Politics – Page 49 – Maverick Philosopher

Tribal America

One of my darker thoughts is that in the end tribal allegiances trump whatever people piously imagine unites us. For a time the great American experiment worked. People assimilated under the aegis of e pluribus unum. People valued liberty over material equality. But now talk of these ideals seems quaint to a growing number. Books like Dennis Prager's latest that celebrate them may have come too late. We may have passed the tipping point toward the descent into tribalism. We shall see.

Blut und Boden shouldn't matter but it does to leftists. Here is an excerpt from my The Hyphenated American (link below):

The liberal-left emphasis on blood and ethnicity and origins and social class is dangerous and divisive. Suppose you come from Croatia. Is that something to be proud of? You had to be born somewhere of some set of parents. It wasn't your doing. It is an element of your facticity. Be proud of the accomplishments that individuate you, that make you an individual, as opposed to a member of a tribe. Celebrate your freedom, not your facticity.

If you must celebrate diversity, celebrate a diversity of ideas and a diversity of individuals, not a diversity of races and ethnicities and groups. Celebrate individual thinking, not 'group-think.' The Left in its perversity has it backwards. They emphasize the wrong sort of diversity while ignoring the right kind. They go to crazy lengths to promote the wrong kind while squelching diversity of thought and expression with their speech codes and political correctness.

A Case for Voluntary Segregation

This old entry, from about a year and half ago, has gained in relevance after Obama's reelection. Here it is again re-titled and revised.

………………………

Another fit topic of rumination on this Independence Day 2011 is the question of voluntary segregation or balkanization. Herewith, a few very preliminary remarks.

I have been inclining toward the view that voluntary segregation, in conjunction with a return to federalism, might be a way to ease tensions and prevent conflict in a country increasingly riven by deep-going differences. We need to face the fact that we do not agree on a large number of divisive, passion-inspiring issues. Among these are abortion, gun rights, capital punishment, affirmative action, legal and illegal immigration, taxation, the need for fiscal responsibility in government, the legitimacy of public-sector unions, wealth redistribution, the role of the federal government in education, the purpose of government, the limits, if any, on governmental power, and numerous others.

We need also to face the fact that we will never agree on them. These are not merely 'academic' issues since they directly affect the lives and livelihoods and liberties of people. And they are not easily resolved because they are deeply rooted in fundamental worldview differences, in a "conflict of visions," to borrow a phrase from Thomas Sowell. When you violate a man's liberty, or mock his moral sense, or threaten to destroy his way of life, you are spoiling for a fight and you will get it.

We ought also to realize that calls for civility and comity and social cohesion are pretty much empty. Comity (social harmony) in whose terms? On what common ground? Peace is always possible if one side just gives in. If conservatives all converted to leftism, or vice versa, then harmony would reign. But to think such a thing will happen is just silly, as silly as the silly hope that Obama, a leftist, could 'bring us together.' We can come together only on common ground, only under the umbrella of shared principles. And what would these be?

There is no point in papering over very real differences.

Consider religion. Is it a value or not? Conservatives, even those who are atheistic and irreligious, tend to view religion as a value, asa good thing, as conducive to human flourishing. Liberals and leftists tend to view it as a disvalue, as something that impedes human flourishing. Some go so far as to consider it "the greatest social evil." The question is not whether religion, or rather some particular religion, is true. Nor is the question whether religion, or some particular religion, is rationally defensible. The question is whether the teaching and learning and practice of a religion contributes to our well-being, not just as individuals, but in our relations with others. For example, would we be better off as a society if every vestige of religion were removed from the public square? Does Bible study tend to make us better people?

The conservative will answer no and yes respectively and will feel sure that he is right. For example, as a conservative, I find it utterly absurd that there has been any fight at all over the Mojave cross, and I have utter contempt for the ACLU shysters who brought the original law suit. Of course, I wholeheartedly endorse the initial clause of the First Amendment, to wit, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ." But it is hate-America leftist extremism on stilts to think that the presence of that very old memorial cross on a hill in the middle nowhere does anything to establish Christianity as the state religion. I consider anyone who believes that to be intellectually obtuse and morally repellent.

As for whether sincere Bible study makes us better, isn't that obvious? Will you be so bold as to maintain that someone who has taken to heart the Ten Commandments will not have been improved thereby? If you do maintain this, then you are precisely the sort of person contact with whom would be pointless or worse, precisely the sort of person right thinking people need to segregate themselves from, for the sake of peace.

The leftist will give opposite answers to the two questions with equal confidence. There is no possibility of mediation here. That is a fact that can't be blinked while mouthing the squishy, bien-pensant, feel-good rhetoric of 'coming together.' Again, on what common ground? Under the aegis of which set of shared principles? There can be no 'coming together' with those whose views one believes are pernicious. A man like A. C Grayling holds views that are not merely false, but pernicious. He of course would return the 'compliment.'

If we want peace, therefore, we need to give each other space by adopting federalism and limiting government interference in our lives, and by voluntary segregation: by simply having nothing to do with people with whom there is no point in interacting given unbridgeable differences.

Unfortunately, the Left, with its characteristic totalitarian tendency, will not allow federalism. But we still have the right of free association and voluntary segregation. At least for the time being.

No doubt there are disadvantages to segregation/balkanization. Exclusive association with the like-minded increases polarization and fosters extremism. See here. The linked piece ends with the following suggestion:

Bishop cites research suggesting that, contrary to the standard goo-goo exhortations, the surer route to political comity may be less civic engagement, less passionate conviction. So let’s hear it for the indifferent and unsure, whose passivity may provide the national glue we need.

Now that is the sort of preternatural idiocy one expects from the NYT. Less civic engagement! The reason there is more civic engagement and more contention is because there is more government interference! The Tea Party movement is a prime example. The solution is less government. As I have said more than once, the bigger the government the more to fight over. The solution is for government to back off, not for the citizenry to acquiesce like sheep in the curtailment of their liberties.

You may have noticed the paradox: Civic engagement is needed to get to the point where we don't need to engage civically with people we find repellent.

It’s the Welfare State, Stupid

When one reads a piece by Robert Samuleson, one feels oneself in the presence of a clear, penetrating, and honest intellect:

By all means, let's avoid the "fiscal cliff": the $500 billion in tax increases and federal spending cuts scheduled for early 2013 that, if they occurred, might trigger a recession. But let's recognize that we still need to bring the budget into long-term balance. This can't be done only by higher taxes on the rich, which seem inevitable. Nor can it be done by deep cuts in defense and domestic "discretionary" programs (from highways to schools), which are already happening. It requires controlling the welfare state. In 2011, "payments for individuals," including health care, constituted 65 percent of federal spending, up from 21 percent in 1955. That's the welfare state.

Compare Samuelson to the leftist ideologue, Paul Krugman:

It’s not just the fact that the deficit scolds have been wrong about everything so far. Recent events have also demonstrated clearly what was already apparent to careful observers: the deficit-scold movement was never really about the deficit. Instead, it was about using deficit fears to shred the social safety net.

From Samuelson, we learn something. We get facts, figures, cogent arguments. From Krugman, we get an ad hominem attack. The fiscal hawks, we are in effect told, are motivated by a dastardly desire to "shred the social safety net," not by any objective economic considerations. Krugman impugns their motives while ignoring their arguments.

I am not opposed to the impugning of motives in all cases. It is legitimate to do so when the other side has no arguments or has transparently worthless ones. In earlier posts I impugned the motives of those who oppose photo ID at polling places, but only after I carefully argued for such ID procedures and refuted the flimsy 'arguments' of the oppostion.

Go read the two articles in question and decide for yourself who is talking sense.

Robert Reich on the New American Civil War

Robert Reich bemoans the New American Civil War as he calls it:

I know families in which close relatives are no longer speaking. A dating service says Democrats won’t even consider going out with Republicans, and vice-versa. My email and twitter feeds contain messages from strangers I wouldn’t share with my granddaughter.

What’s going on? Yes, we’re divided over issues like the size of government and whether women should have control over their bodies. But these aren’t exactly new debates. [. . .] And we’ve had bigger disagreements in the past – over the Vietnam War, civil rights, communist witch hunts – that didn’t rip us apart like this.

Part of the reason that there is a 'civil war' is because of people like Reich and their inability to fairly present the issues that divide us.

He mentions the abortion issue. It is not about whether women should have control over their bodies. Of course they should. It is about whether the fetus growing inside a woman is a part of her body in a sense of 'part' that would permit her to dispose of it the way she would dispose of unwanted fat through liposuction. Reich is not unintelligent: he is capable of understanding the issue. But he is intellectually dishonest: he does not present the issue objectively and fairly. He distorts it like the typical leftist ideologue he is. (See here for my refutation of the 'woman's body' argument.)

He does the very same thing with his talk of "communist witch hunts." That phrase implies that there was no communist infiltration of the U. S. government. But that was precisely the question. The phrase he employs is a question-begging epithet. Why? Well, there are no witches. So if you call something a witch hunt then you are implying that it is a hunt for something that doesn't exist. There is also the implication that the people conducting this search have some ulterior motive such as the desire to suppress all dissent.

The same goes for the phrase 'Red Scare' beloved of the Left. The phrase implies that there was no threat to our gvernment posed by communists. But again that was the very question, a question that is begged by the use of the phrase 'Red Scare.' As a matter of fact, it was not a mere scare, but a real threat. So 'Red Threat' is the proper phrase. After all, we now know that the Rosenbergs were Soviet spies and that Alger Hiss was a communist.

My point is that Reich is not intellectually honest. He understands the issues but he refuses to present them objectively and fairly. He is nothing but a leftist ideologue. And notice the tone of his piece. It begins with a gratuitous smear against Sarah Palin.

The piece ends with Reich's playing of the race card. So typical.

So while bemoaning the 'new American civil war,' he fuels it by his own contemptible behavior.

Why We are Headed for a Fiscal Cliff

A short video. It explains the difference between discretionary and mandatory spending and why not even mandatory spending is covered by tax revenues. Mandatory spending comprises the entitlements and the interest on the national debt. A balanced budget is not possible given the way the government is currently structured. A re-design is needed. It must begin by a posing of the question: What is the proper role of government?

This philosophical question will be neither seriously posed by the people in power, nor answered. And so it is is to be expected that we will go off the cliff. I am talking about the ultimate cliff, not the one coming in early 2013 when $500 billion in tax increases and federal spending cuts are scheduled to kick in.

So you might think that Romney's loss is of no real consequence. It just doesn't matter who presides over the collapse. But if you are headed for a cliff and certain death, would you rather be mounted on a nimble Obama jackass or a plodding Romney elephant? In the long run we're dead. But later is better than sooner. There is more time to prepare.

And there is more time for the owl of Minerva to ascend and survey the passing scene until she too must pass away.

Take it Like a Man

Here via Andrew Klavan.

Gentlemen Lose Against Thugs

Here.

Kevin Kim on the Mourning of the Morning After

Kevin Kim has been following me since late 2003 before I was a proper blogger commencing 4 May 2004 and only a mere slogger (slow blogger without the proper software: I'd upload batches of short posts to a website that I have long since taken down).

In his Conservatives Mourn, Kevin links to me, Malcolm Pollack, and Bill Keezer, and then asks:

Come on, gents– surely you saw this coming?

Well, I didn't for a second think that there would be a landslide in favor of Romney, and I was puzzled by the cocksure pronunciamentos of Dick Morris and others who made up for their lack of crystal balls by displaying their brass balls. But no, I didn't think the Obama win was inevitable, especially after his miserable showing in the first debate. I thought Romney had a good chance of winning given all the objective considerations that condemn Obama, the litany of which I will not again recite. If I was naive, it was because I foolishly underestimated the foolishness of the electorate and how it has been dumbed-down and stupefied by the flim-flam man and his empty rhetoric and outright lies and promises of all sorts of goodies that he is going to get the rich bastards to pay for.

Bill Keezer, whom I have met in the flesh a couple of times and who truly deserves (as does Pollack) the epithet 'gentleman,' speaks in his post of civil war:

If you go back through my blogs for the past few months, you will see the prediction of a coming civil war. The differences in the red vs. the blue states is now so fundamental, that I think civil war is quite possible. I also think the red states will win, hands down. They still have the values that make for effective soldiering. Imagine street gangs against disciplined, seasoned fighters. There will be no contest, and if the red states take mercy on the blue, woe to both. It is time for justice. (A concern of the last couple of blog posts, which is not moot.)

God help us if Bill is right and the present war of words and votes ramps up into a shooting war. Leftists need to be careful. If push comes to shove, and shove to shoot, the Red Staters will clean your clock. After all, they have the guns.

How can we avoid tearing ourselves apart? My recommendation is a return to federalism. But of course the Left, which is totalitarian from the ground up, won't allow that. And so we may be in for some 'excitement.'

Addenda:

1. Obama wins, gun stocks soar.

2. Ed Feser joins the mourning and adds some recrimination in his meaty post, Chief Justice Ockham. Be sure to follow the internal "Razor Boy" link.

3. Malcolm Pollack points us to a couple posts of his more substantial than the one linked to above. Here and here.

Bread, Circuses, and Decline

This from an English reader commenting on my owl of Minerva post:

America's fondness for bread and circuses is by no means singular and all may be well for a while, as Theodore Dalrymple observed, at least as long as the bread holds out. Yet the twilight quickly becomes darkness and after the owl of Minerva takes off, what then? Some sort of apocalypse seems overdue – but I rather feebly hope not in my lifetime.

Philosophers, for the time being, have their consolations; but when the multitude howls for 'bread' and at the same time burns down the bakeries, for how long will gentlemen and scholars be permitted the peace and quiet in which to enjoy their books, music, and speculations?

I'm glad that I'm on my way out rather than on my way in because the decline of American civilization will affect the whole world.

Best Wishes from one depressed. . . .

A genuine apocalypse, that is, a revelation ab extra of a Meaning hitherto hidden and inaccessible to us, might be a good thing. Nur ein Gott kann uns retten, said Martin Heidegger in his Spiegel interview near the end of his life. But I fear all we will get is a descent into brutality and chaos. There is, I agree, consolation for the old: I am very happy to be 62 rather than 26. One can hope to be dead before it all comes apart. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am in the habit of taking care of myself and could be facing another 25 years entangled in the mortal coil. When barbarism descends this will be no country for old men.

In the earlier entry I wasn't reflecting on the possibility of the utter collapse of the U.S. but on the more likely possibility of decline to the level of a European welfare state whose citizens come increasingly to resemble Nietzsche's Last Men.

I fully agree that Minervic flights and the consolations of philosophy cannot be enjoyed when the barbarians are at the gates of one's stoa. The owl of Minerva is a tough old bird, but no phoenix capable of rising from its ashes.

I myself have argued more than once in these pages that conservatives, especially those of them given to contemplative pursuits, need to make their peace with activism in order to secure and defend the spaces of their quietism.

Libertarians are the Ralph Naders of the Conservative Side

I just heard Dennis Prager say that on his radio show. Exactly right. The point is to do good, not feel good about yourself by making some meaningless, ineffectual, narcissistic, self-congratulatory, adolescent 'statement.' It is a futile gesture to 'stand on principle' and 'vote your conscience' when the candidate representing your principles is unelectable. Politics is not about theoretical purity but about practical efficacy.

I would add to Prager's thought that, even if libertarian ideas were better than conservative ideas — and they are not inasmuch as what is good in libertarianism is already included in conservatism – it would remain foolish to vote for libertarians. It would be a case of letting the better and the best become the enemy of the good. If you vote for the unelectable candidate with better ideas over the electable candidate with good ideas, then you have done something manifestly foolish.

There is another side to this argument, however. The following is from Andrew P. Napolitano, a man I respect:

Can one morally vote for the lesser of two evils? In a word, no. A basic principle of Judeo-Christian teaching and of the natural law to which the country was married by the Declaration of Independence is that one may not knowingly do evil that good may come of it. So, what should a libertarian do?

If you recognize as I do that the Bush and Obama years have been horrendous for personal freedom, for the soundness of money and for fidelity to the Constitution, you can vote for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. He is on the ballot in 48 states. He is a principled libertarian on civil liberties, on money, on war and on fidelity to the Constitution. But he is not going to be elected.

So, is a vote for Johnson or no vote at all wasted? I reject the idea that a principled vote is wasted. Your vote is yours, and so long as your vote is consistent with your conscience, it is impossible to waste your vote.

On the other hand, even a small step toward the free market and away from the Obama years of central economic planning would be at least a small improvement for every American’s freedom. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. That is Romney’s best argument. I suspect it will carry the day next Tuesday.

I am afraid the good judge does not understand the phrase 'lesser of two evils' in this context. It does not imply that the candidates are evil, but that, while both are imperfect, the one is better than the other. Both Romney and Obama are highly imperfect. In an ideal world, the choice would not be between them. (Indeed, in an ideal world there would be no need for government at all, and no need to choose any candidates for any offices.) But one candidate (Romney) is less imperfect than the other. In this sense, Romney is the lesser of two evils, i.e., the least imperfect of two imperfect candidates.

But this sense is consistent with the principle that one may not knowingly do evil that good come of it.

Napolitano claims that it is impossible to waste one's vote as long as one votes one's conscience. But this ignores the point I have repeatedly made, namely, that voting and politics generally is a practical business: it is about accomplishing something concrete in the world as it actually is. It is about doing good, not feeling good about yourself. Once that is understood, it is crystal clear that to vote for an unelectable candidate is to waste one's vote.

This is especially obvious when Republicans lose to Democrats because Libertarians voted for unelectable Libertarians instead of electable Republicans. There were a couple of cases like that in yesterday's election. Such Libertarians not only wasted their votes, they positively made things worse.

The Owl of Minerva Spreads its Wings at Dusk

Obama won, conservatism lost, and a tipping point has been reached in America's decline. Our descent into twilight and beyond is probably now irreversible. The economy is bad, the opposition fought hard and well, and the incompetent leftist won anyway. Why? The Left promises panem and the culture's circenses have kept the masses distracted from higher concerns and real thought. That's the answer in a sentence.

Should any of this trouble the philosopher? Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous phrase that comes down to us from Plato's Republic (486a). The rise and fall of great nations is just more grist for the philosopher's mill. His true homeland is nothing so paltry as a particular nation, even one as exceptional as the USA, and his fate as a truth-seeker cannot be tied to its fate. Like the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Athens is not bound to a geographical location.

National decline is not just grist for the philosopher's mill, however, it is also perhaps a condition of understanding as Hegel suggests in the penultimate paragraph of the preface to The Philosophy of Right:

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk.

Daughter of Jupiter, Minerva in the mythology of the Greeks is the goddess of wisdom. And the nocturnal owl is one of its ancient symbols. The meaning of the Hegelian trope is that understanding, insight, wisdom arise when the object to be understood has played itself out, when it has actualized and thus exhausted its potentialities, and now faces only decline.

When a shape of life has grown old, philosophy paints its grey on grey. The allusion is to Goethe's Faust wherein Mephisto says

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Grey, dear friend, is all theory
And green the golden tree of life.

Philosophy is grey, a "bloodless ballet of categories" (F. H. Bradley) and its object is grey — no longer green and full of life. And so philosophy paints its grey concepts on the grey object, in this case America on the wane. The object must be either dead or moribund before it can be fully understood. Hegel in his famous saying re-animates and gives a new meaning to the Platonic "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

In these waning days of a great republic, the owl of Minerva takes flight. What we lose in vitality we gain in wisdom.

The consolations of philosophy are many.

My Campaign Sign

Subtle, eh? I thought of placing two such chairs side by side, the second to signify the vacuity of the benighted and mendacious Joe Biden, but then I thought that might confuse people.

Did you vote? Of course, I don't want any of you liberal knuckleheads to vote thereby canceling out the thoughtful votes of conservatives, but I do defend your right to vote.

Is voting a civic duty? Think of it this way. You have benefited all your life from the rule of law and from living and flourishing in a relatively well-ordered society. And you don't feel any obligation to do your bit to preserve and protect that order?

Does it matter whether you vote? Well, does it matter who the sheriff of your county is, or which judges are retained?

Vote Libertarian, Waste a Vote

Did you perchance vote for Gary Johnson for president? Then you wasted your vote on an unelectable candidate and helped Barack Obama's re-election.

The truth of a view does not depend on its popularity. But the political implementation of a view does depend on the electability of the candidate or candidates who represent it. If politics were merely theoretical, merely an exercise in determining how a well-ordered state should be structured, then implementation would not matter at all. But politics is practical, not theoretical: it aims at action that implements the view deemed best. Someone who votes for an unelectable candidate demonstrates by so doing that he does not understand the nature of politics.

Even if Johnson is electable in the sense of (i) satisfying the formal requirements for being president, and (ii) being worthy of the office, he is not electable in the specific sense here in play, namely, possessing a practical chance of winning.

When one votes for any unelectable candidate one merely squanders one's vote. If you are a libertarian, then your views are closer to those of Romney than to those of Obama. By voting for the unelectable Johnson, you help someone win whose views are diametrically opposed to your own instead of helping one whose views are partially consonant with your own. Now that is stupid, is it not? It shows a lack of practical sense.

If you won't vote for an candidate that does not perfectly represent your views, then either

A. you are a utopian who fails to understand that politics is about action, not theory, in the world as it is, as opposed to some merely imagined world; or

B. you falsely think there is no difference between the major party candidates.

The same reasoning applies to those who vote for Jill Stein. You are wasting your vote on an unelectable candidate. You are making a statement all right, but nobody cares and it won't matter. But I hope you lefties do vote for her: you will be helping Obama lose.