Although the state under leftism is totalitarian and demands conformity and submission in matters of moment, it tolerates and indeed encourages the cultivation of a politically inconsequential individualism of private self-absorption. A people given bread (food stamps and other forms of infantilizing dependency), circuses (mass sporting events), dope (legalization of marijuana), pornography, politically correct propaganda, and such weapons of mass distraction as Twitter and Facebook is kept distracted, enervated, and submissive.
Nowadays it is not religion that is the opiate of the masses, but the dope of Big Government.
Dennis Prager was complaining one day about how the Left ridicules the Right. He sounded a bit indignant. He went on to say that he does not employ ridicule. But why doesn't he? He didn't say why, but I will for him: Because he is a gentleman who exemplifies the good old conservative virtue of civility. And because he is a bit naive.
Prager's behavior, in one way laudable, in another way is not, resting as it does on an assumption that I doubt is true at the present time. Prager assumes that political differences are more like intellectual differences among gentlemanly interlocutors than they are like the differences among warring parties. He assumes that there is a large measure of common ground and the real possibility of mutually beneficial compromise, the sort of compromise that serves the common good by mitigating the extremism of the differing factions, as opposed to that form of compromise, entered into merely to survive, whereby one side knuckles under to the extremism of the other.
But if we are now in the age of post-consensus politics, if politics is war by another name, then it is just foolish not to use the Left's tactics against them.
It is not enough to be right, or have the facts on your side, or to have the better arguments. That won't cut it in a war. Did the Allies prevail over the Axis Powers in virtue of having truth and right on their side? It was might that won the day, and, to be honest, the employing of morally dubious means (e.g., the firebombing of Dresden, the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), the same sort of means that the Axis would have employed had they been able to. One hopes that the current civil war doesn't turn bloody. But no good purpose is served by failing to understand that what we have here is a war and not minor disagreements about means within the common horizon of agreed-upon assumptions, values, and goals.
Have we entered the age of post-consensus politics? I think so. I should write a post about our irreconcilable differences. For now a quick incomplete list. We disagree radically about: the purpose of government; crime and punishment; race; marriage; abortion; drugs; pornography; the interpretation of the Consitution; religion; economics.
Take religion. I have no common ground with you if you think every vestige of the Judeo-Christian heritage should be removed from the public square, or take the sort of extremist line represented by people like Dawkins and A. C. Grayling. If, however, you are an atheist who gives the Establishment Clause a reasonable interpretation, then we have some common ground.
London Karl sent me to The Mad Monarchist, not that he agrees with it. Apparently, there is no position on any topic that someone won't defend. But we've known that for a long time. Descartes said something to that effect.
Is anarchism the opposite of monarchism?
Anarchism is to political philosophy as eliminative materialism is to the philosophy of mind. That is to say, it is an untenable stance, teetering on the brink of absurdity, but worth studying as a foil against which to develop something saner. To understand in depth any position on a spectrum of positions you must study the whole spectrum.
Study everything. For almost every position on any topic contains some insight or other, even if it be only negative. The monarchist, for example, sees clearly what is wrong with pure democracy. If there are any positions wholly without value, then they are still worth studying with the philosophical equivalent of the pathologist's eye and the philosophical equivalent of the pathologist's interest.
An important but troubling thought is conveyed in a recent NYT op-ed (emphasis added):
Machiavelli teaches that in a world where so many are not good, you must learn to be able to not be good. The virtues taught in our secular and religious schools are incompatible with the virtues one must practice to safeguard those same institutions. The power of the lion and the cleverness of the fox: These are the qualities a leader must harness to preserve the republic.
The problem as I see it is that (i) the pacific virtues the practice of which makes life worth living within families, between friends, and in such institutions of civil society as churches and fraternal organizations are essentially private and cannot be extended outward as if we are all brothers and sisters belonging to a global community. Talk of global community is blather. The institutions of civil society can survive and flourish only if protected by warriors and statesmen whose virtues are of the manly and martial, not of the womanish and pacific, sort. And yet (ii) if no extension of the pacific virtues is possible then humanity would seem to be doomed in an age of terrorism and WMDs. Besides, it is unsatisfactory that there be two moralities, one private, the other public.
Consider the Christian virtues preached by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. They include humility, meekness, love of righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, love of peace and of reconciliation. Everyone who must live uncloistered in the world understands that these pacific and essentially womanish virtues have but limited application there. (I am not using 'womanish' as a derogatory qualifier.) You may love peace, but unless you are prepared to make war upon your enemies and show them no mercy, you may not be long for this world. Turning the other cheek makes sense within a loving family, but no sense in the wider world. (Would the Pope turn the other cheek if the Vatican came under attack by Muslim terrorists or would he call upon the armed might of the Italian state?) This is perfectly obvious in the case of states: they are in the state (condition) of nature with respect to each other. Each state secures by blood and iron a civilized space within which art and music and science and scholarship can flourish and wherein, ideally, blood does not flow; but these states and their civilizations battle each other in the state (condition) of nature red in tooth and claw.
The Allies would not have been long for this world had they not been merciless in their treatment of the Axis Powers.
This is also true of individuals once they move beyond their families and friends and genuine communities and sally forth into the wider world.
The problem is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245):
The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular — be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth interests of the community.) [Arendt cites the Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]
There is a tension between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen. As a philosopher raised in Christianity, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare. This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops many of whom are woefully ignorant of the simple points Arendt makes in the passage quoted. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.
What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug smuggler or a human trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law breaking. I must be concerned with public order. This order is among the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's law breaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" as the New Testament enjoins us to do.
Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops and others who confuse private and public morality.
Many prominent liberals now consider verifiable ID requirements at polling places to constitute voter suppression. And of course their use of 'suppression' is normatively loaded: they pack a pejorative connotation into it. Voter suppression, as they use the phrase, is bad. Well then, do these liberals also think that requiring drivers to operate with valid licenses to be driver suppression in that same pejorative sense? If not, why not?
After all, to require certification of age and of minimal driving knowledge and skills limits the number of drivers just as an ID requirement at the polls limits the number of voters. But for either limitation to amount to suppression in a pejorative sense, the limitation would either have to be injurious or arbitrary or unnecessary or in some other way bad.
But obviously both forms of certification are necessary and reasonable and in no way bad and the discrimination they involve is legitimate. (See articles below if you really need arguments.)
So why do liberals label legitimate voting requirements as voter suppression? Because they want to make the polling places safe for voter fraud. They need people, citizens or not, alive or dead, to 'vote early and vote often' if they are going to win in close elections. If it is not close, they can't cheat; but if it is close then cheating is justified by the end, namely, winning. Or so they believe.
You won't understand the Left unless you understand that they lack the qualms of those of us brought up on 'bourgeois' morality, most of which is contained in the Judeo-Christian tradition. For a leftist, there is nothing wrong with lying and cheating if those are means judged necessary to achieve their end, namely, the victory of the Left and the destruction of the Rght. So they want as many potential leftists voting as possible regardless of citizenship status, age, or criminality.
You can bet that if actual or potential conservatives were involved in voter fraud, liberals would call for standards of ID to be ramped up to 'proctological' levels.
What I have just done is explain why liberals maintain the absurd view they maintain. It is perfectly comprehensible once you grasp that the point is to enable voter fraud. The arguments why their view is untenable are found in the some of the articles listed below.
The best proof of this to date is the bitter wrangling and the wastage of time, effort, and money over Obamacare. This fight will continue until Obamacare is repealed or gutted. In the long and nasty process, the political climate in this country is bound to become ever more toxic. Way to go, liberals, way to go!
Big government leads to big trouble as we fight endlessly, acrimoniously, and fruitlessly over all sorts of issues that we really ought not be fighting over. The final clause of the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution enshrines the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." So the more the government does things that grieve us, by intruding into our lives and limiting our liberties, the more we will petition, lobby, and generally raise hell with the government and with our political opponents.
If you try to tell me how much soda I can buy at a pop, or how capacious my ammo mags must be, or how I must speak to assuage the tender sensitivities of the Pee Cee, or if you try to stop me from home-schooling my kids, or force me to buy health insurance, then you are spoiling for a fight and you will get it. Think of how much time, energy, and money we waste battling our political enemies, working to undo what we take to be their damage, the damage of Obamacare being the example du jour.
So if you want less contention, work for smaller government. The smaller the government, the less to fight over.
A Pond away, the American-born Janet Daley of The Telegraphsee things with exceptional clarity. Concluding paragraphs:
Economic freedom, as well as political liberty, is being traded in at a startling pace even in the US, where it was once the be-all and end-all of the American dream. US citizens are discovering that their president’s flagship health-care programme is going to force them to buy the sort of health insurance that he believes they should have rather than the (cheaper, less comprehensive) kind they had chosen for themselves. They may have been willing to take their chances with minimal coverage that would pay only for catastrophic events, but the government says no. In its paternalistic wisdom, it will insist (by law) that they pay for everything it thinks is desirable, whether they want it or not.
The principle of the ideological struggle with communism — that the power of the state was an inherent danger from which the individual must be protected — is being lost to memory. Government is always the custodian of virtue now, holding out against the wicked, self-serving forces of profit and private interests. It is as if we have learnt nothing from the history of the 20th century about which values and beliefs actually delivered a life that was worth living — and how much vigilance is required to preserve them.
Why write an article on a subject you know nothing about? This is a question that Amia Srinivasan might usefully have asked herself. She is a Prize Fellow in philosophy at All Souls College, Oxford, one of the most prestigious academic positions in the academic world; and her webpage at Oxford includes several papers of outstanding merit. You would never guess that she is a serious philosopher, though, from her article “Questions for Free-Market Moralists” in The New York Times, October 2013. The “free-market moralist” she has principally in mind is Robert Nozick, the author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). If Srinivasan has read this book at all, the experience appears to have passed her by.
For Dworkin, the meaning of religion consists in “two central judgments about value” that he believes religious people — theists and some atheists — regard as objectively true. First, “each person has an innate and inescapable responsibility to try to make his life a successful one: that means living well, accepting ethical responsibilities to oneself as well as moral responsibilities to others, not just if we happen to think this important but because it is in itself important whether we think so or not.” Second, “what we call ‘nature’ — the universe as a whole and in all its parts — is not just a matter of fact but is itself sublime: something of intrinsic value and wonder.”
If this is what Dworkin maintains, then his characterization of religion leaves a lot to be desired, to put it mildly. This is obviously NOT what the meaning of religion consists in on any adequate understanding of religion. Religion cannot be reduced to axiology. True, the religious will accept that there are objective values and disvalues. But such acceptance, even if necessary for being religious, is not sufficient.
All or most of the following are beliefs essential to anything that can be legitimately called a religion:
1.
The belief that there is what William James calls an "unseen order."
(Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 53) This is a realm of absolute
reality that lies beyond the perception of the five outer senses and their
instrumental extensions. It is also inaccessible to inner sense or
introspection. It is also not a realm of mere abstracta or thought-contents.
So it lies beyond the discursive intellect. It is accessible from our side via
mystical and religious experience. An initiative from its side is not to be
ruled out in the form of revelation.
2.
The belief that there is a supreme good for humans and that "our supreme good
lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves" to the "unseen order."
(Varieties, p. 53)
3.
The conviction that we are morally deficient, and that this deficiency impedes
our adjustment to the unseen order. Man is in some some sense fallen from the
moral height at which he would have ready access to the unseen order. His moral
corruption, however it came about, has noetic consequences.
4.
The conviction that our moral deficiency cannot be made sufficiently good by
our own efforts to afford us ready access to the unseen order.
5.
The conviction that adjustment to the unseen order requires moral
purification/transformation.
6.
The conviction that help from the side of the unseen order is available to bring
about this purification and adjustment.
7.
The conviction that the sensible order is not plenary in point of reality or
value, that it is ontologically and axiologically derivative. It is a
manifestation or emanation or creation of the unseen order.
In a word, Dworkin's characterization leaves out Transcendence; it leaves out what is absolutely central to religion, namely, the conviction that there is a transcendent dimension, an "unseen order," (see #1 supra) and that adjustment to this order is essential to human flourishing (see #2 supra).
What Dworkin has delivered is a miserable leftist substitute for religion. Being a leftist, he of course cannot value or perhaps even understand the genuine article; but he at least could have had the intellectual honesty not to try to redefine something whose definition is tolerably clear. Berkowitz has it right:
. . . Dworkin redefines religion to conform to his progressive sensibilities. What he presents as the offering of an olive branch to believers may seem to a person of faith, with justice, as a hostile takeover attempt. The steps by which Dworkin appropriates the religious label for his own left-liberal and atheistic outlook provide a case study in how the progressive mind, under the guise of conciliation, seeks to command the moral high ground exclusively and discredit that which differs from it.
"Hostile takeover" is right. Berkowitz also perceptively notes that
Dworkin also overlooks a formidable problem latent in his sanctification of the progressive perspective. If progressivism counts as a religion, then enacting the left-liberal policy agenda would seem to represent an establishment of religion in violation of the First Amendment.
But of course progressivism is not a religion, but an anti-religious political ideology. Nevertheless, one can and must ask: if it is wrong for the State to impose religion on its citizens, why isn't it also wrong for the State to impose leftist ideology on its citizens as it now doing here in the USA?
Eric Holder's out-of-control Department of (Social) Justice is at it again, this time going after Bobby Jindal's school choice program in Louisiana.
Yet another attack on federalism. This is not a word that wears its meaning on its sleeve, and the average panem et circenses American would be hard-pressed to define it.
Federalism 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 and border control could gravitate toward states like Texas.
The fact of the matter is that we do not agree on a large number of divisive, passion-inspiring issues (abortion, gun rights, capital punishment, affirmative action, school vouchers, photo ID at polling places, legal and illegal immigration, taxation, wealth redistribution, the purposes and limits, if any, on governmental power . . .) and we will never agree on them. These are not merely academic issues since they directly affect the lives and livelihoods and liberties of people. And they are not easily resolved because they are deeply rooted in fundamental worldview differences. When you violate a man's liberty, or mock his moral sense, or threaten to destroy his way of life, you are spoiling for a fight and you will get it.
I fear that we are coming apart as a nation. We are disagreeing about things we ought not be disagreeing about, such as the need to secure the borders. The rifts are deep and nasty. Polarization and demonization of the opponent are the order of the day. Do you want more of this? Then give government more say in your life. The bigger the government, the more to fight over. Do you want less? Then support limited government and federalism. A return to federalism may be a way to ease the tensions, not that I am sanguine about any solution.
Would that I could avoid this political stuff. But I cannot in good conscience retreat into my inner citadel and let my country be destroyed — the country that makes it possible for me to cultivate the garden of solitude, retreat into my inner citadel, and pursue pure theory for its own sake.
Political discourse is unavoidably polemical. The zoon politikon must needs be a zoon polemikon. 'Polemical’ is from the Greek polemos, war, strife. According to Heraclitus of Ephesus, strife is the father of all: polemos panton men pater esti . . . (Fr. 53) I don't know about the 'all,' but strife is certainly at the root of politics. Politics is polemical because it is a form of warfare: the point is to defeat the opponent and remove him from power, whether or not one can rationally persuade him of what one takes to be the truth. It is practical rather than theoretical in that the aim is to implement what one takes to be the truth rather than contemplate it. What one takes to be the truth: that is the problem in a nutshell. Conservatives and leftists disagree fundamentally and nonnegotiably.
Implementation of what one takes to be the truth, however, requires that one get one’s hands on the levers of power. Von Clausewitz held that war is politics pursued by other means. But what could be called the converse-Clausewitz principle holds equally: politics is war pursued by other means.
David Horowitz, commenting on "Politics is war conducted by other means," writes:
In political warfare you do not just fight to prevail in an argument, but rather to destroy the enemy's fighting ability. Republicans often seem to regard political combats as they would a debate before the Oxford Political Union, as though winning depended on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles. But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.
You have only thirty seconds to make your point. Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention) would not get it. Your words would go over some of their heads and the rest would not even hear them (or quickly forget) amidst the bustle and pressure of everyday life. Worse, while you are making your argument the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, borderline racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich. Nobody who sees you in this way is going to listen to you in any case. You are politically dead.
Politics is war. Don't forget it. ("The Art of Political War" in Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey Spence 2003, pp. 349-350)
The proprietor of After Aristotleagrees with me that polemics has no place in philosophy. But he has a question for me: "Do his [my] statements about philosophy apply also to political philosophy?"
My answer is that if polemics has no legitimate place in philosophy, then it follows that it has no legitimate place in political philosophy. I am assuming, of course, that political philosophy is a species of philosophy in general, an assumption that strikes me as plainly true.
To appreciate my answer bear in mind my distinction between philosophy-as-inquiry and philosophy-as-worldview. When I write 'philosophy,' without qualification, I almost always intend the former. My thesis, then, is that polemics has no place in philosophy-as-inquiry or in any of its branches, however things may stand with regard to the many philosophical worldviews.
The problems of political philosophy are much more likely to ignite human passions than, say, abstruse questions in metaphysics. The misnamed 'problem of universals,' for example, is not likely to be 'taken to the streets.' But polemics is just as out of place in political philosophy as it is in metaphysics.
Addendum (6 August): It may be that the proprietor of After Aristotle had a different question in mind: "You maintain that polemics has no place in philosophy, but you polemicize regularly in political philosophy. But surely what goes for philosophy goes for political philosophy! Are you not being inconsistent?" If that is the question, then my answer is that politics is not the same as political philosophy; that I do not polemicize in political philosophy; and that polemics is not out of place in politics. I wish it were not true, but politics is war conducted by other means. That is clearly how our opponents on the Left view it, and so that is how we must view it if we are to oppose them effectively.
As a cultural warrior, I do battle with my enemies. As a philosopher, I seek truth with my friends.
Liberals support separation of church and state, and so do I. But they have no problem with using the coercive power of the state to impose leftist ideology. Now leftism is not a religion, pace Dennis Prager (see article below), but it is very much like one, and if you can see what is wrong with allowing contentious theological doctrines to drive politics, then you ought to be able to see what is wrong with allowing the highly contentious ideological commitments of leftism to drive politics, most of which revolve around the leftist trinity (Prager) of race, gender, and class. If "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ," as per the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, then it ought to make no law that establishes the quasi-religion of leftism.
This is a large topic, and I have a substantial post in the works. But for today, just one example of what I am getting at.
It is a tenet of contemporary liberalism that opposition to same-sex 'marriage' is 'discriminatory' and that opponents of it are 'bigots.' Now this is both obtuse and slanderous. But liberals have a right to their opinions, even if it is to be wished that they would give some thought to the corresponding obligation to form correct opinions. Be that as it may, liberals have a right to their benighted views, and we ought to tolerate them. After all, we too are liberals in a much older, and a defensible, sense: we believe in toleration, open inquiry, free speech, individual liberty, etc. And we are liberal and self-critical enough to countenance the possibility that perhaps we are the benighted ones.
But toleration has limits.
What we ought not tolerate is the sort of coercion of the individual by the state that we find in the case of the Washington State florist who refused to sell floral arrangements to be used at a same-sex 'marriage' ceremony. This woman has no animus against gays, and had sold flowers to the homosexual couple. But she was not about to violate her own conscience by providing flowers for a same-sex event. As a result she was sued by the Washington State attorney general, and then by the ACLU.
Now do you see what is wrong with that? The state says to the individual: you have a right to your religious and philosophical beliefs, but only so long as you keep them to yourself and don't allow them to be expressed in your relations with your fellow citizens. You may believe what you want in the privacy of your own mind, but you may not translate your beliefs into social or political action. But we are free to translate our leftist 'theology' into rules and regulations that diminish your liberty. What then becomes of the "free exercise of religion" spoken of in the First Amendment? It is out the window. The totalitarian state has taken one more step in its assault on the liberty of the individual.
The totalitarian state of the contemporary liberal says to the individual: you have no right to live your beliefs unless we allow you to; but we have every right to impose our leftist beliefs on you and force you to live as we see fit.
Here are some home truths that cannot be repeated too often:
We are not the property of the state.
Our rights and liberties do not come from the state, but are logically antecedent to it, inscribed as they are in the very nature of things.
We do not have to justify our keeping of what is ours; the state has to justify its taking.
