Social and Political Philosophy – Page 10

American Conservatism

My brand of conservatism could be called American. It aims to preserve and where necessary restore the values and principles codified by the founders. Incorporating as it does elements of classical liberalism and libertarianism, American conservatism is far from throne-and-altar reaction. While anti-theocratic, it is not anti-religious. It stands for individual liberty and its necessary supports, private property, free markets, and limited government. It is liberal in its stress on liberties, but conservative in its sober view of human nature, a nature easily corrupted by power and in need of restraint. It avoids the reactionary and radical extremes. It incorporates the values of the Enlightenment. American conservatism presupposes the existence of “unalienable rights” which come from nature or from “nature's God.” First among the liberties mentioned in the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution is religious liberty which includes the liberty to exercise no religion. It is first in the order of exposition and (arguably) first also in the order of importance. The second liberty mentioned is free speech. Both of these classically American values are under assault from the utopian Left which has taken over the Democrat party in the USA.

As against certain factions of the alternative Right, American conservatism insists that the United States is a proposition nation: the propositions are in the founding documents. I don't see how that could be reasonably denied. These propositions define the American identity and provide a bulwark against the identity politics shared by the cultural Marxists and their alt-right opponents. But I also don't see how it could be reasonably denied that the discovery and articulation of classically American principles and values was achieved by people belonging to a certain tradition and will be preserved, if it is preserved, only by people in that tradition or who can be assimilated into it. This has consequences for immigration policy.

To allude to e pluribus unum, a One cannot be made out of just any Many. Some groups are unassimilable. I take it to be axiomatic that immigration must be to the benefit of the host country, a benefit not to be defined in merely economic terms. And so I ask a politically incorrect but perfectly reasonable question: Is there any net benefit to Muslim immigration? Immigrants bring their culture with them. Muslims, for example, bring with them a Sharia-based, hybrid religious-political ideology that is antithetical to American values. We are under no obligation to allow the immigration of subversive elements. The founding propositions are universally true; they are not the property of whites even though whites discovered them. But such propositions, while true for all humans and in this sense true universally, are not recognized by all humans, and not presently capable of being recognized or put into practice by all humans. The attempt to impart these propositions to some groups will be futile, especially if it involves force, or can be interpreted by the group in question as a cover for an attempt to dominate or control them for ulterior motives. The implication for foreign policy is that the USA must adopt an enlightened nationalism and not attempt to teach the presently unteachable.

Subsidiarity as Bulwark against the Left’s Assault on Civil Society

David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

The principle of subsidiarity strikes a reasonable balance between statism and collectivism as represented by the manifest left-ward drift of Democrat administrations such as President Obama's, on the one hand, and the libertarianism of those who would take privatization to an extreme, on the other. The Left is totalitarian by its very nature, and as the Democrat party drifts ever left-ward, it becomes ever more totalitarian and socialist and ever more a threat to individual liberty and the private property that is its foundation.

Subsidiarity also fits well with federalism, a return to which is a prime desideratum and one more reason not to vote for Democrat candidates. 'Federalism' is another one of those words that does not wear its meaning on its sleeve, and is likely to mislead. Federalism is not the view that all powers should be vested in the Federal or central government; it is the principle enshrined in the 10th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Whether or not you are Catholic, if you accept the principle of subsidiarity, then you have yet another reason to oppose the Left. The argument is this:

1) The Left encroaches upon civil society, weakening it and limiting it, and correspondingly expanding the power and the reach of the state. (For example, the closure of Catholic Charities in Illinois because of an Obama administration adoption rule.)

2) Subsidiarity helps maintain civil society as a buffer zone and intermediate sector between the purely private (the individual and the familial) and the state.

Therefore

3) If you value the autonomy and robustness of civil society, then you ought to oppose Obama and the Left.

The truth of the second premise is self-evident. If you wonder whether the Left does in fact encroach upon civil society, then see my post Obama's Assault on the Institutions of Civil Society.

What is Cultural Marxism?

Despite the febrile complaints of some leftists, 'cultural Marxism' is a useful term that picks out a genuine cultural phenomenon. It is no myth. Nor is it an anti-Semitic or a racist 'dog whistle.' It is alleged by leftists to be an anti-Semitic conservative slur because the members of the Frankfurt School were mainly Jews, even Adorno. Adorno's original name was not 'Theodor W. Adorno,' but 'Theodor Adorno Wiesengrund.'

But what is cultural Marxism?

For Karl Marx, the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class conflict. In market societies the two main classes in conflict are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which stand to each other as oppressor and oppressed. This is not a conflict that can be mediated: it can be overcome only by the defeat of the oppressors. Herein lies an important difference between (classical) liberalism and Marxist leftism.ⁱ For the latter, politics is war, not a process of bargaining and accommodation on the basis of mutually accepted norms between parties with common interests and a desire to coexist peacefully. Cultural Marxism, retaining both the oppressor-oppressed motif and the belief in the intractability of the conflict, moves beyond classical or economic Marxism by widening the class of the oppressed to include blacks and other 'people of color,' women, male and female homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, Muslims, immigrants legal and illegal, and others deemed to be victims of oppression.

Correspondingly, cultural Marxism widens the class of oppressors to include potentially all whites, males, heterosexuals and religionists, Christians mainly, regardless of their economic status. Thus within the ambit of cultural Marxism, a working-class Southern white male heterosexual Christian ends up among the oppressors. Such are Hillary Clinton's deplorables and irredeemables, and those about whom Barack Obama said, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”ⁱⁱ

^{___________________________}

i cf. Ralph Miliband, Marxism and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 17.

ii https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/14/barackobama.uselections2008. Read the sentence carefully. It makes no sense.

Third Parties: Discussion Societies in Political Drag

A so-called 'third party' is any party in U. S. politics other than the Democrats and the Republicans. There are many third parties. My thesis is that third parties are discussion societies in political drag. Corollary to that is my claim that anyone who has anything to do with a third party thereby demonstrates ignorance as to the nature of the political. (Recent possible exception: the Reform Party when it backed Ross Perot.)

Politics is not theoretical; it is practical. There is political theory, of course, and it divides into political science (empirical and non-normative) and political philosophy (normative). But politics is neither of the two. It is praxis, not theoria. The political life is a form of the vita activa, not of the vita contemplativa. Here is a working definition of 'political activity.'

Political activity is human activity in concert with like-minded others in pursuit of governmental power for the purpose of implementing programs and policies contributory to the common worldly good or the worldly good of those the party represents.

Now the vast majority of third parties have no chance of coming to power. It follows that those who vote for third-party candidates are almost in every instance wasting their vote. These voters don't understand the nature of the political as above defined.

Some vote third-party to 'make a statement' or to 'lodge a protest.' But these gestures are futile. No one gives a damn about Joe Blow's 'statement' or 'protest' or would even be aware of them. Consider the American Solidarity Party:

Writing for First Things in July 2016, David McPherson, assistant professor of philosophy at Creighton University, urged voting for the ASP ticket as “a protest vote against a system that presents us with such poor choices.” Moreover, by supporting the ASP, he argued, “‘a man [sets] an example,’ so that the idea of human solidarity, based on the equal dignity of all human beings, may not die away.”

The sentiment is noble, but the proposed course is impractical. Politics is a practical game! It is not about having the right views. That does no good unless one can implement them. And only a fool lets the best become the enemy of the good. Politics is a matter of better or worse, not perfect or imperfect. It is about accomplishing something in the extant suboptimal circumstances.

So what should you do if you are a Libertarian, or rather 'Losertarian'? Do what Ron Paul did: become a Republican and try to push that stodgy bunch in a more libertarian direction. Similarly with ASP members. Stop wasting your time and become Republicans. Try to inject some subsidiarist ideas into the mix.

In 2020, ASP members ought to vote for Trump, and not abstain. It is folly to believe in 'political equivalentism' as between Left and Right in the present constellation of circumstances here in the States.

Don't confuse a discussion society with a political party!

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, democratic control to transmogrify into control by an elite group of central planners who, exulting in their power, will use all the means at their disposal to hold on to it and expand it — and 'the people' be damned.

The tendency, then, is for socialism to terminate in statism and totalitarianism. Power to the people? Hardly. 'The people' end up among the socially planned and not among the social planners. Either that or they end up in a gulag.

Addendum 8/31. London Ed comments:

Good post, and the seed of an answer to the ‘No true Marxist’ argument. As you say, collective ownership of the means of production is essential to socialism, not just a mere accident.

The next step in the proof would be to show that it is essential, not just accidental, to collective ownership that supposedly collective, democratic control will inevitably transmogrify into ‘control by an elite group of central planners who, exulting in their power, will use all the means at their disposal to hold on to it and expand it’. Hence, the bad history of Marxism is not a mere accident, despite what its supporters claim.

This would be the next step in the proof if a proof in the strict sense could be had. Here socialists enjoy some 'wiggle room.' A strict proof is not available. My first point above is non-negotiable since it is merely a consequence of the definition of 'socialism.' But how do we prove that collective ownership necessarily and inevitably issues in statism and totalitarianism? Of course, repeated failure is a good inductive argument for an ideal's being unrealizable. But induction is not demonstration. Without a demonstration, we cannot deny the socialist his 'wiggle room.'

The Chesterton Move

The true-believing socialist will most likely make what I will call the 'Chesterton move.' G. K. C. famously asserted, or at least implied, that Christianity hasn't failed; it's never been tried. "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. (G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (1910), ch. 1.5)

The idea here is that Christianity is a realizable ideal, but that we simply haven't realized it. Now if an ideal is realizable, then its never having been realized is no apodictic proof of its not being a genuine ideal, one that we ought to try to realize. Our democratic socialist can say something similar. Insufficient attempts have been made properly to implement the socialist ideal; the fact that it has never been achieved is no knock-down argument against the ideal. We have to organize and make a concerted effort and suppress the evil capitalist greed-heads who stand in our way.

The Chesterton Move and the 'No True Marxist' Fallacy

Now if our democratic socialist has available to him the Chesterton Move, then he is in a position to deny that 'No True Marxist' is a fallacy. He can say that true Marxism, or rather true socialism, will not lead to totalitarian tyranny. If it does, then it was not true socialism!

A Deeper Issue

Can we know from experience the natures of things and thus what is possible and impossible? Can we know a posteriori that socialism without totalitarian tyranny is impossible?

The conservative will presumably answer this question in the affirmative, but he won't be able to prove that he is right. Or so say I.

The Aporetics of the Situation

1) An ideal that has never been realized, despite repeated attempts to realize it, cannot be realized.

2) An ideal that cannot be realized is no (genuine) ideal at all

3) Democratic socialism is a genuine ideal.

The above is known in the trade as an antilogism or an inconsistent triad. The limbs of the triad are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent.

If you are not willing to accept that the triad is a genuine aporia or insolubilium, then you must reject/modify one of the constituent propositions. I don't believe that (2), an analog of the 'Ought implies Can' principle, can be reasonably rejected. So we either reject (1) or (3). I reject (3). The democratic socialist would have to reject (1).

Can I refute him? No. Can he refute me? No. And yet we must act. So I battle socialism and stand with Donald Trump:

America will never be a socialist country!

Watch the video and check out the expression on Bernie Sanders' face. And how about the tribal females all in white?

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 the fact that some were very rich and some were very poor?' To this question Anderson replied that 'we are all bothered by different things. That finished him with the Melburnians'. [Kennedy quotes Manning Clark, The Quest for Grace, Melbourne, 1991, p. 193]

"We are all bothered by different things." And even when we are bothered by the same things, we prioritize the objects of botherment differently. Now suppose you and I are bothered by exactly the same things in exactly the same order. There is still room for disagreement and possibly even bitter contention: we are bothered to different degrees by the things that bother us.

"It angers me that that doesn't anger you!" "It angers me that you are insufficiently angered by what angers both of us."

Here then is one root of political disagreement. It is a deep root, perhaps ineradicable. And it is a root of other sorts of disagreement as well. We are bothered by different things.

Are conservatives bothered by gun violence? Yes, of course. But the Americans among them are bothered more by the violation of the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. Liberals, even if they are slightly bothered by the violation of these rights, assuming they admit them in the first place, are much more bothered by gun violence. Now there are factual questions here concerning which agreement is in principle possible, though exceedingly unlikely. For example there is the question whether more guns in the hands of citizens leads to less crime. That is a factual question, but one that is not going to be resolved to the satisfaction of all. Conservatives and liberals disagree about the facts. Each side sees the other as having its own 'facts.'

But deeper than facts lie values. Here the problem becomes truly intractable. We are bothered by different things because we differ about values and their ordering. American conservatives and presumably most liberals value self-reliance but conservatives locate it much higher up in the axiological hierarchy. This probably explains why liberals are more inclined to rely on professional law enforcement for protection against the criminal element even while they bash cops as a bunch of racists eager to hunt down and murder "unarmed black teenagers" such as Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri fame. (Brown was unarmed, but tried to arm himself with the cop's gun. This is an important detail conveniently left out of the biased mainstream media accounts.)

As for what finished Anderson with the Melburnians, he was apparently not sufficiently exercised by (material) inequality for the tastes of the latter despite his being a man of the Left, though not reliably so due to his iconoclasm.

Does it bother conservatives that there is wealth inequality? To some extent. But for a(n American) conservative, liberty trumps equality in the scale of values. With liberals it is the other way around. Liberals of course cherish their brand of rights and liberties and will go to absurd extremes in defending them even when the right to free expression, a big deal with them, spills over into incitement to violence and includes the pollution of the culture with pornography. Of course, this extremism in defense of free expression bangs up against the liberals' own self-imposed limit of political correctness. The trashers of Christianity suddenly become cowards when it comes to the trashing of Islam. That takes more courage than they command. And they are easily cowed by events such as the 7 January 2015 terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Liberals are also absurdly eager to spread the right to vote even at the expense of making the polling places safe for voter fraud. How else do you explain their mindless opposition to photo ID? But not a peep from liberals about 'real' liberties and rights such as gun rights, the right to private property, and the right to freedom from excessive and punitive taxation.

Is material inequality a problem? Not as such. Why should it be?

As I recall John Rawls' Difference Principle, the gist of it is this: Social and economic inequality is justified ONLY IF the inequality makes the worse off better than they would have been without the inequality. Why exactly? If I'm smarter than you, work harder, practice the ancient virtues, avoid the vices, while you are a slacker and a screw-up who nevertheless has what he needs, why is my having more justified ONLY IF it makes you better off than you would have been without the inequality? (Yes, I know all about the Original Position and the Veil of Ignorance, but I don't consider that an argument.)

At the root of our differences are value differences and those, at bottom, are irreconcilable.

On that cheery note, I punch the clock. Have a pleasant weekend.

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. They don't just talk, write, and argue. Not that the latter aren't important; they are. But balance is also important.

We need more doctors, engineers, and businessmen in government — and fewer lawyers. And a few working stiffs, too. There are truck drivers and pipe fitters who could do the job. How can a government top-heavy with lawyers be representative of the folks?

Lawyers are especially over-represented in the Democrat Party as Michael Medved observes:

By re-nominating Obama and Biden, the Democrats have selected only attorneys for all six of the most recent places on national tickets, cementing their status as the party of lawyers. Meanwhile, none of the last 8 Republicans nominated for president or vice president has been a practicing attorney.

Though Romney won a law degree in a joint program along with his Harvard MBA, he never joined the legal profession. All told, 14 of the last 18 places on Democratic national tickets since 1980 have gone to attorneys, and if Al Gore had finished law school at Vanderbilt before running for Congress, that would have been 17 of 18. The domination of the party by lawyers clearly connects to its propensity to address every problem with legal solutions—legislation, regulations, and law suits—rather than private sector, business initiatives.

None of the above is lawyer bashing. We need lawyers if we are to have a legal system and the rule of law. (And to defend ourselves against lawyers.) But lawyers, like liberals, have given themselves a bad name by their bad behavior. They are too often the sophists of the modern world. Remember the sophists of the ancient world? They knew how to make the weaker argument appear the stronger.

Martin Luther once vented his misology via "Reason is a whore." But nowadays, when whores are sex workers, the Lutheran pronunciamento has lost its sting much as the oldest profession has lost its opprobrium.

Perhaps in its stead we should put: "Reason is a lawyer."

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: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.

The crucial proposition is the first. By 'end of human life' is meant the ultimate or final goal or purpose of human life, not its cessation or stoppage. It is presupposed that all human lives share the same final purpose. And what might that be? For a traditional Catholic, the Baltimore Catechism gives the answer:

LESSON FIRST
ON THE END OF MAN
1. Q. Who made the world?
A. God made the world.
2. Q. Who is God?
A. God is the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things.
3. Q. What is man?
A. Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image
and likeness of God.
6. Q. Why did God make you?
A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world,
and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

The Catholic integralist is making the following claims. First, every human life has an ultimate purpose. Second, the purpose is not different for different people: all, regardless of race, sex, or any other difference, share the same purpose. Third, the final common purpose is known and not open to doubt or debate: it is not a matter of conjecture or speculation or private opinion. Fourth, the final common purpose is to know, love, and serve God in this world, and to be happy with him in the next. And of course the Catholic integralist is committed to the presuppositions of these claims, e.g., that there is a God, that he created everything distinct from himself, that man has a destiny that transcends this life, and so on.

Suppose all of the above is true. Then the political order here below must subserve the divinely ordained eternal order. The temporal power, the State, must be subordinated to, and therefore cannot be separated from, the true church, the Roman Catholic Church. If so, classical liberalism is an erroneous and pernicious political philosophy.

One consequence of this view seems to be that state power can be justifiably used to coerce dissidents. Some of them hold that human life has no purpose at all. Others hold that it has a purpose but one that is determined by the individual. Still others think that there is a common ultimate purpose but that it is secular and humanistic and therefore atheistic.

And then there are the classically liberal theists who hold that when it comes to the final purpose of human life and how to attain it, there is reasonable belief, but no knowledge. If there is no knowledge in this area then coercion of atheists, agnostics, and non-Catholics could not be justified. Finally, there are those who, while holding that there is knowledge in this area, knowledge that justifies the coercion of dissidents, reject the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Some Protestants for example, or Islamists.

My view is that we ought not stray too far from the classically liberal view of the Founders. We do not KNOW that the Catechism worldview is true. ONLY IF it were known to be true could it be justifiably imposed via the awesome power of the State. In a well-ordered Republic, the dissent of secular humanists, atheists, and non-Catholic theists ought to be tolerated. At the same time, State power must never be used to violate the consciences of Catholics by, say, forcing them to support the grave moral evil of abortion on demand with their tax dollars.

Government by ts very nature is coercive. I stand for limited government and limited coercion.

So that's my initial take on Catholic integralism. It is a non-starter.