Angelo M. Codevilla's essay is essential reading. Restraining myself, I will quote only the opening paragraph:
“Comrade, your statement is factually incorrect.” “Yes, it is. But it is politically correct.”
he notion of political correctness came into use among Communists in the 1930s as a semi-humorous reminder that the Party’s interest is to be treated as a reality that ranks above reality itself. Because all progressives, Communists included, claim to be about creating new human realities, they are perpetually at war against nature’s laws and limits. But since reality does not yield, progressives end up pretending that they themselves embody those new realities. Hence, any progressive movement’s nominal goal eventually ends up being subordinated to the urgent, all-important question of the movement’s own power. Because that power is insecure as long as others are able to question the truth of what the progressives say about themselves and the world, progressive movements end up struggling not so much to create the promised new realities as to force people to speak and act as if these were real: as if what is correct politically—i.e., what thoughts serve the party’s interest—were correct factually.
. . . Alan Dershowitz discusses his time litigating cases in the old Soviet Union. He was always taken by the fact that they could prosecute anybody they wanted because some of the statutes were so vague. Dershowitz points out that this was a technique developed by Beria, the infamous sidekick of Stalin, who said, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” That really is something that has survived the Soviet Union and has arrived in the good old USA. “Show me the man,” says any federal prosecutor, “and I can show you the crime.” This is not an exaggeration.
And now Donald J. Trump, the legally elected president of the United States, is the man. To prosecute someone for a crime, some crime has to be alleged. But in this case what is the crime? Alan Dershowitz raises the question and answers it: there is no crime.
There is no evidence that Trump or his team colluded with the Kremlin to swing the election in Trump's favor. But even if there were, such collusion would be at worst political wrong doing, not a crime. This is not my opinion but the opinion of a distinguished Harvard law professor who is not a Trump supporter. As Dershowitz told Tucker Carlson last night, "I voted for Hillary Clinton very proudly."
Around 3:10 Dershowitz speaks of "hacking the DNA" several times. He means: hacking the DNC, the Democrat National Committee. Carlson failed to catch the mistake.
I now want to make a point that Dershowitz did not make last night, namely, that phrases like 'hacking the election' have no definite meaning. You can literally hack into John Podesta's e-mail account, but you can't literally hack an election. (It has been claimed that the password he employed was 'password.' Could Podesta be that stupid or careless? I am skeptical.) Of course, you could use 'hack an election' to mean 'influence an election,' but then you will have changed the subject. Almost all of us, from low-level bloggers to the most august pundits, were trying to 'hack the election' in the sense of 'influence the election.'
What we have here with the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller is not an inquiry into whether a crime has been committed, but a witch hunt: a search for a nonexistent crime to pin on a much-hated man.
But didn't Trump obstruct justice by firing Comey? Is that not what is maintained by such powerful intellects as Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi? Of course not, as Dershowitz points out at 3:38 ff. Trump's firing of Comey was well within the president's constitutional rights. "Under the unitary theory of the executive, the president has the right to direct the justice department." I would add that the president fired Comey for good reason.
No doubt the 'optics' were bad: the firing looked self-serving. So the haters pounced suggesting that the only reason Trump fired Comey was because Comey was about to expose criminal acts by Trump. But that is just nonsense. Again: which criminal acts?
Even if Trump was sick of Comey and wanted him out for personal motives, he had solid impersonal legal reasons for firing him. They were set forth in the Rosenstein memorandum.
The Trump haters appear to be committing a version of the genetic fallacy. The psychological motivation of a claim or action is irrelevant to the question of the truth of the claim or the justifiability of the action. Had Hillary or Bernie or Jill or Jeb! been president, each would have been justified in firing Comey. Again, this is because of the availability of solid impersonal legal reasons for his firing. And you can bet all of Hillary's ugly pant-suits that she would have fired him had she won as she was 'supposed to.'
Heather Mac Donald is a profile in civil courage in stark contrast to the cowardice of the university administrators who, in abdication of authority, allow leftist thugs to prevent her and other sensible people from speaking. As I have lately observed, the university is pretty much dead, not everywhere of course, and naturally I except the STEM disciplines.
When the authorities will not maintain order, then eventually others will, and things can turn very ugly very quickly.
I was joking with somebody recently about blog backup.
"Why do I need to back up my blog?" said I. "The NSA has every word."
Joking aside, the underlying issue is a vexing one. There is no true liberty without security, but a security worth wanting must make allowance for a large measure of liberty.
It is a case of competing values. One of my early posts (13 May 2004) explores the dialectic. I gave it the catchy title, Liberty and Security. Damn, if it's not good! By the way, one of the many pleasures of blogging is re-reading and re-enjoying one's old writings.
Serendipitous! I spent the morning out in the desert practicing with my handguns. When I logged on afterward I found that Bill Keezer had referred me to an entry entitled Power Tools by Malcolm Pollack in which the latter quotes Col. Jeff Cooper. I want the quotation for my files:
Weapons are the tools of power. In the hands of the state, they can be the tools of decency or the tools of oppression, depending on the righteousness that state. In the hands of criminals, they are the tools of evil. In the hands of the free and decent citizen, they should be the tools of liberty. Weapons compound man’s power to achieve whatever purpose he may have. They amplify the capabilities of both the good man and the bad, and to exactly the same degree, having no will of their own. Thus, we must regard them as servants, not masters–and good servants of good men. Without them, man is diminished, and his opportunities to fulfill his destiny are lessened. An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.
I haven't been able to find a source. As you know, I do not like unsourced quotations. It's the scholar in me. Paging Dave Lull! If cyberspace has a Head Librarian, Dave is the man.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it."
You are free to live unarmed, and for some this will be a wise course. A gun is not a talisman. Its mere presence won't protect you. To paraphrase Col. Jeff Cooper, owning a gun no more makes you armed than owning a guitar makes you a musician. You will need to get training, and you will need to throw thousands of (aimed!) rounds down range before you can consider yourself competent.
These are trying times. The thuggish elements among us are on the rise, and they are enabled by those in positions of authority. The wise hope for the best, and work for the best, but prepare for the worst. You might want to think about that as well as ask yourself: Which side am I on, and who is on my side?
Nagel replies in the pages of NYRB (8 June 2017; HT: Dave Lull) to one Roy Black, a professor of bioengineering:
The mind-body problem that exercises both Daniel Dennett and me is a problem about what experience is, not how it is caused. The difficulty is that conscious experience has an essentially subjective character—what it is like for its subject, from the inside—that purely physical processes do not share. Physical concepts describe the world as it is in itself, and not for any conscious subject. That includes dark energy, the strong force, and the development of an organism from the egg, to cite Black’s examples. But if subjective experience is not an illusion, the real world includes more than can be described in this way.
I agree with Black that “we need to determine what ‘thing,’ what activity of neurons beyond activating other neurons, was amplified to the point that consciousness arose.” But I believe this will require that we attribute to neurons, and perhaps to still more basic physical things and processes, some properties that in the right combination are capable of constituting subjects of experience like ourselves, to whom sunsets and chocolate and violins look and taste and sound as they do. These, if they are ever discovered, will not be physical properties, because physical properties, however sophisticated and complex, characterize only the order of the world extended in space and time, not how things appear from any particular point of view.
The problem might be condensed into an aporetic triad:
1) Conscious experience is not an illusion.
2) Conscious experience has an essentially subjective character that purely physical processes do not share.
3) The only acceptable explanation of conscious experience is in terms of physical properties alone.
Take a little time to savor this problem. Note first that the three propositions are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true. Any two limbs entail the negation of the remaining one. Note second that each limb exerts a strong pull on our acceptance. But we cannot accept them all because they are logically incompatible.
Which proposition should we reject? Dennett, I take it, would reject (1). But that's a lunatic solution as Professor Black seems to appreciate, though he puts the point more politely. When I call Dennett a sophist, as I have on several occasions, I am not abusing him; I am underscoring what is obvious, namely, that the smell of cooked onions, for example, is a genuine datum of experience, and that such phenomenological data trump scientistic theories.
Sophistry aside, we either reject (2) or we reject (3). Nagel and I accept (1) and (2) and reject (3). Black, and others of the scientistic stripe, accept (1) and (3) and reject (2).
I appreciate the appeal of the naturalistic-scientistic worldview and I don't dismiss it in the way I dismiss eliminativism about the mental:
Look, there is just one world, this physical world, and we are physical parts of it including all your precious thoughts, moods, and sensations. If you are serious about explaining consciousness, then you have to explain it the way you explain everything else: in terms of our best natural science. With the progress of science over the centuries, more and more of what hitherto was thought inexplicable scientifically has been explained. The trend is clear: science is increasingly de-mystifying the world, and it is a good induction that one day it will have wholly de-mystified it and will have cut off every obscurantist escape route into the Cloud Cuckoo Land of religion/superstition.
It is essential to see, however, that this worldview is precisely that, a worldview, and therefore just another philosophy. This is what makes it scientistic as opposed to scientific. Scientism is not science, but philosophy. Scientism is the epistemology of naturalism, where naturalism is not science but ontology. No natural science can prove that reality is exhausted by the physical, and no natural science can prove that all and only the scientifically knowable is knowable.
But it is not irrational to be a naturalist and a scientisticist — an ugly word for an ugly thing — in the way that it is irrational to be an eliminativist. But is also not irrational to reject naturalism and scientism.
And so the strife of systems will continue. People like me will continue to insist that qualia, intentionality, conscience, normativity, reason, truth and other things cannot be explained naturalistically. Those on the other side will keep trying. Let them continue, with vigor. The more they fail, the better we look.
Do those on our side have a hidden religious agenda? Some do. But Nagel doesn't. He is just convinced that the naturalist project doesn't work. Nagel rejects theism, and I believe he says somewhere that he very much does not want it to be the case that religion is true.
Nagel, then, has no religious agenda. But this did not stop numerous prominent, but viciously leftist, academics from attacking him after he published Mind and Cosmos. See the following articles of mine:
Democrats know how to circle the wagons, stand together, and refrain from attacking their own. Republicans seem to prefer the circular firing squad. And the Libertarians? Theirs is the self-indulgent circle jerk of those who will never have power.
You can add this to the list of Trump's accomplishments: he has provoked the Left to expose themselves in all their ugliness. Wittingly? Some say yes: he is playing them like a fiddle. I don't know whether his provocations are witting or unwitting. The fact remains:
So far all the political violence associated with the election of Trump, from Inauguration to the latest campus rioting, has been on the Left. No pro-Trump crowds don masks, break windows or shut down traffic. The crudity in contemporary politics—from the constant sick jokes referring to First Family incest, smears against the First Lady, low attacks on the Trump children, boycotts of the Inauguration, talk and dreams of killing the president—is on the liberal/progressive side. The entertainment industry’s obscenity and coarseness have been picked up by mainstream Democratic officials, who now routinely resort to profanities like s–t and f–k to attack the president. Almost every ethical code—television journalists do not report on air private conservations with their guests during breaks, opposition congressional representatives do attend the Inauguration, Senators do not use obscenities—have been abandoned in efforts to delegitimize Trump.
When Hillary Clinton assumed the mantle of the “Resistance,” she was deliberately using a metaphor to convey the idea that she is analogous to a French patriot under occupation and Trump is a veritable foreign Nazi belligerent.
The point about Hillary is important. Here we have a prominent politician engaging in what is arguably seditious libel if not outright sedition.
There are egalitarians in ontology as there are in political theory.
Herewith, four types of ontological egalitarianism: egological, spatial, temporal, and modal.
Egological egalitarianism is the view there is a plurality of equally real selves. I take it we are all egological egalitarians in sane moments. I'll assume that no one reading this thinks, solipsistically, that he alone is real and that others, if they exist at all, exist only as merely intentional objects for him. The problem of Other Minds may concern us, but that is an epistemological problem, one that presupposes that there are other minds/selves. On ontological egalitarianism, then, no self enjoys ontological privilege.
Spatial egalitarianism is the that there is a plurality of equally real places. Places other than here are just as real as the place picked out by a speaker's use of 'here.' I take it we are all spatial egalitarians. No one, not even a Manhattanite, thinks that the place where he is is the only real place. Here is real but so is yonder. No place enjoys ontological privilege. All places are equal.
Temporal egalitarianism is the view that there is a plurality of equally real times. Times other than the present time are just as real as the present time. No time enjoys ontological privilege, which implies that there is nothing ontologically special about the present time. All times are equal. No time is present, period. This is called the B-theory of time. Here is a fuller explanation.
Modal egalitarianism is the view that there is a plurality of equally real possibilities. Possibilities other than those that are actual are just as real as those that are actual. It is plausible to think of possibilities as coming in maximal or 'world-sized' packages. Call them possible worlds. On modal egalitarianism, then, all possible worlds are equally real. No world enjoys ontological privilege. Our world, the world we take to be actual, is not absolutely actual; it is merely actual for us, or rather, actual at itself. But that is true of every world: each is actual at itself. No world is actual, period. In respect of actuality, all possible worlds are equal.
What is curious about these four types of ontological egalitarianism is that, while the first two are about as close to common sense as one is likely to get, the second two are not. Indeed, the fourth will strike most people as crazy. Was David Lewis crazy? I don't know, but I hear he was a bad driver.
At root, commentary is a minding-with, a co-mentation. It is an attempt to enter into an author's thinking and think along, sympathetically yet critically. The good commentator is companion before critic, but critic too. A com-pan-ion, at root, is one with whom one breaks bread. The companionable commentator thus shares with the author the bread of sense he puts on the table.
The following ruminations belong among the metaphysical foundations of debates about tribalism, racism, and the differences between my brand of conservatism and the neo-reactionary variety. For example, I say things like, "We should aspire to treat individuals as individuals rather than reduce them to tokens of types or members of groups or instances of attributes." This of course gives rise to questions like, "What exactly is it to treat an individual as an individual, given that there are no individuals bereft of attributes?" And before you know it we are deep in the bowels of metaphysics, entangled, to shift metaphors, in conundra that may well be insoluble. Here are two theses I will just state on the present occasion:
T1. All the hot-button issues (abortion, immigration, capital punishment, etc.) are metaphysical at bottom.
T2. The insolubility of the underlying metaphysical problems, if they are insoluble, 'percolates up' into the popular debates and renders them insoluble as well.
…………………………………………….
Here is a remarkable passage from Pascal's remarkable Pensées:
A man goes to the window to see the passers by. If I happen to pass by, can I say that he has gone there to see me? No; for he is not thinking of me in particular. But does he who loves someone for her beauty, really love her? No; for small-pox, destroying the beauty without destroying the person, will put an end to love. And if I am loved for my judgment, for my memory, am I loved? No; for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where then is this 'I,' if it resides neither in the body, nor the soul [mind]? And how love the body or the soul [mind] save for these qualities which do not make the 'me,' since they are doomed to perish? For can one love the soul [mind] of a person in the abstract, irrespective of its qualities? Impossible and wrong! So we never love anyone, but only qualities. (p. 337, tr. H. F. Stewart)
This passage raises the following question. When I love a person, is it the person in her particularity and uniqueness that I love, or merely the being-instantiated of certain lovable properties? Do I love Mary as Mary, or merely as an instance of helpfulness, friendliness, faithfulness, etc.? The issue is not whether I love Mary as Mary versus loving attributes in abstracto; the issue is whether I love Mary as Mary versus loving her as an instance of lovable attributes.
These are clearly different. If it is merely the being-instantiated of an ensemble of lovable properties that I love, then it would not matter if the love object were replaced by another with the same ensemble of properties. It would not matter if Mary were replaced by her indiscernible twin Sherry. Mary, Sherry, what's the difference? Either way you get a package of the very same delectable attributes.
But if it is the person in her uniqueness that I love, then it would matter if someone else with exactly the same ensemble of properties were substituted for the love object. It would matter to me, and it would matter even more to the one I love. Mary would complain bitterly if Sherry were to replace her in my affections. "I want to be loved for being ME, not for what I have in common with HER!"
Self Love
The point is subtle. It is perhaps more clearly made using the example of self-love. Suppose Phil is my indiscernible twin. Now it is a fact that I love myself. But if I love myself in virtue of my instantiation of a set of properties, then I should love Phil equally. For he instantiates exactly the same properties as I do. But if one of us has to be annihilated, then I prefer that it be Phil. Suppose God decides that one of us is more than enough, and that one of us has to go. I say, 'Let it be Phil!' and Phil says, 'Let it be Bill!' So I don't love Phil equally even though he has all the same properties that I have. I prefer myself and love myself just because I am myself.
This little thought-experiment suggests that there is more to self-love than love of the being-instantiated of an ensemble of properties. For Phil and I have the same properties, and yet each is willing to sacrifice the other. This would make no sense if the being of each of us were exhausted by our being instances of sets of properties. In other words, I do not love myself solely as an instance of properties but also as a unique existent individual who cannot be reduced to a mere instance of properties. I love myself as a unique individual. And the same goes for Phil: he loves himself as a unique individual. Each of us loves himself as a unique individual numerically distinct from his indiscernible twin.
We can take it a step further. If love is blind as folk wisdom has it, self-love is blind in excelsis. In some cases self-love is present even when the lover/beloved lacks any and all lovable attributes. If there are cases like this then there is love of self as a pure individual. I love me just because I am me and not because I instantiate lovable attributes. I love myself, not as an instance of attributes, but as a case of existence. Instances are interchangeable; cases of existence are not. I love myself in that I am in a sense of 'am' that cannot be identified with the being-instantiated of a set of properties. I love my very existing. If so, and if my love is a 'correct emotion' (Brentano), then my sheer existing must be good.
I take this to show that self-love cannot be identified with, or reduced to, love of an instance of lovable attributes qua instance of those attributes.
Other Love
Now it is a point of phenomenology that love intends to reach the very haecceity and ipseity of the beloved: in loving someone we mean to make contact with his or her unique thisness and selfhood. It is not a mere instance of lovable properties that love intends, but the very being of the beloved. It is also true that this intending or meaning is in some cases fulfilled: we actually do sometimes make conscious contact with the haecceity and ipseity of the beloved. In the case of self love we not only intend, but arrive at, the very being of the beloved, not merely at the co-instantiation of a set of multiply instantiable lovable properties. In the case of other love, there is the intention to reach the haecceity and ipseity of the beloved, but it is not clear how arriving at it is possible given Pascal's argument.
In the case of self love, my love 'reaches' the beloved because I am the beloved. In the case of other-love, my love intends the beloved, but it is not clear that it 'reaches' her.
The question underlying all of this is quite fundamental: Are there any genuine individuals? X is a genuine individual if and only if X is essentially unique. The Bill and Phil example suggests that selves are genuine individuals and not mere bundles of multiply instantiable properties. For each of the twins is acutely aware that he is not the other despite complete agreement in respect of pure properties.
Here are some of my metaphysical theses:
1. There exist genuine individuals. 2. Genuine individuals cannot be reduced to bundles of properties. 3. The Identity of Indiscernibles is false. 4. Numerical difference is numerical-existential difference: the existence of an individual is implicated in its very haecceity. 5. There are no nonexistent individuals. 6. There are no not-yet existent individuals.
With all the fake news and journalistic malpractice, there is real news that is going unreported and under-reported. Below, a couple of under-reported recent items that will gladden conservatives while eliciting howls of rage from the nattering knuckleheads of the Left.
A correspondent of mine thinks that Trump has done only one conservative thing: nominated and presided over the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Not so. He has done a number of conservative things. For example, his courageous affirmation of the rule of law anent illegal immigration has reduced it by some 60-70%. And that tough talk cost nothing. Good deal, eh? I am put in mind of Grandmaster Nimzowitsch: "The threat is often stronger than the execution." As for the execution of the Great Wall of Trump, give it time. The obstructionist Dems need to be subdued first.
The two items mentioned below are only the latest of the Orange Man's conservative accomplishments.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt decided to replace half of the members on one of its key scientific review boards, while Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is “reviewing the charter and charge” of more than 200 advisory boards, committees and other entities both within and outside his department.
Here is a little irony for you. There is voter fraud, and 'the dead' are prime offenders. And everybody except for a handful of troglodytes has photo ID. But crapweasel Dems deny these obvious truths. And yet they call us denialists for merely being skeptical about the claim that anthropogenic global warming is such a threat to humanity as to trump [I love it!] all others and to demand a radical re-organization of the nation's economy.
Today, states and cities ruled by the Left are seizing disproportionate influence in national politics by counting the votes of non-citizens. California issued drivers’ licenses—de facto voter registration—to a million illegals. Countless localities, such as New York City, Detroit, and Florida’s Broward County, do similar things. A few million votes here and there add up to a wall protecting today’s ruling class as it imposes itself on the rest of the country. Because this fraud so threatens the body politic’s integrity, a federal law requiring positive proof of citizenship for voting in federal elections is a sine qua non of continued national cohesion.
Brilliant analysis by Victor Davis Hanson. A rasty tasty morsel (O felix erratum!):
Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash is underappreciated for its effect on the campaign. Through painstaking research, it tied together all the strands of Clinton nefariousness: the Clinton Foundation as an excuse to hire political flunkies and provide free jet travel; the quid pro quo State Department nods to those who hired Bill Clinton to speak; and corruption under Hillary Clinton, from cellphone concessions in Haiti to North American uranium sales to Russian interests.
Add to the Clinton sleaze Hillary’s unsecured server and communications of classified material, the creepy New York and Washington careerists who turned up in the Podesta archives, and the political rigging that warped the conduct of the Democratic National Committee.
The result was that Hillary could no longer play the role of the “good” Clinton who “put up” with her husband’s “good ole boy” sleaze. Her new image was that of an equal partner in crime — or perhaps even a godmother who used the capo Bill as muscle. In comparison, Trump steaks, Trump University, Trump taxes, and Trump ties were old-fashioned American hucksterism, but with one important difference: Trump’s excesses were a private person’s; Clinton’s were those of a public servant.
Should a special prosecutor be appointed? By all means! To investigate Hillary.
We raise our glasses tonight in tribute to the unsung session players who added so much to our Boomer soundtrack. Back in the '60s we assiduous readers of liner notes came across the name 'Bruce Langhorne' again and again. The mood of so many of those memorable tunes by Dylan, Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Richard and Mimi Farina, Carolyn Hester and others was made by his unobtrusive guitar leads and fills. With his passing at age 78 last month, Langhorne (on the far left) is unsung no more. Here are some tunes which feature Langhorne's work and some that don't.
Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar. The incredible mood of this version, especially the intro, is made by Langhorne and the bass of Russ Savakus, another well-known session player from those days. I've been listening to this song since '65 and it gives me chills every time.
Carolyn Hester, I'll Fly Away. Dylan on harp, a little rough and ragged. Langhorne on guitar? Not sure.
Joan Baez and her sister, Mimi Farina, Catch the Wind. Fabulous.
In an entry bearing the charming title WTF? Robert Paul Wolff expresses astonishment at his commenters' discussion of anti-natalism:
I have to confess that blogging is weird. It has its pleasures, but from time to time the conversation here takes a genuinely strange turn. Anti-natalism? Seriously? With all the challenges that face us, with the disaster that is American politics, with the signs, at long last, of a grassroots progressive surge, we are talking about anti-natalism?
Look, far be it from me to stifle discussion. When you are done, I will go on talking about the world.
From this outburst one can see that for the leftist activist, the political is everything. One is not talking about the world if one is talking about the value of life and the morality of procreation. For the Stoned Philosopher, questions about life and death, meaning and value, God and the soul, pale into insignificance in comparison to the political squabbles of the day.
Our appreciation that the political is a limited sphere leaves us at a political disadvantage over against leftists for whom the political is the only sphere.
he notion of political correctness came into use among Communists in the 1930s as a semi-humorous reminder that the Party’s interest is to be treated as a reality that ranks above reality itself. Because all progressives, Communists included, claim to be about creating new human realities, they are perpetually at war against nature’s laws and limits. But since reality does not yield, progressives end up pretending that they themselves embody those new realities. Hence, any progressive movement’s nominal goal eventually ends up being subordinated to the urgent, all-important question of the movement’s own power. Because that power is insecure as long as others are able to question the truth of what the progressives say about themselves and the world, progressive movements end up struggling not so much to create the promised new realities as to force people to speak and act as if these were real: as if what is correct politically—i.e., what thoughts serve the party’s interest—were correct factually.