Social and Political Philosophy – Page 5

The Militant Defends Trump and Our Civil Liberties

I never thought I'd be quoting from The Militant! A tip of the hat to Tony Flood who writes,

I could consider making a tactical alliance with one who signs off with "The fight to defend constitutional liberties is at the center of the class struggle today." This is classic Marxism, not Antifa terrorism.

Populist democracy makes for strange bedfellows. This is true democracy, not Orwellian 'democracy' which is the wokester's name for oligarchy. Why then am I not a socialist? Two reasons. First, socialism does not work economically. Second, because socialism runs counter to human nature and will not be freely adopted, socialism must be enforced. Enforcement requires a massive state apparatus inimical to individual liberty. It would be interesting to do a comparison between totalitarian state socialism and 'woke' capitalism. Both are totalitarian, anti-populist, and suppressive of individual freedoms such as freedom of speech and thought. (See fourth quotation below.) How then do they differ? Excerpts:

Throughout the final days of the 2022 campaign, Democrats centered their fire on former President Donald Trump. They claim “democracy itself” is threatened if he ever holds office again. Before Trump was even elected in 2016, Democrats unleashed the FBI against him — and against constitutional freedoms working people have won in blood and sorely need. They’ve used congressional witch hunts and launched a cascade of legal cases against him, his family members and political allies.

Speeches by prominent Democrats make abundantly clear they will continue on this course whoever wins control of Congress. The real culprits responsible for Trump, they insist, are the millions of working people President Joseph Biden calls “semi-fascists” and believes can’t be trusted to make political decisions.

The entirety of Biden’s prime-time Nov. 2 speech — his main address prior to the election — was to attack so-called MAGA Republicans as a “threat to democracy.”

[. . .]

Then in the Nov. 2 speech, Biden said Trump supporters threaten the rule of law, not because of what they do, but because of what they think and say. This is an attack on freedom of speech itself.

[. . .]

The only other issue Democrats campaigned around is abortion, built on false claims that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling this summer outlawed it. But that isn’t true. It held abortion had no basis in the Constitution and returned the debate over the issue to the people and their elected representatives.

[. . .]

Smear opponents as ‘foreign agents’

From the beginning, one key theme of the Democrats’ assault on Trump and his administration was the utterly disproven charge that they were hooked up with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They got the FBI to put forward the Steele Dossier, a collection of gossip and smears paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, to try and impeach Trump.

Three Axes of Conflict

Antony Beevor in The Spanish Civil War (Orbis 1982, Penguin 2001, p. 279) writes that in the aftermath of the war both sides engaged in gross simplifications for propaganda purposes:

As a result, the three axes of conflict (left-right, centralist-regionalist, and authoritarian-libertarian) have often been crudely amalgamated, leaving the ferocity of the war partly unexplained.

Philosophers do well to study history to offset their penchant for the bird's-eye view. They need to come to ground from time to time if only to fuel themselves for further flight. Feasting on the carrion of fact, however, is not particularly nutritious. So what caught this philosopher's eye was the three-axes schema. Philosophers love schemata. They love the synoptic and panoptic survey. 'Spectators of all time and existence . . . ."

The three-axes schema strikes me as relevant to the current political war in the USA as we teeter on the brink of World War Three thanks to the stupidity and criminality of the Democrat Party and the useful idiots who support it.

1) Left-Right. It might be useful to distinguish between the Old Left, the New Left, and the 'Woke' Left. (Having sneered, I now drop the sneer quotes, at least for the space of this paragraph.) What distinguishes the Woke Left is corporate capitalism, the globalist capitalism of mega-corporations with the economic, and in consequence thereof political, clout to bend both government and the Fourth Estate to their collective will, thereby destroying the independence of both of the latter and eliminating checks on their unbalanced power.

2) Centralism-Regionalism. Liberty versus tyranny defines the battle for the soul of America. Tyranny emanates from the central government which, while endlessly mouthing 'democracy' and 'rule of law' respects neither. Liberty, if it can survive, will be defended locally and regionally by citizens with the civil courage to speak out and face 'cancellation' and worse. (I am thinking, among other things, of ordinary citizens who attend school board meetings and protest being labelled 'domestic terrorists' for rejecting the indoctrination of their children in Critical Race Theory, in 1619-type historical revisionism, in transgender ideology, and in anti-Caucasian ethno-masochism.) Regionalism is or is closely related to federalism. (The overturning of Roe v. Wade scored a point for the latter; the Left's febrile outrage clearly demonstrates its anti-federalism and anti-democratic spirit. )

3) Authoritarian-Libertarian. American conservatism is not authoritarian but classically liberal. But while classically liberal, and thus opposed to throne-and-altar paleo-conservatism, it also opposes the anti-religionism and anti-traditionalism of the Left, especially that of the 'woke' Left, which is a particularly virulent and lethal strain of leftism. It thus treads the via media avoiding both the Road to Serfdom (you get the allusion, of course) and the road to anarchy as lately instantiated by Atifa black shirts and BLM Marxist thugs.

No Alternative to (Classical) Liberalism

I wrote yesterday, "There can be no peaceful coexistence in one and the same geographical area over the long term except under classical liberalism." But what is classical liberalism? Here I found an adequate characterization:

Fukuyama follows John Gray in defining liberalism in terms of four broad characteristics. It is individualist in asserting the moral primacy of the person over the collective, egalitarian in affording the same legal and political status to all citizens, universalist in viewing all human beings as possessing the same moral dignity, and meliorist in affirming the improvability of all social and political arrangements.

Fukuyama rehearses solid reasons for preferring liberalism to other forms of political association. Liberalism offers a more or less peaceful way of managing diversity in pluralist societies. It protects human dignity and autonomy through the rule of law. And it facilitates economic growth by protecting private property rights and the freedom to buy and sell.

This comports well with what I have been saying over the years.

Individualism. The individual is the locus of value, not the collective, certainly not the state, but also not the tribe or the family, whether extended or nuclear. Families are very important, far more important than leftists could ever understand; but they contribute to human flourishing only to the extent that they nurture strong, resolute, independent, individuals. Individualism fits well with my anti-tribalism. Tribal self-identification is mis-identification. You are not in your innermost essence a token of a type or a member of group but a potential individual charged with the task of self-individuation, the task of becoming a unique individual and thus something much more than an interchangeable token of a type or member of a group. God is the supreme Individual; you are to become God-like. You could subscribe to what I just wrote even if you think God is but a regulative Ideal and not a reality. Self-individuation is a project and a task, not a given; to the extent that tribal and familial identifications impede this project they should be opposed.

Individual persons are morally distinct: I am responsible for what I do and leave undone, and you for what you do and leave undone. People should be judged as individuals and on their merits.

Egalitarianism. People are manifestly not equal, either as individuals or as groups, except formally, that is, as rights-possessors. The classical liberal stands for equal legal and political rights for all citizens.

Universalism. There are natural rights and they are the basis of civil rights. They are not conferred by governments. Well-crafted constitutions codify these rights. Legitimate governments enforce their protection. Among natural rights are rights to life, liberty, and property.

Meliorism. The perfectibility of man is a dangerous leftist illusion that has led to the spillage of oceans of blood in the 2oth century. Classical liberalism is not leftism, and despite what many opine, classical liberalism is not inevitably on the slouch toward hard leftism. Human beings are deeply flawed, so much so that they cannot perfect themselves by any individual or collective effort. Whether or not there is 'pie in the sky,' there is certainly no 'pie in the future' achievable by human effort. The eschaton will not and cannot be immanentized, to adapt a formulation of Eric Voegelin which I take to mean that we cannot achieve, within history, and by purely human means, the summum bonum that religious types envisage as our ultimate end.

All that being said and well understood, we can nevertheless make piecemeal improvements in the human lot. Things don't have to be as horrendously bad as they currently are. There is better and worse in human affairs and with effort and commitment we can better some things somewhat. The meliorist does not allow the unachievable best to become the enemy of the achievable better. His is not an all or nothing attitude. He is neither a revolutionary nor a reactionary.

Moral Community and Civil War

Malcolm Pollack writes, and I respond in blue:

Visited your blog today . . . and saw this striking passage:

But also: haven't the barbarians forfeited their (normative) humanity to such an extent that they no longer deserve moral consideration? Do they form a moral community with us at all?

I am just asking. Or is inquiry now verboten?

It's not verboten – I think it's pretty clear that the foe has already asked it of our side and found us fit for exclusion. (Joe Biden's "Red Speech" made that plain enough.)

BV: Yes. Biden's 'semi-fascist' is a weasel-word equivalent in meaning to 'fascist,' which itself is an abuse of a legitimate term. The Left's favorite 'F' word is a toxic blend of psychological projection and Orwellian subversion of language. Leftists drain the term of its descriptive meaning so as to employ it as a semantic bludgeon.

But it is chilling, nevertheless, to be asking it in serious immediacy, rather than as a speculative, worst-case example of where we might get to if we aren't careful. It seems though, that now we really are pretty much there, and that is – even for folks like us who have been thinking so hard about the road ahead for so long – a grim mile-post.

BV: Yes, we appear to be reaching a critical juncture at which we will either put the destructive Left in its place and start the long march back to comity, or else advance into hotter and hotter forms of civil war, thereby weakening ourselves over against our geopolitical adversaries who believe we are ripe for collapse if the right shocks are administered. (For example, what has the Biden administration done to protect the power grid? Nothing. The ChiComs could easily knock out most if not all of it. The Biden admin, however, thinks delusionally that the non-threat of 'white supremacy' and the very distant possible threat of 'climate change' are imminent existential threats.)

What makes our predicament so dire is that the worst of the threats to the Republic are not external, but internal, emanating as they do from the extreme ('woke') Left which has infiltrated all of our institutions aided and abetted by a vast number of Useful Idiots who do not understand what is happening.

I have read a great deal in recent years about the history of civil war, and when things get to this point – when large numbers of people begin seriously questioning whether their fellow-citizens have forfeited their claim to moral inclusion (which really is the same as saying they are no longer to be seen as fellow humans) – then a nation is approaching the final exit.

BV: Yes, if you are using 'human' normatively and not merely biologically. I am reminded of someone who when asked how many men he had killed, replied in effect, "Not a one, I killed only communists."

What strikes me here is to look back over your own slow and cautious approach to this point over these many years: always thoughtful, always trying to hang on to the better angels of the American nature, and always wary of the most inflammatory and divisive voices on the Right.

BV: You understand me, Malcolm, and I am deeply appreciative of that fact as well as of your gentlemanly conduct even when I was unduly harsh in my responses to you. You and 'Jacques' [a Canadian academic philosopher who must use a pseudonym to protect himself against the depredatory Left which is apparently even more vicious up there than down here] have had an influence on me.

But here you are. (And so am I.) When those who hate you have branded you as unpersons, and make clear that they want you dead and gone, to keep your own circle expansive enough to include them is just unilateral disarmament, and suicidal folly. Woe that we should have lived to see such times in America.

BV: I should make clear, though, that when I asked in the passage you quoted "whether the barbarians have forfeited their (normative) humanity to such an extent that they no longer deserve moral consideration," I was not asking rhetorically. I was not making a statement but genuinely asking a question. And the same goes for the question whether they, the barbarians, form a moral community with us at all. By barbarians I mean the BLM and Antifa thugs and all who would erase our history and traditions together with the criminal element in which blacks are 'over-represented,' as well as all the civilized-looking enablers of the explicitly barbarous from Biden on down, and let's not leave out the hidden operatives who pull the strings of puppets such as Biden.

As a philosopher, my interest in these questions is not just here-and-now practical, although it is that inasmuch as I cannot do philosophy if I am dead or in prison. I am no Boethius. My interest is also theoretical. We are not just clever land mammals, bits of the Earth's fauna. We are also persons, rights-possessors, and as such equal regardless of race, sex, and other biological differences. Here is a mighty bulwark against the biologism of the (true) fascists. To the extent that the alt-Right moves in that direction I must oppose them.

This bring me to the topic of tribalism. I have been strenuously opposing it. Unfortunately, it appears to be the historical norm (statistically, not normatively). If the reversion to the tribal is inevitable, then I fear that humanity is finished given the existence of WMDs.

Still and all, I have been considering that a pro tempore white tribalism might be necessary, though not in itself desirable, given the vicious assault on Western civilization that we are seeing. We should discuss this, Malcolm, practically and theoretically. What is to be done by people like us who are not about to withdraw into the petty particulars of private life, but want to do our bit to preserve a civilization that has made it possible for us and so many around the world to live long and productive lives. You and I are not about to acquiesce in the suicide of the West or accept dhimmitude, whether of the Islamist, Communist, or 'woke' variety. And so it becomes quite the pressing question whether our political enemies have forfeited their normative humanity and can still be tolerated. Toleration, you have heard me say, is a great value of the classical liberalism of the Founders. But toleration has limits, as I have also repeatedly said. We are approaching those limits, and the patience of patriots is wearing thin.

If the USA, as she was founded to be, collapses, there will be nowhere left to escape to. The rest of the Anglosphere is shot.

What is Fascism? Are MAGA Republicans Fascists?

The Left's favorite 'F' word is of course 'fascist.' But of course they don't define it, the better to use it as a verbal cudgel. But we know that responsible discussion of a topic begins with a definition of terms.

What is a fascist? More to the point, what is fascism? The term expresses what philosophers call a 'thick' concept. Such concepts combine evaluative and descriptive content. Examples include cruel and cowardly. If I describe an action as cowardly, I am both describing it and expressing a negative moral evaluation of it. Right and wrong, by contrast, are 'thin' concepts inasmuch as they contain no descriptive content. If I commend you for doing the right thing, my commendation includes no descriptive content. Fascist is clearly thick. If we are called fascists, or 'semi-fascists' in the parlance of our illustrious president Joe Biden, at least some slight descriptive content is implied, even if the lion's share of the semantic load is expressive, not of sober moral judgment, but of blind hatred and contempt. I now unpack the descriptive content of fascist and fascism, and then go on to argue that no Republican, MAGA or not, can be fairly accused of being a fascist.

Main marks of fascism

According to Anthony Quinton,

It [Fascism] combines an intense nationalism, which is both militarily aggressive and resolved to subdue all aspects of public and private life to the pursuit of national greatness. It asserts that a supreme leader is indispensable, a heroic figure in whom the national spirit is incarnated. It seeks to organize society along military lines, conceiving war as the fullest expression of the national will as brought to consciousness in the leader. It sees the nation not primarily as a cultural entity, defined by a common language, traditional customs, perhaps a shared religion, a history of heroes and great events, but also in questionably biological terms. (Anthony Quinton, "Conservatism," in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, eds. Goodin and Pettit, Blackwell, 1995, p. 264.)

Quinton tells us that there are anticipations of fascism in Fichte, Carlyle, and Nietzsche, and that its main exponents are Mussolini and Hitler. Fascism is further described as "aggressive," "militant," and "totalitarian without qualification." The masses are to have no say in their governance; they are to obey. There are no rules for the orderly transfer of power. "Leaders are presumably to emerge as victors in the struggle for power within the ruling party." (264) Quinton also mentions the 'organicism' of fascism whereby it appeals to those "ready to submerge their individuality" in the national life and to find thereby their whole raison d'etre in "the service of the state," in the way that the function of a particular organ is to contribute to the well-being of the body of which it is a part." (264-265)

Are MAGA Republicans fascists?

I can be brief. Of course they are not.

Start with nationalism. Trump's is an enlightened nationalism and it is certainly not "militarily aggressive." America First does not mean that that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. The general principle is that every country has a right to grant preference to itself and its interests over the interests of other countries while respecting their interests and right to self-determination. America First is but an instance of the general principle. The principle, then, is Country First.

And of course enlightened nationalism has nothing to do with white nationalism. We must resist this race-baiting leftist smear. There is no 'biologism' in Trump's nationalism.

Is Trump at the center of a 'cult of personality'? No more than Obama was. Trump supporters are drawn to the ideas he espouses, which are all classically American; they are in fact most of them critical of the man himself.

To understand how destructive the Left is, you must understand that they feel no compunction at the Orwellian subversion of language, the brazen telling of lies, and psychological projection: what they accuse us of doing is almost always what they themselves are doing. They project in order to deflect attention from their own malfeasance and dereliction of duty.

Once again, TRUTH IS NOT A LEFTIST VALUE. Part of their trick is to say something so manifestly in conflict with reality that people will think: no one would have the chutzpah to say that unless it were true. That is the psychology of the big lie. And notice the smile. This is part of the psychological ploy. You look into the camera as Joey B did during one of the debates with Trump and you smile — and the pearl-clutching old ladies (of all ages and sexes) melt, and think, "He's such a nice man!"

Adeimantus, Machiavelli, Bloom, and Strauss

Recent events make it clear that the West is on the wane. The sun is setting on the Land of Evening. As the West goes under, the philosopher, like the proverbial owl of Minerva, spreads his wings in the gathering dusk so as to attain an altitude from which to survey the passing scene. He soars and he strains, to com-prehend and understand, and if he is of the tribe of Plato, he seeks to discern what might lie beyond the scene he surveys. His flight is fueled by the thoughts of his great predecessors.

I found the following in Allan Bloom's interpretive essay on Plato's Republic which is appended to his translation thereof. (Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato, Basic Books, 1968, p. 371, correction and emphasis added.)

Adeimantus' objection, then, is the same as Machiavelli's: the best regime is a mere dream, for a good city cannot avoid ruin if it does not do the things which will enable it to survive among vicious cities. It is foreign policy which makes the devotion to the good life within a city impossible [sic; read: possible] One must be at least as powerful as one's neighbors and must adopt a way of life such as to make this possible. Poverty, smallness, and unchangingness cannot compete with wealth, greatness, and innovation. The true policy is outward-looking, and cities and men are radically dependent on others for what they must be. Without a response to this objection— which Machiavelli thought to be decisive for the rejection of classical political thought — the very attempt to elaborate a utopia is folly. (p. 371)

My gloss: An enlightened nationalism, while chary of intervention, cannot be isolationist.

And the following I found in Leo Strauss' essay "What is Political Philosophy?" in What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies, University of Chicago Press, 1988, originally published by The Free Press, 1959, pp. 40-41, emphasis and hyperlink added.

The founder of modern political philosophy is Machiavelli. He tried to effect, and he did effect, a break with the whole tradition of political philosophy. He compared his achievement to that of men like Columbus. He claimed to have discovered a new moral continent. His claim is well founded; his political teaching is "wholly new." The only question is whether the new continent is fit for human habitation.

In his Florentine Histories he tells the following story: Cosimo de Medici once said that men cannot maintain power with pater-nosters in their hands. This gave occasion to Cosimo's enemies to slander him as a man who loved himself more than his fatherland and who loved this world more than the next. Cosimo was then said to be somewhat immoral and somewhat irreligious. Machiavelli himself is open to the same charge. His work is based on a critique of religion and a critique of morality.

His critique of religion, chiefly of Biblical religion, but also of paganism, is not original. It amounts to a restatement of the teaching of pagan philosophers, as well as of that medieval school which goes by the name of Averroism and which gave rise to the notion of the three impostors. Machiavelli's originality in this field is limited to the fact that he was a great master of blasphemy. The charm and gracefulness of his blasphemies will however be less strongly felt by us than their shocking character. Let us then keep them under the veil under which he has hidden them. I hasten to his critique of morality which is identical with his critique of classical political philosophy. One can state the main point as follows: there is something fundamentally wrong with an approach to politics which culminates in a Utopia, in the description of a best regime whose actualization is highly improbable. Let us then cease to take our bearings by virtue, the highest objective which a society might choose; let us begin to take our bearings by the objectives which are actually pursued by all societies. Machiavelli consciously lowers the standards of social action. His lowering of the standards is meant to lead to a higher probability of actualization of that scheme which is constructed in accordance with the lowered standards. Thus, the dependence on chance is reduced: chance will be conquered.

I will take a stab at a gloss of the italicized passage. It is a grave error to aim at a utopian resolution of our political predicament. To seek the unachievable best is to preclude the attainment of the achievable good. The pursuit of unrealizable ideals will make hypocrites of us and what is far worse, murderers who will be able to justify mass murder to achieve perfection as if anything truly straight could ever be made by human effort from the crooked timber of humanity.

Identity Politics: Is it Possible to Remain Classically Liberal?

There is an identity politics of the Left and an identity politics of the Right. The second kind became obvious to me when, after objecting to the tribalism of blacks, Hispanics, and other racial/ethnic groups, and after calling for a transcending of tribalism, I was countered by certain alt-rightists/neo-reactionaries who reject any such transcending and think that what is needed is a white tribalism to oppose tribalisms 'of color.'

While I reject the destructive falsehoods of left-wing tribalists, and understand the urge of 'alties' to oppose them with vigor, I don't want to go into reactionary mode if I can avoid it. The reactionary is defined by what he reacts against. I want to move in a positive direction. I want to reject identity politics of both the Left and the Right by transcending them both. To be identity-political is to take one's primary self-identification to be a tribal or group identification, an identification in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, religion, disability, socio-economic class, or some combination of these.

That is not how I self-identify, and I believe that no one should self-identify in that way. I identify as a person, as a rational being, as a free agent, as a truth-seeker, as a lover of the good and the beautiful, as a conscious and self-conscious subject. I do not primarily self-identify as an object in nature, a two-legged land mammal, or in any such way. Of course, I am an animal, a genetically human animal, essentially (not accidentally) Caucasian, and essentially (not accidentally) male, whence it follows, contrary to current leftist lore, that I cannot change my race or my sex. But while I am an animal, I am also a person, a spirit.

Here is one problem we face. Our enemies on the 'woke' and thus tribalist Left reject this scheme which ultimately rests on a personalist and theistic foundation. They are an existential threat to us, where an existential threat is not merely a threat to one's physical existence, but also, and more importantly, a threat to one's way of life as a spiritual, cultural, and historical being as opposed to a mere biological system for whom biological survival is the only value. There is no reaching these 'woke' folk with talk of persons and rights and the equality of persons and of rights. That is to them just bourgeois ideology that serves only to legitimate the extant social order. They are tribalists who refuse to transcend their tribal identifications and see themselves as persons, as rational beings, as autonomous agents. But not only that, they are also race realists despite their obfuscatory and logically inconsistent talk of race as a social construct. The inconsistency doesn't bother them because truth is not a leftist value, and logical consistency can count as a value only to those for whom truth is a value. This is because truth enters into the definition of logical consistency.

The problem, then, is that it is probably not possible to defeat our enemies — who, nota bene, do not want peaceful coexistence — except by going tribal ourselves, and engaging them in the way they apparently want to be engaged, with blood and iron. Either that, or we accept political dhimmitude. And so a certain amount of pro tempore white tribalism may be needed to counteract the tribalists 'of color.'

I would like it not to be true, but I fear that it is.

Edward W. Farrell on Populism

An impressive essay by an old friend of this weblog. Excerpts:

Populists feel betrayed by the movers and shakers of the world who they faintly hoped were working in their best interests but were actually working in the interest of something else. What is this "something else?" Nothing less than a perfectly homogenous world untroubled by nationality or biology or religion, a world superficially diverse in ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation but lockstep in rigid ideology and hatred of dissent; a world, oddly enough, that's perfectly suited to fuel the engines of global commerce which feeds the global lust for feel-good distraction. The down payment for this perfect world is the perfect elimination of populists. Populists have discovered this by observing the inexorable erosion of their accustomed way of life over several decades along with the livelihoods that once supported their freedom of self-determination–all to the tune of "things are getting better all the time." When they have the temerity to ask "getting better for whom?" and become too loud to be ignored, or God forbid they support a Trump, they receive a scornful lecture that they're working against their own best interests, which they are too stupid to understand. But they understand what this means: shut up and quit interfering with the best interests of your employers, their employers, all the government wonks that tirelessly work to support the wealth brokers to whom everyone grovels, and everyone else who knows nothing except that you and your kind are an albatross hung on civilization's neck.

[. . .]

Identity Politics and the Transformation of Civil Rights My discussion here is based largely on Christopher Caldwell's The Age of Enlightenment, though of course he cannot be blamed for any tangential interpretations or conclusions I've drawn from it.

The path of race relations since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reveals the true depth of the chasm between progressives and traditionalists. The traditionally-minded American sees America as exceptional: a beacon, "the city on the hill," built on constitutional foundations that are wise, sound, and unprecedented. In this view civil rights was never intended to alter American exceptionalism or the foundations that supported it. Rather, civil rights was seen as an effort to bring blacks, oppressed first by slavery and then by discriminatory Jim Crow laws in the South, into full citizenship with the majority of US citizens with all their attendant privileges and opportunities. The ultimate goal here was "race neutrality," a concept whereby race would no longer be a factor that lead to discrimination or preferential treatment.

By 2020 it became obvious that many progressives had something entirely different in mind. They did not share the vision of America as a "city on a hill;" rather, they believed racism was central to America's ethos and that all of its institutions were racist. Racism had not so much to do with individuals and their treatment of other individuals. Racism was "built into" all of Americas laws and institutions; in fact, the notion of race neutrality was simply a dodge that perpetuated white power. And the progressive goal of racial equality (as opposed to neutrality) demanded that the institutions, laws, and cultural ethos that supported white power be destroyed or otherwise rendered harmless to its victims. Identity politics became the means of determining which group was the most oppressed and thus stood first in line for their share as white power was dismantled and redistributed.

How did this divide come about?

Read the rest.

Are We the Government?

"We the people are the government." (Joe Biden) Barack Obama used to spout that same falsehood. "The government is us."

It is a nice question whether they were lying or bullshitting. The liar cares enough about the truth to want to hide it from us. The bullshitter doesn't care about the truth and will say anything. I borrow the distinction from Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit, a book undoubtedly more purchased than read. It is a fine piece of analysis, but probably beyond the grasp of those who have 'twitterized' their attention spans.

The government is not us. It is an entity distinct from most of us, and opposed to many if not most of us, run by a relatively small number of us. Among the latter are some decent people but also plenty of power-hungry individuals who may have started out with good intentions but who were soon suborned by the power, perquisites, and pelf of high office, people for whom a government position is a hustle like any hustle.

Government likes power and likes to expand its power, and can be counted on to come up with plenty of rationalizations for the maintenance and extension of its power. It must be kept in check by us, who are not part of the government, just as big corporations need to be kept in check by government regulators. Not that proper regulation is likely now under 'woke' capitalism. But this is a large and separate topic.

If you value liberty you must cultivate a healthy skepticism about government. To do so is not anti-government. Leftists love to slander us by saying that we are anti-government. It is a lie and they know it. They are not so stupid as not to know that to be for limited government is to be for government. But truth is not their concern; winning is. To their way of thinking the glorious end justifies the shabby means.

Free Speech Absolutism?

Time was when leftists were latitudinarian to the point of extremism on the question of free speech. But of late a "sea change into something rich and strange" (Shakespeare, The Tempest) has occurred, the 'trigger' being the liberation of Twitter by Elon Musk. Leftists are now spooked by the specter of 'free speech absolutism.' And not only leftists, but certain of their pseudo-con fellow travellers such as the bootless Max Boot.

To discuss the topic sensibly we need a definition. One thing it should do is to specify that the topic is public expression, whether in speech or writing, not what occurs in private or in solitude. And let's be clear that the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution protects speech against abridgment by the Federal government alone: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . . ." We also need to agree on what it means to say that a right is absolute. A right is absolute if and only if it is (i) inviolable (in the sense that it ought not be violated), (ii) exceptionless, and (iii) equal, i.e., the same for everyone.

Free speech absolutism, then, is the view that everyone has the moral right right to express publicly, whether in speech or in writing, whatever one wants to express, on any topic, anywhere, and before any audience.

This is what I mean by free speech absolutism. (I also think that this is what one ought to mean by it.) Is that what you mean? There is no point in discussing this question or any question unless we agree on what exactly we are talking about. If you don't agree with my definition than you ought to provide and defend a different one.

Note that if the right to free expression is absolute, then whatever anyone anywhere expresses to anyone, whether true, false, meaningless, incitive of violence, etc. ought to be tolerated. This follows from the correlativity of rights and duties. If the right to free expression is absolute, then the duty to tolerate is absolute and therefore exceptionless and the same for all. But then we get toleration extremism, a position defended by J. S. Mill which I demolish in a Substack article.

Free speech and open inquiry must be defended, but no intelligent and morally sane person could support free speech absolutism. The speech-suppressive Left aided and abetted by cranky neo-cons such as the bootless Boot have created a bogeyman.

Smear opponents as ‘foreign agents’

PROFILES

Donald W. Livingston