Paul Gottfried versus NeoCon Mythology

Here:

Professor Gottfried goes on to examine several examples of these purges, correcting the errors of those who have distorted the record. For example, many have claimed that Buckley’s 1965 denunciation of the John Birch Society was because the Birchers were guilty of anti-Semitism. This is simply slander. Whatever their other errors may have been, it wasn’t anti-Semitism that led Buckley to denounce the JBS, but rather their opposition to LBJ’s escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

As we know, both Williamson and Jonah Goldberg belong to the “Never Trump” cult that National Review created in late 2015, and the anti-Trump fury of “the socially and professionally acceptable Right” illustrates how jealously they regard their status as Gnostic archons of the movement, with the authority to banish anyone they dislike. Trump won the GOP nomination despite the opposition of the National Review crowd and, while they predicted (and openly planned for the aftermath of) his defeat in November 2016, somehow Trump won again. We’ve had to endure the butthurt whining of the Never-Trumpers ever since.

How do we explain this? A major factor is the vanity and careerist ambitions of the intelligentsia. Those whom Ace of Spades has dubbed “the Cruise Ship Wing of fake conservatism” (a reference to the travel-with-pundits deals sold to subscribers of National Review and the Weekly Standard) are careful to protect their “respectable” reputations, and they cannot enhance their reputations by admitting they were wrong.

That's right. The bow-tied boys have an inordinate concern with 'respectability' and the perquisites of high status. They want to be liked and accepted and taken seriously. They don't seem to realize that leftists will always loathe them no matter how many concessions they make.

What the Fight is About

Robert W. Merry understands that the fight is not primarily over Trump but over the soul of America and her future.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump opened up a series of fresh fault lines in American politics by advocating new directions for the country that no other politician would discuss. They included a clamp-down on illegal immigration and a serious reduction in overall immigration after a decades-long influx of unprecedented proportions; an effort to address the hollowing out of America’s industrial capacity through trade policies; an end to our nation-building zeal and the wars of choice spawned by it; and a promise to curtail the power of elites who gave us unfettered immigration, an industrial decline, endless wars, years of lukewarm economic growth, and an era of globalism that slighted old-fashioned American nationalism.

[. . .]

Before Trump’s 2016 emergence onto the political scene, many liberals believed the American future belonged to what political analyst Ron Brownstein called the “coalition of the ascendant”—including racial minorities, immigrants, Millennials, and highly educated whites residing primarily along the nation’s two coasts. They were convinced this ascendant force would eventually overwhelm the declining white majority and usher in a new era of globalism, open borders, identity politics, free trade, cultural individualism, foreign policy interventionism, and gun control.

Trump interrupted the coalition of the ascendant on its way to U.S. political hegemony. In the process, he touched off an epic struggle over the definition of America.

For those committed to the new world envisioned by the coalition of the ascendant, it is easy to see Trump, with all of his crudeness and vulgarity, as evil. After all, he’s personally distasteful and he wants to destroy the America of their dreams. But for Trump supporters, he represents their last hope for preserving the old America. These people view the stakes as so high that the president’s personal indecency and civic brutishness simply don’t register as problems. They may wish for a more wholesome leader, but no such person has emerged to take up their cause.

The Left's blind rage against Trump is not primarily because of the man and his personal style, but because of his threat to their agenda. If Trump had Hillary's ideas and policies, and Hillary Trump's, the Left would have overlooked Trump's personal behavior and supported him in the same way that they overlooked the bad behavior of Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton.  The would have dismissed the Access Hollywood tape as locker-room talk in the same way they dismissed Bill Clinton's much worse sexually predatory actions as pecadilloes belonging to his personal life.

The Never-Trumpers, on the other hand, hate Trump primarily because of the man he is, and not primarily because of his ideas and policies.  They hate him because he is a crude and obnoxious outsider, an interloper, who crashed their party and threatened to upset their cozy world.

Proof of this is that Trump's solid conservative accomplishments mollify the bow-tie brigade not one bit.  Their hatred and mindless opposition is in no way reduced by the Gorsuch confirmation, the Kavanaugh nomination, the movement of the U. S. embassy to Israel, the surging stock market, the low unemployment numbers, the defense of religious liberty, and so on down the list.

Desert Light Draws Us into the Mystical

Today, the feast of St. Augustine, is a clear and dry day in the Valley of the Sun. A meditation, then, on light and the ascent to the Light.

Cathedral Rock Western SupsJust as the eyes are the most spiritual of the bodily organs, light is the most spiritual of physical phenomena. And there is no light like the lambent light of the desert. The low humidity, the sparseness of vegetation that even in its arboreal forms hug the ground, the long, long vistas that draw the eye out to shimmering buttes and mesas — all of these contribute to the illusion that the light is alive.

Light as phenomenon, as appearance, is not something merely physical. It is as much mind as matter. Without its appearance to mind it would not be what it phenomenologically is. But the light that allows rocks and coyotes to appear, itself appears. This seen light is seen within a clearing, eine Lichtung (Heidegger), which is light in a transcendental sense. But this transcendental light in whose light both illuminated objects and physical light appear, points back to the onto-theological Source of this transcendental light. Heidegger would not approve of my last move, but so be it.

Augustine claims to have glimpsed this eternal Source Light, the light of Truth, upon entering into his "inmost being." Entering there, he saw with his soul's eye, "above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, an unchangeable light." He continues:

     It was not this common light, plain to all flesh, nor a greater
     light of the same kind . . . Not such was that light, but
     different, far different from all other lights. Nor was it above my
     mind, as oil is above water, or sky above earth. It was above my
     mind, because it made me, and I was beneath it, because I was made
     by it. He who knows the truth, knows that light, and he who knows
     it knows eternity. (Confessions, Book VII, Chapter 10)

'Light,' then, has several senses.  There is the light of physics. There is physical light as we see it, whether in the form of illuminated things such as yonder mesa, or sources of illumination such as the sun, or the lambent space between them. There is the transcendental light of mind without which nothing at all would appear. There is, above this transcendental light, its Source.

A tetrad of lights: physical, phenomenal, transcendental, and divine.

Voter Fraud is Real

Leftists of course deny the fact since it serves their purposes to do so. Their grand strategy is to win by demographic means. 

Truth is not a leftist value. Or rather, it is if it supports their agenda, but is not if it doesn't.

For a leftist, the difference between a citizen and a non-citizen is the difference between someone who is physically present within a nation's boundaries and one who isn't.

John Fund has done good, objective work on voter fraud. See here and here.

Robert Reich to Cloud Cuckoo Land

The more the Trumpster accomplishes, the more the victims of TDS hate him.

For Robert Reich, impeachment is not enough. Nor would Trump's removal from office be enough. The formerly sane Reich, descending into a delusionality delightful to us of the Coalition of the Sane, proposes the annullment of the entire Trump administration and all of its works.

Enjoy!

Against Iconoclasm and the Erasure of History

Muslim iconoclasmMuslims are well-known for their iconoclasm, hostility to the arts, and destruction of cultural artifacts. Leftists are like unto Muslims in this regard too.

The trouble with iconoclasm is that all parties can play the game. 

Mass-murdering communist regimes are responsible for some 94 million deaths in the 20th century. Why not then destroy all the statues and monuments that honor the likes of Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin, Fidel Castro and all others who either laid the foundations for or carried out mass murder?  

 

You understand, of course, that I am not advocating this.  For one thing, the erasure of history would make it rather more difficult to learn from it. For another thing, there would be no end to it.  Why not destroy the Colosseum in Rome? You know what went on there.

Or how about St. Robert Bellarmine, S. J. ?  Should paintings and statues of him be destroyed?  He had a hand in the burning at the stake of the philosopher Giordano Bruno! According to Wikipedia:

Bellarmine was made rector of the Roman College in 1592, examiner of bishops in 1598, and cardinal in 1599. Immediately after his appointment as Cardinal, Pope Clement made him a Cardinal Inquisitor, in which capacity he served as one of the judges at the trial of Giordano Bruno, and concurred in the decision which condemned Bruno to be burned at the stake as a heretic.[5]

Better known is the fact that Bellarmine is the man who hauled the great Galileo Galilei before the Inquisition. 

Calling all philosophers and scientists! To your sledge hammers and blow torches!

And then there are the paintings, statues, etc. of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., plagiarist and adulterer. Yes, King plagiarized (portions of) his Boston University dissertation. 

Anyone with sense should be able to understand that high merit worthy of honor can exist alongside deep character flaws.

There is no need to multiply examples. You should be getting the point along about now.

I now assign Victor Davis Hanson, The Ideology of Statue Smashing. Yes, kiddies, this will be on the final.

Mysticism with Monica

OstiaSt. Monica's feast day is today; her son's is tomorrow. Of the various mystical vouchsafings, glimpses, and intimations recorded by St. Augustine in his Confessions, the vision at Ostia (Book 9, Chapter 10) is unique in that it is a sort of mystical duet. Mother and son achieve the vision together. Peter Kreeft does a good job of unpacking the relevant passages.

Kreeft here lists fourteen features of mystical experience which comport well with my experience.

Related: Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, and Wisdom

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Destinations and How to Get There

Music-travel

I got 'em all. How about you?

Graphic credit. HT: Ingvarius Maximus of Alhambra

Gladys Knight and the Pips, Night Train to Georgia

Monkees, Last Train to Clarksville

Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven

AC/DC, Highway to Hell

Eagles, Hotel California

Wilbert Harrison, Kansas City

The Bonny Banks O' Loch Lomond

James Taylor, Carolina in my Mind

Eddie Money, Two Tickets to Paradise

Steve Miller Band, Fly Like an Eagle

Grateful Dead, Casey Jones

Johnny Horton, The Battle of New Orleans

Brewer and Shipley, One Toke Over the Line 

Dave Dudley, Six Days on the Road 

Beatles, Yellow Submarine

Ramblin' Tommy Scott, She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain When She Comes

Peter, Paul and Mary, Puff the Magic Dragon

A Typical Leftist and the Tragedy of the Commons

Robert Paul Wolff:

Abbie Hoffmnan [Hoffman] famously wrote a book titled Steal This Book.  What greater compliment could an author hope for than to have his or her book stolen?  Jeffrey Kessen, may his tribe increase, quotes from a recent FaceBook post by someone who, in 1983, stole my book, Kant's Theory of Mental Activity, from a library!  That is infinitely better than a positive review.

This is disgusting but typical of lefties. Here is a guy who is all for socialism, but praises a jackass who steals a piece of public property. 

But if there is no respect for public property now, why think there will be after the installation of socialism? Fools like Hoffman and Wolff think that after the glorious revolution 'bourgeois morality' with its stricture against theft will be superseded and we will all live in mutually supportive harmony. That's utopian nonsense, as if the Revolution will bring about a "fundamental transformation" of human nature. It is quasi-religious, idolatrous nonsense to boot as if the New Man will emerge with the secular socialist eschaton. U-topia is Nowheresville for the Nowhere Man. 

Socialists have no appreciation of what is called in social science the tragedy of the commons:

The tragedy of the commons is a term used in social science to describe a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action. 

Private property is not only the foundation of individual liberty, it also helps insure that things get taken care of. And please note that if I maintain my property everyone around me benefits as well. This includes my house and my cars.  

Thus my well-maintained private property redounds to the benefit of the public.  It won't be my car that drops a muffler that hits Mike the motorcyclist in the face causing him to crash.  It won't be my properly maintained house that causes your property values to decline.

Am I against public libraries?  Of course not. I'm for public libraries and open stacks. I support them with the real estate tax I pay. A little socialism never hurt anybody. But if a thing is good, more is usually not better.  Socialism is like whisky in this respect.

The trouble with leftists is that they undermine the very 'bourgeois morality' that needs to be practiced if socialism to any degree is to work in the first place.

We need more mockery and condemnation of leftists. Don't you agree?

More on Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse

This entry continues my ruminations on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). The commenters in the earlier thread gave me no reason to think that DDS does not entail MC. But one of them sent me to Christopher Tomaszewski's paper which is worth reading and deserves a response.

Tomaszewski presents one of R. T. Mullins' arguments as follows:

1) Necessarily, God exists.
2) God is identical to God’s act of creation.
Therefore
3) Necessarily, God’s act of creation exists.

Tomaszewski claims that above argument is invalid and for the same reason that the following argument is invalid:

7) Necessarily, God exists.
8) God is identical to the Creator.
Therefore
9) Necessarily, the Creator exists.

Now the second argument is clearly invalid. It takes us from true premises to a false conclusion. God exists in every possible world. But in only some worlds does he instantiate the role of Creator. So it is not the case that the Creator exists in every possible world.

Some find the Leibnizian patois of 'possible worlds' puzzling. I don't need it. The point can be made without it, as follows. God exists of metaphysical necessity. But he does not create of metaphysical necessity: creation is a contingent act. Therefore, it is not the case that, necessarily, God is the Creator. Had he created nothing, he would exist without being Creator.

So the second of the two arguments is invalid. Now if the first argument has the same logical form as the second, then it too will be invalid.  But the first argument does not have the same logical form as the second.

The form of the first is:

Necessarily, for some x, x = a.
a = b.
ergo
Necessarily, for some x, x = b.

Clearly, this argument-form is valid, whence it follows that any argument having this form is valid. I am assuming that the individual constants 'a' and 'b' are Kripkean rigid designators: they denote the same object in every possible world in which the object exists.  I am also assuming Kripke's Necessity of Identity principle: For any x, y if x = y, then necessarily, x = y.  By instantiation, if a = b, then necessarily a = b. Now if necessarily a exists, and a cannot exist without being identical to b, then necessarily b exists.

Contra Tomaszewski, the arguments have different forms. The first instantiates a valid form and is therefore valid while the second instantiates an invalid form and is therefore invalid.

I expect someone to object that (2) above – God is identical to God’s act of creation — is not an instance of the logical form a = b, where the terms flanking the identity sign are Kripkean rigid designators. But I say they are; indeed they are strongly rigid designators.  A rigid designator is a term that picks out the same item in every possible world in which the item exists. A strongly rigid designator is a term that picks out the same item in every possible world, period.  Thus the designatum of a strongly rigid designator is a necessary being.

My claim, then, is that (2) is a statement of identity and that  'God' and 'God's act of creation' in (2) are both strongly rigid designators. My claim is entailed by DDS which says, among other things, that there is no real distinction in God between agent and action.  So if God is identical to his act of creating our universe, and God exists in every possible world, then the creation of our universe occurs in every possible world, which in turn entails modal collapse.

Tomaszevski has an interesting response (pp. 7-8):

While God’s act is indeed intrinsic (and therefore identical) to Him, “God’s act of creation” designates that act, not how it is in itself, but by way of its contingent effects. That is, whether “God’s act of creation” designates God’s act depends on the existence of a creation which is contingent, and so the designation is not rigid. And since the designation is not rigid, the identity statement is not necessary, as it must be in order to validate the argument from modal collapse. 

This response begs the question. For it assumes that the effect of the divine act of creation is contingent. But that is precisely the question!  If you just assume — as we all want to assume –  that creation is contingent, then of course there is no modal collapse. The issue, however, is whether one can adhere to that assumption while holding fast to DDS.  Besides, the second sentence in the above quotation makes little or no sense. The act of creation is individuated by the object of creation (our universe, say, in all its detail); an act of divine creation is nothing without its object.  

Am I assuming what I need to prove (and thus begging the question) when I insist that (2) above is necessarily true and thus that the first argument is valid?  No, I am merely unpacking what DDS implies.  

My conclusion is that Tomszevski has clarified the problem for us, but he has not refuted the above argument from DDS to MC.