Terrorism

Banned By Youtube? Heather MacDonald Continues To Speak About The Victims Of Crime

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More speech, please:

As posted:

Here’s Sam Harris on police statistics, what conclusions one might draw from them, and why he disagrees with the empirical claims of Black Lives Matter as it presently stands. Rioting, looting and violence are crimes; outcomes of what presents itself to be a non-violent movement.

Despite the legitimate grievances and reasons to be angry, radical ideas act as accelerants, mobilizing resentment, aiming it outwards and towards destruction.

As a man of the Left on many issues (TDS, change-focused political philosophy), I imagine this makes Harris a particular target as a turncoat and heretic, alienating a good chunk of his audience. As a man dedicated to thinking problems through, however, using statistics towards greater knowledge of empirical problems, this makes Harris rather consistent.

It’s not like these problems haven’t been with us for a while. Without police protection, you’ll probably get worse outcomes and more retributive violence. A reader sends a link to The Confessions Of Bernhard Goetz, subway vigilante:

There’s a lot here: Genuine threat (thugs), fear, real victimization (previous muggings and a likely soon-to-be mugging), but also serious ignorance and over-reaction.

I imagine Goetz was a bit like a feral animal fleeing out of that subway car, up the station stairs and into the night.

From min 33:40:

The question to be litigated was whether the community would make a judgment about his (Goetz) own good faith belief….are we in a position to condemn him for over-reacting?

As Heather MacDonald has pointed out (a postmodern conservative of sorts, with a background in the humanities), there is crime, and there will be police and limited resources to target criminals, and there will be new technologies used within current police rules in acccordance with the laws.

A while ago, she spoke for a while before BLM protesters rushed the stage:

It strikes this blog that focusing on data and actual victims of crime in communities (robbery, theft, gang/turf/drug wars etc.), and by extension, how the police approach these problems is a very reasonable [topic] despite the genuine racial tensions all about.

It also deeply threatens one of the core planks of the activist worldview: Namely, that an oppressed victim class must be led by activists against the oppressors who are using morally illegitimate state resources to punish them. For such folks, the system was always racist and rotten to the core, and thus requires their moral, social and political vision of a just society and their political activism to make it right.

Damn those who disagree.

Unsurprisingly, this is probably how you get campus protesters, university enablers and sympathetic mobs emotionally, financially, and personally justified in stopping Heather MacDonald from speaking and requiring her to get a security detail.

Now it’s just spilled out into the public at large.

My guess is, you are now more scared of disagreeing publicly, and you would be right:

Meanwhile, criminals, victims of crime, police officers and private citizens carry on.

Heather MacDonald: ‘The War On Cops’ C-Span interview with MacDonald on the book here.

As previously and often posted:

“First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.’

‘Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. ‘

‘Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. ‘

And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.”

-John Stuart Mill ‘On Liberty: Chapter II-Of The Liberty Of Thought And Discussion’

The Intellectual Cowardice Of The Crowd-Charles Murray At Middlebury College

The Two Clashing Meanings Of Free Speech-Whence Liberalism?

On this site, see: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”…

Repost-Classical Liberalism Via Friesian.Com-‘Exchange with Tomaz Castello Branco on John Gray’

How might this relate to the Heglian/post-Marxist project via ‘The End Of History’: Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’

A Modern Liberal, somewhat Aristotelian and classical?: From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’…Repost: Martha Nussbaum Channels Roger Williams In The New Republic: The First Founder

Samuel Huntington was quite humble, and often wise, about what political philosophy could do: From Prospect: Eric Kaufmann On ‘The Meaning Of Huntington’

From The NY Times Book Review-Thomas Nagel On John Gray’s New ‘Silence Of Animals’…From Darwinian Conservatism: ‘The Evolution of Mind and Mathematics: Dehaene Versus Plantinga and Nagel’…

From Edward Feser: ‘Nagel And His Critics Part IV

 

Slight Update & Repost-A Few Thoughts On Robert Bork’s “Slouching Towards Gomorrah”

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Book here. Bork died as of December 19th, 2012.

Bork argues that during the 1960’s, likely starting with the SDS, a form of liberalism took shape that promotes radical egalitarianism (social justice, equality of outcomes) and radical individualism (excessive freedom from the moral and legal doctrines which require an individual’s duty and which form the fabric of civil society). This is the New Left.

Grounded in an utopian vision, fed in part by the affluence of the previous decades and the boredom and yearning of largely well-off youth, the New Left blossomed not merely into the anti-draft Vietnam protests across the nation’s universities, but into a movement that has forever altered American life in mostly negative ways for Bork (see Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic: That Party At Lenny’s… for a rich account of the times).

Bork is quite explicit about the violence and threats of violence he witnessed, the barbarism on display, and the confused, tense years that unfolded (culminating in the Kent State debacle). He was one of two conservative law professors at Yale during the late 1960’s and he argues that events have rarely been represented accurately as he saw them. It is a personal account.

On Bork’s view, the New Left is still quite with us, for the New Left, to some extent, has morphed into the multi-cultural, diversity politicking, equality pursuing liberal left we’ve come to know and love. How much equality is enough? There’s never enough. How free is the individual? Well, he’s almost, if not totally, free.  Radically liberating’s one’s self is central, usually from oppression, and once sexually, morally and politically liberated, utopia will arrive.

I think Bork is at his best when he highlights how portions of the radical individualist project continue to seek meaning in life through collectivist political philosophy, politics, political ideology, gender equality, feminism etc (whereas I would think Bork finds this meaning, a deeper, wiser meaning, in Church doctrine, but the Natural Law folks have problems with him). Bork even concedes that it may be something in the pursuit of liberty itself, as we do have liberty and equality defined in our Constitution, such as they are. On this view, the seeds of its destruction lie within liberty and our founding documents to some extent. Perhaps the old, classical liberalism (equality of opportunity, free markets, party of the working man) will eventually go soft and give way to more radical liberty, given due time. This is what Bork, as a nearly lone conservative amongst older-school liberals, claims happened at Yale in 1967-69.

Bork also puts forth an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. He makes the case that there are simply a lot of cultural elites legislating from the bench, using the Supreme Court as a means to the end of more diversity and equality-making, and that they’ve wandered far afield from the document itself (some background here, if you have a better link or better understanding, drop a line). They court an ultimate danger of undermining themselves, cultivating radicalized people and setting themselves up as the only authority capable of interpreting and directing those people:

If the Constitution is law, then presumably its meaning, like that of all other law, is the meaning the lawmakers were understood to have intended. If the Constitution is law, then presumably, like all other law, the meaning the lawmakers intended is as binding upon judges as it is upon legislatures and executives. There is no other sense in which the Constitution can be what article VI proclaims it to be: “Law….” This means, of course, that a judge, no matter on what court he sits, may never create new constitutional rights or destroy old ones. Any time he does so, he violates not only the limits to his own authority but, and for that reason, also violates the rights of the legislature and the people….the philosophy of original understanding is thus a necessary inference from the structure of government apparent on the face of the Constitution.

As to the legal aspects, I do know that Justices Clarence Thomas, William Rehnquist, and Antonin Scalia have been/were influenced by originalism to some extent. Of course, like Bork, this makes them targets for attack by the opposition:

—————————–

I must say I find Bork refreshing reading when he helps to reveal the authoritarian (nay, totalitarian) impulses of the “personal is political” crowd. It’s fun to have someone provide context when observing the tolerance crowd keep on doing intolerant things, yet piously and humourlessly demanding tolerance all the same (see what FIRE does in response at college campuses). Many of these people actually do run our universities, or those who run our universities will cave to groups of the loudest activist professors and students.

***As an aside, I think what’s happened at Slate magazine helps advance the theory. While politically left, I liked Slate when it can be a bit edgy, thoughtful, occasionally more of a haven for artists, writers, creative thinkers and iconoclasts (Christopher Hitchens was a good example). As of this writing, I find a commitment to the shibboleths of the Left is the ruling order of the day (see the NY Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic as well): You have to toe the line with political correctness and gender and racial equality, and all that individual freedom has limits, obviously, and coalesces around regulated markets, trying to control the public square, and other Statist projects. Such collectivism should make every individual stop and think about how they fit into such a framework.

Why, it’s almost enough to make a man yearn to live back in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

As for art, as T.S. Eliot points out, a first-rate poet can also chart a course back to church doctrine, though this blog believes art is best served when one points out the obvious problems that religion, politics, law, and polite society have with it. Robert Bork quoting Yeats and Auden is interesting though potentially problematic, but Robert Bork quoting rap lyrics to show cultural decay probably just emboldens the opposition.

I think Bork is arguing that unless we stay religious to some extent, and recognize that truth can be revealed to us through the word of God as well as through reason, we will decline (and there are all sorts of declinists out there).

Any thoughts and comments are welcome.

Related On This Site: Charles Murray is trying to get virtue back with the social sciences: Charles Murray At The New Criterion: ‘Belmont & Fishtown’…Can you maintain the virtues of religion without the church…of England?: From The City Journal: Roger Scruton On “Forgiveness And Irony”…

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”…

How does Natural Law Philosophy deal with these problems, and those of knowledge?

Richard Rorty tried to tie postmodernism and trendy leftist solidarity to liberalism: Repost: Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”

Catholic libertarianism: Youtube Via Reason TV-Judge Napolitano ‘Why Taxation is Theft, Abortion is Murder, & Government is Dangerous’

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

On The CHOP-ping Block-It’s Not All Peace, Love and Empathy: Which Moral Lights?

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My two cents: It is, to some extent, the logic of ’68 continued, but now the more radical elements have come to the surface.  Just as CHAZ/CHOP started out with some legitimate grievance and healthier protest instincts, devolving into factional anarchy, chaos, thuggery and desperation, so too have many Left coalitions become more openly visible.

Drama on the high Seattle seas.

My guess is, Mayor Jenny Durkan believes (to some extent) in the tenets of the Church Of High Secular Protest and ‘-Ismology’:  Morally committed people, counter-culturally and collectively inclined, can keep things together (the rich and ‘corporations’ are morally suspect, males are unnecessarily aggressive, racism and sexism are everywhere, the police oppress while peace, love and empathy are next).

I’d like to think that CHAZ/CHOP was proven utopian at best.

Human nature and reality caught up.

Nobly, oh-so nobly, our fair Mayor invoked law enforcement when the action showed up on her doorstep.

Is she changing her tune?  Will most voters in Seattle suddenly rethink their moral commitments?

Don’t hold your breath.

—

Aside from Seattle, I think it should be obvious that our own institutional weakness is a major contributing factor to many current states of affairs.  Whichever model you may be using to view human political organization (some of my favorites include our American Framers, the Platonic, the Aristotelian and Montesquieu), our political parties are increadibly weak, our universities over-built and WAY over-administered with many second and third-raters).

It is very taboo to say so these days:  One need not base all their moral commitments in truth and knowledge claims put forth by those who believe society must radically change, nor even merely even the Civil Rights coalitions.   Movements tend to devolve into rackets, though many ideals may remain deep and true.

I’d like to keep one foot in and one foot out of such visions of (H)umanity.

—

As posted

Repost: Classical Liberalism Via Friesian.Com-‘Exchange with Tomaz Castello Branco on John Gray’

Correspondence here.

Link sent in by a reader.

Without a stronger moral core, will liberalism necessarily corrode into the soft tyranny of an ever-expanding State?

Since the 60’s, and with a lot of postmodern nihilism making advances in our society, is a liberal politics of consent possible given the dangers of cultivating a kind of majoritarian politics: Dirty, easily corrupt, with everyone fighting for a piece of the pie?

As an example, Civil Rights activists showed moral courage and high idealism, to be sure, but we’ve also seen a devolution of the Civil Rights crowd into squabbling factions, many of whom seem more interested in money, self-promotion, influence, and political power.

The 60’s protest model, too, washed over our universities, demanding freedom against injustice, but it has since devolved into a kind of politically correct farce, with comically illiberal and intolerant people claiming they seek liberty and tolerance for all in the name of similar ideals.

Who are they to decide what’s best for everyone? How ‘liberal’ were they ever, really?

Kelley Ross responds to a correspondent on Isaiah Berlin’s value pluralism, while discussing John Gray as well:

‘Now, I do not regard Berlin’s value pluralism as objectionable or even as wrong, except to the extend that it is irrelevant to the MORAL issue and so proves nothing for or against liberalism. Liberalism will indeed recommend itself if one wishes to have a regime that will respect, within limits, a value pluralism. I have no doubt that respecting a considerable value pluralism in society is a good thing and that a nomocratic regime that, mostly, leaves people alone is morally superior to a teleocratic regime that specifies and engineers the kinds of values that people should have. However, the project of showing that such a regime IS a good thing and IS morally superior is precisely the kind of thing that Gray decided was a failure.

Thus, I believe Gray himself sees clearly enough that a thoroughgoing “value pluralism” would mean that the regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini is just as morally justified as the regime of Thomas Jefferson. Gray prefers liberalism (or its wreckage) for the very same reason that the deconstructionist philosopher Richard Rorty prefers his leftism: it is “ours” and “we” like it better. Why Gray, or Rorty, should think that they speak for the rest of “us” is a good question. ‘

and about providing a core to liberalism:

‘Why should the state need a “sufficient rational justificaton” to impose a certain set of values? The whole project of “rational justification” is what Gray, and earlier philosophers like Hume, gave up on as hopeless. All the state need do, which it has often done, is claim that its values are favored by the majority, by the General Will, by the Blood of the Volk, or by God, and it is in business.’

And that business can quickly lead to ever-greater intrusion into our lives:

‘J.S. Mill, etc., continue to be better philosophers than Berlin or Gray because they understand that there must be an absolute moral claim in the end to fundamental rights and negative liberty, however it is thought, or not thought, to be justified. Surrendering the rational case does not even mean accepting the overall “value pluralism” thesis, since Hume himself did not do so. ‘

Are libertarians the true classical liberals? Much closer to our founding fathers?

Related On This Site: From The NY Times Book Review-Thomas Nagel On John Gray’s New ‘Silence Of Animals’…From Darwinian Conservatism: ‘The Evolution of Mind and Mathematics: Dehaene Versus Plantinga and Nagel’…

From Edward Feser: ‘Nagel And His Critics Part IV’…A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”…

John Gray Reviews Jonathan Haidt’s New Book At The New Republic: ‘The Knowns And The Unknowns’

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

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?’

A broader point I’ve been trying pin down, is how, with the unspooling of Enlightenment thinking, there has also unspooled an individualism becoming nihilist, postmodern and deeply alone; artfully and glamourously trashy. Out of such an environment, where many hip, avant-garde birds are flying, (S)elves flirt with Romantically primitive collectivism, epistemological faddishness, modern and failed theories of (H)istory like Marxism.

American egalitarianism, based in our founding documents, even as recently as two generations ago, was more able to effectively resist the rather unimaginative class-war critiques of Marxism.

Which kind of center would I like to see hold?

Some previously posted links:

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.

Update & Repost-From Darwinian Conservatism: ‘Haidt’s Vindication of Fusionist Conservatism and Aristotelian Liberalism’

Jonathan Haidt At Minding The Campus: ‘Campus Turmoil Begins In High School’

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

-Daniel Dennett: ‘Postmodernism And Truth’

Via A Reader-Isaiah Berlin’s Lectures On The Roots Of Romanticism. Romanticism–>Modernism–>Postmodernism–>Wherever We’re Heading Now

Maybe it all started with Beethoven: Everyone’s a (S)elf.

Andy Ngo Inside The People’s Republic Of Autonomous And Occupied Seattle-A Few Links On Free Will, CHAZ, CHOP Or Whatever’s Coming Next

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Andy Ngo from inside CHAZ, or CHOP, or TBD:

“Despite the pleas from those who live and work inside Capitol Hill for law and order to be restored, Seattle’s city council has determined that CHAZ should continue. On Tuesday, the city even provided upgrades to CHAZ, including street blockades that double as graffiti canvases, along with cleaning services and porta-potties.

It is difficult to decipher what CHAZ occupants want. Each faction, whether liberal, Marxist or anarchist, has their own agenda. But one online manifesto posted on Medium demands no less than the abolishment of the criminal justice system.”

My two cents: To give you a flavor of Seattle politics, there has been an avowed Socialist (born in India) on the City Council for a few years now, a Marxist of sorts (born in Africa), writing for The Stranger, and maybe, Dear Reader, just check out Yesler Terrace.  It says a lot more than I could.

In Seattle then, there’s a globally aspiring green, pink and red politics which runs the city (pretty insane), fighting it out with a rather muscular system of free-flowing capital and trade (Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, a big port), a rather mild, perhaps Left-Of-Center working-man, garage-band ethos (fishing, boat-building, timber, code, grunge etc), and some very laid-back attitudes.  Seattle’s not the most civilized, mature nor cultured place, but it’s got some real advantages.

As for CHAZ or CHOP:  Capitol Hill has always seemed like a slowly unfolding protest to me.  Now it’s been kicked-up a few notches. The general ethos there, for better or worse, is alternative, counter-culture, anti-establishment, and ‘liberatory.’

It’s unsurprising to me, then, that Seattle’s current Mayor (responsible for law enforcement) supports undercutting the laws she’s required to enforce because she shares overlap with the ideas of anarchists, radicals, revolutionaries and some violent and dangerous lawbreakers in her vision of democratic leadership.  Everything must go!

Will this be good for her re-election chances?  It’s possible.

The sad thoughts which come to me:  However this little experiment ends, it will cost.  There will be some lives, property, many businesses, the time and energy of thousands.

Even if many residents and businesses do decide to sue the City and the Mayor’s Office for being stuck in CHOP, it’s still taxpayer money.  It won’t just be the deep pockets paying, but the time, money and decency of everyone deciding to honorably carry something which doesn’t require destroying everything that exists first.

On that note, if you’re interested in a more philosophical discussion, on many schools of postmodern thought, the nihilism of Nietzsche, collectivism, and the politics of identity, Stephen Hicks is worth a listen:

The ideas of free will and individual responsibility are generally not shared by those with a collectivist, identity-driven worldview:

And even as Mill’s utilitarianism can end-up sacrificing a few individuals for some greater good, the intersectional and identity-politics ideas sacrifice individuals at the start.

Yes, this was coming, and it’s still coming.  The radical roots are very unstable foundations upon which to maintain democratic institutions:

Repost-Daniel Dennett: ‘Postmodernism And Truth’

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From 1998:

‘When I was a young untenured professor of philosophy, I once received a visit from a colleague from the Comparative Literature Department, an eminent and fashionable literary theorist, who wanted some help from me. I was flattered to be asked, and did my best to oblige, but the drift of his questions about various philosophical topics was strangely perplexing to me. For quite a while we were getting nowhere, until finally he managed to make clear to me what he had come for. He wanted “an epistemology,” he said. An epistemology. Every self-respecting literary theorist had to sport an epistemology that season, it seems, and without one he felt naked, so he had come to me for an epistemology to wear–it was the very next fashion, he was sure, and he wanted the dernier cri in epistemologies. It didn’t matter to him that it be sound, or defensible, or (as one might as well say) true; it just had to be new and different and stylish. Accessorize, my good fellow, or be overlooked at the party’

Worth a read.

The arts and humantities can be given a seriousness of purpose, I’m guessing, but must that purpose necessarily be scientific?

Do creative musical/artistic geniuses really need to understand particularly well how the sciences advance? How much does it matter that a theater major understands how the sciences come to say true things about the world and predict with high accuracy how nature behaves beyond a philosophy course or two?

I could be wrong.

Clearly, one problem is that out of the postmodern malaise comes the nihilism, moral relativism and general desperation where many can be found clinging to the sciences, or some standard of rationalism and reason that doesn’t seem sufficient in answering all the questions religion claims to answer. Nor does it seem sufficient as a platform to understand human nature, history, tradition, the wisdom in our institutions, and the experience past generations can offer beyond its own presumptions.

Lots of people can thus make ideology their guide and political change their purpose, or the State their religion and their own moral failings or moral programs everyone’s moral oughts through the law and politics.

Who has the moral legitimacy to be in charge?

Also On This Site: .Repost: Larry Arnhart At Darwinian Conservatism Reviews E.O. Wilson’s ‘The Social Conquest Of Earth’

Repost-From The Access Resource Network: Phillip Johnson’s “Daniel Dennett’s Dangerous Idea’…From Edge: ‘Dennett On Wieseltier V. Pinker In The New Republic’

Maybe if you’re defending religion, Nietzsche is a problematic reference: Dinesh D’Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche’s Prophesy…

A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”…Repost-Classical Liberalism Via Friesian.Com-‘Exchange with Tomaz Castello Branco on John Gray’

Addition: If the British left, and Eagleton as somewhat representative of it, can’t sanely recognize that part of the problem is the way that Muslims seek a religious kingdom here on earth, and that there can’t be reasonable discussion of this, then…see here, where Roger Scruton suggests a return to religious virtue: From The City Journal: Roger Scruton On “Forgiveness And Irony”

See Also: 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”

Mark Blyth, Riots Full Of Radicals & Watered-Down Marxism-Some Links

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The idea of the ‘Splinternet’, being discussed in many quarters, is interesting.  Networks of global online collaboration, personally and professionally, are easily overshadowed by larger divergent and conflicting political, national and legal interests (China, The EU, America).

Here’s a refreshing jolt of Scottish insight and depressive realism for you (don’t know if I know enough to know about how much I think is true).  A lot of the problems in the tail need to be analyzed.

—

Dear Reader, if you’re thinking belief doesn’t matter, please check out what can happen to people when they come in and out of hope, attached to deeper system of belief, even if that system is generally an ideology with debatable epistemological roots.

Of course there are always violent knuckleheads at such events, but it’s remarkable how many people find themselves sharing common intellectual ground:

What you personally think is true, and what you know, can profoundly affect your experiences and the decisions you make.  This bleeds into the thousands of daily judgments your make, moral and otherwise.

Rod Dreher (formerly Catholic, currently Orthodox, religiously conservative but often writing for a liberal mainstream) brings up a former piece of his on Ta Nehisi Coates’ popularized racial identity separatism:  ‘Amy Cooper, Race, And Mercy’

‘He [Coates] set himself up to be disillusioned because he expected of liberalism something it couldn’t deliver. (“To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.” — Flannery O’Connor). He really seems to have thought that we were moving inexorably to the elimination of that particular evil in this world.’ And we are!

Jason Hill’s open letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates here. Theodore Dalrymple’s review of Coates.

—

To some extent, a Marxist or post-Marxist framework has won many minds, including those viewing the world primarily through the ‘-Isms’ (feminism, environmentalism, racism, liberation theology, a politics prioritizing collective identity, constant radical overthrow of anything established).

Change becomes an immediate necessity, and any injustice, or perceived injustice, becomes an actionable reality.  Any established tradition, practice, or responsibility someone else has decided to carry becomes oppressive.

Unfortunately, such a view, mainstream in many quaraters, never really condemns violence in pursuit of its aims.

 

If identity politics is a watered-down form of Marxism [quite a bit of truth in this] then some Leftists are advocating a return to more pure Marxism, in the face of institutional weakness and capture (‘woke’ elites, competitive globalism and flabby, high liberal institutionalism, ‘neo-liberals’ etc.).  A lot of the industrial utopianism Marx advocated (dependent upon and reactive to Hegelian (H)istoricism and a ridiculously reductive materialism), is easily transferable to computing technology and (S)cience.

In America, personally, I believe a more religious, more traditional civil fabric is being eroded in favor of…something else (freedom of speech and religious liberty perhaps no longer enjoying a popular majority).

As for my thinking, the Platonic model found in the Republic (one of many models I’m using), keeps me up at night:  Benjamin Jowett’s translation of Plato’s Republic can be found here.

On this site, see:

From The Liberal Bastions-James Baldwin, Often…Jason Hill’s open letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates here. Theodore Dalrymple’s review of Coates:

James Baldwin’s works are there to be read and thought about, his words and ideas echoing in your mind; your words formed in response.

Take or leave those words and ideas. You can write a paper, and forget them. They may deeply move and stir your moral imagination, or not.

Such is freedom.

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”…

As to politics and social institutions, sent in by a reader, here’s a talk given by John McWhorter about his views in ‘Losing The Race‘, a man who strikes me as politically amorphous, unsatisfyingly moderate for some, and often very sensible. As has been the case for a while, there [are] a whole range of views out there

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?

If That’s Where A Center Coalesces, Can You Still Count Me Out? Join My Elite, Platinum Plus Membership Plan-YouTube And Susan Wojcicki

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Youtube is balancing interests by moving away from independent content-creators and towards larger, existing media players.  Money is probably a main reason, but there’s also this:

‘Wojcicki said that she decided to start prioritizing authoritative sources in the wake of the terrorist attack in Nice, France on Bastille Day (July 14) in 2016.

“I remember reading about it and being just extremely upset and thinking our users need to know about it,” Wojcicki said.’

The human mind infers from known and unknown facts, creating order even when there are no known facts.  Gossip, speculation, conspiracy theories, well-made fictions and entertaining lunacy are staples in human affairs, and always have currency.

In fact, ‘they’ is probably one of the most common beliefs amongst any polity.

While I may not agree with Wojcicki, I certainly understand a move by someone in her position towards ‘authoritative’ truth.  In fact, old media outlets sold their reputations on layers of fact-checkers, which means ‘The Daily Youtube’ is looking more and more like a reality.

Surely you trust a few algorithms, a class of media and political people, and Ms Wojcicki to decide which gates to open and close?

Surely you trust them to decide which voices get heard and which get banned?

Surely you trust them to decide which ideals our leaders should embody in order to guide our Republic with the consent of the governed?

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Strangely, at the moment, this might make me more sympathetic to the political extremes or ‘populism’ these days, when it comes to the current media and political landscape.

As posted ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK:

Still funny in my opinion:  Who reads the newspapers?

But, still to me, even funnier:  Yes, that’s a Chinese brothel.

‘Noble’ profession journalism never so much was, though I suppose it has a place for the essential in our Republic.  The essential won’t happen without the right kind of local civic engagement, either.

Here’s an interesting discussion between two people, likely led by opposing political instincts but who find themselves sharing some radical, common ground (right and left, O’Keefe and Weinstein, respectively).

How low should you go, especially if you’re out in the cold with respect to many mainstream media and political institutions?

As posted, someone’s going to be running our institutions and making rules out of a presumed universal and common sense set of assumptions:

Martin Gurri via Marginal Revolution: ‘Notes From A Nameless Conference:’

Gurri offered an interesting take on matters socio-cultural:

The dilemma is that this present is defined by a radical distrust of the institutions of industrial society, and of the elites that control them, and of their statements and descriptions of reality. The conference organizers got our predicament right. At every level of contemporary social and political life, we are stuck in the muck of a profound crisis of authority.

Hmmm…:

‘The senior people, largely white and male, seemed to believe that, in punishment for the sins of their fathers, trust had fractured along identity lines. Women today were thought to trust only women, for example. Muslims trusted Muslims, and no one else. Some archetypical essence of “woman” or “Muslim” made internal communications possible, and separated each group from the rest of the human race. It was, to be sure, a disaster of biblical proportions – the story of Babel told in the times of the tweet – and it left the men in charge desperate to put forward individuals of a different sex and skin coloration, to say the things they wanted to hear.

For younger elites, trust involves a sort of cosplay of historical conflicts. They put on elaborate rhetorical superhero costumes, and fight mock-epic battles with Nazis, fascists, “patriarchs,” slave-owners, George III, and the like. Because it’s only a game, no one gets seriously hurt – but nothing ever gets settled, either. Eventually, the young cosplayers must put away their costumes, take one last sip of Kombucha, and set off, seething with repressed virtue, to make money in the world as it really is.’

Roger Sandall from ‘Guardianship: The Utopia Of The New Class‘ finishes with:

‘One remembers Weber’s epitaph for the Protestant Ethic, as he contemplated a devitalised bourgeoisie spiritlessly tending the petrified mechanism their ancestors had raised. Adapted, without apology, it might also be used to depict that petrified Utopia of the New Ruling classes of the East.

Weber:

‘Rulers without honour, administrators without heart, priests without conviction, this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilisation never before achieved.’

Just thought I’d Throw This In There:

An interesting take from Slate Star Codex-‘The APA Meeting: A Photo-Essay:’

There’s a popular narrative that drug companies have stolen the soul of psychiatry. That they’ve reduced everything to chemical imbalances. The people who talk about this usually go on to argue that the true causes of mental illness are capitalism and racism. Have doctors forgotten that the real solution isn’t a pill, but structural change that challenges the systems of exploitation and domination that create suffering in the first place?

No. Nobody has forgotten that. Because the third thing you notice at the American Psychiatric Association meeting is that everyone is very, very woke.

This reminds me of a poem by Robert Pinsky, entitled ‘Essay On Psychiatrists’

V. Physical Comparison With Professors And Others

Pink and a bit soft-bodied, with a somewhat jazzy
Middle-class bathing suit and sandy sideburns, to me
He looked from the back like one more professor.

And from the front, too—the boyish, unformed carriage
Which foreigners always note in American men, combined
As in a professor with that liberal, quizzical,

Articulate gaze so unlike the more focused, more
Tolerant expression worn by a man of action (surgeon,
Salesman, athlete). On closer inspection was there,

Perhaps, a self-satisfied benign air, a too studied
Gentleness toward the child whose hand he held loosely?
Absurd to speculate; but then—the woman saw something

Maintaining a healthy skepticism:

Previous ‘elite’ links on this site, arriving at some yet predictable, unrealized truths: Via Marginal Revolution via American Affairs: ‘The Western Elite From A Chinese Perspective:’

Kenneth Anderson At Volokh: ‘The Fragmenting of the New Class Elites, Or, Downward Mobility

Two Kinds Of Elite Cities in America?

There are people with careers writing about elites, becoming somewhat elite themselves, which haven’t fared too well

Repost-Jonathan Haidt At Heterodox Academy: ‘The Blasphemy Case Against Bret Weinstein, And Its Four Lessons For Professors’

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Full piece here.

‘In the wake of the violence at Middlebury and Berkeley, and in the aftermath of the faculty mob that coalesced to condemn gender studies professor Rebecca Tuvel, many commentators have begun analyzing the new campus culture of intersectionality as a form of fundamentalist religion including public rituals with more than a passing resemblance to witch-hunts.’

Again, and again:

“First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.’

‘Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. ‘

‘Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. ‘

And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.”

-John Stuart Mill ‘On Liberty: Chapter II-Of The Liberty Of Thought And Discussion’

See the previous post.The Intellectual Cowardice Of The Crowd-Charles Murray At Middlebury College

Charles Murray’s Account Of The Middlebury College Affair

Repost-From The Liberal Bastions-James Baldwin, Often

Related On This Site:From FIRE.org-’Federal Government Mandates Unconstitutional Speech Codes At Colleges And Universities Nationwide’Greg Lukianoff At FIRE.Org: ‘Emily Bazelon And The Danger Of Bringing “Anti-Bullying” Laws To Campus’

A U.S. County Quiz, Some Mars Links, And Earlier Thoughts About The Latest Moral Ideas

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Via David Thompson, take a quiz of All Counties of the United States by Proximity.

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Some Mars links:

If you’ve been cooped-up indoors lately, like we are for Corona, then you’re probably experiencing ‘cabin fever’.  Bouts of restless energy, boredom, and frustration are common.

Imagine for a moment you’re stuck on Antarctica, the next delivery weeks away, the temperature -40 F outside.  It’s been months and that guy you never liked anyways just passed by your room and he’s totally f**king with you by casually mentioning the ending to the book he sees in your hand (some reports suggest alcohol was involved).  The base smells like body odor, cooking oil and that same streak is still on the kitchen floor in that same exact spot.

Now imagine somewhere much colder than this, the atmosphere so thin your blood would alternately pressure boil and freeze.  It’s drier than the driest desert on Earth.  The surface outside is rusted and toxic (like you could breathe the air or play in the dirt anyways).  The next delivery, well, there is no next delivery.  This is another planet.

Was there ever water?  How acidic was that water?  Did the EM dynamo just run out, the planet left to spin alone, slowly losing any atmosphere it might have had?  Did any microbial life move underground with the ice billions of years ago?  Could it have done so?

It’s only about 49 million miles to get back home.

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Moving along, and because you didn’t ask:

For me, it’s refreshing to hear any celebrity, politician, or public figure express anything other than support for what the latest moral cause might be these days.  New rules are being formed.

The late Ken Minogue:

On the many dangers of political idealism, and using political theory as the limits of your field of vision:

‘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 idea.’

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

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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

Denis Dutton suggested art could head towards Darwin (and may offer new direction from the troubles of the modern art aimlessness and shallow depth…the money and the fame) Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’…

Roger Sandall, Australian critic of romantic primitivism and the Western’s Left’s penchant for the Noble Savage: His home page where his essays can be found. Here’s “The Rise Of The Anthropologues“ and…

Robert Hughes, Australian and often fierce critic of modernism and post-modernism.

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”…

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

Repost-Some Practical Solutions For Threats To Free Thought, Free Speech & Freedom Of Expression

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Who are the actual stakeholders in refusing the tactics of ostracism, intimidation, and threats of violence on campus curently coming from the far Left?:

Jonathan Haidt continues to have interesting ideas:

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It may be as simple as just letting the true-believers, zealots, and ideologues have their own place, having to compete in the marketplace of ideas ($80k a year….for this?). Yes, often it’s a form of capitulation, but such true-believers, zealots, and ideologues depend upon the institutions they colonize for their survival (disrespecting the rules and legitimacy of the institutions from the get-go; seeking radical transformation and control of the institutions nonetheless).

It will also require the backbone of many in academia and intellectual pursuits to stand-up to charges of thinking differently and violating the holy ‘-Isms’ from time to time. Especially when it has to do with one’s own discipline, domain, and methods.

Eventually, the mobs will come after you, too.

More here.

Link sent in by a reader.

Interesting paper presented by Erika Kiss, beginning about minute 32:00 (the whole conference is likely worth your time for more knowledge on Oakeshott).

According to Kiss, Oakeshott’s non-teleological, non-purposive view of education is potentially a response to Friedrich Hayek, Martha Nussbaum, and Allan Bloom, in the sense that all of these thinkers posit some useful purpose or outcome in getting a liberal education.

Hayek’s profound epistemological attack on rationalist thought is still a system itself, and attaches learning to market-based processes which eventually drive freedom and new thinking in universities. The two are mutually dependent to some extent.

Nussbaum attaches liberal learning to ends such as making us ‘Aristotelian citizens of the world’, or better citizens in a democracy, which has struck me as incomplete at best.

Allan Bloom is profoundly influenced by Straussian ne0-classicism, and wants love, classical learning, honor and duty to perhaps be those reasons why a young man or woman should read the classics. This, instead of crass commercialism, the influences of popular music, deconstructionism and logical positivism.

On this site, see: Mark Pennington Via Vimeo: ‘Democracy And The Deliberative Conceit’

A taste of her Nussbaum here. Also, see:From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’

Via C-SPAN-The Historical Context Of Allan Bloom

…Timothy Fuller At The New Criterion: ‘The Compensations Of Michael Oakeshott’John Gray At The Literary Review Takes A Look At A New Book On Michael Oakeshott: ‘Last Of The Idealists’

Related On This Site: Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff At The Atlantic: ‘Why It’s a Bad Idea To Tell Students Ideas Are Violence’

John Gray Reviews Jonathan Haidt’s New Book At The New Republic: ‘The Knowns And The Unknowns’

See the previous post.The Intellectual Cowardice Of The Crowd-Charles Murray At Middlebury College

Charles Murray’s Account Of The Middlebury College Affair

Repost-From The Liberal Bastions-James Baldwin, Often

Related On This Site:From FIRE.org-’Federal Government Mandates Unconstitutional Speech Codes At Colleges And Universities Nationwide’Greg Lukianoff At FIRE.Org: ‘Emily Bazelon And The Danger Of Bringing “Anti-Bullying” Laws To Campus’

Jonathan Haidt At Heteodox Academy: ‘The Blasphemy Case Against Bret Weinstein, And Its Four Lessons For Professors’