“In both cases the political leaders whom Burke opposed insisted on certain rights: the English government on the rights of soverignty and the French revolutionists insisted on the rights of man. In both cases Burke proceeded in exactly the same manner: he questions less the rights than the wisdom of exercising the rights.”
“What ever might have to be said about the propriety of Burke’s usage, it is here sufficient to note that, in judging the political leaders whom he opposed in the two most important actions of his life, he traced their lack of prudence less to passion than to the intrusion of the spirit of theory into the field of politics.”
Addition: As a friend points out: Strauss is trying to get around the 2nd Nietzschean crisis of modernity, and the cinching and tightening of moral, political, and philosophical thinking into only an Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment pursuit of truth under Reason alone. The Natural Right and Natural Law Philosophies, including and a pursuit of the truth which can involve religion (Augustine?), or Greek conceptions of the good and the true as applied to the city-state vastly broaden and prevent the inherent nihilism in these waves of modernity as Strauss saw them…historicism being one of these Enlightenment pursuits, from political science to the social sciences to Hegelian and post-Hegelian historicism…the logic is followed to its inherently nihilistic ends. This poses a threat to individual liberty among other things…
A fair synopsis? Any thoughts and comments are welcome.
There sure are a lot of people ignoring the obvious fascism of the anti-fascists inviting the fascists into their collectivist, ideological embrace, giving meaning to a lot of rather pathetic, lonely people.
The individuals focusing on the idea of racial categories, collectivist solutions to individual problems, equity-first and tribal/group-first ideological and political frameworks have the right to peaceably assemble, of course, but there must be law and order and there must be enough individual citizens answering bad speech with more speech.
I am hoping (perhaps unwisely) for a correction in many media quarters, parts of the academy and the high-liberal turrets where’s there’s been great clamor towards activist logic and increasing emotional commitment to the same old political idealism which gives cover for the violent and radical elements on the Left.
This invites genuine fascism which I sternly and open denounce (not patriotism, not a nation of citizens and laws, not the conservation of liberal order). Violence is not the answer.
To be fair, I think Wood offers a decent piece of journalism (interviews, phone calls, research etc.); a well-written, longer-form work I find to be in shorter-supply these days.
In it, he highlights Spencer’s Nietzschean-influenced intellectual aspirations and populist ambitions to become a mouthpiece for alt-right advocacy (serious enough to get attention, unserious enough to be poseurish and pathetically fascistic..which means Spencer may not represent more than a vocal minority, even on the alt-right……feel free to send some data my way).
To be critical: What I think Wood misses, and what many anti-Trumpers and liberal ‘gentry’ miss (Trump is an opportunist if there ever was one), is that Richard Spencer (an opportunist if there ever was one) isn’t enjoying his moment in the sun alone. The kind of black bloc, antifa radicalism which Spencer publicly addresses is clearly ok using violence on the way to radical and revolutionary freedom.
Addition: I should clarify that I don’t think Trump is a fascist, but merely an opportunist; a rather socially liberal, NYC real-estate developer.
This leads to the most persuasive arguments I’ve heard criticizing modern liberalism: It’s all too easy to ignore the true-believers, radicals, poseurs and nutbars (they’re our bastards) beneath one’s own platform, especially if they share some version of one’s own cherished beliefs and ideals.
Left and Left-liberal idealism prospers and is even institutionalized at places like Berkeley (no shortage of anti-racist, neo-Marxist, anti-establishment, anti-capitalist sentiment at Berkeley), which helps fuel radicals which help fuel the Richard Spencers.
Fascists and anti-fascists sure can come to resemble one another, trading tired power theories, hitting each other over the head, and trying to squeeze some meaning from similar principles while showboating through the nihilistic void.
Frankly, they deserve each other, and they deserve to be marginalized by the rest of us.
***I don’t think one need be a Nietzschean nor Nietzsche-inspired, nor a Nietzsche-reacting sort of Straussian (from H.L. Mencken to Leo Strauss to Camille Paglia to John Gray) to seriously question the modern liberal and secular human project, and help offer perspective.
But, it probably helps in understanding the fascist tendencies of Spencer and his enemies/allies..
Addition: I should make it clear that Nietzsche didn’t have much truck with fascists, and that he diagnosed, from the depths of his own nihilism, a lot of the crises that would come to face Europe…as for folks like Spencer, they seem to get enough nihilism to carry around while looking for meaning/purpose/identity/belonging elsewhere (in fascist movements)
Hitchens could be entertaining, especially on grounds I’m guessing he knew instinctively well as a former Trotskyite: Ideologies, while highlighting truths, promise a one-stop shop on truth, knowledge, how to be in the world, what to do and what the future will be.
People can kill for less, and when they adhere to such systems, then they can end-up killing more:
Via a reader. Platonic idealism has advantages in restoring both idealism and realism into political debate, but also drawbacks. It can be a bulwark against moral relativism, which is a modern soup in which Left and Right fascism can be found simmering.
As you’ll notice in the James Damore affair (memo here,interview here), data and methodologies can be disputed, as can conclusions and recommendations derived from the data in the hopes of arriving at truth. The point is you want forums to arrive at the truth, because the truth really doesn’t go away, and the wrong untruths and incentives can lead to much human misery.
I don’t know if Google really ought to be a forum for this particular discussion, as Google is a private company and I don’t have all the details. I do suspect as an influential company Google tithes to various groups in/out of power in order to have the engineers do the work they really want to do (governments, interest groups/loud voices, lobbyists…).
Moral reasoning attached to ideas and ideologies engenders emotions and loyalties, beliefs and meaning, around which individuals seek common purpose. This can also create vast structures of social, political and intellectual influence, self-interest, and money.
I suspect that’s a lot of what’s going on here, and if the truth is shown to potentially conflict with any or all of the above, then watch out.
***(Google clearly has a lot of social, political and intellectual influence, but it also in the business of providing tangible value and products to people’s lives bound by contract and law (enforced by governments)..this also attracts all kinds of people).
1. The first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis-Summers notes that high positions demand high commitment. Science could be analogous to other professions like law. He appeals to a longitudinal study that suggests that fewer women may agree to, or be willing to, devote such time and energy to their jobs over their careers as do men. Changing the nature of these professions to higher female ratios may change some of the fundamental ways we arrange our society:
“…is our society right to expect that level of effort from people who hold the most prominent jobs?”
Perhaps…though the subtext might be: are some members of our society right to expect that the guiding ideas of diversity and equality won’t come with a host of other problems…?
***Charles Murray takes it a few steps further, asserting that our social sciences are leading us to become more like Europe (less dynamic and less idealistic in our pursuit of Aristotelian happiness) He also argues that there is a sea-change going on in the social science that will come to support his thinking.
2. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end-The bell curve argument that there are more genius and idiot men. When you get to MIT, 3 and more standard deviations above the mean…means a lot.
3. The third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search-If discrimination is such an important factor in there being a lack of women scientists, then economic theory holds that there are going to be:
“…very substantial opportunities for a limited number of people who were not prepared to discriminate to assemble remarkable departments of high quality people at relatively limited cost simply by the act of their not discriminating.”
So if the theory holds…where are the science departments scooping up all women scientists at low cost…who’ve been rejected elsewhere due to discrimination?
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I believe there is quite arguably discrimination against women in the sciences, and they have a harder road to reach success. But there is also substance here…and clearly politics was a factor in Summers’ firing as well; the women’s groups who viewed his ideas as an attack on their belief appealed to public sentiment in the worst kind of way.
Will social science ever be enough to address such an issue…or is it possibly changing to adapt to the demands people require of it?
Addition: I always get an email or two that suggests I’ve joined the ranks of those who don’t fully understand the problem and seek to oppress women. I don’t think I’ve done such a thing, and if women are going broaden and deepen feminism, they may well have to answer to arguments like these.
It’s not like there aren’t women in the sciences either, Vera Rubin, Lisa Randall and Lise Meitner come to mind, but this debate is clearly not just about science. It’s also about feminism, the social sciences, money, politics, public opinion etc…
‘This year, we decided it was time to take a fresh look at that figure, since a lot has changed over the last few years. And as we announced in our just-released 2017 report on campus speech codes, the number of free speech zone policies is down: Today, roughly one in 10 of the schools we surveyed maintain a free speech zone policy.’
‘I keep hearing about a supposed “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, or statements such as, “This isn’t free speech, it’s hate speech,” or “When does free speech stop and hate speech begin?” But there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. Hateful ideas (whatever exactly that might mean) are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas.‘
The folks at Charlie Hebdo didn’t find the PEN ‘activists’ much to think about.
‘A true devotee of freedom of speech says, ‘Let everyone speak, because it is important that all sides are heard and that the public has the right to use their moral muscles and decide who they trust and who they don’t’. The new, partial campaigners for friends’ speech effectively say, ‘Let my friend speak. She is interesting. She will tell the public what they need to hear.’ These are profoundly different positions, the former built on liberty and humanism, the latter motored by a desire to protect oneself, and oneself alone, from censorship. The former is free speech; the latter ‘me speech’.
Old news I know, but it seems that the Yale Press was genuinely afraid that publishing this book could potentially lead to violence, and that they are responsible for the consequences of such potential violence.
Hitchens:
“…Yale had consulted a range of experts before making its decision and that “[a]ll confirmed that the republication of the cartoons by the Yale University Press ran a serious risk of instigating violence.”
Conor Friedersdorf wrote a piece at the Atlantic rather charitable to Dunham’s latest bid for attention.
Many people want to see themselves as cool and meaningfully bohemian, radical and counter-culturally relevant, independently artsy but successful and morally virtuous. Dunham is likely a vehicle for many of these wishes.
What if also true is that the logic of the ideology Dunham holds has led to much of the desire to moralize to strangers, the potential for deceit and incentives to lie about her own experiences, and the isolated search for Self along with the branding of a political and ideological platform to gain power and influence?
As posted, three quotations that highlight how this blog chooses to look at the world (more at what people do, not what they say):
“…and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important that equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree.”
Minogue concludes that instead of seeking “insane perfectionism” by, e.g., trying to abolish world poverty, we should simply be happy to live decent moral lives. This is, in effect, a challenge to build a better world by expressing our individuality through greater commitment to the institutions of family, markets, and church – an invitation simultaneously less exciting than undertaking grand projects and less destructive, as well.
‘Hoffer said: “The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”
People who are fulfilled in their own lives and careers are not the ones attracted to mass movements: “A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding,” Hoffer said. “When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.”
What Hoffer was describing was the political busybody, the zealot for a cause — the “true believer,” who filled the ranks of ideological movements that created the totalitarian tyrannies of the 20th century.’
‘Franzblau created Cuddle Sanctuary in 2014, after attending her first group cuddle event, to help others realize their own touch needs. Since the election, Cuddle Sanctuary has seen 252 new clients beginning as early as the day following the election. The usual Wednesday night cuddle workshop following the decision was dubbed “Election Detox.” Five of the 21 attendees were new.’
After reading ‘The Calm, Gentle Rise Of Cuddlers For Hire‘ in our household back in 2015 (a joke still that still runs), we knew we were on to something good. There’s talk of technology, literature, global economics, modernity etc. all in relation to professional cuddling. Why, you could have a day at TED focused just on professional cuddling, and maybe throw-in that guy who’s an adult baby.
As to politics: Whatever your thoughts on Trump, I doubt it helps any elected President having to deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous infantilization. I mean, this is a President who might well respond in-kind.
When the personal gets political, politics gets personal.
To be honest: Seeking intimacy and paying money to hug strangers in a warehouse with a fair amount of new-age blather might help some people.
Using the kind of judgment I reserve for people I actually care about, however, (you know, personally) I might say something like the following:
‘Hey, at least you’re not paying for sex!
No, really…you’ve got a lot to offer. Why don’t you go to meet-ups, book-clubs, take a course and start building yourself up that way? You can do it. Let’s grab a drink talk it out.’
A part of the piece that rung a bell:
‘Everyone should be in what Wyatt calls a “hell yes” space – that if asked for a specific touch, the reply would be a passionate OK. But more importantly, if you don’t want to partake, the word “no” should not be marred with guilt or shame.’
I’ll leave this from a post I put up about Jeff Koons, because I think it has some relevance to where parts of the ‘culture’ may be heading:
Koons’ Made In Heaven only amplifies that sound, blurring the line between art and porn, private experience and public show, innocence (so easily corrupted) and naive, narcissistic indulgence.
Koons himself:
‘This type of dislocated imagery is what motivates people. They’re amused by it, but they have a lot of guilt and shame that they respond to it. I was trying to remove that guilt and shame.’
Freedom is next!
***Call me old-fashioned, but you don’t earn respect from others by demanding it, and you don’t convince others of your political views by using politics to beat them into seeing the world as you do.
Or perhaps you do if you’re business model isn’t so good…
Dear Reader, what are you doing with your imagination? For a few hours, this is what I’ve done with mine.
Apparently not all cuddlers are overtly political (addition: never mind, this is the same lady as featured in the Rolling Stone piece).
‘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’
Perhaps Banksy is a good example of a certain Left worldview wrapped within the transgressive postmodern art-scene.
You never have to grow up, really learn how to paint, nor think that much. Perfect for media consumption these days.
More On Nietzsche’s influence-Part of Bryan Magee’s series:
Nietzsche directed his thought against Christian morality, secular morality (Kantian and utilitarian), was quite anti-democratic, and anti-Socratic Greek (the beginning of the end).
Quote found here at friesian.com (recovering Kantian idealism and moving in a libertarian direction):
‘Oddly enough, it is the intellctual snobbery and elitism of many of the literati that politically correct egalitarianism appeals to; their partiality to literary Marxism is based not on its economic theory but on its hostility to business and the middle class. The character of this anti-bourgeois sentiment therefore has more in common with its origin in aristocratic disdain for the lower orders than with egalitarianism.’
