Author: Bill Vallicella

Generalizations are the Offspring of Wisdom

People foolishly oppose generalization. One often hears, 'Never generalize!' But that itself is a generalization in the imperative mood. The partisan of brute particularity who so opines is hoist by his own petard.

So it was with pleasure that I heard Dennis Prager one day  remark   that "Generalizations are the mother of wisdom." But my man had the cart before the horse. Being a quibbler and a pedant, I cannot forebear to suggest an improvement:

   Generalizations are the offspring of wisdom

Or perhaps: 

   Generalization is wisdom's distillate.

For wisdom does not spring from generalization; it is rather that (true) generalizations spring from wisdom as its expression and codification.  

Seize and Squeeze

Seize the day and squeeze it for all the juice it's worth. Repeat tomorrow. And no day without a little Emerson:

 . . . we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our   actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as  the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. (From "Experience")

Authoritarianism from the Left

Michael Anton

I solicit comments on the following excerpts (bolding added):

The greatest factor in hastening the end of American-style democracy over the past 125 years (at least) has been increasing government centralization and administrative rule. To answer the question posed by Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein’s edited volume, Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America: it already did happen here! The project all along has been, and still is, to end politics. That is, to foreclose as illegitimate public debate and disagreement on issues allegedly settled by science and administered via expertise. As our personal freedom to abuse our bodies, sate our appetites, and neglect our duties ever expands, our actual freedom to govern ourselves and determine our collective future radically contracts. The people writing these ostensible democratic laments are all in the intellectual lineage of those who brought us to this point. Their aim is to complete the project. Trump’s aim—however inchoate or implicit—is to reverse it. Who’s the real anti-democrat?

Earlier in the piece we read:

In any event, it’s rich to read the Left fret about the end of “democracy” when they have spent so much conscious effort undermining its necessary preconditions. They have done so, I think, for two reasons. First, they long ago came to equate liberty with license. Philosophically, once nature was discarded as the standard by which to guide and judge human life, the satisfaction of appetites became the only conceivable end. Hence in matters of personal morality, the contemporary Left is a curious combination of libertine and censor. Any physical—especially sexual or pharmaceutical—act that does not draw blood or pick a pocket is permitted. There are no mores that are simply necessary to society or to personal well-being. If you’re not directly harming someone else, then no one has any business even passing judgment on what you do. But you deserve to be crushed for thinking or saying the wrong thing—especially for passing judgment! Witness the recent massive freak-out over Penn Law professor Amy Wax’s praise of the once-commonplace concept of “bourgeois norms.” How dare she!

My take on Amy Wax:

Amy Wax on Free Speech

I am afraid Professor Wax does not appreciate what she is up against. She writes,

It is well documented that American universities today, more than ever before, are dominated by academics on the left end of the political spectrum. How should these academics handle opinions that depart, even quite sharply, from their “politically correct” views? The proper response would be to engage in reasoned debate — to attempt to explain, using logic, evidence, facts, and substantive arguments, why those opinions are wrong. This kind of civil discourse is obviously important at law schools like mine, because law schools are dedicated to teaching students how to think about and argue all sides of a question. But academic institutions in general should also be places where people are free to think and reason about important questions that affect our society and our way of life — something not possible in today’s atmosphere of enforced orthodoxy.

Of course I agree with this brave little sermon.  But it is naive to think that it will have any effect on the leftist termites that have infested the universities. They don't give a rat's ass about the values Wax so ably champions.  Wax doesn't seem to realize that civil discourse is impossible with people with whom one is at war.

Liberals Need to Preach What They Practice

Liberals who have amounted to something in life through advanced study, hard work, deferral of   gratification, self-control, accepting responsibility for their actions and the rest of the old-fashioned virtues are often strangely  hesitant to preach these conservative virtues to those most in need of them. These liberals live Right and garner the benefits, but think Left.

They do not make excuses for themselves, but they do for others. And what has worked for them they do not think will work for others. Their attitude is curiously condescending.  If we conservatives used 'racist' as loosely and irresponsibly as they do, we might even tag their attitude 'racist.'

It is the 'racism' of reduced expectations.

It is not enough to practice what you preach; you must also preach what you practice.

Law professors Amy Wax and and Larry Alexander have recently come under vicious fire for pointing out the obvious: many of our social problems are rooted in a collapse of middle-class cultural norms. But it is a good bet that the leftist scum who attacked them live by, and owe their success to, those very same 'racist' norms. It is an equally good bet that they impose them on their children.

Now let me see if I understand this. The bourgeois values and norms are 'racist' because blacks are incapable of studying, working hard, deferring gratification, controlling their exuberance, respecting legitimate authority and the like?  

But surely blacks are capable of these things. So who are the 'racists' here? The conservatives who want to help blacks by teaching them values that are not specifically white, but universal in their usefulness, or the leftists who think blacks incapable of assimilating such values?

Or is it something like the opposite of 'cultural appropriation'? Is it that whites  violate and destroy black 'culture' by imposing on blacks white values that blacks cannot appropriate and turn to use? But of course the values are not 'white' but universally efficacious.

Just as self-control helps keep me alive, self-control would have kept Trayvon Martin alive if had had any. And the same goes for Michael Brown of Ferguson. 

Higher Education or Higher Enstupidation?

In case you haven't yet had your fill of academic insanity, take a gander at Heather MacDonald's Higher Ed's Latest Taboo is 'Bourgeois Norms.'

Apparently, such norms are white-supremacist, misogynistic, and homophobic.  And what norms might these be? Why, "hard work, self-discipline, marriage and respect for authority."

Apparently you are a 'racist' if you advise blacks to "Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. . . . Eschew substance abuse and crime."

As stupid as this is, it perhaps gives us a clue as to the 'liberal' criterion of racism: Something is racist if it is something blacks can't do. So deferring gratification, working hard, saving and investing, refraining from looting, showing respect for legitimate authority are all racist because blacks as a group have a hard time doing these things.

To promote and recommend these life-enhancing values and norms is to 'dis' their 'culture.'  After all, all cultures are equally good, equally conducive to human flourishing, right?

Are these the implications here?  I'm just asking. I am trying to understand. I am trying to get into the liberal head. So far it seems like diving into a bucket of shit. Or am I being unfair?  Am I missing something? 

Swamp Carjackings

Look on the bright side! It's good for the economy: guns and ammo sales will surge, the insurance companies will be able to rake in higher premiums, and the undertakers will thrive.  And things are not really that bad if you consider the stats:

Police data show carjackings in the nation's capital spiked by 97.9% in 2023 with 958 reported carjackings last year compared to 484 in 2022, with motor vehicle theft up 82% from 3,756 in 2022 to 6,829 in 2023. Vehicle theft in the greater Washington-Maryland-Virginia area also rose by 68% last year, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

Only 958 reported carjackings in 2023 in the whole of D. C.! And as we all know, few if any carjackings go unreported.

Besides, law enforcement is racist to its core.  

Go Brandon!

Build back better!

Open the borders and let 'em all in. The more the merrier!

Diversity is our strength and unity is white supremacist and insurrectionist!

Why Do We Front Our Ideas?

"Preaching to the choir is unnecessary, and if you were to attain the age of a Methuselah you would still not be near converting your opponents. So what's the use of your arguing and asserting?"

This is a text-book example of a False Alternative. For there is a third reason to argue and assert, namely, to sway the fence-sitters whose number is legion, and to bring them over to our side.

What's more, it is false that preaching to the choir is unnecessary. We do so to reinforce them in their 'faith' and prevent their backsliding. It is also false that it is pointless to engage our opponents. We 'preach' to them for several reasons: (a) to change the minds of some; (b) to get our opponents to appreciate that we have a position that is rationally defensible even if not ultimately acceptable to them; (c) to oppose and demoralize them; (d) to make their arguments look bad to others so that their influence wanes.

Finally, some of us just naturally incline to the life of the mind. Its pleasures are intense and reliable. They extend deep into old age. We love to study and we love to write. We athletes of the mind thrive on the agon of intellectual exertion and struggle. For me to go even one day without studying  and writing is 'unthinkable,' as 'unthinkable' as going a day without coffee, meditation, and physical exercise.

America, You Don’t Understand Us Academics!

I am too busy now to comment on this self-serving piece, but it is not surprising that people who fill their bellies from some job or profession have no trouble finding reasons in justification of it.

A vegetarian once asked a man who worked in a slaughter house whether he had any moral reservations about his work. The man replied, "People have to eat."