“All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope?
With that, Buchanan repudiates not only the founding principle of our Constitutional order, but also a core teaching of the Christian faith, which holds that all men are created in the image of God.
I am with Dreher on this without sharing quite the level of high dudgeon that he expresses in his piece.
I am always surprised when people do not grasp the plain sense of the "that all Men are created equal" clause embedded in the opening sentence of the second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence. It cannot be charitably interpreted as a statement of empirical fact. If it were so interpreted, it would be false. For we all know, and certainly the Founders knew, that human beings are NOT equal as a matter of empirical fact either as individuals or as groups.
Suppose a statement can be interpreted in two ways. One way it comes out plainly false; the other way it comes out either true or plausible or not obviously untrue. Then what I understand the Principle of Charity to require is that we go the second way.
For Buchanan to demand "scientific or historic proof" shows deep misunderstanding. For again, the claim is not empirical. Is it then a normative claim as Mona Charen (quoted by Dreher) seems to suggest? It implies normative propositions, but it is not itself a normative proposition. It is a metaphysical statement. It is like the statement that God exists or that the physical universe is a divine creation. Both of the latter statements are non-empirical. No natural science can either prove them or disprove them. But neither of them are normative.
Note that the Declaration's claim is not that all men are equal but that all men are created equal. In such a carefully crafted document, the word 'created' must be doing some work. What might that be?
There cannot be creatures (created items) without a Creator. That's a conceptual truth, what Kant calls an analytic proposition. So if man is created equal, then he is created by a Creator. The Creator the founders had in mind was the Christian God, and these gentlemen had, of course, read the Book of Genesis wherein we read that God made man in his image and likeness. That implies that man is not a mere animal in nature, but a spiritual being, a god-like being, possessing free will and an eternal destiny. Essential to the Judeo-Christian worldview is the notion that man is toto caelo different from the rest of the animals. He is an animal all right, but a very special one. This idea is preserved even in Heidegger who speaks of an Abgrund zwischen Mensch und Tier. The difference between man and animal is abysmal or, if you prefer, abyssal. Man alone is Da-Sein, the 'There' of Being; man alone is endowed with Seinsverstaendnis, an understanding (of) Being. But I digress onto a Black Forest path.
Now if all men, whether male or female, black or white, are created equal by God, and this equality is a metaphysical determination (Bestimmung in the sense of both a distinctive determination and a vocation) then we have here the metaphysical basis for the normative claim that all men ought to be treated equally, that all men ought to enjoy equally the same unalienable rights, among them, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. (We note en passant that these are negative rights!)
All men are normatively equal because they are metaphysically equal. They are the latter because they are spiritual beings deriving from one and the same spiritual source. Each one of us is a person just as God is a person. We are equal as persons even though we are highly unequal as animals.
Without this theological basis it is difficult to see how there could be any serious talk of equality of persons. As the alt-righties and the neoreactionaries like to say, we are not (empirically) equal either as individuals or as groups. They are absolutely right about that.
Dreher is also right that the theologically-grounded equality of persons is "the founding principle of our Constitutional order," and thus of our political order. Repudiate it, as Buchanan seems to be doing, and you undermine our political order.
What then does our political order rest on if the equality of persons is denied?
I do not advocate secession. But in these trying times all options must be explored. Professor Williams' Were Confederate Generals Traitors? (HT: Bill Keezer) concludes:
Confederate generals were fighting for independence from the Union just as George Washington and other generals fought for independence from Great Britain. Those who’d label Gen. Robert E. Lee as a traitor might also label George Washington as a traitor. I’m sure Great Britain’s King George III would have agreed.
If a civil war is a war for control of a central government, the U. S. Civil War was not a civil war but a war of secession.
Professor Williams is a black man. There are loons on the Left who will call him a traitor to his race. But one can be a traitor to one's race as little as one can change one's race. The world is not social construction all the way down. To think otherwise is one of the marks of a leftist.
One of the reasons secession is under lively discussion is because we need to find ways to get away from these destructive fools. We need the political equivalent of divorce. The hard questions pertain to the how. I have made the somewhat anemic suggestion of a return to federalism, but there must be other possibilities shy of secession.
My brand of conservatism is personalist, which may help explain why I find myself at loggerheads with those on the so-called 'Alternative Right.' And my brand of personalism is conservative which may help explain why I look askance at libertarianism and at 'mainstream conservatism' to the extent that the latter is libertarian and insufficiently attentive to the importance of national sovereignty and the right of a nation to preserve its culture from dilution and indeed subversion. The libertarian overemphasizes the economic. He is followed in this by the mainstream conservative. The alt-rightist rightly resists this overemphasis but runs the risk of falling into an excessive and morally obnoxious particularism. One form this particularism takes is in the alt-right's anti-egalitarianism. See here:
The Alt Right is anti-equalitarian. It rejects the idea of equality for the same reason it rejects the ideas of unicorns and leprechauns, noting that human equality does not exist in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form.
We are being told that there is no non-trivial sense in which human beings are equal. This, I take it, is a characteristic and defining Alt Right claim to which I oppose the Trad Right thesis that there is a sense in which all human beings are equal, namely, as persons. I suspect that this may be the main difference between the Alt and the Trad versions of conservatism. Or if not the main difference, then an important one.
But my concern is not to oppose the Alt Right, whatever exactly it is supposed to be, but to defend the thesis that human beings are equal, not as animals in nature, but as persons. Here, as elsewhere, my aim is clarity, not agreement. Agreement is out of reach, but clarification of differences is an achievable and worthwhile goal.
Empirical Inequality is a Fact
Empirical inequality cannot be denied: by the various empirical measures there is plenty of inequality among individuals and groups. (Trivial example: men on average are taller than women. Height is an example of an empirically measurable attribute.) So if human beings are taken solely in their empirical and material natures, or if human beings are nothing more than material beings, then talk of the equality of all human beings is either false or trivial. (That all human beings are equal in that they all have been born at or near the surface of the earth is empirically true, but trivially true.)
Let me make a couple more pedantic points just to make sure that the issue is clear. That we are not all empirically equal is of course consistent with two or more of us being equal in some measurable respect or even in all such respects. If it should turn out that Tim and Tom are alike in all empirical respects, that would be consistent with the denial that we are all empirically equal. A second point is that the denial that we are all empirically equally is not a normative, but a factual, claim and as such axiologically neutral. There is no implication that this is a bad, or a good, state of affairs. It is just a fact.
The Question
Given the plain fact of empirical inequality, is there any defensible sense in which human beings could be said to be equal and in possession of equal rights?
Equality is not a Matter of Abstraction
There is a misunderstanding that needs to be squelched at the outset. Talk of the equality of humans as persons does not involve abstraction from all the empirical differences that divide individuals and groups. No doubt there is the concept human being in general which every individual human animal falls under. We arrive at this concept by abstracting from all the differences between individuals to arrive at a determination common to them all. But to speak of persons is not to engage in such an abstraction. It is to refer to the unique subject of experience that each of us is, and to which each one of us can refer using the first-person singular pronoun. That to which I refer when I say 'I' is a unique personal reality, a concrete individual, not an abstraction.
The Concept of Person
A person, then, is a concrete subject of experience. By 'subject,' I don't just mean something that has or supports experiences as in the Aristotelian notion of a substrate or hypokeimenon, but something that is an initiator or enactor or source of experiences. Analogously as rays of light emanate from a light source, 'rays' of intentionality emanate outward from the subject (in the modern sense) toward objects. A person is a subject in both of these ancient and modern senses.
To unpack it a bit: a person is a conscious and thus sentient individual, capable of self-consciousness, possessing feeling and will and memory and the capacity to reason and plan and seek the truth about itself and everything else. I have just limned the concept of person in the descriptive sense of 'person.' We may now add the normative sense. A person in the normative sense is a rights-possessor which, in virtue of having rights, induces in other persons various duties. For example, my right to life induces in you the duty to refrain from taking my life, and your duty derives from my right. In this sense rights and duties are correlative.
Equality of Persons, not of Animals
So when I speak of the equality of persons, that does not mean that all human animals are empirically equal, either as individuals or as groups, which is plainly false, nor does it mean that all human animals are equal just insofar as they are instances of the concept human being. The latter is true of course: each instance of human being is the same as, and equal to, every other such instance qua instance. But while true it misses the point, namely, that each human being is a unique person.
We need to distinguish among: (a) All humans are empirically equal, which is false; (b) All humans are equally instances of the concept human being, which is true but trivial; (c) Each human being is a unique person.
My claim, then, is that we are all equal as persons in the descriptive sense, and therefore all equal in the normative sense. That is, if any one of us is a rights-possessor in virtue of being a descriptive person, then every one of us is a rights-possessor in virtue of being a descriptive person. And all of this regardless of sex, race, age, and any other empirical feature. We are equal as persons even if my will is stronger than yours and my intellect more penetrating. We are equal as persons even if you are more compassionate than me.
The point, then, is that equality is grounded in personhood, not in animal constitution. To clarify this, we need to think some more about the relation of persons and human beings or human animals when the latter are viewed from the angle of the natural sciences of biology and anthropology.
Persons and Human Animals
The above definition of 'person' allows for persons that are not human beings and human beings (genetic humans) that are not persons, as well as persons that are human beings. In the following Venn diagram, A = persons and B = humans. The intersection C represents persons who are human. God, angels, demons, and pre-embodied and disembodied Platonic souls are examples of persons that are not human. They are not human because they are not animals at all, but pure spirits. Also examples of persons that are not human are embodied persons whose personhood is realized in non-human material stuff, e.g. extraterrestrials and persons realized, not in living matter, but in computers. Examples of humans that are not persons, on my definition of 'person,' would be anencephalic human neonates. They would not be persons because of their lack of capacity to develop language and reasoning skills. (For more on the anencephalic business, see Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons, the comments to which were good.) But these anencephalic individuals are nonetheless genetically human as the offspring of human parents.
To repeat, our equality is grounded in our shared personhood despite our considerable empirical differences. Personhood cannot be understood in natural-scientific terms.
I am not commited to saying that we can exist as persons without animal embodiment. I am committed to saying that persons cannot be reduced to animals.
Equality in the Declaration of Independence
The first sentence of the second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence reads, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Clearly, on a charitable interpretation, what this affirms is not (a) or (b) but something in the vicinity of (c). We are equal as persons, as subjects of experience and as rights-possessors, not as animals in nature. As objects in the natural world having natural and empirically detectable properties, we are obviously not all equal.
Our equality is grounded in our being, not objects in the world, but subjects for whom there is a world. Subjectivity looms large on the personalist conception. It is only as conscious and self-conscious subjects that we are purposive beings who pursue things, including happiness, and have a right to the sort of life that conscious beings enjoy. This is life via intentional acts emanating from a personal center and not life in a merely biological sense. Human living cannot be exhaustively understood biologically, and this despite the plain fact that we are animals in nature.
That empirical equality is not at issue should also be obvious from the talk of a Creator. We are said to be created equal. If we are created equal, but are at the same time plainly unequal empirically speaking, then the respect in which we are created equal cannot be an empirical respect. We are not equal as specimens of a biological species, but equal in some other respect. What respect could that be?
Talk of a creator brings a purely spiritual being, God, into the picture. In the context of Christianity, which is the context in which the Founders operate, that means that we are created in the image and likeness of God. And what that means is that we too are spiritual beings possessing free will and the dignity and worth that comes with it, despite our embodiment in nature.
On this scheme, political equality and equality of rights rest on a metaphysical foundation, namely the metaphysics of persons, where persons are spiritual individuals with a destiny that transcends their animal mortality. We are all equal as creatures of the same Creator.
Interim Conclusion
Our problem was to explain how how humans could be said to equal when they are manifestly unequal empirically speaking. The classical theist will have no trouble answering. We are more than animals. We are spiritual individuals created by God in his image and likeness. As such we are equal in dignity and worth and equal in rights, whether tall or short, white or black of brown or yellow, male or female young or old, etc.
If it is essential to the Alt Right to deny that there is any sense in which humans are equal that is not either false or trivial, then the Alt Right view excludes classical theism and conversely.
An Objection and a Reply
Correspondent Jacques raises the following objection:
Let's agree it's ["All men are created equal"] a normative claim to the effect that all 'persons' have certain 'rights'. What then entitles all of them to these rights? A normative fact like that doesn't float free from all empirical facts. There's got to be some reason why all normal human adults have these rights but chickens or pencils don't, some empirical property of these beings only that generates or confers certain rights. Is it the shared property of being a person? Or the shared property of being human? Something else? I suspect that any of the candidate properties will be either morally irrelevant, even by liberal-leftist standards, or else relevant but distributed so unequally that it will be hard to understand how it could be the basis for 'equal' rights.
This is a fair question. We do not ascribe rights such as a right to life to chickens. We raise them to eat them. We treat them as mere means to our ends, even if we treat them humanely. Why is it morally permissible to eat chickens but not to eat humans? Why is it morally permissible to force animals to work for us but impermissible to enslave humans? What grounds the normative properties?
I agree with Jacques that normativity does not "float free": it needs anchorage in the non-normative. But the non-normative need not be observable by the senses. The non-normative is not equivalent to the empirical. It is open to me to say that the moral impermissibility of eating humans is grounded in the non-normative fact of their being persons in the descriptive sense. Humans are persons while chickens are not; this factual difference grounds the normative difference. It also explains why it is permissible to make a beast of burden of a donkey, but not of a man. I may agree to carry your load, but if you force me to carry it, then you violate my normative personhood which is grounded in my descriptive personhood.
Jacques also asks, "Why should we think there is any suitable empirical basis for the normative claim that 'all men are equal' or that such normative claims could be true regardless of any empirical facts?" I agree that there is no empirical basis for the normative claim. But it doesn't follow that it has no basis. The normative claim has a metaphysical basis in the nature of persons.
One has to stand in awe at the intellectual power and wisdom of the leading ladies of the Democrat Party. I am thinking of Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and now, Chelsea Clinton. The latter has recently opined that racism, sexism . . . and yes, even jingoism are not opinions.
If you are a regular reader you know how I would respond to this scurrilous nonsense. So I won't waste any time on it. (But see related articles below.)
Why the post then? It is merely to keep you informed of the direction in which the cultural indicators are pointing, and, possibly, to inspire you to do your bit to flush the liberal-left scum from positions of power, or, in the case of Chelsea, to keep this twerp from gaining any.
I was joking with somebody recently about blog backup.
"Why do I need to back up my blog?" said I. "The NSA has every word."
Joking aside, the underlying issue is a vexing one. There is no true liberty without security, but a security worth wanting must make allowance for a large measure of liberty.
It is a case of competing values. One of my early posts (13 May 2004) explores the dialectic. I gave it the catchy title, Liberty and Security. Damn, if it's not good! By the way, one of the many pleasures of blogging is re-reading and re-enjoying one's old writings.
As for me, I can’t understand how my work of almost 50 years amounts to a “nativist strategy.” Most of what I’ve published is scholarship on various historical subjects and hardly a strategy for promoting whiteness or ethno-nationalism. What I have argued when writing political polemics is the following: States that are culturally homogeneous tend to be more stable than those that are not; multiculturalism is a means by which certain elites can generate ethnic and social problems that they then put themselves in charge of and from which they derive benefit. Moreover, multiculturalism is a quintessential political religion, in that it offers moral and spiritual redemption through revolutionary change under the direction of an all-powerful political class. I’ve also mocked the view that whatever American “liberal democracy” and the post-Western “West” have become at this point in time should be a model for universal conversion. The American government should not be running around the globe forcing on others our latest version of “democratic” enlightenment.
The editors of New York may disagree with my priorities and analyses, but I don’t see how this disagreement proves that I’m a white nationalist.
I'd say Gottfried 1; NYM 0.
In my What Does 'America First' Mean? I argue, among other things, that an enlightened nationalism is not to be confused with nativism or white nationalism.
[Rex] Tillerson explained “America First” this way. It applies to “national security and economic prosperity, and that doesn’t mean it comes at the expense of others.” This defies common sense. Surely, if we’re first, someone else is second, third, and finally last.
Not at all. A perverse misunderstanding fueled by anti-Trump bias. In January, I explained it like this:
It ['America First'] does not mean that that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. We say 'America first' because we are Americans; the Czechs say or ought to say 'Czech Republic first.' The general principle is that every country has a right to grant preference to itself and its interests over the interests of other countries while respecting their interests and right to self-determination. America First is but an instance of the general principle. The principle, then, is Country First. If I revert to America First, that is to be understood as an instance of Country First.
The Atlantic author does not approve of Tillerson's distinction between national interests and national values. But the distinction is easily defended. American values are superior to all others. But we ought to have learned by now that imposing them on others is not in our interest, whether in the aggressive way of Bush or the feckless and geo-politically know-nothing 'lead from behind' way of Obama.
Muslim and other nations are wedded to their own backward values and they are not about to abandon them for ours. Any attempt to teach them how to live will be interpreted as aggression, and by Muslims as 'crusading.' They are stuck deep in the past in their ancient hatreds, prejudices, and tribalisms. With the partial exception of Turkey, they were untouched by the Enlightenment, although Ataturk's revolution seems now to be failing as Turkey slides back toward the old ways.
Modern liberalism, as John Dewey and its other originators conceived it, is the enemy of individual rights in the Founders' sense. Dewey goes so far as to say that in the context of the twentieth century, the Founders' understanding of rights is evil. [Reference?] Dewey also disparages the importance of government by consent of the governed. Elections really do not matter for Dewey. Democracy is not about elections and consent, nor is it about securing the right to liberty. It is rather "that form of social organization, extending to all the areas and ways of living, in which the powers of individuals shall . . . be fed, sustained, and directed" by government.56 Liberalism therefore prefers government by supposedly neutral, supposedly scientific "experts" largely insulated from the interference of public opinion and elected officials.57Liberals have long seen the Constitution, as it was originally understood, as their enemy; thus their indifference or hostility to "original intent."
Believers in the Founders' idea of equality, on the other hand, are the strongest supporters of the Constitution. Clarence Thomas is the Supreme Court justice who is most faithful to the text and spirit of the Constitution. The reason is that Justice Thomas, uniquely among those now on the Court, sees an intimate connection between the principles of the Declaration, which are the principles of individual liberty, and the text of the Constitution. In other words, Thomas respects the Constitution not just because it is a law, not just because it was adopted by the majority, but because it is good. As Thomas explained in a 2001 lecture at James Madison University, "the principles upon which the American Constitutional order is based are universal principles, applicable to all people at all times." He is interested in the constitutional text, he said, precisely for this reason.
Conservatives sometimes invoke facts as if the factuality of a fact justifies it. Rush Limbaugh: "Life is not fair." Bill O'Reilly: "We live in a capitalist society."
But you can't say that life is not fair and leave it at that; for this allows the lefty to come back with, "Then let's make it fair!" After all, the mere fact that such-and-such is the case doesn't justify its being the case. Similarly with capitalism. You cannot just say that our economy is capitalist. You have to go on to explain why capitalism is a superior form of economic arrangement.
John Rawls wrote a very influential book entitled A Theory of Justice in which he articulates the notion that justice is fairness. Key to his book is what he calls the Difference Principle.
Rawls' Difference Principle implies that social and economic inequalities are justified only if they benefit the worst off in a society. (Cf. A Theory of Justice, Harvard UP, 1971, p. 60) There is more to it than that, but that is an implication of it.
But I can't see why one ought to accept the implication. Suppose A and B are from similar backgrounds. They work at the same type of job. Person A devotes himself to wine, women, and song. B, however, practices the old virtues, saves, invests, and then buys, improves, rents and sells mid-range real estate. Person A has enough throughout his life but dies with nothing. B dies with a net worth of 5 million USD, which is not that difficult to acquire these days given inflation and a reasonably healthy economy.
I would say that the economic disparity between A and B is justified whether or not the inequality benefits the worst-off. Of course, the disparity will benefit others, and maybe even the worst-off. As conservatives like to point out, poor people don't hire anybody. Our small-scale developer, however, will hire all sorts of people.
Liberals like Rawls seem to assume that there is something unjust about inequality as such. I don't see it. Of course, inequality that has arisen from fraud, etc. is unjust. But inequality as such? Why?
My tendency is to think that not only are some inequalities allowed by justice, but positively required by it. But this is a huge topic, and to discuss it properly one has to delve into the theoretical apparatus (original position, veil of ignorance, etc.) with which Rawls supports his two principles of justice.
My point du jour is simply that too many conservatives lack the intellectual equipment and/or training properly to defend conservative ideas. They have the right ideas but they can't articulate and defend them. I am talking about influential conservatives, the ones in the trenches of talk radio and television, people like Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Hannity. I am not talking about the conservatives in the ivory towers that few have heard of such as Victor Davis Hanson.
Innovations are presumed guilty until proven innocent. There is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional beliefs, usages, institutions, arrangements, techniques, and whatnot, provided they work. By all means allow the defeat of the outworn and no-longer-workable: in with the new if the novel is better. But the burden of proof is on the would-be innovator: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Conservatives are not opposed to change. We are opposed to non-ameliorative change, and change for the sake of change.
And once again, how can anyone who loves his country desire its fundamental transformation? How can anyone love anything who desires its fundamental transformation?
You love a girl and want to marry her. But you propose that she must first undergo a total makeover: butt lift, tummy tuck, nose job, breast implants, psychological re-wire, complete doxastic overhaul, sensus divinitatis tune-up, Weltanschauung change-out, memory upgrade, and so on. Do you love her, or is she merely the raw material for the implementation of your currently uninstantiated idea of what a girl should be?
The extension to love of country is straightforward. If you love your country, then you do not desire its fundamental transformation. Contrapositively, if you do desire its fundamental transformation, then you do not love it.
Victor Davis Hanson nails down some important points. I add a bit of commentary in blue.
But first a question. Do we really need the designator 'Alt-Left'? Isn't the referent of this term pretty much indistinguishable from the contemporary Left? Granted, we need to distinguish between the contemporary Left and old-time liberalism. There is not much, or anything, that is paleo-liberal about the contemporary Left, as will emerge below. We also need to distinguish between the Right and the Alt-Right. Let me make it clear that I am not now, and never have been, Alt-Right. My brand of conservatism takes on board key elements of paleo-liberalism. It is also far from anything that could be called white nationalism, although it does espouse what I call an enlightened nationalism. (See here and here.) But I am having a hard time seeing any need to distinguish between the (contemporary) Left and the Alt-Left.
My impression is that 'Alt-Left' is a knee-jerk coinage brought onto the field by commentators such as Sean Hannity to counter the false notion that Trumpism is an Alt-Right movement. Be that as it may. Now a few excerpts from Hamson's piece.
Its overarching ideology seems to be a filtered version of campus postmodernism. Therefore the “truth” is simply a pastiche of “stories” or “narratives.” They can gain credence if those with power and influence “privilege” them, in efforts to enhance their own status and clout. “My story” is just as viable as “the truth,” a construct that does not exist in the abstract.
BV: Correct. For the Alt-Left there is no such thing as truth. There are only power and narratives. A narrative is a story, and we all know that a story need not be true to influence people and inspire them to action. The influence of Nietzsche is unmistakable here. For Nietzsche there are no facts, only interpretations. (Cf. W. Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, p. 458) A narrative is an interpretation that subserves the interests of some individuals or groups that either have power or seek to gain power.
Interpretations and perspectives are ideological reflections of power. Their function is to legitimate the power of those in power. The question of truth cannot arise since there is no truth, only competing perspectives of competing power centers. There is no truth because the world is devoid of intrinsic intelligibility. All intelligibility is partial and perspectival and projected by the stories we tell in support of our interests and power prerogatives. Intelligibility is relative to us and our narratives. We make the world intelligible and in many different ways since we are many and competing. Why is there no way things are, no nature of things, no intrinsic intelligibility? Because, at bottom, the world is the will to power. This is Nietzsche's central ontological claim. Die Welt ist der Wille zur Macht und nichts anders. (Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht) This ontological claim underpins his central epistemological thesis, perspectivism. Both the ontology and the epistemology are consequences of the death of God, as N. himself clearly sees. No God, no truth. No God, no unitary source of all things but a blind seething will to power at odds with itself. See my Nietzsche category for more on this.
I would say that Nietzsche is as important as Marx for understanding the Alt-Left. Nietzsche is part of what makes cultural Marxism cultural.
For the Alt-Left, there are not really inanimate [immutable?] laws of human nature or language. Instead political mobilization can construct powerful narratives of change: Opposition to gay marriage can be endorsed by both Obama and Clinton in 2008 and then be reconstructed as proof of right wing bigotry by 2012.
BV: Thus for the Left truth doesn't matter. The narrative or party line shifts with political needs. It's about power and control. If power can be achieved by reversing the narrative, then the narrative is reversed. Nothing new here: it is right out of the commie playbook.
Zones of neo-Confederate federal nullification to stop the deportation of illegal alien criminals can be rebranded as “sanctuary cities” to protect the innocent “migrants” from arbitrary and racist immigration laws. “La Raza” does not really mean “The Race.” Instead Raza simply denotes the “people” in reference to oppressed communities.
BV: As I have said a hundred times, leftists regularly engage in self-serving linguistic distortions and innovations even unto the Orwellian. The Orwellian template: X, which is not Y, is Y. War is peace. Slavery is freedom. Less liberty is more liberty. La Raza is not La Raza. Illegal aliens are neither illegal nor alien.
Leftists also refuse to make obvious distinctions such as that between legal and illegal immigrants. Not because they are stupid, but because their power agenda swamps every other consideration. Power rushes to fill the vacuum left when truth absents itself in the wake of the death of God.
The Alt-Left also believes that racial, ethnic, sexual, and religious identity is essential not incidental to character—as evidenced from the profound by the recent racialist statements of would-be candidates to head the DNC, to the ridiculous, as the careerist-driven and invented identities of a Sen. Elizabeth Warren or Ward Churchill or former white/black activists such as Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King attest.
BV: The Alt-Left shares this anti-personalism with the Alt-Right. Both are race-based and identity-political. The reactionary stance of the Alt-Right ties it to its opponent with which it shares the repugnant, anti-Christian, and anti-paleoliberal notion that one's very identity as a person is racially determined. The issue of personalism is crucial. I will explore it in future posts.
Perhaps the battle between the Alt-Left and the Alt-Right comes down to the struggle between two forms of atheism, a febrile socially constructivist anti-realism and a biologically determinist naturalism.
Please read the whole of Hanson's outstanding article.
America First does not mean that that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. This is compatible with respecting other countries' interests and right to self-determination.
So America First has nothing to do with chauvinism which could be characterized as a blind and intemperate patriotism, a belligerent and unjustified belief in the superiority of one's own country. America First expresses an enlightened nationalism which is obviously compatible with a sober recognition of national failings.
An enlightened nationalism is distinct from nativism inasmuch as the former does not rule out immigration. By definition, an immigrant is not a native; but an enlightened American nationalism accepts legal immigrants who accept American values, which of course are not the values of the Left or the values of political Islam.
An enlightened nationalism is not isolationist. What it eschews is a fruitless meddling and over-eager interventionism. It does not rule out certain necessary interventions when they are in our interests and in the interests of our allies.
So America First is not to be confused with chauvinism or nativism or isolationism.
It is also not to be confused with xenophobia. The America Firster has no irrational fear of persons or things foreign. The same holds for every enlightened nationalist.
An enlightened nationalism is not a form of idolatry. 'America First' is not in competition with 'God First.' The principles belong to different orders. The first is a 'horizontal' principle defined over countries; the second is a 'vertical' principle having to do with countries and God. Obviously the following two propositions are logically consistent:
1) Every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries.
2) No country is an appropriate object of worship; only God is worthy of worship.
Finally, an enlightened nationalism is not white-supremacist. I will now quote Rabbi Aryeh Spero, not only because he makes good points, but to distance myself from those Alt-Rightists who are anti-semitic and white-supremacist:
It is not “white supremacism” when people with self-respect display love and admiration for their background and history, wish to defend it, and are proud of it. It is normal and healthy. The opposite is rootlessness. Nor are sincere calls for the maintenance of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian ethos, as liberals today accuse, “code words for racism”.
The purpose of the shaming we now see coming from liberals against fellow Americans is to muzzle us, so that what we believe is no longer able to be heard or transmitted. It is an enforcement of our political impotence. Longer term, the never-ending demonization is designed to end our civic and religious heritage. Through left-wing bullying and scorn, our heritages are being replaced by the new theologies of progressivism and non-distinctiveness.
That's right; I quibble only with the good rabbi's misuse of 'theology.' Just as progressivism is not a religion, as I have lately argued ad nauseam, it is also not a theology. 'Theology' refers either to God's knowledge of himself, which lies beyond our ken, or to our attempted knowledge of God. But progressivism has no truck with God, being secularist and atheist in its core forms.
A March 15 WAPO piece begins like this: "States’ rights is making a comeback, but this time it’s progressives, not slaveholders or white supremacists, raising the cry."
This implies that those who for years have been speaking out for federalism and Tenth Amendment rights are either slave holders or white supremacists.
I'd call that left-wing bias, wouldn't you?
The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people."
What is Federalism?
Federalism, roughly, is (i) a form of political organization in which governmental power is divided among a central government and various constituent governing entities such as states, counties, and cities; (ii) subject to the proviso that both the central and the constituent governments retain their separate identities and assigned duties. A government that is not a federation would allow for the central government to create and reorganize constituent governments at will and meddle in their affairs. Federalism is implied by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Federalism would make for less contention, because people who support high taxes and liberal schemes could head for states like Massachusetts or California, while the conservatively inclined who support gun rights and capital punishment could gravitate toward states like Texas.
We see the world differently. Worldview differences in turn reflect differences in values. Now values are not like tastes. Tastes cannot be reasonably discussed and disputed while values can. (De gustibus non est disputandum.) But value differences, though they can be fruitfully discussed, cannot be objectively resolved because any attempted resolution will end up relying on higher-order value judgments. There is no exit from the axiological circle. We can articulate and defend our values and clarify our value differences. What we cannot do is resolve our value differences to the satisfaction of all sincere, intelligent, and informed discussants.
A return to federalism, I suggest, is the sanest and best way to overcome this difficulty. If we are lucky we will be able to bring unity and diversity together in a dialectical unity thereby avoiding the extremes of totalitarianism and secessionism.
It is the ancient problem of the One and the Many in one of its political forms. E pluribus unum: out of many, one. But a One worth wanting is a One not suppressive of, but respectful of, the many in their manifold modes of manyness.
Trump is doing well despite obstructionist Dems, deep-state saboteurs, and the nay-saying nimrods of Never Trumpism. The stock market is way up, illegal immigration is way down, and a solid conservative, Neil Gorsuch, is a SCOTUS shoo in.
Add to the list an incitement of interest among lefties in federalism.
Calexit, Bluexit and other secessionisms are just silly and won't happen. United we stand; divided we fall. We can keep the Union together if we practice some enlightened segregation. I have been arguing for federalism for years. We need the political equivalent of divorce. Members of a divorced couple can remain on amicable terms if they severely restrict their contact to what is patently in their common interest, such as the care of children. You get the analogy. It limps, but no analogy is perfect. A perfect analogy is an identity and you can't (fruitfully) compare a thing to itself.
For both historical and philosophical reasons, federalism runs counter to the progressive instinct. Those on the left like government, and their preferred legislature is the Supreme Court. On top of this, the South’s invocation of states’ rights to resist the civil rights movement has tainted the phrase, which many regard as code for “Jim Crow.”
But Mr. Trump’s election may be occasioning a welcome rethink, especially among Democrats who understand they have lost far more than the White House. For all the attention to Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote victory, Democratic influence over state legislatures is now reduced to Civil War levels. In this environment, some progressives appreciate that they might have more to gain from a federalism that empowers minorities—sexual, racial, political, whatever—in locales where their views dominate.
One concern is whether lefties can learn to control their totalitarian instinct. I am not particularly sanguine about that. So keep your powder dry.
Federalism is what I recommend to ease tensions and preserve the Union. Patrick J. Buchanan explains it well. His piece concludes:
A new federalism—a devolution of power and resources away from Washington and back to states, cities, towns and citizens, to let them resolve their problems their own way and according to their own principles—may be the price of retention of the American Union.
Let California be California; let red state America be red state America.
