December 2013 – Page 2 – Maverick Philosopher

Call for Vapors: Dead Smokers’ Society to Meet in January in Scottsdale

Mike V. writes,

I am hosting the first meeting of The Dead Smokers Society on Monday, January 13th, from 10 a.m. to noon at the stoplight at Scottsdale Community College. I have invited all of my friends to smoke and vape with me on the street on the first day of school. This could be REALLY fun. I am inviting you if you can come.

The only rule is: Membership in the DSS requires use of cigarettes, cigars, pipes, or vapor devices.

I can only applaud this bit of commonsensical, liberty-affirming activism and I hope to be able to attend despite my quietism. I shall sport an Arturo Fuente 'Curly Head,' a cheap smoke, but a good smoke. Here is some background information and argument and polemic from an old post of mine dated 26 June 2012:

Tobacco Insanity in Maricopa County and the Need for Smoke-Ins

Peter and Mike teach in the Maricopa County Community College system. One teaches at Scottsdale CC, the other at Glendale CC. Over Sunday breakfast they reported that, starting 1 July (if I got the story straight), no smoking of tobacco products will be allowed anywhere on any CC campus in Maricopa County, Arizona. And that includes parking lots and closed cars in parking lots.

Now I would like to believe that our liberal brethren possess a modicum of rationality. But with every passing day I am further disembarrassed of this conceit of mine. The evidence is mounting that liberals really are as stupid and lacking in common sense as many on the Right say they are.

What does common sense suggest in a case like this? Well, that no smoking be allowed in classrooms, libraries, laboratories, restrooms, administrative offices, hallways, etc., and perhaps not even in individual faculty offices during consulation hours or if the smoke will make its way into occuppied public passageways.

This is a common sense position easily buttressed with various aesthetic, safety, and health-related arguments. The underlying principle is that we ought to be considerate of our fellow mortals and their physical and psychological well-being. It is debatable just how harmful are the effects of sidestream smoke. What is not debatable is that many are offended by it. So out of consideration for them, it is reasonable to ban smoking in the places I listed above. But to ban it everywhere on campus is extreme and irrational. For no one but Tom is affected by Tom's smoking in his car and while striding across the wind-blown campus.

You say you caught a whiff of his cigaratte as he passed by? Well, he heard you use the 'F' word while blasting some rap 'music' from your boom box. If Tom is involved in air pollution, then you are involved in cultural and noise pollution. You tolerate him and he'll tolerate you.

You say you smell the residual ciggy smoke on Peter's vest? That's too bad. He has to put up with your overpowering perfume/cologne or look at your tackle-box face and tattoo-defaced skin. Or maybe you are a dumb no-nothing punk wearing a T-shirt depicting Che Guevara and you think that's cool. We who are not dumb no-nothing punks have to put up with that affront to our sensibilities.

But there really is little point in being reasonable with people as unreasonable as liberty-bashing tobacco-wackos. So I think Peter and Mike ought to think about organizing a smoke-in. In the 'sixties we had love-ins and sit-ins, and they proved efficacious. Why not smoke-ins to protest blatantly extreme and irrational policies?

There must be plenty of faculty and staff and students on these campuses — and maybe even a few not-yet-brain-dead liberals — who would participate. Hell, I'll even drive all the way from my hideout in the Superstitions to take part. We'll gather in some well-ventilated place way out in the open to manifest our solidarity, enjoy the noble weed, and reason – if such a thing is possible — with the Pee-Cee boneheads who oppose us.

By the way, that is a joint old Ben Franklin is smoking in the graphic. In this post I take no position on the marijuana question.

Companion post: Is Smoking Irrational? Other such posts are collected in Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Of Meaning and Meat

No matter how you squeeze and beat, you won't get meaning from a hunk of meat.

……………….

Addendum (12/27). It occurred to me that the above aphorism can be read in two ways. I intend that it be read in the first way!

Peter Geach 1916-2013

Here is a Commonweal obituary.

The obit contains a couple of minor inaccuracies.

1. "Under his father's tutelage, one of Geach's earliest philosophical influences was the metaphysician J.M.E. McTaggart, who infamously argues in his 1908 book The Unreality of Time for, well, the unreality of time." This title is not a book but an article that appeared in the journal Mind (17.68: 457–474), in 1908.

McTaggart presents a full dress version of the famous argument in his 1927 magnum opus, The Nature of Existence, in Chapter XXXIII, located in volume II.

McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time is one of the great arguments in the history of metaphysics, an argument as important and influential as the Eleatic Zeno's arguments against motion, St. Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God and F. H. Bradley's argument against relations in his 1893 Appearance and Reality, Book I, Chapter III. All four arguments have the interesting property of being rejected as unsound by almost all philosophers, philosophers who nonetheless differ wildly among themselves as to where the arguments go wrong. Careful study of these arguments is an excellent introduction to the problems of metaphysics. In particular, the analytic philosophy of time in the 20th century would not be unfairly described as a very long and very detailed series of footnotes to McTaggart's great argument.

2. "Along with Aquinas and McTaggart (whose system he presents in his 1982 book Truth, Love, and Immortality), Geach's main philosophical heroes were Aristotle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gottlob Frege." My copy of Truth, Love and Immortality shows the University of California Press (Berkeley and Los Angeles) as the publisher and the publication year as 1979. The frontispiece features an unsourced quotation from McTaggart:

The longer I live, the more I am convinced of the reality of three things — truth, love and immortality.

Merry Christmas, Loyal Readers!

Ed Farrell sent me the above. Check out his fine photography here.

The Pope is Just Wrong about Economics

Pope Francis' Erroneous Economic Pontifications

Once Again, Pope Francis. Excerpt:

It is interesting that the Pope refers to compassion in the way he does, given that the contradiction that is the “welfare state” has not only ruined the most needy and has led to growing exclusion, but has degraded the notion of charity which refers to the voluntary surrender of personal resources and not to a third party forcibly taking something from someone else’s labor.

Papal Economics

Christmas Eve at the Oldies

Merry Christmas everybody. Pour yourself a drink, and enjoy.

Cheech and Chong, Santa Claus and His Old Lady
Canned Heat, Christmas Boogie

Leon Redbone and Dr. John, Frosty the Snowman
Beach Boys, Little St. Nick. A rarely heard alternate version.
Ronettes, Sleigh Ride
Elvis Presley, Blue Christmas
Charles Brown, Please Come Home for Christmas
Wanda Jackson and the Continentals, Merry Christmas Baby
Chuck Berry, Run Rudolph Run
Eric Clapton, Cryin' Christmas Tears
Judy Collins, Silver Bells
Ry Cooder, Christmas in Southgate. Don't miss this one. Great video.
Bob Dylan, Christmas Bells

Who could possibly follow Dylan's growl except

Tom Waits, Silent Night. Give it a chance.

A surprising number of Christmas songs were written by Jews.

Camille Paglia: It’s a Man’s World

Camille Paglia does not merit the plenary MavPhil endorsement, but C. P. is a good partial antidote to P. C. Here (HT: Kevin Wong) she talks sense (emphasis added):

It was always the proper mission of feminism to attack and reconstruct the ossified social practices that had led to wide-ranging discrimination against women. But surely it was and is possible for a progressive reform movement to achieve that without stereotyping, belittling or demonizing men. History must be seen clearly and fairly: obstructive traditions arose not from men’s hatred or enslavement of women but from the natural division of labor that had developed over thousands of years during the agrarian period and that once immensely benefited and protected women, permitting them to remain at the hearth to care for helpless infants and children. Over the past century, it was labor-saving appliances, invented by men and spread by capitalism, that liberated women from daily drudgery.

[. . .]

Indeed, men are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments. It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall.

Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving from all over the world. These stately colossi are loaded, steered and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!

The first article below explains why the lovely Camille does not merit the coveted plenary MavPhil endorsement.

Kenny, Geach, and the Perils of Reading Frege Back Into Aquinas

London Ed has informed me of the passing of Peter Geach. May he find the Unchanging Light that he sought through his long and productive life of truth-seeking in these shadowlands. One honors a thinker best by thinking his thoughts, sympathetically, but critically. Here is one of my attempts. Others referenced below.

…………

I have been studying Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being (Oxford 2002). I cannot report that I find it particularly illuminating. I am troubled by the reading back of Fregean doctrines into Aquinas, in particular in the appendix, "Frege and Aquinas on Existence and Number." (pp. 195-204) Since Kenny borrows heavily from Peter Geach, I will explain one of my misgivings in connection with a passage from Geach's important article, "Form and Existence" in God and the Soul. Geach writes,

Frege, like Aquinas, held that there was a fundamental distinction in rebus answering to the logical distinction between subject and predicate — the distinction between Gegenstand (object) and Begriff (concept). [. . .] And for Frege the Begriff, and it alone, admits of repetition and manyness; an object cannot be repeated — kommt nie wiederholdt vor. (45-46)

So far, so good. Geach continues:

Understood in this way, the distinction between individual and form is absolutely sharp and rigid; what can be sensibly said of one becomes nonsense if we try to say it of the other. [. . .] Just because of this sharp distinction, we must reject the Platonic doctrine that what a predicate stands for is is some single entity over against its many instances, hen epi pollon. On the contrary: the common nature that the predicate 'man' (say) stands for can be indifferently one or many, and neither oneness nor manyness is a mark or note of human nature itself. This point is made very clearly by Aquinas in De Ente et Essentia. Again we find Frege echoing Aquinas; Frege counts oneness or manyness (as the case may be) among the properties (Eigenschaften) of a concept, which means that it cannot at the same time be one of the marks or notes (Merkmalen) of that concept. (46)

I smell deep confusion here. But precisely because the confusion runs deep I will have a hard time explaining clearly wherein the confusion consists. I will begin by making a list of what Geach gets right.

1. Objects and individuals are unrepeatable.
2. Concepts and forms are repeatable.
3. Setting aside the special question of subsistent forms, no individual is a form, and no object is a concept.
4. Frege distinguishes between the marks of a concept and the properties of a concept. The concept man, for example, has the concept animal as one of its marks. But animal is not a property of man, and this for the simple reason that no concept is an animal. Man has the property of being instantiated. This property, however, is not a mark of man since it is not included within the latter's conceptual content: one cannot by sheer analysis of the concept man determine whether or not there are any men. So there is a sense in which "neither oneness nor manyness is a mark or note of human nature itself." This is true if taken in the following sense: neither being instantiated singly nor being instantiated multiply is a mark of the concept man.

But how do these points, taken singly or together, support Geach's rejection of "the Platonic doctrine that what the predicate stands for is some single entity over against its many instances"? They don't!

It seems obvious to me that Geach is confusing oneness/manyness as the relational property of single/multiple instantiation with oneness/manyness as the monadic property of being one or many. It is one thing to ask whether a concept is singly or multiply instantiated. It is quite another to ask whether the concept itself is one or many. It is also important to realize that a Fregean first-level concept, when instantiated, does not enter into the structure of the individuals that instantiate it. Aquinas is a constituent ontologist, but Frege is not. This difference is deep and causes a world of trouble for those who attempt to understand Aquinas in Fregean terms. For Frege, concepts are functions, and no function enters into the structure of its argument. The propositional function x is a man is not a constituent of Socrates. What's more, the value of the function for Socrates as argument is not a state of affairs with Socrates and the function as constituents. The value of the function for Socrates as argument is True; for Stromboli as argument, False. And now you know why philosophers speak of truth-values. It's mathematical jargon via Frege the mathematician.

The Fregean concept man is one, not many. It is one concept, not many concepts. Nor is it neither one nor many. It can have one instance, or many instances, or no instance. The Thomistic form man, however, is, considered in itself, neither one nor many. It is one in the intellect but (possibly) many in things. In itself, however, it is neither. And so it is true to say that the form is not "some single entity over against its many instances." It is not a single entity because, considered in itself, it is neither single nor multiple.

But this doesn't follow from point (3) above. And therein consists Geach's mistake. One cannot validly move from the "sharp distinction" between individuals/objects and forms/concepts to the conclusion that what a predicate stands for is not a single entity. Geach makes this mistake because of the confusion exposed two paragraphs supra. The mutual exclusion of objects and concepts does not entail that concepts cannot be single entities.

There is another huge problem with reading Frege back into Aquinas, and that concerns modes of existence (esse). A form in the intellect exists in a different way than it does in things. But if Frege is right about existence, there cannot be modes of existence. For if existence is instantiation, then there cannot be modes of existence for the simple reason that there cannot be any modes of instantiation.

I'll say more about this blunder in another post. It rests in turn on a failure to appreciate the radically different styles of ontology practiced by Aquinas and Frege. In my jargon, Aquinas is a constituent ontologist while Frege is a nonconstituent ontologist. In the jargon of Gustav Bergmann, Aquinas is a compex ontologist while Frege is a function ontologist.

Some Points on Homosexuality in the Context of the Culture War

A few days ago I was blissfully unaware of Duck Diversity Dynasty, the reality show on the Arts and Entertainment channel. I still haven't watched even one episode, nor am I particularly inclined to; the antics of rednecks are not my thing. I have gathered, however, that the series falls more on the entertainment end of the Arts and Entertainment spectrum. One of the characters whose reality is depicted, Phil Robertson, shown on the left, has made comments on homosexuality that have drawn attention, to put it mildly. I won't rehearse the details of a brouhaha about which my astute readers can be expected to be familiar. I will simply make a few comments bearing upon the contretemps that strike me as important.

1. To have the homosexual disposition or inclination or proclivity is one thing; to exercise it in homosexual sex acts such as anal intercourse is quite another. You may be born with the proclivity, and stuck with it, but you are free to exercise it or not. The proclivity may be part of 'who you are,' ingredient in your very identity, but the practices are freely engaged in. Acts done or left undone are contingent and thus no part of anyone's identity. Moral criticism of homosexual practices is not criticism of anyone for who he is.

2. It follows that rejection of homosexual sex acts as immoral is consistent with acceptance of homosexuals as people. In a trite phrase, one can hate the sin but love the sinner. The sinful and the immoral, however, are not quite the same, though I cannot expatiate on the distinction at the moment.

It is therefore very bad journalism to describe Robertson's comments as 'anti-gay' for that elides the distinction I just drew. Opposition to homosexual practices is not opposition to homosexuals.

And of course there is nothing 'homophobic' about Robertson's comments. I don't reckon that the good old boy pictured above has any irrational fear of homosexuals. 'Homophobic' is a coinage of leftists to prevent one of those famous 'conversations' that they otherwise call for. It is a question-begging epithet and semantic bludgeon meant to close down debate by the branding of their opponents as suffering from a mental defect. This is why only a foolish conservative acquiesces in the use of this made-up word. Language matters. One of the first rules for successful prosecution of the Kulturkampf is to never let the enemy distort the terms of the debate. Insist on standard English, and always slap them down when they engage in their notorious 'framing.' As for 'gay,' that too is a word we ought not surrender. Use the neutral 'homosexual.' Same with 'queer.' 'Queer' is a good old word. Nominalists think abstracta are queer entities. There is no implication that the analysis of such is in any way proctological.

3. Whether or not Phil Robertson and people like him can cogently defend their opposition to homosexual practices, they have a right to hold and express their opinions in public fora, and a right to be tolerated by those who oppose their views. To tolerate is not approve of, let alone endorse; it is to put up with, to allow, to refrain from interfering with the promulgation of distasteful ideas. Without widespread toleration it is hard to see how a nation as diverse and pluralistic as the USA can remain even minimally united.

4. There are solid arguments based in theology and philosophy for rejecting as immoral homosexual practices. And they are available to Robertson and Co. should they decide to lay down their shotguns long enough to swot them up. These arguments won't convince those on the the other side, but then no argument, no matter how well-articulated and reasonable, no matter how consistent with known empirical fact and free of logical error, convinces those on the other side of any 'hot button' issue.

5. As a corollary to (4), note that arguments against homosexuality needn't presupose the truth of any religion. They can be purely philosophical. The same goes for abortion. If I argue against late-term abortion on the the ground that it is sufficiently like infanticide to inherit the moral wrongness of infanticide, then I argue in a way that makes no use of any religious premise.

6. The A & E Network has every right to fire Robertson and Co. By the same token, a baker or a florist has every right to refuse service to a same-sex couple planning a same -sex 'marriage' and it is simply wrong for government at any level to force the baker or the florist to violate his conscience.

7. In the interests of comity, homosexuals and their practices ought to be tolerated. Whether or not the practices are immoral, they ought to be legally permissible as long as they are between consenting adults. But this right to be tolerated does not translate into a right to be approved or applauded or celebrated or a right to impose their views on others, or a right to change the culture to their liking. In particular, it does not translate into a right to have their 'marriages' legally recognized.

8. Given the obvious distinction made in (1) above, the following sort of argument is invalid. "Tom didn't choose to be homosexual; he was born that way, so his practice of homosexuality via anal intercourse is morally acceptable." That sort of argument obviously proves too much. Pedophiles, sadomasochists, necrophiliacs, and so on down the list of sexual perversions are most of them born with their proclivity, but that fact does not justify their engaging in the corresponding practices.

For more on this delightful topic, see Jim Goad, When Ducks Cry.

California Regulators Go After Sriracha Hot Sauce

Pope Francis recently spoke, quite foolishly, of "unfettered capitalism," as if there is any such thing in the world. A more worthy cynosure of disapprobation is the slide toward unfettered regulation and omni-invasive government spearheaded by presumably well-meaning liberal-fascist nanny-staters.

You know things are getting bad when they come after your hot sauce. An Asian restaurant without Sriracha is like, what? A house without a fireplace? Coffee without caffeine? A man without balls?

You see, if these food fascists can go after Sriracha on the ground that it is a raw food, then Tabasco sauce, that marvellous Louisiana condiment from Avery Island, that undisputed king of the hot sauces, recognized as such by true connoisseurs all across this great land, that sine qua non of fine dining, and the criterion that separates, in point of the prandial, the men from the candy-mouthed girly-men, and which is also a raw food — then, I say, Tabasco sauce is in danger, a state of affairs the only appropriate remedy to which which would be of the Second Amendment variety, if I may be permitted a bit of holiday hyperbole.

David Tran, founder of Huy Fong Foods, fled communist Viet Nam to come to our shores for freedom and a chance at self-reliance and economic self-determination . Unfortunately, the successors of commies, the leftists of the Democrat Party, may drive Tran out of California into a friendlier environment.

When they came for the soda, you did nothing because you don't drink the stuff. When they came for the Sriracha, you did nothing because you didn't know what the hell it was. But if they come after Tabasco sauce and you do nothing, then you deserve to be shot — figuratively speaking of course.

Story here.

Mind and Matter

Here are a couple of theses that are part of my credo, though I do not merely believe them, but think I have good reasons for believing them:

Thesis 1: One cannot get mind from matter no matter how the matter is arranged or how complexly arranged. That mind should arise from matter is unintelligible.

To appreciate the force of this thesis, let's run through some objections. And I do mean run: what follows has to be cursory.

Objection 1. "There is no question of getting mind from matter; mental states and properties just are states and properties of the material world, patterns of behavior perhaps, or patterns of neural activity."

Response 1. Of course I reject identity theories that reduce the mental to the physical, whether they be type-type identity theories or merely token-token identity theories. I have written an 'unconscionable' number of posts on this topic I and am not inclined to repeat myself in any detail. But if you tell me that, say, my thinking about Prague is identical to a complex state of my brain, I would dismiss that as obvious nonsense and for a very good reason. My occurent thinking, at this moment, is of or about or directed to an object that, for all I know, was nuked out of existence — God forbid — a second ago and this without prejudice to my act of thinking's now being about precisely the object it is about. Now this intrinsic object-directedness or intrinsic intentionality of my act of thinking — to use the philosopher's term of art — is not a property that it makes any sense to ascribe to any physical object or state. Now if x has a property that y lacks, or vice versa, then of course x cannot be identical to y.

Objection 2. "There simply are no mental states as you claim, and the argument from intentionality you give can be run in reverse so as to prove it."

Response 2. The objector is suggesting the following argument: "(1) If mental states such as thinking about Prague are anything, then they are brain states; (2) such mental states exhibit intrinsic intentionality; (3) no physical state, and thus no brain state, exhibits intrinsic intentionality; therefore (4) there are no mental states."

This eliminativist argument issues in a conclusion that is obviously, breathtakingly false, and so one of the premises must be false. The stinker is of course (1).

Objection 3. "Granted, it is unintelligible that mind should arise from matter as conceived in current physics. But the matter that we know might hide and contain within itself occult powers beyond the ken of current or any future physics, including the power to give rise to mind."

Reply 3. The game is up when materialists reach for occult powers. The only matter we know about is the matter of ordinary experience and physics. And there is no place in matter so conceived for occult powers that give rise to mind. If you tell me that what thinks when I think is an intracranial hunk of meat, then you are ascribing a power to matter that destroys the very concept of matter that you started with and that you need to articulate your materialism.

Thesis 2: That matter should arise from mind is not unintelligible.

Why not? Because intrinsic to mind is object-directedness, or object-positing. Mind by its nature is of objects distinct from mind. Mind has the power to create objects distinct from itself and its states. This power is not occult. It is open to us in reflection. The entire material cosmos could be be just a huge system of intentional objects for a sufficiently capacious and powerful mind. The thought is thinkable. It is intelligible. That is not to say it is true or to say that we have good reasons for believing it. It has its difficulties, but it makes sense in the way it makes no sense to maintain that mind arises from matter. That is an absurdity that can be seen to be such by hard thinking.

So we get an asymmetry. Matter could, for all we know, be the product of mind, but mind could not, for all we know, be the product of matter.

Contractions

My rule on contractions: though permissible in informal writing such as blogging, they ought to be avoided or used sparingly in formal writing. I came across the following sentence in a well-written piece in a serious publication.

"Heroic" would have pleased Ranke, who'd died nine years earlier.

The contraction distracted me, so much so that I am now writing about it. And note that in the very same sentence we find the uncontracted "would have." This is better:

"Heroic" would have pleased Ranke, who had died nine years earlier.

Credo

Simone Weil's Profession of Faith begins as follows.

There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties.

Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

Another terrestrial manifestation of this reality lies in the absurd and insoluble contradictions which are always the terminus of human thought when it moves exclusively in this world.

Just as the reality of this world is the sole foundation of facts, so that other reality is the sole foundation of good.

That reality is the unique source of all the good that can exist in this world: that is to say, all beauty, all truth, all justice, all legitimacy, all order, and all human behaviour that is mindful of obligations.

"At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world."

Those minds whose attention and love are turned towards that reality are the sole intermediary through which good can descend from there and come among men.

Advice for Hollywood Liberals

Robert M. Thornton, ed., Cogitations from Albert Jay Nock (Irvington-on-Hudson: The Nockian Society, 1970), p. 59:

If realism means the representation of life as it is actually lived, I do not see why lives which are actually lived on a higher emotional plane are not so eligible for representation as those lived on a lower plane. (Memoirs, 200)

Exactly. If the aim is to depict reality as it is, why select only the most worthless and uninspiring portions of reality for portrayal? Why waste brilliant actors on worthless roles, Paul Newman in The Color of Money, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in The War of the Roses, Robert De Niro in Goodfellas and Casino, to take four examples off the top of my head from a potential list of thousands. The Grifters is another example. A very good film in any number of respects. But imagine a film of the same cinematic quality which portrays in a subtle and intelligent manner a way of life — I avoid 'lifestyle' — that has some chance of being worth living. Notice I said "subtle and intelligent." I am not advocating Sunday School moralizing or hokey platitudinizing. And note that I am not opposing the above mentioned, but pointing out that a constant diet of dreck is both boring and unhealthy.

But I don't expect the folks in HollyWeird (Michael Medved's expression) to comprehend the simple point I have just made. They are too mesmerized by the color of money for that. Nor do I expect most liberals to be able to wrap their minds around it. They are too bereft of moral sense for that. So I'm preaching to the choir and to a few fence-sitters. But that has value: Maybe a fence-sitter or two will slide off to the Right Side; and perhaps the choirboys and girls are in need of a little extra ammo.

A deeper question concerns the purpose of art. To depict reality? That is not obvious. A good topic for someone else to take up. Conservative bloggers, get to it.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Songs from Inside Llewyn Davis

The Llewyn Davis character in the brilliant Coen Bros. film suggests, I don't say represents, Dave van Ronk. So let's start with some tunes (not necessarily the renditions) from the movie done by the Mayor of MacDougal Street.

Hang me, Oh Hang Me

Green, Green Rocky Road

Dink's Song. Marcus Mumford and Oscar Isaac version. Punch Bros. live version. Carolyn Hester. Odetta. Dylan.

Tom Paxton, The Last Thing on My Mind

Justin Timberlake, et al. Five Hundred Miles. PPM version. Journeymen version.

Please Mr. Kennedy clip