Briefly stated, moral narcissism is this: What you say you believe or claim you believe — not how you actually behave — defines who you are and makes you “virtuous” in your own eyes and the eyes of others. Almost always, this is without regard to the consequences of those beliefs, because actual real-world results are immaterial and often ignored.
If you have the right opinions and say the right things, people will remember your pronouncements, not your actions or what happened because of them.
That is moral narcissism.
We see this in the campaign of Bernie Sanders, a moral narcissist par excellence who, rarely revising a half-century-old worldview, trumpets the virtues of socialism with scant reference to the cost of its programs or to its often-totalitarian outcome.
I would add that moral narcissism fits nicely with the denial of objective truth, one of the features of contemporary liberalism. If there is no objective way things are, then all that matters is how one postures and what one says. If you say the 'right' things, the politically correct things, the 'sensitive,' 'nonjudgmental,' 'inclusive,' things, then you are good person whether or not any of it can be expected to work out in reality.
For example, it sounds really good and 'caring' to say that the state should provide free college educations at public institutions for all and to call for an expansion of social services generally. And its sounds 'racist' and 'xenophobic' and 'mean-spirited' to insist on the stoppage of illegal immigration. But put the two together, freebies and open borders,and you get an objective absurdity that cannot work out in reality.
Not to confront this contradiction shows a lack of concern for truth.
Obviously, a sustainable welfare state requires strict immigration control. Or, if you prefer open borders, then you need a libertarian clamp-down on entitilements and social services. One or the other. Reality places us before this exclusive 'or.'
Sanders the socialist thinks he can have it both ways: a massive welfare state with open borders. That is objectively unworkable. Reality will not allow it. But if there is no reality and no objective truth, then no problem! One can say all the right things and posture as virtuous.
And when disaster occurs, you can always plead your good intentions.
I am trying to understand the structure of the problem of dirty hands.
A clear example of a dirty hands situation is one in which a political leader authorizes the intentional slaughter of innocent non-combatants to demoralize the enemy and bring about the end of a war which, if it continues, could be reasonably expected to lead to the destruction of the leader's state. The leader must act, but he cannot authorize the actions necessary for the state's survival without authorizing immoral actions. He must act, but he cannot act without dirtying his hands with the blood of innocents. In its sharpest form, the problem arises if we assume that certain actions are absolutely morally wrong, wrong in and of themselves, always and everywhere and regardless of circumstances or (good) consequences. The problem stands out in sharp relief when cast into the mold of an aporetic triad:
A. Moral reasons for action are dominant: they trump every other reason for action such as 'reasons of state.'
B. Some actions are absolutely morally wrong, morally impermissible always and everywhere, regardless of situation, context, circumstances.
C. Among absolutely morally wrong actions, there are some that are (non-morally) permissible, and indeed (non-morally) necessary: they must be done in a situation in which refusing to act would lead to worse consequences such as the destruction of one's nation or culture.
It is easy to see that this triad is inconsistent. The limbs cannot all be true. (B) and (C) could both be true if one allowed moral reasons to be trumped by non-moral reasons. But that is precisely what (A), quite plausibly, rules out.
The threesome, then, is logically inconsistent. And yet each limb makes a strong claim on our acceptance. To solve the problem one of the limbs must be rejected. Which one?
(A)-Rejection. One might take the line that in some extreme circumstances non-moral considerations take precedence over moral ones. Imagine a ticking-bomb scenario in which the bomb-planter must be tortured in order to find the location of the bomb or bombs. (Suppose a number of dirty nukes have been planted in Manhattan, all scheduled to go off at the same time.) Imagine a perfectly gruesome form of torture in which the wife and children of Ali the jihadi have their fingers and limbs sawn off in the presence of the jihadi, and then the same is done to him until he talks. Would the torture not be justified? Not morally justified of course, but justified non-morally to save Manhattan and its millions of residents and to avert the ensuing disaster for the rest of the country? One type of hard liner will say, yes, of course, even while insisting that torture of the sort envisaged is morally wrong, and indeed absolutely morally wrong. I am in some moods such a hard liner.
But am I not then falling into contradiction? No. I am not maintaining that in every case it is morally wrong to torture, but in this case it is not. That would be a contradiction. I am maintaining that it is always morally impermissible to torture but that in some circumstances moral considerations are trumped by — what shall I call them? — survival considerations. These are external to the moral point of view. So while morality is absolute in its own domain, its domain does not coincide with the domain of human action in general. The torture of the jihadi and his wife and children are justified, not morally, but by non-moral reasons.
(B)-Rejection. A second solution to the triad involves rejecting deontology and embracing consequentialism. Consider the following act-type: torturing a person to extract information from him. A deontologist such as Kant would maintain that the tokening of such an act-type is morally wrong just in virtue of the act-type's being the act-type it is. It would then follow for Kant that every such tokening is morally wrong. A consequentialist would say that it all depends on the outcome. Torturing our jihadi above leads or can be reasonably expected to lead to the greatest good of the greatest number in the specific circumstances in question, and those on-balance good consequences morally justify the act of torture. So, contra Kant, one and the same act-type can be morally acceptable/unacceptable depending on circumstances and consequences. Torturing Ali the jihadi is morally justified, but torturing Sammy the jeweler to get him to open his safe is not.
On this second solution to the triad, we accept (A), we accept that moral considerations reign supreme over the entire sphere of human action and cannot be trumped by any non-moral considerations. But we adopt a consequentialist moral doctrine that allows the moral justification of torture and the targeting of non-combatants in certain circumstances.
Now we must ask: Do the consequentialist torturers of the jihadi and their consequentialist superiors who order the torture have dirty hands? Suppose the hands of the torturers are literally bloody. Are they dirty? I am tempted to say No. They haven't done anything wrong; they have the done the right thing, and let us assume, at great psychological and emotional cost to themselves. Imagine snapping off the digits of a fellow human being with bolt cutters or high-torque pruning shears. Could you do that to a child in the presence of his father and do it efficiently and with equanimity? Could you do your job, your duty, despite your contrary inclination? (I am turning Kant's phraseology against him here.) But you must do it because the orders you have been given are morally correct by the consequentialist theory.
Do the torturers have dirty hands? It depends on what exactly it is to have dirty hands whch, of course, is part of the problem of dirty hands. On a narrow understanding, a dirty hands situation is one in which the agent acts, and must act, while both accepting all three limbs of our inconsistent triad and appreciating that they are inconsistent. A dirty hands situation in the narrow and strict sense is an aporetic bind. You must act and you must act immorally in violation of absolute moral prohibitions, and you cannot justify your actions by any non-moral considerations that trump moral ones. That's one hell of a bind to be in! Some will be tempted to say that there cannot ever occur such a bind. But if so, then there cannot ever occur a dirty hands situation. So maybe talk of 'dirty hands' is incoherent.
If this is what it is to be in a dirty hands situation, then a consequnetialisdt cannot be in a dirty hands situation. He is not in an aporetic bind since he rejects (B). And the same goes for those who reject (A) or (C).
(C)-Rejection. A third solution to the problem involves holding that there is no necessity to act: one can abstain from acting. A political leader faaced with a terrible choice can simply abdicate, or simply refuse to choose. He does not order the torture of the jihadi and and hence does not act to save Manhattan; but by not acting he willy-nilly aids and abets the terrorist.
Interim Conclusion
I have the strong sense that I will be writing a number of posts on this fascinating topic. For now I will conclude that if we leave God and the soul out of it, if we think in purely immanent or secular terms, then we are in a genuine aporetic bind, and the problem of dirty hands, narrowly construed, is a genuine one, but also an insoluble one. For rejecting any of the limbs will get us into grave trouble. That needs to be argued, of course. One entry leads to another, and another . . . .
The Trump phenomenon provides excellent fodder for the study of political reasoning. Herewith, some thoughts on the cogency of the 'Hillary is Worse' defense for voting for Trump. I'll start with some assumptions.
A1. We are conservatives.
A2. It is Trump versus Hillary in the general: Sanders will not get the Democrat Party nod, nor will there be a conservative third-party candidate. (To be be blunt, Bill Kristol's ruminations on the latter possibility strike me as delusional.)
A3. Donald Trump is a deeply-flawed candidate who in more normal circumstances could not be considered fit for the presidency.
A4. Hillary Clinton is at least as deeply-flawed, character-wise, as Trump but also a disaster policy-wise: she will continue and augment the destructive leftist tendencies of Barack Hussein Obama. Hillary, then, is worse than Trump. For while Trump is in some ways not conservative, it is likely he will actually get some conservative things done, unlike the typical Republican who will talk endlessly about illegal immigration, etc., but never actually accomplish anything conservative.
With ordinary Republicans it is always only talk, followed by concession after concession. They lack courage, they love their power and perquisites, and they do not understand that we are in the age of post-consensus politics, an age in which politics is more like war than like gentlemanly debate on the common ground of shared principles.
My Challenge to the NeverTrump Crowd
To quote from an earlier entry:
In this age of post-consensus politics we need fighters not gentlemen. We need people who will use the Left's Alinskyite tactics against them. Civility is for the civil, not for destructive leftists who will employ any means to their end of a "fundamental transformation of America." For 'fundamental transformation' read: destruction.
It's a war, and no war is civil, especially not a civil war. To prosecute a war you need warriors. Trump is all we have. Time to face reality, you so-called conservatives. Time to man up, come clean, and get behind the 'presumptive nominee.'
Don't write another article telling us what a sorry specimen he is. We already know that. We are a nation in decline and our choices are lousy ones. Hillary is worse, far worse.
Consider just three issues: The Supreme Court, gun rights, and the southern border. We know where Hillary stands. We also know where Trump stands. Suppose he accomplishes only one thing: he nominates conservatives for SCOTUS. (You are aware, of course, that he has gone to the trouble of compiling a list of conservative candidates. That is a good indication that he is serious.) The appointment of even one conservative would retroactively justify your support for him over the destructive and crooked Hillary.
[. . .]
The alternative [to voting for Trump] is to aid and abet Hillary.
The False Priests are the columnists, media pundits, public intellectuals, and politicians who have presented themselves as principled conservatives or libertarians but now have announced they will vote for a man who, by multiple measures, represents the opposite of the beliefs they have been espousing throughout their careers. We’ve already heard you say “Hillary is even worse.” Tell us, please, without using the words “Hillary Clinton” even once, your assessment of Donald Trump, using as a template your published or broadcast positions about right policy and requisite character for a president of the United States. Put yourself on the record: Are you voting for a man whom your principles require you to despise, or have you modified your principles? In what ways were you wrong before? We require explanation beyond “Hillary is even worse.”
Now one thing that is unclear is whether Murray would accept (A4), in particular, the bit about Hillary being worse. He doesn't clearly state that they are equally bad. He says, "I am saying that Clinton may be unfit to be president, but she’s unfit within normal parameters. Donald Trump is unfit outside normal parameters." Unfortunately, it is not clear what this comes to; Murray promises a book on the topic.
Well, if you think Trump and Hillary are equally bad, then you reject (A4) and we have a different discussion. So let me now evaluate the above Murray quotation on the assumption that (A4) is true.
The Underlying Issue: Principles Versus Pragmatism
It is good to be principled, but not good to be doctrinaire. At what point do the principled become doctrinaire? It's not clear! Some say that principles are like farts: one holds on to them as long as possible, but 'in the end' one lets them go. The kernel of truth in this crude saying is that in the collision of principles with the data of experience sometimes principles need to be modified or set aside for a time. One must consider changing circumstances and the particularities of the precise situation one is in. In fact, attention to empirical details and conceptually recalcitrant facts is a deeply conservative attitude.
For example, would I support Trump if he were running against Joe Lieberman? No, I would support Lieberman. There are any number of moderate or 'conservative' Democrats that I would support over Trump. But the vile and destructive Hillary is the candidate to beat! And only Trump can do the dirty job. This is the exact situation we are in. If you are a doctrinaire conservative, say a neocon like Bill Kristol, then, holding fast to all of your principles — and being held fast by them in turn — you will deduce therefrom the refusal to support either Trump or Hillary. Like Kristol you may sally forth on a quixotic quest for a third conservative candidate. Just as one can be muscle-bound to the detriment of flexible and free movement, one can be principle-bound to the detriment of dealing correctly and flexibly with reality as it presents itself here and now in all its recalcitrant and gnarly details.
Conclusion: The 'Hillary is Worse' Defense is Cogent
Part of being a conservative is being skeptical about high-flying principles. Our system is the best the world has seen and it works for us. It has made us the greatest nation on the face of the earth — which is why almost everyone wants to come here, and why we need walls to keep them out while commie shit holes like East Germany needed walls to keep them in. (The intelligent, industrious Germans were kept in poverty and misery by a political system when their countrymen to the west prospered and enjoyed the fabled Wirtschaftswunder. Think about that!) But from the fact that our system works for us, it does not follow that it will work for backward Muslims riven by ancient tribal hatreds and infected with a violent, inferior religion. The neocon principle of nation-building collides with gnarly reality and needs adjustment.
Murray's point seems to be that no principled conservative could possibly vote for Trump, and this regardless of how bad Hillary is. His reasoning is based on a false assumption, namely, that blind adherence to principles is to be preferred to the truly conservative attitude of adjusting principles to reality. Murray's view is a foolish one: he is prepared to see the country further led down the path to "fundamental transformation," i.e., destruction, as long as his precious principles remain unsullied.
Our behavior ought to be guided by principles; but that is not to say that it ought to be dictated by them.
Rather than say that principles are like farts as my old colleague Xavier Monasterio used to say, I will try this comparison: principles are like your lunch; keep it down if you can, but if it makes you sick, heave it up.
A large part of the appeal of Donald Trump even to those of us who oppose much of his style and substance is that he and he alone appears prepared to fight the Left and fight to win, which of course means using all their dirty tactics against them. He alone seems to grasp that we are in a war, and that civility has no place in a war, except for a mock civility deployed when it is advantageous to do so. The politics of personal destruction has been a trademark feature of the Left since at least V. I. Lenin, and Trump has shown that he is skilled in this nasty art. Case in point: his swift elimination of the gentlemanly but effete Jeb Bush. Poor Jeb went from Jeb! to Jeb in no time despite all the money behind him. One hopes that Trump can destroy the despicable Hillary in the same way.
But surely the politics of personal destruction is a sub-optimal form of politics, to put it in the form of an understatement.
Given that we agree on very little in this age of rage and polarization, are there any prospects for peaceful coexistence? Peter Wehner:
There’s no easy or quick way out of this. It will require some large number of Americans to re-think how we are to engage in politics in this era of rage and polarization. Toward that end John Inazu, an associate professor of law and political science at Washington University in St. Louis, has written Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving through Deep Difference.
Professor Inazu’s book explores, in an honest and realistic way, how we can live together peaceably despite our deep differences. He concedes we lack agreement about the purpose of our country, the nature of the common good, and the meaning of human flourishing. But this is hardly the first time. (To take just one example, America in 1860 was far more riven than it is today.)
What is needed is to reclaim what Inazu calls three “civic aspirations” – tolerance, humility and patience. The goal here isn’t to pretend our deep differences don’t exist; rather, it’s to approach politics in ways that takes [sic] into account our constitutional commitments (including allowing individuals to form and gather in groups of their choosing) and civic practices. It is to give people space to live their lives and think about things in different ways. It means accepting our disagreements without degrading and imbruting those with whom we disagree. It obligates us, in other words, to understand what pluralism requires of others and of us. (The requirements we place on others is the easy part; the requirements we place on ourselves is the more challenging part.)
This all may sound hopelessly high-minded to you, eliciting a dismissive roll of the eyes. It’s so unfashionable, so unrealistic, so out of touch. It’s chic to be cynical. Except for this: Disagreeing with others, even passionately disagreeing with others, without rhetorically vaporizing them is actually part of what it means to live as citizens in a republic. (Once upon a time this was part of civics education.) The choice is co-existence with some degree of mutual respect — or the politics of resentment and disaffection, the politics of hate and de-humanization.
Right now, it appears an awful lot of people are embracing the politics of hate and de-humanization.
I am not as sanguine as Wehner or Inazu. We are told that the goal is "to approach politics in ways that takes [sic] into account our constitutional commitments (including allowing individuals to form and gather in groups of their choosing) and civic practices. It is to give people space to live their lives and think about things in different ways."
But precisely here is the problem. The Left will not allow it! They don't give a rat's ass about the Constitution or its commitments. There are leftist scum who now argue against free speech. There are university administrators who either have no understanding of the traditional values of the university, including open inquiry and free debate, or else are too cowed to enforce them. Not to mention the leftist termites among them out to undermine the West and its institutions. There is nothing liberal about these so-called 'liberals.' Furthermore, leftists have no qualms about using the power of the state to erode the institutions of civil society. Disaster looms if the Left gets its way and manages to eliminate the buffering elements of civil society lying between the naked individual and the state. The state can wear the monstrous aspect of Leviathan or that of the benevolent nanny whose multiple tits are so many spigots supplying panem et circenses to the increasingly less self-reliant masses. Whichever face it wears, it is the enemy of that traditional American value, liberty. To cite just one example, the Obama administration promotes ever-increasing food stamp dependency to citizens and illegal aliens alike under the mendacious SNAP acronym thereby disincentivizing relief and charitable efforts at the local level while further straining an already strapped Federal treasury. A trifecta of stupidity and corruption, if you will: the infantilizing of the populace who now needs federal help in feeding itself; the fiscal irresponsibilty of adding to the national debt; the assault on the institutions of civil society out of naked lust for ever more centralized power in the hands of the Dems, the left wing party. (Not that the Republicans are conservative.)
Wehner fails to grasp that the Left is fundamentally destructive of the spaces in which people "live their lives and think about things in different ways." This is why there can be no peace with them.
It is hopelessly naive to think that we can have comity without commonality. There are certain things we cannot be expected to agree on. We will never agree on the purpose of human life or the nature of human flourishing. This is why the Declaration of Independence speaks not of an unalienable right to happiness, but of an unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness which includes a pursuit of the question as to what it would be to be happy. But we have to agree on the purpose of government and a small set of core American values. One of them is liberty, which entails a commitment to limited government. A second is e pluribus unum which expresses the value of assimilation. A third is that rights are not granted by government but have a status antecedent to government and the conventional. Does the Left accept these as values? Of course not. The Left is totalitarian from top to bottom. It is anti-liberty. The Left promotes a mindless and destructive diversity. The Left, being totalitarian, cannot brook any competitors, not the private sphere, not private property which is the foundation of individual liberty, not the family, not religion with its reference to Transcendence, not any realm of values beyond the say-so of rulers.
I am not expressing cynicism, but realism. Inazu and Wehner are engaged in a vaporous feel-good sort of preaching lacking any connection with reality. They fail to grasp that we have reached the point where we agree on almost nothing and that the way forward will be more like war than like civil debate on a common ground of shared principles.
Maybe the alternative is this: we either defeat the Left or we balkanize. To put it oxymoronically I have toyed quite seriously with the idea that what we need is the political analog of divorce, not that this is an optimal solution. See my A Case for Voluntary Segregation. I am speaking, of course, of political segregation, not racial segregation. I have to point out the obvious because some stupid race-baiting liberal may be reading this.
I see you're paying attention to current affairs. Very hard on the nerves. I can't do it. I tried to watch one Rep "debate": the most vulgar public display I've ever seen. Do you remember the saying "he who slings mud loses ground"? I think the "contestants" dug themselves mineshaft-deep holes that night. Shameful. Didn't try to watch the Dems, but I can imagine. I'll ask you a question: as citizens do you think people deeply offended by the mudslinging nevertheless have a duty to attend to the political debate and eventually try to make an educated choice (even if it's another egregiously malum minus choice)? Unlike some countries which legally mandate voting (Australia), US citizens have no statutory obligation to vote, but I'll guess you don't see that as exhausting the duties of a citizen.
That is a wonderful saying, "He who slings mud loses ground." I had never heard it before. I shall remember it. A variant occurs to me, "He who digs up dirt loses ground."
An interesting logico-linguistic point that should interest Slim: Constructions of the form He who Fs Gs, while featuring what is grammatically the third-person singular masculine pronoun, are not logically pronominal at all. The use of 'he' in such constructions is quantificational. Thus "he who slings mud loses ground" is replaceable both salva veritate and salva significatione by
For any x, if x slings mud, then x loses ground.
Now on to to Slim's question:
As citizens do you think people deeply offended by the mudslinging nevertheless have a duty to attend to the political debate and eventually try to make an educated choice (even if it's another egregiously malum minus choice)?
After Trump referred to his phallus, praising its size and efficacy, I turned off the TV. So there is no duty to listen to all the mud slung from side to side. But yes, one does have a civic duty to "attend to the debate" in the sense of informing oneself of both (i) what the candidates represent and (ii) their character as individuals. Why? Well, since we have benefited from civil order, we have a moral responsibility to help maintain it and pass it on. It is a question of gratitude, a good conservative virtue.
One ought to attend to both (i) and (ii). I am puzzled but also appalled at the number of Trump supporters who are blind partisans who are either unaware of or dismissive of the man's obvious negatives. They are so enamored of his populism that they are willing to ignore the man's character as if that has no bearing on his fitness for high office.
Mandatory Voting?
There is a reason not to go the way of the Aussies and make voting mandatory. As it is here in the USA, roughly only half of the eligible voters actually vote. This is arguably good inasmuch as voters filter themselves. If I were a liberal, I would say that eligible voters who stay home 'disenfranchise' themselves, and often to the benefit of the rest of us. (But of course I am not a liberal and I don't misuse words like 'disenfranchise.')
What I mean is that, generally speaking, the people who can vote but do not are precisely the people one would not want voting in the first place. To vote takes time, energy, and a bit of commitment. Careless, lazy, and uninformed people are not likely to do it. And that is good. I don't want my thoughtful vote neutralized by the vote of some dolt who is merely at the polling place to avoid a fine. And if you force a man to vote, he may rebel and vote randomly or in other ways that subvert the process.
Of course, many refuse to vote out of disgust at their choices. My advice for them would be to hold their noses and vote for the least or the lesser of the evils. Politics is always about choosing the least or the lesser of evils. The very fact that we need government at all shows that we live in an imperfect world, one in which a perfect candidate is not to be found. Government itself is a necessary evil: it would be better if we didn't need it, but we do need it.
I support the right of those who think the system irremediably corrupt to protest by refusing to vote. Government is coercive by its very nature, and mandatory voting is a form of coercion that belongs in a police state rather than in a free republic.
If you think that a higher voter turnout is a good thing, that is happening anyway as divisions deepen and our politics become more polarized. The nastier our politics, the higher the turnout. And it will get nastier still. So why do we need mandatory voting?
Fact is, we are awash in unnecessary laws. We don't need more laws and more government interference in our lives. And will a mandatory voting law be enforced? How? At what expense? Isn't it perfectly obvious to everyone with commonsense that we need to move toward less government rather than more, toward more liberty rather than less? (You may infer from this that Hillary and Bernie lack common sense.)
If you think about it, 'One man, one vote' is a very dubious principle. I think about it here. Voluntary voting is one way of balancing the ill effects of 'One man, one vote.' But isn't voting a civic duty? I would say that it is. But not every duty should be legally mandated.
Seldom Seen Slim has correctly guessed my position: the duties of a citizen are not exhausted by what is legally mandated. One has a moral obligation to stay politically informed, to do one's best to form correct political opinions, and to vote.
We have neo-barbarians at the gate. [In truth, they are already within the gates.] We have little will to deal with them. We are mocked because we have the finest equipment, but no will to fight. The heart of our civilization has disappeared in a relativism that cannot distinguish friend and foe, truth and falsity. Not only do our people not know who they are, but even what they are. We no longer choose to understand families, truth, or polity.
We think now of Caesar as a single popular leader who rules for his own good. John Paul II spoke of “democratic tyranny” in a people who have no internal principle of rule except for what they want as enforced by their own laws. On the Ides of March, 2016, it is well to take a second look at this most famous Caesar, killed on this day in 44 B.C. What things, we should ask ourselves, ought we never to “render” unto him?
I'm enjoying the irony of American Sanders supporters lecturing me, a former Soviet citizen, on the glories of Socialism and what it really means! Socialism sounds great in speech soundbites and on Facebook, but please keep it there. In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself, and the ambition and achievement that made modern capitalism possible and brought billions of people out of poverty. Talking about Socialism is a huge luxury, a luxury that was paid for by the successes of capitalism. Income inequality is a huge problem, absolutely. But the idea that the solution is more government, more regulation, more debt, and less risk is dangerously absurd.
The penultimate sentence needs some qualification, but otherwise Grandmaster Kasparov is enunciating very important truths with the authority of someone who speaks from experience. Kasparov, ethnically Jewish on his father's side, was world chess champion from 1985-1993. He was born Garik Kimovich Weinstein. Jews dominate chess out of all proportion to their numbers. A liberal dumbass would say they are 'over-represented.'
I feel a rant coming on . . . enough blogging for one day.
As far as I can tell, our thoughts on Trump’s unfitness are pretty close, and the way you’ve laid out the matter in your most recent post (Trumpian Propositions) also mirrors my thinking. This extends to the following sentence, which I’ve uttered almost verbatim to friends and family: “we know what Hillary will do, while we do not know what Trump will do.”
Where we disagree – or rather, where I may disagree with you, but am still working out my thoughts and waiting for further developments – is in evaluating the implications of that statement. You take it as an argument to vote for Trump; after all, you say, “[h]e might actually do something worthwhile.” I agree with that quotation as well. It seems to me that HRC will be a terrible President 100 times out of 100, while DJT may only be terrible 98 or 99 times out of 100.
But here’s the problem: I fear that his worst could be worse, maybe much worse, than Hillary’s. He is a thug, or at least often behaves like one (e.g. in his use of eminent domain both in the U.S. and in Scotland) and expresses admiration for thugs (e.g. Putin, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Un, the Chinese in cracking down in the Tiananmen Square massacre back in ’89, etc.). Trump, it seems to me, wants to be El Jefe, not merely the commander in chief of a Republic, subject to checks and balances and limitations on executive power. (See for example his incredible statement in the debate that he would give illegal orders to members of the armed forces, and they would follow them.)
BV: If we use 'thug' to refer to someone who habitually engages in thuggish behavior, then perhaps Trump is not fairly called a thug. But he is often thuggish, and he clearly admires thugs and thuggish behavior. This is a disqualifier. Lacking self-knowledge, he cannot see this fact about himself. This is another disqualifier.
It is also important to note that much of the admiration and support for Trump reflects a dark side of human nature, namely, the tendency secretly to admire supposed tough guys and 'winners,' and to have contempt for 'losers' many of whom 'lose' because they are reasonable, civil, conciliatory, and concerned for the common good, Mitt Romney being one example. To admire a winner just in virtue of his winning while ignoring the question of the morality of the means to victory is human-all-too-human. It is rooted in our animal nature. In Trump's moral calculus, the worst sort of human being is the loser. This is why the first thing he said in his response to Mitt Romney was that the latter lost.
To the extent that we can ascribe a moral theory to a shallow-pate like Trump, his is the morality of Thrasymachus, if we take that to be the view that it is right and just that the strong should dominate the weak. Might makes right. Success justifies. If the panzers of the Wehrmacht roll into Poland crushing all resistance, then the fact justifies the deed. My power to kill you confers moral justification on my killing you. On the other hand, failure condemns. If you are too weak to win and you lose, then it is right and just that you lose. When Hitler saw that the fatherland was about to be destroyed, his attitude was that it deserved to be destroyed. So he ordered the scorched earth Nero Decree as much to punish the Germans for losing as to prevent useful infrastructure from falling into the hands of the enemy.
In light of this it is easy to understand Trump's mocking of the man with the palsied hand and his reference to Megyn Kelly's menstrual cycle. The cripple is weak and less worthy of life. Women are weaker than men and so their claims can be dismissed as products of their weakness. It also sheds light on Trump's assuring us that his sexual apparatus is large and in good working order. For any weakness in that area would detract from his status as alpha male and argue his lack of value. For a man as crude as Trump the measure of a man is the size and rigidity of his penis and the extent of his net worth. Now many a man is concerned with penis and pelf; but few are so morally vacuous as to have no compunction about tying one's worth as a person to such things.
What matters for our latter-day Thrasymachus is to win, whatever the cost. And or course winning is measured in the crudest quantitative terms imaginable. Trump tweeted to a journalist who criticized him, "I get more pussy than you." What matters is quantity of 'pussy,' size of net worth, height of buildings . . . . It doesn't matter that those buildings are casinos wherein people degrade and impoverish themselves.
And notice that he doesn't care that these damning facts are known about him. He is not ashamed to be the crude vulgarian that he is. He is like Bill Clinton in this regard. Nixon, who was brought up right, could be shamed, but not Bill Clinton. "I did it because I could." And like Bill Clinton, Trump has no compunction about lying. It comes as naturally to him as breathing.
And nothing he says has to make sense since it is not about making sense but about winning. So he can make noises as if he is supportive of Christianity even though, by his own moral calculus, he ought to despise Jesus Christ. For the world has never known a bigger loser and more utter failure than Jesus. Humanly speaking, Jesus was a total loser. If that is not obvious, the case has been made most convincingly by Romano Guardini in Jesus Christus, chapter 3, "Failure."
Like Obama, Trump will say anything if he thinks it will get him what he wants. It doesn't matter whether it is true or even makes sense, or contradicts what he said the day before.
My correspondent is worried that Trump's worst may be worse than Hillary's worst. Could be. We just don't know. But we do know Hillary will do whereas we do not know what Trump will do. So it strikes me as reasonable to roll the dice in his favor should he get the nomination. Meanwhile, we should do our damndest to make sure he doesn't get the nomination.
It isn’t clear to me that he’s better than Hillary Clinton, even leaving aside his Napoleonic complex. Is there anything that you know he stands for? He thinks Planned Parenthood is “great”, he’ll let all the “good ones” (Mexicans) back in, likes H1B visas, imported immigrants to work at his resort while rejecting American labor as recently as last July, was for restrictions on the second amendment until about 30 seconds ago, recommends higher taxes on the rich, has advocated torture, opposes free trade, wants to further limit the first amendment, has been playing footsies with the KKK and the white supremacists (the “bad earpiece” try was a joke, as he himself mentioned David Duke and white supremacists in that CNN interview), has a decades-long track record of engaging in crony “capitalism” – and the list goes on and on. I don’t see where he’s better than she is, except on a very few issues where his “conversion” goes back to the instant he decided to run, and which in every case has been retracted or at least undermined by later statements during the campaign. He’s a bullshitter, a bully, and a blusterer, and if you go by his actions instead of his words he’s just another liberal democrat.
BV: There is one thing I KNOW Trump stands for, namely, his own ego. He is all the awful things you say he is. And I agree that it is not CLEAR that he is better than Hillary.
So I just don’t see it. [. . .]
The only possible and meaningful plus I see for Trump is the possibility that he appoints conservatives to SCOTUS. There is no chance that Hillary will do so, but he might. (I’m not absolutely sure about that, but it’s moderately possible.) Maybe that’s a good enough reason. Given that his sister is a pro-choice judge, and given his social liberalism, and given his seeming ignorance of and disdain for the U.S. Constitution (I especially liked his recent comments about judges signing bills into law), the odds of his nominating an originalist justice are iffy at best. But again, maybe that’s good enough. Still: does one elect a liberal ignoramus who might be Mussolini for a shot at 2-3 (relatively) good Supremes?
BV: Hillary is Obama in a pant suit. She will continue his "fundamental transformation of America." Like Obama, she is a destructive leftist. She must be stopped. Therefore, you must vote for the Republican nominee whoever it is. It will be either Trump or Cruz.
I don't think it is right to say that the only good thing Trump might do is appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court. It is a very good bet that he will put a severe dent in the influx of illegal aliens across the southern border. (Forget his bluster about making Mexico pay for the wall.) But we KNOW that hate-America Hillary will do nothing to stem the illegal tide. If anything she'll encourage it because in her cynical eyes they are undocumented Democrats.
A third thing Trump might very well do is stop the outrage of sanctuary cities. But we KNOW Hillary won't.
A fourth thing Trump can be expected to do enforce civil order in the face of rampaging blacks of the Black Lives Matter ilk. These lying scum have targeted the police and are actively working to undermine the rule of law. Hillary is in bed with them. The evil bitch repeats all the lies about Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, 'mass incarceration' and so on. And what is most despicable is that she does it cynically for her own personal advantage.
A fifth thing Trump might do is defend religious liberties. We KNOW that Hillary won't. Never forget that the Left is anti-religion and has been since 1789. Part of the reason for this is that the Left is totalitarian: it can brook no competitors to State power. This is why it must destroy belief in God and in the family. The god of the leftist is the State, the apparatchiks of the latter being the State's 'priesthood.'
A sixth thing Trump might do is defend Second Amendment rights. We KNOW that Hillary won't. She is a mendacious 'stealth ideologue' who won't admit that she is for Aussie-style confiscation, but that is what the liberty-bashing bitch is for. She realizes that guns in the hands of citizens is a check on her leftist totalitarianism.
Here is the situation. If it comes down to Trump versus Hillary, then you face a lousy choice between two awful candidates. So you must vote for the least awful of the two. And that is Trump. Alles klar?
"But why not vote for neither?"
The short answer is that the Left is totalitarian. You can't withdraw from politics, because they won't let you. And again, we know that Hillary is a leftist who will try to extend the reach of government into every aspect of our lives. You must take a stand.
Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist and I have loosely referred to him in the same way, violating my own strictures against loose talk. Mea culpa. But of course Sanders is not a socialist in any reasonably strict sense of the term. Not only does he misuse the term, but he also does so quite foolishly since in American politics 'socialist' remains a dirty word. By so labeling himself he insures that he will never be more than a Vermont senator. He is a decent old coot, unlike the despicable Hillary, but in the end a side show on the way to the main event. Practically, then, my question is moot, but theoretically interesting nonetheless.
Sanders recently claimed that he, like Pope Francis, is a socialist. When asked to clarify his meaning, he said the following: "Well, what it means to be a socialist, in the sense of what the pope is talking about, what I'm talking about, is to say that [1] we have got to do our best and live our lives in a way that alleviates human suffering, [2] that does not accelerate the disparities of income and wealth."
I have intercalated numbers to distinguish the two different claims Sanders makes. [1] has nothing specifically to do with socialism. After all, I agree with [1] and I support free enterprise under the rule of law. Capitalism is good because it leads to prosperity and the alleviation of human suffering. Capitalism makes charitable giving possible. [2] has something to do with socialism but it is based on the foolish notion that there is something wrong with inequality as such.
The main point, however, is that Sanders' definition of 'socialism' is risible. Here is a dictionary definition adequate for present purposes:
Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods;
a system of society or group living in which there is no private property : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.
By this definition, Sanders is not a socialist. For he does not advocate government ownership of the means of production, nor is he out to abolish all private property. He needs capitalism to generate the loot that he wants to confiscate and redistribute.
Here it is argued that Sanders would do better to label himself a social democrat rather than a democratic socialist.
While Sanders is not a socialist strictly speaking you could say he is drifting in the socialist direction toward the omni-competent (omni-incompetent?) and omni-intrusive state. So if you value liberty you must oppose Bernie and Hillary and the whole bunch of gun-grabbing, religion-bashing, race-baiting, tradition-trashing, free speech-despising, liberty-quashing, Constitution-shredding, state-worshipping, hate-America leftists.
So if it comes down to Trump versus Hillary, you must roll the dice and vote for the awful Trump and hope for the best.
Another important step is a better comprehension by communities that government is at best a rude machinery, which can accomplish but very limited good, and which, when strained to accomplish what individuals should do for themselves, is sure to be perverted by selfishness to narrow purposes, or to defeat through ignorance its own ends. Man is too ignorant to govern much, to form vast plans for states and empires. Human policy has almost always been in conflict with the great laws of social well-being, and the less we rely on it the better. The less of power given to man over man the better. I speak, of course, of physical, political force. There is a power which cannot be accumulated to excess, — I mean moral power, that of truth and virtue, the royalty of wisdom and love, of magnanimity and true religion. This is the guardian of all right. It makes those whom it acts on free. (from Discourses on War. HT: Dave Bagwill)
Before one is a conservative or a liberal ideologically, one is a conservative or a liberal temperamentally, or by disposition. Or at least this is a thesis with which I am seriously toying, to put it oxymoronically. The idea is that temperament is a major if not the main determinant of political commitments. First comes the disposition, then come the theoretical articulation, the arguments, and the examination and refutation of the arguments of adversaries. Conservatism and liberalism are bred in the bone before they are born in the brain.
If this is so, it helps explain the bitter and intractable nature of political disagreement, the hatreds that politics excites, the visceral oppositions thinly veiled under a mask of mock civility, the mutual repugnance that goes so deep as to be unlikely to be ascribable to mere differences in thinking. For how does one argue against another's temperament or disposition or sensibility? I can't argue you out of an innate disposition, any more than I can argue you out of being yourself; and if your theoretical framework is little more than a reflection at the level of ideas of an ineradicable temperamental bias, then my arguments cannot be expected to have much influence. A certain skepticism about the role and reach of reason in human affairs may well be the Oakeshottian upshot.
But rather than pursue the question whether temperament is a major if not the main determinant of political commitments, let us address, with the help of Michael Oakeshott, the logically preliminary question of what it is to be conservatively disposed. Here are some passages from his "On Being Conservative" (from Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, Basic Books, 1962, pp. 168-196, bolding added):
The general characteristics of this [conservative] disposition are not difficult to discern, although they have often been mistaken. They centre upon a propensity to use and to enjoy what is available rather than to wish for or to look for something else; to delight in what is present rather than what was or what may be. Reflection may bring to light an appropriate gratefulness for what is available, and consequently the acknowledgment of a gift or an inheritance from the past; but there is no mere idolizing of what is past and gone. What is esteemed is the present; and it is esteemed not on account of its connections with a remote antiquity, nor because it is recognized to be more admirable than any possible alternative, but on account of its familiarity: not, Verweile doch, du bist so schoen, but Stay with me because I am attached to you.
[. . .]
To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. Familiar relationships and loyalties will be preferred to the allure of more profitable attachments; to acquire and to enlarge will be less important than to keep, to cultivate and to enjoy; the grief of loss will be more acute than the excitement of novelty or promise. It is to be equal to one's own fortune, to live at the level of one's own means, to be content with the want of greater perfection which belongs alike to oneself and one's circumstances.
[. . .]
The disposition to be conservative is, then, warm and positive in respect of enjoyment, and correspondingly cool and critical in respect of change and innovation: these two inclinations support and elucidate one another. The man of conservative temperament believes that a known good is not lightly to be surrendered for an unknown better. He is not in love with what is dangerous and difficult; he is unadventurous; he has no impulse to sail uncharted seas; for him there is no magic in being lost, bewildered, or shipwrecked. If forced to navigate the unknown, he sees virtue in heaving the lead every inch of the way. What others plausibly identify as timidity, he recognizes in himself as rational prudence; what others interpret as inactivity, he recognizes as a disposition to enjoy rather than to exploit. He is cautious, and he is disposed to indicate assent or dissent, not in absolute, but in graduated terms. He eyes the situation in terms of its propensity to disrupt the familiarity of the features of his world.
[. . .]
. . . what makes a conservative disposition in politics intelligible is nothing to do with natural law or a providential order, nothing to do with morals or religion; it is the observation of our current manner of living combined with the belief (which from our point of view need be regarded as no more than an hypothesis) that governing is a specific and limited activity, namely the provision and custody of general rules of conduct, which are understood, not as plans for imposing substantive activities, but as instruments enabling people to pursue the activities of their own choice with the minimum frustration, and therefore something which it is appropriate to be conservative about.
[. . .]
And the office of government is not to impose other beliefs and activities upon its subjects, not to tutor or to educate them, not to make them better or happier in another way, not to direct them, to galvanize them into action, to lead them or to coordinate their activities so that no occasion of conflict shall occur; the office of government is merely to rule. This is a specific and limited activity, easily corrupted when it is combined with any other, and, in the circumstances, indispensable. The image of the ruler is the umpire whose business is to administer the rules of the game, or the chairman who governs the debate according to known rules but does not himself participate in it.
[. . .]
. . . the office he attributes to government is to resolve some of the collisions which this variety of beliefs and activities generates; to preserve peace, not by placing an interdict upon choice and upon the diversity that springs from the exercise of preference, not by imposing substantive uniformity, but by enforcing general rules of procedure upon all subjects alike.
Government, then, as the conservative in this matter understands it, does not begin with a vision of another, different, and better world, but with the observation of the self-government practised even by men of passion in the conduct of their enterprises; it begins in the informal adjustments of interests to one another which are designed to release those who are apt to collide from the mutual frustration of a collision. Sometimes these adjustments are no more than agreements between two parties to keep out of each other's way; sometimes they are of wider application and more durable character, such as the International Rules for the prevention of collisions at sea. In short, the intimations of government are to be found in ritual, not in religion or philosophy; in the enjoyment of orderly and peaceable behaviour, not in the search for truth or perfection.
[. . .]
. . . politics is an activity unsuited to the young, not on account of their vices but on account of what I at least consider to be their virtues.
Nobody pretends that it is easy to acquire or to sustain the mood of indifference which this manner of politics calls for. To rein-in one's own beliefs and desires, to acknowledge the current shape of things, to feel the balance of things in one's hand, to tolerate what is abominable, to distinguish between crime and sin, to respect formality even when it appears to be leading to error, these are difficult achievements; and they are achievements not to be looked for in the young. Everybody's young days are a dream, a delightful insanity, a sweet solipsism. Nothing in them has a fixed shape, nothing a fixed price; everything is a possibility, and we live happily on credit. There are no obligations to be observed; there are no accounts to be kept. Nothing is specified in advance; everything is what can be made of it. The world is a mirror in which we seek the reflection of our own desires. The allure of violent emotions is irresistible. When we are young we are not disposed to make concessions to the world; we never feel the balance of a thing in our hands – unless it be a cricket bat. [Jim Morrison: "We wnat the world, and we want it now!"] We are not apt to distinguish between our liking and our esteem; urgency is our criterion of importance; and we do not easily understand that what is humdrum need not be despicable. We are impatient of restraint; and we readily believe, like Shelley, that to have contracted a habit is to have failed. These, in my opinion, are among our virtues when we are young; but how remote they are from the disposition appropriate for participating in the style of government I have been describing. Since life is a dream, we argue (with plausible but erroneous logic) that politics must be an encounter of dreams, in which we hope to impose our own. Some unfortunate people, like Pitt (laughably called "the Younger"), are born old, and are eligible to engage in politics almost in their cradles; others, perhaps more fortunate, belie the saying that one is young only once, they never grow up. But these are exceptions. For most there is what Conrad called the "shadow line" which, when we pass it, discloses a solid world of things, each with its fixed shape, each with its own point of balance, each with its price; a world of fact, not poetic image, in which what we have spent on one thing we cannot spend on another; a world inhabited by others besides ourselves who cannot be reduced to mere reflections of our own emotions. And coming to be at home in this commonplace world qualifies us (as no knowledge of "political science" can ever qualify us), if we are so inclined and have nothing better to think about, to engage in what the man of conservative disposition understands to be political activity.
Despite their name, liberals seem uninterested or insufficiently interested in the 'real' liberties, those pertaining to property, money, and guns, as opposed to the 'ideal' liberties, those pertaining to freedom of expression. A liberal will go to any extreme when it comes to defending the right to express his precious self no matter how inane or obnoxious or socially deleterious the results of his self-expression; but he cannot muster anything like this level of energy when it comes to defending the right to keep what he earns or the right to defend himself and his family from the criminal element from which liberal government fails to protect him. He would do well to reflect that his right to express his vacuous self needs concrete back-up in the form of economic and physical clout. Scribbler that I am, I prize freedom of expression; but I understand what makes possible its retention.
Taxation then is a liberty issue before it is a 'green eye shade' issue: the more the government takes, the less concrete liberty you have. Without money you can't get your kids out of a shitty public school system that liberals have destroyed with their tolerate-anything mentality; without money you cannot live in a decent and secure neighborhood. Without money you can't move out of a state such as California which is 'under water' due to liberal fiscal irresponsibility.
Taxation is a liberty issue. That is one thought as April 15th approaches. Another is that the government must justify its taking; the onus is not on you to justify your keeping.
Government exists to serve us, not the other way around.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 101:
Certain rash people have asserted that, just as there are no mice where there are no cats, so no one is possessed where there are no exorcists.
That puts me in mind of anarchists who say that where there are no laws there are no criminals. That is not much better than saying that where there are no chemists there are no chemicals.
Just as there are chemicals whether or not there are any chemists, there are moral wrongs whether or not there are any positive laws prohibiting them. What makes murder wrong is not that there are positive laws prohibiting it; murder is wrong antecedently of the positive law. It is morally wrong before (logically speaking) it is legally wrong. And it is precisely the moral wrongness of murder that justifies having laws against it.
And yet there is a sense in which criminals are legislated into existence: one cannot be a criminal in the eyes of the law unless there is the law. And it is certainly true that to be a criminal in the eyes of the law does not entail being guilty of any moral wrong-doing. But the anarchist goes off the deep end if he thinks that there is no moral justification for any legal prohibitions, or that the wrongness of every act is but an artifact of the law's prohibiting it.
An excellent article by Walter Russell Meade. Study it, muchachos. Yes, this will be on the final.
A revenant is one who has returned from the dead or from a long absence.
Has Old Hickory come back as Donald Trump?
Though I despise contemporary liberalism and leftism (any difference?), that doesn't quite put me on the Jacksonian right. Meade:
Lynch law and Jim Crow were manifestations of Jacksonian communalism, and there are few examples of race, religious or ethnic prejudice in which Jacksonian America hasn’t indulged.
[. . .]
Jacksonians are neither liberal nor conservative in the ways that political elites use those terms; they are radically egalitarian, radically pro-middle class, radically patriotic, radically pro-Social Security.
I am too much of an intellectual, and too much of an old-time liberal, to be a Jacksonian. At the bottom of the Jacksonian bucket are the rednecks and know-nothings. You know the type. The guy who shoots out the windows of a convenience store because he thinks the proprietor is a Muslim when in fact he is a Sikh. He doesn't know the difference between a Muslim and a Hindu because he doesn't read books. He is too busy swilling Budweiser at NASCAR events and tractor-pulls. (He had hisself a coupla Buds but he was none the wiser.)
At the bottom of that same Jacksonian bucket are the jingoists who confuse jingoism with patriotism. "My country right or wrong." And while I believe that "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence sense, and all deserve equal treatment before the law, I am no radical egalitarian. I am an elitist, but in the best possible sense of that word. People are obviously not equal in respect of any empirical attribute. You could put it like this: we are all equal before God, equally wretched, but among one another plainly unequal spiritually, mentally, morally, and physically. But my elitism has nothing to do with inherited privilege or blood lines and the like. It is an elitism grounded in talent and ability and the individual's free development of his talents and abilities. True, you did nothing to deserve your God- or nature-given talent, but you have nonetheless a right to its possession and development. If you develop your talents in accordance with the old virtues and become unequal to others in respect of the three Ps (position, power, and pelf), then so be it. Material equality, as such, is not a value.
And I am certainly not radically pro-Social Security.
But if comes down to a fight with vile and destructive leftists, you can bet I will be on the side of the Jacksonian good old boys, locked and loaded. Meade concludes:
Whatever happens to the Trump candidacy, it now seems clear that Jacksonian America is rousing itself to fight for its identity, its culture and its primacy in a country that it believes it should own. Its cultural values have been traduced, its economic interests disregarded, and its future as the center of gravity of American political life is under attack. Overseas, it sees traditional rivals like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran making headway against a President that it distrusts; more troubling still, in ISIS and jihadi terror it sees the rapid spread of a movement aiming at the mass murder of Americans. Jacksonian America has lost all confidence in the will or the ability of the political establishment to fight the threats it sees abroad and at home. It wants what it has always wanted: to take its future into its own hands.The biggest story in American politics today is this: Andrew Jackson is mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore.
