John Hospers lays into 'limousine libertarians.'
Category: Politics
Politics: Would That I Could Avoid It
Using 'quietist' in a broad sense as opposed to the Molinos-Fenelon-Guyon sense, I would describe myself as a quietist rather than as an activist. The point of life is not action, but contemplation, not doing, but thinking. The vita activa is of course necessary (for some all of the time, and for people like me some of the time), but it is necessary as a means only. Its whole purpose is to subserve the vita contemplativa. To make of action an end in itself is absurd, and demonstrably so, though I will spare you the demonstration. If you are assiduous you can dig it out of Aristotle, Aquinas and Josef Pieper.
Jacques Maritain on Right and Left
Before one is a conservative or a liberal ideologically, or by party affiliation, one is a conservative or a liberal temperamentally, or by disposition. My suspicion is that temperament is a major if not the main determinant of political commitments. First comes the disposition, then come the theoretical articulation, the arguments, and the examination and refutation of the arguments of adversaries. Conservatism and liberalism are bred in the bone before they are born in the brain.
If this is so, it helps explain the bitter and intractable nature of political disagreement, the hatreds that politics excites, the visceral oppositions thinly veiled under a mask of mock civility, the mutual repugnance that goes so deep as to be unlikely to be ascribable to mere differences in thinking. For how does one argue against another's temperament or disposition or sensibility? I can't argue you out of an innate disposition, any more than I can argue you out of being yourself; and if your theoretical framework is little more than a reflection at the level of ideas of an ineradicable temperamental bias, then my arguments cannot be expected to have much influence. A certain skepticism about the role and reach of reason in human affairs may well be the upshot. Pointing to this skepticism I betray my own conservative bias. For surely one of the differences between conservatives and leftists is that conservatives are sober where leftists are sanguine about the power and role of reason in the transforming of society.
I recently found a beautifully pithy formulation of the difference between Left and Right in Jacques Maritain's The Peasant of the Garonne (1968, tr. De Brouwer):
The pure man of the left detests being, always preferring, in principle, in the words of Rousseau, what is not to what is. [footnote by J.M.: "What is not is the only thing that is beautiful," said Jean-Jacques Rousseau. And Jean-Paul Sartre: "The real is never beautiful."] The pure man of the right detests justice and charity, always preferring, in principle, in the words of Goethe (himself an enigma who masked his right with his left), injustice to disorder. Nietzsche is a noble and beautiful example of the man of the right, and Tolstoy, of the man of the left. (pp. 21-22.)
Maritain is of course speaking of ideal types. No sane political philosophy could be purely leftist or purely rightist in the above senses. But it is useful to have the extremes of the spectrum so clearly delineated, especially since political opponents love to paint each other as extremists.
A Liberal Asks: What are the Bases of Liberal Opposition to Religion?
Harriet E. Baber, professor of philosophy, "unrepentant liberal," and proprietor of The Enlightenment Project writes,
I'm an academic. Most of my friends and colleagues are atheists, have no sympathy for religion of any kind and, in particular, detest Christianity. Being a good liberal I read good liberal sources because I like to read people who agree with me but when it comes to religion they don't agree with me. [. . .] As a Christian, I am exceedingly pissed off about about being characterized as Other, and not only Other but Dangerous Other. What is the problem?
Is it because we hold beliefs you regard as false or flat out stupid? I have some sympathy with that because I don't have any sympathy with stupidity. [. . .]
Is it because you take Christianity to be a moral and, more importantly, political agenda, putting a lid on sexual expression and generally making people miserable?
Which is it? Or is it something completely different? I'm just curious. OK, not just. I want to convert the wor[l]d.
I would certainly not characterize myself as a liberal as this term is popularly understood, but I am deeply sympathetic to religion, though also quite critical of it as readers of this blog know. Like Baber, I am puzzled by the depth of the animus against religion, Christianity in particular, that emanates from the Left. Why the blind, raging hostility to it? Why the inability to see anything good in it? Why the fulminations of people like A. C. "Gasbag" Grayling? As I see it, the following are some of the main reasons why otherwise intelligent liberals oppose religion. It is obvious that not every person who self-identifies as 'liberal' is opposed to religion; it is equally obvious that most are. So when I speak of liberals I mean most contemporary liberals.
Continue reading “A Liberal Asks: What are the Bases of Liberal Opposition to Religion?”
A Tax Day Observation
Good societies are those that make it easy to live good lives. A society that erects numerous obstacles to good living, however, cannot count as a good society. By this criterion, present day American society cannot be considered good. It has too many institutionalized features that impede human flourishing. In Good Societies and Good Lives, I discuss one such feature, state lotteries. Another impediment is a tax code that punishes productive behavior and rewards behavior that is imprudent.
Hypocrisy, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Left
If, per impossibile, there were such a catalog as the Seven Deadly Sins as seen from the Left, hypocrisy would be in first place. Why? Although some who identify themselves as liberals or leftists can be counted among the religious, the dominant note of the Left from at least 1789 on has been anti-religious. Couple this with the fact that perhaps the most egregious forms of hypocrisy are found among religionists, especially the televangelical species thereof, and you have the beginning of an explanation why liberals and leftists find hypocrisy so morally abhorrent. That men of the cloth and their followers exhibit the worst forms of hypocrisy is captured in standard dictionary definitions of 'hypocrisy.' My Webster's shows, "a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; esp.: the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion." One reads something similar in the OED.
Continue reading “Hypocrisy, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Left”
Anti-Obama Bumper Sticker
I saw this attached to the back of a Jeep Liberty:
I'll keep my guns, freedom, and money. You can keep the "change."
Another conservative sticker recently sighted:
If you can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em.
Which suggests the 'contrapositive' sticker:
You breed 'em, we'll feed 'em.
With taxpayers' dollars of course.
Liberal Hypocrisy
Bruce Thornton reviews Peter Schweitzer’s Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, (Doubleday, 2005, 272 pp.) Excerpts:
The Politicization of the American Philosophical Association
Several people have asked me my opinion on the recent petition to the American Philosophical Association regarding alleged discrimination by certain colleges and universities against homosexuals. At the moment I have nothing to say about either the petition or the counterpetition. I want to point out that the politicization of the A. P. A. is nothing new and, more importantly, that it is inconsistent with the charter of the A. P. A as a professional organization that it take groups stands on debatable social and political questions. My reasons are given in the letter to the A. P. A. reproduced below.
Neven Sesardic e-mailed a while back:
I wonder whether there has ever been any reaction to your wonderful letter to the APA about their stand on the war in Iraq. I let my subscription lapse after that.
I did receive a very nice supportive letter from Panayot Butchvarov, although it may have been in reference to an earlier letter in which I protested the APA's taking of a group stand against capital punishment. Having lived under Communism, Butchvarov is familiar with the perils of groupthink.
I am glad to hear that Sesardic let his membership lapse. So did I. And I encourage other conservatives and libertarians to ask themselves whether it is really in their best interest to fund Left-leaning organizations. But even liberals should be able to appreciate that professional organizations ought not take group stands on eminently debatable social and political questions. Here is the Iraq letter, published in the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 77, no. 2 (Nov., 2003), p. 85.
Dear Editor:
The APA Pacific Division has proposed a resolution to "express our serious doubts about the morality, legality and prudence of a war against Iraq led by the United States." If individual members have doubts, it is their right to express them in their capacity as private citizens. But a collective expression by the APA as a whole, or in any of its Divisions, is clearly inappropriate. The reason should be obvious. The purpose of the APA is "exclusively educational, literary and scientific . . . " as per its constitution. It is therefore in keeping with its charter that the APA provide a framework in which serious discussion of questions concerning pacifism, just war doctrine, etc., can take place. But for the APA to endorse pacifism, or just war theory, or a version of just war theory that rules out preemptive strikes, or to express doubts about the moral justification of a particular war, is clearly in violation of its mandate. This would be as wrong, and indeed as absurd, as if the APA were to adopt an official stance on the mind-body problem, or on any other philosophical problem. If the APA is not prepared to take sides in the debate between, say, John Searle and Daniel Dennett, then it ought not take sides in the debate in foreign policy between, say, William J. Bennett and Noam Chomsky.
But the effort and expense spent on this hopelessly belated resolution are not entirely wasted. The arguments given in favor of the resolution, fallacious as they are, provide excellent fodder for logical analysis, and so may be of some use to teachers of logic. The latter can say to their students: Here is what happens when otherwise intelligent people allow ideological bias to cloud their thinking.
Is Religious Instruction Child Abuse? Is Religion the Greatest Social Evil?
That religious instruction constitutes child abuse is another theme of contemporary militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins and A. C. Grayling. Consider the competing 'truths' taught by different faith-based schools, e.g. that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is not, etc. Grayling complains that
. . . in schools all over the country these antipathetic 'truths' are being force-fed to different groups of pupils, none of whom is in a position to assess their credibility or worth. This is a serious form of child abuse. It sows the seeds of apartheids capable of resulting, in their logical conclusion, in murder and war, as history sickeningly and ceaselessly proves. There is no greater social evil than religion. It is the cancer in the body of humanity. Human credulity and superstition, and the need for comforting fables, will never be extirpated, so religion will always exist, at least among the uneducated. The only way to manage the dangers it presents is to confine it entirely to the private sphere, and for the public domain to be blind to it in all but one respect: that by law no one's private beliefs should be allowed to cause a nuisance or any injury to anyone else. For whenever and wherever religion manifests itself in the public arena as an organised phenomenon, it is the most Satanic of all things. (A. C. Grayling, Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, Oxford 2003, 34-35, emphasis added.)
Continue reading “Is Religious Instruction Child Abuse? Is Religion the Greatest Social Evil?”
The ACLU and Mardi Gras
Fat Tuesday, coming as it does the day before Ash Wednesday, derives its very meaning from the beginning of Lent. The idea is to get some serious partying under one's belt just before the forty-day ascetic run-up to Easter. So one might think the ACLU would wish to lodge a protest against a celebration so religious in inspiration. Good (contemptible?) lefties that they are, they are ever crusading against religion. Perhaps 'crusade' (L. crux, crucis) is not the right word suggestive as it is of the cross and Christianity; perhaps 'jihad' would be better especially since many loons of the Left are curiously and conveniently ignorant of the threat of militant Islam and much prefer going after truly dangerous outfits like the Boy Scouts.
The Post-Modern Protocols of War: Victor Davis Hanson on the Gaza Rules
Required reading from the pen of Victor Davis Hanson. Since I cannot do better than him, I will simply provide excerpts of five key points he makes. Be sure and read the whole piece. Here are Hanson's Gaza rules in his words but with material omitted:
First is the now-familiar Middle East doctrine of proportionality. Legitimate military action is strangely defined by the relative strength of the combatants. World opinion more vehemently condemns Israel's countermeasures, apparently because its rockets are far more accurate and deadly than previous Hamas barrages that are poorly targeted and thus not so lethal.
Second, intent in this war no longer matters. Every Hamas unguided rocket is launched in hopes of hitting an Israeli home and killing men, women and children. Every guided Israeli air-launched missile is targeted at Hamas operatives, who deliberately work in the closest vicinity to women and children.
Third, culpability is irrelevant. The "truce" between Israel and Hamas was broken once Hamas got its hands on new stockpiles of longer-range mobile rockets — weapons that are intended to go over Israel's border walls.
Yet, according to the Gaza rules, both sides always deserve equal blame. Indeed, this weird war mimics the politically correct, zero-tolerance policies of our public schools, where both the bully and his victim are suspended once physical violence occurs.
Fourth, with instantaneous streaming video from the impact sites in Gaza, context becomes meaningless. Our attention is glued to the violence of the last hour, not that of the last month that incited the war.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 to great expectations that the Palestinians there would combine their new autonomy, some existing infrastructure left behind by the Israelis, Middle East oil money and American pressure for free and open elections to craft a peaceful, prosperous democracy.
Fifth and finally, victimization is crucial. Hamas daily sends barrages into Israel, as its hooded thugs thump their chests and brag of their radical Islamic militancy. But when the payback comes, suddenly warriors are transmogrified into weeping victims, posing teary-eyed for the news camera as they deplore "genocide" and "the Palestinian Holocaust." At least the Japanese militarists did not cry out to the League of Nations for help once mean Marines landed on Iwo Jima.
Companion posts: Weakness Does Not Justify, Hezbollah Disproportionality
Hezbollah Disproportionality
I wrote the following in the summer of 2006 in response to the Left's asinine and morally obtuse bandying-about of such phrases as 'disproportionality' and 'asymmetry of power,' but it is relevant to current events. Substitute 'Hamas' for 'Hezbollah' and make minor factual adjustments as necessary. Of course, I don't mean to suggest that Hezbollah plays no role in the current aggression against Israel. See here.
1. Hezbollah hides their fighters and their installations among the civilian population using them in effect as human shields. Israel does not do this.
2. Hezbollah attacks indiscriminately and without warning, lobbing rockets into population centers with the aim of killing as many civilians as possible. Israel does not do this. Instead, it gives advance warning and aims to target only combatants and their materiel.
3. Hezbollah's avowed aim is the destruction of the State of Israel. It is not Israel's aim to eliminate any state.
4. Hezbollah uses suicide/homicide bombers. Israel does not.
5. Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran whose president since June 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel. Israel, by contrast, though supplied by the USA, is not a proxy of the USA: the USA is not attacking Lebanon or any other country via Israel. There is a clear difference here. The USA arms Israel so that it can defend itself, not so that it can attack other countries; Iran arms Hezbollah so that it can attack Israel with the aim of wiping it off the face of the earth.
A curious fact about Ahmadinejad is that, while he prepares a holocaust for Israelis, he denies the Holocaust.
6. Hezbollah loads its warheads with ball bearings so as to cause maximum damage to human beings. Israel does not.
7. Hezbollah and Islamic terrorists generally hate life and seek death. Israelis and Jews generally love life and seek to avoid death, their own, and other people's. The following from a TNR article says it all:
As Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, once said: "We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death."
Why Not Stick to Pure Philosophy?
I ask myself this question.
Why not stick to one's stoa and cultivate one's specialist garden in peace and quiet, neither involving oneself in, nor forming opinions about, the wider world of politics and strife? Why risk one's ataraxia in the noxious arena of contention? Why not remain within the serene precincts of theoria? For those of us of a certain age the chances are good that death will arrive before the barbarians do.
Those in the arena may be admired for their courage, but doubts arise as to their wisdom.
So why bother one's head with the issues of the day? We will collapse before the culture that sustains us does. The answer is that the gardens of tranquillity and the spaces of reason are worth defending, with blood and iron if need be, against the barbarians and their leftist enablers. Others have fought and bled so that we can live this life of solitude and beatitude. And so though we are not warriors of the body, we can and should do our tiny bit as warriors of the mind to preserve for future generations this culture which allows us to pursue otium liberale in peace, quiet, and safety.
Weakness Does Not Justify
Might does not make right, but neither does impotence or relative weakness. That weakness does not justify strikes me as an important principle, but I have never seen it articulated. The power I have to kill you does not morally justify my killing you. In a slogan: Ability does not imply permissibility. My ability to kill, rape, pillage & plunder does not confer moral justification on my doing these things. But if you attack me with deadly force of magnitude M and I reply with deadly force of magnitude 10 x M, your relative weakness does not supply one iota of moral justification for your attack, nor does it subtract one iota of moral justification from my defensive response. If I am justified in using deadly force against you as aggressor, then the fact that my deadly force is greater than yours does not (a) diminish my justification in employing deadly force, nor does it (b) confer any justification on your aggression.
Suppose a knife-wielding thug commits a home invasion and attacks a man and his family. The man grabs a semi-automatic pistol and manages to plant several rounds in the assailant, killing him. It would surely be absurd to argue that the disparity in lethality of the weapons involved diminishes the right of the pater familias to defend himself and his family.
The principle that weakness does not justify can be applied to the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict from the summer of 2006 as well as to the current Israeli defensive operations against the terrorist entity, Hamas. The principle ought to be borne in mind when one hears leftists, those knee-jerk supporters of any and every 'underdog,' start spouting off about 'asymmetry of power' and 'disproportionality.'