Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • What’s Wrong with Economic Inequality?

    We are naturally unequal with respect to empirical attributes, both as individuals and as groups, and this inequality results in economic inequality. Is this inequality evil? Why should it be?  Is economic inequality as such morally wrong? I have a right to what I have acquired by my honest hard work, deferral of gratification, and practice of the ancient virtues. It is therefore to be expected that I will end up with a higher net worth than that of people who lack my abilities and virtues.  It seems to follow that there is nothing morally wrong with economic inequality as such.

    The economy is not a zero-sum game. If I "mix my labour" (Locke) with the soil and grow tomatoes, I have caused new food to come into existence; I haven't taken from an existing stock of tomatoes with the result that others must get fewer.  If my lazy neighbor demands some of my tomatoes, I will tell him to go to hell; but if he asks me in a nice way, then I will give him some. In this way, he benefits from my labor without doing anything. Some of my tomatoes 'trickle down' to him.  To mix some metaphors, a rising tide lifts all boats. Lefties hate this conservative boilerplate which is why I repeat it. It's true and it works. When was the last time a poor man gave anyone a job? When was the last time a poor man gave anyone a loan?  When was the last time a poor man made a contribution to a charity?  Who pays taxes? 

    I deserve what I acquire by the virtuous exercise of my abilities. But do I deserve my abilities? No, but I  have a right to them. I have a right to things I don't deserve. Nature gave me binocular vision but only monaural hearing. Do I deserve my two good eyes? No, but I have a right to them. Therefore, I am under no moral obligation to give one of my eyes to a sightless person. (If memory serves, R. Nozick makes a similar point in Anarchy, State, and Utopia.)

    At this point someone might object that it is just not fair that some of us are better placed and better endowed than others, and that therefore it is a legitimate function of government to redistribute wealth to offset the resultant economic inequality. But never forget that government is coercive by its very nature and run by people who are intellectually and morally no better, and often worse, than the rest of us. Their power corrupts them and you can be sure they will do all they can to preserve their power, pelf, and privileges all the while professing to be democrats and egalitarians.

    The levellers are not on the same level as us, and they are often 'not on the level.' You catch my drift, no doubt.

    The equalizers have vastly unequal power compared to us.  So there is a bit of a paradox here, to put it mildly. One would have to be quite the utopian to imagine  that the socialist-communist  Leviathan will "wither away" in the fullness of time, as Lenin and Lennon 'imagined.'

    And surely it is the silly liberal who imagines that we are the government or that the government is us. That is mendacity that approximates unto the Orwellian.

    The evil of massive, omni-intrusive government is far worse than economic equality is good. Besides, lack of money is rooted in lack of virtue, and government cannot teach people to be virtuous. If Bill Gates' billions were stripped from him and given to the the bums of San Francisco, in ten year's time Gates would be back on top and the bums would be back in the gutters.

    Perhaps we can say that economic inequality, though axiologically suboptimal, is nonetheless not morally evil given the way the world actually works with people having the sorts of incentives that they actually have, etc.  There is nothing wrong with economic inequality as long as every citizen has the bare minimum.  But illegal aliens have no right to any government handouts.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Why Would Anyone Consider Islam a Race?

    Islam is obviously not a race, but a religion.  If you hesitate to call Islam a religion, then it is either a political ideology masquerading as a religion, or a hybrid ideology that blends features of religion and political ideology, or a Christian heresy.  On any of these interpretations it is not a race.  That should be perfectly clear.

    No race has apostates. Islam has apostates. Ergo, etc.

    With respect to religions and political ideologies, there are conversions and de-conversions. One cannot convert to, or de-convert from, one's race. Ergo, etc.

    Why then do some want to call Islam a race?  Here is a very plausible answer. I know of no better:

    Criticizing Islam is not racism.  There is no such thing as "anti-Muslim racism" any more than there is "anti-Christian racism," "anti-Republican racism," or "anti-Capitalist racism." 

    So why would anyone claim differently?

    It is because the battle over Islam is being fought in the West, the only arena in which it can still be critically debated.  It is also here that repugnance toward racism is strong and nearly universal.  From politics to high-risk mortgages and illegal immigration, fear of the race card is one of the strongest influences on public policy.

    At the same time, it is nearly impossible to defend Islam on its own merits in the West in free and open debate.  According to its own texts, the religion was founded in terror.  Its political and social code is deeply incompatible with liberal values.

    Muslims societies usually rely on threat of violence to suppress intellectual critique of Islam and the freedom of other religion to fairly compete, which, if allowed, would be the slow death of Islam.  Their counterparts in the West have learned to rely on the race card.  If they can paint any criticism of their religion as "racism," then the massive evidence against Islam can be dismissed out of hand without having to contend with it.

    Slinging the worst of all slurs to compensate for deficiency of fact and logic is weak enough, but it is ironic given that what is being defended in such cheap fashion is an ideology that is overtly supremacist in nature. 

    That's right. Islam is supremacist in nature. Not racially supremacist, but ideologically supremacist. Leftists try to hide this fact by calling critics of Islam racists, from which they then slide to the vicious slur that these critics are white supremacists, which brings them back to the 'race card,' the only card in their deck and the one they never leave home without.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Et in Arcadia Ego

     

    Et in arcadia egoDeath says, "I too am in Arcadia."

    The contemplation of death, one's own in particular, cures one of the conceit that this life has a meaning absolute and self-contained.  Only those who live naively in this world, hiding from themselves the fact of death, flirting with transhumanist arcadian and other utopian fantasies, can accord to this life the ultimate in reality and importance.

    If you deny a life beyond the grave, I won't consider you foolish or even unreasonable.  But if you anticipate a paradise on earth, I will consider you both.  And if you work to attain such a state in defiance of morality, then I will consider you evil, as evil as the Communists of the 20th century who murdered 100 million to realize their impossible fantasies. 

    Guercino – Et in Arcadia Ego – 1618-22 – Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Seductive Sophistry of Alan Watts

     

    Alan wattsHere. (An entertaining video clip, not too long, that sums up his main doctrine.)

    Alan Watts was a significant contributor to the Zeitgeist of the 1960s.  Just as many in those days were 'turned on' to philosophy by Ayn Rand, others such as myself were pushed toward philosophy by, among other things,  Alan Watts and his writings.  But early on I realized that there was much of the pied piper and sophist about him.  He once aptly described himself as a "philosophical entertainer" as opposed to an academic philosopher.  Entertaining he was indeed.

    I heard him speak on 17 January 1973 in the last year of his life .  He appeared to be well into his cups that evening, though in control.  Alcohol may have been a major contributor to his early death at age 58 on 16 November 1973. (See Wikipedia)  What follows is a journal entry of mine written 18 January 1973.

    ………………..

    I attended a lecture by Alan Watts last night at El Camino Junior College. Extremely provocative and entertaining.  A good comparing and contrasting of Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu and Chinese views. 

    At random:  One must give up the desire to be secure, the desire to control.  Ego as totally illusory entity which is really nothing but a composite of one's image of oneself and certain muscular tensions which arise with attempts to achieve, grasp, and hold on.  The self as opposed to the ego is God, God who forgot who he was.  The world (cosmos) as God's dream.  Thus the self-same Godhead reposes in each individual.  There is no spiritual individuality.  And therefore, it seems, no possibility of personal relations. 

    Consider the I-Thou relation.  It presupposes two distinct but relatable entities.  If there is only one homogeneous substance, how can there be relation?  But perhaps I'm misinterpreting the Wattsian-Hindu view by thinking of the Hindu deity as substance rather than as function, process.  Watts himself denies the existence of substance.  Last night he made the well-known point  as to the linguistic origin of the notion of substance.  [This is of course not a "well-known point."]

    Denial of the ego — i.e. its relegation to the sphere of illusion — would seem to go hand in hand with denial of substance.  [Good point, young man!] Watts seems very close to a pseudo-scientific metaphysics.  He posits a continuum of vibrations  with the frequency of the vibrations  determining tangible, physical qualities.  Yet he also says that "We will always find smaller particles"; that "We're doing it"; that the fundamental reality science supposedly  uncovers is a mental, a theoretical, construct.

    Thus, simultaneously, a reliance on a scientific pseudo-metaphysics AND the discrediting of the scientific view of reality.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Jerking Toward Social Collapse

    Thanks to 'progressives,' our 'progress' toward social and cultural collapse seems not be proceeding at a constant speed, but to be accelerating.  But perhaps a better metaphor from the lexicon of physics is jerking.  After all, our 'progress' is jerkwad-driven.  No need to name names.  You know who they are.

    From your college physics you may recall that the first derivative of position with respect to time is velocity, while the second derivative is acceleration.  Lesser known is the third derivative: jerk.  (I am not joking; look it up.)  If acceleration is the rate of change of velocity, jerk, also known as jolt, is the rate of change of acceleration.

    If you were studying something in college, and not majoring in, say, Grievance Studies, then you probably know that all three, velocity, acceleration, and jerk are vectors, not scalars.  Each has a magnitude and a direction.  This is why a satellite orbiting the earth is constantly changing its velocity despite its constant speed.

    The 'progressive' jerk too has its direction:  the end of civilization as we know it.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Hyperbole

    Every word they write is a lie, and every syllable they speak. Their mendacity extends even unto the syntax of their sentences. Their periods prevaricate and their dashes dissemble.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Capitalism, Competition, and Cooperation

    One reason capitalism is superior to socialism is because competition is good and breeds excellence.  It also fits with human nature.  People are justifiably concerned with their own well-being first of all and will strive mightily to enhance it.  They are much less motivated to work for 'the common good,' especially if what that is is decided by an omni-intrusive state apparatus vastly unequal in power to the people, an apparatus that violates their liberty and removes their incentives to work.

    But my main point is that competition is good.

    Liberals tend to oppose cooperation to competition, and vice versa, as if they excluded each other. "We need more cooperation and less competition." One frequently hears that from liberals. But competition is a form of cooperation. As such, it cannot be opposed to cooperation. One cannot oppose a species to its genus.

    Consider competitive games and sports. The chess player aims to beat his opponent, and he expects his opponent to share this aim: No serious player enjoys beating someone who is not doing his best to   beat him. But the competition is predicated upon cooperation and is impossible without it. There are the rules of the game and the various protocols governing behavior at the board. These are agreed upon and respected by the players and they form the cooperative context in which the competition unfolds. We must work together (co-operate) for one of us to emerge the victor. And in this competitive cooperation both of us are benefited.

    Is there any competitive game or sport for which this does not hold? At the Boston Marathon in 1980, a meshuggeneh lady by the name of Rosie Ruiz jumped into the race ahead of the female leaders and before the finish line. She seemed to many to have won the race in the female category.  But she was soon disqualified. She wasn't competing because she wasn't cooperating.  Cooperation is a necessary condition of competition.

    In the business world, competition is fierce indeed. But even here it presupposes cooperation. Fed Ex aims to cut into UPS'  business – but not by assassinating their drivers. If Fed Ex did this, it would be out of business. It would lose favor with the public, and the police and regulatory agencies would be on its case. The refusal to cooperate would make it uncompetitive. 'Cut throat' competition does not pay in the long run and makes the 'cut throat' uncompetitive.

    If you and I are competing for the same job, are we cooperating with each other? Yes, in the sense that our behavior is rule-governed. We agree to accept the rules and we work together so that the better of us gets the appointment. The prosecution and the defense, though in opposition to each other, must cooperate if the trial is to proceed. And similarly in other cases.

    Competition, then, contrary to liberal dogma, is not opposed to cooperation. Moreover, competition is good in that it breeds excellence, a point unappreciated, or insufficiently appreciated, by liberals. This marvellous technology we bloggers use every day — how do our liberal friends think it arose? Do they have any idea why it is so inexpensive?  Competition!

    Not only does competition make you better than you would have been without it, it humbles you.  It puts you in your place.  It assigns you your rightful position in life's hierarchy.  And life is hierarchical.  The levellers may not like it but hierarchies have a way of reestablishing themselves. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • Stalin on Philology

    For insight into the depredations suffered by science and scholarship in Stalin's USSR, I recommend Chapter 4 of Volume III of Leszek Kolakowski's magisterial Main Currents of Marxism (Oxford, 1978). It is astonishing what happened to literature, philosophy, economics, physics, cosmology, and genetics in the Workers' Paradise. Not even philology was spared. Kolakowski, pp. 141-142:

    In the first few days of the Korean War, when international tension was at its height, Stalin added to his existing titles as the leader of progressive humanity, the supreme philosopher, scientist, strategist, etc., the further distinction of being the world's greatest philologist. (As far as is known, his linguistic attainments were confined to Russian and his native Georgian.) In May 1950 Pravda had published a symposium on the theoretical problems of linguistics and especially the theories of Nikolay Y. Marr (1864-1934). Marr, a specialist in the Caucasian languages, had endeavoured towards the end of his life to construct a system of Marxist linguistics and was regarded in the Soviet Union as the supreme authority in this field: linguists who rejected his fantasies were harassed and persecuted. His theory was that language was a form of 'ideology' and, as such, belonged to the superstructure and was part of the class system. . . .

    Stalin intervened in the debate with an article published in Pravda on 29 June, followed by four explanatory answers to readers' letters. He roundly condemned Marr's theory, declaring that language was not part of the superstructure and was not ideological in character. . . .

    The Marrists were ousted from the domain of linguistics. . . .

    Don't say it can't happen here.  It is happening here as witness the ideological tainting of climatology by the gasbags of global warming.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Alinsky, Tartakower, and Nimzowitsch: “The Threat is Stronger than the Execution”

    Kai Frederik Lorentzen writes,

    In your latest blog entry you refer to Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Being aware that you are a chess player, I want to ask: Do you know that his rule number nine had earlier been formulated by grandmaster Tartakower?

    Alinsky: "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."

    Tartakower: "Die Drohung ist stärker als die Ausführung."

    I am well aware of the saying, both in German and in English, but I was under the false impression that it originated with Aron Nimzowitsch, most likely because of the famous 'smoking threat' anecdote.  Edward Winter, the chess historian, provides all the details one could ask for, and more: 

    Page 138 of Schach 2000 Jahre Spiel-Geschichte by R. Finkenzeller, W. Ziehr and E. Bührer (Stuttgart, 1989) ascribed to Tartakower a remark quoted as ‘Eine Drohung ist stärker als eine Ausführung’. In the English-language edition (London, 1990) that came out lumberingly as ‘A threat is more effective than the actual implementation’, whereas the usual rendering is ‘The threat is stronger than the execution’. Moreover, Nimzowitsch, rather than Tartakower, is customarily named as the coiner of the phrase, with everything tied into the famous ‘smoking threat’ anecdote.

    On page 191 of the July 1953 CHESS M. Lipton pointed out two contradictory versions of the story of Nimzowitsch complaining that his opponent was threatening to smoke. On pages 31-32 of Chess for Fun & Chess for Blood (Philadelphia, 1942) Edward Lasker asserted that the incident, involving a cigar, had occurred ‘in an offhand game between Nimzowitsch and Emanuel Lasker in Berlin’ (although there was still, according to Edward Lasker’s account, an umpire to whom Nimzowitsch could protest). On page 128 of The World’s Great Chess Games (New York, 1951) Reuben Fine stated that the scene had been New York, 1927, and that Nimzowitsch complained to the tournament director, Maróczy, when Vidmar ‘absent-mindedly took out his cigarette case’.

    New York, 1927 was also given as the venue by Irving Chernev (‘This is the way I heard it back in 1927, when it occurred’) on pages 15-16 of The Bright Side of Chess (Philadelphia, 1948). Nimzowitsch, we are told, complained to the tournament committee that Vidmar looked as if he wanted to smoke a cigar, but Chernev mentioned no remark about the threat being stronger than the execution. [. . .]

    "The threat is stronger than the execution" is undoubtedly the best translation of Die Drohung ist stärker als die Ausführung. Winter, however, cites Eine Drohung ist stärker als eine Ausführung which is not as good in German or in English: "A threat is stronger than an execution."

    As for Alinsky, it hadn't occurred to me that he was essentially repeating the Tartakower line.  Very interesting, and I thank for pointing that out.  We pedants derive inordinate but harmless pleasure from such bagatelles.

    I don't know whether Alinsky played chess (many Jews do). I learned about this most famous Tartakowerism when I played the game seriously in my early youth. Not only with teenage peers but also with a grown up team in the third national league (Verbandsliga) where I played at board four (of eight) and had positive overall results in all three seasons. The teenage boy I was enjoyed making grown up men -  architects, doctors, lawyers -  sweat in their suits … I also liked to play Blitzschach a lot, with five or two minutes time for the whole match. I still have a beautiful English chess clock from the late 1970s but hardly ever play today. Other things became more important, and laymen often tend to avoid former club players. And if it doesn't sound too kulturpessimistisch, I may add that I sometimes have the impression that digitalization killed the poetic spirit of the game. Can Goddess Caissa survive the algorithms?         

    BV at ChessChess is Jewish athletics, as the saying goes, and they dominate the game. See Jews in Chess. I would expect that Alinsky had some knowledge of the game.  I conjecture that one of the roots of Jew hatred is envy.  Jews have made contributions to high culture far out of proportion to their numbers. 

    If our paths ever cross, Kai, we will have to play. I am a patzer, but on a good day I rise to the level of Grand Patzer. My highest USCF rating was around 1720. So I am a 'B' player.  I am 'strong coffee house' at least in the coffee houses around here. I came to serious play (tournaments) too late in life to to get any good.  But I beat everyone around here and so people think I'm a master.  A big fish in a small pond. I try to explain to them the hierarchical nature of chess and of life herself, but I rarely get through to them. I play a few 3-minute blitz games per day on the Internet Chess Club, the premier site for chess play. 

    The poetic spirit of the game will never die as long as there are romantics like me around. Caissa, like Philosophia, will ever evade the algorithms.

    Chess is a beautiful thing, a gift of the gods, an oasis of sanity in an insane world. If I met Alinsky at the barricades we'd meet as enemies; over the chess board, however, as friends.

    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartakowerismen
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals
    https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/03/liberal-immigration-hyper-hypocrisy.html

    Bill Vallicella

  • ‘Liberal’ Immigration Hyper-Hypocrisy

    You may remember Trump Labor Secretary nominee Anthony Puzder who came under fire for having employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper.  But why should 'liberals' care given that they do not distinguish legal from illegal immigrants while standing for open borders and sanctuary jurisdictions in defiance of the rule of law? Suddenly, these destructive leftists care about immigration law? 'Liberals' should praise Puzder for giving the poor woman a job.  After all, as they say, no human being is illegal!

    What the Left is doing here is employing a Saul Alinsky tactic.  The fourth of his Rules for Radicals reads:

    Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

    Leftists judge us by rules for which they have nothing but contempt. 

    The ordinary hypocrite will not practice what he preaches, but at least he preaches, thereby paying lip service to ideals of conduct that he puts forth as binding on all.   The Alinksyite leftist is a hyper-hypocrite who preaches ideals of conduct, not to all, but to his enemies, ideals that he has no intention of honoring.

    Of course, I am not saying that Puzder did not do wrong in hiring the illegal immigrant. He did, assuming he knew she was illegal.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Is Illegal Immigration a Crime?

    It is. Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats have been lying to us. Illegal immigrants are subject to criminal penalties. While improper entry is a crime, unlawful presence is not a crime. One can be unlawfully present in the U. S. without having entered improperly, and thus without having committed a crime. 

    If a foreign national enters the country on a valid travel or work visa, but overstays his visa, failing to exit before the expiration date, then he is in violation of federal immigration law. But this comes under the civil code, not the criminal code. Such a person is subject to civil penalties such as deportation.

    So there are two main ways for an alien to be illegal. He can be illegal in virtue of violating the criminal code or illegal in virtue of violating the civil code. 

    Those who oppose strict enforcement of national borders show their contempt for the rule of law and their willingness to tolerate criminal behavior, not just illegal behavior.

    Bill Vallicella

  • On Ceasing to Exist: An Aporetic Tetrad

    John F. Kennedy ceased to exist in November of 1963.  (Assume no immortality of the soul.) But when a thing ceases to exist, it does not cease to be an object of reference or a subject of predicates. If this were not the case, then it would not be true to say of JFK that he is dead. But it is true, and indeed true now, that JFK is dead.  Equivalently, 'dead' is now true of JFK.  But this is puzzling: How can a predicate be true of a thing if the thing does not exist?  After a thing ceases to exist it is no longer around to support any predicates. What no longer exists, does not still exist: it does not exist.

    I am of the metaphilosophical opinion  that the canonical form of a philosophical problem is the aporetic polyad. Here is our puzzle rigorously set forth as an aporetic tetrad:

    1) Datum: There are  predicates that are true of things that no longer exist, e.g., 'dead' and 'famous' and 'fondly remembered' are true of JFK.

    2) Veritas sequitur esse: If a predicate is true of an item x, then x exists.

    3) Presentism: For any x, x exists iff x is temporally present.

    4) The Dead: For any x, if x is dead, then x is temporally non-present.

    The limbs of the tetrad are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent.  To solve the tetrad, then, we must reject one of the propositions. It can't be (1) since (1) is a datum. And it can't be (4) since it, on the mortalist assumption, is obviously true. (To avoid the mortalist assumption, change the example to an inanimate object.) Of course, if an animal dies, its corpse typically remains present for a time; but an animal and its corpse are not the same. An animal can die; a corpse cannot die because a corpse was never alive.

    One cannot plausibly reject (2) either. To reject (2) is to maintain that a predicate can be true of a thing whether or not the thing exists. This is highly counter-intuitive, to put it mildly.  Suppose it is true that Peter smokes.  Then 'smokes' is true of Peter.  It follows that Peter exists.  It seems we should say the same about Kennedy. It is true that Kennedy is dead. So 'dead' is true of Kennedy, whence it follows that Kennedy exists. Of course, he does not exist at present. But if he didn't exist at all, then it could not be true that Kennedy is dead, famous, veridically remembered, and so on.  Kennedy must in some sense exist if he is to be the object of successful reference and the subject of true predications.

    There remains the Anti-Presentist Solution.  Deny (3) by maintaining that it is not only present items that exist. One way of doing this by embracing so-called eternalism, the view that past, present, and future items all exist tenselessly.

    But what is it for a temporal item, an item in time, to exist tenselessly?  The number 7 and the proposition 7 is prime exist 'outside of time.'  They exist timelessly.  If the number and the proposition are indeed timeless or atemporal items, then it it makes clear sense to say that 7 tenselessly exists and that 7 is prime both tenseless exists and is tenselessly true.  But it is not clear what it could mean to say that an item in time such as JFK exists tenselessly or is tenselessly dead or famous, etc.

    The tenseless existence of a temporal item is not timeless existence. Nor is tenseless existence the same as  omnitemporal/sempiternal existence: Kennedy does not exist at all times.  He existed in time for a short interval of time.  So what is it for a temporal item to exist tenselessly?  Try this:

    X exists tenselessly iff X either existed or exists (present tense) or will exist.

    But this doesn't help. The disjunction on the right-hand side of the biconditional, with 'Kennedy' substituted for 'X' is true only because the past-tensed 'Kennedy existed' is true. We still have no idea  what it is for a temporal item to exist or have properties tenselessly.  Presumably, 'Kennedy exists tenselessly' says more than what the tensed disjunction says. But what is this more?

    Interim Conclusion.  If we can't find a way to make sense of tenseless existence, then we won't be able to reject (3) and we will be stuck with our quartet of inconsistent plausibilities.  More later.

    Bill Vallicella

  • On Suicide

    My knowledge of my ignorance regarding the ultimate disposition of things keeps me from viewing suicide as a live option should the going get tough. I lack the complacent assurance of those atheists and mortalists who are quite sure that there is no afterlife. I also lack the complacent assurance of those theists and immortalists who feel sure that God will forgive them.  And it seems to me that I have good grounds for both lacks of assurance.

    "You may be fooling yourself. It may be that what keeps you from viewing suicide as a live option is your having been brought up to believe that it is a mortal sin. The priests and nuns got hold of your credulousness before you could erect your critical defenses."

    To which my reply will be that others, brought up in the same way, went on to commit suicide and to commit without qualm other sins that they were taught were mortal. They were brought up the same way and taught the same things at a time when the Catholic Church was taken seriously as a source of theological and moral authority.  Those others were not receptive to the religious teaching. They received it, but they were not receptive to it, and so they did not really receive it.  A doctrine can be taught but not the receptivity thereto. Seeds can be sown, but if the soil is inhospitable, nothing will grow.

    My innate receptivity to the message that something is ultimately at stake in life and that it matters absolutely how we live does not prove that the message is true. But the innateness of the receptivity to the message shows that it was not a matter of indoctrination but a matter of maieutic.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Burdens, Loads, Weights, and Weltschmerz

    Rolling Stones, Beast of Burden

    Jackson Browne, The Load Out

    The Band, The Weight

    Allman Bros., Not My Cross to Bear

    ZZ Top, Got Me Under Pressure

    Tom Waits, Shiver Me Timbers. The clue to the meaning of this great song lies in the reference to Jack London's Martin Eden.

    Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet

    Shadows are falling, and I've been here all day
    It's too hot to sleep, and time is running away
    Feel like my soul has, turned into steel
    I've still got the scars, that the sun didn't heal
    There's not even room enough, to be anywhere

    It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

    Well, my sense of humanity, has gone down the drain
    Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain
    She wrote me a letter, and she wrote it so kind
    She put down in writing, what was in her mind
    I just don't see why I should even care

    It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

    Well, I've been to London, and I've been to gay Paris
    I've followed the river, and I got to the sea
    I've been down on the bottom, of a world full of lies
    I ain't lookin for nothing, in anyone's eyes
    Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear

    It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

    I was born here, and I'll die here, against my will
    I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still
    Every nerve in my body, is so naked and numb
    I can't even remember what it was, I came here to get away from
    Don't even hear a murmur of a prayer

    It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

    BONUS CUT: It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. I've loved this song since I first heard it in '65.  I'll let the YouTubers gush for me.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Destructive Leftists Pose an Existential Threat

    Peggy Noonan appreciates the threat, but remains a Never-Trumper:

    Noonan, who's a NeverTrump, must feel the same way about having to state the obvious from such a superb description of the parallel events.  That missing conclusion in her piece is that the only one thing standing between this repulsive neo-Cultural Revolution and us is President Trump, someone she will never be able to bring herself to say good things about.  She's a NeverTrump, after all, and her NeverTrumpism signals she's probably still a something of a stylist after status, which is roughly speaking, how Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit argues the NeverTrump crowd rolls.

    Yet Trump won because he defends us, the people, and our interests, favoring law and not just law, but the same set of laws for everyone.  He couldn't care less about niceties or even being polite to these Cultural Revolutionaries who are out to kill us, because he's not concerned with status or making any such weasels at war with law, history, or civility feel good.  He is the status. 

    This is why we got Trump.

    Glenn Reynolds nails it:

    And as far as I can tell, although Never-Trumpers talk a lot about morality and principles, their actual beef seems to be a combination of aesthetic dislike of Trump’s messaging style, and resentment that he’s not hiring them, and never will hire them. I suppose a lot of people confuse their own social standing and economic prospects with morality, but color me unpersuaded.

    Perhaps in 2016 you could imagine that Trump would be such an awful President that you had a moral duty to oppose him. But in 2019, it’s obvious that that’s not the case. In fact, he’s pretty darn successful. Instead of gay concentration camps, he’s trying to end discrimination against gays worldwide. Instead of being a warmonger he’s now ending wars — and getting grief about it from Never-Trumpers. The Russia-collusion thing was always twaddle, but nobody is even pretending otherwise anymore. And Trump’s background and personal life certainly don’t stand out as compared to many other occupants of the Oval Office whom the establishment deemed entirely acceptable.

    Bill Vallicella

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  3. And then there is the Sermon on the Mount. Here is a list of 12 different interpretations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sermon_on_the_Mount

  10. Bill, One final complicating observation: The pacifist interpretation of Matt 5:38-42 has been contested in light of Lk 22: 36-38…

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