Month: January 2023

The Musket Canard, its F-15 Counterpart, the Need Canard, and 2A

Tony Flood commenting on my Substack entry ARs and Cattle Cars:

Excellent all around, Bill. Pithy opener and rises from there, especially the fixed meaning/variable application distinction. (Good biblical hermeneutics, too.) Will propagate. 

Besides the musket canard, there's its F-15 counterpart, which recently came out of Biden's mouth (I wonder who put it there): to take on the US government, you'd need fighter jets and maybe some nukes, not measly AR-15s. This invites patriots to rhetorically ask Brandon whether they should put such items on their wish list, if that's what it would take to neutralize a tyranny's threat (2A's raison d'être). Does might, after all, make right? Given a nuclear-armed George III, should Washington have thrown in the towel? I'm sure you could make the point I'm cornering more convincingly.
Thank you, Tony. Your comment raises a number of issues. I'll mention two here. I solicit your response.
 
1) I agree that the Second Amendment's raison d'être is to keep tyranny at bay.  Historically, that was why it came to be.  (If there is an historian in the house, I am open to correction.) Tactically, however, it might not be wise to harp on this point lest you provoke a Biden-type response.  There are other reasons for 2A.  One has to do with defense of self and of certain others (spouse, children, et al.)
 
I argue as follows. If I have the right to life, then I have the right to defend my life, and you (plural) have the correlative duty not to take my life. But if I have the right to life, then I have the right to acquire, keep, and bear instruments appropriate for the defense of my life.  What count as appropriate instruments will depend on circumstances, and circumstances change.  If the criminal element is armed with semi-automatic 9-mm pistols with 13-round magazines, then surely the law-abiding citizen must be allowed  to own such firearms. A fortiori given that the government, which is charged with the protection of life, liberty, and property, is in many (not all) places refusing to do its job and is instead empowering criminals by defunding the police, eliminating cash bail, emptying the prisons, opening the borders, and similar 'reforms.' (Note the woke-left's Orwellian use of 'reform.')
 
Besides keeping the government and the criminal element in check, there are two further reasons why the citizen's "right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." One is that guns are needed by some in pursuit of their legitimate occupations. Ranchers use AR-15s to thin out the predatory coyote population. (By 'coyote' I mean a species of canine.) A fourth reason is that firearms have legitimate sporting applications such as marksmanship competitions.
 
2) This brings me to the Need Canard. 

You can have a right to a thing whether or not you now have or will ever have a need for it. So the best response to the leftist who asks, "Why do you need a semi-automatic firearm?" is wrong question! Stop the pointless conversation right there. "The question is not whether I need one; the question is whether I have a right to one." Then explain that the right to appropriate means of self-defense follows from the right to self-defense which in turn follows from the right to life.

Depending on the sort of leftist you are dealing with you could then go on to explain why you do need a gun. But the wisest policy is not to debate leftists. Generally speaking and admitting exceptions, leftists need to be defeated, not debated. Debate is worthwhile only with open-minded truth seekers. Truth, however, is not a leftist value. At the apex of the leftist's value hierarchy stands POWER. That is not to say that a leftist will never speak the truth; he will sometimes, but only if it serves his agenda. 

Related: Floridians do not welcome home invaders.

Down with Tobacco, Up with Marijuana

Why down with the first (I allude to the menthol cigarette ban) and up with the second?  Why the differential treatment and the misplaced moral enthusiasm? The locoweed I smoked with band members in the late '60s was tame stuff, poor in tetrahydrocannabinol as compared to the potent THC-rich product on the market today.  Since then, cigarettes have been wussified what with the addition of filters and lower nicotine levels.   

So why the differential treatment? The short answer is that it is not in the interest of a police state to promote alertness and attention, which is what nicotine does, while it is in such a state's interest to promote dopiness and lethargy and escapism and every manner of vice.  

It is the tried-and-true panem et circenses principle. Keep the masses fat and stupid, doped up on hooch and weed, distracted by mass sporting events such as the Stupor Bowl and pornography, expectant of regular initiative-inimical handouts and 'freebies,' and they will be easy to control. 

Sate the peoples' blood-lust with HollyWeird brutality and gun violence while at the same time stripping law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights.   Alec Baldwin easily serves as poster-clown for this sort of thing: he make big bucks in movies that celebrate violence while knowing nothing himself about firearms and their safe handling. The nimrod is on record as opposing the National Rifle Association, an outfit that promotes gun safety and defends constitutionally-protected (not constitutionally-conferred) natural rights.  Baldwin is a contemptible fool whose willful self-enstupidation resulted in a young woman's death. He has been brought up on charges of involuntary manslaughter, which sounds just right to me. (It's a stronger charge than negligent homicide.) 

We saw the same panem-et-circenses pattern with the COVID-19 lockdown. The churches were targeted for closure while the liquor stores stayed open. Police states brook no critique or competition from organized religion, but a liquored-up citizenry is kept distracted and manipulable.

Similarly with Biden's wide-open border policy. It is not just to flood the nation with 'undocumented Democrats' so as to insure in perpetuity the hegemony of what is now a hard-Left party, but also to allow in as much fentanyl as possible to poison and kill off the native population, and in particular the poor white trash of Appalachia and elsewhere in fly-over country, the people Hillary spoke of as deplorables and Obama as clingers to guns and Bibles.

A government worth having promotes virtue in the people and in particular the virtues of self-reliance and self-control. A totalitarian state, however, works best by promoting vice. A reader sent me to this perceptive article portions of which I will now share:

Remember that the “government,” as I describe it, is much more than just the state. It includes schools, banks, and corporations, collaborating with the state to govern a population. This need not be a conspiracy — although it often is — it can simply occur because of a shared set of objectives and priorities. For the government to cooperate correctly with itself, it needs maximal data and predictability in the population.

That’s why modern governments exert an inverted form of pastoral power to promote vice. Greed, lust, and vainglory are very predictable: if you know that every merchant will do anything to maximize profit, then you can predict their trading patterns with precision. The “rational actor,” the utilitarian automaton, and the pleasure-maximizer are the ideal constituents of the modern population. This means we can expand Dr. E. Michael Jones’ well-known dictum that “sexual liberation is political control”4 by saying: manipulation of any vice is political control.

This is why the government is promoting Impossible burgers, even though the company loses money: they want to centralize all protein production. Impossible is a tool to nudge the population’s behavior through a desire for “meatiness” in food. The government seeks to steer the rudder of our vices until all protein comes from patented software and gene edits. They won’t even have to pass a law.

To summarize and expand upon three of the main points made in the above quotation:

1) The government is not just the State but the latter together with all its adjuncts and extensions including Big Tech and Big Pharma. But 'adjunct' might not be the best word given the regulatory capture of the former by the latter.

2) If the interests of different groups align and they move in the same direction, this need not be due to any  conspiracy among the groups. It follows that anyone who alleges a commonality of direction, towards increasing wokeness, say, is not automatically a conspiracy theorist.

3) ". . . modern governments exert an inverted form of pastoral power to promote vice." A genuine insight beautifully expressed.  I hope you won't take it amiss if I nominate that good Catholic, Joe Biden, for the annual Pastor of Vice award.

You may recall that in 2016, Joey B. received the University of  Notre Dame's Laetare Medal. Read this for a good laugh:

“We live in a toxic political environment where poisonous invective and partisan gamesmanship pass for political leadership,” said Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president. “Public confidence in government is at historic lows, and cynicism is high. It is a good time to remind ourselves what lives dedicated to genuine public service in politics look like. We find it in the lives of Vice President Biden and Speaker Boehner.

Might we call this the 'regulatory capture' of a once-great university by the WokeState and its puppets and pimps? (Or is that going too far?)  The (so-called) Catholic universities are the most corrupt of all, for they have fallen the farthest. They are in dire need of defunding by sane and reasonable alumni. Not a dime for those who support DEI.

The churches, the RCC in particular, the universities, the once-great ones especially, and the Fourth Estate should serve as checks on the State and its omnivorous appetite for power and control.  They should function as bulwarks against and critics of the government and its metastasizing octopus of grasping and sucking agencies and agents.

The American Kakistocracy

A kakistocracy is a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. (Wikipedia) This is what we have under the current bunch of Dems.  The worst have risen to the top. 'President' Joe Biden should come to mind as leader of the pack. But can a puppet preside over anything? The question answers itself.

Biden is surely one of the worst in point of truthfulness. I used to say that Barack Obama was a master of the multiple modes of mendacity, but it appears that Joey B. has him beat. Here is a (partial) catalog of his sins against truth.  HT: Tony Flood.

And here is a stab at a typology of untruthfulness.

On the bright side, Speaker McCarthy here demonstrates the fine art of political demolition as he shuts down a PBS wonkette politely, but decisively. The C-SPAN video runs for 3:33.

Globalist-Capitalist Woke Leftism

Here are some half-baked thoughts that perhaps Vito C. and Ed B. can help me formulate. The new global-capitalist woke leftism (GCWL) is very different from the old socialist-humanist leftism (which I take to include both the Old Left and the New Left). I want to understand the similarities and the differences.

GCWL versus SHL

1) Both are secular and anti-religion.  Since 1789 the Left has been virulently anti-clerical and anti-religious. Nota bene: an ersatz religion is not a religion! So stop calling leftism a religion, Dennis Prager.

2) Both target the middle class.

3) Both are internationalist  and anti-nationalist.

4) The main difference seems to be that SHL is humanist while GCWL tends toward the erasure of humanity and humanism via anti-natalism, paganism, nature-idolatrous environmentalism, misanthropy, Orwellian subversion of language, and leukophobic ethno-masochism and much else besides.

So that's a start. Inadequate, no doubt. Come on boys, help me out. Why do I have to do all the work?

The Ersatz Religion of ‘Wokery’: What is to be done?

The short answer is that the cure for an ersatz religion is genuine religion.

Colin Dueck in a review of Joshua Mitchell:

So, what is to be done? Mitchell’s answer in American Awakening is the observation that an essentially theological problem requires a theological solution. If the destructive ersatz religion of left-wing identity politics rests on a mistaken premise of all-encompassing group innocence versus group guilt—as it obviously does—then the answer is to recover that older spiritual awareness and humility that all human beings are flawed sinners as individuals. Here, Mitchell is in the best tradition of leading 20th-century conservative philosophers, who understood that the ideological authoritarian movements of that era could not only be stopped by political method; they also had to be confronted through a deeper understanding of their spiritual roots.  [The idea is better conveyed by replacing 'could not only be stopped by political method' with 'could not be stopped by political method only.']

Why is 'wokery' an essentially theological problem? 

Mitchell says that twenty-first century progressives believe in a kind of hierarchy of human sin and transgression based upon a series of group dichotomies: male versus female, white versus non-white, straight versus gay, Western versus non-Western, and so on. In each pairing, the latter group is the historical victim, and the former group the victimizer. Sin or guilt, like innocence, is therefore assigned by group. For oppressor groups, sin cannot be washed away, other than by apologetics ['apologies' works better here] that never end. For oppressed groups, there is no guilt or transgression in the first place, only the innocence of victimhood.

As Mitchell notes, identity politics removes the traditional religious scapegoat and finds a new one. In the older understanding, the sacrifice of the guiltless Christ—the one true innocent—is needed because all human beings are irredeemably sinful. In the newer progressive understanding, some groups are sinful, and some are not. This unleashes a new form of political activism. To be specific, it encourages a form of politics that is collectivist, utopian, and revolutionary—really an ersatz religion. We have seen their kind before. It does not end well.

As you can see, this article is of high quality. You really should read the whole of it. One quibble, though. On Christianity, human beings are not irredeemably sinful; if that were the case they could not be redeemed. The Christian idea is rather that human beings are all so deeply and originally sinful that they cannot redeem themselves by their own individual or collective effort and so need a divine Redeemer.

Reckless Reparations Reckoning

Another episode in Victor Davis Hanson's chronicling of our wanky descent into unhinged Unsinn.  Here is a choice morsel:

Current racial tribalization obsessions have descended into a nadir that makes Al Sharpton’s 1990s Tawana Brawley/Crown-Heights career start (“If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”/ “We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.”) look amateurish in comparison. In this context, new calls arise for ludicrous reparations simply because we have become a ludicrous society.

Simone Weil in the Light of Plato

Substack notes on Phaedo 83.

Thomas Merton, Journals, vol. 4, p. 57 (10 October 1960):

The superb moral and positive beauty of the Phaedo.  One does not have to agree with Plato, but one must hear him.  Not to listen to such a voice is unpardonable, it is like not listening to conscience or nature.

Absolutely right.

The writings of Plato are inexhaustible  in their riches. For years I read and taught the Phaedo dialogue, without appreciating the theory of relations contained therein until I read Plato's "Phaedo" Theory of Relations by Héctor-Neri Castañeda.  I spent the summer of 1984 with Hector in Bloomington at Indiana University on an NEH summer seminar grant. Little did I know at the time that Frithjof Schuon, a very different type of philosopher than Hector, and one I admire more than Hector, was living in Bloomington at the same time. An opportunity missed!

Hector was a brilliant man, a creative powerhouse, and most generous in the help he gave his younger colleagues, but his approach to philosophy was merely theoretical; I discerned no spiritual depth in him. Schuon was roughly the opposite: spiritually deep but in need of some analytic discipline.  Plato combined the attributes of spiritual depth and analytic penetration that fall asunder in lesser mortals.

For Weil, Plato "has genius whereas only the word talent applies to Aristotle." ("Human Personality" in Simone Weil, An Anthology, p. 67) 

The Great Blizzard of ’78 Remembered

I had an odd schedule in those days.  I hit the sack at four in the afternoon and got up at midnight.  I caught the last trolley of the night to the end of the line, Boston College station.  Got off, hiked  up the hill to my office where I worked all night on my dissertation while listening to a classical music station out of Waltham, Mass.  Then I prepared my lectures, taught a couple of classes, went for a run, played a game of chess with my old friend and apartment mate,  Quentin Smith,  and was in bed by four again.  That was my schedule early fall '77 to late spring '78, every single day holidays included.

That's how I got my dissertation done. I ruthlessly cut out everything from my life except the essential.  I told  one girlfriend, "See you at my dissertation defense."  She later expressed doubts about marrying a man given to occasional interludes of "hibernation."  Another girlfriend complained that I kept "odd hours."  True enough.  And I still do.  I don't get up at midnight any more.  I get up between 1 and 2 AM.  I've become a slacker.

One  night in early February the snow was coming down pretty thick as I caught the last trolley of the night.  The trip up the hill to my office was quite a slog.  A big drift against the main door to Carney Hall made it difficult to get the door open.  But I made it inside and holed up in my windowless office for two or three days as the Great Blizzard of '78 raged.  I got a lot of work done and finished the dissertation on schedule.

  Blizzard 78

Dylan’s Philosophy of Modern Song

From Variety:

Of the dozens or even hundreds of singers and songwriters that Bob Dylan extols in his new  book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” there is one that seems to stand out even more than the others, so effusive is Dylan’s praise. This performer, he writes, is “downright incredible” and “lived in every moment of every song he sang… His performance is just downright incredible. There is nothing small you can say about it… When he stood and sang, he owned the song and he shared it and we believed every single word. What more could you want from an artist?”

The artist in question: Perry Como, naturally.

As a Dylan fan from the early '60s, I can tell you that one can never be sure when Bob is serious and when he is putting us on.

Will I buy this book?  Is the sky blue? I was about to write, "Is the Pope Catholic?" But that doesn't work anymore, with Bergoglio the Benighted at the helm of a sinking ship. 

Addendum (1/24)

'Termitic' and 'benighted' are adjectives I have repeatedly applied to 'Pope' Francis. No doubt some of you find that offensive. I intend no disrespect for the office, but I do have serious moral and intellectual reservations about its current occupant. And you should too. See this Telegraph piece which begins:

Gay “clubs” operate openly in Catholic seminaries, the institutions that prepare men for the priesthood, the late Pope Benedict XVI has claimed in a posthumously published book scathing of Pope Francis’s progressive agenda. 

In a blistering attack on the state of the Catholic Church under his successor’s papacy, Benedict, who died on Dec 31 at the age of 95, said that the vocational training of the next generation of priests is on the verge of “collapse”.

He claimed that some bishops allow trainee priests to watch pornographic films as an outlet for their sexual urges.

Benedict gave instructions that the book, What Christianity Is, should be published after his death.