Author: Bill Vallicella

On Being Prudent in a Post-Consensus, No-Trust Society

The young especially need to be very careful about what they say and to whom they say it.  The U. S. is becoming the S. U. To be on the safe side, never associate with leftists. (This is good advice even for leftists since they are famous for turning on their own for the 'sin' of not being sufficiently left.) Practice the political equivalent of divorce to the extent that it is possible. If you must associate with leftists, limit your contact with them and keep your mouth shut. Rod Dreher has some advice for you:

I told the professor that I try never to talk about anything controversial in personal company unless I’m sure that everyone around me already agrees with me. It’s not simply that I don’t want to get into it with a screaming SJW who wants to have it out with me at a cocktail party because I don’t share her view of some political issue. That’s part of it, but I am a public figure, and say lots of controversial things in this space. I try to leave work here on the blog, and not take it into private life. With me, it’s more the case that I don’t want to say something controversial that I wouldn’t say on the blog, and have someone overhear it, send it out on social media, and ruin me.

I can’t think offhand what kind of remark that might be, but these days, who knows? The word the professor in last night’s conversation used was completely ordinary, and not used by him in a racial context. But in our emotivist world, the student felt that it was racist, so the professor had to face something he never should have had to face.

So now you have a professor who has to see students as potential destroyers of his career on spurious grounds. You have to go to cocktail parties and social gatherings being very conscious of what you say and don’t say, because some angry person might put it on social media. Everybody is potentially working for the secret police.

I’m not being as hyperbolic with that remark as you think. When I was in Hungary recently, my friend A. told me that her country still hadn’t recovered the social capital plundered by the communists. That is, Hungarians — like everyone living under communism — had to learn not to trust anybody. You truly didn’t know who was a secret police information. An ill-considered word could cost you your job. A thoughtless joke overheard by the wrong set of ears could land you in prison. We don’t have a totalitarian state here, but we are creating that kind of society.

"But aren't you big on civil courage?"

I am; but I cannot in good conscience urge it on the young and naive. It is easy for me to display a modicum of civil courage: I've made mine. But if you are trying to find a foothold, and especially if you have dependents, be careful. Once you establish yourself you will be a position to punch back effectively.

Now, as Rod would say, read the whole thing.

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On the Folly of the Vatican II ‘Reforms’

There was something profoundly stupid about the Vatican II 'reforms' even if we view matters from a purely immanent 'sociological' point of view.

Suppose Roman Catholicism is, metaphysically, buncombe to its core, nothing but an elaborate  human construction in the face of a meaningless universe, a construction  kept going by human needs and desires noble and base. Suppose there is no God, no soul, no post-mortem reward or punishment, no moral world order.  Suppose we are nothing but a species of clever land mammal thrown up on the shores of life by blind evolutionary processes, and that everything that makes us normatively human and thus persons (consciousness, self-consciousness, conscience, reason, and the rest) are nothing but cosmic accidents.  Suppose all that.

Still, religion would have  its immanent life-enhancing  role to play, and one would have to be as superficial and ignorant of the human heart as a New Atheist to think it would ever wither away: it inspires and guides, comforts and consoles; it provides our noble impulses with an outlet while giving suffering a meaning.  Suffering can be borne, Nietzsche says somewhere, if it has a meaning; what is unbearable is meaningless suffering.  Now the deep meaning that the Roman church provides, or rather provided, is tied to its profundity, mystery, and reference to the Transcendent all expressed in the richness of its traditional Latin liturgy. 

Anything that degrades it into a namby-pamby secular humanism, just another brand of liberal feel-goodism and do-goodism, destroys it, making of it just another piece of dubious cultural junk.  Degrading factors: switching from Latin to the vernacular; the introduction of sappy pseudo-folk music sung by pimply-faced adolescents strumming gut-stringed guitars; leftist politics and political correctness; the priest facing the congregation; the '60s obsession with 'relevance.'  And then there was the refusal to teach hard-core doctrine and the lessening of requirements, one example being the no-meat-on-Friday rule.  Why re-name confession 'reconciliation?  What is the point of such a stupid change?  

A religion that makes no demands fails to provide the structure that people, especially the young, want and need.  Have you ever wondered what makes Islam is so attractive to young people? (One prominent example is John 'Jihad Johnny' Walker Lindh who was baptized Catholic.)

In its zeal to become 'relevant,' the Roman church succeeded only in making itself irrelevant.  Its cultural relevance is now practically nil. Is any Catholic today dissuaded from contraception or abortion or divorce by Catholic teaching? Do priests have the authority that they still had in the '50s and early '60s? Are any of them now taken seriously as they once were?  And who can take seriously an ancient church that allows its teaching to be tampered with by a leftist jackass such as Bergoglio?

People who take religion seriously tend to be conservatives and traditionalists; they are not change-for-the-sake-of-change leftist utopians out to submerge the Transcendent in the secular.  The stupidity of the Vatican II 'reforms,' therefore, consists in estranging its very clientele, the conservatives and traditionalists.  

The church should be a liberal-free zone.

To Hell with Bergoglio

My title, not Buchanan's.

I'll have to check, but I don't believe that Canon Law allows for the ecclesiastical equivalent of impeachment and removal from office for popes. Perhaps it ought to.

Jesus-luciferAs for hell, here is an amateur theological consideration. Suppose a rebellious nature such as Bertrand Russell or Jean-Paul Sartre or Christopher Hitchens finds himself in the divine presence and yet continues to refuse to acknowledge reality, which includes the rebel's creature status.  Hitch, or whoever, continues to assert himself madly with Luciferian pride and egomania against the Source of all being, truth, intelligibility, personhood, and value, making of himself an absolute when there can be only one Absolute.

How could such a rebel be admitted into divine fellowship, or even into a purgatorial condition preparatory to divine fellowship? No God worth his salt could allow such a thing.

There has to be hell for rebels who freely choose it.  Allowance must be made for the rebels and their shouting of the eternal No!

 

Trump, Adultery, Morality, and the Alinskyite Left

There is no wisdom on the Left and no common sense. Dennis Prager is a prominent purveyor of common sense.  So if you don't know what it is you can learn it from him.  Here is a sample:

It should be clear that this whole preoccupation with Trump’s past sex life has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with humiliating Trump — and, thereby, hopefully weakening the Trump presidency — the raison d'etre of the media since he was elected. Here’s one proof: The media rightly celebrate, as we all do, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as one of the moral greats of the 20th century despite reports of his having committed adultery on numerous occasions. [I would add that he also plagiarized portions of his Boston University dissertation.]

Likewise, the media and the Left idolized Sen. Ted Kennedy, regularly referring to him as the “Lion of the Senate.” Yet Kennedy was notorious for his lechery — far more so than Trump. Typical Ted Kennedy behavior, as described in New York magazine, was when he and then-fellow Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd “participated in the famous ‘waitress sandwich’ at La Brasserie in 1985, while their dates were in the bathroom.”

John F. Kennedy remains the most revered of Democratic presidents in the modern era. Yet we now know he routinely had affairs in the White House in his wife’s absence and had the Secret Service provide him advance notice of her return.

And, by the way, if sexual infidelity invalidates the character and, therefore, the worthiness of a politician, why doesn’t it invalidate the character and worthiness of an editor at The New York Times or The Washington Post? Why aren’t their sex lives investigated? They have, after all, more influence than almost any politician.

A Double Standard or an Alinskyite Tactic?

One mistake I have corrected in my own political thinking — thanks in part to Malcolm Pollack and 'Jacques' — is the tendency to confuse the double standard with a hard-Left Alinskyite tactic the name of which, if it has one, I don't know.

Suppose you and I are politically opposed but agree on certain values or standards. We are, for example, both strongly committed to free speech and open inquiry.  But your behavior suggests a tacit commitment to "Free speech for me but not for thee." This is an example of a double standard. The moniker is infelicitous in that there are not two standards but one; what makes the  standard 'double' is that it is inconsistently applied.  While sincerely professing a commitment to free speech you tend to take it more seriously in your own case and less seriously in the cases of those with opposing views. You really do accept the value of free speech; it is just that you have a hard time in the heat of conflict applying it fairly and consistently to all parties.

But there is something far worse than the double standard.

The most vicious and mendacious type of leftist will feign an interest in our conservative standards and then use them against us.  In many cases  they don't even feign the interest. 

The sex business referenced above is a good example. Leftists do not value chastity, sexual purity, traditional marriage (as opposed to same-sex 'marriage'), marital fidelity.  Talk of lust as a deadly sin is a joke to them. They have a pronounced libertine wobble and are entirely too 'sophisticated' for the above. They celebrate 'alternative sexual lifestyles.'  Bestiality is not a grave sin but something to joke about (Al Franken). 

Since they do not share our standards when it comes to sexual behavior, it is a mistake to accuse them of a double standard when they pillory Trump while giving Teddy a pass.  The truth is, they see politics as war and will do anything to win including using our standards against us while mocking those very standards.

The same with free speech. The Alinskyite hard Left doesn't give a damn about free speech except insofar as they can use it it to destroy free speech. These tactics are at least as old as V. I. Lenin, and people need to be aware of them.

Our political opponents on the Left are not fellow citizens but domestic enemies and the sooner we admit this fact the better.

As for Teddy Boy's waitress sandwich, you can read about it here. 

Friendships Superficially Satisfying

I had known him for years. Our friendship was an acquaintanceship that remained on the surface. Never having gone deep, it never drifted toward the hazards the deep waters hide: the differences that most truly define and distinguish us, but also oppose us to others. And so when he died I could not bring to mind a false word, a sarcastic expression, a competitive tension, or a joke that hid a jab. Not one unpleasant memory sullied my recollection.

Such superficial friendships are perhaps perfect for an imperfect world in which there is more of seeming than of being. We do well to value the surfaces in a world of surfaces.  The surfaces are sure; the depths are dubious. On life's surface those who meant little but brighten memory count for more than those who meant more but haunt and disturb from a past their presence makes dark.

In Defense of ‘Gunsplaining’

He's a Never-Trumper, but David French does talk and write a good game.  

By the way, don't confuse a Never-Trumper with an Anti-Trumper. The former constitute a proper subset of the latter. A Never-Trumper is a self-professed  conservative of some stripe or other whereas an Anti-Trumper may or may not be. Every Never-Trumper is an Anti-Trumper, but not conversely.

Terminology matters, in politics as in the gun debate.

One reason gun-grabbing 'liberals' are despicable is that they refuse to invest a couple of hours in learning the terms of the debate.  French gives examples.

A Modest Proposal: Revise the Second Amendment

John Paul Stevens today in the The New York Times called for  the enactment of laws "prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons" and beyond that, as a "more effective and more lasting reform," the repeal of the Second Amendment.

(I wonder if the good justice understands that semi-autos include most handguns owned and carried by Americans today, and that among these pistols there is the low-caliber .22. Does Stevens propose that the existing stock be confiscated? Is he willing to countenance a huge black market?)

Justice Stevens considers the Second Amendment a "relic of the 18th century" with its talk of "a well-regulated militia." Let us assume, arguendo, that he is right and that the Second in its original formulation, and despite District of Columbia v. Heller, does not recognize an individual citizen's right to keep and bear arms.

Well then, a reasonable course would be to strip out the archaic language and bring the Second Amendment up to date. Not repeal simply, but repeal and replace with something better.

How might it go?

Because the right to life entails both the right to self-defense and the right to the appropriate means of self-defense, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

My proposal is both modest and reasonable and in keeping with American values and traditions.  Not only that, it throws a sizable sop in the direction of those leftists who support a so-called 'living constitution.'  Perhaps we ought to update the whole constitution, but not along destructive leftist lines which have little to do with our values and traditions, but along sound, salutary conservative lines.

Does my eminently reasonable proposal have a chance? Of course not.  How about Justice Stevens'? I wouldn't put money on it.

What I will do is buy more guns and ammo. And you should too. 'Voting' with one's wallet is much more effective than voting. Fund the Right, defund the Left.  Money is what gets people's attention. Money and the power that emanates from the barrel of a gun.

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