right or genuine enemies on the
Left are another sign that the views of moderates can't be disentangled
from the clearer views of non-moderates.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Jul 30 15:38:26 2004
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 15:38:26 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: "T
Subject: Re: Another Article
Message-ID: <20040730193826.GA14937@vectra>
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A few quick points:
1. Auster is describing "American culture" as fundamentally the culture
of a particular people -- a complex people, with variations, components
and additions, but a particular people for all that. To the extent that
view is right, it seems to me that what a Catholic would want is to
convert that culture (meaning that particular people) to Catholicism
rather than dissolve it and them and put something else there instead.
2. England was still England and it had what was Auster sees as good in
the English tradition -- e.g., the common law and the tradition of
distributed constitutional government, popular self respect, various
things related to social trust -- before Henry's marital problems. I
don't see that any of the things he talks about are implicitly at odds
with Church doctrine. To the extent "moral autonomy" means restraint
that makes a better social order possible it can't be that different
from conscience. At least initially I would want to say that what's good
in Anglo-American culture should be able to find a home in Catholicism
at least as one legitimate variation. Protestantism after all is a
fragment of Catholicism.
3. Can Latin America really be understood as a European transplant? At
least where I live American Indian influence and background seem strong
among immigrants from there.
jk
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Jul 30 17:16:01 2004
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 17:16:01 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: "T
Subject: Re: Another Article
Message-ID: <20040730211601.GA15343@vectra>
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I agree that any real evangelization of America would change its culture
considerably. It seems to me though that there are a couple of different
questions that could be asked in connection to the article:
1. Should a national society be created based among other things on
Protestantism and assimilation of newcomers to standards that include
among other things Protestant hegemony, and
2. Once such a society has come into being, and actually provides the
standards, loyalties, memories, associations etc. that order the lives
of millions, is it better to (a) dissolve it with the aid of continuing
mass immigration of people with little historical connection or affinity
to the existing society, combined with a demand for multiculturalism
(abolition of the presumed authority of established local standards and
ways), or (b) prefer that it maintain itself as a going system, although
one that can change as its members are persuaded or find in their own
lives that something better is possible.
It seems to me the second question is one that is more alive in American
public life today, and the one to which the article is primarily
relevant. On that second question it seems to me that (b) is better,
because man is social and almost any assemblage of traditional social
standards that's actually capable of maintaining itself and allowing
people to run their lives in a way they mostly find good is better than
none. Once you have people living in a generally functional setting in
which they can be effective moral agents because informal social
standards are coherent enough for them to run their lives in conjunction
with those they live with you can talk to them about whether better
things are possible. Choice (a) strikes me as more likely to promote a
situation in which the only social authorities are the market (a.k.a.
money) and an all-pervading bureaucracy that asserts legitimacy on
account of a claimed neutrality that can't be distinguished from
nihilism. That latter situation strikes me as a greater danger today to
humanity and therefore Catholicism than Protestantism so I'd try to
avoid it.
One issue in the way I set the question up, of course, is the extent to
which "America" as the functioning society and culture described in the
lead-in to 2 still exists. I suppose it's a matter of degree, so I still
prefer 2(b) to 2(a). If America has problems abolishing what it's been
in favor of compulsory liberal universalism, which is the concrete
prospect actually before us, won't solve them.
I would imagine that the upper-class and highly-educated Augustine had a
different relation to Latin and classical culture than the average
village-dwelling Berber. It's my impression that the life of rural
people in Latin America especially Indians is not well integrated with
the formal public institutions of those countries. And as to the Germans
and the Romans, there was eventually a great synthesis but it took quite
a while.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sat Jul 31 11:38:56 2004
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 11:38:56 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: I
Subject: Re: Slobo Winning!
Message-ID: <20040731153856.GA18488@vectra>
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As I said at the time (28 Mar 1999):
If a country is having a civil war because the southern part wants to
secede, and a couple thousand people die, and the union forces commit
outrages like setting people's houses on fire, *of course* the
international community should declare war on the union. I don't see
how anyone could have a problem with that.
On Sat, Jul 31, 2004 at 07:52:55AM -0700, I wrote:
> Yugoslavia didn't intervene in our civil war; why should we intervene
> in theirs?
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Tue Aug 3 15:55:24 2004
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 15:55:24 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: Kerry
Message-ID: <20040803195524.GB1413@vectra>
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I agree that Kerry is much more an abstract and pure form so what you
say makes sense. Clinton is more like Plato's tyrannical man. I'm sure I
have much less a sense of Kerry as a man or imitation thereof than you
do though. I'm a bit embarrassed in this kind of discussion by the
extent to which in general I ignore the particulars of the news. I'd
rather have a root canal than watch a major party convention for
example.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Wed Aug 4 07:08:35 2004
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 07:08:35 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: J
Subject: Re: your mail
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Hello,
Thanks for the note.
When I say that equality is "purely formal - and therefore empty" I'm
making a somewhat abstract philosophical point. I mean that if you say
you want equality you're not saying anything at all about what's good or
bad, you're just saying that things, conditions, people or whatever
should all be the same in some respect. For example, if you demand equal
education that demand could be met by making everyone's education the
same as yours, making your education the same as everyone else's,
inventing a new system of education and forcing it on everyone, keeping
everyone from having any education at all, killing everyone (in which
case there would be no educational inequalities), etc., etc., etc.
So equal education is not at all the same as good education. In fact, it
normally means bad education because it means everything has to be
forced to be the same. Your parents stayed married and worked hard
enough, controlled their impulses enough, and valued you and education
enough to send you to a Jesuit school. Was it good or bad for them to do
that? I say it was good and you should praise them for it, but if
equality is the standard it was bad and you should condemn your parents
because what they did meant you got a better education than other
children.
If you say equality is the great good then you have to say that parents
should never be able to do anything for their children because that
guarantees inequality. Parents are different so they'll do different
things for their children and that will be unequal. Parents shouldn't
even be allowed to encourage their children to study because if that's
allowed some will do it more than others and their children will have an
advantage. If you want equality then children should be brought up by
the state and subjected to a system of education that can be made
rigidly uniform so none will have an advantage. When they become adults
they still shouldn't be allowed to do anything for themselves or others,
because that will lead to more inequality. Everything should be run by a
huge bureaucracy and people should just do what they're told.
All of which might sound extreme but such things have actually been
tried in large parts of the world and they suggest what happens when
equality is treated as the key point. Justice may involve equality or it
may not. To say justice is simply equality is to say that justice should
be absolutely blind, that it should never take note of differences or
allow them to have an effect because no difference should ever make a
difference. It suggests a sort of steam-roller approach to government
that doesn't care what the result is or whether it's anything anyone
would ever want so long as nothing is higher than anything else. I don't
see how that can be good. Some equality is OK in particular settings or
as a subordinate principle. The tendency though has been to make it the
great standard of what's just and right, and I think that's wrong and
destructive.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Aug 6 08:09:59 2004
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 08:09:59 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: how liberalism is distinct from leftism--a reply to Horowitz
Message-ID: <20040806120959.GA16102@vectra>
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Hi,
I agree with the overall analysis. The distinction between moderate
leftism (liberalism) and leftist leftism doesn't last because moderation
can't support itself indefinitely when the demands of the authoritative
principles (freedom and equality) are unbounded and there's nothing
transcending them to keep them in their place. Moderation is a style and
not an independent self-sustaining principle. In the 30s there was the
tag that communists were democrats in a hurry. I think there was
something to that.
I'd say the process goes as follows:
1. Authoritative concept of the transcendent (i.e., established
religion) gets tossed.
2. That means that desire is the only thing that can really be
authoritative.
3. Therefore the political goods are first liberation of desire
(freedom) and then satisfaction of desire (promotion of prosperity, the
welfare state).
4. Since all desires are equally desires they are all equally
authoritative. Therefore equality becomes an additional standard. You
get social legislation and then the principle of "tolerance" -- that the
only legitimate desires are ones that accept the equal value of all
other desires that accept equality.
5. The foregoing is radically at odds with all existing societies but
nonetheless metaphysically necessary. Continuing progressive social
change therefore becomes an absolute demand of morality.
6. How fast and how radical you think the change should be depends on a
variety of personal factors -- how cautious you are, how concrete or
abstract your thinking is, how well-integrated you are with the current
set-up, etc.
7. The ultimate implications of the principles are the same in any
event, and are extremely radical. The cautious, well-integrated and
concretely-minded find that alarming, so they find ways of avoiding the
conclusion and refusing to recognize obvious implications of their own
principles. When radical implications nonetheless arrive (PC suppression
of thought, "gay marriage," etc.) they're reduced to insisting the
innovations are "mainstream" or instances of "social change," which
somehow makes it absurd or a sign of psychological disturbance to
contest.
In your email, by the way, you say first that equality is the leading
principle for liberals and then that liberty is.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Aug 6 10:21:38 2004
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 10:21:38 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: how liberalism is distinct from leftism--a reply to Horowitz
Message-ID: <20040806142138.GA16578@vectra>
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It seems to me the distinction between good liberalism and bad leftism
is one thing that defines neoconservatism. Of course Horowitz has other
more valuable sides, for example his refusal to accept the "no friends
to the Right" principle and his recognition of the pervasiveness of what
he calls the Left.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Aug 6 11:26:36 2004
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 11:26:36 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: how liberalism is distinct from leftism--a reply to Horowitz
Message-ID: <20040806152636.GA16688@vectra>
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It seems to me the Founding tradition did reject any concrete
transcendent authority. They might have had some abstract notion of God
but every man defined what God was for himself. And those private
definitions were explicitly made irrelevant to political participation
and the organization of government. So the transcendent was such in name
more than in function. As a social and practical matter it didn't exist.
You have to ask where the belief that liberty and equality are supreme
standards come from. It's easy to understand where they come from if you
assume that men first rejected the objectivity of the good and so
concluded at least implicitly that value is simply a matter of what's
desired. Otherwise it remains quite puzzling.
How you present things to DH of course brings in other issues.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Aug 6 12:52:54 2004
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 12:52:54 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: how liberalism is distinct from leftism--a reply to Horowitz
Message-ID: <20040806165254.GC16908@vectra>
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In what I said I should have spoken (as you spoke) of the "liberalism of
the Founding tradition" instead of simply "the Founding tradition." As a
concrete event the Founding included a great many things. One of them
was liberalism, which I identify as rejection of concrete transcendent
authority in favor of following one's own lights and therefore in the
end doing what one wants. If it doesn't have that feature it's not
recognizable as liberalism. And I do believe that liberalism, taken as a
final principle, is a problem.
I don't think recognizing a defect in the 1787 constitution makes "any
recognizable American conservatism" impossible. A society precedes its
formal written laws and fundamental conflicts can be resolved in various
directions.
As discussed, I think there's a difference between what the Founders
mostly intended and what they actually did. Most of them no doubt
intended a basically Christian society. They also no doubt mostly
intended for the federal government to be quite limited in its area of
authority. That wasn't the effect of what they did though. The "no
religious test" and "no establishment" clauses made one's religion
irrelevant to one's relation to the fed government, and since the fed
government has the armed forces and the final power of adjudication the
principles on which it's based in the end become fundamental throughout
society. Religion becomes simply private, which means socially
non-existent, which is a problem since man is social. If God isn't
recognized as in principle the final authority then there's a problem.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Aug 6 12:55:52 2004
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 12:55:52 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: carol.iannone@att.net
Subject: Re: how liberalism is distinct from leftism--a reply to Horowitz
Message-ID: <20040806165552.GD16908@vectra>
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If you have some sort of established religion then you have a
transcendent that's concretely authoritative in the sense that it
differs practically from the thoughts of each man what's good, true,
etc.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Aug 6 13:07:44 2004
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 13:07:44 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: how liberalism is distinct from leftism--a reply to Horowitz
Message-ID: <20040806170744.GB17306@vectra>
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I had a combination of things in mind -- the "religious test" clause,
various statements e.g. Washington to Jews and Jefferson to Baptists,
and also the nature of the federal govt as a highest political authority
that holds final legal authority and has the final power of the sword
that's set up for very limited final purposes -- basically, commerce and
national defense.
jk
On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 12:45:30PM -0400, L wrote:
>
>
> Also, if by "explicitly made irrelevant" you're referring to the First
> Amendment, I can't agree. The First Amendment did not say that
> Christianity, religion, trascendent belief were irrelevant to politics.
> It said that Congress could not set up one denomination as the official
> denomination for the United States. The fact that deference to religion
> has been expected in public life until late in the 20th century and
> atheism has not been tolerated in public life until very recently shows
> that your statement, "those private definitions were explicitly made
> irrelevant to political participation and the organization of
> government," is simply wrong.
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Aug 6 13:36:42 2004
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 13:36:42 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: how liberalism is distinct from leftism--a reply to Horowitz
Message-ID: <20040806173642.GA17469@vectra>
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I don't recall saying that "the Founding was no good from the start,
because the Founding contained as one of its elements liberalism."
You spoke of the "older American liberalism of the Founding tradition."
I'm not sure what you would include in that. I would think that any sort
of liberalism would include following one's own lights in spiritual
matters and rejection of the duty of submitting to external
ecclesiastical authority in such things.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Aug 6 15:25:48 2004
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 15:25:48 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: how liberalism is distinct from leftism--a reply to Horowitz
Message-ID: <20040806192548.GA17554@vectra>
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But the "liberalism of the Founding tradition" is also different
language than most conservatives would use. Expressions like "the
American tradition of freedom" and so on have been much more common.
The language you used tied the War for Independence and the 1787
Constitution to a much broader tradition of Western thought. That made
sense to me. When something -- like American political society -- has
evidently gone wrong in some basic way it makes sense to look at it and
discuss it in a broader setting. American society after all is one form
of human society, and Americans are Westerners and men and their
thoughts and history are a chapter of the thoughts and history of the
West and of humanity.
You say the Founding was defective. I try to identify the defect. To
identify a defect as a defect, and say why it's sufficient to cause
profound problems today, it helps to talk about it in simple logical
terms that display what's amiss with it.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Aug 6 17:08:11 2004
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 17:08:11 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: how liberalism is distinct from leftism--a reply to Horowitz
Message-ID: <20040806210811.GA18233@vectra>
References: <20040806120959.GA16102@vectra> <015701c47bc7$026ca740$e02bfea9@h6l3p> <20040806152636.GA16688@vectra> <018401c47bcf$7f1759e0$e02bfea9@h6l3p> <20040806165254.GC16908@vectra> <01bc01c47bd9$7575f180$e02bfea9@h6l3p> <20040806173642.GA17469@vectra> <01d601c47bdd$9b207140$e02bfea9@h6l3p> <20040806192548.GA17554@vectra> <024e01c47bf1$0e6ee560$e02bfea9@h6l3p>
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"No good" and "America as a failed experiment" are much too strong. I do
think it's a mistake to overplay America as a creed. The War for
Independence and the 1787 constitution didn't create America, which
already existed as a society before then, and like any society America
precedes its positive legal institutions. I think in any tradition you
have to look back at the acts of the past and value some of them and
some aspects of them more than others. Even those that are admirable in
many ways like the writing of the constitution have limitations and you
can't make a religion of them.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Fri Aug 6 21:30:06 2004
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 21:30:06 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: carol.iannone@att.net
Cc: L ,
Paul Cella
Subject: Re: how liberalism is distinct from leftism--a reply to Horowitz
Message-ID: <20040807013006.GA19120@vectra>
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Apart from blame though there's the question whether a particular choice
they made should guide us today or whether that was then and this is now
so a different formulation is needed and things they thought they could
do without (e.g., some sort of formal public recognition of a higher
religious authority) now turn out to be necessary in the long run or
under current circumstances.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Sun Aug 8 16:40:22 2004
Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 16:40:22 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: E
Subject: Re: weird science
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Doesn't make much sense to me. Every possible government is based on
some belief thought to justify killing and dying, because killing is
what governments do and dying is what they have to be able to ask people
to do if they're going to survive. Every society without exception is
faith-based. If Rob wants to be left alone the type of Christianity
we've had in America is a better candidate than the kind of PC socialism
Kerry favors. I think it's crazy to say the Taliban is religion and what
Bush believes is religion, so they're the same. You might as well say
that Stalin is this-worldly leftish politics and Kerry is this-worldly
leftish politics, so they're the same too.
Jim
From kalb@aya.yale.edu Mon Aug 9 08:32:29 2004
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 08:32:29 -0400
From: Jim Kalb
To: L
Subject: Re: Addendum to Liberalism and Leftism: How LBJ fits into this
Message-ID: <20040809123229.GA29213@vectra>
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Basically it seems to me that a classical liberal is someone who thinks
liberty and equality are opposed and takes the side of liberty. A
leftist doesn't think they're opposed. He thinks liberty without
equality is oppression -- a situation in which well-placed people can do
what they want and not-well-placed people just have to accept whatever
the results are. And a trad conservative doesn't think they're opposed
because he asks what it means to choose liberty as the supreme goal of
social order and answers that it means that no goal is to be given
official preference because all are equally good. So from that
perspective liberty as a supreme goal is a consequence of equality and
the two are not in principle opposed.
I think it's difficult for classical liberals to see any of that because
they view liberty and equality as different ultimate values that people
happen to have and don't look farther for the common understanding of
the world both values reflect.
jk
--
Jim Kalb
Turnabout: http://jkalb.org
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
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