Social and Political Philosophy – Page 12

On the Near-Orwellian Abuse of ‘Democracy’

The near-Orwellian abuse of this word should disturb you. The elitist operatives of the Deep State attempt to bring down President Donald Trump by any and all means for supposedly destroying our 'democracy' — when he was democratically elected according to the rules of our system of government, and they are not men and women 'of the people.' To hijack Hillary: they are not 'deplorable' enough for that.

At this point some leftist is sure to jump up and scream, "But Trump lost the popular vote." Yes he did. So screaming, leftists betray their ignorance of our system of government. Ours is a republic, not a pure democracy. The people have a say, to be sure, but only via representatives. I now hand off to Walter E. Williams for a civics lesson leftists are in dire need of:

Many people whine that using the Electoral College instead of the popular vote and majority rule is undemocratic. I’d say that they are absolutely right. Not deciding who will be the president by majority rule is not democracy.

But the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or any other of our founding documents.

How about a few quotations expressed by the Founders about democracy?

In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wanted to prevent rule by majority faction, saying, “Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

John Adams warned in a letter, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.”

Edmund Randolph said, “That in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”

Then-Chief Justice John Marshall observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

The Founders expressed contempt for the tyranny of majority rule, and throughout our Constitution, they placed impediments to that tyranny. Two houses of Congress pose one obstacle to majority rule. That is, 51 senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators.

The president can veto the wishes of 535 members of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.

To change the Constitution requires not a majority but a two-thirds vote of both houses, and if an amendment is approved, it requires ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.

Finally, the Electoral College is yet another measure that thwarts majority rule. It makes sure that the highly populated states—today, mainly 12 on the east and west coasts, cannot run roughshod over the rest of the nation. That forces a presidential candidate to take into consideration the wishes of the other 38 states.

Those Americans obsessed with rule by popular majorities might want to get rid of the Senate, where states, regardless of population, have two senators.

Should we change representation in the House of Representatives to a system of proportional representation and eliminate the guarantee that each state gets at least one representative?

Currently, seven states with populations of 1 million or fewer have one representative, thus giving them disproportionate influence in Congress.

While we’re at it, should we make all congressional acts by majority rule? When we’re finished with establishing majority rule in Congress, should we then move to change our court system, which requires unanimity in jury decisions, to a simple majority rule?

My question is: Is it ignorance of or contempt for our Constitution that fuels the movement to abolish the Electoral College?

To answer Professor Williams' question, it is contempt and a desire to destroy our system of government, the greatest the world has ever seen. That is part of their project to "fundamentally transform" the USA.

In What Sense are We Equal? Equality, Natural Rights, and Propositionism

Michael Anton (Publius Decius Mus), in a review of Thomas G. West, The Political Theory of the American Founding speaks of an "error,"

. . . from a certain quarter of the contemporary Right, which holds that any appeal to equal natural rights amounts to “propositionism”—as in, the “proposition that all men are created equal”—which in turn inevitably leads to the twin evils of statist leveling and the explicit or tacit denial that there is anything distinct[ive] about the American nation. In this telling, “all men are created equal” is dangerous nonsense that means “all men are exactly the same.” Among other dismal policies we are allegedly compelled to enact if we recognize the existence of equal natural rights are redistribution, racial quotas, and open borders.

Refuting this is easy, and well-trodden, ground.

[. . .]

West does so, in perhaps the clearest articulation of natural human equality penned since the founding itself. The idea is elegantly simple: all men are by nature equally free and independent. Nature has not—as she has, for example, in the case of certain social insects— delineated some members of the human species as natural rulers and others as natural workers or slaves. (If you doubt this, ask yourself why—unlike in the case of, say, bees—workers and rulers are not clearly delineated in ways that both groups acknowledge and accept. Why is it that no man—even of the meanest capacities—ever consents to slavery, which can be maintained only with frequent recourse to the lash?) No man may therefore justly rule any other without that other’s consent. And no man may injure any other or infringe on his rights, except in the just defense of his own rights. The existence of equal natural rights requires an equally natural and obligatory duty of all men to respect the identical rights of others.

I find this articulation of human equality far from clear. What bothers me is the sudden inferential move in the passage quoted from the factual to the normative. I agree arguendo that it is a fact about human beings that

1) No man ever consents to slavery

but I don't see how we can validly infer from (1) the normative claim that

2) No man may justly rule any other without that other's consent.

I maintain that slavery is a grave moral evil and a violation of a basic human right, one possessed by all humans and possessed by all equally. My point, however, is that the moral impermissibility of slavery does not immediately follow from the fact, if it is a fact, that no human ever consents to be enslaved. If I don't consent to your enslaving me, how does that make it morally wrong for you to enslave me?

The problem is that the notion of a natural right is less than perspicuous. Part of what it means to say that a right is natural is that it is not conventional. We don't have rights to life, liberty, and property because some body of men has decided to grant them to us. We have them inherently or intrinsically. We don't get them from the State; we have them whether or not any state exists to secure them as a good state must, or to deprive us of them as a bad state will.

Rights are logically antecedent to contingent social and political arrangements, and thus logically antecedent to the positive law (the law enacted by a legislature). One can express this by saying that rights are not conventional but natural. But then 'natural' just means 'not conventional.'

Suppose our rights as individual persons come not from nature but from God. Then their non-conventionality would be secured. Now it would be good if we could proceed in political philosophy without bringing God into it. But then we face the problem of explaining how norms could be ingredient in nature.

Perhaps someone can explain to me how my right not to be enslaved could be grounded in my being an animal in the material world. How could any of my rights as an individual person be grounded in my being an animal in nature? I am open for instruction.

One could just insist that rights and norms are grounded in nature herself. But that would be metaphysical bluster and not an explanation.

To put it another way, I would like someone to explain how 'natural right' is not a contradictio in adiecto, provided, of course, that by a natural right we mean more than a non-conventional right, but a right that is non-conventional and somehow ingredient in or grounded in nature.

And let's never forget the obvious: as natural beings, as part of the fauna of the space-time system, we are manifestly not equal either as individuals or as groups.

So I say that if you want to uphold intrinsic and unalienable rights, rights that do not have their origin in human decisions and conventions, and if you want to uphold rights for all humans regardless of their empirical strengths and weaknesses, and the same rights for all, then you must move beyond nature to nature's God who is the source of the personhood of each one of us human animals, and the ground of equality of persons. No God, no equality of persons and no equality of rights.

It seems clear that something like this is what the second paragraph of the Declaration means with its talk of men being CREATED equal and being ENDOWED by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights. The rights come from above (God) and not from below (nature).

This is why it is either stupid or highly uncharitable when neo-reactionary conservatives read the plain words of the Declaration as meaning that all humans are empirically equal as animals in nature. It can't mean that for the simple reason that no one in his right mind, and certainly not the great men of the Founding, could believe that all humans are empirically equal either actually or potentially.

Suppose there is no God. Then talk of equal rights is empty. We may continue to talk in those vacuous terms, somehow hiding the vacuity from ourselves, but then we would be 'running on fumes.' People may continue to believe in equal rights, but their belief would be groundless.

The trouble with the view I am recommending is that it requires a lot of heavy-duty metaphysics of God and Man. This metaphysics is widely contested and certainly not obvious. But the same goes for the naturalism that denies God and puts man back among the animals. It too is widely and very reasonably contested and certainly not obvious.

Welcome to the doxastic-epistemic side of the human predicament.

Now I would like you to surf on over to Malcolm Pollack's place and read this and the posts immediately subsequent to it, i. e., scroll up.

P. S. I didn't get around to propositionism/propositionalism. This discussion of Paul Gottfried will have to do for now.

David Boaz on F. A. Hayek

Excerpts worth pondering:

Hayek’s last book, The Fatal Conceit, published in 1988 when he was approaching ninety, returned to the topic of the spontaneous order, which is “of human action but not of human design.” The fatal conceit of intellectuals, he said, is to think that smart people can design an economy or a society better than the apparently chaotic interactions of millions of people. Such intellectuals fail to realize how much they don’t know or how a market makes use of all the localized knowledge each of us possesses.

[. . .]

Reagan and Thatcher admired Hayek, but he always insisted that he was a liberal in the classical sense, not a conservative. The last chapter of “The Constitution of Liberty” was titled “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” He pointed out that the conservative “has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike.”

You won't hear about Hayek and his ideas in the the leftist seminaries, which is what most of our universities have become. Yet another reason to bring down the Left.

Although I am experiencing some salutary pressure from the neo-reactionary direction, I continue to hold that a sound conservatism must incorporate the insights of the classical liberals. How to pull this off in concreto is of course a difficult question given the limitations of libertarianism.

Libertarians seem to think that we are all rational actors who know, and are willing and able to act upon, our own long-term best self-interest. This is manifestly not the case. That is why drug legalization and open borders are disastrous. They are particularly disastrous for a welfare state, which is what we have, and which is not going to "wither away." Sure, if libertarians were in charge there wouldn't be a welfare state; but the Libertarian Party of the USA — founded by USC philosopher John Hospers in 1970 by the way — will never gain power. They are the "Losertarian Party" to cop a moniker from Michael Medved. Remember the clown they ran for president in 2016, the former governor of New Mexico? I've already forgotten his name. Something Johnson?

The libertarians think of man one-sidedly as homo oeconomicus. Accordingly, humans are "consistently rational and narrowly self-interested agents who usually pursue their subjectively-defined ends optimally."

That's a text-book case of false abstraction.

Libertarians have something to learn from conservatives. But go too far in the particularistic conservative direction and you end up with the tribalism of the Alt-Right . . . .

Perhaps we need to resurrect some version of fusionism. It might help with the current political 'fission' and 'centrifugality.' No doubt you catch my drift.

The Constitution, Reason, and Abstract Principles

This entry continues the 'religious test' discussion. (Last installment here.) The Canadian writes,

I agree that there's no incoherence in a statement such as "(1) The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and disallows religious tests. (2) The Constitution guarantees these things subject to the proviso that the religion in question is compatible with the principles of the American founding." But why is the most reasonable interpretation one that projects such a proviso on to the text? What are the criteria for a reasonable interpretation? On the one hand, a reasonable interpretation might be one that results in a constitution that reasonable people could accept. Naturally, if this is the criterion, no reasonable interpretation can produce a constitution that, in practice, would create a society where that same constitution would be destroyed. On the other hand, it might simply be one that's adequately supported by the textual evidence (and other evidence, e.g., reasonably hypotheses about the authors' intentions). Or maybe a reasonable interpretation is subject to both constraints. In any case there is a tension between the two. As you say, there's really no good textual evidence (or any other kind, as far as I know) to indicate that the Constitution really does implicitly limit the scope of religious freedom so as to preclude the freedom to practice traditional Islam, or that it limits the scope of 'No religious test' so as to allow for tests with respect to Islam. I'd argue that a reasonable interpretation in the second sense–the most reasonable one, in that sense–is unreasonable in the first sense.

"What are the criteria for a reasonable interpretation?" I agree that there is no evading this difficult question. One answer is that a reasonable interpretation is an internally coherent one. The First Amendment guarantees the "free exercise" of religion and "freedom of speech," inter alia. Now if "no religious test" (Article VI, section III) is interpreted in so latitudinarian a fashion as to allow Sharia-supporting Muslims to gain political power, then we are on the road to an internal contradiction. For these Muslims, once in power, will of course try to shut down the free exercise of religions other than Islam, and they will attempt to prohibit freedom of speech if it involves any criticism, no matter how respectful, of Muhammad or of any aspect of their religion. They will have used the Constitution to destroy the Constitution. They will have exploited our freedom of religion to eliminate freedom of religion, and our freedom of speech to eliminate freedom of speech.

It seems to me that the Constitution cannot be interpreted so as to allow the emergence of the following logical contradiction:

a) Under no circumstances shall (i) the freedom to practice the religion of one's choice (or to refrain from the practice of any religion) be prohibited by the government, or (ii) the freedom to express one's view publicly be abridged.

b) Under some circumstances (e.g., when enough Muslim fundamentalists gain power) the freedom of religion and the freedom of speech many be prohibited and abridged.

Note that the (a)-(b) dyad is logically inconsistent: the limbs cannot both be true. What we have here is a strict logical contradiction.

But to embrace a logical contradiction is the height of unreasonableness.

I conclude that to interpret the Constitution in such a way that it allows for the emergence of the above contradiction is unreasonable. The solution is obvious to me: one cannot allow a destructive political ideology such as Islam to count as a religion for purposes of Constitutional interpretation. I am conceding that Islam is a religion and not a mere political ideology masquerading as a religion, and I am conceding that it is a religion in its own right and not a Christian heresy; the point is that it is a religion-cum-political ideology that is incompatible with the principles and values of the American founding.

Therefore, Islam ought not count as a religion when it comes to interpreting the Constitution. It may well be a way to God for those brought up on it and who know no better way, and it deserves respect for that reason. But this is no reason to abstract from its totalitarian and theocratic political nature, a nature at war with our political principles.

The Canadian continues:

In any case, I think that for your argument you need the first notion of reasonable interpretation. But then there's a problem: Leftists, whose ideas about reasonable political principles are very different from ours, can now argue on a similar basis that we should just ignore the seemingly plain meaning of the Constitution in cases where it conflicts with their values. For instance, they can argue that since it's just not reasonable to let citizens buy AR-15s, the 2nd Amendment must be interpreted in such a way that citizens don't have that right. That seems worrisome. If there isn't even a generally agreed meaning for the constitution, the only way to politically resolve such disagreements is by some kind of debate over ultimate aims or values; but I know you agree with me that that isn't likely to happen either. So it seems wise to insist that the constitution's meaning is the meaning of the text, not the meaning that we think it would have or should have in order to be most reasonable. But then we're back to the problem that the text just doesn't seem to exclude Islamic freedom of religion, or to allow for a "religious test" in that case–or even to exclude the possibility that the Constitution is just internally inconsistent in some respects…

In many cases there is no "plain meaning." The meaning has to be 'excavated.' Does "establishment of religion" have a plain meaning in the First Amendment? (That's a rhetorical question.) "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ." The meaning is open to interpretation. Or take the Second Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Does 2A bear its meaning on its sleeve? Of course not. What is the Militia? Is the right individual or collective? Does the initial clause supply a reason, or the only reason, in justification of the right to keep and bear arms? I have argued elsewhere that it supplies a reason, not the only reason. I am sure many if not most would disagree.

So I deny the Canadian's assumption that the Constitution has a plain meaning that can just be 'read off' the text. There is no avoiding interpretation in the light of principles that are not themselves articulated in the Constitution. The Law of Non-Contradiction, for example, is not stated in the Constitution. We bring that principle to the text, and reasonably so.

Or consider the Principle of Charity in interpretation. To save keystrokes I won't formulate the principle. My astute readers know more or less what it is. Well, does "All men are created equal" in the Declaration have a plain meaning? There are benighted souls who think it implies the empirical equality of all human beings. But this violates the Principle of Charity since if the declaration in the Declaration were so interpreted it would come out false! The Charity principle, however, is not to be found in any of the founding documents; we bring it to the text and we do so reasonably.

There is no avoiding interpretation. The text does not have a plain meaning. The other extreme, however, is far worse. There are those who say that the Constitution means whatever SCOTUS says it means. But then there is no text; there is a tabula rasa upon which people in black robes write whatever they want. The most SCOTUS can do is decide upon an enforceable meaning among candidate possibilities that find support in the text. That alone is the reasonable view.

For example, are 2A rights collective or individual? It was decided that they are individual. SCOTUS in this decision came to the 'right' decision. Yes, my use of 'right' is tendentious. More on this problem below.

What I am saying, then, is that there is a text, not a tabula rasa; the text has a meaning; the meaning is not obvious; the meaning is subject to interpretation in the light of principles brought to the text.

But whose principles are these? Those of a reasonable person. But what constitutes reasonableness? Here is where the crunch comes, as my Canadian interlocutor fully appreciates. SCOTUS has the power to lay down the law and enforce an interpretation of the Constitution. But who has the power to decide what the principles of rationality are? Logically prior question: Are the principles of rationality matters of decision at all?

The Canadian concludes:

We might be back to a recurring deeper disagreement here. I don't think that any system of abstract principles and values is enough to provide a framework for a workable society. I think some kind of pre-rational or pre-conceptual horizon of meaning and practice and natural community is the basis; explicit principles and values have a role, but only when they're understood by everyone to operate within that specific cultural world. The principles of "no religious test" or "freedom of religion" were just fine when they were only being applied to a fairly small range of fairly similar religions, practiced by relatively similar people. (And, sure, there were always some who were not so similar–Africans, Amerindians–but they were small in number and had no real influence.) Once every religion on earth was included in American society, that was bound to create insoluble problems. Of course, one option is to simply say that there will be freedom of religion for a specific list of religions, and only those ones. But that seems contrary to other traditional American principles. I suspect that the very idea of "religion" that we in the west tend to take for granted is really an artefact of our specific religious and cultural heritage. There is probably no useful general account of "religion" across all human cultures. So it would be unwise to propose any kind of freedom for that kind of thing.

I agree that abstract principles and values are not enough. They have to reflect a (temporally) prior pre-conceptual shared understanding that is taken for granted. The principles and values cannot be imposed ab extra, but must be a sort of distillate or articulation on the conceptual plane of what is already tacitly understood and accepted at the pre-conceptual level. Otherwise we will argue about the principles.

Argument about first principles is the province of philosophy and is legitimate there. In philosophy, nothing is immune to scrutiny. I should think that 'nothing immune to scrutiny' is a constitutive rule of the philosophical 'game' or enterprise. But if our politics becomes a philosophical free-for-all, then we are in trouble.

There is no place for dogmas in philosophy. But in politics and religion we seem to need them. We need propositions that are unquestionably accepted.

For example, if we don't all accept that there is a sense in which we are all equal, equal as rights-possessors, then we are in deep trouble. And if we don't all accept that certain ideologies such as Islam are incompatible with the principles enshrined in the U. S. Constitution, then we are in deep trouble. Examples are easily multiplied.

I think we agree on why we are in the mess we are in. As you put it, "Once every religion on earth was included in American society, that was bound to create insoluble problems." But benign non-Christian religions such as Buddhism are not the problem. The problem is Islam. The solution is extreme vetting of immigrants from Muslim countries. "Of course, one option is to simply say that there will be freedom of religion for a specific list of religions, and only those ones. But that seems contrary to other traditional American principles."

I disagree. Which traditional American principle are you referring to? Don't tell me "freedom of religion." Islam is not a religion in a sense that could allow it to be on a list of acceptable religions given American principles.

Can a multi-cultural society flourish? There is reason to be skeptical. A society cannot flourish without shared principles and values. But the latter presuppose and grow out of a shared public culture. Acquiescence in and assimilation to that shared culture — Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian — must be demanded of all would-be immigrants. Otherwise we will break apart and become easy pickings for foreign aggressors.

I suspect it is already too late to turn things around peacefully. Civil war is a real possibility.

Separation of Leftism and State

Contemporary liberals support separation of church and state, and so do I. But they have no problem with using the coercive power of the state to impose leftist ideology. Now leftism is not a religion, pace Dennis Prager (see article below), but it is very much like one, and if you can see what is wrong with allowing contentious theological doctrines to drive politics, then you ought to be able to see what is wrong with allowing the highly contentious ideological commitments of leftism to drive politics, most of which revolve around the leftist trinity (Prager) of race, gender, and class.

If "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ," as per the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, then it ought to make no law that establishes the quasi-religion of leftism.

Even more important than separation of church and state these days is separation of leftism and state.

This is a large topic; for today, just one example of what I am getting at.

It is a tenet of contemporary liberalism that opposition to same-sex 'marriage' is 'discriminatory' and that opponents of it are 'bigots.' Now this is both obtuse and slanderous for reasons we supplied in earlier entries. But liberals have a right to their opinions, even if it is to be wished that they would give some thought to the corresponding obligation to form correct opinions. Be that as it may, liberals have a right to their benighted views, and we ought to tolerate them. After all, we too are liberals in a much older, and a defensible, sense: we believe in toleration, open inquiry, free speech, individual liberty, etc. And we are liberal and self-critical enough to countenance the possibility that perhaps we are the benighted ones.

But toleration has limits.

What we ought not tolerate is the sort of coercion of the individual by the state that we find in the case of the Washington State florist who refused to sell floral arrangements to be used at a same-sex 'marriage' ceremony. This woman has no animus against gays, and had sold flowers to the homosexual couple. But she was not about to violate her own conscience by providing flowers for a same-sex event. As a result she was sued by the Washington State attorney general, and then by the ACLU.

Now do you see what is wrong with that?

The state says to the individual:

You have a right to your religious and philosophical beliefs, but only so long as you keep them to yourself and don't allow them to be expressed in your relations with your fellow citizens. You may believe what you want in the privacy of your own mind, but you may not translate your beliefs into social or political action. But we are free to translate our leftist 'theology' into rules and regulations that diminish your liberty.

What then becomes of the "free exercise of religion" spoken of in the First Amendment? It is out the window. The totalitarian state has taken one more step in its assault on the liberty of the individual.

The totalitarian state of the contemporary liberal says to the individual: you have no right to live your beliefs unless we allow you to; but we have every right to impose our leftist beliefs on you and force you to live as we see fit.

Here are some home truths that cannot be repeated too often:

We are not the property of the state.

Our rights and liberties do not come from the state, but are logically antecedent to it, inscribed as they are in the very nature of things.

We do not have to justify our keeping of what is ours; the state has to justify its taking.

The Greatest Risk We are Taking

Patrick J. Buchanan:

But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants, many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million, composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.

Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation and one people?

There is none. Most people with a bit of life experience know that one can get along and interact productively with only some people. There has to be a broad base of shared agreement on all sorts of things. For example, there ought to be only one language in the U. S. for all public purposes, English. It was a huge mistake when voting forms were allowed to be published in foreign languages. Only legal immigrants should be allowed in, and assimilation must be demanded of them.

No comity without commonality as one of my aphorisms has it.

The Left, however, wants the end of America as she was founded to be, "one nation and one people." That is why leftists support the illegal invasion from the south. But being mendacious leftists they will never openly admit this, but instead speak with Orwellian obfuscation of "comprehensive immigration reform."

The enemy has been identified.

Do not think of leftists and 'progressives' as fellow citizens; they are merely among us as disorderly elements and domestic enemies. There can be no peace with them because they represent an 'existential threat.' Not to our physical existence so much as to our way of life, which is of course more important than our mere physical existence as animals.

But I must add, contra certain of the Alt Right, that "one people" should not be understood racially or ethnically. An enlightened nationalism is not a white nationalism. America is of course 'a proposition nation.' You will find the propositions in the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence.

I don't give a flying enchilada whether you are Hispanic or Asian. If you immigrated legally, accept the propositions, drop the hyphens, and identify as an American, then I say you are one of us. I'll even celebrate the culinary diversity you contribute.

That being understood, it is also true that whites discovered these America-constitutive propositions and are well-equipped to appreciate and uphold them, and better equipped than some other groups. That is a fact that a sane immigration policy must reflect.

My view is eminently reasonable and balanced, don't you think? It navigates between the Scylla of destructive leftist globalist internationalism and the Charybdis of racist identity-political particularism.

On the Promiscuously Commendatory Overuse of ‘Democracy’

'Democracy' is one of those words that is almost always used in a commendatory and non-pejorative way, even though a little thought should uncover several negative features of the term's referent.

This is a large and important topic. I will just touch on one point this morning.

In today's Washington Examiner we find an opinion piece entitled 'A people without borders' is a people without democracy.

The title is instructively false. If the people north of the Rio Grande, both U. S. citizens and illegal aliens, decide to do away with political borders, then we would have a people without borders that is a people with democracy.

Is that not obvious?

Just give everyone who lives in the U. S. the vote, regardless of citizenship status, and at the same allow all who want to come into the country to come. You will then have achieved, by democratic means, a borderless country and a borderless people.

Isn't this what the Democrat Party wants?

If the people decide, then they can decide to do away with political borders, or their enforcement, which for practical purposes amounts to the same. (A political border that is not enforced is, practically speaking, no border at all. It is like a speed limit that is not enforced. Unenforced speed limits limit no one's speed.)

So why does the above-cited opinion piece have such a moronic title? It is because people foolishly think that democracy is this incredibly wonderful thing about which no on must ever speak a critical word.

But if you can think at all, you must be able to grasp that there are certain principles and values that ought not be up for democratic grabs. One of these is that a nation without enforceable and enforced borders is no nation all, a corollary of which is that there is a distinction between citizen and non-citizen.

The U. S. is not a democracy but a representative republic.

Addendum (4/4)

Here is another example of the fetishization of the word 'democracy' in an otherwise good article:

Nations that don't control their borders cease to exist. Their laws no longer mean anything. Democracy ceases to function. It's a constant lesson from history, one the U.S. would be wise to heed.

It is not democracy that ceases to function but the constitutionally-based representative republic. If the people decide to do away with the rule of law, how is that undemocratic?

If the people decide, then they can decide who the people are. They can decide that the people are those present in a given geographical area, whether citizens or non-citizens. Or they can decide that only 'people of color' are real people and that whites are 'racists.'

Remember how George W. Bush used to go on about bringing democracy to the Middle East? The knucklehead just loved that word 'democracy.' Sounds good until the people decide for Sharia. Does democracy then become undemocratic?

Opposing as I do pure democracy, I am not advocating monarchy or anything like it. I am advocating a return to the principles of the American founding.

The Secularization of the Judeo-Christian Equality Axiom

It is a plain fact that humans are not empirically equal either as individuals or as groups. Why then is there so much politically correct resistance to this truth? It is because it flies in the face of a central dogma of the Left, namely, that deep down we are all the same, want the same things, have the same abilities, share the same values, and so on. So if women are 'under-represented' among the engineers, for example, then the only way to explain this, given the leftist equality dogma, is in terms of something nefarious such as sexism. For if we are all equal empirically, then the 'under-representation' — a word I enclose in sneer quotes because of its conflation of the factual and the normative — cannot be explained in terms of a difference in interests and values or a difference in mathematical aptitude. (Remember what happened to Lawrence Summers of Harvard?)

The dogma is false, yet widely and fervently believed. Anyone who dares offend against it faces severe consequences. Amy Wax, for example:

A University of Pennsylvania law school professor will no longer teach required courses following outcry over a video in which she suggested — falsely, according to the school — that black students seldom graduated high in their class.

Amy Wax, a tenured professor, will continue to teach electives in her areas of expertise but will be removed from teaching first-year curriculum courses, Penn Law Dean Theodore Ruger said in a statement Wednesday.

Ruger said Wax spoke “disparagingly and inaccurately” when she claimed last year that she had “rarely, rarely” seen a black student finish in the top half of their class.

Professor Wax spoke the truth, but the truth is no defense in the court of the politically correct. In present-day academe, all must toe the party line and woe to him who doesn't. The universities have become leftist seminaries.

What explains the fervor and fanaticism with which the Left's equality dogma is upheld? Could we explain it as a secularization of the Judeo-Christian belief that all men are created equal? Long before I read Carl Schmitt, I had this thought. But then I found this provocative assertion by Schmitt:

All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development . . . but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. (Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, tr. G. Schwab, University of Chicago Press, 1985, p. 36.)

The idea that all humans are equal in virtue of having been created by God in the image and likeness of God is a purely theological notion consistent with deep and wide empirical differences among humans. Its secularization, I suggest, involves several steps. (These are my ideas, not Schmitt's.)

The first step is to transform the metaphysical concept of equality of persons into an empirical concept of equality of measurable attributes.

The second step is to explain away the manifest empirical inequality of human groups and individuals in terms of sexism or racism or ageism or some other 'ism.' This involves a turn toward social constructivism and a reality-denying turn away from the mind-independent reality of biological differences between the sexes and the races. Sex becomes 'gender' and the latter a social construct. Similarly with race. The absurdities that result are foolishly embraced rather than taken as so many reductiones ad absurdum of the original mistake of making sex and race social constructs. Thus one foolishly embraces the notion that one can change one's race. For a calm and thorough critique of this notion as represented by a contemporary academic, see my Can One Change One's Race?

The third step is to jettison the theological underpinning of the original equality conception.

In this way a true, non-empirical claim of Christian metaphysics about persons as rights-bearers is transformed into a false empirical claim about human animals. At the same time the ground of the non-empirical claim is denied.

It is easy to see how unstable this all is. Reject God, and you no longer have a basis for belief in equality of persons. Man reverts to being an animal among animals with all the empirical inequality that that brings with it.

So the Left has a problem. It is virulently anti-theistic and anti-religious and yet it wants to uphold a notion of equality that makes sense only within a theistic framework. The Left, blind to this inconsistency, is running on the fumes of an evaporating Christian worldview. Equality of persons and rights secularizes itself right out of existence once the theological support is kicked away.

Nietzsche understood this long ago. The death of God has consequences. One is that the brotherhood of man becomes a joke. If my tribe can enslave yours, then it has all the justification it needs and can have for doing so. Why should I treat you as my brother if I have the power to make you my servant and I have freed my mind of Christian fictions?

For those of us who oppose both the Left and the Alt-Right faction that is anti-Christian and Nietzschean, the only option seems to be a return to our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Here is an example of an argument from the Alt Right faction I am referring to:

There is a strong anti-Christian tendency in contemporary White Nationalism.

The argument goes something like this: Christianity is one of the primary causes of the decline of the white race for two reasons. First, it gives the Jews a privileged place in the sacred history of mankind, a role that they have used to gain their enormous power over us today. Second, Christian moral teachings—inborn collective guilt, magical redemption, universalism, altruism, humility, meekness, turning the other cheek, etc.—are the primary cause of the white race’s ongoing suicide and the main impediment to turning the tide. These values are no less Christian in origin just because secular liberals and socialists discard their supernatural trappings. The usual conclusion is that the white race will not be able to save itself unless it rejects Christianity.

I agree entirely with the sentence I have bolded. Leftist secularization is essentially a suppression of the supernatural with a concomitant maintenance of virtues and precepts that make sense only within a supernatural framework. But 'trappings' is not the right word; 'supports' is better. The Left is engaged in the absurd project of kicking away the support of universal rights, the dignity and equality of persons, and all the rest while trying to hold on to these commitments.

The deeper question, though, is whether Christianity weakens us and makes us unfit to live and flourish as the animals we are in the only world there is, this world of space, time, matter and change, or whether Alles Vergaengliche ist nur ein Gleichnis (Goethe), time is a moving image of eternity (Plato), and this world is a fleeting vale of tears that veils an Unseen Order.

How Identity Politics is Made to Destroy Us

An outstanding essay by David Horowitz. I am tempted to reproduce the whole thing. I shall restrain myself.

Three Pillars of Totalitarianism

The totalitarian implications of this increasingly powerful ideological trend in the national culture have become pronounced enough to have alarmed some liberals, most notably the writer Andrew Sullivan. Observing that cultural Marxism is now the required creed of America’s liberal arts colleges, Sullivan warns, “When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based “social justice” movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well. If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large. What matters most of all in these colleges—your membership in a group that is embedded in a hierarchy of oppression—will soon enough be what matters in the society as a whole.”

In America’s universities, which are the training grounds for America’s future leaders, the victory of the cultural Marxists is already complete. In Sullivan’s words, “The Enlightenment principles that formed the bedrock of the American experiment—untrammeled free speech, due process, individual (rather than group) rights—are now routinely understood as mere masks for “white male” power, code words for the oppression of women and nonwhites. Any differences in outcome for various groups must always be a function of “hate,” rather than a function of nature or choice or freedom or individual agency. And anyone who questions these assertions is obviously a white supremacist himself.”

There are three pillars of the totalitarian outlook. The first is its totalist agenda—the elimination of private space and the abandonment of the liberal idea that there should be limits to government authority. In its place, totalitarians insist that “the personal is political.” Since the hierarchy of oppression that inspires social justice warriors encompasses all social relationships between races and ethnicities, between men, women, and multiple politically correct genders, there is no area of social life that escapes political judgment and is protected from government intrusion. Already, in New York City—to take one municipality controlled by the political Left—there are 31 government designated genders, and fines for failing to recognize them.

The second pillar is the idea of the social construction of race, class, and gender. This anti-scientific idea that races and genders are socially created rather than biologically determined is already the unchallenged premise of virtually all academic courses relating to gender and race, and informs many of the planks of the official platform of the Democratic Party. Recognizing the role of biological factors in determining gender and race would require an adjustment to reality, whereas the goal of identity politics is revolutionary and “transformative.” Removing and/or suppressing the alleged creators of genders and races will make possible the social transformation whose goal is “social justice.” The alleged creators of genders and races are the designated villains of identity politics: patriarchal and racial oppressors (white supremacists) who employ these categories to marginalize, dehumanize and dominate vulnerable alleged victim groups.

The centrality of these victim groups is encapsulated in totalitarianism’s third pillar: objectification—the elimination of individual agency and accountability in favor of group identities and oppression status. This, of course, is the inevitable consequence of collectivist ideologies which make groups primary and remove from individuals their agencies as subjects. If there is inequality its source is an invisible hierarchy of oppression, never the inequalities and failures of individuals themselves. If homicide is the number one killer of young black males, whites must be responsible because whites allegedly control all the institutions and social structures that determine black outcomes—notwithstanding the fact that the same crime statistics plague municipalities run by blacks as those run by whites. What may go on in black communities to account for these and other appalling statistics—out of wedlock births, physical abuse by parents, drug trafficking, lax law enforcement policies instituted by liberal authorities—is rendered invisible by an ideology which regards race as the determining factor regardless of individual behaviors and failings. If women are “under-represented” in engineering positions at Google, this cannot be because of individual choices made by women—to think so is prima facie sexism—but must be the work of a patriarchal conspiracy, however invisible.

The third pillar, Objectification, is also relevant to the identity politics of the Alt-Right, a topic Horowitz does not address in his essay. It is important to see that both the Left and the Alt-Right share the pernicious "elimination of individual agency and accountability in favor of group identities." 'Objectification' is exactly the right word for the refusal on both the Left and the Alt-Right to view people as individuals, as persons, as subjects irreducible to their class or racial or sexual membership.

Is Economic Inequality Morally Acceptable?

This from a reader:

We are born with a natural inequality with soon turns into economic inequality. The reason it turns into economic inequality, I believe, is that humans have a natural desire for status. It is an essential part of the human condition, and I believe impossible to eradicate, indeed it is impossible to conceive human nature or existence without the existence of status, and our desire to improve it. It is part of any organisation, including academia or the church. This is an evil, I believe, but to eradicate it would involve destroying our freedom, which is a worse evil.

Yes, we are naturally unequal, both as individuals and as groups, and this inequality results in economic inequality. But I wouldn't explain this in terms of the desire for status. Status is relative social standing, and depends on how one appears in the eyes of others. But this is relatively unimportant and has little to do with money and property which are far more important. I can live very well indeed without name and fame, accolades and awards, high social position and the perquisites that come in its train. But I cannot live well without a modicum of material wealth.

It is not desire for status that explains economic inequality but the desire for money and property and the sort of material security it provides. Obviously, other factors come into the explanation including living in a politically stable capitalist country under the rule of law. There are socialist crap holes in which everyone except the apparatchiki are poor but equal, but impoverished equality is not an equality worth wanting. This is why commie states need walls to keep legals in while the USA needs a wall to keep illegals out.

Is the desire materially to improve oneself evil? I would say no as long as the the pursuit of wealth remains ordinate, and therefore subordinate to higher values. Is the resultant economic inequality evil? No again. Why should it be? I have a right to what I have acquired by my hard work, deferral of gratification, and practice of the ancient virtues. It is to be expected that I will end up with a higher net worth than that of people who lack my abilities and virtues.

The economy is not a zero-sum game. If I "mix my labour" (Locke) with the soil and grow tomatoes, I have caused new food to come into existence; I haven't taken from an existing stock of tomatoes with the result that others must get fewer. If my lazy neighbor demands some of my tomatoes, I will tell him to go to hell; but if he asks me in a nice way, then I will give him some. In this way, he benefits from my labor without doing anything. Some of my tomatoes 'trickle down' to him. A rising tide lifts all boats. Lefties hate this conservative boilerplate whoch is why I repeat it. It's true and it works. When was the last time a poor man gave anyone a job? Etc.

I deserve what I acquire by the virtuous exercise of my abilities. But do I deserve my abilities? No, but I have a right to them. I have a right to things I don't deserve. Nature gave me binocular vision but only monaural hearing. Do I deserve my two good eyes? No, but I have a right to them. Therefore, I am under no moral obligation to give one of my eyes to a sightless person. (If memory serves, R. Nozick makes a similar point in Anarchy, State, and Utopia.)

At this point someone might object that it is just not fair that some of us are better placed and better endowed than others, and that therefore it is a legitimate function of government to redistribute wealth to offset the resultant economic inequality. But never forget that government is coercive by its very nature and run by people who are intellectually and morally no better, and sometimes worse, than the rest of us.

The evil of massive, omni-intrusive government is far worse than economic equality is good. Besides, lack of money is rooted in lack of virtue, and government cannot teach people to be virtuous. If Bill Gates' billions were stripped from him and given to the the bums of San Francisco, in ten year's time Gates would be back on top and the bums would be back in the gutters.

Perhaps we can say that economic inequality, though axiologically suboptimal, is nonetheless not morally evil given the way the world actually works with people having the sorts of incentives that they actually have, etc. There is nothing wrong with economic inequality as long as every citizen has the bare minimum. But illegal aliens have no right to any government handouts.

The Left Eats Its Own: Andrew Sullivan

Despite 'credentials' that ought to endear him to the Left, Mr. Sullivan has learned the hard way that he still has too much good sense to count as one of them:

As for objective reality, I was at an event earlier this week — not on a campus — when I made what I thought was the commonplace observation that Jim Crow laws no longer exist. Uncomprehending stares came back at me. What planet was I on? Not only does Jim Crow still exist, but slavery itself never went away! When I questioned this assertion by an African-American woman, I was told it was “not my place” to question her reality. After all, I’m white.

The reason I can't take Sully all that seriously is that, while he sees through the insane lies of the Left, he refuses to do the one thing necessary to combat them effectively in the present constellation of circumstances, namely, support Donald Trump and his administration. Sullivan's deranged hatred of the man blinds him to Trump's political usefulness in beating back the destructive Left.

Look: I don’t doubt the good intentions of the new identity politics — to expand the opportunities for people previously excluded. I favor a politics that never discriminates against someone for immutable characteristics — and tries to make sure that as many people as possible feel they have access to our liberal democracy. But what we have now is far more than the liberal project of integrating minorities. It comes close to an attack on the liberal project itself. Marxism with a patina of liberalism on top is still Marxism — and it’s as hostile to the idea of a free society as white nationalism is. So if you wonder why our discourse is now so freighted with fear, why so many choose silence as the path of least resistance, or why the core concepts of a liberal society — the individual’s uniqueness, the primacy of reason, the protection of due process, an objective truth — are so besieged, this is one of the reasons.

Although Sullivan goes too far when he implies that it is never justifiable to discriminate against a person on the basis of immutable characteristics, see below, I basically agree with his little speech. I agree with his four core concepts.

In particular, I oppose the tribalism of those who see others as mere tokens of racial/ethnic/sexual types and who identify themselves in the same way. Tribalism could be defined as precisely this reduction of a person to a mere token or instance of a racial/ethnic/sexual type, whether the person is oneself or another. It is a refusal to countenance the potential if not actual uniqueness of the individual. The Left is tribal in this sense but so is the Alt-Right. What they have in common is the reduction of individual identity, personal identity, to group identity. My brand of conservatism resists this reduction and attempts to navigate a via media between the identity-political extremes.

I have found it difficult to get these ideas across to my open-minded and good-natured alt-right interlocutors.

They will tell me that, as a matter of fact, people identify tribally. I agree. My point, however, is that such identification is not conducive to social harmony and that we ought to at least try to transcend our tribalism.

The claim that such-and-such ought to be done cannot be refuted by the fact that it is not done. The propositions that people ought not sexually molest children, ought not drive drunk, ought not embezzle, etc. cannot be refuted by invoking the fact that they do. The same goes for institutions. The existence of an institution does not morally justify its existence.

The claim that people ought to do A could, however, be refuted if it could be shown that people, or some group of people, cannot do A. Ought implies can. I cannot reasonably demand of blacks, say, that they think and act less tribally if they are simply incapable of so thinking and acting.

So my interlocutors' point might be that urging people to be less tribal is empty preaching that unreasonably demands that people do what they cannot do. To which my response will be that many blacks and Hispanics and women — who can be thought of as a 'tribe' in an extended sense of the term — do transcend their tribal identities. For example, while Hispanics would naturally like there to be more Hispanics in the USA, many of them are able to appreciate that illegal immigration ought not be tolerated.

You might say that for Hispanics like these, their self-identification as a rational animal, zoon logikon, in Aristotle's sense, trumps their self-identification as Hispanic.

There are higher and lower, noble and base, modes of self-identification. Philosopher versus cocksman, say. You can guess my view: self-identification in terms of race, ethnicity, and sex is toward the base end of the scale.

Do I deny that I am a white male? Not at all. What's more, those attributes are essential to me. To speak with the philosophers: I am a white male in every possible world in which I exist. I cannot be an animal at all unless I have some immutable characteristics. (And to think of them as socially constructed is the height of leftist lunacy.) Then why is it base to identify in terms of these characteristics? Because there are higher modes of self-identification.

What makes them higher or better? They are less divisive and more conducive to social harmony. We are social animals and we benefit from cooperation. While competition is good in that it breeds excellence, conflict and enmity are bad. If we can learn to see one another as unique individuals, as persons, as rational beings rather than as interchangeable tokes of racial/ethnic/sexual types, then we are more likely to achieve more mutually beneficial social interactions.

The higher self-identifications are also more reflective of our status as free moral agents. I didn't choose my race or sex, but I did choose and continue to choose to develop myself as an individual, to actualize my potential for self-individuation. My progress along that line of self-development is something I can be proud of. By contrast there is something faintly absurd and morally dubious about black pride, white pride, gay pride, and the like. You're proud to be white? Why? You had no say in the matter. Nancy Pelosi is apparently ashamed to be white. That is equally mistaken.

Am I saying that race doesn't matter? No. Race does matter, but it matters less than leftists and alt-rightists think and more than some old-time (sane) liberals and conservatives like Dennis Prager think. (See Dennis Prager on Liberalism, Leftism, and Race.) Certain racial and ethnic groups are better equipped to appreciate, i.e., both understand and value, the points I have been making. Part of it has to do with intelligence. Asians and Jews, as groups, are more intelligent than blacks and Hispanics as groups. That is just a fact, and there are no racist facts. (A fact about race is not a racist fact.) What's true cannot be racist or sexist.

I spoke above of the uniqueness of the individual. I know that sounds like vacuous sermonizing and utter bullshit to many ears. But to adequately discuss it we would have to enter metaphysics. Some other time. But please note that ameliorative politics must be grounded in political theory which rests on normative ethics which presuppose philosophical anthropology which leads us back to metaphysics.

I should stop now. I have given my alt-right sparring partners enough to punch back at. Have at it, boys. Comments crisp and concise are best. People don't read long comments. Many short, good; one long, bad.

Addendum: Is it ever morally justifiable to discriminate against a person on the basis of an immutable characteristic?

Of course it is. I flunked my Army pre-induction physical. The Army discriminated against me because I hear out of only one ear. Southern Pacific Railroad did the same when, following in the footsteps of my quondam hero, Jack Kerouac, I tried to get a job as a switchman. Examples are easily multiplied. Want to join the Army? There are age restrictions. You can't be over 40. Should every combat role in the mlitary be open to females? Obviously not.

You would have to be as willfully stupid as Nancy Pelosi to think that all discrimination is unjust.