Agnostic-Looking for Liberals In The Postmodern Wilderness
These are great vocals and harmonies and very good songwriting. It’s country-folk with a bit of distance and strangeness; as though its been washed-through some pop and the indie L.A. scene, but also, apparently, through Sweden.
The Swedes seem to bring a forlorn, northern folk-depth to the table.
Hey, this reciprocity works for me:
A quintessential pop-song. There’s actually a lot of depth and arrangment here:
A terrorist blows up a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires (85 dead) in 1994–>Prosecutor Alberto Nisman starts relentlessly investigating years later and eventually confirms evidence of an Iranian state-sponsored Hezbollah agent behind the attack–>Nisman also discovers that the President of Argentina (wonderfully corrupt) is involved in the cover-up of this fact for politics/money/trade/ideological reasons–>Alberto Nisman is murdered in 2015.
A little more on the murder here.
Dexter Filkins took a look at the death of Nisman:
Now it’s back in the news again:
From The NY Times:
‘On July 18, 1994, Ibrahim Hussein Berro, an operative of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, drove a van filled with 606 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil into the Buenos Aires Jewish community center, known as AMIA. More than 300 Argentines were wounded; 85 were murdered. It remains the bloodiest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history.
From 2004 until 2015, our friend, the prosecutor Alberto Nisman, tirelessly pursued the truth behind this crime. He knew from his investigation that the attack was an Iranian-planned operation. And he determined that Ms. Kirchner was behind a cover-up designed to whitewash Iran’s role.
What drove Ms. Kirchner? Argentina faced deep economic problems at the time, and the financial benefits of closer relations with Iran might have tempted her. Her government also had populist ties to Iran and the Bolivarian bloc of nations led by Venezuela. Whatever the reason, never has Ms. Kirchner been formally charged in the crime. Until now.’
This event demonstrates not only how criminally corrupt the Argentine government is (Don’t Cry For Me Argentina), but also the kinds of people, incentives and dangers out there in the world.
The thuggish regime in Iran really is seeking to expand its scope globally (murdering Jews on foreign soil). It really is seeking deliverable nukes while dipping into black-market activity, funding terrorism in a bid to the Mediterranean. It really is seeking supremacy over a quickly forming Saudi-Israeli alliance (Al Quds in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, current ‘allies’ in Yemen).
It will do these kinds of ‘legitimate’ deals where it can too.
During the past administration, a decision was made in Washington to frame American relations with the Iranian regime as either war or a deal to include them in the ‘community of nations’ (perhaps what you might expect from a ‘peace’ activist).
It’s not clear these are the kinds of people with whom we can, nor should, be doing business (though I’m sympathetic to countering Saudi-funded Wahhabism).
Yeah it’s Vice (way radical and edgy), but at least they’re on-scene:
Addition: Argentinian politics are deeply charged, personal, corrupt and messy.
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Anti-Semitism runs deep, and there are plenty of people to reinforce their own standing/lack of standing by scapegoating Jewish folk. A lot of the time such differences can be explained simply by what happens in the schoolyard (he/she is different, isn’t like me, looks funny etc.) but dear Lord, can such sentiment be theorized into racial and genetic pseudo-science, justified by religious conviction, and mobilized into political violence.
More care is required than to leave freedoms in the hands of identitarians.
Jamie Kirchik’s ‘Last Night In Sweden‘:
‘The danger of governments and the press continuing to deny the reality of violent anti-semitism, and of the real dangers posed by large numbers of migrants from Muslim-majority countries without any real effort or ability to acculturate them to Western social and political norms, while blaming “the far right” and “neo-Nazis” alone for anti-semitism and attacks on Muslims, should be plain to any thinking person.’
Via Mick Hartley via Forward: ‘Take It From A British Jew: Anti-Zionism Leads To Anti-Semitism.‘
Israel, Iran, & Peace: Andrew Sullivan Responds To Charges Of Potential Anti-Semitism…
From Guernica: Bernard Henri Levy Interview On Anti-Semitism And Fascism
Repost-Henry Kissinger & George Schulz Via The WSJ: ‘The Iran Deal And Its Consequences’
‘This seems to me a time when several European governments act specifically and deliberately against the most patent and obvious national interests of their country, often with the support of the intelligentsia…’
It’s baffling to me that one of the most basic and visceral obligations leaders have to the people they represent (safety and security) isn’t really being met in many cases. Heck, it appears just pointing these problems out makes one unwelcome in polite society; the issue not yet the stuff of pandering political promise.
Most of us know right away, in fact, we feel it all around us when there’s danger afoot: ‘I’m not safe here. I’ve got to stay alert.‘
Let’s just say it’s a priority for most people, whether standing outside a seedy bar, living in a rough part of town, or being anywhere near a war-zone.
What worries me is that many European societies are only generating political will enough for consensus around ideas which can’t even get this most basic of obligations….basically right.
What’s the plan, here, exactly?
Via a reader, Dr Tino Sanandaji, a Kurdish-Swede discusses Kurds, Kurds in Europe, European immigration and Swedish immigration in particular, via the Rubin Report, which pursues a new form of anti-Left liberalism:
Christopher Caldwell At The Claremont Review Of Books: ‘The Hidden Costs Of Immigration’…From The Middle East Quarterly Via A & L Daily: Europe’s Shifting Immigration Dynamic
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Here’s to hoping for an Islamic renaissance, but preparing for a continued challenge against Islamism and its discontents, including radicalism. Some Muslims will continue the return to purity and brotherhood against outside forces, seeking to control the internal debate within Islam.
Scruton touches on how important irony and Roman law are in the Christian tradition and the culture that developed from it, as well as the cultural developments which distinguish it from the Hebrew bible and the Old Testament.
He also touches on the Western problems of nihilism and postmodernism as he sees them.
Some of his essays here.
Interesting quote at min 6:35 of video 4/4:
‘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.”
Addition: Here’s a quote by Samuel Huntington, which seeks to highlight that this blog has yet to find a universal value, religious, human rights or otherwise, that isn’t subject to human nature and organization (how we define that is up for debate, Darwinian, Natural Law…otherwise). The main fight in the 20th century has been against the great dangers of idealism (Communism, Marxism, National Socialism etc.). Part of the 21st century’s strategic challenge will be battling the religious idealism of Islamists.
Here’s another quote:
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
The quote is from The Clash Of Civilizations and is fairly well known, but I wanted to highlight it as it’s up for debate; coming into some conflict with Scruton’s thinking. Political Order In Changing Societies, by Huntington, info here, is a book likely worth your time.
Our form of violence is responsive to our institutions, laws, and traditions, much like our police forces are here to ideally ‘protect and serve.’
So, what’s the appeal to conservatism, and Scruton’s Burkean conservatism with some German influence? Well, I’m not entirely a ‘Scrutonian,’ but here’s a quotation from George Will on Stephen Colbert, which isn’t an endorsement of the Republican party, but a deeper conservatism when functioning well:
“What conservatives say is that we will protect you against idealism.”
That sounds reasonable. As for ‘peace,’ or world peace, or Kantian perpetual peace or the arc of history bending towards justice…I remain skeptical.
See also 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’
Douthat’s original piece here.
‘The Swedish experience does demonstrate that it’s possible for a welfare-state society to survive the waning of religion and the decline of traditional marriage without sacrificing middle class prosperity. But this success is founded on a level of cultural homogeneity and an inheritance of social capital that simply isn’t available in a polyglot republic-cum-empire like our own.’
Riffing on Douthat: If liberty means extending liberty, or aiming to extend liberty to ever more groups of people through State involvement and a more moral bureaucratic class redistributing resources through the most up to date thinking or the new economic models, then at what cost does this occur to the creation of wealth? Can you even compare Sweden and the U.S effectively? What hard evidence do we have that these policies will work? More deeply: Who is in charge and how do such people ‘know’ what is best for others?
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I remain skeptical of some work by Charles Murray, but he had some interesting ideas on Sweden fifteen years back. That model has not been as successful in assimilating immigrants and maintaining Swedish birth rates nor arguably economic dynamism, and there is a pendulum which can swing back darkly to the right, to nationalism, racial identity and the baggage of the past:
“In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their “child-friendly” policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers, and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. Those same countries are ones in which jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And they, with only a few exceptions, are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, least often seen as a vocation, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest.”
As Murray suggests, the prevailing European secular habit of mind (which shuns overt religious faith) has also transposed a lot of Christian metaphysics (and a lot Marxist materialist/socialist/social democrat/communist thought) into the modern European state. Many religious values continue of course, but are also, in part, maintained by that state. That state, in turn, can limit much dynamism and freedom we take for granted here in the U.S..
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Continuing towards a theme, the rise of nanny-statism in the U.S. (banning Big Gulps and ‘nudging‘ people toward decisions you want them to make) partially has its roots in behavioral economics, and Cass Sunstein’s libertarian paternalism (he makes some interesting arguments):
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From an article at CATO:
“If behavioral economics has taught us anything, it’s that humans are vulnerable to framing effects. In other words, how people make choices turns on seemingly irrelevant aspects of the situation, such as the order in which options are presented, the other (unchosen) options presented at the same time, which option is designated as the “default,” and so on.
The new paternalists, having learned this lesson well, frame the public policy debate in a way that encourages paternalistic interventions. They have done so in at least three ways.”
Click through for more. A lot of people have plans for you and me. A lot.
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Here’s a quote from Arthur Schopenhauer:
“Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
Related On This Site: From Michael Totten At World Affairs: “Noam Chomsky: The Last Totalitarian”…Via Youtube: (1 of 3) Kant, Chomsky and the Problem of Knowledge…Martha Nussbaum criticizing Chomsky’s hubris in Martha Nussbaum In Dissent–Violence On The Left: Nandigram And The Communists Of West Bengal
The West is less violent? I’m not sure I’m convinced by Pinker, anyways: At Bloggingheads Steven Pinker Discusses War And Thomas Hobbes…From Reason.TV Via YouTube: ‘Steven Pinker on The Decline of Violence & “The Better Angels of Our Nature”‘
Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen have plans for America and India, and it involves much more state involvement here in America: Amartya Sen In The New York Review Of Books: Capitalism Beyond The Crisis
Have you downloaded the apps…and the concepts of Enlightenment and post Enlightenment liberty that can lead to runtime errors and fiscal failure? Sachs and Niall Ferguson duke it out: CNN-Fareed Zakaria Via Youtube: ‘Jeff Sachs and Niall Ferguson’
Repost-From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”…Francis Fukuyama At The American Interest-’The Two Europes’
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 leftist solidarity to liberalism, but wasn’t exactly classically liberal: Repost: Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”
