Substack latest. A Boethian-Hegelian rumination.
Month: April 2022
Miracles: Some Preliminary Points
It can't hurt to back up a bit to examine some definitions, make some distinctions, nail down some terminology, and catalog some questions. See how much you agree with.
1) A little girl falls into a mine shaft but is pulled out three days later alive and well. People call it a 'miracle.' That is a misuse of language because the unlikelihood of an event does not justify labelling it miraculous.
2) David Hume's two-part definition has dominated subsequent discussions. The gist of his definition is that a miracle is "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity . . . ." (Enquiry, sec. x, part i)
3) Hume's definition raises a number of questions. What is a law of nature? What is it to 'transgress' or violate a law of nature? Could a violation of a law of nature occur without supernatural agency? If so, would it count as a miracle? If a supernatural agent such as God brings about something by an act of will, but without violating any natural law, is that a miraculous bringing-about? If God ("the Deity") is involved in every miracle, what attributes must God have to be so-involved? The God of Aquinas could be a miracle worker, but what about the deus sive natura of Spinoza?
4) Laws of nature must not be confused with laws in the political-legal realm. And this despite the use of 'transgression,' 'violation,' and 'law' with respect to both kinds of law, and despite talk of laws of nature 'governing' this or that phenomenon and of phenomena 'obeying' laws. Two differences come immediately to mind: legal laws, unlike laws of nature, are enacted by legislatures and need enforcement. Kepler's laws of planetary motion, for example, were neither enacted by a legislature nor do they need enforcement. There is no need for an 'astro-cop' to make sure that the planets keep to their elliptical orbits, or to ensure that no signal exceeds the cosmic speed limit, 186,282 mi/sec. This ties in with another apparent difference. Legal laws are prescriptive, permissive, or proscriptive statements; statements of laws of nature are merely descriptive: they merely codify what happens. And even if they codify what must happen, the necessity involved is not legal but nomological or nomic. This point leads to a further distinction.
5) A legal law is just a statement that states either what is legally required, or legally permitted, or legally prohibited. There is no distinction between a legal law and something in the world of nature that makes its true. But in the case of laws of nature we need to distinguish between law statements and the laws themselves. Let me explain.
On one theory of laws, the regularity theory, a law is just an exceptionless regularity, a repeatable pattern of event sequences. A sample of pure water at sea-level is heated to 212 deg. Fahrenheit. That is one event token. It is followed by a second spatiotemporally contiguous event token: the beginning to boil of the same sample of water. The two event tokens make up an event sequence. What makes it a causal sequence is its instantiation of a pattern which, formulated in a statement, would go like this: "Whenever pure water at sea level is heated to 212 Fahrenheit, it boils." What makes this universal generalization true is the underlying pattern of heating-boiling events 'out there in the world.'
A statement of a law of nature, therefore, must be distinguished from the law that it states. The latter exists whether or not the former does. If Coulomb's law is true it was true long before the birth of Charles-Augustin de Coulomb.
6) Now what is a transgression of a law of nature? I should think that a law of nature is more than an exceptionless regularity in that laws support counterfactual conditionals. But without going into this, we can confidently say the following. Whatever a law of nature is, it either is or entails an exceptionless regularity. A transgression/violation of a law would then be an exception to the regularity, i.e., a counterexample thereto. But then it would seem to follow that miracles as Hume understands them are not just impossible, but logically impossible. Try this argument on for size:
1) A miracle is an exception to a law of nature.
2) Every law of nature is an exceptionless regularity.
Therefore
3) A miracle is an exception to an exceptionless regularity. But:
4) An exception to an exceptionless regularity is logically impossible.
Therefore
5) Miracles are logically impossible.
This argument seems to show that if miracles are to be logically possible, then they cannot be understood as violations of laws of nature. How then are they to be understood? Please note that (2) merely states that whatever a law of nature is, it is an exceptionless regularity. Thus (2) does not commit one to a regularity theory of laws according to which laws are identified with exceptionless regularities. The idea is that any theory of (deterministic) laws would include the idea that a law is an exceptionless regularity.
Interim conclusion: If miracles are possible, then they cannot be construed as Hume construes them. And now: modus ponendo ponens? Or modus tollendo tollens?
(To be continued)
7) Humean miracles are violations ("transgressions") of laws of nature by divine agency. But are miracles Humean? William Lane Craig thinks not:
That is, I think, an untenable definition of what a miracle is . . . . Miracles are not violations of the laws of nature. The laws of nature describe what would happen in a particular case assuming that there are no intervening supernatural factors. They have what are called ceteris paribus clauses implicit in them – namely, all [other] things being equal, this is what will happen in this situation. But if all [other] things are not equal, the law isn’t violated. Rather, the law just doesn’t apply to that situation because there are other factors at work. In the case of a miracle, God doesn’t violate the laws of nature when he does a miracle. Rather, there will be causal factors at work, namely God, which are supernatural and therefore what the laws of nature predict won’t happen because the laws of nature only make predictions under the assumption that there are no intervening supernatural factors at work. So a miracle, I think, properly defined, is an event which the natural causes at a time and place cannot produce at that time and place. Or, more succinctly, a miracle is a naturally impossible event – an event which the natural causes at a certain time and place cannot bring about. It is beyond the productive capacity of nature. (Emphases added)
‘Equity’
'Equity' as currently used by wokesters refers to equality of outcome.
It could be achieved in a footrace by attaching weights to runners so as to insure that they all cross the finish line at the same time. One would thereby purchase the benefit of envy-free equality of result at the cost of excellence and high achievement. Would it be worth it?
And then there is the question of who would attach the weights and how they would go about doing so. Would they not have to be unequal in power and authority to those equalized to bring about the latter's equality of result? I suspect that those who support 'equity' imagine themselves as among the equalizers and not the equalized, just as those who are for central planning think of themselves as among the central planners and not the centrally planned.
The means to the achievement of 'equity' are far worse than 'equity' is good.
A Warning from Elon Musk
There is no political solution, not only for the reasons that Musk gives, but also because it is not the best who rise in politics but often the very worst. That is certainly true in the USA at present. The current administration is characterized by blatant mendacity, corruption, sheer stupidity, and mental incompetence.
So What’s up with the Metaphilosophy Book?
I was happy to find the following item in the mailbag the other morning:
Hi Bill,
I recall (however, I can't find exactly where) that you mentioned in an old blog post your intention to publish a work on metaphilosophy at some point in the future. I am curious, is this still a goal of yours? If so, is it in progress? I would be delighted to read it, but I understand if you've chosen not to pursue that project.Your grateful reader,Chandler
Thank you for your inquiry, Chandler. Yes, the metaphilosophy book is in progress, and has been for longer than I care to reveal. Why am I taking so long with it?
I gave the following dissertation advice a few posts ago:
. . . finish the bloody thing now while you are young and cocky and energetic. Finish it before your standards become too exacting. Give yourself a year, say, do your absolute best and crank it out. Think of it as a union card. It might not get you a job but then it just might. Don't think of it as a magnum opus or you will never finish.
My current predicament is the opposite. I am now old and my standards have become as exacting as they ever will be. I'm under time pressure but it's of a different sort than the young person's. The young philosopher needs to 'make it' and secure a space within which he can pursue his vocation. He has to solve 'the problem of the belly.' He may also be driven by worldly ambition. I have secured the space, solved the problem of livelihood, and I have renounced all worldly ambition in line with Wittgenstein's 1948 observation, "Ambition is the death of thought." (Ehrgeiz ist der Tod des Denkens, Culture and Value, p. 77)
So now I can afford to set high standards. Trouble is, they slow you down. That's good in one way. I take to heart the advice of Wittgenstein and Brentano. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80: Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!" "This is how philosophers should greet each other: 'Take your time!'"
A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have forgotten where he says this: Wer eilt, bewegt sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft. "One who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis."
On the other hand, the clock is running, the flag will fall, and the time control is sudden death. There is no secondary or tertiary control; nor can one take an 'incomplete' when the Grim Reaper comes knocking, his scythe glistening in the rays of the setting sun.
‘Unthinkable’ Used Thoughtlessly
Not every test is a litmus test. So why do people refer to any old test as a litmus test? Same explanation. Not every record is a track record. Not every list is a laundry list. I could continue with the examples. And you hope I won't. Don't be a linguistic lemming. The mind you save may be your own.
Language matters. The subversion of language is the mother of all subversion.
Walter approves of this message.
The Peripatetic Zetetic
On the Continental Divide trail near Abiquiu, New Mexico, August 2015.
Spinoza’s Epistemic Theory of Miracles
Chapter Six of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise is entitled, "Of Miracles." We do well to see what we can learn from it. Spinoza makes four main points in this chapter, but I will examine only two of them in this entry.
We learned from our discussion of Augustine that there is a tension and possibly a contradiction between the will of God and the existence of miracles ontically construed. Miracles so construed violate, contravene, suspend, transgress, or otherwise upset the laws of nature. But for theists the laws of nature are ordained by God, regardless of how laws are understood, whether as regularities or as relations of universals that entail regularities (as on David M. Armstrong's theory of laws) or whatever. So it seems as if the theist is under a certain amount of conceptual pressure to adopt an epistemic theory of miracles. We heard Augustine say, Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura: A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature. We find a similar view in Spinoza, despite the very considerable differences between the two thinkers:
. . . the universal laws of nature are decrees of God following from the necessity and perfection of the Divine nature. Hence, any event happening in nature which contravened nature's universal laws, would necessarily also contravene the Divine decree, nature, and understanding; or if anyone asserted that God acted in contravention to the laws of nature, he, ipso facto, would be compelled to assert that God acted against His own nature — an evident absurdity. (tr. Elwes, Dover, p. 83)
It follows from this that miracles are to be construed epistemically:
Further, as nothing happens in nature which does not follow from her laws, and as her laws embrace everything conceived by the Divine intellect, and lastly, as nature preserves a fixed and immutable order; it most clearly follows that miracles are only intelligible as in relation to human opinions, and merely mean events of which the natural cause cannot be explained by a reference to any ordinary occurrence, either by us, or at any rate, by the writer and narrator of the miracle. (p. 84, emphasis added)
Since the course of nature, being ordained by God, cannot be contravened, miracles ontically construed are impossible. Talk of miracles, therefore, is simply talk of events we cannot explain given the present state of our knowledge. Miracles are thus parasitic upon our ignorance. They are natural events that simply surpass our limited human comprehension. To a perfect understanding nothing would appear miraculous. That is the first main point that Spinoza makes in his chapter "Of Miracles."
The second main point is that neither God's nature, nor his existence, nor his providence can be known from miracles, but can be known only from the fixed and immutable order of nature.
Spinoza's argument, expressed in my own way, is something like the following. If we take miracles ontically, as actual interruptions or contraventions of the order of nature, and thus of the will of God, then not only are they impossible, but they can provide no basis for knowledge of God. If, on the other hand, we take miracles epistemically, as events the causes of which we do not understand, then in this case as well we have no basis for knowledge of God. For we cannot base knowledge of God on ignorance, and events are miraculous only due to our ignorance of their natural causes.
Spinoza concludes his defense of his second main point with the surprising claim that belief in miracles leads to atheism:
If, therefore, anything should come to pass in nature which does not follow from her laws, it would also be in contravention to the order which which God has established in nature for ever through universal natural laws; it would, therefore, be in contravention to God's nature and laws, and, consequently, belief in it would throw doubt upon everything, and lead to Atheism. (p. 87)
Some ‘Tweets’ on Free Speech
Thanks to Elon Musk, Twitter has been liberated from the speech police. Free at last! I may sign up. In these hyperkinetic times, pithy sayings are needed to punch through the noise. And sometimes one needs to SHOUT.
Dissent is not hate. If I dissent from your VIEWS, it does not follow that I hate YOU.
Can a contemporary 'liberal' distinguish between a person and the proposition he asserts? If he can, but he doesn't, then he ought to be morally reprimanded. We have a moral responsibility to try to think straight. We may not succeed, but we must try.
Don't confuse being judgmental with making moral judgments.
Don't make Dennis Prager's mistake of saying that the the First Amendment protects 'hate speech.' That formulation is a foolish concession to the Left's notion that conservative speech is hate speech. The First Amendment protects DISSENT. Hate, like love, is in the eye of the beholder, and leftists are not known for their 'visual' acuity.
The trouble with 'liberals' is that they are ruled by their emotions. That is why they hear dissent as hate.
The growing feminarchy within the Democrat Party will only exacerbate the party's governance by emotion. Is that a 'sexist' thing to say? Not if it is true; it is true; ergo, it is not 'sexist.'
Dissent is not hate. But even if dissent is couched in (what some inappropriately sensitive person takes to be) harsh and hurtful or even hateful language, it still must be protected.
I apologize for repeating all of these obvious points. But in these benighted times, they need to be stated time and time again.
THE DEMS NO LONGER SUPPORT FREE SPEECH. And you are STILL a Democrat? What is wrong with you? Jonathan Turley:
Yet recently, the Democratic Party seems to have abandoned its historic fealty to free speech. Democratic writers and leaders are publicly calling for everything from censorship to the criminalization of free speech. The latest such clarion call appeared in The Washington Post by a column from MSNBC analyst and former Obama official Richard Stengel.
Augustine and the Epistemic Theory of Miracles
This is a revised version of an entry from November 2009. Long-time reader Thomas Beale has got me thinking about miracles again. I cannot tell you what to believe about this vexing topic, but I can help you think clearly about it by making some distinctions. Below I distinguish between ontic and epistemic approaches to miracles.
………………………….
In The City of God, Book XXI, Chapter 8, St. Augustine quotes Marcus Varro, Of the Race of the Roman People:
There occurred a remarkable celestial portent; for Castor records that, in the brilliant star Venus, called Vesperugo by Plautus, and the lovely Hesperus by Homer, there occurred so strange a prodigy, that it changed its colour, size, form, course, which never appeared before nor since. Andrastus of Cyzicus, and Dion of Naples, famous mathematicians, said that this occurred in the reign of Ogyges.
The Bishop of Hippo comments:
So great an author as Varro would certainly not have called this a portent had it not seemed to be contrary to nature. For we say that all portents are contrary to nature; but they are not so. For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing? A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature. (Modern Library, p. 776, tr. Dods, emphasis added.)
Suppose Venus did in fact change its color, size, form, and course during the reign of some Theban king. Suppose that really occurred. Would we call it a miracle or not? Ontically understood, a miracle is an event contrary to nature, contrary to what 'naturally' occurs. It is an event the origin of which is supernatural. But this is not the tack Augustine takes. For him, nature is whatever God wills. Dei voluntas rerum natura est. And since nothing can run contrary to the will of God, Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura: A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature.
Augustine's approach is thus epistemic. It is because of our ignorance of nature's real workings that we take as contrary to nature what in reality is not contrary to nature. The contrast is this:
ONTIC: Whether or not event M is a miracle does not depend on what any finite mind thinks, believes, opines, expects, takes to be the case, etc. There is a fact of the matter as to whether or not an event is a miracle; whether or not M is a miracle is not relative to us and our knowledge and ignorance.
EPISTEMIC: There are no events contrary to nature; there are no "transgressions" (to use Hume's word) of laws of nature. M is a miracle only in the sense that it does not comport with our understanding of nature, does not fit our picture of nature, thwarts our expectations as to how nature will behave, etc. To a perfect understanding there would be no miracles.
So far, so good. But the epistemic approach to miracles has an untoward consequence noted by Antony Flew in his entry "Miracles" in The Encylopedia of Philosophy, vol. 5, 346-353. Miracles have an apologetic function: they can be cited as attesting to the reality of God or as supporting the credibility of a putative divine revelation. For example, the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes, if accepted as fact, serves the apologetic purpose of attesting to the divinity of Jesus. Only a divine being could do that, or change water into wine, or walk on water, or raise the dead, etc. But if these events are merely inexplicable to us at present, then we have no reason to take these events as having any special divine origin. If theism is true, everything other than God has a divine origin. But for miracles to have probative force in respect of specific theses such as the divinity of Jesus, they would have to be brought about by a special divine intervention. They would otherwise be no different than any other event belonging to the created order.
Suppose you see a man walking on water, and suppose your seeing is veridical: the man really is walking on water. (And to preempt the unserious, we are talking about water in the liquid state.) That is not possible given the laws of nature as we understand them. The surface tension of water is not great enough to support a man's weight. But it may be that our understanding of the laws of nature is very incomplete. There may be special psychophysical laws, unknown to us, that allow certain human beings possessing great powers of concentration to affect by force of will alone the surface tension of water. Suppose that is so in the case of Jesus. Then there would be nothing ontically miraculous about his walking on water. There would be no violation or suspension of the laws of nature. If so, Jesus' walking on water would not give one reason to infer that he was divine. He might simply be a man with very special powers.
For the miracles associated with Jesus to attest to his divinity they must be construed as genuine ontic miracles, as being special divine interventions that are contrary to nature. But if nature is whatever God wills, then there cannot be any ontic miracles. For nothing can act contrary to the will of God. The problem is similar to the problem we confront in connection with Hume. If laws either are or entail exception-less regularities, then there cannot be any miracles given that miracles are violations of, e.g., exceptions to, laws.
It looks as if Augustine's position faces a dilemma. Either we construe miracles epistemically or we construe them ontically. If we construe them epistemically, then in Flew's words, they "provide no good ground at all for believing that doctrines associated with these occurrences embody an authentic revelation of the transcendent." (348) But if we construe miracles ontically, then we face a version of the difficulty pointed out by Hume. Just as there cannot be exceptions to exceptionless regularities, there cannot be any occurrences contrary to nature given that what occurs in nature is willed by God.
The Gist of Brightly’s Presentism
An excerpt from a comment by David Brightly to this entry:
My mind is populated with ideas of things. I acquire these ideas (a) directly through acquaintance with external objects and (b) indirectly by description in language and image. These ideas of things guide my interaction with the outside world. Having seen a bear go into the cave or having been told 'There's a bear in the cave', I approach the cave with caution. Through my contact with the external world I come to accept that all external things come into existence, exist for a while, and then pass out of existence. The ceasing to exist of things that I am familiar with and am attached to is an everyday experience. When I have such an experience, or have a thing's passing described to me, my idea of that thing becomes modified. None of the idea itself passes away, at least not initially. Instead the idea (not the thing it's an idea of) acquires a new attribute, analogous to the label 'Account Closed' on the front of a business ledger, signifying that, to a first approximation, the content of the idea can be safely ignored for purposes of guiding my life. I might express this label by saying 'The thing is past' or 'The thing is in the past' or 'The thing has ceased to exist'. The important point here is that, despite appearances, these assertions are not predicating something of the thing itself but rather of my idea of it, namely that the idea is redundant.
Suppose that a monument M, of which I had direct sensory acquaintance, has been demolished. M no longer exists, but my memorial ideas, my memories, of M still exist. Consider the most vivid of these, idea R. R is obviously distinct from M because R is a mental representation of M. R exists now 'in' my mind; M does not exist now, and, being a physical chunk of the external world, never existed 'in' any (finite) mind either spatially or merely intentionally. When I learn that M no longer exists, R undergoes a modification; it "acquires a new attribute" as David puts it. This new attribute is not an attribute of M, which no longer exists, but solely an attribute of R. We could describe this attribute as the property of not being of or about anything real or existent. It comes to the same if we call this attribute the property of being non-veridical. This simply means that R is not true of anything. R has thus undergone a modification: it was veridical when M existed, but is now non-veridical when R no longer exists. (In my example, R is a memory, but it might be a past-directed description, say, 'the only statue at the corner of Third and Howard.'
You can see where David is going with this. He is proposing that we analyze 'M is (wholly) past, ' M is in the past,' and 'M has ceased to exist' in terms of 'R has ceased to be veridical.'
One virtue of this analysis is that R is available, and available at present, which satisfies the demands of presentism according to which only what exists (present tense) exists. But I don't think the analysis is workable even as a specification of truth conditions. The cup out of which Socrates drank the hemlock existed but no one now has any ideas about it, that very cup. And there are innumerable things that existed but no longer exist about which no one now or ever had any ideas whether singular or general. What existed cannot depend for its having existed on the present contents of any finite mind. But there is worse to come when we ask about truthmakers.
If you are wondering what the difference is between a truth condition and a truthmaker, our old friend Alan Rhoda in an old blog post does a good job of explaining the distinction:
. . .truthmakers are parcels of reality . . . .
Not so with truth conditions. Truth conditions are semantic explications of the meaning of statements. They tell us in very precise terms what has to be true for a particular statement to be true. For example, a B-theorist like Nathan Oaklander will say that the truth conditions of the sentence "The 2006 Winter Olympics are over" is given by the sentence "The 2006 Winter Olympics end earlier than the date of this utterance". Thus truth conditions are meaning entities like statements that are used to spell out or analyze the meaning of other statements.
'M existed' is true, true now, and contingently true now (it might not have been true now and would not have been true now if the Antifa thugs hadn't dynamited the monument). We have here a truthbearer that clearly needs a truthmaker. So I ask a simple question of the presentist: What makes it true that M has ceased to exist? (In general: what makes any presently true, past-tensed, contingent truth true?) The truthmaker cannot be or involve M because M, on presentism, does not exist.
Note that the truthmaker of 'M has ceased to exist' cannot be the fact that the memorial representation or idea R has ceased to be veridical. This answer avails nothing since it merely postpones the question, which becomes: what makes it true that R has ceased to be veridical? 'R is no longer veridical' is true, presently true, and contingently true. It needs a truthmaker.
If the presentist says instead that 'M has ceased to exist' had a truthmaker in the past, what makes true this tensed claim, namely, the claim that the truthbearer in question had a truthmaker in the past?
Could past-tensed contingent truths be brute truths? (A brute truth, by definition, has no need of a truthmaker.) I may come back to this topic in a separate entry. But if you grant me that the true, present-tensed, contingent 'BV is seated' (assertively uttered at t) needs a truthmaker, then how could the mere passage of time do away with the need for a truthmaker of the presently true, contingent, past-tensed 'BV was seated' (assertively uttered at t* > t)?
Finally, the presentist might reject the need for any truthmakers at all. I would respond by hitting him over the head with Aristotle's Categories, figuratively speaking of course.
Institutions and Credibility
Key institutions appear to be working very hard to destroy their own credibility. The Roman Catholic Church, the Center for Disease Control, the fourth estate, the military, the business 'community,' academe, the entertainment industry, and the government in all three branches, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial have very little credibility left. Each of these institutions has 'earned' our disrespect as could easily be shown. To name some names: Bergoglio, Fauci, Milley, Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, McConnell. My esteemed readers will have no trouble adding to the list.
For now I refer you to Steven Hayward:
• A few days ago I remarked that the Biden Administration would have to appeal the district court ruling striking down the mask mandate despite the political unpopularity of masks because preserving the power of the administrative state is a core principle of the left today. I just didn’t expect The New Republic to come right out and admit this point:
Biden had no choice but to appeal. That’s because Mizelle—a former Clarence Thomas clerk whom the American Bar Association rated “not qualified” based on insufficient experience when she was nominated in 2020—wasn’t repealing only a mask mandate. She was also advancing a slow-motion conservative assault on the post–New Deal regulatory state. . .
As I’ve written before, the right’s big brass ring is to overturn the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which seemed at the time, believe it or not, to be a conservative ruling, but now stands as the only bulwark against virtually closing down regulatory agencies entirely.
Word of the Day: Assuasive
Merriam-Webster: soothing, calming. Example: "Like all good listeners, he has a way of attending that is at once intense and assuasive: the supplicant feels both nakedly revealed and sheltered, somehow, from all possible judgment." (David Foster Wallace)
I am a good listener, but far more intense than assuasive.
You have the verb 'assuage' in your vocabulary; now add the adjective 'assuasive.'
Which Side Are You On?
I have criticized Rod Dreher and others for "floating above the fray," for trying to be objective and impartial in those practical situations in which immediate action is required and in which the requisite action is impeded by the otherwise laudable attempt to arrive at the objective truth of the situation.
"Can't you see that failing to support Donald J. Trump, the only one on our side willing and able to achieve results, aids and abets the political enemy?" "Can't you grasp that politics is a practical enterprise?" "Are you incapable of distinguishing between political theory and political practice?" "The very survival of the Republic is at stake and you want to wait around for the perfect conservative candidate?" "You are letting the unattainable best become the enemy of the achievable good!" "What is wrong with you, man, which side are you on?"
But now I need to examine whether I myself am being consistent on the Ukraine question. I have criticized those who attack and indeed smear Tucker Carlson and others as 'Putin supporters.' Am I not "floating above the fray" when I try to understand the current Ukraine horror and how it came about and how it could have been avoided? Am I not aiding and abetting a vicious aggressor when I credit Carlson et al. with insights worth pondering? Which side am I on here? Does not my attempt at being fair and balanced have the effect of aiding Vlad the Aggressor? Should I take the Dick Morris line against Tucker Carlson?
When we examine our consciences — a salutary practice to be enacted on a daily basis — we sometimes in all justice must acquit ourselves of the charges we bring against ourselves. And so it seems to me in this case. There is an important difference.
As an American citizen I have a strong interest in the preservation of the Republic and the defense of all that makes it what it is, including its borders. Threats to it are threats to me and my way of life, the life of the philosopher who is committed to free speech, open inquiry, and the pursuit of truth I do not have the same interest in the defense of Ukraine and its borders. This is not to say that the USA should not help Ukraine defend itself. It is to insist on the principle, Country First. A special case thereof is America First. Let us review what this means.
It does not mean that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. We say 'America first' because we are Americans; the Czechs say or ought to say 'Czech Republic first.' The general principle is that every country has a right to grant preference to itself and its interests over the interests of other countries while respecting their interests and right to self-determination. America First is but an instance of the general principle. The principle, then, is Country First. If I revert to America First, that is to be understood as an instance of Country First.
So America First has nothing to do with chauvinism which could be characterized as a blind and intemperate patriotism, a belligerent and unjustified belief in the superiority of one's own country. America First expresses an enlightened nationalism which is obviously compatible with a sober recognition of national failings. Germany has a rather sordid history; but Germany First is compatible with a recognition of the wrong turn that great nation took during a well-known twelve-year period (1933-1945) in her history.
An enlightened nationalism is distinct from nativism inasmuch as the former does not rule out immigration. By definition, an immigrant is not a native; but an enlightened American nationalism accepts immigrants who accept American values, which of course are not the values of the Left or of political Islam.
An enlightened nationalism is not isolationist. What it eschews is a fruitless meddling and over-eager interventionism. It does not rule out certain necessary interventions when they are in our interests and in the interests of our allies.
So America First is not to be confused with chauvinism or nativism or isolationism.
America First is as sound an idea as that each family has the right to prefer its interests over the interests of other families. If my wife becomes ill, then my obligation is to care for her and expend such financial resources as are necessary to see to her welfare. If this means reducing my charitable contributions to the local food bank, then so be it. Whatever obligations I have to help others 'ripple out' from myself as center, losing claim to my attention the farther out they go, much like the amplitude of waves caused by a rock's falling into a pond diminishes the farther from the point of impact. Spouse and/or children first, then other family members, then old friends, then new friends, then neighbors, and so on.
The details are disputable, but not the general principle. The general principle is that we are justified in looking to our own first.
The main obligation of a government is to protect and serve the citizens of the country of which it is the government. It is a further question whether it has obligations to protect and benefit the citizens of other countries. That is debatable. But if it does, those obligations are trumped by the main obligation just mentioned. I should think that a great nation such as the USA does well to engage in purely humanitarian efforts such as famine relief. Such efforts are arguably supererogatory.
One implication of Country First is that an immigration policy must be to the benefit of the host country. The interests of the members of the host country supersede the interests of the immigrants. Obviously, there is no blanket right to immigrate. Obviously, potential immigrants must be vetted and must meet certain standards. Obviously, no country is under any obligation to accept subversive elements or elements who would work to undermine the nation's culture. Obviously, obviously, obviously — but not to the destructive leftists who have hijacked the Democrat Party and have installed a puppet to do their bidding.
Suppose you disagree with the enlightened nationalism I am sketching. What will you put in its place? If you are not a nationalist, what are you? Some sort of internationalist or cosmopolitan. But the notion of being a citizen of the world is empty since there is no world government and never will be. What could hold it together except the hegemony of one of the nations or a coalition of nations ganging up on the others?
The neocons tried to press America and it values and ways upon the world or upon the Middle Eastern portion thereof. The neocon mistake was to imagine that our superior system of government could be imposed on benighted and backward peoples riven by tribal hatreds and depressed by an inferior religion. The folly of that should now be evident. One cannot bomb the benighted into Enlightenment.
Leftist internationalists want to bring the world to America thereby diluting and ultimately destroying our values. The mistake of the multi-culti cultural Marxists is to imagine that comity is possible without commonality, that wildly diverse sorts of people can live together in peace and harmony. Or at least that is one mistake of the politically correct multi-cultis.
So the way forward is enlightened nationalism. Trump understands this in his intuitive and inarticulate way. The Never-Trumpers do not. Their brand of yap-and-scribble, inside-the-Beltway, bow-tied, pseudo-conservatism puts a premium on courtly behavior and gentlemanly debate that is an end in itself and rarely issues in ameliorative action. The people, however, demand action.
Which side are you on?
Superstition Wilderness: Garden Valley Loop out of First Water Trailhead
The boys were a little anxious but acquitted themselves well on this five and a half mile loop through characteristically rugged Superstition terrain except for the easy walk through Garden Valley itself. The guide books say it takes four and a half hours. It took the old men a bit longer. We left at 6:36 and were back at the Jeep at 11:22 ante meridian. We made the full trip to Hackberry Spring which involves an arduous return via some scrambling and a lot of streambed rock hopping.
In these times that try men's souls it is excellent therapy to be on trails that try men's soles. Isn't that cute?
Dennis proudly standing and your humble correspondent sitting near Hackberry Spring. Photo credit: Jeff K.
Dale Tuggy has a good eye. Here is a shot from our Good Friday hike, 3 April, 2015. We are headed back to the trailhead from Hackberry Spring via the First Water Creek bed.
And here is the man himself in the vicinity of Hackberry Spring: