Category: Social and Political Philosophy
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How Much Socialism is There in Cultural Marxism?
It is a mistake to confuse 'classical' Marxism with cultural Marxism. The former is characterized by the labor theory of economic value; the call for the abolition of private property; collective ownership of the means of production, i.e., socialism in the strict sense of the term; historical materialism (HISTOMAT) and dialectical materialism (DIAMAT); belief in…
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Joseph Sobran: Notes for the Reactionary of the Future
Don't be put off by the title. This essay, which William F. Buckley published in December, 1985 in National Review, is bristling with insights and distinctions essential for clear thinking about political matters. (HT: Malcolm Pollack) The late Lawrence Auster offers a sympathetic but critical perspective. I'm very busy now. Commentary on Sobran's dazzling essay…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Don’t Pathologize Political Differences
This is the excellent advice of Alan Dershowitz (emphasis added): But psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have no more right to pathologize a president or a candidate because they disagree with his or her political views than do prosecutors or politicians have a right to criminalize political opponents. I have been writing in opposition…
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A Basic Liberal Assumption: Every Political Party is Tolerable
George Schwab, in his Introduction to Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (University of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 13, bolding added, footnotes omitted), writes: In his endeavor to strengthen the Weimar state, Schmitt challenged a basic liberal assumption then widely held either for philosophical or tactical reasons, namely, that every political party, no matter…
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Paul Gottfried on David Gordon and Right-Wing Celebrity Authors
It is fun to play the public intellectual and drop the names of authors whose works one has never read with care. And it is very easy to get out beyond one's depth. At the moment I am thinking of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, and to a lesser extent, Rod Dreher. Their commentarial confidence …
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The Unavoidability of the Political
Skholiast at Speculum Criticum sends a friendly greeting that I have shortened a bit: Like the recent correspondent you quote in your Christmas post, I've been reading you a long time — I guess ten years now — and I read you from across the political divide. Possibly I am further "left," or "radical," or…