Month: November 2023

Political Polarization: the Radical Cure

Political polarization is deep and wide. We are 'siloed' into our positions and things threaten to go 'thermonuclear.'  The usual cures cannot be dismissed out of hand, but are mostly blather served up by squishy, bien-pensant 'liberals' for their own insipid and clueless ilk. No doubt we should listen to others respectfully, but how many of our political opponents are worth listening to or are worthy of respect? No doubt we should seek common ground. But is they any left to be found?

Go ahead, take a civility pledge, but civility is only for the civil, and how many of our political enemies are civil? Civility is like toleration: it is a good thing but it has limits.

And so it falls to me to point out a cure for polarization that is never mentioned: eliminate one of the poles. The Hamas-Jew polarization, for example, is solved by eliminating Hamas. For here there is and can be no common ground, no mutual respect, no 'conversation' or 'negotiations.' Palliation is out of the question; amputation is the answer. Examples are easily multiplied. The side that is in the right should destroy the side that isn't.  

You say that war is never the answer? It depends on the question. Sometimes you have to give war a chance. 

Robert Kaplan on Henry Kissinger

Robert Kaplan:

Kissinger’s beliefs, which emerge through his writing, are certainly not for the faint-hearted. They are emotionally unsatisfying, yet analytically timeless. They include:

  • Disorder is worse than injustice, since injustice merely means the world is imperfect, while disorder tempts anarchy and the Hobbesian nightmare of war and conflict, of all against all.
  • It follows, then, that order is more important than freedom, since without order there is no freedom for anybody.
  • The fundamental issue in international and domestic affairs is not the control of wickedness, but the limitation of self-righteousness. For it is self-righteousness that often leads to war and the most extreme forms of repression, both at home and abroad.
  • The aim of policy is to reconcile what is just with what is possible. Journalists and freedom fighters have it easy in life since they can concern themselves only with what is just. Policymakers, burdened with bureaucratic responsibility in order to advance a nation’s self-interest, have no such luxury.
  • Pessimism can often be morally superior to misplaced optimism. Pessimism, therefore, is not necessarily to be disparaged.

It is true that much of the above is derivative of the great philosophers, especially Hobbes. But it is to Kissinger’s credit that he consciously activated it in the daily conduct of foreign policy.

[.  . .]

Kissinger was a “genuine statesman”, to use the German philosopher-historian Oswald Spengler’s definition: that is, he was not a reactionary who thought that history could be reversed, nor was he a militant-idealist, who thought that history marched in a certain direction. Kissinger’s conclusion was more grounded: he believed less in victory than in reconciliations.

Radical Islam’s Threat to the Left

Substack latest.

Why don't leftists — who obviously do not share the characteristic values and beliefs of Islamists — grant what is spectacularly obvious to everyone else, namely, that radical Islam poses a grave threat to what we in the West cherish as civilization, which includes commitments to free speech, open inquiry, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, freedom to reject religion, universal suffrage, the emancipation of women, opposition to cruel and unusual penal practices, and so on?   In particular, why don't leftists recognize the grave threat radical Islam poses to them?  Why do leftists either deny the threat or downplay its gravity? Given their atheism and pronounced libertine ‘wobble,’ they would be among the first to lose their heads under Islamic law (Sharia).

Here is a quickly-composed  list of twelve related reasons based on my own thinking and reading and on discussions with friends. 

Why Swim the Tiber?

A philosophy colleague I thought was Protestant has unbeknownst to me swum the Tiber. I asked him why. Here is part of his response, slightly redacted:

My story is rather boring, I’d wager. Since my late teen years I was nonplussed with the lack of intellectual vigor in most Protestant denominations (Baptist, Methodist, etc.) I began to hear the call of Rome in graduate school. My study of Aquinas, Scotus, Suarez, et al.  had an effect. But for whatever reason I simply couldn’t make the move  at the time; the blame may have been on Mary’s status, perhaps even the idea of a Pope’s (seemingly) radical authority. Ergo my move to Lutheranism.

 
But as I continued my studies both philosophical and theological, I began to call into question the ardent “individualism” at the heart of  Protestantism. Indeed, I’m not sure there would have been a Hobbes or a Locke without a Luther . . . and while my respect for the latter waned (though surely did not disappear), I began to see the need — if you can call it that — for authority, for something or someone who stands above all the rest, who makes the contested call. I suppose that amount of Hobbesianism stayed with me.  While in politics perhaps individual freedom (“rights”, if you will) trumps all, I’m just not so sure that’s the case when it comes to eternity, to salvation. Maybe the stakes are too high, I’m not sure. But I can’t stand on my own. 
 
My colleague has more to say and in a later entry  I may address it; the issue of teaching authority, however, is an important one that merits discussion. I will have my say and I invite others to do the same.

One who refuses to accept, or questions, a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) may be accused of reliance upon private judgment and failure to submit to the Magisterium or teaching authority of the Church.  Two observations on this accusation.

First, for many of us private judgment is not merely private, based as it is on consultation with many, many public sources.  It is as public as private. Everything I've read over the years from Parmenides on down in the West, the Bible on down in the Near East, and the Upanishads on down in the Far East feeds into my 'private' judgment.  So my 'private' judgment is not merely mine as to content inasmuch as it is a collective cultural upshot, albeit processed through my admittedly fallible and limited pate. Though collective as to content, its acceptance by me is of course my sole responsibility.  My first point, then, is that we ought to distinguish wider and narrower senses of 'private' and realize that a 'private' judgment might not be merely private.

Second, the party line or official doctrine of any institution is profoundly influenced by the private judgments of individuals. Think of the profound role that St. Augustine played in the development of Roman Catholic doctrine.  He was a man of powerful will, penetrating intellect, and great personal presence.  He was trained in rhetoric in Carthage and in Rome. Imagine going up against him at a theological conference or council!   

Summing up the two points, the private is not merely private, and the official is not merely official.

Of course, part of the official doctrine of the Roman church is that its pronunciamenti anent faith and morals are guided and directed by the Holy Ghost. (Use of the old phrase, besides chiming nicely with der Heilige Geist, is a way for this conservative to thumb his nose at Vatican II-type innovations which, though some of them may have had some sense, tended to be deleterious in the long run.  A meatier question which I ought to take up at some time is the one concerning the upsurge of priestly paederasty after Vatican II: post hoc ergo propter hoc? That should give pause to any one thinking of swimming the Tiber. Rod Dreher, who took the plunge, kept swimming, eastward. We could say he swam the Tiber first, and then the Bosporus, when, disgusted by priestly paedophilia, and the RCC's mafia-like protection of their own, he embraced Eastern Orthodoxy.)

What I have just written may sound as if I am hostile to the Roman Church. I am not. Nor have I ever had any negative experiences with priests, except, perhaps to have been bored by their sermons. All of the ones I have known have been upright, and some exemplars of the virtues they profess.  In the main they were manly and admirable men.  But then I'm an old man, and I am thinking mainly of the pre-Vatican II priests of my youth. 

I have no time now to discuss the Church's guidance by the third person of the Trinity, except to express some skepticism: if that is so, how could the estimable Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) be followed by the benighted Bergoglio? (Yes, I am aware that there were far, far worse popes than the current one, and I am aware of  the theme of Satan's grip on the sublunary.)

Of course, I have just, once again, delivered my private judgment. But, once again, it is not merely private inasmuch as it is based on evidence and argument: I am not merely emoting in the manner of a 'liberal' such as Bergoglio when he emoted, in response to the proposed Great Wall of Trump, that nations need bridges, not walls. What an unspeakably stupid thing to say! Well, then, Vatican City needs bridges not walls the better to allow jihadis easy access for their destructive purposes. Mercy and appeasement must be granted even unto those who would wipe Christianity from the face of the earth, and are in process of doing so.

But how can my judgment, even if not merely private, carry any weight, even for me, when it contradicts the Magisterium, the Church's teaching authority, when we understand the source and nature of this authority? ('Magisterium' from L. magister, teacher, master.)

By the Magisterium we mean the teaching office of the Church. It consists of the Pope and Bishops. Christ promised to protect the teaching of the Church : "He who hears you, hears me; he who rejects you rejects me, he who rejects me, rejects Him who sent me" (Luke 10. 16). Now of course the promise of Christ cannot fail: hence when the Church presents some doctrine as definitive or final, it comes under this protection, it cannot be in error; in other words, it is infallible. 

In a nutshell: God in Christ founded the Roman church upon St. Peter, the first pope, as upon a rock. The legitimate succession culminates in Pope Francis. The Roman church as the one true holy catholic and apostolic church therefore teaches with divine authority and thus infallibly. Hence its teaching on indulgences not only cannot be incorrect, it cannot even be reasonably questioned. So who am I to — in effect — question God himself?

Well, it is obvious that if I disagree with God, then I am wrong.  But if a human being, or a group of human beings, no matter how learned, no matter how saintly, claims to be speaking with divine authority, and thus infallibly, then I have excellent reason to be skeptical. How do I know that they are not, in a minor or major way, schismatics diverging from the true teaching, the one Christ promised to protect?  Maybe it was some version of Eastern Orthodoxy that Christ had in mind as warranting his protection.

These and other questions legitimately arise in the vicinity of what Josiah Royce calls the Religious Paradox. 

One last point for today. My friend and colleague questions above "the ardent 'individualism' at the heart of  Protestantism." This point, however, needs some qualification inasmuch as Martin Luther, while anti-Rome, was not anti-Church.  He was certainly no maverick theologian preaching his own 'personal,' 'individualistic' truth. In his battle with the Anabaptists, Luther is decidedly anti-papist, but not anti-Church. Luther thought that the Anabaptists, Zwinglians, Schwenckelfeldians, et al. ". . . threatened the Reformation cause because  together they formed a common front repudiating Church and society." (Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, Yale UP, 2006, p. 229)

If what Protestants want is a reformed church, then they want a church, which will have its 'confession,' its compendium of defining doctrines and prescribed and proscribed practices that would be binding upon and thus authoritative for anyone who wanted to belong to that church.   If so, the issue should not be framed as one between individualism and church authority, but as between one church authority versus another, for example Calvinists versus 'papists,' 'Romanists.'

Happy Thanksgiving?

The last four horrible years make my annual Thanksgiving homily ring somewhat hollow, especially the penultimate line:

And don't forget the country that allows you to live your own kind of life in your own kind of way and say and write whatever you think in peace and safety.

This is no longer true. We are no longer the "land of the free," let alone "the home of the brave." We are in steep decline. You are not free if you cannot express your thoughtful, fact-based, and heart-felt opinions without fear of reprisal. Step out of line and you run the risk of being destroyed, if not physically, then politically and economically. Examples are legion.  Here is one of an increasing many.

Still and all, we have much something to be grateful for.  But we will have to redouble our efforts to preserve the objects of our gratitude, in particular, what remains of our liberty, and our "sweet land of liberty."  Patriots are waking up to the depredations of 'Woke' and there is reason to be hopeful. So be of good cheer, do your bit, and long live the Republic! Never give up, never give in, fight hard, and fight to win. There are a lot of us and we can win if we hang together which, to paraphrase a Founder, beats hanging separately.

Thanksgiving Happy

The ‘Reel’ Truth about George Floyd

Here

Tony Flood chimes in:

Jesse's interview with Liz Collins: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6341513639112

Jesse's excerpt from Collin's new documentary The Fall of Minneapolis: https://www.foxnews.com/media/jesse-watters-george-floyd-story-very-different-depending-on-who-you-talk-to
 
 
When Crump, Floyd's attorney, said his client was a healthy man, he lied (or didn't know what he was talking about, take your pick).
 
20 deaths, $2 billion in damages, and massive social proof that leftists can do what they want, when they want (even during COVID lockdown), and the media will cover for them, as we're seeing in mass support for Hamas.
 
No republic can long last that honors  individuals such as Floyd and dishonors the great men that built it.  I'm taking bets: how long can we last under Dementocrat rule?  How long until the collapse of civil order? Two years, three? What say you, Tony?

Wokery and the Double Denial

Substack latest.

It is not unreasonable to maintain that there is no God and that nature alone exists. But suppose you take it a step further and deny nature as well. Then you are in the precincts of 'woke' lunacy.  Call it the Double Denial. On the Double Denial, everything is a social construct, including the social constructors. Could they too be social constructs? How?

Related: Gender Ideology and its Consequences

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

Lonnie Mack and Co.

Mack has been around a long time. I first picked up a guitar around the time this tune climbed the charts. "If I could only play like that!" Never got close. But I played in bands that got paid. If you get paid for doing something, then someone must think it's worth paying for. That's not saying much, but it's saying something. 

Jackson Browne, The Pretender.  This great song  goes out to Darci M who introduced me to Jackson Browne. Darci was Lithuanian. Her mother told her, "Never bring an Italian home." So I never did meet the old lady. I never met any anti-Italian prejudice on the West coast whence I hail; the East is a different story.

Abba, Fernando. I first heard this in Ben's Gasthaus, Zaehringen, Freiburg im Breisgau,' 76-'77.  This one goes out to Rudolf, Helmut, Martin, Hans, und Herrmann, working class Germans who loved to drink the Ami under the table.

Electric Flag, Groovin' is Easy

A contender for the greatest, tightest band of the '60s, featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar, my second guitar hero. I saw him play at the Monterey Pop Festival in '67. The Jewish kid from an affluent Chicago suburb exemplifies cultural appropriation at its finest. His riffs derive from B. B. King but he outplays the King of the Blues.  Is that a racist thing to say? It can't be racist if it's true.

Commander Cody, Truck Drivin' Man.  This one goes out to Sally and Jean and Mary in memory of our California road trip nine years ago.   "Pour me another cup of coffee/For it is the best in the land/I'll put  a nickel in the jukebox/And play that 'Truck Drivin' Man.'"

Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar. The incredible mood of this version, especially the intro, is made by Langhorne and the bass of Russ Savakus, another well-known session player from those days. I've been listening to this song since '65 and it gives me chills every time. 

And now the fifteen-year-old is an old man of 73, and tears stream from his eyes for the nth time as he listens to this and we are once again on the brink of nuclear war as we were back in October of '62.  It'll be a hard rain indeed, should it fall. 

I once asked a guy what he wanted in a woman. He replied, "A whore in bed, Simone de Beauvoir in the parlor, and the Virgin Mary on a pedestal."  An impossible trinity. Some just want the girl next door.

Bobby Darin, Dream Lover. With pix of Sandra Dee.

Audrey Hepburn, Moon River

Gogi Grant, The Wayward Wind, 1956. I'll take Lady Gogi over Lady Gaga any day.

Doris Day, Que Sera, Sera, 1956.  What did she mean? The tautological, Necessarily, what will be, will be? Or the non-tautologically fatalistic, What will be, necessarily will be? Either way, she died in May.

Is Empiricism Self-Refuting?

Russell says it is; I examine his claim. Substack latest.

Russell Old Man with Pipe

Addenda (11/19)

Tony Flood writes,

Brian Kilmeade mentioned Ayaan Hirsi Ali's conversion to Christianity  quickly as he introduced her, one of his guests tonight, but I heard it on TV which was on in the background; I thought I had misheard Kilmeade. I've always admired her courage and considered her professed atheism in the context of her experience of Islamic terror. 

But her Wiki entry says she "converted to Christianity" (by which I hope she means that she received Christ as her savior), citing this and this. 
 
She blogged about Russell last week (as you did today): 

In 2002, I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled “Why I am Not a Christian.” It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South London branch of the National Secular Society, I would be compelled to write an essay with precisely the opposite title.
In high school in 1970 along the road to my Communism, I had read Russell's essay and decided I would study philosophy. I remember catching his obit in the papers, marveling at the longevity of this stellar Victorian intellectual who had been my contemporary for over a decade-and-a-half and therefore could have met. 
 
Anyway, Ali's now firmly in my Hall of Hero(in)es. Feel free to share this, which may come as news to others as it did to me.
 
Thanks, Tony. I share your high opinion of Ali. The Unherd article which I excerpted earlier is important.  I too read Russell's Why I am not a Christian in high school.  Russell was a logical and philosophical technician of high rank, but unlike his pal Wittgenstein, he wrote popular works as well. Wittgenstein, as you know, took a dim view of Russell's popular writings. Russell was secular to the core; Wittgenstein, I could easily show, had the heart of the homo religiosus despite his bladed intellect.
 
Edward writes,

Interesting, and overlaps with a central theme of the book, as follows. Assume

1 Knowledge is propositional. That is, whatever counts as knowledge has to be expressible in language as a proposition.

2 Propositions have two terms and can be affirmative or negative, universal or particular. Thus to any two terms there correspond exactly four propositions.

3 There are a finite number of term types, as set out in Locke’s classification of ‘ideas’ in Book II of the Essay.

4 The meaning of any term is derived from experience. Locke assumes that every word either signifies a simple ‘sensible idea’, or signifies a complex idea that can be analysed into simple parts.

These assumptions define what Bennett calls meaning-empiricism, and Hanna calls semantic psychologism. It follows from them that every object of human understanding is defined by a proposition whose meaning depends on experience.

In this way we can set a limit to human understanding.

Note that the empiricist project differs from the scholastic-Aristotelian one. The scholastics generally did not believe in meaning-empiricism, because they thought that the proper signification of a term is an object, not an idea. So I think to settle your question we must look at whether words signify ‘ideas’, i.e. affections of the soul, or not.

Ad (1). Is all knowledge propositional? You are making a very strong claim here: necessarily, nothing counts as knowledge that is not expressible in declarative sentences.  But knowing what something is like counts as knowledge. I know what it is like to be punched in the stomach, but not what it is like to undergo a menstrual period.  I know some people by description only, others by acquaintance only, and still others by description and by acquaintance. Isn't knowledge by acquaintance a counterexample to your thesis?  And then there is 'carnal knowledge.' Does it not count as knowledge? There is also 'know how.' My cats know how to open doors, but they would be hard-pressed to verbalize that knowledge.

Ad (2). "Thus to any two terms there correspond exactly four propositions." Since copulae are typically tensed, there have to be more. There have to be at least twelve. 'Every animal in the house was/is/will be a cat.'  4 categorical forms X 3 simple tenses = 12 different propositions.  And then there are the tenseless uses of copulae, e,g, 'The cat is an animal.'   'The triangle is a three-sided plane figure that encloses a space.' Yogi Berra joke: "You mean now?"  'God is' is either eternally true/false or omnitemporally true/false, and tenseless either way.

Ad (3). OK.

Ad (4). "The meaning of any term is derived from experience." My question is: how could we know that this proposition is true if it is indeed true? To know that it is true, we have to know what it means. But it cannot mean anything if it is true. Do the terms of this proposition signify a sensible idea? No. 'The meaning of any terms' does not signify a sensible idea.  The same goes for 'a meaning derived from experience.'  Meaning-empiricism is meaningless on its own theory of meaning.