Politics – Page 10 – Maverick Philosopher

Extreme to Extremists

Moderate views are extreme to extremists. Our moderate views must appear as extreme to the hard-leftists who have hijacked the once respectable Democrat Party, so-called by us because it can no longer be referred to truthfully as democratic.

A Sane Populism is not an Anti-Intellectualism

Here is a statement that is not only extreme but also manifestly false:

In fact, you could wipe society’s table clear of every writer, artist, actor, musician, professor, dancer, reporter, tastemaker, producer, influencer, teacher, lobbyist, politician, everyone on TV, everyone who doesn’t get their hands dirty, and our world would keep turning just fine.

If there were no trucks, there would be no truckers. If there were no automotive technology, there would be no trucks. If there were no engineering (applied physical science), there would be no automotive technology. If there were no theoretical physics, there would be no applied science. If there were no pure mathematics, there would be no theoretical physics (in the technologically implemental, post-Galilean sense of the term). If there were no people who never got their hands dirty, there would be no pure mathematics. And there would be none of this if there were no philosophers.

It all began with philosophy, the attempt to know man and world by the use of reason applied to the data of experience. If there were no philosophers, we would still be retailing cosmogonic myths.

And if there were no philosophers like me, there would be no one to explain all of this to you, something I have just done, in an admittedly inadequate bloggity-blog sort of way, without getting my hands dirty.

That being said, I fully support the peaceful and eminently democratic protests of the Canadian truckers and their American confreres.

And I heartily condemn the anti-democratic fascists of the Left, both here and to the North, who use the power of the State to suppress individual liberty, and then engage in the Orwellian subversion of language to cover their tracks and gaslight the citizenry.

For example, the foolish Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, claims that the trucker protests are racist. But what does race have to do with them? Nothing. When he's done misusing 'racist,' he will go on to misuse 'domestic terrorist' and 'insurrectionist.' What sort of person is terrorized by the blaring of horns? What does terrorism and insurrection have to do with these legitimate and eminently democratic peaceful protests? Nothing.

And isn't Trudeau famous for his asseveration that "Diversity is our strength"? One who dissents from fascist clamp-down is holding a view diverse from that of the fascists.

Comments on President Trump’s SOTU #3

From my Facebook page, 5 February 2020. Joe Biden is a disaster except for one thing: he is making DJT look very good indeed.

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Donald J. Trump did a great job with his third State of the Union address last night. (4 February 2020) He took the high ground and demonstrated that he can rise to the occasion when necessary. He made no mention of his impeachment by the House or his expected acquittal by the Senate which will be fait accompli by the end of today. There was also no mention of the Democrats, their witch hunts, or their obstructionism. He cleaved to the positive the whole time, listing his many accomplishments, both domestic and foreign. Promises made; promises kept; Nancy [Pelosi] wept. Or rather grimaced.

45 sounded all the right notes on the rule of law, sanctuary jurisdictions, illegal immigration, socialism, abortion, religious liberty, and Second Amendment rights. He said the things that need saying, the very things that Milquetoast Mitt [Romney] and the rest of the go-along-to-get-along Republican pseudo-cons are afraid to say. He offended all the right people, including Speaker Pelosi behind him and, to his right, the pouting and sullen girly-girl House Democrats all in white as they were last year, putting their female tribalism on display.

The Orange Man continued in the tradition inaugurated by the great Ronald Reagan in 1982 by honoring ordinary citizens. (Do you remember Lenny Skutnick, who plunged into the icy Potomac to rescue an Air Florida flight victim, and was honored in 1982 by Reagan?)

But the high point of the accolades was President Trump's bestowal of the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh who was recently diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. Limbaugh is the prime mover behind conservative talk radio which intellectually obtuse and morally defective 'liberals' insist on calling 'hate radio' thereby demonstrating their failure to grasp the distinction between hate and dissent and the important role dissent plays in a healthy republic.

This blogger enjoyed the 70 or so minute speech immensely. His enjoyment was marred only by his having to look at Nancy Pelosi making faces, chewing her dentures, and looking like the dingbat she is.

And did you notice how, at the end of the speech, Pelosi tore her copy of the speech transcript in half in front of the whole country? What a nasty, passive-aggressive joke she is! She will end her career on a very sad note. And it will be quite a moral struggle for this blogger to contain his schadenfreude.

Three Lockean Reasons to Oppose the Democrats

The main purposes of government are to protect life, liberty, and property. Subsidiary purposes are subordinate to the Lockean triad. This is lost on the present-day Democrat party which has been hijacked by the hard Left. Despite what they say, they are anti-life, anti-liberty, and anti-property. So if you value life, liberty, and property, then you must not vote for any Democrat. Why 'any'? Because Democrat politicians are under party discipline and toe the party line. The one or two exceptions prove the rule. Because these exceptions are few and not reliably exceptional, my rule stands.

The Republicans in their timid way do stand for life, liberty, and property. Or at least some of them do. And they have become less timid under Trump's tutelage. Lindsey Graham, for one, located his manly virtue and put it to work during the Kavanaugh confirmation. His recent behavior is less inspiring. In any case, the choice is clear. Vote Republican, never vote for any Democrat, and don't throw away your vote on unelectable third-party candidates. As for the third point, you must never forget that politics is praxis, not theoria. What matters is not to have the best theory, but the best implementable theory. No implementation of policy without power. No power without winning. Win, gain power, implement ameliorative policies. If you don't have your hands on the levers of power, you are just another talker like me. Two other related maxims.

First, it is folly to let the best become the enemy of the good. Second, politics is never about perfect versus imperfect, but about better versus worse. You find Trump deficient in gravitas? Well, so do I and defective in other ways to boot. But he was better than the alternative in 2016 and he will be better than the alternative in 2024. (And thank you, Sleepy Joe, for making Trump's virtues and accomplishments stand out so clearly.)

I will now briefly list some, but not all, of the reasons why the Democrats are anti-life, anti-liberty, and anti-property despite any mendacious protests to the contrary.

ANTI-LIFE. The Dems are the abortion party. They support abortion on demand at every stage of fetal development. They are blind to the moral issues that abortion raises. They absurdly think that abortion is merely about women's health and reproductive rights. They are not ashamed to embrace such Orwellian absurdities as that abortion is health care. To make matters worse, they violate the sincerely held and cogently argued beliefs of fellow taxpayers by their support of taxpayer funding for abortion. You will recall that the 'devout Catholic' Joe Biden reversed himself on the Hyde Amendment. He showed once again who and what he is, a political opportunist grounded in no discernible principles, not to mention a brazen liar whose mendacity is now compounded by being non compos mentis, not of sound mind.

ANTI-LIBERTY. The Dems are opposed to free speech, religious liberty, and self-defense rights. They regularly conflate free speech with 'hate speech' and religious liberty with 'theocracy.' And this while going soft on genuine theocratic regimes such as Iran's. All of this puts them at odds with the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. And in general we can say that contemporary Democrats are anti-Constitutional inasmuch as an open or living constitution, which they advocate, is no constitution at all, but a mere tabula rasa they hope to deface with their anti-American leftist ideology.

ANTI-PROPERTY. Today's Democrats, as hard leftists, are ever on the slouch toward socialism, which, in full flower (to put it euphemistically) requires central planning and government ownership of the means of production. That is where they want to go even though, as stealth ideologues, they won't admit it.

But let's assume that the statement I just made is exaggerated and that Dems really don't want socialism as it is classically defined. Still, they are anti-property in various ways. They think that we the people have to justify our keeping whereas government doesn't have to justify its taking. That is precisely backwards. They don't appreciate that the government exists for us; we don't exist for the government. They confuse taxation with wealth redistribution. And by the way, the government is not us, as Barack Obama has said. 'The government is us' is as perversely knuckle-headed as 'Diversity is our strength.' The latter stupidity is plainly Orwellian. What about the former? Pre-Orwellian?

Finally, you need to understand that private property is the foundation of individual liberty.

Vito Caiati on David Brooks

I solicited Dr Caiati's comments on David Brooks' Atlantic piece, What Happened to American Conservatism? The lede reads: "The rich philosophical tradition I fell in love with has been reduced to Fox News and voter suppression." That is a good tip-off to the quality of the article. Here is what Vito said, and I agree:

I am not the right person to write a response, since I have nothing but contempt for Brooks, whom I regard as a miserable opportunist at the service of the Left. (He is precisely the sort of creature that makes an ad hominem attack, usually best avoided, entirely appropriate.) Any man who writes,

I’m content, as my hero Isaiah Berlin put it, to plant myself instead on the rightward edge of the leftward tendency—in the more promising soil of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. If its progressive wing sometimes seems to have learned nothing from the failures of government and to promote cultural stances that divide Americans, at least the party as a whole knows what year it is

is either delusional for thinking that such a “moderate wing” actually exists and that “the party as a whole” is an entity that fosters national comity and is actually concerned for the welfare of the citizenry or, in my view, is simply acting in bad faith. No true conservative of whatever stripe can have anything to do with this intellectually and morally bankrupt party, which is entirely dominated by the Left and which wages an unceasing war against the very traditions, customs, and legal system that Brooks supposedly values so highly.

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Now for my two cents. Useful idiots such as Brooks are worse than hard leftists. They live in the past, blind to the present, and unwittingly advance the very causes that they, as conservatives, are supposed to be opposing. Here is what I had to say four years ago. The passage of time has only reinforced my points:

The Op-Ed pages of The New York Times are plenty poor to be sure, but Ross Douthat and David Brooks are sometimes worth reading. But the following from Brooks (28 October 2016) is singularly boneheaded although the opening sentence is exactly right:

The very essence of conservatism is the belief that politics is a limited activity, and that the most important realms are pre-political: conscience, faith, culture, family and community. But recently conservatism has become more the talking arm of the Republican Party. Among social conservatives, for example, faith sometimes seems to come in second behind politics, Scripture behind voting guides. Today, most white evangelicals are willing to put aside the Christian virtues of humility, charity and grace for the sake of a Trump political victory.

Come on, man. Don't be stupid. The Left is out to suppress religious liberty. This didn't start yesterday. You yourself mention conscience, but you must be aware that bakers and florists have been forced by the state to violate their consciences by catering homosexual 'marriage' ceremonies. Is that a legitimate use of state power? And if the wielders of state power can get away with that outrage, where will they stop? Plenty of other examples can be adduced, e.g., the Obama administration's assault on the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The reason evangelicals and other Christians support Trump is that they know what that destructive and deeply mendacious stealth ideologue Hillary will do if she gets power. It is not because they think the Gotham sybarite lives the Christian life, but despite his not living it. They understand that ideas and policies trump character issues especially when Trump's opponent is even worse on the character plane. What's worse: compromising national security, using high public office to enrich oneself, and then endlessly lying about it all, or forcing oneself on a handful of women?

The practice of the Christian virtues and the living of the Christian life require freedom of religion. Our freedoms are under vicious assault by leftists like Hillary. This is why Trump garners the support of Christians.

The threat from the Left is very real indeed. See here and read the chilling remarks of Martin Castro of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights. Given Castro's comments the name of the commission counts as Orwellian.

Nancy Pelosi and the Divine Spark

Posted on my Facebook page, two years ago. I nailed it then, and it stays nailed down. Nancy has declined in the last two years. She seems on the verge of joining Sleepy Joe in the land of non compos mentis.

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Donald Trump famously referred to MS-13 gangsters as "animals." That's not the way I would put it inasmuch as it is an insult to animals who, unlike the gangbangers, are beneath good and evil. But Trump talks like a working stiff and we all know what he meant. Pelosi, however, took umbrage, protesting that the murderous bunch possesses "the divine spark" (her phrase) along with the rest of us. I don't disagree, but I do have a couple of questions for Madame Speaker.

First, Nancy dear, do you think the pre-natal also have the divine spark? If not, why not? Isn't that what your Catholic religion, bits of which you regularly inject into your speeches, teaches? And if the horrific rapes, murders, beheadings, etc. of the MS-13 do not cause them to forfeit the "divine spark," then how it it that a human fetus' lack of development prevents it from having said spark?

Second, as a leftist committed to driving every vestige of religion, or rather Christianity, from the public square, can't you see that it is inconsistent of you to use themes from your Catholic girlhood when it suits you and your obstructionist purposes? You come across as a silly goose of a dingbat. Or is that just an airhead act to mask your mendacity and subversiveness and Alinskyite disregard for double standards?

Military Service and ‘Skin in the Game’

There is something to be said in favor of an all-voluntary military, but on the debit side there is this: only those with 'skin in the game' — either their own or that of their loved ones — properly appreciate the costs of foreign military interventions. I say that as a conservative, not a libertarian.

There is also this to consider: In the bad old days of the draft, people of different stations – to use a good old word that will not be allowed to fall into desuetude, leastways not on my watch — were forced to associate with one another — with some good effects. It is 'broadening' to mingle and have to get along with different sorts of people. And when the veteran of foreign wars returns and takes up a profession in, say, academe, he brings with him precious hard-won experience of all sorts of people in different lands in trying circumstances. He is then more likely to exhibit the sense of a Winston Churchill as opposed to the nonsense of a Ward Churchill.

At the moment, Vladimir Putin is threatening to send his troops into the Ukraine. There are those with no skin in the game who are willing to expend American blood and treasure should the Ukraine be invaded. I humbly suggest that we secure our own borders before we worry about the borders of foreign countries. I have no skin in this game, but also no prospect of profiting from yet another foreign adventure.

Donald Trump has it right: America first!

Click on the link to learn what the slogan means.

What does Populism Threaten?

First posted on my Facebook page on this date three years ago.

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POPULISM is a threat to a leftist internationalism that rejects national borders and denies to nations the right to preserve their cultures, the right to stop illegal immigration, and the right to select those immigrants who are most likely to prove to be a net asset to the host country, and most likely to assimilate. There needn't be anything white supremacist or white nationalist about populism. (By the way, white supremacism and white nationalism are plainly different: a white nationalist needn't be a white supremacist.) And of course there needn't be anything racist or xenophobic or bigoted about either nationalism or populism. It is a mistake to confuse nationalism with white nationalism, a mistake deliberately promoted by leftists.

Populism in the style of Trump is not a threat to liberal democracy as the Founders envisioned it, but a threat to the leftist internationalism I have just limned and which contemporary 'liberals' confuse with the classically liberal democracy of the Founders. It is also quite telling that these 'liberals' constantly use the word 'democracy' as if it is something wonderful indeed, but they almost never mention that the USA is a democratic republic. Our republic has a stiff backbone of core principles and meta-principles that are not up for democratic grabs, or at least are not up for easy grabs: the Constitution can be amended but it is not easy, nor should it be.

Those who think that democracy is a wonderful thing ought to realize that Sharia can be installed democratically. This is underway in Belgium. Brussels could be Muslim within 20 years. Let enough Muslims infiltrate and then they will decide who 'the people' are and who are not 'the people.' The native Belgians will then have been displaced. Ain't democracy wonderful?

Let enough illegal aliens flood in, give them the vote, and they may or more likely will decide to do away with the distinction between legal and illegal immigration as well as the one between immigration and emigration. Ever wonder why lefties like the word 'migrant?' It manages to elide both distinctions in one fell swoop.

A sane and defensible populism rests on an appreciation of an insight I have aphoristically expressed as follows:

No comity without commonality.

There cannot be social harmony without a raft of shared assumptions and values, not to mention a shared language. There is need of cultural coherence. A felicitous phrase, that. Our open, tolerant, Enlightenment culture cannot cohere and survive if Sharia-supporting Muslims are allowed to immigrate. For their ultimate goal is not to assimilate to our ways, but to impose their ways on us, eventually replacing us.

Can you show I'm wrong?

Political Observations

The short statements below are from my Facebook page. It is important to explain to the open-minded and politically uncommitted, in a pithy and non-polemical way, what American conservatives stand for. The American conservative, as I use the term, is neither a throne-and-altar neo-reactionary, nor is he an alt-Right tribalist. His conservatism takes on board the best of classical liberalism. You could call him a paleo-liberal. And of course he is far from the yap-and-scribble, do-nothing 'cruise ship' pseudo-conservatives who are willing to accept political dhimmitude so long as their perquisites and privileges and invitations to the tonier Beltway salons remain intact.

My 'voice' over at Facebook is usually polemical, unlike the shorts below. I tread the razor's edge between saying what needs to be said about incendiary topics and getting de-platformed. Polemical discourse, including invective, mockery, and the rest are justified by the fact we are engaged in a war with the destructive Left over the soul of America. You are welcome to join me, but just be sure to read the pinned post at the top of the page.

THE FIRST OBLIGATION OF GOVERNMENT

The main obligation of a government is to protect and serve the citizens of the country of which it is the government. It is a further question whether it has obligations to protect and benefit the citizens of other countries. That is debatable. But if it does, those obligations are trumped by the main obligation just mentioned. I should think that a great nation such as the USA does well to engage in purely humanitarian efforts such as famine relief. Such efforts are arguably supererogatory and not obligatory.

NATIONALISM AND 'FAMILIALISM'

America First is as sound an idea as that each family has the right to prefer its interests over the interests of other families. If my wife becomes ill, then my obligation is to care for her and expend such financial resources as are necessary to see to her welfare. If this means reducing my charitable contributions to the local food bank, then so be it. Whatever obligations I have to help others 'ripple out' from myself as center, losing claim to my attention the farther out they go, much like the amplitude of waves caused by a rock's falling into a pond diminishes the farther from the point of impact. Spouse and/or children first, then other family members, then old friends, then new friends, then neighbors, and so on.

The details are reasonably disputable, but not the general principle. The general principle is that we are justified in looking to our own first.

ENLIGHTENED NATIONALISM

AMERICA FIRST does not mean that that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. We say 'America first' because we are Americans; the Czechs say or ought to say 'Czech Republic first.' The general principle is that every country has a right to grant preference to itself and its interests over the interests of other countries while respecting their interests and right to self-determination. America First is but an instance of the general principle. The principle, then, is Country First.

ENLIGHTENED NATIONALISM AND CHAUVINISM

America First has nothing to do with chauvinism which could be characterized as a blind and intemperate patriotism, a belligerent and unjustified belief in the superiority of one's own country. America First expresses an enlightened nationalism which is obviously compatible with a sober recognition of national failings. Germany has a rather sordid history; but Germany First is compatible with a recognition of the wrong turn that great nation took during a well-known twelve-year period (1933-1945) in her history.

NATIONALISM, NATIVISM, ISOLATIONISM

An enlightened nationalism is distinct from nativism inasmuch as the former does not rule out immigration. By definition, an immigrant is not a native; but an enlightened American nationalism accepts immigrants who accept American values, which of course are not the values of the Left or of political Islam.

An enlightened nationalism is not isolationist. What it eschews is a fruitless meddling and over-eager interventionism. It does not rule out certain necessary interventions when they are in our interests and in the interests of our allies.

So America First is not to be confused with chauvinism or nativism or isolationism.

The Fix We Are In: How Should We Respond to the ‘Woke’ Revolutionaries?

The difference between paleo-liberal and post-liberal responses to the 'woke' Left is well described in a recent Substack entry White tribalism is a third response. I have been entertaining (with some hospitality) the notion that whites may need to go tribal pro tempore, for the time being, in order to defend themselves and their interests (which are not just their interests but the interests of civilization and high culture) against the various tribalisms promoted by the Left. Call it Tribalism Pro Tem.

But so far my 'official' position on this weblog and elsewhere would fall under the paleo-liberal or classically liberal rubric. As I see it, a sound conservatism, American conservatism I call it, takes on board what is good in classical liberalism. Against Deneen, whose position is limned in the above-linked Substack piece by N. S. Lyons, I would object that there is no inevitability to the slide from the classical liberalism of the Founders, which was respectful of traditions, to a society of atomized, deracinated individuals. I suspect that Deneen succumbs to the classic slippery slope fallacy.

This just over the transom from a reader:

A question for you: It seems like I'm one of the alt-right "tribalists" you take yourself to disagree with. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) But do we really disagree? Let me try to clarify my position a little.

I'd be very happy to live in a society where race and other tribal markers don't matter much. They could be a purely personal or social kind of thing with no political meaning.

On the other hand, when I look around and see how non-white (etc.) tribalism is being weaponized against white people, and specifically white-Euro-Christian men, it seems to me that we have no practical option other than consciously identifying as the tribe under attack. It's largely a defensive thing. We are being attacked as white people, or white men, so it's not enough to just call ourselves "Americans" or "Canadians" or whatever. Those civic identities have already been deconstructed or rejected by the people who hate us and seek power over us. They just don't care. And others like us are not going to be motivated by appeals to these more abstract categories when their enemies are attacking them for being white, and male.

So it's in this (weird) context that I think white men should be conscious and proud of their "tribal" identity, as a healthy and empowering response to the hateful tribalism of others. In a different context I wouldn't advocate this kind of tribalism. Against a society that says it's shameful and immoral to be a white man–which, let's be frank, is what they're really saying–we should affirm that there's nothing wrong with us, that we like ourselves and won't apologize for being who we are.

Do you disagree?

I agree with qualifications, caveats, and codicils.

I can't see that a white-tribal or white-male-tribal response to the pernicious tribalisms promoted by the Left is a good solution in the long run. But in the short run I see no acceptable alternative to a pro tempore white tribalism. So I don't disagree with my reader on the practical plane. But as a theist and a personalist, I consider a self-identification as a member of a tribe to be a false self-identification. I am not just an animal of a particular sex and race, and because I am not just that, any self-identification as just that is a false self-identification. I am more than that. And I would add that my life-project is to realize that 'more' and to achieve individuation as a person. This individuation is not a given but a task. It is a spiritual task. This is an existentialist motif expressed in a neo-Kantian way. But this is not the place to expatiate further on this theme.

Who am I ultimately? Just a token of a type? Just an interchangeable member of a particular tribe of animals? You wouldn't have to be a theist to reject this sort of crude self-identification. One could take oneself to be zoon logikon in Aristotle's sense, a rational animal. One could reject God and the soul and still achieve a loftier self-apperception than that of a bit of the Earth's fauna determined by the biological categories of race and sex. Now I accept the biological reality of race and sex: they are not social constructs. 'Society' — whatever that is — did not 'assign' me my male sex upon birth. The very notion is absurd. Nor did any group. Nor can I interpret myself as black or female and thereby bring about a change of race or sex. Race and sex are neither social constructs nor personal constructs. My reality is logically and ontologically antecedent to my self-understanding. Indeed, I am essentially (as opposed to accidentally) Caucasian and male. An essential (accidental) property of a thing is a property that thing cannot (can) exist without.

My interlocutor will probably feel that I am sidestepping the pressing, practical issue by raising the questions that most deeply interest me, namely, those about the metaphysics of the self. He will remind me that I am no Boethius and would have a very hard time investigating the metaphysics of the self in the gulag or under torture. And he would be right to so remind me.

Suppose a black guy gets in my face and attacks my whiteness and all of its values and virtues (objectivity, punctuality, self-control, ability to defer gratification, love of learning, etc.) I will point out that his smart phone would not exist if it were not for the cultural goods produced in the West and the values and virtues just listed. I will point out that no high culture at the level of the West came out of sub-Saharan Africa. I will point out his ingratitude at the thousands that died in the U.S. Civil War to free the slaves. I will remind him that slavery existed on the continent of North America long before the Unites States of America came into existence, and that the moral and philosophical foundations of this polity made possible the elimination of slavery.

And so I would do something I would prefer not to do, namely stick up for the white tribe. And I would do it as long as I had to do it. I would play the role part-time of the pro tem white tribalist. But at the same time that I was playing this role out of a necessity imposed on me ab extra, I would not forget who I am really am. And who is that? Well, there are several options the exploration of which does not belong here. But let me just note that if you are a classical theist you will not take yourself to be identical to an animal slated for utter destruction in a few years determined by your biology.

One more point which I think is very important. I wrote above of whiteness and its values and virtues. But we whites do not own these virtues and values any more than we own the truths of mathematics and natural science. They are universal and belong to all. It is just that whites have proven to be so much better at their discovery, articulation, dissemination, and so much better at living in accordance with them and reaping the benefits from such living. If blacks want to improve their lives, they will have to engage in some serious cultural appropriation, which is not really cultural appropriation given the universality of the virtues and values. They will have to order their lives along the lines of the 'white' virtues and values that they foolishly denigrate.

Is it Rational to be Politically Ignorant?

For many it is. Substack latest.

Politics and Philosophy

Politics is a practical game. One has to win to be effective. Merely to have the better set of ideas and policies is to fail. Philosophy, however, is not about winning. It is about ultimate understanding, spiritual self-transformation, and wisdom. A politics fully informed by insight and understanding would be ideal if it were not impossible. This 'ideal,' however is not an ideal for us. Nothing can count as an ideal for us if it is unattainable by us.

Ars longa, vita brevis. The same is true of philosophy. The philosopher has time and takes his time. Hear Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80: Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!" "This is how philosophers should greet each other: Take your time!"

The philosopher can resist the urge for a quick solution. He takes his time because he is a "spectator of all time." (Plato, Republic, Book VI) He's in the game for the long haul, for the 'duration.' After his death he is still in the game if his Nachlass is found worthy. He may concern himself with the questions of the day, but he never loses sight of the issues of the ages. And he has an eye for the presence of the latter within the former.

In politics we have enemies; political discourse is inherently polemical. But there are no enemies in philosophy. For if your interlocutor is not a friend, then you are not philosophizing with him. Ideally, philosophy is the erothetic love of truth pursued either in solitude or among friends who love each other but love the truth more than they love each other.

Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. (Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1096a15; but the thought is already in Plato at Republic, Book X, 595b-c and 607c. I am tempted to say that everything is already in Plato . . . . . I shall resist the temptation.)

Is There a Political ‘Use it or Lose it’ Principle?

If you want to maintain your physical fitness, you must exercise regularly. Use it or lose it! Not so long ago I thought that the same principle had a political application: if you want to maintain your freedoms, you must exercise them. Use 'em or lose 'em! But times have changed. And when times change, the wise re-evaluate. I'll give two examples.

In the present political climate, if I exercise my right to free speech I may lose the right. Use it and lose it. This is because vast numbers nowadays do not recognize any such right. For these people, dissent is hate; so if your speech is dissenting speech it is hate speech, which cannot be tolerated. Dissent is hate, and hate is violence, and violence is racism! Of course, dissent is not hate, and hate is not violence, etc. but these truths are irrelevant in an age of groupthink and mass delusion. Truth is passé in the Age of Feeling. So if you speak your mind calmly, reasonably, and with attention to facts, but sail against the prevailing winds, you may find yourself de-platformed, 'cancelled,' and put on a watch list of dissidents, and perhaps a 'no fly' list. After all, conservatives are 'potential terrorists.' And white conservatives are of course 'white supremacists.'

So here is my thought: The exercise of a right in a society in which that right is no longer widely recognized but is instead perceived as hurtful, hateful, 'racist,' etc. has no tendency to secure that right; on the contrary, the exercise of the right endangers both the right and the exerciser thereof. The same goes for the mere invocation or mention of the right.

Here we may have the makings of an argument against speaking out. But we will have to think about this some more. Civil courage is a beautiful virtue but it is sometimes trumped by that of prudence.

My second example is the right to keep and bear arms, an individual right, one that is protected and secured, but not conferred, by the Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. To exercise this right openly, as by 'open carry,' is inadvisable. You may think that you are standing on your rights, and by exercising them securing them, but in a society dominated by group-thinking leftists, your constitutionally-guaranteed rights are not respected or even acknowledged. You are arguably undermining your rights and their exercise. You are reinforcing their mindless fears and fantasies. After all, prominent progressive politicians view the NRA as a domestic terrorist organization! What then will they think of you if they see you packing heat? It would be best to conceal both your weapons and your views.

The practice of ketman is advisable. Rod Dreher:

Ketman is the strategy that everyone in our society who isn’t a true believer in “social justice” and identity politics has to adopt to stay out of trouble. On Sunday, I heard about a professor in a large state university in a state that yesterday went for Trump, who is filled with constant anxiety. He believes that his interactions with colleagues and students are filled with the potential to destroy his career. Why? Because all it takes is an accusation of racism, sexism, or some other form of bigotry to wreck a lifetime of work. This is the world that the identity politics left has created for us.