Category: Politics

Sam Harris and the Problem of Disagreement: Is Conversation Our Only Hope?

Sam Harris:

More and more, I find myself attempting to have difficult conversations with people who hold very different points of view. And I consider our general failure to have these conversations well—so as to produce an actual convergence of opinion and a general increase in goodwill between the participants—to be the most consequential problem that exists. Apart from violence and other forms of coercion, all we have is conversation with which to influence one another. The fact that it is so difficult for people to have civil and productive conversations about things like U.S. foreign policy, or racial inequality, or religious tolerance and free speech, is profoundly disorienting. And it’s also dangerous. If we fail to do this, we will fail to do everything else of value. Conversation is our only tool for collaborating in a truly open-ended way.

[. . .]

. . . conversation is our only hope.

Sam HarrisFascinating and worthy of careful thought. Here are the main points I take Harris to be making.

1. A successful conversation produces a convergence of opinion and an increase in good will between the participants.

2. The failure to have such conversations is the most consequential problem that exists.

3. Apart from violence and other forms of coercion, all we have is conversation with which to influence one another.

4. Our failure to have civil and productive conversations about important matters of controversy is dangerous.

5. If we fail to do this, we will fail to do everything else of value. 

 

Should we agree with any or all of these points?

Ad (1).  We shouldn't agree with this.  It would not be reasonable to do so.  Neither of the two conditions Harris specifies are necessary for a successful conversation.  I have had many successful philosophical and other conversations that do not issue in agreement or convergence of opinion.  And I am sure you have as well.  What these conversations issue in is clarification. The topic becomes clearer, as well as its implications for and relations with other topics, the arguments on both sides get better understood, as well as one's views and one's interlocutor's views. Mutual clarification, even without agreement, even with intractable disagreement, is sufficient for successful conversation.  If we come to understand exactly what it is we disagree about, then that is very important progress even if we never come to agree.

In fact, I consider it utopian and indeed foolish to think that one can achieve (uncoerced, rational) agreement on truly fundamental matters.  On some matters rational agreement among competent interlocutors is of course possible; but on others just impossible.  If this is right, then agreement on all important matters of controversy cannot be an ideal for us, a goal we ought to pursue.  Ought implies can.  If we ought to pursue a goal, then it must  be possible for us to achieve it.  If a certain goal is impossible for us to achieve, then we cannot be obliged to achieve it.

A reachable goal is clarity, not agreement; toleration, not consensus.

Consider religion.  Is it a value or not?  Conservatives, even those who are atheistic and irreligious, tend to view religion as a value, as conducive to human flourishing.  Liberals and leftists tend to view it as a disvalue, as something that impedes human flourishing.  This is an important, indeed crucially important, question.  Does Sam Harris really think that, via patient, civil, mutually respectful conversation, no matter how protracted, he is going to convince those of us who think religion important for human flourishing to abandon our view?

If he thinks this he is naive.  I respect Harris, something I cannot say about some other New Atheists.  But Harris is out beyond his depth in philosophy and religion.  And he has a foolish belief in the power of reason to resolve the issues that are of deepest concern to us.  Reason is a magnificent thing, of course, but Harris appears to have no inkling of its infirmity or limits.

As for the other condition, an increase in good will, surely it is not necessary for a successful conversation.  The quantity of good will may stay the same in a discussion without prejudice to the discussion's being productive.  It may even decrease.  Admittedly, without a certain amount of initial good will, no fruitful conversation can take place.  But it is false to say that a successful conversation increases good will.

Ad (2).  If (1) is false or unreasonable, then so is (2).  Suppose I have a conversation with an atheist such as Harris and fail to budge him from his position while he fails to budge me from mine.  Such a conversation can be very productive, useful, successful, not to mention transcendently enjoyable.  The life of the mind is of all lives the highest and best, and its being these things  is not predicated on achieving agreement about the lofty topics that engage our interest while quite possibly transcending our ability to resolve them to our mutual satisfaction.  The failure to meet Harris's conditions need be no problem at all, let alone the most consequential problem that exists.

Ad (3).  Harris tells us that it is either coercion or conversation when it comes to influencing people.  This is plainly a false alternative. One way to non-violently and non-coercively influence people is by setting a good example.  If I treat other people with kindness, respect, forbearance, etc., this 'sets a good example' and reliably induces many people in the vicinity to do otherwise.  In fact I needn't say a word, let alone enter into a conversation.  For example, with a friendly gesture I can invite a motorist to enter my lane of traffic.  In doing so, I ever-so-slightly increase the good will and fellow feeling in the world, profiting myself  in the process.  In this connection, a marvellous aphorism from  Søren Kierkegaard, Journals, #1056 comes to mind:

The essential sermon is one's own existence.

But more importantly, there is teaching which in most cases is a non-violent but also a  non-conversational mode of influencing people.  For example, teaching someone how to change a tire, play chess, use a computer.  If I have a skill, I don't discuss it with you, I teach it to you.  Much of elementary education is non-violent but also non-conversational.  Teaching the alphabet, the moves of the chess men, the multiplication tables, and so on.  There is nothing to discuss, nothing to have a conversation about.  The elements have simply to be learned.  Controversial topics open to debate will arise late on.  But there is no point in discussing the Peano axioms if one does not know that 1 + 1 = 2.

What about ethical instruction?  Only a liberal fool would advocate conversations with young children about theft and murder and lying as if the rightness or wrongness of these acts is subject to reasonable debate or is a matter of mere opinion.  They must be taught that these things are wrong for their own good and for the good of others. Discussion of ethical niceties and theories comes later, if at all, and presupposes ethical indoctrination: a child who has not internalized and appropriated ethical prescriptions and proscriptions cannot profit from ethical conversations or courses in ethics.  You cannot make a twenty-year-old ethical by requiring him to take a course in ethics.  He must already be ethical by upbringing.

Harris's thesis #3 is plainly false.  But this is not to deny that respectful conversation is much to be preferred over coercive methods of securing agreement and should be pursued whenever possible.

Ad (4). Harris tells us that it is "dangerous" to not have civil and productive conversations about important and controversial matters.  But why dangerous? Harris must know that even among competent and sincere interlocutors here in the West who share may assumptions and values we are not going to come to any agreement about God, guns, abortion, capital punishment, same-sex 'marriage,' the cluster of questions surrounding 'global warming' and plenty of other economic, political, and social questions.  How can it be dangerous to not have interminable, inconclusive conversations?  Conversations that go nowhere?  That are more productive of dissensus than consensus?  That contribute to polarization?  Well, I suppose you could say that if we are talking we are not shooting.

Ad (5).  Harris is really over the top on this one.  Exercise for the reader: supply the refutation.

Conclusion:  Conversation is overrated.  If it is our only hope we are in very bad shape.  We need fewer 'conversations,' not more.  And we need more tolerance of opposing points of view.  More tolerance and more voluntary separation.  We don't need to talk to get along.  We need to talk less while respecting boundaries and differences.  We need less engagement and more dis-engagement.  Everybody needs to back off.  Trouble is, totalitarians won't back off.  They want a total clamp-down on belief and behavior.  And it doesn't matter whether they are 'liberal' totalitarians or Islamist totalitarians.

So there looks to be no way to avoid a fight.  Unfortunately, it is reason herself who teaches that it is often the hard fist of unreason that prevails and settles the issue when the appeal to reason is unavailing.

POTUS at Rushmore: A Great Speech

If you agree with the speech, you are either an American or appreciative of American values; if not, a hate-America leftist.  The speech could be taken as a test of where one stands.

There was nothing "dark and divisive" about it. Trump is not a divider, but the Great Clarifier. He is not a divider because we have long been divided.  Part of what he has accomplished is to make clear the division and to give a forceful voice to the American patriot.  A patriot is neither a chauvinist nor  a jingoist; a patriot is one who loves his country with an ordinate love, a love consistent with criticism of country and its government.

If you complain that Trump cannot unite us, that is certainly true; no one can. Unity is possible only under the umbrella of shared principles, and Left and Right do not share principles. To invert the metaphor, the citizens of the USA no longer occupy common ground.  Will the Left give up its illusions and lies and come to our side? No chance of that, as little as any chance that we will give up our cherished principles for lies and illusions.

Here:

But as a statement of America’s founding principles, Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech was as eloquent and powerful a speech as any elected official has made in a long, long while, precisely because it contained, at its core, the emotional truth every immigrant holds to be self-evident: Knowing that it’s here and only here that accidents of birth can be transcended with relative ease and the full bloom of one’s genius allowed to flourish precisely because the cultural soil is so rich and so varied and contains multitudes.

[. . .]

To reject this vision as dark is to turn your back on America’s foundational covenant, the same spirit that animated anyone from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr., which, sadly, is the case today among so many of the guardians of our institutions.

And here:

Donald Trump did not launch the latest culture war: The left-leaning press, political foes, Marxist-believing activists, and corporate and educational institutions did. When President Trump stood before a patriotic crowd on Friday night, under the watchful eyes of our country’s greatest presidents, his pronouncement that the silent majority will not retreat or surrender our founding principles was not divisive. It was American.

Point of No Return

The 2020 presidential election will not be Biden versus Trump; Biden is but a shell, a puppet, a has-been on cognitive life support. The election will be Biden's keepers versus Trump. But even this observation does not cut deeply enough. 2020 will be a referendum on whether the people want the preservation of the Republic or its dissolution.  Conrad Black:

President Trump spoke nothing but the truth at Mount Rushmore on Friday when he said “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this but some know exactly what they are doing.” 

It is inconceivable that the FBI—particularly with the opprobrium it has rightly attracted for its antics in the Russian collusion canard—is not close to being able to indict the leadership of Black Lives Matter and Antifa for sedition and incitement to a range of violent crimes, including murder and arson. It is also inconceivable that the country could fail to choose the president’s championship of patriotic continuity with strong emphasis on racial equality and the highest standards of civilized law enforcement over the nihilism and Americo-phobic mob rule of the post-George Floyd rioters whom the Democrats in their decadent insipidity have appeased.

The almost inexpressibly contemptible Democratic de Blasio regime in New York City has reduced the police budget by $1 billion as violent crime has more than doubled. The president’s reopening of the economy brought back nearly 5 million workers out of unemployment in June and this process should continue. The fatality rates of the pandemic have declined by nearly 90 percent from their high, with spread of the virus now concentrated amongst those who can best resist it. The subject of pathetic Democratic hand-wringing, the surge in new cases is effectively irrelevant other than that it increases national immunity to it.  

Former conservatives and pillars of the pre-Trump Republican Party are now facing the point of no return. If they confirm their support for the almost leaderless Democratic Party now closely allied with pestilence and racist mayhem, they will never have any political influence in any party again. The time to choose between irreconcilable opposites is almost at hand.

President Trump’s Mount Rushmore Speech

Roger Kimball appreciates its magnificence and writes about it brilliantly:

The president was especially strong in challenging what is perhaps the most obnoxious manifestation of our petulant antinomianism—that species of politically correct intolerance that has come to be called “cancel culture.” In essence, cancel culture is the malignant inversion of liberalism’s defining virtues, openness and tolerance. It is born of historical ignorance and a stunning lack of empathy—an ironic fact, since one of the chief premises of cancel culture is its own supposed superior sensitivity. 

In fact, the emotional payload of cancel culture is not more sensitive than its accommodating alternative, just more narcissistic. It operates by proxy, filing claims for redress on behalf of a ghostly population of abstractions: “indigenous peoples,” slaves of yesteryear, and on and on in an endless litany of complaint. 

What is not at all abstract, however, are the effects of cancel culture. As the president noted, it is wielded as a weapon, “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.” In a word, cancel culture is “the very definition of totalitarianism” and is “completely alien to our culture and our values.” It should have “absolutely no place in the United States of America.” And here is where his speech took on a steely seriousness. “This attack on our liberty must be stopped,” he said, “and it will be stopped.” 

In short, the president has promised to cancel cancel culture. Is that a contradiction, a violation of the spirit of tolerance he has promised to uphold? No. 

The enemies of civilization routinely use and abuse its freedoms in order to destroy it. Candid men understand this and act to prevent it. As G. K. Chesterton put it, “There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.”

[. . .]

We know that all of our most pathological cities have been run as Democratic monopolies for decades. Donald Trump had the temerity to point this out. We know that our public schools are increasingly factories of left-wing, anti-American indoctrination. The president had the temerity to point that out as well. The narrative is that Trump is a crude and bumbling ignoramus, but can you imagine Joe Biden or any other Democrat in office today having the moral courage and clarity of mind to say this:

The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities run by liberals, is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism and other cultural institutions. Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country—and to believe that the men and women who built it, were not heroes, but villains. The radicals’ view of American History is a web of lies—all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted, and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition. 

What Can a Sane individual Do in the Present Political Situation?

This is a repost from last November. Given how fast things are unraveling, what I wrote then sounds  a bit lame now. Still, I think my suggestions are sound. They are things I do. Whether you should do them is your call.

……………………….

What can an individual do? Not much, but here are some suggestions.

Exercise your rights and in particular your Second Amendment rights; the latter provide the concrete backup to the others. A well-armed populace, feared by the totalitarians, is a strong deterrent without a shot being fired. Money spent on guns, ammo, accessories, and range fees goes to support our cause.  Be of good cheer, and hope for the best. But prepare for the worst.

Vote in every election, but never for any Democrat. And don't throw away your vote on third-party losers. The Libertarians are losertarians and the other third parties are discussion societies in political drag. Politically, they are jokes. Politics is a practical business. It's about better or worse, not about perfect or imperfect. Don't let the best become the enemy of the good. Make your vote count — not that any one vote counts for much. Thanks to Trump, the Great Clarifier, there are now real choices.  The days of Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee are over. 

Vote with your wallet. Contribute to conservative causes, but never give money to leftist causes, organizations, or publication outlets. Did your alma mater ask for a contribution? "Not one dime until you clean up your act."  That's what I tell them. PBS and NPR programming is sometimes surpassingly excellent, but to give money to these left-leaning outfits is inimical to your interests as a conservative. Don't be a fool who empowers his enemies. 

Vote with your feet. Do you live in a sanctuary crap hole such as California? Leave. But don't come to Arizona, this rattle-snake infested inferno crawling with gun-toting racists. Keep heading East.  Move in with Elizabeth Warren. Her 3.5 million dollar pad near Harvard Square has plenty of room.

Punish any leftist 'friends' you may still have by withdrawing your high-quality friendship from them. Let them experience consequences for their willful self-enstupidation. Ceteris paribus, of course. 

Finally, show some civil courage and speak out: blog, facebook, tweet. But temper your rhetoric and don't incite violence. That's what they do (Maxine Waters, for example, hiding behind her Black Privilege.) But if you are young and need gainful employment, be careful, be very careful.  Never underestimate the mendacity and viciousness of leftists.  To them you are a deplorable 'racist.' Truth and morality are bourgeois fictions to them.  Power is what they believe in. 

Don't retreat into your private life lest you wake up one morning to find that there is no private life.

In this article, Rod Dreher admits that he has no idea how to go about fighting the 'woke' militants.

No Fool Like an Old Fool

Ed is an 80-year-old neighbor of mine. We've been casual acquaintances for years, running into each other on the trails, exchanging greetings and snatches of conversation. The other day politics came up for the first time, and to my surprise I learned that Ed, originally a Republican, had become an Independent, and was now a Democrat. I said, perhaps with a bit of surprise, "How can you support the Dems, given their current leadership?"

Ed, the quintessentially nice guy, said, "Let's stay friends, Bill, and avoid politics." I agreed that this was the wisest course, and we parted amicably. But my opinion of old Ed had dropped, and I resolved to limit my contact with him, limited as it already was. I knew there was no reaching him.

What explains the utter political stupidity of otherwise good, intelligent, and basically conservative people? Doesn't Ed understand what is in his and his family's interest?

One factor is mindless Trump hatred. A second is that old people live in the past and simply cannot see what is happening. A third is a life too much absorbed in the private and the quotidian. Luckily, old Ed probably won't be around to wake up to the day when the private life is no more.

No fool like an old fool.

Anthony Flood Reviews David Horowitz, Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win

An Amazon review by our long-time correspondent. I award it the plenary MavPhil endorsement.  Tony coins a brilliancy, 'academedia complex.'  I would add a qualifier, 'academented.' 

Anthony Flood
5.0 out of 5 stars The Blitzkrieg the Berserkers Have Coming to Them

Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2020

 
“The virus and its consequences will eventually be resolved. Far more ominous for the future of our country is the war described in the pages of this book.”

Thus David Horowitz, in a note penned as this book went to press, anticipated this question: how will Trump meet the challenge of the virus-predicated lockdown, now aggravated by the Left’s violent (and lockdown-undermining) assault on America’s institutions?

A few days after Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win was published, the answer came: millions of jobs were created in May 2020, more than any analyst predicted. (They predicted job losses.) That would have been impossible had the economy’s fundamentals not been as sound as they were in early March—which they wouldn’t have been had Trump not been at the helm of state for the preceding three Marches.

Following up his best-selling Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America, Horowitz surveys the landscape of Trump’s vindication, recording the genuine (i.e., anti-“progressive”) progress America has made in the face of past onslaughts and those that threaten us a season away from the general election.

For divide, sabotage, resist is the battle plan of the anti-American contingent we call the Left. Truth means nothing to them; power, everything. They align with every movement that holds out the promise of “transforming” America: environmentalism, Islam, solicitude for criminals (homegrown or foreign trespassers).

The English word “blitz” contracts the German Blitzkrieg, “lightning war,” which entered our vocabulary during the Second World War. It makes for a snappier book title, but the reference to war should not be lost, given Horowitz’s own words.

“Traditionally [Horowitz notes] Democrats have approached politics as a form of war conducted by other means, while Republicans have entered the political arena as pragmatists and accountants. But the siege of Donald Trump has begun to create a new Republican Party, passionate and combative in defense of a leader they believe has stood up for them, and—equally important—who exceeds them in his appetite for combat. ‘Populism’ is the term political observers have drawn on to describe this phenomenon. The energy populism creates adds up to the blitz that is described in this book, and that has enabled him to overpower his opposition.”

By itself, of course, the German Blitz means “lightning,” suggesting the speed of the response. But speed is not to the point: Trump’s counterpunching is, and that’s what Horowitz shines a Klieg light on.

For three years, Trump’s supporters have put up with what Blitz chronicles: the vicious innuendos against, potty-mouthed slanders of, and outright lies about the man they put in the White House. Feigning fear he wouldn’t accept the results of the 2016 election, Leftists in the academedia complex have demonstrated repeatedly that they wouldn’t and didn’t.

There’s nothing so vile they won’t impute to him, his family, and those who work for him. Modeling a derangement syndrome not yet listed in the Physicians’ Desk Reference, Democrats project onto him the defects they major in. Trump has survived a battery of personal attacks that would have felled lesser men. It’s useful to have its details arrayed compactly in one place. Even those familiar with them need to be reminded of them.

Passing in review are the stages of the coup that began even before its object materialized: from its inception in the counterintelligence effort against Trump and his campaign (which only Obama’s White House could have authorized), with every vendor of mainstream opinion cheering it on; the rival-financed foreign intelligence, even as foreign collusion was imputed to him; the predicateless FISA “investigations”; to the hysterical cries of “illegitimacy” and the importuning of electors to be faithless; the Mueller “investigation,” whose “investigators” knew they had no foundation; through the Ukrainian phone call fiasco, to the impeachment farce that distracted Washington from the Beijing-spawned and -spread virus that became a global pandemic.

Horowitz reminds readers of the reputation Trump enjoyed long before he announced his candidacy: the businessman who kept an eye on how the world in which he made his fortune works, who never hesitated to voice his disgust with the way the New York’s liberal establishment (of which he had been arguably a member in good standing) ran his city and country (that is, into the ground). The promoter (and terminator) of a string of apprentices was a pop icon, a favorite of the very people who now vilify him.

Given his record of success, however, especially among African Americans—criminal justice reform (now undoing the mass-incarcerating effects of the legislation Joe Biden co-wrote), the First Step Act, Opportunity Zones, record low unemployment, and so on—the Black column holding up the edifice of vilification is cracking. If it crumbles, costing the Democrats another ten percent of the Black vote, it’s over for them. (For details, see my Amazon review of Robinson and Eberle’s Coming Home: How Black Americans Will Re-Elect Trump.) No wonder the Left is going berserk on all platforms, all issues, throwing everything against the wall to see what, if anything will stick. So far, nothing has.

For those who like numbered lists, Horowitz appends two. The first is “The Nine Biggest Dangers to America from the Anti-Trump Left”: Resistance; Identity Politics; Open Borders; Green Communism; Communist Health Care; Support for Criminals and Contempt for the Law; Hostility to Religious Liberty and the First Amendment; Support for America’s Enemies; and Attack on America’s Heritage.

The second: “The Top Ten Lies the Democrats Have Told You.” Each charge is reversible, and Horowitz reverses them all, concisely and unanswerably: Republicans Are Racists; Democrats Care About Minorities; Republicans Betrayed the Constitution; Democrats Care About Minorities; Slavery and Racism Are America’s True Heritage; The Iran Deal Prevented Iran from Getting Nuclear Weapons; Donald Trump Colluded with the Russians; Republicans Are Religious Bigots; The “Green New Deal” Is Scandinavian Socialism; Israel Occupies Palestine; Single-Payer Health Care Is a Human Right. Even Trumpistas who think they know how to refute these canards will benefit from Horowitz’s refresher course. (For instance, this reviewer.)

“From the beginning of the Resistance to Trump,” as Horowitz concludes Blitz, “Democrat attacks on the president have been attac
ks on America’s foundations: resistance to the results of a fair and free election; abetting a deep state coup to undermine the presidency, and the pursuit of a transparently sham impeachment. All this added up to a campaign of baseless slanders against the nation’s commander-in-chief, worthy of America’s most determined enemies. Collectively these constitute the greatest crime against America committed by its own citizens since the Civil War.”

This November Americans will have an opportunity to repel those attacks. Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win provides an armamentarium for the counterattack.

David French, Donald Trump, Christianity, and Politics

David French maintains that Christians cannot, if they are to remain true to Christian teachings, support Donald Trump:

The proper way for Christians to engage in politics is a rich subject . . . but there are some rather simple foundational principles that apply before the questions get complex. For example, all but a tiny few believers would agree that a Christian should not violate the Ten Commandments or any other clear, biblical command while pursuing or exercising political power.

But of course we see such behavior all the time from hardcore Christian Trump supporters. They’ll echo Trump’s lies. They’ll defend Trump’s lies. They’ll adopt many of his same rhetorical tactics, including engaging in mocking and insulting behavior as a matter of course.

Farther down:

I fully recognize what I’m saying. I fully recognize that refusing to hire a hater and refusing to hire a liar carries costs. If we see politics through worldly eyes, it makes no sense at all. Why would you adopt moral standards that put you at a disadvantage in an existential political struggle? If we don’t stand by Trump we will lose, and losing is unacceptable. (Emphasis added.)

French has just touched upon the deepest issue in this debate.  He is right that it makes no sense for conservative Christians not to support Trump if politics is seen through worldly eyes. The question, however, is whether one can avoid doing so. Can one see politics and pursue it through unworldly eyes?  Can one participate in politics at any level, and especially at the higher levels, while adhering strictly and unwaveringly to Christian principles and precepts and while practicing Christian virtues?  Can one combine contemptus mundi with political action?

I don't believe that this is possible.

Christian precepts such as "Turn the other cheek" and "Welcome the stranger" make sense and are salutary only within communities of the like-minded and morally decent; they make no sense and are positively harmful in the public sphere, and, a fortiori, in the international sphere.  The monastery is not the wide world.  What is conducive unto salvation in the former will get you killed in the latter.  And we know what totalitarians, whether Communists or Islamists, do when they get power: they destroy the churches, synagogues, monasteries, ashrams, and zendos. And with them are destroyed the means of transmitting the dharma, the kerygma, the law and the prophets.  

An important but troubling thought is conveyed in a recent NYT op-ed (emphasis added):

Machiavelli teaches that in a world where so many are not good, you must learn to be able to not be good. The virtues taught in our secular and religious schools are incompatible with the virtues one must practice to safeguard those same institutions. The power of the lion and the cleverness of the fox: These are the qualities a leader must harness to preserve the republic.

The problem referenced in the bolded sentence is very serious but may have no solution.  That's the aporetician in me speaking. 

The problem as I see it is that (i) the pacific virtues the practice of which makes life worth living within families, between friends, and in such institutions of civil society as churches and fraternal organizations  are essentially private and cannot be extended outward as if we are all brothers and sisters belonging to a global community.  Talk of  global community is blather.  The institutions of civil society can survive and flourish only if protected by warriors and statesmen whose virtues are of the manly and martial, not of the womanish and pacific, sort. And yet (ii) if no  extension beyond the private of the pacific virtues is possible. then humanity would seem to be doomed  in an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.  Besides, it is unsatisfactory that there be two moralities, one private, the other public.

I say that we need to face the problem honestly.

Consider the Christian virtues preached by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.  They include humility, meekness, love of righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, love of peace and of reconciliation.  Everyone who must live uncloistered in the world understands that these pacific and essentially womanish virtues have but limited application there.  Indeed, their practice can get you killed. (I am not using 'womanish' as a derogatory qualifier.)

Si vis pacem . . .You may love peace, but unless you are prepared to make war upon your enemies and show them no mercy, you may not be long for this world.  Turning the other cheek makes sense within a loving family, but no sense in the wider world.  (Would the Pope turn the other cheek if the Vatican came under attack by Muslim terrorists or would he call upon the armed might of the Italian state?)  My point is perfectly obvious in the case of states: they are in the state (condition) of nature with respect to each other. Each state secures by blood and iron a civilized space within which art and music and science and scholarship can flourish and wherein, ideally, blood does not flow; but these states and their civilizations battle each other in the state (condition) of nature red in tooth and claw.  Talk of world government or United Nations is globalist blather that hides the will to power of those who would seize control of the world government. United under which umbrella of values and principles and presuppositions?

What values do we share with the Muslim world? Do they accept the Enlightenment values enshrined in our founding documents? Obviously not.  Christianity has civilized us to some extent. Has Islam civilized them? Their penology is barbaric as is their attitude toward other cultures and religions. 

The Allies would not have been long for this world had they not been merciless in their treatment of the Axis Powers.  

Israel would have ceased to exist long ago had Israelis not been ruthless in their dealing with Muslim terrorists bent on her destruction.

This is also true of individuals once they move beyond their families and friends and genuine communities and sally forth into the wider world. 

The problem is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245):

     The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all
     earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular
     — be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been
     frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended
     protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of
     the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the
     wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned
     against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who
     for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good
     for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for
     others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth
     interests of the community.) [Arendt cites the Nicomachean Ethics,
     Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]

There is a tension  between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen.  As a philosopher raised in Christianity, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian  "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare.

This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to  influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops many of whom are woefully ignorant of the simple points Arendt makes in the passage quoted. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.

What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his  perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I   cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug smuggler or a human trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law breaking. I must be concerned with public order.  This order is among  the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's law breaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" as the New Testament enjoins us to do.

Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops  and others who confuse private and public morality. 

David French is such a one.

Bernie the Buffoon’s Borscht Belt Bushwa

We will hear it no more. His is the last spasm of state-side socialism that speaks its name plain. The coming brew will be of the stealth-ideological variety. Comrade Bernie has bowed out to make way for Biden the Senile. 

Long ago, my friends, in the fabulous and far-off days of Camelot and for some time thereafter, everyone called it the Democratic Party, and it was no joke. It has now petered out into the precincts of left-wing lunacy achieving what is perhaps the absolute nadir of political self-enstupidation.   The Democrats have become Dementocrats. The Ragin' Cajun must be gnashing his teeth down in the bayou while in the enclaves of the sane there is much jubilation, but also much speculation as to what the Dementocrat operatives have up their sleeves.

Lay in your supply of popcorn before the hoarders get it.

The really fascinating case, however, is Elizabeth Warren, who had an excellent shot at the nomination before she committed suicide by intersectionality as I observe in Did Sexism Bring Elizabeth Warren Down?

 

Nancy Pelosi and other Corona Meltdowns

Victor Davis Hanson lays into Nancy Pelosi with severity, but with justice:

Nancy Pelosi: Gone are the mythologies that Nancy Pelosi was a pragmatic liberal voice of reason among the otherwise polarizing American Left, honed after years of paying her dues to the Democratic Party, as the mother of five dutifully ascended the party’s cursus honorum.

It does not matter whether her political and ethical decline was a result of her deep pathological hatred of Donald Trump. Who cares that her paranoia arose over the so-called “Squad” that might align with socialist Bernie Sanders to mesmerize Democrats to march over the cliff into McGovern-like oblivion? All concede that very few octogenarians have the stamina and clarity to put in the 16-hour work-days and transcontinental travel required by a Speaker of the House.

Instead, all that matters is that for a nation in extremis she is now puerile, even unhinged—and increasingly dangerous.

Continue reading “Nancy Pelosi and other Corona Meltdowns”

Anthony Flood Reviews David Horowitz, Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America

Excerpts:

Cultural Marxism is but the latest form of the cultural cancer now metastasizing throughout the body politic. (Marxism-Leninism was only the deadliest form, not the first, but even today old-fashioned Communism does not lack adherents.) That the Democratic Party is now this malignancy’s host is the grim, but well-documented, conclusion of Horowitz’s long literary career.

In Dark Agenda’s last chapter, Horowitz puts forward the metaphor of civil war to define what might be in front of us. It’s a possible outcome of the divisions that beset us and which we’re all supposed to want to “heal.” One prosecutes a war, however, not to heal one’s enemies, but rather to incapacitate them.

For Americans only the Age of Lincoln offers the closest comparison to our parlous state. But shall Christians and their Jewish allies (agnostic and observant alike) prepare for military conflict and await—or initiate—our Fort Sumter? Is it not quixotic to put all our eggs in the electoral consensus-building basket? Are we restricted to chronicling our enemies’ crimes, as Horowitz has masterfully done in dozens of popular and scholarly tomes? Urgency calls forth a response, but if Horowitz has an idea of how Americans might defeat the Left’s dark agenda, he doesn’t share it here. No suggested plan of action follows the note of urgency he sounds.

In the third paragraph, Flood touches upon a point that troubles me as well. We have reams of incisive conservative commentary on what the Left has wrought but precious little by way of concrete proposals for ameliorative action by individuals. In  fairness to Horowitz, however, it needs noting that in the concluding chapters of Big Agenda (Humanix 2017), he lists various things the Republican party and President Trump can do. So he does outline a plan of action, and he is appropriately combative:

The movement galvanized by Trump can stop the progressive juggernaut and change the American future, but only if it emulates the strategy of the campaign: Be on the offense; take no prisoners; stay on the attack. To stop the Democrats and their societal transformation, Republicans must adhere to a strategy that begins with a punch in the mouth. That punch must pack an emotional wallop large enough to throw them off balance and neutralize their assaults. It must be framed as a moral indictment that stigmatizes them in the way their attacks stigmatize Republicans. It must expose them for their hypocrisy. It must hold them accountable for the divisions they sow and the suffering they cause. (Big Agenda, Humanix, 2017, p. 142)

Still and all, I would like to see a list of what individuals can do beyond voting and writing letters and blog posts.  Does Tony Flood have any suggestions?  I suppose I myself should put up or shut up while well aware of the dangers of saying anything that might incite violence among the unhinged. (But violence is being done every day by leftists to the unborn and to our Constitutional rights and sacred American values). So here are three suggestions, just to keep this post short. I invite Tony to e-mail me with any thoughts he may have.

  • Buy guns and learn how to use them. The idea here is deterrence and not aggression. A well-armed populace is a mighty check against both the criminal element that leftists work to empower, and against leftists themselves and their agents. We can demoralize them without firing a shot. Call it winning through intimidation. They will never respect us, but they can be brought to fear us. (An analysis of respect might show that fear is is a large part of it.) Grandmaster Nimzowitsch's remark is apropos: "The threat is stronger than the execution."  2A is concrete back-up for 1A and all the rest of our rights. Leftists know this. This explains the mindlessness and mendacity of their confiscatory assault on our Second Amendment rights.  
  • Vote with your feet and your wallet.  Leave blue localities and let them languish in the feculence their policies have birthed, and bring your money and tax dollars to healthy places. 
  • Defund the Left. For example, refuse to support your leftist alma mater, to use a border-line pleonastic expression.      

Flood's review concludes:

Of course, Dark Agenda is no more an essay on spirituality than on political philosophy. The case it makes, however, cries out for at least a hint of the response that its author believes will meet this greatest of all challenges. If there’s no political way to overcome the darkness, only the spiritual route is left.

Yet David Horowitz leaves this tension unresolved. For him, the Christian Scriptures are not (as far as I know) a source of divinely revealed truth; Christianity is but the historically contingent arrangement that works for people who happen to love instead of hate Western civilization; things don’t go any deeper than that. Am I wrong about him?

Like all human arrangements, however, Western Civ will eventually pass away into the void out of which all things, including humans, allegedly emerged . . . unless the Christian worldview is overarchingly true. Maybe Horowitz has one more book in him in which he can address this question. But I’d prefer to be shown that something in his vast literary oeuvre already has.

Having read more Horowitz than Tony has, I believe he is right in the second paragraph lately quoted.

And I am sympathetic with the third paragraph, though not with Flood's enthusiasm for Van Til. See the entries in my Van Til and Presuppositionalism category. 

Finally, I have a deep-going analytic post on Horowitz' agnosticism as he presents it in Dark Agenda. See Five Grades of Agnosticism.