Agnostic-Looking for Liberals In The Postmodern Wilderness
This blog is still welcoming critiques of reformers, progressives and liberators who seem pretty certain of what they are against, if not always certain, just what exactly, they are for. I could be persuaded to become a liberal, on certain matters, if I thought that the people seeking to change our current traditions, customs, and laws understood just which habits of mind, character and ideas they will rely upon for our freedoms going forward.
Which knowledge should become the basis to guide the moral foundations for new laws and the rules which we all must follow? Which customs should become the basis for new arrangements, gradually hardening into traditions?
Who should be in charge of these institutions going forward and how should their authority be limited?
A 20th century address of some of those claims to knowledge:
‘But my object is not to refute Rationalism: its errors are interesting only in so far as they reveal its character. We are considering not merely the truth of a doctrine, but the significance of an intellectual fashion in the history of post-Renaissance Europe. And the questions we must try to answer are: What is the generation of this belief in the sovereignty of technique? When springs this supreme confidence in human ‘reason’ thus interpreted? What is the provenance, the context of this intellectual character? And in what circumstances and with what effect did it come to invade European politics?’
Oakeshott, Michael. “Rationalism In Politics“. Rationalism In Politics And Other Essays. Liberty Fund, 1991. Print. (Pg 17).
The Puritan past of Boston directs many Bostonians, nowadays, into acting like members of something like a church of high-liberalism. Very buttoned up behavior but not necessarily the same holy denials.
I would be more comfortable leaving my freedoms to many high liberal priests if I thought they were more competent.
I’m not sure many people have thought these changes through:
‘The effect of modern liberal doctrine has been to hand over the facts of moral and political life into the maladroit hands of social and political scientists, and the results have been intellectually disastrous. For moral issues, shuffled into the logician’s column, turn into formalized imperatives; transferred by the device of generic man to the sociologist, they turn into culturally determined norms. As likely as not, the psychologist will regard them as neurotic symptoms. Politics similarly loses its autonomy, dissolved into a set of reactions to supposed external causes. The criterion of a “value-free science” is no doubt scientific in excluding propaganda from intellectual investigation. But it is merely superstitious when it turns “values”—in fact the subject matter of ethics and politics—into an intellectual red light district into which no thinker may stray, on pain of losing his respectability.’
Minogue, Ken. “The Liberal Mind“. Rationalism In Politics And Other Essays. Liberty Fund, 1991. Print. (Pg 17).
The actual Communists, committed Socialists, and narrow dogmatists, well, they’re pretty up-front about their intentions and aims. Once the rational ends of man are known within these doctrines, every single one of us becomes the means to reach these ends through radical revolution, the logic unfolding towards its murderous outcomes.
Apart from people pursuing defunct ideologies, frankly, I think most people go along to get along. If enough truths about a particular injustice emerge through radical protest, social change, and appeals to reason and non-reason, then many everyday people slowly follow the logic of social reform.
There are moral gains and there are freedoms, but they don’t come without costs.
Many of these changes weren’t driven by deep knowlege claims nor ‘science,’ but rather by committed social and political actors with visions of the future.
Something I think might help unite the Anglosphere, even though I think America might still have the largest stores of healthy religious conservative tradition:
In dealing with the Enlightenment, frankly, I’m a little more comfortable with the English/Scottish liberal tradition than the German idealism found on the Continent.
A quick quotation. Leo Strauss On John Locke:
‘Hobbes identified the rational life with the life dominated by the fear of fear, by the fear which relieves us from fear. Moved by the same spirit, Locke identifies the rational life with the life dominated by the pain which relieves pain. Labor takes the place of the art which imitates nature; for labor is, in the words of Hegel, a negative attitude toward nature. The starting point of human efforts is misery: the state of nature is a state of wretchedness. The way toward happiness is a movement away from the state of nature, a movement away from nature: the negation of nature is the way toward happiness. And if the movement toward happiness is the actuality of freedom, freedom is negativity .’
Strauss, Leo. Natural Right And History. Chicago: The University Of Chicago Press, 1965. (Pg 250).
According to Strauss, the rational life for an individual, from Hobbes to Locke, is defined negatively, respectively as either a removal from fear or a removal from pain. And more broadly: Strauss has Locke remaking Hobbes’ more intrusive Leviathan into a smaller role for government: to secure them in their lives, liberty and estate (property). The key formulation of nature here, though, remains the same.
The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy elaborates:
‘Leo Strauss, and many of his followers, take rights to be paramount, going so far as to portray Locke’s position as essentially similar to that of Hobbes. They point out that Locke defended a hedonist theory of human motivation (Essay 2.20) and claim that he must agree with Hobbes about the essentially self-interested nature of human beings. Locke, they claim, only recognizes natural law obligations in those situations where our own preservation is not in conflict, further emphasizing that our right to preserve ourselves trumps any duties we may have.
On the other end of the spectrum, more scholars have adopted the view of Dunn, Tully, and Ashcraft that it is natural law, not natural rights, that is primary. They hold that when Locke emphasized the right to life, liberty, and property he was primarily making a point about the duties we have toward other people: duties not to kill, enslave, or steal. Most scholars also argue that Locke recognized a general duty to assist with the preservation of mankind, including a duty of charity to those who have no other way to procure their subsistence (Two Treatises 1.42). These scholars regard duties as primary in Locke because rights exist to insure that we are able to fulfill our duties.’
And of course, there’s this problem:
‘Another point of contestation has to do with the extent to which Locke thought natural law could, in fact, be known by reason.’
So what does Strauss offer instead as a possibility for man and nature? Nature revealing itself to man without the use of his reason…or through his reason without a lot of Enlightenment metaphysics? Or through some return to Natural Right?
Any thoughts and comments are welcome. Here’s another quote:
That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
From the Declaration Of Independence.
Variations On A Neo-Classic Theme
It’s not a landscape from too near.
Like sorrows, they require some distance
Not to bulk up larger than they are.
The risk is, backing off too far.
But finger trees are hand from here.
The wounds of mines, the growth of pines
Both appear and disappear.
There’s but a shagginess remains,
An olive or a purple haze,
That nice, unshaven atmosphere
Of averages faces, average hills.
Whatever goats are dancing there,
Being all invisible,
Animate objects of a will
Contemplative without desire,
Suffer no vertigo at all
But dance until our spirits tire,
Or dine forever, or until
The speculative garbage fail–
Tin cans and comic books–which small
Imaginary campers there
Forgot against this very hour.
Via Mick Hartley:
‘No great surprise that Argentina cancelled their friendly against Israel’
As for the Argentinian regime, such shenanigans may be representative of its basic corruption, dysfunction, and an alignment against U.S. and Israeli interests. Global politicking.
Geo-political trade-winds can blow, and political leaders can suck.
Via Mick Hartley via Forward: ‘Take It From A British Jew: Anti-Zionism Leads To Anti-Semitism.‘ Israel, Iran, & Peace: Andrew Sullivan Responds To Charges Of Potential Anti-Semitism…Repost-Henry Kissinger & George Schulz Via The WSJ: ‘The Iran Deal And Its Consequences’ Protests Within Iran, Donald Trump, And Visions Of Political Order-A Few Links And Thoughts
Via Twitter, Venezuela is still in tatters:
Good actor, but political moron, Sean Penn, has been in a helicopter with dynamic Bolivarian Bonapartist Hugo Chavez.
If you had to count up the radically chic useful idiots here in the U.S., you might get 15% of the vote?:
As posted, from the NY Times on the current mayor of New York City:
‘Bill de Blasio, then 26, went to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine in the middle of a war between left and right. But he returned with something else entirely: a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.
and:
‘His activism did not stop. In the cramped Lower Manhattan headquarters of the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, where he volunteered, Mr. de Blasio learned to cause a stir. He and a ragtag team of peace activists, Democrats, Marxists and anarchists attempted to bring attention to a Central American cause that, after the Sandinistas lost power in a 1990 election, was fading from public view. “The Nicaraguan struggle is our struggle,” said a poster designed by the group’
One More Revolution.
—
Anthony Daniels (Theodore Dalrymple) on ‘The Second-Worst Poet In English:’
As for Cumberland Clark’s poetry:
‘It is wonderfully, gloriously, hilariously awful’
As for getting right what an entire intellectual class, given to bouts of useful idiocy, still often gets wrong:
‘He was aware of the terror, the mass executions, the famine, the wanton destruction, the lying propaganda, the tyranny, and the universal spying that Bolshevism instituted from the first.’
You dare not speak such truth amongst adherents!:
I forthwith shall consult with my own dynamic, courageous fatherly leader, for all of life’s problems:
Luck is not chance (1350)
Luck is not chance—
It’s Toil—
Fortune’s expensive smile
Is earned—
The Father of the Mine
Is that old-fashioned Coin
We spurned—
To A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That’s clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.
Design
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth–
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth–
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?–
If design govern in a thing so small.
Dream big, Californians, but plant your dreams in real gardens.
Victor Davis Hanson offers some suggestions which may or may not guide policy on a mid to longer-time horizon (water projects, roads, and an awareness of the economic and cultural bifucation which has occurred).
The short-term’s looking messy, indeed. The mid- and longer- terms, of course, are still in doubt:
As posted:
Part of what’s happened is cultural:
Louis Menand’s piece at the New Yorker: ‘Out Of Bethlehem:‘ (he’s still dealing with the idea of multiculturalism).
The radicalization of Joan Didion:
‘After the Old Sacramento moment, Didion came to see the whole pioneer mystique as bogus from the start. The cultivation of California was not the act of rugged pioneers, she decided. It was the act of the federal government, which built the dams and the weirs and the railroads that made the state economically exploitable, public money spent on behalf of private business. Didion called it “the subsidized monopolization” of the state.’
Much is downstream of culture:
‘When Robert J. Samuelson published a Newsweek column last month arguing that high-speed rail is “a perfect example of wasteful spending masquerading as a respectable social cause,” he cited cost figures and potential ridership to demonstrate that even the rosiest scenarios wouldn’t justify the investment. He made a good, rational case — only to have it completely undermined by the evocative photograph the magazine chose to accompany the article.’
In my experience, it’s not much about economics (those rationalizations tend to come later), but more about many people finding solidarity, common-cause, identity and group-identity through a set of shared interests and ideals. My major complaint is that basic human needs met under such ideals become met through politics and often non-delimited theories of political power.
To say nothing of other people’s money.
Utopias, progressivism and new-age explorations still have to answer to time, truth and reality.
From California’s High Speed Rail Authority Site:
‘California high-speed rail will connect the mega-regions of the state, contribute to economic development and a cleaner environment, create jobs and preserve agricultural and protected lands’
What could go wrong?
———–
Much left and left-liberal idealism finds expression through high-speed rail: If you build it, the ideal society will come.
Unions and union-elected government representatives tend to get contracts, money, power and influence, if they play the game right. Many environmentalists and environmental groups can get contracts, money, power and influence, if they play the game right. Everyone somewhat invested in the ideal of a better, shared, collectivist society (especially those further left into anti-capitalism and diversified into identity groups by ‘race, gender and class’) might get money, power and influence…if they play the game right. The winners aren’t always so ‘sharing.’
As I see it, much political stability and individual liberties are lost as these political and social arrangements become reflective of both actual human nature as it is and the economic scarcity of reality.
Update And Repost-From The Spiked Review Of Books: ‘Delving Into The Mind Of The Technocrat’
Dream big: Via Reason: ‘California’s Public Transportation Sinkhole’
A great city deserves great art extravaganzas…: L.A.’s New Public Art Piece ‘The Levitated Mass,’ Or As The American Interest Puts It: ‘A Moving Rock’
…California Dreamers From The Atlantic-A Brief Review Of Kevin Starr’s History Of California
The people who promise solutions to poverty and homlessness seem to be engaged in a utopian cost-shifting exercise which favors their interests and overlooks crime, violence and personal responsbility…hardly a way to balance the budget: Repost-Heather MacDonald At The City Journal: ‘The Sidewalks Of San Francisco’…
Some concentrated wealth on top, a stalled legislature with members who know how to play the game…and a service sector beneath…that probably can’t go on forever: …From The WSJ: ‘Joel Kotkin: The Great California Exodus’…
Full article here. (Originally posted ten years ago now, and I suspect more people are receptive to the problems raised…).
The basic idea: Many young and young(ish) American men are free of the social obligations to commit to women, get married, have kids, and thus languish in a suspended state of man-childishness.
How did they get here? By the radical and excessive cultural changes the last 40 years have brought about: I’m assuming the excesses of feminism, the excesses of equality.. which form a solid part of majority pop culture opinion and have often been institutionalized…
“Young men especially need a culture that can help them define worthy aspirations. Adults don’t emerge. They’re made.”
Hymowitz is arguing that the culture is failing young men in an important way, and it’s doing so by abandoning certain cultural values and the depth and wisdom those values sustain.
Do you find the argument persuasive?
Addition: Emily Yoffee at Slate picks up on the same idea: adandoning the institution of marriage does have consequences for all of us.
See Also: Kay Hymowitz In The The City Journal: Love In The Time Of Darwinism
From Will Wilkinson-A Response To Kay Hymowitz: ‘The “Menaissance” and Its Dickscontents’…Kay Hymowitz In The The City Journal: Love In The Time Of Darwinism…Kay Hymowitz In The City Journal: Child-Man In The Promised Land?…Kay Hymowitz At The City Journal: ‘How Brooklyn Got Its Groove Back’
From The Chronicle Of Higher Ed Via A & L Daily: Christina Hoff Sommers “Persistent Myths In Feminist Scholarship”…Wendy Kaminer At The Atlantic: ‘Sexual Harassment And The Loneliness Of The Civil Libertarian Feminist’
The Groundhog
In June, amid the golden fields,
I saw a groundhog lying dead.
Dead lay he; my senses shook,
And mind outshot our naked frailty.
There lowly in the vigorous summer
His form began its senseless change,
And made my senses waver dim
Seeing nature ferocious in him.
Inspecting close his maggots’ might
And seething cauldron of his being,
Half with loathing, half with a strange love,
I poked him with an angry stick.
The fever arose, became a flame
And Vigour circumscribed the skies,
Immense energy in the sun,
And through my frame a sunless trembling.
My stick had done nor good nor harm.
Then stood I silent in the day
Watching the object, as before;
And kept my reverence for knowledge
Trying for control, to be still,
To quell the passion of the blood;
Until I had bent down on my knees
Praying for joy in the sight of decay.
And so I left; and I returned
In Autumn strict of eye, to see
The sap gone out of the groundhog,
But the bony sodden hulk remained.
But the year had lost its meaning,
And in intellectual chains
I lost both love and loathing,
Mured up in the wall of wisdom.
Another summer took the fields again
Massive and burning, full of life,
But when I chanced upon the spot
There was only a little hair left,
And bones bleaching in the sunlight
Beautiful as architecture;
I watched them like a geometer,
And cut a walking stick from a birch.
It has been three years, now.
There is no sign of the groundhog.
I stood there in the whirling summer,
My hand capped a withered heart,
And thought of China and of Greece,
Of Alexander in his tent;
Of Montaigne in his tower,
Of Saint Theresa in her wild lament.
Every summer…
