Demographics

Repost-Compstat For Prosecutors? Hipsters Late To The Game? How Far Will Utilitarian Logic Go?

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Heather MacDonald at the City Journal-‘Prosecution Gets Smart:’

The police, and now prosecutors, are responding to available data and new strategies that respond to that data.

MacDonald:

‘The rethinking of prosecution has only begun. Gascon is exploring the idea of predictive prosecution, echoing the nascent predictive policing concept. “We want to create tools to project crime patterns several years out” by mapping the connections between victims and offenders in a neighborhood, he says. In addition, he wants improved means of measuring whether his office’s court filings are targeted efficiently.’

How much of good policing and prosecution will ultimately rely on the judgment and experience of police officers working their beats and prosecutors working their caseloads?

How much on the the politics and policies of the day?

How much on data and technology?

I’m guessing that in the roughest neighborhoods, the cliche often found in movies carries some weight: The character and dedication of good police officers keeps the bad guys in check, and the good guys from becoming the bad.

Hipster Real Estate At The New York Times:

‘By many measures, Jeff Huston and his wife, Lisa Medvedik-Huston, arrived late to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They weren’t among the first waves of artists and hipsters in the early-to-mid ’90s to cross the East River in search of cheaper, grittier confines.’

At least none of the guys have gone-in for hyphenated names yet. That’s the event horizon. One thing that seems to have changed in the latest rounds of gentrification are some of the ideals guiding the people moving into Brooklyn and making it a brand…i.e. the ‘hipsters.’

Surely people aren’t so naive and idealistic as to not understand gentrification?

From Darwinian Conservatism-‘Trolleyology & Rawlsian Moral Grammar‘

‘For a Kantian utilitarian like Singer, the relevant moral principle in the trolley problem–that five deaths are worse than one death–is the same in both cases, and therefore Singer would pull the switch and push the fat man. For Singer, the 10% of the people who would push the fat man are rightly following pure moral reason, while the other 90% are allowing their emotions to override their reason, because from the viewpoint of pure reason, there is no morally relevant difference between the two cases.’

How far will utilitarian logic go?

A reader sent in this quote by Ken Minogue, conservative British thinker, found on page 20 in the first print edition of ‘The Liberal Mind:’

‘Liberalism has come more and more to see politics simply as a technical activity like any other. We first decide what it is that we want, how we think our society ought to be organized, and then we seek the means to our end. It means, for example, that all widespread problems turn into political problems, inviting a solution by state activity. Faced with backsliding, governments must coerce. They must control the climate of thought in which people live, and if necessary engage in large scale and protracted repression in order to keep a public consistent with what it seemed to want at some time in the past.’

From Darwinian Conservatism: ‘Nietzsche–Aristocratic Radical or Aristocratic Liberal?’

Here’s Nietzsche scholar J.P. Stern on Nietzsche’s anti-Christian, anti-secular morality (Kant, utilitarians), anti-democratic, and anti-Greek (except the “heroic” Greek) biases…See the comments Repost-Camille Paglia At Arion: Why Break, Blow, Burn Was Successful…Update And Repost: ‘A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche / Strauss Connection’

Out of the Valley of modernism, post-modernism, and relativism…one path from Nietzsche’s nihilism is through Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom Update And Repost: ‘A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche / Strauss Connection’…Some Tuesday Quotations From Leo Strauss…From Peter Berkowitz At Harvard: ‘The Reason Of Revelation: The Jewish Thought Of Leo Strauss’

Can Kant do all that heavy lifting…what are some of the dangers of Kantian reason?: From Bryan Magee’s Talking Philosophy On Youtube: Geoffrey Warnock On Kant…A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty” …

…Peter Singer discusses Hegel and Marx…From Philosophy And Polity: ‘Historicism In German Political Theory’

Update & Repost-Ken Minogue’s ‘Christophobia’ and the West

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Full piece here.

Essay here.

There’s something almost religious about the way some people go about pursuing their non-religious ideas.

Minogue framed it thusly:

‘Olympianism is the characteristic belief system of today’s secularist, and it has itself many of the features of a religion. For one thing, the fusion of political conviction and moral superiority into a single package resembles the way in which religions (outside liberal states) constitute comprehensive ways of life supplying all that is necessary (in the eyes of believers) for salvation. Again, the religions with which we are familiar are monotheistic and refer everything to a single center. In traditional religions, this is usually God; with Olympianism, it is society, understood ultimately as including the whole of humanity. And Olympianism, like many religions, is keen to proselytize. Its characteristic mode of missionary activity is journalism and the media.’

And:

‘Progress, Communism, and Olympianism: these are three versions of the grand Western project. The first rumbles along in the background of our thought, the second is obviously a complete failure, but Olympianism is not only alive but a positively vibrant force in the way we think now. Above all, it determines the Western moral posture towards the rest of the world. It affirms democracy as an ideal, but carefully manipulates attitudes in a nervous attempt to control opinions hostile to Olympianism, such as beliefs in capital or corporal punishment, racial, and other forms of prejudice, national self-assertion—and indeed, religion‘

As previously posted, Minogue discussed ideology (Marxist ideology in particular), and modern promises of radical and revolutionary freedom: To go deeper and replace Science and Religion, Economics and Politics, on the way to some knowable end-point to human affairs.

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Perhaps the flip-side to liberal secular humanist faith is a lack of faith. Surely some deep, liberal thinker out there has become thoroughly convinced that people are no good, after all, and can’t be trusted with their freedoms apart from his/her thinking or ideological commitments. Perhaps there’s a secular humanist political leader somewhere thoroughly sick of humanity for the time being, simply accruing more political power and influence because they can.

As far as satire or mockery goes, they would be just as worthy, no?

Via David Thompson: ‘Don’t Oppress My People With Your White Devil Science‘

As a Straussian might see it: Once you set up (S)cience on the positivist definition, as the only arbiter of facts, one can very easily invite the anti-(S)cience response in kind, which manifests itself here as the retreat into a victimhood/oppressor ideology.

‘(S)cience’ was only a tool of the white oppressor, anyways, don’t you know (and no one actually has to do the hard work the sciences require…how convenient):

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As to these more radical groups splintering and applying pressure upwards upon institutions of learning (or at least remaining very vocal and demanding voices within them), I remain skeptical of merely relying upon an adaptable and healthy post-Enlightenment humanism to push back against them in the long-run.

It seems groups of post-Enlightenment individuals gathering to solve commonly defined problems is a risky business, indeed, or at least subject to the same old schisms and problems religious institutions underwent and continue to undergo regarding human nature. I think it’s fair to say people and institutions are often requiring of constraints, especially when it comes to political power and lawmaking; especially when it comes to the challenges our civilization faces from within and without in maintaining institutional authority.

I’d like to think that secularly liberal leadership, more broadly, including the people who want to be in charge of all of us (at their best operating from within moral communities of not too great a solipsism and self-regard) can resist such pressures. For there certainly are those who would fracture our institutions into rafts of post-Enlightenment ‘-isms’ and politicized movements often driven by illiberal ideologies; movements relying on the presumed self-sufficiency of reason while behaving quite irrationally.

I’m looking around and not seeing too much decency in American politics, lately.

A.C. Grayling makes one of the better cases for morality without religious doctrine, I’ve heard of late, but I’m not entirely sold these particular problems can be addressed sufficiently:

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Jonathan Haidt has infused the more modern field of moral psychology with some of David Hume’s empiricist theory of mind, the idea that intuitions come first, and our reasons for them are usually trotted out afterwards (when was the last time you walked away from an argument/debate/discussion totally converted and persuaded by the reasoning of the other guy?

Yet, how, exactly, did our institutions of higher-learning get to the point of catering to the loudest, often most naive, and often illiberal student-groups claiming their feelings and ideas deserve special treatment?

Isn’t this already a failure of leadership, to some extent?:

Related: A definition of humanism:

“‘…a morally concerned style of intellectual atheism openly avowed by only a small minority of individuals (for example, those who are members of the British Humanist Association) but tacitly accepted by a wide spectrum of educated people in all parts of the Western world.”

Roger Scruton At The WSJ: ‘Memo To Hawking: There’s Still Room For God’

Related On This Site: From Darwinian Conservatism: ‘The Evolution of Mind and Mathematics: Dehaene Versus Plantinga and Nagel’

Sunday Quotation: Edmund Burke On The French Revolution

The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”… From George Monbiot: ‘How Freedom Became Tyranny’…Looking to supplant religion as moral source for the laws: From The Reason Archives: ‘Discussing Disgust’ Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum.… Repost: Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”

Roger Scruton In The American Spectator: The New Humanism…From Nigel Warburton’s Site: A Definition of Humanism?…From The City Journal Via Arts And Letters Daily: Andre Glucksman On “The Postmodern Financial Crisis”

One way out of multiculturalism and cultural relativism:

Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’

Repost-From The Liberal Bastions-James Baldwin, Often

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Quote found here:

‘By the time Baldwin published “Another country” and the essay collection “Nobody Knows My Name,” both in 1962, he had become America’s leading black literary star. Both books were commercially successful, but reviews were mixed. In 1962, “The New Yorker” published Baldwin’s essay “The Fire Next Time,” which detailed his evangelical upbringing and his views on Christianity as a form of slavery forced on and then embraced by blacks. When Baldwin became the official voice of black America, however, he immediately compromised his voice as a writer, sacrificing his gifts in order to gain acceptance from the Black Power movement. In the 1970s, Baldwin was adrift not only politically but aesthetically. Nevertheless, up until his death, in 1987, at the age of 63, Baldwin continued to harbor the hope that he would be embraced as an important literary figure by his own race.’

And just to suggest no definitive answers to such problems, but rather which kinds of questions might be worth asking:

At minute 9:20 of Thomas Sowell discussing his book: ‘Intellectuals and Race…‘

…Baldwin is quoted:

“People in Harlem know they are there because white people do not think they are good enough to live anywhere else…[In a new housing project they] naturally…began smashing windows, defacing walls {and] urinating in the elevators…“

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But what if in the crusade of black folks to appeal to white folks’ better natures, one fell prey to the vanity of this idea?:

‘The central premise of liberal intellectuals for decades…[was] that the racial problem was essentially…inside the minds of white people…“

Well, Baldwin was pretty successful at reaching inside the minds of many, to his credit, using his natural gifts to make a moral plea for such ends.

Sowell asks why certain cultures have pursued ideas and abstractions to tremendous advantage, developing habits of success in the sciences, politics, law, trade and technology in the process?

America, certainly, has been one such success story, despite and partly because of its original sin, and such successes have happened before in England instead of Ireland, the Greeks and Romans instead of Northern Europe, as Sowell notes.

Why not join ’em, copying what works, or at least trying hard to beat them at their own game once given the chance? This seems to be a logical consequence of Sowell’s reasoning. This, as opposed becoming locked in resentment, justified in anger, dependent upon the ‘oppressorfollowing an ideology in search of a cause; victimhood in search of facts and evidence.

Schools and programs can do a lot, expanding experience and making people larger than they otherwise would be, but they are often an inefficient way to do it, offering less than can a stable home in a growing economy, while running into problems of unions, twisted incentives, bureaucracies, corruption and waste.

Notice the emotional appeal:

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I suspect that under an activist moon, many liberals must feel the tidal pull of solidarity against the ‘oppressor;’ left seeking their own moral lights in a rather dense fog.

There must be someone to blame!

This can also be very funny; creating incentives for well-educated, often very square people to overlook, quite conveniently at times, their own habits of success, wealth-building and hard-work.

This can also be very sad, making successful folks follow incentives that will eventually undercut their own habits of success, wealth-building and hard-work through awful political incentives, potentially dragging us all into poorer place with little room to reflect.

Preach what you practice. Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.

Any thoughts and comments are welcome.

Also On This Site: From Fora Via YouTube: ‘Thomas Sowell and a Conflict of Visions’…Two Sunday Quotations By Albert Jay Nock in ‘Anarchist’s Progress’…

Repost-Vidal/Buckley Debate, 1968

Repost-Thomas Sowell at The National Review: ‘The Inconvenient Truth About Ghetto Communities’ Social Breakdown:’

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Posted about five years ago now, during the Baltimore protests, which quickly became riots.

Full piece here

‘Non-judgmental subsidies of counterproductive lifestyles are treating people as if they were livestock, to be fed and tended by others in a welfare state — and yet expecting them to develop as human beings have developed when facing the challenges of life themselves.‘

The ‘but for’ arguments still seem in effect:  ‘But for’ the Civil Rights movement and some sort of radical change to get out from under being oppressed by the civil laws, and ‘but for’ for non-violent social protest for even some basic moral consideration and inclusion in civil society in the first place, black folks would not be where they are today.

Such radical change attracts the purveyors of radical ideology, however, and can make for strange bedfellows who are tasked with trying to address the problems of the ghetto.

Up top, Often well-meaning white liberals, progressives, social reformers, morally concerned humanists and redistributionists, bureaucrats, some black folks, academics and regular Democrat-party voters (all kinds of issues and coalitions).

Down below:  Often radical ideologues (who don’t believe there should even be a system, man),  some advocates of violence and genuinely violent groups, ideas and incentives which often lead to grifters and shakedown artists (yet, truth be told, many quite engaged in their communities).  Don’t forget the ‘baptized Marxism’ of liberation theology (doing good at a steep cost and deep into Leftist ideology) and many people, aside from hard-core criminals, willing to do violence if given the right chance and circumstances (mob mentality).

Addition:  And of course all the people who don’t fit into my nor anyone else’s ramblings about them.  You know…people.

The problems remain, however, and they are grim.  It still strikes me that politics and political movements remain often a very cumbersome and inefficient way to address these problems. One party, in particular, doesn’t really seem to have anything else.

Socially and politically, we are much deeper into those problems now, and I’m having trouble seeing stability upon deeper currents, when the rate of change outstrips the ability of institutions to adapt.

Interview here.

Sowell speaks about his then new book, ‘Intellectuals And Race’, and speaks against multiculturalism:

‘What multiculturalism does is it paints people into the corner in which they happen to be born. You would think that people on the left would be very sensitive to the notion that one’s whole destiny should be determined by the accident of birth as it is, say, in a caste system. But what the multiculturalism dogma does is create the same problems that the caste system creates. Multiculturalism uses more pious language, but the outcome is much the same.’

Here is Sowell, heavily influenced by the Chicago School, arguing the welfare state maintains some of the same dependence in the black community that slavery required:

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Related On This Site:   What about black people held in bondage by the laws..the liberation theology of Rev Wright…the progressive vision and the folks over at the Nation gathered piously around John Brown’s body?: Milton Friedman Via Youtube: ‘Responsibility To The Poor’……Robert George And Cornel West At Bloggingheads: “The Scandal Of The Cross”…

Race And Free Speech-From Volokh: ‘Philadelphia Mayor Suggests Magazine Article on Race Relations Isn’t Protected by the First Amendment’

Repost-Eugene Volokh At The National Review: ‘Multiculturalism: For or Against?’

Repost-Neither Commerce Nor Contemplation, Exactly?

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Perhaps aestheticizing a city isn’t necessarily good for long-term prospects, at least not at the cost of actual jobs. Maybe it’s at best a second- or third- order priority.

Perhaps aestheticization can bring good to a city if there are already enough people providing goods in the city. Curating and criticizing art can be valuable, of course, but both seem second- or third-order priorities to actually making art (citizens, be wary of leaving arts in the hands of many enbalment-oriented Arts Councils, public radio and college professors, docents, Mayor’s Offices…they [often] have other interests and incentives aside from the art).

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There are some things (bullshittery) which don’t sit right with me about the below video, this packaging of chocolate with high middle-brow tastes and vague Self-oriented hipster collectivism.

It strikes me as the kind of thing people from smaller towns and suburbs might imagine an ideal city to be on a visit, which is to say, potentially imbued with a lot of high middle-brow tastes these days (creative, urban, vibrant etc).

Such is my read, anyways, which probably says quite a bit about me.

The Mast Brothers invite customers into their process. They’re giving you bits of their individual Selves to mix with your individual Self as you band together towards the future that awaits. Come to the glittering Brooklyn upon the horizon.

Few chocolate-makers take pains to mention Mark Twain & Ralph Waldo Emerson in their promo videos:

From The American Conversative: ‘The Gentrification Trade-Off In Buffalo:’

‘Hidden away in the far western corner of New York State and straddling the Canadian border, Buffalo sometimes feels like the city that time forgot. Many of its storefronts, bars, and bowling alleys look like they haven’t been updated since the 1970s.’

Vincent Gallo has Italian roots and comes from an industrial, hard-working city full of Catholic immigrants and is also interested in the Arts. He was a visual artist who went to NYC, then L.A., and turned to film as a means to self-expression and potential financial success. Did he want Celebrity? Money? Fame?

This, apparently, is one aspect of ‘culture’ that’s been created: The pursuit Self through celebrity, money and fame, as a thing that many, many people all share as an artifact of ‘culture.’

Probably all of the above in addition to self-expression and the pursuit of beauty and saying true things by creating images.

I can say it’s rare to find a tradition-defending aesthete and iconoclastic supporter of the Republican party. Maybe it’s the Buffalo roots.

It makes for great T.V. taking on the critics in a USA track-suit while defending the vision behind ‘Buffalo 66‘, even though he seems like, potentially, quite an asshole:

American cities relying on industries such as textiles, furniture, various light and heavy manufacturing, railroads, steel, coal, oil, automobiles etc. have seen good times come and go.

Sometimes the good times came and went one generation ago, sometimes three. Buffalo is certainly among those cities.

Will the good times come again?

It’s certainly making for ‘interesting’ politics.

The arts can be one lens with which to look at these problems and places…

Repost-Ah, Look At All The Lonely People-‘Jeff Koons Is Back’ Via Vanity Fair

-Banksy’s website here. Newsweek’s piece: ‘See You Banksy, Hello Invader.‘

I’d argue that it’s possible, especially with the constant cries of modernism to ‘make it new,‘ I think this is one way we’ve arrived at pop art, and the desire to blend conceptual art and popular music together. This is in evidence from The Talking Heads to Lady Gaga to Jay Z promoting his new album alongside Marina Abramovic at MOMA.

Another lens to understand the world as a citizen is the social sciences, and this blog favors the contrarians amongst what is increasingly monolithic and received opinion:

Here’s a fine example of how to exchange ideas. Two people gather in a forum to present and dispute the data used, the methodologies applied, the empirical evidence offered, and the conclusions and conjectures both might draw from their own thinking. There’s some light moderation and Q & A from the audience:

Maybe vocation, purpose and meaning have A LOT to do with our current issues. How to live and what to do?

Repost: Some Links On Meritocracy-Many People Want Politics To Be Interested In You

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In light of all the flak Ross Douthat was getting for his opinion piece on the death of G.H.W. Bush ‘Why We Miss The WASPs.’

As posted, let me offer this quote from ‘A Modest Proposal’:

‘But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expense and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England.’

Of course, some criticism is coming from predicably Left and activist elements (amplified on Twitter).

I don’t think a lot of people already in positions of authority have thought this through.

What needs replacing, exactly, and why? Compared to what? Which kinds of ideas and habits ought to be those someone holds close and puts into practice while in positions of authority? What about incentives?

The consent of the governed?

From this article in the Independent on American novelist Louis Auchincloss:

How did money actually work among those in America’s elite?:

But the old monopoly of power had gone, and the country was the poorer for it. “The tragedy of American civilization,” Auchincloss wrote in 1980, “is that it has swept away WASP morality and put nothing in its place.”

Here’s another Auchincloss quote from a reader (haven’t checked this one out…probably a quote site). The prose strikes me as kind of post-Wharton, mannered and dull:

“I used to go to church. I even went through a rather intense religious period when I was sixteen. But the idea of an everlasting life — a never-ending banquet, as a stupid visiting minister to our church once appallingly described it — filled me with a greater terror than the concept of extinction…”

If such things be true, then many of the best and the brightest seem busy contructing a meritocracy in the old WASP establishment’s place; an enterprise of many unresolved personal conflicts between political ideals of activist change, progress, and ever-expanding personal freedoms on one hand and deeply held religious beliefs, traditions and customs on the other.

There seems to be an ex post facto character to much of the ol’ meritocratic enterprise, in my humble opinion, where a healthy skepticism is warranted.

In fact, it’s probably made [more] room for the same old Socialism.

On that note, I have a healthy respect for contrarians, frankly, when merely speaking out in favor of…:

‘the importance of traditional marriage values in ensuring children’s future success…’

…involves controversy and professional censure.

It’s so bland!

In fact, what will you do with your own blandness, dear reader, entombing the flaming desire to be woke within; the little half-opened doors of ecstasy and ‘environmental justice’?:

Earth Quaker Action Team is ON IT. (I’m not sure the Quakers ever had much institutional authority…so this could well be a marketing ploy to start more Quaking)

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Full discussion here.

Helen Andrews offers a critique of the meritocratic system she sees dominating U.S. education (more grades, achievement and performance-based…less legacy and WASP based).

Yes, the old system had its problems and horrors, but she cites its end in a Victorian redesign of the British civil service, a redesign whose counterpart is now thriving here in the U.S. since the 1960’s.

Andrews from her original piece:

‘Others favor the slightly more radical solution of redefining our idea of merit, usually in a way that downplays what Guinier calls “pseudoscientific measures of excellence.” She even has a replacement in mind, the Bial-Dale College Adaptability Index, the testing of which involves Legos. (Why are you laughing? It is backed by a study.) This is even less likely to work than fiddling with the equality-of-opportunity end. For one thing, the minority of families willing to do whatever it takes to get into Harvard will still do whatever it takes to get into Harvard.’

and:

‘My solution is quite different. The meritocracy is hardening into an aristocracy—so let it. Every society in history has had an elite, and what is an aristocracy but an elite that has put some care into making itself presentable? Allow the social forces that created this aristocracy to continue their work, and embrace the label.’

Is there proof of a causal mechanism from which this meritocracy will thus harden into an aristocratic elite?

If so, will it just be an elite of different ideals, assumptions, blind-spots and stupidities…now with top-down social-science and pseudo-scientific bureaucratic/administrative oversight?:

As I see it, yes, these schools were always about grooming ambitious, wealthy, and well-connected people to some extent; grooming them into institutions that often govern the rest of us.

***I’d add that much like the deeper logic behind a more general multiculturalism, its practitioners and the younger people raised within this system can easily lose sight of the lenses they’re using to view the world (shared ideals and assumptions about moral virtue, truth and knowledge claims, the idea of moving towards the telos of a ‘better world’ which can now become the social glue of the institutions themselves).

***I should add that I’m rather sympathetic to Andrews’ slow-change, tradition-favoring, conservative-ish, position.

I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of this quote by Ken Minogue:

‘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.’

-Minogue, Kenneth. Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. (Pg 111).

If we are coming apart, who’s putting us back together? : Via Youtube: ‘Are We Really Coming Apart?’ Charles Murray and Robert Putnam Discuss…Repost-Charles Murray Lecture At AEI: The Happiness Of People

Related On This Site: Once you take apart the old structure, you have to criticize the meritocracy you’ve helped create: David Brooks At The NY Times: ‘Why Our Elites Stink’

The anti-intellectual’s intellectual: Repost-Via Youtube: Eric Hoffer-’The Passionate State Of Mind’…

Leo Strauss:From Darwinian Conservatism By Larry Arnhart: “Surfing Strauss’s Third Wave of Modernity”

A deeper look at what education “ought” to be, which is remarkably like it is now: A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.

How dare he?: Repost-Revisting Larry Summers: What Did He Say Again?From The Harvard Educational Review-

Still reliving the 60′s?: A Few Thoughts On Robert Bork’s “Slouching Towards Gomorrah”

The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”… From George Monbiot: ‘How Freedom Became Tyranny’…Looking to supplant religion as moral source for the laws: From The Reason Archives: ‘Discussing Disgust’ Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum.New liberty away from Hobbes?: From Public Reason: A Discussion Of Gerald Gaus’s Book ‘The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom And Morality In A Diverse And Bounded World’…Richard Rorty tried to tie postmodernism and trendy leftist solidarity to liberalism, but wasn’t exactly classically liberal: Repost: Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”

Charlie Hebdo & Freedom Of The Press-Douglas Murray Reviews Phillipe Lançon

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At The Spectator, Douglas Murray reviews ‘Disturbed‘ by Charlie Hebdo survivor, Phillipe Lancon:

Murray:

‘Lançon is under no illusions about this process: ‘This lack of solidarity was not merely a professional and moral disgrace.  By isolating and pointing the finger at Charlie, it helped make the latter the Islamists’ target.’ Death threats and ‘filthy emails’ to the staff were common for a decade.’

There is silence surrounding the bloodshed, along with desire to turn away, ignore, and forget.

Confronting, recalling and remembering upsets many assumptions these days.

As for my American take on the French desire to relentlessly and radically mock all institutional authority (the Catholic Church, ‘bourgeois’ thinking, diametrically opposed political views like Le Front National), well, how very French.

‘Charlie Hebdo (French pronunciation: ​[ʃaʁli ɛbdo]; French for Charlie Weekly) is a French satirical weekly magazine,[3] featuring cartoons,[4] reports, polemics, and jokes. Irreverent and stridently non-conformist in tone, the publication describes itself as above all secular, skeptic,[5] and atheist,[6] far-left-wing,[7][8] and anti-racist[9] publishing articles about the extreme right (especially the French nationalist National Front party),[10] religion (Catholicism, Islam, Judaism), politics and culture.’

What about the differences between Islam and Islamic civilizations and the post-Enlightenment West?  Point them out at your own risk. Violate much secular humanist conventional wisdom (supporting Christian religious liberty when it ain’t cool) and be ignored.

Stand against the oft radically driven causes of the radical Left (beneath much secular-humanist and high-liberal thought) and possibly be threatened with violence.

Draw cartoons insulting the central figure in Islam and maybe get murdered.

Salman Rushdie at about minute 57:00:  ‘This idea of separate treatment for separate cultures…I think essentially if we follow that to its conclusion…destroys our ability to have a really moral framework for society.‘

Six writers apparently know what is acceptable speech and what isn’t, and thus don’t think the folks at Charlie Hebdo engaged in acceptable speech.

Christopher Hitchens (nearly a free speech absolutist, railing against many of his former friends on the Left) discussing the Yale Press, which was genuinely afraid that publishing this book could lead to violence in the Muslim street:

“…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.”

Cartoons here.  The cartoonist is still in some danger.

Food for thought.

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’

See Also:  If you thought the cartoons were bad, more on the Fitna movie here.  From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”  Libertarians love this issue:  Repost-A Canadian Libertarian Making Noise: Ezra Levant 

A Few Thoughts On Heather MacDonald At The City Journal-‘San Francisco’s Homelessness Crisis’

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Audio discussion here.

Full piece here.

MacDonald draws her own conclusions from some salient facts:

‘The stories that the homeless tell about their lives reveal that something far more complex than a housing shortage is at work. The tales veer from one confused and improbable situation to the next, against a backdrop of drug use, petty crime, and chaotic child-rearing.’

Here is the best I’m able to explain the logic behind West Coast homeless policies:  ‘They‘ don’t want to build enough houses/provide enough jobs/help our fellow human beings, but if ‘we’ rise up against the oppressor, in personal liberation (sexual, spiritual, political) and collective moral concern (empathy, healing, community), ‘we’ can solve the homelessness/mental illness/drug addiction problems within x years.

The ‘capitalist system’ and ‘corporations’ are generally morally suspect, but even as ‘we’ individuals explore the frontiers of our emotions and (S)elves, modeling our lives collectively on some of their successes (neo-liberalism), ‘we’ can build the ideal society and a better global world.  Let’s make ‘our’ dreams practical with real work and labor, modeling and deploying the successes of the sciences beyond medicine and psychiatry; implementing all available knowledge into political and social institutions with taxpayer money.

—

Many people on the West (Left) Coast have come from somewhere else, sometimes as black sheep, sometimes as familial and social refugees, sometimes for a job, a career, etc. I see these shared ideals are doing a fair amount of of work to bind people together.

How much direct religious/traditional rebellion is involved, and how much religious overlap from religious doctrine to human rights doctrine there is I take on a case-by-case basis:  Protesting and activism tend to act as unifying virtues in themselves.

I’ve experienced a lot of freedom, genuine tolerance, and intellectual opportunity here, but also many naive and shallow assumptions about Nature, Human Nature, and political organization.

Reality knocks.

[I’ve removed an older post, as that’s enough opinion to last]

Repost-Live Here And Make Honey In Nature’s Hive

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James Lileks:

‘I share many of the New Urbanist ideas for cities, but I can’t cast my lot in with the group because they are screwball-daft when the subject of cars comes up, and will entertain any inconvenience as long as it’s anti-car. I don’t want to ride a got-damned bicycle to work. Most people don’t. Period.’

‘Woman Who Lived In A Micro-Apartment Doles Out Life Advice:’

“Living in that tiny space made my life so much bigger,” Cohen told The Post. “My book is about living the life you want in whatever size you choose — it’s not just about learning to live smaller, but smarter.”

The simple life has its appeal.

Of course, individual choice eventually comes into conflict with planned communities and group obligations, to say nothing of taxes and regulations borne by other individuals…

I’m guessing Seattle’s Yesler Terrace project is still mostly pipe-dream, but if elected, I promise a social-worker, a community garden, full kindergarten empowerment and adult employment in every cell block:

‘The new neighborhood will bring together people from many walks of life, ethnic backgrounds and income levels. Partnerships will help strengthen the social fabric of the community by providing open spaces and community centers for gathering, and programs to increase health, academic achievement and economic opportunity.’

At the New Urbanist website:

“Only when humans are again permitted to build authentic urbanism — those cities, towns, and villages that nurture us by their comforts and delights — will we cease the despoiling of Nature by escaping to sprawl.”

As previously posted:

Whatever your thoughts on sprawl, here are some of the groups, who, in my opinion, are involved:

–Greens and activists who want to control and regulate the energy sector according to their understanding of nature. Or they at least will control much lawmaking and the political process through activism, while directing massive amounts of federal taxpayer money to developing this vision (chosen and controlled by politicians whom they favor). Whatever’s going on with the climate, they’re usually willing to overlook the political waste, corruption, higher costs of gas and basic services and fewer jobs that could make us like Europe, without many of the benefits.

–The products of modernism and modernist architecture. Some modernists believe in utopian and semi-utopian visions of the future, or simply, a better world where people should be rounded up and live happily according the visions of a few artists, architects, and city-planners. They don’t like the suburbs too much.

–Collectivists, humanists and multicultural types who like a broad, ‘equality of outcome,’ definition of democracy and believe there will be room for everyone, all races and classes, in the new urban environment (more like European social democrats) if just the right people are in charge.

–Anyone with a monied, career or professional, personal or identity-based stake in this vision.

Bob Zubrin pointed out the problems of environmentalism, and the authoritarian impulses behind many environmentalist goals and methods, which I’ve applied to the urbanists in parentheses below:

After the utopian dreams fade, and when the money runs-out, you often just end-up with a movement which further Left types will use to gain leverage, as in Europe:

1. There isn’t enough to go around (suburbs waste resources like gas, electricity, and materials in addition to lost productivity and time)

2. Human nature needs to be constrained as a result (Trains, buses and bikes are the preferred method of transportation instead of cars…while apartments, co-ops and living units instead of houses in the suburbs are the places to live)

3. Someone needs to be in charge (Someone like Bloomberg, or similarly paternalistic leaders are ok as long as they line up with the message and enforce the right laws from the top down)

4. We volunteer ourselves for the job (Someone’s got to build a vision of the future, and the vision of the artist or architect, or city planners for example, may be enough for the rest of us to live in much like occurs in modernist architecture).

If you’ve been following current cultural trends, there’s been some native New Yorker pushback against the hipsters in Williamsburg. These urban dwellers often arrive from the suburbs, moving to urban centers in search of identity, group meaning, and membership with a kind of collectivist, artistic, modernist to postmodernist impulse that lines up with urbanism. They are changing our culture in many ways.

See Also: Briton Roger Scruton perhaps also wants America to be more like Europe, less rootless, wasteful, and tramping the flowers. In modernism’s place (souless airports, blank modern facades speaking only to themselves) Scruton suggests Leon Krier’s New Urbanism and a return to more Classical architecture. Repost: Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?

Brasilia: A Planned City and Review Of Britain’s “Lost Cities” In The Guardian

Repost-Via Reason: ‘Salvador Allende’s Cybersocialist Command Center’…Cities should be magnets for creativity and culture? some people don’t want you to have the economic freedom to live in the suburbs: From Foreign Policy: ‘Urban Legends, Why Suburbs, Not Cities, Are The Answer’…From Grist.Org Via The New Republic Via The A & L Daily: ‘Getting Past “Ruin Porn” In Detroit’…

You don’t get the progressive base without the restrictive laws…they are baby steps to paradise: Richard Epstein At Defining Ideas: ‘City Planners Run Amok’…Richard Epstein At The Hoover Institution Journal: ‘Three Cheers for Income Inequality’…Richard Epstein At The Hoover Institution’s Defining Ideas: ‘California’s Kafkaesque Rent Control Laws’

What if you’re economy’s already depressed? Don’t make a maze of laws and build stadiums and museums on the public dime…get new industry: From Reason: ‘Reason Saves Cleveland With Drew Carey’…Reason also suggests that if such creative/entrepenurial spirit gets off the ground, it will have to get around the public sector in Detroit. From Reason Via Youtube: ‘Is Harrisburg’s Nightmare America’s Future?’

 

Via Rod Dreher: ‘Rednecks And The Two Randys’-Selfhood Tribalism And The Same Old Human Nature?

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Via Rod Dreher, ‘Rednecks And The Two Randys’

‘That’s how I felt listening to Terry Gross and the other NPR show after listening to Jackie talk briefly about the Squad. Our media elites will fall all over themselves to defend and celebrate people like Ilhan Omar and Randy Rainbow, but guys like the middle-aged man who came down from my attic today dripping sweat, and who can’t bear people like Ilhan Omar — in the eyes of our liberal elites, they’re what’s wrong with this country.’

I’d rather not have to choose between ‘Jackie’ and ‘Randy Rainbow, ‘ personally.

Unfortunately, however, choices can be very real when it comes to people, coalitions and politics.  Often these choices boil down to the lesser of evils, or certainly, compromises and more compromises.  When a lot of change overwhelms our instititutions, at a time when those institutions are arguably seriously over-built and over-leveraged, well, arguably, here we are.

Where did I put that hobby horse? Beneath the appeal to experts (some ‘studies’ professors, some social scientists, and some scientists) is a constant showcasing of activist concerns at NPR (the assumption of moral rightness and truthfulness of activist causes, mostly, the vague moral suspicion of religious belief, conservation of established traditions, corporations etc).

I find myself disagreeing often, despite the high production value.

As I choose to see the world, when it comes to politics, much activist logic is, well, radical and revolutionary, the truths activists have to tell coming with destabilizing dangers and deadly serious risks (they can be important truths).  Not only change but maybe even violent change.  Certainly liberatory.

If I go looking for ignorance, in-group/out-group dynamics, a desire to believe, I can look no further than myself, frankly.  Such urges never really go away, though they can be channeled better; mediated and expressed through love, family, friendships, work and some attention and care with one’s own mind through deeper reasoning and ‘big ideas.’

Looking for and working hard to get at the truth really matters.

What I’m pretty sure of:  Such impulses certainly can’t be directed towards what I see as modern Selfhood tribalism (from tattoos to Romantic Primitivism to political idealism and identity coalition-building) without consequences for everyone.

What is true of religious organizations, traditions and corporations, of course, is also true of political orgs and missionary secular humanists.

Also from the American Conservative, ‘Wendell Berry Goes To Indiana:’

Wendell Berry, on “tolerance and multiculturalism,” from his essay “The Joy of Sales Resistance”:

‘Quit talking bad about women, homosexuals, and preferred social minorities, and you can say anything you want about people who haven’t been to college, manual workers, country people, peasants, religious people, unmodern people, old people, and so on.’

Addition:  The search for religious purity through a relationship with God, purity of the spoken word, and purity of of the perfectibility of Man and the Human could have some serious overlap, here, folks.