Separation
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle
Everything I do is stitched with its color
Every six months or so…
Month: November 2016
A Few Links On The Death Of Castro
Many folks have explained why Communist revolutions begin in violence and end in such misery, and why so many followers cling to these doctrines with a sort of religious fervor, selectively blind hope, and continued loyalty.
Or at least some folks held their ground and documented the mess:
–Robert Conquest At The Hoover Institution: ‘When Goodness Won’
–A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”…Appeasement Won’t Do-Via A Reader, ‘Michael Ignatieff Interview With Isaiah Berlin’
Michael Moynihan takes a look at how some in the Western media and in positions of influence have handled the death of what is essentially, a brutal dictator:
‘The preceding days have demonstrated that information peddled by Castro’s legion of academic and celebrity apologists has deeply penetrated the mainstream media consciousness, with credulous reporting sundry revolutionary “successes” of the regime: not so good on free speech, but oh-so-enviable on health care and education.’
and:
‘And how does Reuters describe Castro? After 50 years of brutal one-party rule, to apply the appellation “dictator” seems a rather contentious issue: “Vilified by opponents as a totalitarian dictator, Castro is admired in many Third World nations for standing up to the United States and providing free education and health care.” And again, we return to education and health care.’
Democratic socialism, and social democracy, are often just the distance some folks have migrated from their previous ideological commitments (tolerating market reforms and ‘neo-liberal’ economic policy out of necessity, not necessarily a change of heart nor mind).
For others it may be the distance they’ve unconsciously drifted towards such ideas more recently.
For other brave souls, it may be the distance required to stick one’s fingers into the political breezes which blow over the floor of the EU, in order to ‘stay engaged’:
Remember, this is the non-elected President of the EU Commission.
With the death of #FidelCastro, the world has lost a man who was a hero for many. https://t.co/u0ULZoG8Fl
— Jean-Claude Juncker (@JunckerEU) November 26, 2016
Michael Totten relays an anecdote here:
‘He told me about what happened at his sister’s elementary school a few years after Castro took over.
“Do you want ice cream and dulces (sweets),” his sister’s teacher, a staunch Fidelista, asked the class.
“Yes!” the kids said.
“Okay, then,” she said. “Put your hands together, bow your heads, and pray to God that he brings you ice cream and dulces.”
Nothing happened, of course. God did not did not provide the children with ice cream or dulces.
“Now,” the teacher said. “Put your hands together and pray to Fidel that the Revolution gives you ice cream and sweets.”
The kids closed their eyes and bowed their heads. They prayed to Fidel Castro. And when the kids raised their heads and opened their eyes, ice cream and dulces had miraculously appeared on the teacher’s desk.’
Gloria Estefan offers a window into Cuban culture, music, honor, and immigration as it mixes with American culture.
As previously posted:
Michael Moynihan reviewed Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’ which praised the Cuban Health Care System.
Christopher Hitchens took a helicopter ride with Sean Penn, and that tracksuit-wearing strongman of the people, Hugo Chavez-Hugo Boss:
It’s a long way out of socialist and revolutionary solidarity, which continually occupies the South American mind. One more revolution: Adam Kirsch takes a look at Mario Vargas Llosa. The Dream Of The Peruvian.
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The End Of History? –Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’
Related On This Site: What Will De Blasio’s New York Look Like?-Some Links…Sandinistas At The NY Times: ‘A Mayoral Hopeful Now, de Blasio Was Once a Young Leftist’…Two Links On Diane Ravitch & School Reform
Happy Thanksgiving 2016
All the best to you and yours.
Nightmare on Thanksgiving Street:
Some Tuesday Links-EM Drive, Climate Predictions & Academic Seepage
-Hey, it seems to work so far:
According to the law, for a system to produce thrust, it has to push something out the other way. The EM Drive doesn’t do this.
Yet in test after test it continues to work. Last year, NASA’s Eagleworks Laboratory team got their hands on an EM Drive to try to figure out once and for all what was going on.
Jerry Pournelle has a link (scroll down) Peer reviewed, eh?
Ok…let’s go to Mars faster than planned…but hold on, seasteader types…
How about test-pilots?
Via Jerry Pournelle, Bob Zubrin on the some of those climate change predictions (Romantic roots, Rationalist lights, collectivist beliefs that can veer into the deterministic, anti-capitalist, and radical):
Let’s be a little more realistic about doomsday, shall we?
Fossil fuels actually seem to be greening the planet:
These wouldn’t be the types Theodore Dalrymple might have been discussing?
Group Preferences: Opiate Of The Intellectuals’
What are they telling me my moral concerns and actions should be today?:
‘Clearly the example of a transsexual Muslim airline pilot was meant as a reductio ad absurdum and not as a real or actual concern.’
Repost-From The American Spectator: ‘Environmentalism and the Leisure Class’-Still Pretty Relevant
Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty: From George Monbiot: ‘How Freedom Became Tyranny’
If A Field Has ‘Studies’ After It, It’s Probably Not Necessary-Michael Totten Reviews Sohrab Ahmari At The City Journal: ‘The New Socialist Realists’
This blog is looking more like ‘The New Criterion‘ every day…
Full review here. Sohrab Ahmari’s The New Philistines here.
Totten:
‘Ahmari was inspired to write The New Philistines after attending a spectacularly unpleasant performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at William Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London. The theater’s new director, Emma Rice, detests the original Shakespeare. The Bard’s plays, she says, are “tedious” and “inaccessible.” Perhaps, with such a dim view of the source material and its creator, she should have taken a different job, but instead she chose to make Shakespeare more “relevant.” “Relevance meant rewriting the play,” Ahmari writes, “and not just rewriting, but bad rewriting.”’
Oh boy.
As this blog has been arguing for over a decade, a lot of modern art is pretty good, but beyond the current political/ideological squabbles, there sure are a lot of poseurs making crap.
–A Bleak, Modern House-Four Poems
The creep of vacuous ideas and lack of any apparent talent/technique is common, and it can be hard to tell where celebrity, marketing and branding bullshit ends, and ‘art’ begins:
-Ah, Look At All The Lonely People-‘Jeff Koons Is Back’ Via Vanity Fair
What is this lady doing?:
Some quotes for you, dear Reader:
‘In the shorter term, postmodernism has caused an impoverishment of much of the academic humanities, both in the quality of the work being done and the civility of the debates. The sciences have been less affected and are relatively healthy. The social sciences are mixed.
I am optimistic, though, for a couple of reasons. One is that pomo was able to entrench itself in the second half of the twentieth century in large part because first-rate intellectuals were mostly dismissive of it and focused on their own projects. But over the last ten years, after pomo’s excesses became blatant, there has been a vigorous counter-attack and pomo is now on the defensive. Another reason for optimism is that, as a species of skepticism, pomo is ultimately empty and becomes boring. Eventually intellectually-alert individuals get tired of the same old lines and move on. It is one thing, as the pomo can do well, to critique other theories and tear them down. But that merely clears the field for the next new and intriguing theory and for the next generation of energetic young intellectuals.
So while the postmodernism has had its generation or two, I think we’re ready for the next new thing – a strong, fresh, and positive approach to the big issues, one that of course takes into account the critical weapons the pomo have used well over the last while’
We’ll see about that…
Roger Scruton’s words struck me when I read them years ago:
“In the days when the humanities involved knowledge of classical languages and an acquaintance with German scholarship, there was no doubt that they required real mental discipline, even if their point could reasonably be doubted. But once subjects like English were admitted to a central place in the curriculum, the question of their validity became urgent. And then, in the wake of English came the pseudo-humanities—women’s studies, gay studies and the like—which were based on the assumption that, if English is a discipline, so too are they.”
“And since there is no cogent justification for women’s studies that does not dwell upon the subject’s ideological purpose, the entire curriculum in the humanities began to be seen in ideological terms.“
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Apart from the rare genius, it seems the arts tend to ferment in groups and schools, made up of individuals with their own ideas, reacting to each other and events; reacting to their own developing talents and finding out through trial and error what works within some semblance of a tradition.
See: ‘Tradition And The Individual Talent’
Culture matters, in the sense that the value a civilization chooses to place in one activity over another can dramatically affect outcomes for that particular activity; a framework emphasizing and incentivizing the activity to live on in hearts and minds of individuals.
Perhaps Modern Art just needs to be put into broader contexts, given deeper roots which can nourish the talent already being born.
Some people are looking for ‘epistemologies:’
Daniel Dennett: ‘Postmodernism And Truth’
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No, I don’t need a movie explained to me in terms of ‘masculinity’ or feminist doctrine, any more than I need it to tell me to read Leviticus, or be a good Christian. I like good composition.
No, I don’t need a cartoon to reflect ‘solidarity’ around a particular political figure or set of political ideals, you fool!
Good art is usually beyond all that, and makes the viewer question/forget such things.
As previously posted:
Why not just put a few algorithms to work in writing those artist statements?
Bathe in the bathos of a warming world:
A reader sends a link to a SF Gate review of poet Jorie Graham’s ‘Sea Change:‘
‘In “Sea Change,” Graham becomes Prospero, casting spells by spelling out her thoughts to merge with ours, and with the voices of the elements. The result is a mingling of perceptions rather than a broadcasting of opinions. Instead of analysis, the poems encourage emotional involvement with the drastic changes overwhelming us, overwhelm- ing the planet.’
and:
‘Strengths and weaknesses, flows and ebbs, yet every poem in “Sea Change” bears memorable lines, with almost haunting (if we truly have but 10 years to “fix” global warming) images of flora and fauna under siege. Jorie Graham has composed a swan song for Earth.’
Oh boy.
What are these poems being asked to do?
See Also On This Site: Philosopher Of Art Denis Dutton of the Arts & Letters Daily says the arts and Darwin can be sucessfully synthesized: Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’
Stanley Fish also says keep politics out of academia: From The Stanley Fish Blog: Ward Churchill Redux…
Scruton again has deep insight, but will Christian religious idealism have to bump heads with Islamic religious idealism?: From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism
Thanks to iri5
Sunday Poem-Robert Hayden
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering,breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Speech And The Desire To Control The Language, Thoughts And Minds Of Others-Jordan Peterson Talking With Gad Saad
We are seeing some people in the social sciences use quantitative methodologies to try and understand what’s been going on in many universities, with regard to political philosophy, ideology, and collectivist movements.
The modern fields of psychology, evo and moral psychology, sociology, economics, etc all now seem to have practitioners addressing some threats that (R)eason enthroned can pose to all of our liberties, or at least, the radical and revolutionary ideologues who often profess Reason/Anti-Reason as their guide; seeking immediate social change and influence.
What kinds of people join social justice movements and believe/claim to believe righteously and truly in such causes? How much of what they say is true?
How might they fit into a broader framework of ‘-isms,’ often seeking radical equality (of outcome) and collective liberation from dominatory oppression? What potential cost is there to all of our liberties, traditions, and institutions regarding this particular raft of ideas?
—-
Intellectually, as this blog has noted, there is often a watered-down Hegelianism at work in many movements seeking radical and revolutionary freedom (the master/slave dialectic and the absolute idealism providing intellectual foundation for much of what is called cultural relativism these days, which provided foundation for the Marxism and post-Marxism found in such movements).
Here’s Peterson being questioned by a group as to the merits of his ideas:
As to demands for the use of non-gendered pronouns (which is currently trending): I will say that I have sympathy for people on the margins, people with few options and not many opportunities, people who face uphill battles, and sometimes genuine threats of physical violence.
That said, I don’t enjoy the idea of playing a game I can’t win. More speech, not less, is the means to arrive at more truth. Allowing the people you actually fear the freedom to express their ideas allows more sunlight into civil society. I loathe the use of force and the desire to control the thoughts, language and minds of others.
I loathe it even more when it is used as part of a program which attacks our institutions and the legitimate authority required to maintain our institutions, and thus, many of our freedoms.
I most loathe it when it is used to treat other individuals as objects of scorn and oppression, or to shout them down in righteous anger.
Have you learned nothing?
***One rebuttal to the above, of course, would be Hayekian: There is no knowledge that would allow any person or group of persons to centrally plan a language any more than there is knowledge for anyone to centrally plan an economy (yes, you can compile a dictionary a la Samuel Johnson but, no, Esperanto is probably something of a top-down, rationalistic pipe-dream).
As to those Canadian Human Rights Commissions, as previously posted:
Here are {Ezra} Levant’s opening statements during his investigation:
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Levant was fighting what he saw as an infringement upon his freedom of speech by the Human Rights Commission of Alberta. As editor of the Western Standard, Levant published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, and found himself investigated by, in his words, “a kangaroo court.”
Originally, a letter was written by Syed Soharwardy, an imam living in Alberta, to the Alberta Human Rights Commission. Soharwardy claimed that the cartoons were morally offensive to the religion of Islam. Levant believed his decision to publish the cartoons was protected by Canadian law, and that Soharwardy found a path to legal action (at the expense of Canadian taxpayers) through the Human Rights Commission because no one else would take Soharwardy’s claims seriously.
One of Levant’s main concerns seems to be the the way in which someone like Soharwardy, (with unchallenged religious beliefs, and illiberal ideas of social freedom), has infringed upon his freedoms through an institution like the Alberta Human Rights Commission.
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Heading towards a theme, here’s Mark Steyn discussing complaints brought against Macleans, Canada’s largest publication, by the President of the Canadian Islamic Congress (who sent three representatives) to TVOntario. They were upset at the pieces Steyn had published there. The complaints went through the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for alleged “Islamophobia” and “promoting hate:”
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Pretty heated.
Again, the focus here is not whether Islam is a religion whose followers would eventually clash with the idea of separation of church and state, and/or identify with a larger global pan-Muslim population at the expense of their adopted countries. That’s a different debate. We know that here in America, they are granted a space created by our Constitution for freedom of religion in the public square and no specific religious test for office. They must follow our laws and are protected by them. Living and working alongside one another has its benefits and I generally favor the melting pot approach.
The debate here focuses on the effect that multiculturalism, the human rights crowd, and the public sentiment behind them can have upon freedom of expression when Human Rights Commissions are allowed legal recourse to settle this kind of dispute. This is one of the consequences of those ideas in action, and it’s not exactly liberal. It’s the multicultural solution, and it can be absolutely chilling on speech, placing onerous financial burdens on citizens, and it can create a sort of shadow court with aims of its own (if not jurisdiction) operating alongside the regular courts.
We’re not anywhere near Choudary territory yet, but remember that Nidal Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter, had some problems with “workplace violence”. Most multiculturalists really don’t see a problem with their approach.
***A friend points out that the illiberal tendencies of the Muslim complainants in both cases and the illiberalism of the multiculturalists is a good fit. Just don’t be a Canadian on the receiving end.
***This also helps to confirm the libertarian contention that libertarians are the true classical liberals, and modern liberalism has followed the logic of moral relativism, a lot of Continental, New Left, neo-Marxist influences in feminism and race theory which lead to an unhealthy desire to control and be controlled by the State, which will grow larger and larger.
Also On This Site: From The BBC-Kurt Westergaard: ‘Cartoonist Attacker In Danish Court’
Repost-From Beautiful Horizons: ‘Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ramadan at the 92nd Street Y’
Virtual Philosophy has a series on free speech and some links and notes to J.S. Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ among others. Is Mill’s utilitarianism enough?: From virtual philosopher: ‘Free Speech: notes and links for course at Free Word Centre’
A British Muslim tells his story, suggesting that classical liberalism wouldn’t be a bad idea…as a more entrenched radical British Left and Muslim immigration don’t mix too well: From Kenanmalik.com: ‘Introduction: How Salman Rushdie Changed My Life’… Via YouTube: ‘Christopher Hitchens Vs. Ahmed Younis On CNN (2005)’…
Free speech (used both well and unwell) meets offended Muslims: ‘Mohammad Cartoonist Lars Vilks Headbutted‘During Lecture’……From The OC Jewish Experience: ‘UC Irvine Muslim Student Union Suspended’…From Volokh: ‘”South Park” Creators Warned (Threatened) Over Mohammed’
Repost-Eugene Volokh At The National Review: ‘Multiculturalism: For or Against?’…Theodore Dalrymple Still Attacking Multi-Culturalism In Britain…From The Volokh Conspiracy: Multiculturalism As A Traditional American Value
Roger Scruton suggests Islam is incompatible with Western Freedom: From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…
Kenan Malik In The Spiked Review Of Books: ‘Twenty Years On: Internalizing The Fatwa’-Salman Rushdie
Via Sound Politics: ‘360 Degrees Of Mt. St. Helens’
Mention Of Oakeshott On Trump And The Managerial State-A Few Links
-Via Marginal Revolution: Joshua Mitchell at Politico: ‘Donald Trump Does Have Ideas, And We’d Better Pay Attention to Them‘
‘Michael Oakeshott, an under-read political thinker in the mid-20th century, remarked in his exquisite essay, “Rationalism in Politics,” that one of the more pathological notions of our age is that political life can be understood in terms of “principles” that must be applied to circumstances. Politics-as-engineering, if you will. Republicans themselves succumbed to this notion, and members of the rank and file have noticed. Republicans stood for “the principles of the constitution,” for “the principles of the free market,” etc. The problem with standing for principles is that it allows you to remain unsullied by the political fray, to stand back and wait until yet another presidential election cycle when “our principles” can perhaps be applied. And if we lose, it’s OK, because we still have “our principles.” What Trump has been able to seize upon is growing dissatisfaction with this endless deferral, the sociological arrangement for which looks like comfortable Inside-the-Beltway Republicans defending “principles” and rank-and-file Republicans far from Washington-Babylon watching in horror and disgust.’
I can understand why people want to be left out of the fray, as I mostly do, too.
Trump clearly appealed to American national greatness in order to get elected (Make America Great Again), as well as to many people who’ve seen a decline in living standards, and who are wondering just where future opportunities will come from. The lack of trust in institutions is deep and often justified in our country right now, the populist resentment wide, extending quite beyond party politics.
Trump pretty clearly saw an opening on immigration early on in the election (this blog prefers something like the melting-pot), and he pushed the immigration hot-button regularly, through countless speeches, establishing himself in the race on this issue alone.
He then broadened his appeal in attacks on other Republican candidates and the party establishment, the Democratic establishment and the Clinton machine, our top-heavy regulatory State and the current administration, as well as the media more generally. He attacked people, and personalities, often as much ideas and policies.
To my mind, the continual overreach by the Left under an activist President (identity politicking 24/7) has a lot of emperors wearing little clothing.
Onward we go.
-Yeah, but it’s Vox.
-Minogue, Kenneth. Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. (Pg 111).
Works pretty well for me:
‘We may sum this up by saying that the more the style of what used to be called politics becomes theorized, the more political problems come to be reintrepreted as managerial. Working out the least oppressive laws under which different and sometimes conflicting groups may live peaceably together is being replaced by manipulation and management of the attitudes different groups take towards each other, with the hope that this will ultimately bring harmony. In other words, in the new form of society, human beings are becoming the matter which is to be shaped according to the latest moral ideas.’
And maybe 80’s synth-funk will make a come back someday, but until that day, you can see how the stuff is made:
Niall Ferguson At The L.A. Times: ‘Think Kissinger Was The Heartless Grandmaster Of Realpolitik? What About Obama?’
‘Wait — realism? Isn’t that the hard-nosed — not to say amoral — approach to foreign policy commonly associated with Henry Kissinger?
Having spent much of the last decade writing a life of Kissinger, I no longer think of the former secretary of State as the heartless grandmaster of realpolitik. (That’s a caricature.) But after reading countless critiques of his record, not least the late Christopher Hitchens’ influential “Trial of Henry Kissinger,” I also find myself asking another question: Where are the equivalent critiques of Obama?’
Perhaps this is a useful line of thought.
Wherever you happen to be coming from, I’ve often taken ‘realpolitik‘ to mean: Tempering one’s idealism and moral/professional/political commitments with some empiricism or ‘things as they are’ regarding policy and world events (empiricism is complicated, and it ain’t always ‘(S)cience’ as I’ve come see the world).
This can offer a valuable space where some reflection, intellectual honesty, and adjustment can occur by those making decisions, and where people under such decision-makers can hold them to some account (a reasonable constraint if there ever was one).
People rarely agree on beliefs, principles, politics nor policy prescriptions, but as Kissinger noted, there’s always a necessary political component to our beliefs and principles:
“Moreover, the reputation, indeed the political survival, of most leaders depends on their ability to realize their goals, however these may have been arrived at. Whether these goals are desireable is relatively less crucial.”
Kissinger, Henry. American Foreign Policy: Three Essays. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc. 1969.
Ferguson:
‘There is disenchantment with Obama’s foreign policy these days. In recent polls, nearly half of Americans (49.3%) disapprove of it, compared with fewer than 38% who approve. I suspect, however, that many disapprove for the wrong reasons. The president is widely seen, especially on the right, as weak. In my view, his strategy is flawed, but there is no doubting his ruthlessness when it comes to executing it.’
The place where ideals are tested in the world, and found wanting, often requires the cold-eyed application of strategic logic, and to his credit, Obama’s at least stayed this course to some extent as Ferguson points out (though nowhere near enough, and without nearly enough criticism, for my taste).
As I see it, a Western Left activism and liberation idealism was always more the root from which Obama’s policy sprang (the kind of liberation politics and cooled street activism to which many folks have been hesitant to critize when it comes to implications for current institutional authority). The application of cold-logic and non-action out in the world often came later, often out of necessity, where the ideas and policies have failed or been challenged.
As for realpolitik, some of its inherent pragmatism is applicable now, as it’s wise to be pragmatic about what should stay and go, and what’s working now and what might work better. This seems worthy of consideration for no other reason than the reasonable transfer of power in our Republic.
On that note, some people get really angry at Henry Kissinger, with an anger perhaps reserved for heretics and apostates. I’m figuring his roots in an Enlightenment Kantian transcendental idealism make him a target for adherents, believers and true-believers of Left-liberalism idealism out in the world.
This seems to challenge many folks where they live.
As previously posted:
On Niall Ferguson’s new Biography- ‘Kissinger: Volume I: The Idealist.1923-1968:’
Ferguson discusses the first volume in D.C.
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-Scowcroft and Brzezinski may be offering plans: ‘George Shultz & Henry Kissinger At The Hoover Institution: ‘What A Final Iran Deal Must Do’
Israel, Iran, & Peace: Andrew Sullivan Responds To Charges Of Potential Anti-Semitism…Some Saturday Links On Iran-Skepticism, To Say The Least George Shultz & Henry Kissinger At The Hoover Institution: ‘What A Final Iran Deal Must Do’ So what are our interests and how do we secure them as the fires in the Middle-East rage? Michael Totten makes a case here in Why We Can’t Leave The Middle-East.’ He gets push-back in the comments
Henry Kissinger & George Schulz Via The WSJ: ‘The Iran Deal And Its Consequences’…Inside Everyone Is A Western Individual Waiting To Get Out?-Repost-Roger Sandall At The American Interest: ‘Tribal Realism’
Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’