Youtube

A Potential YouTube Covidocracy & Re-Constituting The Humanities-Two Links & A Few Thoughts

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This is coming from a pretty honorable, pretty reasonable guy on the pro-speech, pro-Science Left.

My guesses: Youtube management develops its algorithms with a lion’s share of user data, outsourcing much judgment to AI models and a complex automation process.

Youtube management probably feels pressure, as a company, to direct user attention towards paying clients (existing news outlets and networks just as many such media companies are being hollowed-out by….Youtube). The conflicts of interest in health, the sciences and politics don’t necessarily mean all the truth and getting at the truth.

Many human biases are pushing towards the broad, humanistic goals of equality and ‘democracy’. Ever more freedom, led by Enlightened, benevolent Western sorts.

Freedom is next! Health and Safety first!

For my part, with COVID-19 about, I’m seeing an inconsistent application of rules, bureaucratic authoritarianism, and some clear political corruption and conflicts of interest.

Following the threads of radical liberation doesn’t necessarily weave a strong cloth. In fact, many such threads lead to further institutional decay and ideological capture. The assumption of equality across race, sex, and ability doesn’t necessarily map the terrain.

Many of the wrong people and wrong types of people are ending up in wrong places.

Human nature runs deep. It certainly ain’t all good. Maintaining legitimate authority, our Constitutional constraints, and the consent of the governed ain’t easy.

Addition: I’ve gotten some pushback on: ‘The assumption of equality across race, sex, and ability doesn’t necessarily map the terrain.’

What I mean: I believe basic equality in dealing with another person is a moral obligation, but not one which begins and ends with the laws of men. Civil Rights logic is a major step towards civil recognition and freedom for those oppressed, but is also a massive expansion of State authority which oppressed. Some claiming Civil Rights leadership have devolved into racketeers. Many ideologues reaffirm daily the wish to destroy that which exists. Something like a new belief system, and civic religion, is being formed, likely of necessity. Some minds haven’t (and maybe can’t) necessarily have been persuaded, only coerced.

This is asking a lot of our laws and institutions. Perhaps too much.

Comparing men and women across all domains (personal, biological), while encouraging the many divides between the sexes be remedied by the guiding light of humanistic ideals, and increasingly dense law, does not necessarily mean good law. In fact, it might not accurately map many personal experiences, deepest hopes, nor biological imperatives. Among those charged with highest responsibility in maintaining laws and institutional authority, there is a foundational belief that change comes first. How might such a belief work in practice? Can many current rates of change be sustained?

Individuals aren’t equal in ability, often not even while compared across different days…with themselves. Incentives matter.

These are reasons for deep pessimism, of course. I hope to be proven wrong, or certainly, incomplete, in my thinking.

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On that note, re-constituting a good humanities education, speaking to deepest needs, might be a good place to start.

This probably means kicking out many entrenched ideologues, mid-level managers and gravy-trainers, or just letting some folks rot on the vine.

I won’t pretend to have the knowledge in deciding who’s who and how much.

Start anew? Where?

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

 

The George Floyd Arrest Video, Google, And A Reminder Of Some Better Standards For Speech & Reasonable Discussion-This Thing Won’t Land Itself

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Rod Dreher and commenters have a discussion about the George Floyd arrest video.  Eleven Updates.  It’s a hot topic.

‘Please don’t use my real name – there are issues where taking a stand is worth risking a job, but this isn’t one of them.
I’ve been a practicing attorney for 12 years, mostly doing civil litigation but with a little bit of criminal defense work. The big point you and many others, left and right, have missed about the new bodycam footage is that it’s likely to get Chauvin and the other officers acquitted–not because it shows Floyd resisting, but because combined with the autopsy results, it’s likely to prevent the government from proving causation beyond a reasonable doubt.’

Arrest video here, via Youtube via the Daily Mail.

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On that note, New Tech is New Media, to a large extent, and it is displaying signs of the same ideological capture as much as Old Media and many of our educational institutions.

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.’

Equality–>Equity–>Ideological Capture.

From Google’s CEO:

‘Today we are announcing a set of concrete commitments to move that work forward: internally, to build sustainable equity for Google’s Black+ community, and externally, to make our products and programs helpful in the moments that matter most to Black users.’

The more I think about how complex the search algorithms, how many iterations I’ve performed with them while I/They alter my behavior, and how much information I am giving data stakeholders, well, Dear Reader, I’m a bit chilled.

When I see ‘equity’ language, however, specifically coming from the CEO at the company responsible for many of those algorithms, then I know it’s only a matter of time before that portion of the company becomes toxic, if it doesn’t break Google apart.

Towards understanding why ‘Equity’ is a word which will be used to shut down the pursuit of truth, new knowledge and reasoned debate.  All Enlightenment values many liberals, and now increasingly conservatives, will have to defend:

Come with me to my ‘field of gathered abstractions’:

Why I think the ‘modern’ maps greatly underestimate the depth and wisdom of the religious and humanities’ maps of human nature, rather than the ideological maps of oppressor/oppressed and the postmodern capture.

Highlighting ideological capture with libertarianism:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

‘Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

 First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.’

Highlighting ideology with Darwinian Conservatism, as Larry Arnhart is dealing with many of these ideas.  Here’s the banner from the site:

‘The Left has traditionally assumed that human nature is so malleable, so perfectible, that it can be shaped in almost any direction. By contrast, a Darwinian science of human nature supports traditionalist conservatives and classical liberals in their realist view of human imperfectibility, and in their commitment to ordered liberty as rooted in natural desires, cultural traditions, and prudential judgments.’

The move from Romanticism–>Modernism–>Postmodernism is a deeper and very important current in the Western World, and it is isolating many of us into (S)elves, and promoting a radical posture of first the artist, now each individual, as existentially apart from and outside of all institutions.

Highlighting postmodern skepticism with postmodern skepticism and some British Idealism:

Review here of a book by author Luke O’Sullivan on 20th century British conservative and thinker Michael Oakeshott. Other books by O’Sullivan on Oakeshott can be found here.

Highlighting ideology with 20th-century liberal philosophy

Before modernism, there was the Romantic break of the individual artistic genius driving all this change forward on his own. Isaiah Berlin had some thoughts about this (as well as the horrendous totalitarianism which emerges when you start-out thinking the Ends Of Man are already known).

Thanks, reader. Probably worth revisiting:

Highlighting ideology and speech with older liberalism: How about speech?:

“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’

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

Oh, There Will Be Rules-Did You Just Disrupt Someone’s Experience?

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My two cents: High-end algorithmic design and development takes a fair amount of brains.  In terms of access, we’ve gone from usenet backwaters to very popular global wave pools, disrupting many old forms of communication aggregation and technology.

Rule-making and enforcement is hard, and some of the problems found therein can bedevil anyone (political/ideological disputes, violent actors, child predators etc).  Twas ever thus.  You want the people, you get the problems.  And there are some serious f**kin’ problems.

Each one of us gets what we pay for, I suppose.  So, in choosing to use these companies’ products, each of chooses to play some part, however small.

My vague predictions: Companies tend to get co-opted by the organizational structures that have grown up within them (often run by 2nd and 3rd-raters, loud voices, and/or bureaucrats).  The best talent goes elsewhere or moves on to other problems.  Or maybe the company’s overtaken by new rivals.  Or it stagnates against new technologies. Or maybe they are made to answer other centers of power, authority, and influence.  Or….things fall apart.

Some people on the Left, feeling the pull of authoritarian undercurrents or dashed against the sharp, totalitarian edges of many others on the Left, have been the ones suggesting modeling these platforms’ speech policies on 1st amendment protections or ideas found in J.S. Mill’s thinking.

Those designs have worked much better, for much longer.

As for me, I’m not holding my breath.  I’m pretty sure I don’t trust the lifeguards at the global wave pools.

‘….disrupts people’s experience…’

Repost-It Ain’t What You Know, It’s What You Know That Ain’t So?-Eric Weinstein At the Rubin Report: The Four Kinds Of Fake News

The Two Clashing Meanings Of Free Speech-Whence Liberalism?

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

As for truth, at least with the Weekly World News, you got the best of fakery:

batboy.gif

Bat Boy!

 

William F. Buckley And Kenneth Minogue Discuss Ideology

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I’m well aware that any schlub can post a Youtube video on a WordPress site, but given the progressive politics dominating political discourse, it’s timely, I assure you.

The discussion hinges on the idea of whether or not you and I are already free, and whether or not we somehow need liberating from something.  The world and society are full of injustices, and discontents, and inequalities.  Sure, we needed liberating from King George for various reasons during our revolution, but not in the radical, ideological, rationalist sense (addition: a reader points out John Locke’s right of revolution…duly noted).

Black folks in America certainly needed liberating, held under the laws and subject to extreme injustice.  But how?

In Marxist ideology, this liberating hinges on a form of revolutionary praxis, according to Minogue.  It operates as a closed system of ‘first principles’ which goes deep and purports to function as a science and claims to undercut the sciences, philosophy, capitalism and theology in order to liberate.  This is why it lives on, and on, and on.  Despite its failures it remains ultimately untestable, neither proved nor disproved, not being a form of knowledge we’ll know ever lines up with reality, or that can be falsifiable, a la Karl Popper.

In the video, liberation theology is briefly discussed as well, described by Buckley as a kind of ‘baptised Marxism.’  In it, we see a charged movement against the injustices of slavery moving towards ideas of liberation (think Rev. Wright’s church).   I’ll put up a quote from a few posts ago by Cornel West.:

‘Being a leftist is a calling, not a career; it’s a vocation not a profession. It means you are concerned about structural violence, you are concerned about exploitation at the work place, you are concerned about institutionalized contempt against gay brothers and lesbian sisters, hatred against peoples of color, and the subordination of women.’

Few things are sadder to me than relatively well-off, unknowing, white liberals, maybe even of the classical variety, finding sudden solidarity under the current progressive mainstream discussion, softly under the influence of the New Left alliance of the 60’s.

There are many hypocrisies visible in this approach, logical inconsistencies and costs to all of our economic and political freedoms.

Needless to say, it’s frustrating.

Also As Sent In:  Martin Luther King’s intellectual development came mainly through theology and seminary, social gospel (addressing social injustices), but also depended on various other sources, including Gandhi’s non-violent resistance (not acquiescence) to displace the force of the laws used against blacks for centuries.  He welcomed a broad definition of rights enacted into law to include black folks, and a vast involvement of Federal authority…that libertarians have trouble with philosophically:

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Related On This Site:  Sunday Quotation: Edmund Burke On The French Revolution

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’

One way out of multiculturalism and cultural relativism:

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

They’ve got to keep up with the times:A Few Thoughts On NPR And Current Liberal Establishment Thinking Under Obama

 Ken Burns makes a good documentary, but he’s also arguing he absolutely needs your tax dollars in service of what he assumes to be a shared definition of the “common good” as he pursues that art.  The market just can’t support it otherwise. Repost-From ReasonTV Via Youtube: ‘Ken Burns on PBS Funding, Being a “Yellow-Dog Democrat,” & Missing Walter Cronkite’…From NPR: Grants To The NEA To Stimulate The Economy?…We’re already mixing art and politics, so…

The Hoover Institution Via Youtube: Charles Murray On ‘Coming Apart’

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Likely worth your time.

Thanks to Malcolm Greenhill for pointing this out.   In response to Megan McArdle’s post “America’s New Mandarins,” it might be worth revisiting Charles Murray’s Coming Apart.

Murray argues that since 1963, America’s civic culture, one that prized marriage, one that was more religious and more influenced by organized religion, and one that created a network of civic associations, clubs and shared expectations and obligations has sharply declined (Murray does not advocate a return to 1963).

He tells a tale of two cities: Belmont & Fishtown.  Belmonters are upper-middle class folks, and however much they followed the 60’s zeitgeist (however radical or not radical they were), they could afford to bounce back.  They’ve since come to run many of our institutions and are doing ok for themselves in the professions albeit with less religion in their lives (NPR’s mainstreaming of institutionalized feminism, environmentalism, moral relativism etc. might be a good example).  The upper 20%, and a professional class of lawyers, doctors, professors has held together pretty well.

Fishtowners, on the other hand, haven’t rebounded according to Murray. Working-class whites in Fishtown now have marriage rates of 48% (to 84% in Belmont).  They have much higher out-of-wedlock births, and 1 out of 8 males are not even looking for work alongside only 1 out of 8 people going to church regularly.  Religion has declined in both areas, but much more so in Fishtown.  The social fabric that once held these two groups together, and formed the core of pre-1960’s society, has weakened considerably.

In lieu of Murray’s lost civic culture, the clubs and associations that once bound us together, perhaps we could think of McArdle’s mandarins and meritocrats having been born of the newer, more self-selecting, Belmont. Perhaps some there are more open to government uniting us, or open to more European-style governance.

***Murray also addresses the rise of technology and technological dislocation (brains, STEM training, the rise of the quants) as well.  There are many other moving parts here.

Any thoughts and comments are welcome.

The point of this post:  The mandarins are us!  Egads!

Related On This Site:   Charles Murray At The New Criterion: ‘Belmont & Fishtown’…Charles Murray Lecture At AEI: The Happiness Of People…Can you maintain the virtues of religion without the church…of England?:  From The City Journal: Roger Scruton On “Forgiveness And Irony”…

The NY Times op-ed writer and a practicing Catholic? William Saletan and Ross Douthat At Slate: ‘Liberalism Is Stuck Halfway Between Heaven And Earth’…Douthat’s The Grand New Party…Ross Douthat At First Principles: ‘The Quest for Community in the Age of Obama: Nisbet’s Prescience’

Don’t get Borked, at least if you’re openly religious and aiming for higher office:  Bork had his own view of the 1960′s: A Few Thoughts On Robert Bork’s “Slouching Towards Gomorrah”

Walter Russell Mead takes a look at the blue model (the old progressive model) from the ground up in NYC to argue that it’s simply not working.  Check out his series at The American Interest.  He has a big vision with some holes in it, but it’s one that embraces change boldly.

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’

Monday Quotation From Charles Kesler And A Few Thoughts on Conservatism

Victor Davis Hanson Via Youtube Via Uncommon Knowledge: ‘The New Old World Order’

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10/14/2010

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VDH was a supporter of the Iraq war as part of a larger war against “Islamic fascism.” He is registered Democrat but generally conservative (neoconservative?), and I suspect virtue, duty, and honor are central to a lot of his thinking as he is a military historian who’s written extensively about the Peloponessian wars.

As he points out, we are in an asymmetrical war against Islamic terrorists and also in potential conflict with the nations which actively support, harbor, or simply cannot control those terrorists within their borders.  He discusses some of the forces inside Muslim countries which help to produce these terrorists as he sees them:  anti-modernism, anti-Westernism, an Islamic resurgence whose sharp edge is going to drive the infidel and his Western influences from the Arabian peninsula and restore purist Islam.

In a democracy like ours (he no doubt sees parallels to ancient Athens) we generally don’t provide a lot of public support to a war unless we are in real danger as we were on 9/11.  This kind of ongoing conflict (USS Cole, embassy bombings, Ft. Hood, Times Square bomber) is a tough sell to Americans and VDH is generally suspect of our will to see the struggle through as for him it is a conflict to be won, military campaigns and all.

I’d add that as we speak, Obama’s liberal internationalist policy platform is pursuing a goal which I would support if I had more confidence it would reap reward without too much sacrifice and change to our own freedoms, traditions and institutions (and not lead us into the European multicultural solution which is in part relying on our military strength).

This goal is getting a plurality if not a majority of Muslims to stand up and say to those terrorists, Al-Qaida members, inflammatory Imams and radicals amongst them:  Stop it.  Your way is not our way.

On this view, to achieve this goal, you meet with these Muslims and their organizations where they are, and you try and punish/reward their political leaders who cannot be too far in front of their people.  You still try and install more Western democratic institutions and include the people under a set of ideals which you presume to be universal, but with as little military involvement as possible.  Now you have the “right ideas.”

According to liberal internationalism, curbing American force, withdrawing our military from Afghanistan and Iraq (but involving it in unforeseen ways in Libya, and leaving it out of Syria?) is the best way forward.  With carrots and sticks this will somehow, in the long run, lead toward peace by including and representing all parties without exposing them to the sharp edge of Western society.  The preferred ideals of women’s freedoms, human rights, and tolerance are often pursued most prominently.

As VDH points out, our enemies (Al Qaida, terrorists in general, Ahmadinejad, Hizbollah) see this approach as a sign of weakness, and will take any advantage they can which poses other risks to our security.  Our old enemies like Russia and unknowns like China will do much the same, and international institutions may not be the best way to handle any common interests.  The kinds of institutions which this worldview produces are like the relatively ineffective ones it has already already produced:  the U.N., the failures of the Eurozone and its top down class of bureaucrats, and the excesses of more indebted and unsustainable Western States whose people are being out-produced and out-reproduced.

There is a serious design flaw to such an approach, aside from the Rousseuian tendencies and the idealism inherent within it.

I’m not sure I’m totally on board with another military campaign in the Middle-East and I know many fellow Americans are not as well, so I’ll leave with this quotation by Samuel Huntington which I keep putting up:

“Although the professional soldier accepts the reality of never-ending and limited conflict, “the liberal tendency,” Huntington explained, is “to absolutize and dichotomize war and peace.” Liberals will most readily support a war if they can turn it into a crusade for advancing humanistic ideals. That is why, he wrote, liberals seek to reduce the defense budget even as they periodically demand an adventurous foreign policy.’

Any thoughts and comments are welcome.  Please feel free to highlight my ignorance.

Related On This Site:  The Clash Of Civilizations…The End Of History?:  ’From The Atlantic: Samuel Huntington’s Death And Life’s Work…From The American Interest Online: Francis Fukuyama On Samuel Huntington…From Foreign Affairs Via The A & L Daily: ‘Conflict Or Cooperation: Three Visions Revisited’

Back to 19th Century power politics since the end of history has not “materialized”?:  Obama’s Decision On Missile Defense And A Quote From Robert Kagan’s: ‘The Return Of History And The End Of Dreams…Repost-Daniel Deudney On YouTube Responding to Robert Kagan: ‘Liberal Democracy Vs. Autocracy’

Is the End Of History contingent upon a perfectible State driven by a more moral bureaucratic class?:  Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’

Are we in decline?:  Fareed Zakaria BBC Interview: America In Decline…Richard Lieber In The World Affairs Journal–Falling Upwards: Declinism, The Box Set…

It’s a big assumption to make: From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism….Daniel Greenfield definitely thinks Islam is the problem: From Sultan Knish: ‘The Mirage Of Moderate Islam’…Repost-From Beautiful Horizons: ‘Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ramadan at the 92nd Street Y’

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Lara Logan On Afghanistan Via Youtube: ‘2012 BGA Annual Luncheon Keynote Speech’

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There are real enemies, and real dangers, facing the U.S.  The current administration has a big stake in claiming that Al Qaida and the Taliban are on the wane in Afghanistan, and that the timeline for withdrawal in 2014 is sound, even though ending the war in Afghanistan is not necessarily our objective (preventing another terrorist attack on our soil and protecting our way of life is our objective). This administration also claims that through its liberal internationalist doctrine, Libya has been a success and that the Benghazi attack wasn’t the result of an Al Qaida affiliate (it was the result of an Al Qaida affliliate). It’s conducting a lengthy FBI investigation while claiming that the persecutors will be brought to justice.

Logan, reporting from Afghanistan on the ground for many years, has been observing how that threat is very real.

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I put this up before:

Here’s a quote from Anne-Marie Slaughter, on liberal internationalism:

‘The central liberal internationalist premise is the value of a rules-based international order that restrains powerful states and thereby reassures their enemies and allies alike and allows weaker states to have sufficient voice in the system that they will not choose to exit’

What if you can’t even appease extreme and radical groups of violent Muslims as they murder your troops, diplomats and citizens, let alone get them on-board some sort of ‘rules-based international order’?

What if there is such a chasm between Western and Muslim civilizations that even less violent Muslims on the street have no clue as to the concepts we’re defending, and why, and have little to no incentive to expel the extremists from their own societies?

What if you go so far down this path that you are, or least appear to be, willing to bend on a key issue and core freedom for our country as well as our national security?

Addition: A State Department Background Briefing On Libya; a conference call transcript of some of what happened during the attack.

Related On This Site: From Eli Lake At The Daily Beast: ‘Exclusive: Libya Cable Detailed Threats’

I don’t believe that we can appease Islamic extremists, which is the whole premise of this administration’s approach…blunt American power and incentivize Muslim societies to drive the extreme elements out through international cooperation: Via Youtube-Uncommon Knowledge With Fouad Ajami And Charles Hill

Eli Lake At The Daily Beast: ‘U.S. Officials Knew Libya Attacks Were Work of Al Qaeda Affiliates’ From The BBC Via Michael Totten: ‘Libya: Islamist Militia Bases Stormed In Benghazi’

Via Reuters: ‘U.S. Ambassador To Libya Killed In Benghazi Attack’

Walter Russell Mead At The American Interest Online: ‘Obama’s War’…From The WSJ: “Allies Rally To Stop Gadhafi”…From March 27th, 2009 At WhiteHouse.Gov: Remarks By The President On A New Strategy For Afghanistan And Pakistan…From The New Yorker: ‘How Qaddafi Lost Libya’…

Just how far Left is this administration anyways? Is Bernhard Henri-Levy actually influencing U.S. policy decisions..? From New York Magazine: ‘European Superhero Quashes Libyan Dictator’…Bernhard Henri-Levy At The Daily Beast: ‘A Moral Tipping Point’…Charlie Rose Episode On Libya Featuring Bernhard Henri-Levy, Les Gelb And Others…

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