For those who didn’t make it through, and those who did, and those who have worked every day to make it better…
Here’s a video of the memorial at night, from some number of years ago. You can look into those holes, the water flowing down and away. You can also be with everyone else for a moment, looking at the beauty around you; the bustling city.
Addition: At the NY Observer, a firsthand account from the 77th floor of the 2nd tower.
James revisits many quite original, quite accomplished works.
Of note to this blogger:
‘They are, in fact, idealists: and idealism is a cast of mind that Conrad questions even more than he questions radicalism. The logical end of radicalism, in his view, is terrorism; but idealism is the mental aberration that allows terrorism to be brought about. Conrad’s originality was to see that a new tyranny could be generated by people who thought that their rebellion against the old tyranny was rational. Thus his writings seem prescient about what was to happen in the Soviet Union. He didn’t predict the Nazi tyranny because he had underestimated the power of the irrational to organise itself into a state. But then, nobody predicted that except its perpetrators; and anyway, mere prediction was not his business. His business was the psychological analysis made possible by an acute historical awareness. Under Western Eyes is valuable not because it came true but because it rang true even at the time, only now we can better hear the deep, sad note.’
Clive James’ site here.
Michael Dirda on ‘Clive James Last Readings’ review: A Critic’s Final Homage To Literature, Life:’
‘In 30 brief essays James goes on to tell us — in his most digressive, conversational manner — about the books he’s discovered or returned to quite probably for the last time.’
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Not entirely unrelated:
John Gray begins a discussion of his book ‘The Silence Of Animals‘ with a quote from Conrad:
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Added bonus if you act now in the face of no possible objective knowledge.
Part of Bryan Magee’s series:
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Nietzsche directed his thought against Christian morality, secular morality (Kantian and utilitarian), was quite anti-democratic, and anti-Socratic.
Related On This Site: From The NY Times Book Review-Thomas Nagel On John Gray’s New ‘Silence Of Animals’.
Lawrence Wright offered a decent profile of many Al Qaeda top-men in ‘The Looming Tower.‘
They tended to be smart, educated sorts away from home. Ambitious men with deep grievances and wounded pride. Men seeking purity and strength of purpose, as well as a lost kingdom.
Like many Muslim men relative to those in the West, they’d spent most of their lives segregated from women, with many fewer opportunities to have their educations match a deeper sense of purpose and vocation. These were men, who in that rush of youth, perhaps saw little purpose in merely dedicating their lives to family, work and being connected to others through the kind of civil society and associations we have here in the West.
Of course, some men are pretty sadistic to begin with, but certainly not all.
There was righteous glory to be had, and bloody battles to be fought in driving the infidel from the Arabian peninsula, and eventually Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In fact, most of these men were often exposed to political oppression and brutality within the kinds of States common throughout the Muslim world these days.
As for the new recruits: Some of them had a bomb strapped to them same day. Not much room for franchise growth…in this life!
Wright piece on Al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
Some of Roger Scruton’s essays here. Interesting quote in this video, which may line-up with Wright’s observations about the pursuit of purity, and how it tends to end:
‘Universal values only make sense in a very specific context…the attempt to universalize them, or project and impose them…just leads to their appropriation by sinister forces.”
Any thoughts and comments are welcome.
Feel free to highlight my ignorance.
[Addition]: Of course, what do we do in defense against people who want to kill us where we live, whose ideals are fairly deluded and corrupted from the start?
Related On This Site: From Slate: ‘In Aleppo, Syria, Mohamed Atta Thought He Could Build The Ideal Islamic City’…From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”
Roger Scruton At The WSJ: ‘Memo To Hawking: There’s Still Room For God’
Andy Ngo is physically attacked in Portland, from milkshakes to fists which’ve caused potentially worse injuries. He contributes to the WSJ. Fund here.
Thanks for taking hits for the rest of us, while merely trying to document the continually occuring and continually violent anti-fascist protests there.
“We also are hoping that our fellow journalists might awaken from the delusion that Antifa is a well-intentioned band of anti-fascists with a few bad apples sullying the cause.”https://t.co/TVpck7vCvh
— Quillette (@Quillette) June 30, 2019
So, why the broader media silence (you know, from journalists)?
Why do the Portland authorities tolerate such violent lawlessness, while selectively enforcing the law?
My map is pretty simple: Once individuals and institutions acquiesce or commit to the claims of activist logic, the adoption of radical principles or radical chic (fashionable signaling), the game is afoot. Sympathy for collectivist ideological framing of truths (not the actual truths, per se) can unite strange bedfellows.
If you don’t explicitly condemn violence, nor limit violence through a statement of principles, you will drift into the radicalism of those who wish to tear it all down. Weaponized resentment can easily consume civil discourse.
Of course, some on the Left (laregly what’s become the ‘IDW’) openly condemn such violence and these particular bad actors, while continually arguing for what amounts to radical institutional change.
Openly condemning violence is always welcome:
Follow-up: Did the shakes thrown at @MrAndyNgo contain cement? We don’t know. Quite possibly not.
Was Andy struck repeatedly, bloodied & bruised, and injured sufficiently that he is still in the hospital under observation for brain bleed? Yes. That is all most definitely true.
— Heather E Heying (@HeatherEHeying) June 30, 2019
The view from here:
I think the Arts & Sciences need better stewardship.
But, Chris, you might find yourself thinking, while I appreciate your rakish good looks I happen to disagree. You’ve been reasonably up front about your biases (Northeastern Democrats in the family, Irish Catholic roots and many conservative views, libertarian leanings, a passion for the arts and some work and appreciation in/for the sciences….aiming for live and let live, mostly).
What do you even stand for, anyways?
Hopefully, I’m standing for better stewardship of the institutions of our fine Republic. I’m acting as though there will be rules, and people enforcing those rules, and institutional authority. I’m acting as though there will be politics, regardless of many of the current failures of our political, academic and media folks. I’m respecting religious belief, tolerance, and the consent of the governed.
***Also, I am currently accepting sums in excess of $1 million dollars to the email below. No small-time players, please. I aim to provide, for me and my loved ones, a series of vacation villas from which I can shake my fists at passing clouds, above life’s thousand, cutting indignities.
Robert Hughes makes the case for older forms of visual expression at min 45:08:
‘Painting is, you might say, exactly what mass media are not, a way of specific engagement, not of general seduction. That is its continuing relevance to us: Everywhere and at all times, there is a world to be reformed by the darting subtlety and persistent slowness of the painter’s eye.’
The idea that a painter, through long experience and expert practice, can give you an experience you might not have otherwise had; returning some basic part of yourself to you, or reorienting you to experience the world anew, is an interesting one.
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As to what I think the humanities can do when less frequently co-opted by the causes and movements of the moment.
Quotations which have stuck with me:
“Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.”
‘The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.’
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Meanwhile, politics and geo-politics go on, and if you think you might know which direction (H)istory is moving, you might want to think again.
And again.
This way, at least, we all might learn more along the way.
Some links:
U.S.-China rivalry is not carbon copy of the Cold War. But revisiting debates over what caused the Cold War can help us determine what is driving today’s U.S.-China rivalry. And that is critical to figuring out where to go:@CharlesEdel @ForeignPolicy https://t.co/enltd0wSRB
— Hal Brands (@HalBrands) June 3, 2019
Alleged Strike Shows Israel Is Chasing Iranians Deep Into Syrian Desert. https://t.co/efyZFpnWQb
— Mark Dubowitz (@mdubowitz) June 4, 2019
Via David Thompson-‘The Manhoff Archives‘
Just one guy taking a look at the world he found himself in and taking some photos and videos along the way:
‘Major Martin Manhoff spent more than two years in the Soviet Union in the early 1950s, serving as assistant army attaché at the U.S. Embassy, which was located just off Red Square at the beginning of his time in Moscow.’
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Paul Berman at Tablet: ‘The Left And The Jews: A Tale Of Three Countries‘
‘In the early spring of this year, an angry dispute broke out in the United Kingdom between the mainstream Jewish communal organizations and the leader of the radical left, currently head of the Labour Party, who is Jeremy Corbyn; and a couple of days later, a roughly similar dispute broke out in France between the equivalent French Jewish organization and Corbyn’s counterpart on the French left, who is Jean-Luc Mélenchon; and the double outbreak suggested a trend, which raises a question. It is about America and the Democratic Party.’
I suppose we’ll see.
Movements of radical and revolutionary liberation depend upon the removal of injustice, and solidarity around certain ideals. It seems as more individuals think in terms of group identity and identity politics, ‘the system’ becomes that which unites such identity groups against a common enemy, even if they come to have influence within ‘the system. ‘
Personally, I see ‘the system’ as largely comprised of everyday people engaged in maintaining the laws, traditions and institutions upon which we all depend. Such people often have their own reasons, thoughts and feelings as they go about their duties. Such activities are best done locally. Public trust in federal institutions is dangerously low at the moment, for many good reasons.
We could be in for a bad patch, indeed.
It seems more than fair to critique the laws, traditions and institutions which can and have brutally oppressed and excluded some, but how do the ideas and doctrines of radical liberation actually engage the energies and beliefs of the people within them? What are some consequences of these ideas in practice, shorter and longer-term? Why is authoritarianism so often claimed in enemies but never within these movements themselves (oh so human a characteristic…but a hallmark here), exacerbating authoritarian tendencies?
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At its best, it seems to me the melting pot model engages the reasons people can become nasty, tribal, groupish, and violent towards one another, saying something like: ‘Follow the laws, become a citizen, learn the language, defend the country and get ahead. If you can’t get yourself ahead, get your kids ahead.’
There are obvious shortcomings of defending home and hearth, and that which is familiar and loved within such a model. It doesn’t necessarily scale, and people being what we so often are, can easily resist change and outsiders and new ideas when what’s new might enrich us. All of us can dwell in the natural ignorance of the head and the nostalgic sentiments of the heart for too long, and sometimes we can just be plain wrong.
Yet, the liberty allowed to pursue one’s own ends in such a fashion and the wisdom of seeing human nature more as it is, seem much more humane and capable of political stability and economic opportunity.
If you’re still with me, forget all the above, Dear Reader.
Clear your mind and focus on a single image. Allow this image to occupy your thoughts.
Relax as the image becomes a single, ancient eye. Now open this eye, a lizard’s eye, and see the New World.
Join the Snake Cult! (and enjoy some prime Arnie ‘mittel-English’):
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From Paul Bowles ‘Allal,‘ found within this collection of short stories.
I recall musical and deeply rhythmic English (Bowles was a composer who lived in Morocco for most of his life), along with a recurrent theme of Western innocence, ignorance and arrogance meeting ancient North African realities and brutalities.
‘Moments passed with no movement but then the snake suddenly made a move towards Allal. It then began to slither across Allal’s body and then rested next to his head. He was very calm at this moment and looked right into the snake’s eyes and felt almost one with the snake. Soon his eyes closed and he fell asleep in this position.’
What have you done with your I/Eye, dear Reader?
Something tells me the kind of fantastical savagery and imaginative schlock of Conan the Barbarian doesn’t quite capture the deeply moral, frighteningly real and lushly imagined Bowlesian world…
Some interesting takeaways from the interview above (Kissinger was a young man whose family fled the Nazis and who not long after served in the American military, helping to free a concentration camp).
-In writing an entire undergraduate thesis on Kant’s transcendental idealism, Ferguson sketches a Kissinger who bypassed the historical determinism of the Hegelians and the economic determinism of the Marxists. Freedom has to be lived and experienced to thrive and be understood, and Kant gets closer to championing this conception of individual freedom than do many German thinkers downstream of Kant.
-According to Ferguson, this still tends to make Kissinger an idealist on the idealist/realist foreign policy axis, but it also likely means he’s breaking with the doctrines which animate many on the political Left, hence his often heretical status.
***I’d add that unlike many thinkers in the German philosophical and political traditions, the Anglosphere has economic idealists and various systematists battling other systematists, yes, but there are looser networks of free, civic association and more avoidance of top-down organization and fewer internalized habits of order.
Perhaps such looser civic associations, broad geography and rougher, cruder practices of freedom help keep power and authority dispersed. Kissinger came closer to being ‘America’s Metternich‘ than have all but a few other actors, and Kant was quite serious in the scope of his metaphysics.
Interesting piece here:
‘The most original and interesting aspect of the biography is Ferguson’s ability to engage with and analyze Kissinger’s ideas as set forth in the voluminous letters, papers, articles, and books written by Kissinger as a student, academic, and policy adviser. According to Ferguson, Kissinger the political philosopher was closer to Kant than Machiavelli. While he admired the brilliance of Metternich and Bismarck, his ideal statesmen (e.g., Castlereagh) sought to construct international orders that did not depend upon a guiding genius for their stability.
He was not, however, a Wilsonian idealist—idealism based on abstraction instead of experience, he believed, was a “prescription for inaction.” “The insistence on pure morality,” Kissinger once told a colleague, “is in itself the most immoral of postures.” Statesmen must act under a cloud of uncertainty and often their decisions reflect a choice among evils.’
As previously posted: – ‘Kissinger: Volume I: The Idealist.1923-1968:’
Previously on this site:
Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft here, long before any Iran dealing.
Some thoughts on Fukuyama and Leo Strauss: Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’
Francis Fukuyama uses some Hegel and Samuel Huntington…just as Huntington was going against the grain of modernization theory…:Newsweek On Francis Fukuyama: ‘The Beginning Of History’…Francis Fukuyama At The American Interest Online: ‘Political Order in Egypt’
Robert Nozick merged elements of Kant and Locke in a strong, libertarian defense of the individual A Few Thoughts On Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State and Utopia”…From Slate: ‘The Liberty Scam-Why Even Robert Nozick, The Philosophical Father Of Libertarianism, Gave Up On The Movement He Inspired.’
Interesting quote at min 3:07 of video 3/3:
‘Universal values only make sense in a very specific context…the attempt to universalize them, or project or impose them…just leads to their appropriation by sinister forces.”
I wonder what this would mean when applied to American foreign policy, the Cold War, and Western influence when it comes to world order at the moment…this call for a return to tradition, local politics and religion.
Scruton sees postmodern nihilism as one of the greatest threats to Western civilization right now.
Related On This Site: From Nigel Warburton’s Site: A Definition of Humanism?…A Debate: Would We Better Off Without Religion?…Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?…From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…
Roger Scruton At The WSJ: ‘Memo To Hawking: There’s Still Room For God’
For those who didn’t make it through, and those who did, and those who have worked every day to make it better…
Here’s a video of the memorial at night, from a few years ago. You can look into those holes, the water flowing down and away. You can also be with everyone else for a moment, looking at the beauty around you; the bustling city.
Addition: At the NY Observer, a firsthand account from the 77th floor of the 2nd tower.
“But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind.”
…’Let us by all means make the “Ground Zero” debate a test of tolerance. But this will be a one-way street unless it is to be a test of Muslim tolerance as well .’
For some in the West, Western institutions are simultaneously the source of all moral injustice in the world and apparently, among the only agents capable of granting moral legitimacy in the world.
If ‘we’ (low buy-in, high cost, the individual never quite defined), simply join movements against the mysterious powers controlling us, towards presumably universal ideals, political ideals, or even towards radical revolution (protests can get violent from time to time)….
…then surely let us welcome Muslims, and much that’s illiberal within Islam, in the radically tolerant, creative, diverse, socially democratic future that awaits.
A British Muslim tells his story, suggesting that classical liberalism wouldn’t be a bad idea:From Kenanmalik.com: ‘Introduction: How Salman Rushdie Changed My Life’
What happens when a Canadian imam uses the Canadian Human Rights Commission of Alberta to get as much mileage as he can out of his own absolutist and illiberal tendencies…we don’t need that here: Repost-A Canadian Libertarian Making Noise: Ezra Levant…
See Also On This Site: From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…From The Middle East Quarterly Via A & L Daily: Europe’s Shifting Immigration Dynamic
Kenan Malik In The Spiked Review Of Books: ‘Twenty Years On: Internalizing The Fatwa’-Salman Rushdie
Theodore Dalrymple argues that France has the potential to handle Muslim immigration better because of its ideological rigidity, which can better meet the ideological rigidity of its Muslim immigrants…Theodore Dalrymple Still Attacking Multi-Culturalism In Britain
How do you reasonably deal with relativism anyways?: From Virtual Philosophy: A Brief Interview With Simon Blackburn
A long time ago, and not so long ago. *chiwai*’s photostream here. Excellent photo.
