Politics – Page 49 – Maverick Philosopher

The Four Gs

Conservative: God, guns, gold, grub

Libertarian: guns, gold, grub, grass

Liberal: government, government, government, government.

On Being 26 Rather Than 62

W. K. writes,

You recently mentioned your being very happy, given what's wrong with the world, to be 62 rather than 26; I am 26. Although, sadly, I think liberalism will run until it destroys itself as a parasite that destroys its host, this metaphysical fact of evil's being self-destructive is reason enough for hope. People have always sensed that the world is falling apart, because in a sense it always has been, but even greater than the mystery of evil is the mystery of goodness. Rather than regretting my being 26 rather than 62, I remember, in my Mavphil-inspired gratitude exercises, that the cruelest regime in the history of mankind fell during my lifetime.

I have always believed that Good and Evil are not opposites on a par, but that somehow Good is more fundamental and that Evil is somehow derivative or interstitial or parasitic or privative. The Thomist doctrine of evil as privatio boni is one way of explaining this relation, though that doctrine is open to objections.

So I agree with my correspondent that, in the end, Good triumphs. Unfortunately, it is a long way to the end, a long march along a via dolorosa with many stations of suffering. I don't relish making that journey. Hence my satisfaction at the thought that my life is, most likely, three-quarters over. As I said in that post-election post,

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.

I too am grateful that the Evil Empire fell during my lifetime. But now we have an incompetent jackass in the White House, a hard-core leftist, who was given four more years by a foolish electorate for whom panem et circenses are the supreme desiderata. Innocent of the ways of world, trapped in leftist fantasy land, he is the polar opposite of Ronald Reagan. We are in deep trouble.

But I do not counsel despair. We live by hope, within this life and beyond it. We shall hope on and fight on.

Politics is War and Conservatives Need to Learn How to Fight

The Left accepts and lives by what I call the Converse Clausewitz Principle: Politics is war conducted by other means. (Von Clausewitz's famous remark was to the effect that war is politics conducted by other means.) The party that ought to be opposing the Left, the Republicans, apparently does not believe that this is what politics is. This puts them at a serious disadvantage.

David Horowitz, commenting on "Politics is war conducted by other means," writes:

In political warfare you do not just fight to prevail in an argument, but rather to destroy the enemy's fighting ability. Republicans often seem to regard political combats as they would a debate before the Oxford Political Union, as though winning depended on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles. But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.

You have only thirty seconds to make your point. Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention) would not get it. Your words would go over some of their
heads and the rest would not even hear them (or quickly forget) amidst the bustle and pressure of everyday life. Worse, while you are making your argument the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, borderline racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich. Nobody who sees you in this way is going to listen to you in any case. You are politically dead.

Politics is war. Don't forget it. ("The Art of Political War" in Left Illusions: An
Intellectual Odyssey Spence 2003, pp. 349-350)

Because politics is war, conservatives, if they want to win, must deploy the same tactics the lefties
deploy. Joe SixPack does not watch C-Span or read The Weekly Standard. He won't sit still for Newt Gingrich as this former history professor calmly articulates conservative principles. Joe needs to be fired up and energized. The Left understands this. You will remember that the race-hustling poverty pimp Jesse Jackson never missed an opportunity to refer to Gingrich's "Contract with America" as "Contract ON America." That outrageous slander was of course calculated and was effective. Leftists know how to fight dirty, and therefore the 'high road' is the road to political nowhere in present circumstances, as the 2012 election showed. The nice man Romney was just no match for the street fighter Obama and the slander machine behind him.

The fundamental problem, I am afraid, is that there is no longer any common ground. When people stand on common ground, they can iron out their inevitable differences in a civil manner within the context of shared assumptions. But when there are no longer any (or many) shared assumptions, then politics does become a form of warfare in which your opponent is no longer a fellow citizen committed to
similar values, but an enemy who must be destroyed (if not physically, at least in respect of his political power) if you and your way of life are to be preserved.

As I have said before, the bigger and more intrusive the government, the more to fight over. If we could reduce government to its legitimate constitutionally justified functions, then we could reduce the amount of fighting. But of course the size, scope, and reach of government is precisely one of the issues most hotly debated.

Although I incline toward the Horowitz view, I am not entirely comfortable with it. I would like to believe that amicable solutions are available. You will have to decide for yourself, taking into consideration the particulars of your situation. Some of us are buying gold and 'lead.' I suspect things are going to get hot in the years to to come, and I'm not talking about global warming. Things are about to get very interesting indeed.

The Crisis of American Self-Government

Harvey Mansfield interviewed. Excerpt:

Consider voting. "You can count voters and votes," Mr. Mansfield says. "And political science does that a lot, and that's very useful because votes are in fact countable. One counts for one. But if we get serious about what it means to vote, we immediately go to the notion of an informed voter. And if you get serious about that, you go all the way to voting as a wise choice. That would be a true voter. The others are all lesser voters, or even not voting at all. They're just indicating a belief, or a whim, but not making a wise choice. That's probably because they're not wise."

Exactly right. As I say in "One Man, One Vote: A Dubious Principle":

Suppose you have two people, A and B. A is intelligent, well-informed, and serious. He does his level best to form correct opinions about the issues of the day. He is an independent thinker, and his thinking is based in broad experience of life. B, however, makes no attempt to become informed, or to think for himself. He votes as his union boss tells him to vote. Why should B's vote have the same weight as A's? Is it not self-evident that B's vote should not count as much as A's?

I think it is well-nigh self-evident. The right to vote cannot derive simply from the fact that one exists or has interests. Dogs and cats have interests, and so do children. But we don't grant children the right to vote. Why not? Presumably because they lack the maturity and good judgment necessary for casting an informed vote. Nor do we grant felons the right to vote despite their interests. Why should people who cannot wisely order their own lives be given any say in how society should be ordered?

Read the rest of that meaty post. It is like a red flag before a liberal bull(shitter).

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.