Author: Bill Vallicella

The Conservative Disadvantage (2010 Version)

We conservatives are at a certain disadvantage as compared to our leftist brethren. We don’t seek the meaning of our lives in the political sphere but in the private arena: in hobbies, sports, our jobs and professions, in ourselves, our families, friends, neighborhoods, communities, clubs and churches; in foot races and chess tournaments; in the particular pleasures of the quotidian round in all of their scandalous particularity.

We don't look to politics for meaning. Above all, we conservatives do not seek any transcendent meaning in the political sphere. We either deny that there is such a thing, or we seek it in religion, or in philosophy, or in meditation.  A conservative who denies that there is ‘pie in the sky’ will certainly not seek ‘pie in the future.’ He will not, like the leftist, look to a human future for redemption.  He understands human nature, its real possibilities, and its real limits.  He is impervious to utopian illusions.  He will accept no ersatz soteriology.

 A conservative could never write a book with the title, The Politics of Meaning.  Politics for a conservative is more like garbage-collecting: it is a dirty job; somebody has to do; it would be better if nobody had to do it; and we should all lend a hand in getting the dirty job done. But there is little by way of meaning, immanent or transcendent, in garbage collecting and sewage disposal: these are things one gets out of the way so that meaningful activities can first begin.

I’m exaggerating a bit. To write is to exaggerate, as a Frenchman might put it, which amounts to a meta-exaggeration. But I’m exaggerating to make a serious point. We conservatives don’t look for meaning in all the wrong places. And because we don’t, we are at a certain disadvantage. We cannot bring the full measure of our energy and commitment to the political struggle. We don't even use the word 'struggle.' We are not totally committed to defeating the totally committed totalitarians who would defeat us.

But now we need to become  active.  Not in the manner of the leftist who seeks meaning in activism for its own sake, but to defend ourselves and our values so that we can protect the private sphere from the Left's totalitarian encroachment.    The conservative values of liberty and self-reliance and fiscal responsibility are under massive assault by the Obama administration.   So if you value your life and liberty, you are well advised to inform yourself and take appropriate action.

So get off your conservative duff and vote!  It matters.  We must divest 'conservative activist' of its oxymoronic ring.  There is too much at stake. Next week's election will be a watershed event.

Ned Polsky, Maverick Sociologist

Polsky book Reader Ray Stahl of Port Angeles, Washington, kindly mailed me a copy of Ned Polsky, Hustlers, Beats, and Others.  It is a work of sociology by a maverick sociologist, academically trained, but decidedly his own man.  I wasn't aware of it or him until a few days ago.  The preface already has me convinced that this is a book I will read and digest. A writer who writes like this is a writer to read:

Many readers of this book will feel that I object to the views of other scholars in terms that are overly fierce. These days the more usual mode in academia, thronged as it is with arrivistes aspiring to be gentlemen, is to voice such objections oleaginously. But luckily I cut an eyetooth on that masterpiece of English prose, A. E. Housman's introduction to his edition  of Manilius, and so am forever immune to the notion that polemical writing and scholarly writing shouldn't mix. I believe that polemical scholarship improves the quality of intellectual life — sharpens the mind, helps get issues settled faster — by forcing genteel discussion to become genuine debate.

(Hyperlinks added. Obviously.  But it raises a curiously pedantic question: By what right does one tamper with a text in this way?  Pedantic the question, I leave it to the pedants.)

Polsky died in 2000.  Here is an obituary.  You will have to scroll down to find it.

Halcyon Arizona October

Chilly nights, good for sleeping with windows open, warm dry days of lambent desert light.  October's sad paradise passes too soon but its dying light ushers in the month of Gratitude in my personal liturgy.  The 28th already. Savor each day, each moment, each sunrise and moonset, moonrise and sunset.  Drink green tea in the gloaming with Kerouac on your knee.

Enjoy each thing as if for the first time — and the last.

Arizona Citizenship Proof Law for Voters Overturned by Court

Here. Excerpt, emphasis added:

A three-judge panel of the court, in a 2-1 decision, said the proof-of-citizenship requirement conflicted with the intent of the federal law aiming to increase voter registration by streamlining the process with a single form and removing state- imposed obstacles to registration.

The federal law requires applicants to “attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury” without requiring documentary proof, the panel said.

Copping a riff from Michelle Malkin, you could call this the Left's "No illegal alien left behind" program.  But the day of reckoning approacheth, in less than a week. 

Kerouac October Quotation #26: Kerouac as Homo Religiosus

When On the Road finally saw the light of  day in 1957, fame proved to be Kerouac's undoing.  William Plummer writes insightfully:

For nearly a decade he hungered for recognition, but when the public at last chose to take notice it would choose to measure the least part of him. In forums and on talk shows, he would be queried about drugs, kicks, promiscuity. No one would understand or care to credit the spiritual underpinnings of On the Road; interviewers would regard him quizzically when he suggested that his life and work constituted a single effort to force God to pull back the veil and show Himself in the althogether. (The Holy Goof: A Biography of Neal Cassady, Paragon, 1981, p. 104)

Vanity of Duluoz, pp. 176-7:

Pascal says it better than I do when he says:"WHAT SHALL WE GATHER FROM ALL OUR DARKNESS IF NOT A CONVICTION OF OUR UNWORTHINESS?" and he adds to show you right path: "There are perfections in Nature which demonstrate that She is the image of God" — Timmy [Jack's dead cat] sittin like a lion, Big Slim in his prime, Pop in his prime, me in my careless 1943 youth, you, all — "and imperfections" — our decay and going-down, all of us — "to assure us that She is no more than His image."  I believe that.

"God is dead" made everybody sick to their stomachs because they all know what I just said, and Pascal said, and Paschal means Resurrection.

Santayana on Americans and Socialism

George Santayana (1863-1952), Character and Opinion in the United States (Norton, 1967), p. 171:

His instinct [the American's] is to think well of everybody, and to  wish everybody well, but in a spirit of rough comradeship, expecting every man to stand on his own legs and to be helpful in his turn. When he has given his neighbor a chance he thinks he has done enough for him; but he feels it is an absolute duty to do that. It will take some hammering to drive a coddling socialism into America.

Santayana remarks in his Preface that his observations were made over a forty year period prior to January, 1912. Despite all the socialist hammering (and sickling?) that has gone on since then, we are still at some distance from the coddling socialism found elsewhere. American self-reliance may be on her last legs, but she ain't dead yet.

Maybe we can revivify her a bit this November 2nd. 

Again on “Muslims Attacked Us on 9/11”

This just over the transom in response to a post from yesterday.

Your terminology is technically correct, but what is incorrect with the statement "Muslim extremists attacked us on 911"?

One does not have to be ‘politically correct’ to have a desire not to invite misunderstanding of a statement (that it equals: " Muslims-as-a-group attacked us" ) or to desire to avoid a perceived implication that there is something about the ‘essence’ of ‘Islam’ that is responsible for 911.

Nothing is wrong with 'Muslim extremists attacked us on 9/11.'  But there is also nothing wrong with O'Reilly's statement, "Muslims attacked us on 9/11."  After all, the first entails the second.  No one maintains that every Muslim attacked us on 9/11 or that Muslims as a group attacked us on that day.

My correspondent is missing the point, which is that inappropriate offense was taken by Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg when they stomped off the set in protest.  That inappropriate offense taken  at an objectively inoffensive remark is what shows that political correctness is at work.

This is just one more example among hundreds.  Remember the man who was fired from his job for using the perfectly innocuous English word 'niggardly'?  And then there was the case of some fool taking umbrage at the use of 'black hole.'  See Of Black Holes and Political Correctness and Of Black Holes and Black Hos.

And then there was the recent case of Dr. Laura who pointed out the obvious truth that some blacks apply 'nigger' to other blacks.  This got her in trouble, but it ought not have.  After all, what she said is true!  And let's recall that she had a reason for bringing up this truth: her remark was not unmotivated or inspired by nastiness.

Please note that I am talking about the word 'nigger,' not using it.  This is the use-mention distinction familiar to (analytic) philosophers.  Is Boston disyllabic?  Obviously not: no city consists of syllables, let alone two syllables.  Is 'Boston' disyllabic?  Yes indeed.  Confusing words and their referents is the mark of a primitive mind. In the following sentence

'Nigger' has nothing semantically or etymologically to do with 'niggardly'

I am mentioning both words but using neither.  "But what if someone is offended by your mere mention of 'nigger'?"  Too bad.  That's his problem. He is in need of therapy not refutation.

Kerouac October Quotation #25: The Noise in the Void

From a February 1950 journal entry (Windblown World, p. 262):

There's a noise in the void I hear: there's a vision of the void; there's a complaint in the abyss — there's a cry in the bleak air; the realm is haunted.  Man haunts the earth.  Man is on a ledge noising his life. The pit of night receiveth.  God hovers over in his shrouds.  Look out!

Here  is a review of Windblown World by Gerald Nicosia.

“Muslims Attacked Us on 9/11”

The above statement by Bill O'Reilly caused some fat liberal ladies to stomp off in protest.  You know the story.  But what's to be offended at?   Consider

1. The people who attacked us on 9/11 were Muslims.

True or false? True.  Truth is truth; if you are offended by it the problem is yours alone.  There is such a thing as taking inappropriate offense.  One cannot reasonably take offense at someone's stating what is a plain truth.  Since there is nothing objectively offensive about (1), then the following stylistic variant of (1) is equally inoffensive:

2. Muslim people attacked us on 9/11.

Plainly, (1) is true and inoffensive if and only if (2) is.  But (2) is just another way of saying

3. Muslims attacked us on 9/11.

So (3) like its companions in synonymy is equally true and inoffensive. 

Political correctness is a very great evil and you must, assuming you are a decent, clear-thinking person, do your bit to combat it.  That it is a great evil is indicated by the Juan Williams flap.  The man was fired by National Public Radio for merely reporting on a mental state he often finds himself in when boarding an airplane.  You should find his firing both shocking and outrageous.  It ought to anger you enough to take action.

So do your bit.  It won't cost you much effort.  Write a letter of protest. Speak out. Blog. VOTE! 

Political Aporetics: A Problem with Enforced Equality

This is a sequel to yesterday's post on liberty and (material) equality and their conflict.  It should be read first. This post extends the analysis by pointing out a problem for socialists (redistributivists).  So consider the following aporetic triad, the first two limbs of which are similar to the first two limbs of yesterday's aporetic tetrad:

1. Justice demands redistribution of wealth from the richer to the poorer., and of other social goods from the haves tothe have-nots. A just society is a fair society, one in which there is a fair or equal distribution of the available social and economic goods such as power and wealth.

2. Redistribution, whether of wealth or of other goods such as power, requires an agency of redistribution which forces, via the coercive power of government, the better off to pay higher taxes, forego benefits, make sacrifices, or in some other way compensate the worse off so that greater material equality is brought about.

3. Any effective redistributive agency must possess and exercise power which is far in excess of the power available to other individual and collective agents in the society: it must be greatly UNEQUAL to the latter in power.

These three propositions are individually plausible, and for the redistributivist, not just plausible but mandatory.  (1) defines the redistributivist position, while (2) and (3) he must accept if he wants to implement his scheme of justice.  But the propositions are not jointly consistent: they cannot all be true.  Any two of them, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining one.  Thus (2) and (3), taken in conjunction, entails the negation of (1). 

The conservative/libertarian will have no trouble solving the problem.  He will reject (1).  Justice does NOT demand redistribution; indeed, justice rules it out.  The leftist/redistributivist, however, is in a jam.  He cannot reject (2) or (3) since these are facts that all must acknowledge.  And he must accept (1) since it is definatory of his position.

The redistributivist position thus appears to be internally incoherent.  The redistributivist  is committed to the acceptance of propositions that cannot all be true.  He wants equality, but to enforce it he must embrace inequality

For a concrete historical example, consider Cuba under Fidel Castro.  Who has all the money and the power?  The people?

Kerouac October Quotation #24 : W. C. Fields

How I admire W. C. Fields! — What a great oldtimer he was.  None like him. I'll write something about him soon, my personal ideas. "Ain't you got no Red Eye?" "Ain't you an old Follies girl?" "I snookered that one." "Those Grampion hills." "Mocha-java." "The enterprise I am about to embark upon is fraught with eminent peril, and not fit for a young lady of your tender years." "Don't you want to wear diaphanous gowns? And get enough to eat?" With his straw hat, his short steps, his belly, his wonderful face hid beneath a bulbous puff of beaten flesh, his twisted mouth, his knowledge of American life, of women, of children, of fellow-barflies, and of death ("the fellow in the bright night-gown.") His utter lovelessness in the world. Bumping into everything blindly. Making everybody laugh. The line he himself wrote, addressed to him" "You're as funny as a cry for help." How he blows foam off a beer, an Old Mad Murphy of time; how he is alone among foolish people who don't see his soul.

Shakespeare never was sadder.

A hounded old reprobate, a clown, a drunkard of eternity, and "Man."

(Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954, ed. Douglas Brinkley, Viking 2004, p. 236, entry of 14-16 October 1949.)