Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Social and Political Philosophy

  • The State under Leftism: Totalitarianism cum pane et circensibus

    Although the state under contemporary leftism is totalitarian and demands conformity and submission in matters of moment, it tolerates and indeed encourages the cultivation of a politically inconsequential individualism of private self-absorption.  A people given bread (food stamps and other forms of infantilizing dependency), circuses (mass sporting events), dope (legalization of marijuana), HollyWeird pornography and…

  • Democratic Socialism?

    The label smacks of an oxymoron. Essential to socialism is collective ownership of the means of production. Democratic socialists will presumably want to distinguish socialism from statism, which may be defined as state control of the economy, where the state control is not in turn democratically controlled. Historically, however, the tendency is for supposedly collective,…

  • We are Bothered by Different Things

    Brian Kennedy, A Passion to Oppose: John Anderson, Philosopher, Melbourne University Press, 1995, p. 141: Melbourne intellectuals came to regard [John] Anderson 'as the man who had betrayed the Left, a man who had gone over to the other side.  Melburnians wanted Anderson to answer a simple question: was he or was he not interested in…

  • Too Many Lawyers in Government, not Enough Doctors

    (Written 10 September 2012)   Negatively, physicians are not lawyers.  Positively, they are scientifically trained without being mere theoreticians: they diagnose, they cut, they sew.  They are the plumbers and the auto mechanics of the mortal coil.  They grapple at close quarters with recalcitrant matter.  They do so fearlessly while lawyers watch, ready to pounce.   …

  • Two from Malcolm Pollack

    A Taxonomy of Civil War Vallicella on the 'Proposition Nation': Between Scylla and Charybdis

  • Private Property

    The right to private property is another thing leftists don't understand, unless it is their private property.  Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, tr. Ryan Bloom, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010, p. 177: The Revolution is good.  But why?  One must have an idea of the civilization one wishes to create.  The abolition of property is not an end.  It…

  • Integralism in Three Sentences

    Here: Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him:…

  • Politics is War: Civility and Decency are Secondary Values

    Sohrab Ahmari, Against David-Frenchism, conclusion: Progressives understand that culture war means discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their institutions. Conservatives should approach the culture war with a similar realism. Civility and decency are secondary values. They regulate compliance with an established order and orthodoxy. We should seek to use these values to enforce our…

  • Should Felons Have the Right to Vote?

    Bernie Sanders thinks that felons should have the right to vote even while incarcerated.  That is a foolish and irresponsible view. 1) Felons have shown by their destructive behavior that they cannot productively order their own lives. Why then should they have any say in the ordering of society?  Why should the thoughtful vote of…

  • The Central Dividing Line in American Politics

    The central dividing line, according to Samuel Huntington, is between cosmopolitanism and nationalism.  The former comes in two unpalatable flavors, neo-conservatism and cultural Marxism. The neocon mistake was to imagine that our superior system of government could be imposed by force on  peoples riven by tribal hatreds who do not share our values and are…

  • What’s Wrong with Economic Inequality?

    We are naturally unequal with respect to empirical attributes, both as individuals and as groups, and this inequality results in economic inequality. Is this inequality evil? Why should it be?  Is economic inequality as such morally wrong? I have a right to what I have acquired by my honest hard work, deferral of gratification, and…

  • Capitalism, Competition, and Cooperation

    One reason capitalism is superior to socialism is because competition is good and breeds excellence.  It also fits with human nature.  People are justifiably concerned with their own well-being first of all and will strive mightily to enhance it.  They are much less motivated to work for 'the common good,' especially if what that is…

  • Money, Power, and Equality: An Egalitarian Paradox

    Here, at MavPhil Strictly Philosophical. Excerpt: If the egalitarian wants to equalize wealth, perhaps via a scheme of income redistribution, then he will need to make use of state power to do it: the wealthy will not voluntarily disembarrass themselves of their wealth. But state power is of necessity concentrated in the hands of a…

  • A Good Summary of the Political Thinking of Carl Schmitt

    Carl Schmitt on Political Power by Jürgen Braungardt.  Excerpt: Political existentialism? Schmitt is a political existentialist in the following sense: ‘The political’, that mode of human experience that expresses itself in interpersonal relations of power and struggle, is logically and temporally prior to all political institutions. It is expressed in the distinction between friend and enemy, which is from…

  • Is There a Right to Health Care?

    Here, at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.