Month: October 2017

The Unserious ‘Serious’ Discussion About Guns

George Neumayr is one of the few who is talking sense on the issue.  What follows is a fine complement to what I say in The Problem: Gun Culture or Liberal Culture?

I have bolded some passages.

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The philosophy underlying liberalism is at once totalitarian and relativistic. It proposes more government and less morality. It laughs at the mustiness of the Ten Commandments, then demands respect for a flurry of new laws. It scoffs at old codes of self-control, then presses for “gun control” and greater state controls on this or that freedom.

From this ethos, regnant for decades in elite circles, has come an out-of-control society in which pols reflexively respond to unspeakable tragedy by advocating more and more laws for a people whose gradual loss of virtue guarantees that they will violate them. The terminus of this toxic admixture of totalitarianism and relativism is the transformation of society into a kind of prison: an endless number of laws and deprivation of freedoms imposed on an increasingly soulless citizenry. Of course, the people running such a system, the totalitarian elite, make sure to exempt themselves from the confines of the prison even as they boast of its glorious benefits. Recall the Soviet thugs who would impress Western visitors with stats proving the Soviet Union’s “low crime rate,” or Fidel Castro showing visiting dignitaries “how safe Havana is.”

That is the utopia to which gun-control liberals hope to lead America. They clamor for a tragedy-proof America in which “nothing bad ever happens to anyone,” except the massive loss of their freedom. The gun control lobby’s “solution” to crime isn’t the recovery of a civil society that teaches virtue but the granting of more and more power to a state that treats everyone like a criminal.

Conspicuously absent from all the sanctimonious lectures on gun control this week was any grappling with America’s cultural meltdown, which is the most comprehensible explanation for a spike in mass shootings even as laws and restrictions multiply. Indeed, the loudest voices for gun control come from the degenerate cultural forces most responsible for that meltdown. They demand that America “get serious about gun control,” even as they get less and less serious about the values and institutions most essential to the preservation of civilization. Educrats who have decimated America’s public schools profess shock at an increase in “school shootings”; late-night hosts who roll out the red carpet for blood-and-gore stars wonder at the “glamour of violence”; an elite that prides itself on destroying the traditional family is aghast at the rise of so many mass-shooting misfits who come from broken families.”

All of the hasty calls for more gun control from these preening frauds conveniently ignored that the Las Vegas shooter used illegal guns. If anything, the tragedy is an indictment of their exclusive focus upon legislation as a solution to criminal pathology. That they would politicize it so quickly, without bothering to engage any of the facts of the tragedy, underscores the opportunistic totalitarianism always lurking beneath their demagoguery. They never let a crisis or a mass shooting go to waste.

According to the media, late-night comedy talk show hosts now serve as the “conscience of the nation” at these fraught moments, which sounds about right for a democracy as fatuous as ours. In between showing clips from the latest demented, violence-drenched Hollywood movie, they are going to lead the nation towards “sensible gun control,” apparently. “Sensible gun control” is the elite’s euphemism for making sure that everyone except their bodyguards is deprived of guns.

Beware of the word “sensible” in the mouth of statists. It is what they say right before they violate a right. Obama’s call for “sensible conscience protections” foreshadowed his fiat violating the consciences of all employers by forcing them to cover the abortifacients and contraceptives of their employees. “Sensible gun control” foreshadows the destruction of the Second Amendment.

The left is neither sensible nor serious about controlling wicked behavior. If it were, it would seek to shore up the foundations of civilization, without which the multiplication of laws is useless, to which the tragedy in Las Vegas attests. It is insensible to think that good laws can protect the innocent without a functioning civil society that reinforces them. It is precisely the fruit of that civil society, a culture of self-control, that the liberal elite has done the most to poison. Liberals favor “gun control” without self-control. In the end, this just means more and more government control — an endless cycle of relativism leading to totalitarianism.

Camille Paglia on Hugh Hefner

Here: 

Hugh Hefner absolutely revolutionized the persona of the American male. In the post-World War II era, men's magazines were about hunting and fishing or the military, or they were like Esquire, erotic magazines with a kind of European flair.

Hefner reimagined the American male as a connoisseur in the continental manner, a man who enjoyed all the fine pleasures of life, including sex. Hefner brilliantly put sex into a continuum of appreciative response to jazz, to art, to ideas, to fine food. This was something brand new. Enjoying fine cuisine had always been considered unmanly in America. Hefner updated and revitalized the image of the British gentleman, a man of leisure who is deft at conversation — in which American men have never distinguished themselves — and the art of seduction, which was a sport refined by the French.

Camille Paglia does not merit the plenary MavPhil endorsement, but C. P. is a good partial antidote to P. C. , and she never fails to entertain.

You may enjoy this critical piece: Camille Paglia on Philosophy and Women in Philosophy.

Related articles
Maverick Philosopher: Camille Paglia in Conversation with Jordan Peterson
Hugh Hefner went deaf from too much Viagra but said he'd rather have sex than hearing
The evolution of the Playboy woman's body type from the 1950s to now

Larry Correia on Suppressors

On guns, Correia knows whereof he speaks. 

First read this 'viral' post written in response to the Sandy Hook shooting.  He lists his credentials.  

Then this on suppressors.

If there is any need for suppressors, they need to take the form of muzzles for Hillary, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of that pack of know-nothings who ought to be made to keep their traps shut about matters about which they know nothing.

Alberto Brandolini’s Bullshit Asymmetry Principle and Vallicella’s First and Second Corollaries

Here:

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

The pseudo-precision of 'energy' and 'order of magnitude' aside — in what units is this 'energy' measured ? — the idea is a good one.

Vallicella's First Corollary:

The amount of effort needed to grade and correct and annotate a lousy term paper is much greater than the effort needed to produce it.

Vallicella's Second Corollary:

The amount of effort needed to referee a journal submission and justify one's evaluation is inversely related to the quality of the submission.

Las Vegas Rampage: The Existential Lesson

"Impermanence is swift." (Dogen) Alive in the morning, dead at night. Heute rot, morgen tot. 

The Problem: Gun Culture or Liberal Culture?

This is a repost, slightly redacted, from 2012 to help stem the tsunami of folderol washing over us from the orifices of the mindless gun-grabbing Left in the wake of the Las Vegas rampage.  'Liberal' is elliptical for 'contemporary liberal.'  I am not speaking of classical, 19th century liberals or JFK-liberals. It is not 1960 anymore.

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Without wanting to deny that there is a 'gun culture' in the USA, especially in the so-called red states, I would insist that the real problem is our liberal culture.  Here are four characteristics of liberal culture that contribute to violence of all kinds, including gun violence.  So if you want to do something, work against each of the following. But first look in the mirror to see if you are part of the problem.

1. Liberals tend to have a casual attitude toward crime. 

This is well-documented by Theodore Dalrymple.  No Contrition, No Penalty is a short piece by him.  See also my Crime and Punishment category.

It is interesting to note that Connecticut, the state in which the Newtown massacre occurred, has recently repealed the death penalty, and this after the unspeakably brutal Hayes-Komisarjevsky home invasion in the same state.

One of the strongest voices against repealing the death penalty has been Dr. William Petit Jr., the lone survivor of a 2007 Cheshire home invasion that resulted in the murders of his wife and two daughters.

The wife was raped and strangled, one of the daughters was molested and both girls were left tied to their beds as the house was set on fire.

The two men convicted of the crime, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, are currently on death row.

Anyone who cannot appreciate that a crime like this  deserves the death penalty is morally obtuse.  But not only are liberals morally obtuse, they are intellectually obtuse in failing to understand that one of the main reasons people buy guns is to protect themselves from the criminal element, the criminal element that liberals coddle.  If liberals were serious about wanting to reduce the numbers of guns in civilian hands, they would insist on swift and sure punishment in accordance with the self-evident moral principle, "The punishment must fit the crime,"  which is of course not to be confused with lex talionis, "an eye for an eye."  Many guns are purchased not for hunting or sport shooting but for protection against criminals.  Keeping and bearing arms carries with it a grave responsibility and many if not most gun owners would rather not be so burdened.  Gun ownership among women is on the upswing, and it is a safe bet that they don't want guns to shoot Bambi.

2. Liberals tend to undermine morality with their opposition to religion. 

Many of us internalized the ethical norms that guide our lives via our childhood religious training. We were taught the Ten Commandments, for example. We were not just taught about them, we were taught them.  We learned them by heart, and we took them to heart. This early training, far from being the child abuse that A. C. Grayling and other militant atheists think it is, had a very positive effect on us in forming our consciences and making  us the basically decent human beings we are. I am not saying that moral formation is possible only within a religion; I am saying that some religions do an excellent job of transmitting and inculcating life-guiding and life-enhancing ethical standards, that moral formation outside of a religion is unlikely for the average person, and that it is nearly impossible if children are simply handed over to the pernicious influences of secular society as these influences are transmitted through television, Internet, video games, and other media.  Anyone with moral sense can see that the mass media have become an open sewer in which every manner of cultural polluter is not only tolerated but promoted.  Those of use who were properly educated way back when can dip into this cesspool without too much moral damage.  But to deliver our children over to it is the real child abuse, pace the benighted Professor Grayling.

The shysters of the American Civil Liberties Union, to take one particularly egregious bunch of destructive leftists, seek to remove every vestige of our Judeo-Christian ethical tradition from the public square.  I can't begin to catalog all of their antics.  But recently there was the Mojave Memorial Cross incident. It is absurd  that there has been any fight at all over it.  The ACLU,  whose radical lawyers  brought the original law suit, deserve contempt   and resolute opposition.  Of course, I wholeheartedly endorse the initial clause of the First Amendment, to wit, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ." But it is hate-America leftist extremism on stilts to think that the presence of  that very old memorial cross on a hill  in the middle of nowhere does anything to establish Christianity as the state religion.  I consider anyone who  believes that to be intellectually obtuse and morally repellent.  One has to be highly unbalanced in his thinking to torture such extremist nonsense out of the First Amendment, while missing the plain sense of the Second Amendment, one that even SCOTUS eventually got right, namely, the the right to keep and bear arms is an individual, not a collective, right.

And then there was the business of the tiny cross on the city seal of Los Angeles, a symbol that the ACLU agitated to have removed.   I could continue with the examples, and you hope I won't.

3. Liberals tend to have low standards, glorify the worthless, and fail to present exemplary human types.

Our contemporary media dreckmeisters apparently think that the purpose of art is to degrade sensibility, impede critical thinking, glorify scumbags, and rub our noses ever deeper into sex and violence. It seems obvious that the liberal fetishization of freedom of expression without constraint or sense of responsibility is part of the problem. But I can't let a certain sort of libertarian or economic conservative off the hook. Their lust for profit is also involved.

What is is that characterizes contemporary media dreck? Among other things, the incessant presentation of  defective human beings as if there are more of them than there are, and as if there is nothing at all wrong with their way of life. Deviant behavior is presented as if it is mainstream and acceptable, if not desirable. And then lame justifications are provided for the presentation: 'this is what life is like now; we are simply telling it like it is.' It doesn't occur to the dreckmeisters that art might have an ennobling function.

The tendency of liberals and leftists is to think that any presentation of choice-worthy goals or admirable styles of life could only be hypocritical preaching.  And to libs and lefties, nothing is worse than hypocrisy.  Indeed, a good indicator of whether someone belongs to this class of the terminally benighted is whether the person obsesses over hypocrisy and thinks it the very worst thing in the world.  See my category Hypocrisy for elaboration of this theme.

4. Liberals tend to deny or downplay free will, individual responsibility, and the reality of evil.

This is connected with point (2) above, leftist hostility to religion.  Key to our Judeo-Christian tradition is the belief that man is made in the image and likeness of God.  Central to this image is that mysterious power in us called free will.  The secular extremist assault on religion is at the same time an assault on this mysterious power, through which evil comes into the world.

This is a large topic.  Suffice it to say for now that one clear indication of this denial is the bizarre liberal displacement of responsibility for crime onto inanimate objects, guns, as if the weapon, not the wielder, is the source of the evil for which the weapon can be only the instrument.

Hillary’s Gun Tweets in the Aftermath of the Las Vegas Shooting

1) "Our grief isn't enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again."

Note first Hillary's hypocrisy. She preaches that we must put politics aside, and then goes on to politicize the shooting.  Or perhaps she has a curious notion of politics as that which 'deplorables' engage in while she is above that sort of thing.  Besides, to stand up to the NRA is a political act inasmuch as the NRA is in part a political outfit that lobbies Congress in support of Second Amendment rights.

One understands Hillary's animus against the NRA since this organization played an important role in getting Trump elected.

Note second Hillary's thoughtless repetition of the vacuous boilerplate of career politicians: "to stop this from ever happening again."  This is the emptiest of empty rhetoric. Everyone knows that these sorts of awful events will continue to occur and that they cannot be stopped. The most that can be done is to take certain steps to reduce their likelihood.  For example, baggage checks at the Mandalay would probably have prevented this particular event.  It took numerous trips for the shooter to stock his hotel room with guns and ammo.

2) "Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get."

Another reason why Hillary, Dianne Feinstein, and the rest of the liberal gun-grabbers enjoy no credibility with the sane is that they are know-nothings.  A so-called 'silencer' does not make gun shots inaudible. It merely suppresses the report somewhat.  This is why the correct term is 'suppressor.' But Hillary and her ilk cannot be bothered to learn basic gun terminology such as the distinction between semi-auto and full-auto long guns.  On top of that, they always reach for emotive terminology.  They don't use descriptive terms like 'semi-automatic long gun' but emotive terms like 'assault weapon.'  

There is a technical, non-emotive use for 'assault rifle.' See here.  Selective fire is part of the definition. "Selective fire means the capability of a weapon to be adjusted to fire in semi-automatic, multi-shot burst, and/or fully automatic firing mode.[1]"  By this technical definition, however, semi-automatic long guns available for civilian purchase without special permits such as as the AR-15, which Hillary and  Feinstein would count as 'assault rifles,' are not, technically, assault rifles.

So we have to distinguish between the emotive and the technical use of 'assault rifle.' It is plain that leftists such as Hillary and her ilk use the term emotively.

You would think that philosophers would avoid emotive language. You would be wrong. A reader sends me to Brian Leiter's academic gossip site where he opines that ". . . adult, civilized societies do not allow private citizens to own assault rifles." Leiter is clearly using the term in the emotive sense.

Question for 'liberals': If an AR-15 is used by a citizen to defend his home, his family, and/or his livelihood, is he assaulting or defending?  

Are semi-automatic long guns intrinsically assaultive? Is any gun intrinsically assaultive? Or does it depend on how the weapon is used? Obviously, the latter.  Are the police armed so that they can assault the citizenry? Think about it, 'liberals.'

Hillary's tweets here. 

Charlie Parker

A tribute to Charlie Parker by Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen. Hyper-romanticism and cool jazz. 

Charlie Parker looked like Buddha. Charlie Parker . . . was called the perfect musician and his expression on his face was as calm beautiful and profound as the image of the Buddha represented in the East — the lidded eyes the expression that says: all is well.

This was what Charlie Parker said when he played: all is well. You had the feeling of early-in-the-morning like a hermit's joy or like the perfect cry of some wild gang at a jam session Wail! Whap! Charlie burst his lungs to reach the speed of what the speedsters wanted and what they wanted was his eternal slowdown. A great musician and a great creator of forms . . . . 

. . . Charlie Parker whistling them on to the brink of eternity with his Irish St. Patrick Patootlestick. And like the holy mists we blop and we plop in the waters of slaughter and white meat — and die one after one in Time. And how sweet a story it is

. . . Charlie Parker forgive me. Forgive me for not answering your eyes. For not having made an indication of that which you can devise. Charlie Parker pray for me. Pray for me and everybody.

In the Nirvanas of your brain where you hide — indulgent and huge — no longer Charlie Parker but the secret unsayable Name that carries with it merit not-to-be-measured from here to up down east or west.

Charlie Parker lay the bane off me – – and everybody.

Royce Revisited: Individuality and Immortality

This is a draft of a paper from years ago (early aughts) that it looks like I may never finish. But it is relevant to present concerns. So here it is.

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ROYCE REVISITED: INDIVIDUALITY AND IMMORTALITY

    “What is it that makes any real being an individual?” Near the beginning of his 1899 Ingersoll lecture, The Conception of Immortality, Josiah Royce identifies this as the fundamental question whose answering must precede any serious discussion of the immortality question.i Since the latter concerns whether we survive bodily death as individuals, it is clear that the logically prior question is: What is it to be an individual?

    This question, “formal and dreary” as it may seem, yet “pulsates with all the mystery of life.”ii I share Royce’s enthusiasm since I count it as one of his greatest insights that “the logical problem as to what constitutes an individual being” is identical to “the problem as to the worthy object of love.” (CI 32-33) This essay sets itself three tasks. The first is to expound the main features of Royce’s doctrine of individuality in a rigorous and contemporary manner. The second is to raise some critical objections to it. The third is to sketch an alternative which preserves Royce’s insights.

 

Continue reading “Royce Revisited: Individuality and Immortality”

The Function-Argument Schema in the Analysis of Propositions, Part II

A second installment from the Ostrich of London. 

Another difficulty with the function-argument theory is staring us in the face, but generally unappreciated for what it is. As Geach says, the theory presupposes an absolute category-difference between names and predicables, which comes out in the choice of ‘fount’ [font] for the schematic letters corresponding to name and predicable. For example ‘Fa’, where the upper case ‘F’ represents the predicable, as Geach calls it, and lower case ‘a’ the name. As a direct result, there is only one negation of the proposition, i.e. ‘~Fa’, where the tilde negates whatever is expressed by ‘Fa’. But ‘F’ is a function mapping the referent of ‘a’ onto the True or the False, so ‘~Fa’ says that a does not map onto the True. The object a is there all right, but maps to a different truth-value. Thus ‘Fa’ implies ExFx, ‘~Fa’ implies Ex~Fx, and excluded middle (Fa or ~Fa) implies that something, i.e. a, does or does not satisfy F. The function-argument account has the bizarre consequence that the name always has a referent, which either does or does not satisfy the predicable. There is no room for the name not being satisfied. Indeed, the whole point of the function theory is to distinguish the idea of satisfaction, which only applies to predicables, from reference, which is a feature of proper names only. As Frege points out here:

The word 'common name' is confusing .. for it makes it look as though the common name stood under the same, or much the same relation to the objects that fall under the concept as the proper name does to a single object. Nothing could be more false! In this case it must, of course, appear as though a common name that belongs to an empty concept were as illegitimate as a proper name that designates [bezeichnet] nothing.

The scholastic two-term account, by contrast, allows for the non-satisfaction of the proper name. ‘Frodo is a hobbit’ is true if and only if something satisfies both ‘hobbit’ and ‘Frodo’. It is essential to Aristotle’s theory of the syllogism, as Geach notes, that the middle term (the one which appears in both premisses) can be subject in one premiss, predicate in another. The notion of ‘satisfaction’ or ‘supposition’ applies to both subject and predicate, even if the subject is a proper name like ‘Frodo’. Thus the negation of ‘Frodo is a hobbit’ can be true in two ways. Either some individual satisfies ‘Frodo’ but does not satisfy ‘hobbit’. We express this in English by so-called predicate negation ‘Frodo is not a hobbit’, where the negative is placed after the copula. Or no individual satisfies ‘Frodo’, which we can express by placing the negation before the whole proposition, ‘it is not the case that Frodo is a hobbit’. So the scholastic theory neatly accounts for empty proper names. Not so for the function-argument theory, a difficulty which was recognised early on. Frege developed a complex and (in my view) ultimately incoherent theory of sense and reference. Russell thought that proper names were really disguised descriptions, which is actually a nod to the scholastic theory.

Of course there is a separate problem for the two term theory, of making sense of a proper name not being ‘satisfied’. What concept is expressed by the proper name that is satisfied or not satisfied, and which continues to exist as a concept even if the individual ceases to exist? Bill and I have discussed this many times, probably too many times for his liking.

BV: What is particularly interesting here is the claim that Russell's theory of proper names is a nod to to the scholastic theory.  This sounds right, although we need to bear in mind that Russell's description theory is a theory of ordinary proper names. Russell also allows for logically proper names, which are not definite descriptions in disguise.  The Ostrich rightly points out that that for Frege there there is an absolute categorial difference between names and predicables.  I add that this is the linguistic mirror of the absolute categorial difference in Frege between objects and concepts (functions). No object is a concept, and no concept is an object.  No object can be predicated, and no concept can be named. This leads directly to the Paradox of the Horse:  The concept horse is not a concept. Why not? Because 'the concept horse' is a name, and whatever you name is an object. 

This is paradoxical and disturbing because it imports ineffability into concepts and thus into logic. If concepts cannot be named and objectified, then they are not wholly graspable.  This is connected with the murky notion of the unsaturatedness of concepts. The idea is not that concepts cannot exist uninstantiated; the idea is that concepts have a 'gappy' nature that allows them to combine with objects without the need for a tertium quid to tie them together.   Alles klar?

Now it seems to me that Russell maintains the absolute categorial difference between logically proper names and predicates/predicables. ('Predicable' is a Geachian term and it would be nice to hear how the Ostrich defines it.) Correct me if I am wrong, but this presupposition of an absolute categorial difference between logically proper names and predicates/predicables is a presupposition of all standard modern logic.  It is 1-1 with the assumption that there are atomic propositions.

Here is one problem.  On the Russellian and presumably also on the scholastic theory, an ordinary proper name stands to its nominatum in the same relation as a predicate to the items that satisfy it.  Call this relation 'satisfaction.'  Socrates satisfies 'Socrates' just as he and Plato et al. satisfy 'philosopher.' Now if an item satisfies a term, then it instantiates the concept expressed by the term. But what is the concept that 'Socrates' expresses?  One candidate is: the unique x such that x is the teacher of Plato. Another is: the greatest philosopher who published nothing. 

Notice, however, that on this approach singularity goes right out the window. 'Socrates' is a singular term. But 'the greatest philosopher who published nothing' is a general term despite the fact that the latter term, if satisfied, can be satisfied by only one individual in the world that happens to be actual. It is general because it is satisfied by different individuals in different possible worlds. Without prejudice to his identity, Socrates might not have been the greatest philosopher to publish nothing.  He might not have been a philosopher at all. So a description theory of names cannot do justice to the haecceity of Socrates. What makes Socrates precisely this individual cannot be some feature accidental to him. Surely the identity of an individual is essential to it.

If we try to frame a concept that captures Socrates' haecceity, we hit a brick wall.  Concepts are effable; an individual's haeceity or thisness is ineffable.  Aristotle says it somewhere, though not in Latin: Individuum ineffabile est.  The individual as such is ineffable. There is no science of the particular qua particular.  There is no conceptual understanding of the particular qua particular because the only concepts we can grasp are general in the broad way I am using 'general.'  And of course all understanding is conceptual involving as it does the subsumption of particular under concepts.

Some will try the following move.  They will say that 'Socrates' expresses the concept, Socrateity, the concept of being Socrates, or being identical to Socrates. But this haecceity concept is a pseudo-concept.  For we had to bring in the non-concept Socrates to give it content.

There are no haecceity concepts. As the Ostrich appreciates, this causes trouble for the scholastic two-name theory of predication according to which 'Socrates' and 'wise' are both names, and the naming relation is that of satisfaction.  It makes sense to say that the concept wise person is uninstantiated. But it makes no sense to say that the concept Frodoity is uninstantiated for the simple reason that there cannot be any such concept.

It looks like we are at an impasse. We get into serious trouble if we go the Fregean route and hold that names and predicates/predicables are radically disjoint and that the naming/referring relation is toto caelo different from the satisfaction relation.  But if we regress to the scholastic two-name theory, then we have a problem with empty names. 

Related articles
The Function-Argument Schema in the Analysis of Propositions

BEATific October Again

Kerouac barIt's October again, my favorite month, and Kerouac month in my personal literary liturgy.  And no better way to kick off Kerouac month than with 'sweet gone Jack'  reading from "October in Railroad Earth" from Lonesome Traveler, 1960.  Steve Allen provides the wonderful piano accompaniment.  I have the Grove Press Black Cat 1970 paperback edition. I bought it on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, 12 April 1973. I was travelling East by thumb to check out East Coast graduate schools where I had been accepted, but mostly  I 'rode the dog' (Greyhound bus), a mode of transport I wouldn't put up with today: two guys behind me chain-smoked  and talked all the way from Los Angeles to Phoenix.  New Orleans proved to be memorable, including the flophouse on Carondelet I stayed in for $2.  It was there that Lonesome  Traveler joined On the Road in my rucksack. 

I never before had seen Tabasco bottles so big as on the tables of the Bourbon Street bars and eateries.  Exulting in the beat quiddity of the scene, I couldn't help but share my enthusiasm for Nawlins with a lady of the evening, not sampling her wares, but just talking to her on the street, she thinking me naive, and I was. 

Here is a long  excerpt (7:10), which contains the whole of the first two sections of "October in Railroad Earth," pp. 37-40, of the Black Cat edition.

You don't know jack about Jack if you don't know that he was deeply conservative despite his excesses.  The aficionados will enjoy The Conservative Kerouac.

And a tip of the hat to old college buddy and Kerouac and jazz aficionado 'Monterey Tom' Coleman for sending me to Kerouac on Sinatra, and Hit the Road, Jack.