“Rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or cack-handedly, is not – nor is men being gentlemanly a macho attack,” said the letter published in the newspaper Le Monde.
I'm with Catherine Deneuve and Christina Hoff Sommers on this one. Real women know how to handle obnoxious men: with a stern warning or a slap across the face. They don't go crying to their feminist mommies. And real men accept the rebuke.
The Left has lost its collective mind (hive mind?) on this as on so many other issues. You are one stupid and/or vile leftist if you cannot or will not distinguish among: a bit of old-fashioned gallantry, a risqué joke, the use of an offensive term such as 'broad,' a pat on the derriere, a Frankenian ass grab, a Weinsteinian manipulation, a full-on Clintonian sexual assault, and rape.
To conflate all of these behaviors under the umbrella 'sexually inappriopriate' shows the typical liberal/left incapacity to draw necessary distinctions as well as an inappropriate use of 'inappropriate.'
Good people are even better in small doses. Enjoy their quality in moderation for best results. If familiarity breeds contempt, reserve builds respect.
"Study everything, join nothing." I am sometimes asked for examples. Here are some from Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary under the entry Regalia. (Borrowed from Gilleland the Erudite):
. . . Knights of Adam; Visionaries of Detectable Bosh; the Ancient Order of Modern Troglodytes; the League of Holy Humbug; the Golden Phalanx of Phalangers; the Genteel Society of Expurgated Hoodlums; the Mystic Alliances of Gorgeous Regalians; Knights and Ladies of the Yellow Dog; the Oriental Order of Sons of the West; the Blatherhood of Insufferable Stuff; Warriors of the Long Bow; Guardians of the Great Horn Spoon; the Band of Brutes; the Impenitent Order of Wife-Beaters; the Sublime Legion of Flamboyant Conspicuants; Worshipers at the Electroplated Shrine; Shining Inaccessibles; Fee-Faw-Fummers of the Inimitable Grip; Jannissaries of the Broad-Blown Peacock; Plumed Increscencies of the Magic Temple; the Grand Cabal of Able-Bodied Sedentarians; Associated Deities of the Butter Trade; the Garden of Galoots; the Affectionate Fraternity of Men Similarly Warted; the Flashing Astonishers; Ladies of Horror; Cooperative Association for Breaking into the Spotlight; Dukes of Eden; Disciples Militant of the Hidden Faith; Knights-Champions of the Domestic Dog; the Holy Gregarians; the Resolute Optimists; the Ancient Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs; Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity; Dukes-Guardian of the Mystic Cess-Pool; the Society for Prevention of Prevalence; Kings of Drink; Polite Federation of Gents-Consequential; the Mysterious Order of the Undecipherable Scroll; Uniformed Rank of Lousy Cats; Monarchs of Worth and Hunger; Sons of the South Star; Prelates of the Tub-and-Sword.
I hereby nominate Hillary Clinton for membership in Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity and Harvey Weinstein for The Ancient Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs.
As for myself, I would not join any club that would have me as a member, to cop a line from Groucho Marx.
A lengthy podcast. (HTs: Paolo Juarez, Paul Craddick, Karl White, et al.)
I haven't listened to the whole thing, but I have heard enough to know that Professor Peterson is out beyond his depth and no match for the super-sharp Benatar.
My ongoing series on Benatar's latest book is here.
By a defense of Benatar, I do not mean a defense of his deeply pessimistic and anti-natalist views, views to which I do not subscribe. I mean a defense of the courageous practice of unrestrained philosophical inquiry, inquiry that follows the arguments where they lead, even if they issue in conclusions that make people extremely uncomfortable and are sure to bring obloquy upon the philosopher who proposes them.
The hit piece is entitled The 'Wisdom' of Silenus. It bears no author's name and looks to be something like an editorial. The view of Silenus is easily summarized:
Best of all for humans is never to have been born; second best is to die soon.
We should first note that while Benatar subscribes to the first independent clause, he does not embrace the second. One might think that if life is bad, then death must be at least instrumentally good insofar as it puts an end to suffering. Benatar's view, however, is that "death is no deliverance from the human predicament, but a further feature of it." (The Human Predicament, Oxford UP, 2017, 96)
Benatar outdoes Silenus in pessimism. We are caught in an existential vise, squeezed between life which is bad and death which is also bad. Everyone alive will die. While alive we are in a bad way. When dead we are also in a bad way, Epicurus notwithstanding. There is no escape for those who have had the misfortune of being born. So being born is a misfortune twice over: because life is bad and because being dead is bad.
My first point, then, is that the NC author wrongly assimilates Benatar to Silenus. But why should that bother someone who thinks it acceptable to criticize a book he has not read? I have no problem with someone who dismisses a book unread. My problem is with someone who publishes an article attacking a book he hasn't read.
. . . apart from professional pessimists like Nietzsche’s mentor Arthur Schopenhauer, most people are rightly repelled by this so-called wisdom of Silenus. They understand that life is an inestimable gift, the denial of which is part folly, part obscenity. We said “most people.” There are exceptions. Suicide bombers, disturbed teenagers, and of course certain grandstanding academics. Take Professor David Benatar, head of the department of philosophy at the University of Cape Town. In 2006, Oxford University Press . . . published Professor Benatar’s Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. [. . .] “The central idea of this book,” we read on the first page of its introduction, “is that coming into existence is always a serious harm.”
Understandably repelled, but "rightly repelled"? How does the author know that? How does he know that "life is an inestimable gift"? If life is a gift,then it has to have a donor, and who might that be, God? I'm a theist myself, but surely the existence of God is not self-evident to one whose critical faculties are in good working order. If life is a gift of an all-good God, why is life so horrible for so many in so many ways? Of course there is goodness and beauty in the world as well.
I should think that an intellectually honest person would admit that it is just not clear whether life is an "inestimable gift" or "a business that doesn't cover its costs." (Schopenhauer) Such a person would admit that it is an open question and if he were inquisitive he would want to examine the arguments on either side. But not our NC author who is content to psychologize and ridicule and dogmatize in a manner depressingly ideological but most unphilosophical.
One of the comments on this book at Amazon.com complains that people have been rejecting the book without reading it or arguing against Professor Benatar’s position. Doubtless there is plenty to argue with, not to say ridicule, in Better Never to Have Been. One might start by meditating on what words like “harm” and “better” might mean in the world according to Benatar. It is sobering to contemplate what logical and existential armageddon had to have occurred in order for something like this book to have been written. Still, we believe people are right to take that high road and reject the book without engaging its argument. To quote Nietzsche again, you do not refute a disease: you might cure it, quarantine it, or in some cases ignore it altogether. You don’t argue with it. Reason is profitably employed only among the reasonable. (Emphasis added.)
The irony here is that the NC author is using Nietzsche of all people to clobber Benatar. Assuming one thinks it acceptable to engage in quarantine and prohibition, is there any Western philosopher more deserving of quarantine and inclusion on the index librorum prohibitorum? Has our author ever read Nietzsche's The Anti-Christ? If you do not refute a disease, you also do not invoke the product of a diseased mind to dismiss as diseased the work of some other thinker.
As for rationality, Benatar is a paragon of rationality compared to Nietzsche who rants and raves and forwards incoherent views. For example, his perspectivism about truth collapses into an elimination of truth.
Dr. Johnson had the right idea when he employed the pedal expedient against Bishop Berkeley’s doctrine of universal hallucination. Something similar should be employed in the case of Professor Benatar’s Lemmings First doctrine of human fatuousness.
This is the worst kind of pseudo-philosophical journalistic cleverness and name-dropping. It shows a thorough lack of understanding of Berkeley's idealism. Berkeley was not an eliminativist about material objects. He did not maintain that rocks and trees do not exist; he did not question WHETHER they are; he offered an unusual ontological account of WHAT they are, namely ideas in the divine mind. If you know your Berkeley you know that what I just wrote is true and that the good bishop cannot be refuted by kicking a stone.
The gross facts, the Moorean facts, are not in dispute and philosophers are not in the business of denying them. I would have no trouble showing that even with respect to the characteristic theses of Zeno of Elea, F. H. Bradley, and J. E. M. McTaggart.
I do not deny that there are claims that are beneath refutation. It is not always wrong to dismiss a statement as false or even absurd without proof. Some claims are refutable by "the pedal expedient." Suppose you maintain that there are no pains, that no one ever feels pain. Without saying anything, I kick you in the shins with steel-tipped boots, or perhaps I kick you higher up. I will have brought home to you the plain falsehood of your claim. Or suppose sophomore Sam says that there is no truth. I would be fully within my epistemic rights to respond, 'Is that so?' and then walk away.
But Berkeley is not denying the self-evident. Neither is Benatar. It is not self-evident that human life is an "inestimable gift." That's not a datum but a theory. Maybe it's true. But maybe it isn't. Inquiry is therefore not only appropriate but necessary for those who seek rational justification for what they believe.
When James Burnham published The Suicide of the West in 1964, what he chiefly feared was the West’s lack of resolve to stand up to encroaching Communism. Quite right, too. Burnham was well endowed with what Henry James called the “imagination of disaster.” But we think that even Burnham might have been nonplussed by a Western intellectual who went beyond political capitulation to total existential surrender and whose proclamation of that gospel found a home at one of our greatest university presses. Even as we were absorbing Professor Benatar’s repackaging of Silenus, we stumbled upon an article revealing that sun-drenched, life-loving Italy had become “the least happy” country in Europe. “It’s a country,” said Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome, “that has lost a little of its will for the future.” It’s also a country that has eagerly adopted the philosophy of Professor Benatar and Ms. Vernelli: Italy’s birth rate is an astonishing 1.23, among the lowest in Europe. This is “anti-natalism” with a vengeance.
This is disgusting tabloid stuff. First of all, Benatar is not repackaging Silenus. He is saying something different from Silenus, as we have already seen, and his books are chock-full of challenging arguments and distinctions. There is a lot to be learned from his discussions. I don't find his arguments compelling, but then no arguments in philosophy for substantive theses are compelling.
Second, our journalist subordinates the search for truth to ideology. I don't doubt that the West is under demographic threat. Anti-natalist doctrines, if taken seriously by enough people, will tend to weaken us overagainst the Muslims and others that aim to displace us. But the philosopher seeks the truth, whatever it is, whether it promotes our flourishing or not.
Finally, if one is going to urge the ignoring of Benatar because of the possible consequences of his views, then one should do the same with others including Herr Nietzsche. His views were input to the destructive ideology of National Socialism. (See Nietzsche and National Socialism) And then there is Karl Marx . . . .
This just in from Julien Combray who writes in reference to How Cold Is It?
So cold that exhibitionists were actually describing themselves!
Thanks for your mix of commentary, Bill. Your cogent thinking on a range of topics has served me well for a number of years. Happy New Year to you! Amor Fati!
Sincerely,
Julien Combray
A little Internet pokey-wokey reveals that Mr. Combray has published Sins of Judgment (October 2017) in New English Review. I recommend it to you.
Julien Combray works reluctantly for a French investment bank. He was educated in America and briefly considered a career in academia before abandoning the idea for no apparent reason. He writes on subjects of philosophy and western culture and can often be found taking two hour lunch breaks in cafes throughout London.
When I travelled in China, I saw not one pussy cat. But I had a Chinese student at CWRU who said that the Chinese eat anything with four legs except the kitchen table. And now I recall eating something in Wuhan that tasted like chicken but a tad gamier. Now North Korea is not China. But I understand there's a lot of hungry people in the Land of Little Rocket Man. That suggests that the following image is fake:
Answer here. Trigger Warning! Do not (Melissa) click on this link if you are a snowflake or otherwise p.c-whipped. Seriously politically incorrect content!
Weather is not the same as climate. We all know that. But some seem to think that any sort of weather is evidence for one sort of climate. Here. Just as all roads lead to Rome, all weathers lead to Global Warming.
Whittaker Chambers on the Third Movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:
. . . that music was the moment at which Beethoven finally passed beyond the suffering of his life on earth and reached for the hand of God, as God reaches for the hand of Adam in Michaelangelo's vision of the creation. (Witness, p. 19)
Well, either the adagio movement of the 9th or the late piano sonatas, in particular, Opus 109, Opus 110, and Opus 111. To my ear, these late compositions are unsurpassed in depth and beauty.
Here is Alfred Brendel performing the Second Movement of Opus 111.
In these and a few other compositions of the great composers we are granted a glimpse of what music is capable of. Just as one will never appreciate the possibilities of genuine philosophy by reading positivist philistines such as David Stove, one will never appreciate the possibilities of great music and its power of speaking to what is deepest in us if one listens only to contemporary popular music.
With respect to this post, I agree with much of Douglas Murray's book as well; in fact the only parts I could argue with are his somewhat lenient stance on various English Defence League type people (not his belief in their legal right to state their position though). But the great problem with European immigration is the importation of absolutely regressive thinking, even amongst the true victims of war in Syria and Afghanistan (the 'idiot' Liberals wrongly associate contingent victimhood with innate virtue, never realising that the problem of increased rape and harassment by immigrants is precisely due to the mainstream attitudes all but the educated among their number hold – contempt for women etc).
You're quite right. European 'progressives,' having been enstupidated by political correctness, don't understand that the 'regressives' from Muslim lands do not share their values and have no intention of assimilating, and that it is cultural suicide to let them flood in. (See here.) These leftists also make the typical 'progressive' mistake of thinking that great virtue attaches to being an underdog, a victim, poor, etc. You will have noticed that leftists have a knee-jerk tendency to take the side of the loser and the underdog even when the underdog owes his status to his own bad behavior and foolishness.
Of course we should help those who are in dire straits due to no fault of their own. But aid must be rendered in an intelligent fashion, and never at the expense of the country rendering aid. The principle must be: Country First! Trump's America First! is just a special case of this. For the Germans, Germany First! And so on. The prudent and reasonable look to the welfare of their own first, and only thereafter to that of others.
But I don't see a strong parallel with the argument against mainly (as I understand it) Mexican / Central American immigration to the U.S. Among those immigrants are certainly criminals and gangs (some quite well known escapees from Latin American guerilla wars, narco-wars etc), but not, generally speaking religious ideologues or people with culturally inbuilt regressive values, just the normal regressiveness of the uneducated individual from a Western society.
I grant you that there are differences which weaken the parallel. Better to be invaded by Catholics than by Muslims. Islam is a toxic political ideology inimical to Western values. Contemporary Catholicism, despite its infestation by leftist termites, is much less of a threat politically. But it is still a threat because Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, will most of them end up voting for the hard-Left Democrat Party. Here, by the way, is the reason why the obstructionist Dems so viciously and vociferously oppose Trump's immigration reforms: their long-term strategy is to win demographically. Illegal aliens from the south are for them undocumented Democrats. This is also why they oppose photo ID at polling places. They want to make the polling places safe for voter fraud. Good leftists that they are, they hold the end to justify the shabby means. ('Good' in the preceding sentence functions as an attributive, not a predicative adjective, in Peter Geach's terminology.)
Looking from the outside, and as a frequent visitor to the U.S., my impression is that most Trump voters take more issue with two things: a) being left out of the economic picture no matter how hard they work; their enemy seems to be corporations, Wall Street, and / or big government (Bernie Sanders popularity on the left would seem to be evidence that this is felt across the spectrum of political allegiance); and b) the identity / victim politics of the modern Left, which only cares about LGBT etc as political entities, not normal people, or even 'workers' (the original victim category of Marx).
I can't see the 'experiment in self-destruction' of the UK being repeated in the US; it looks like a different experiment in self-destruction to me – more to do with abrogation of the responsibilities of government to the private sphere, and eventual failure of democracy combined with a self-absorbed intellectual Leftist politics that no longer cares about the mainstream.
I would be interested to see on your blog a more detailed exploration of these 'failed experiments' as you see them unfolding; how Europe and the US correlate and how they differ. Are different sets of civilisational principles at stake in each place?
'Failed experiments' doesn't seem to be quite the phrase. In Europe and the U.K., the experiments in self-destruction seem to be succeeding. Sharia courts? No-go zones? Places in England where an Englishman must fear to tread? I will have to do more research to be able comment on how the U. K. and U. S. cases differ. But I don't think the two experiments in self-destruction are very different. In both cases a mindless immigration policy engineered by destructive global elitists.
George Schwab, in his Introduction to Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (University of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 13, bolding added, footnotes omitted), writes:
In his endeavor to strengthen the Weimar state, Schmitt challenged a basic liberal assumption then widely held either for philosophical or tactical reasons, namely, that every political party, no matter how antirepublican, must be permitted freely to compete for parliamentary representation and for governmental power. This meant that the sole requirement of such parties in their quest for power was that they proceed legally. Because the most influential commentators and jurists of the Weimar constitution argued that it was an open document insofar as any and all constitutional revisions are permissible if these are brought about legally, a totalitarian movement which succeeds in legally capturing the legislature can then proceed legally to forge a constitution and state that would reflect its militant political ideology.
Schwab goes on to report that Schmitt in 1932, the year before Hitler's accession to power, "argued that only those parties not intent on subverting the state be granted the right to compete for parliamentary and governmental power."
That makes excellent sense and ought to be applied to our present situation. We ought not tolerate subversive political parties. Or perhaps I should say that we ought not tolerate subversive parties whose threat to the principles of the American Founding and our system of government are credible and dangerous. Time was when that was true of the Communist Party USA. But those days are gone. Tactically, it might be a mistake to ban subversive parties that are too weak to pose a threat since the banning might draw members to them. Perhaps we could call this tactic "repressive tolerance" to hijack some terminology from Herbert Marcuse. To tolerate them is more repressive of them than to ban them.
Suppose a Sharia party in the U. S. were to form and become a credible threat. Should it be banned? Of course. No party that rejects the very principles upon which our country is founded ought to be tolerated even if it could legally get some of its members elected. Would you hire an arsonist as a cook?
What about the Democrat Party?
The contemporary Democrat Party lurches ever leftward. This is spectacularly clear from recent events in California. The once Golden State is now in open defiance of federal immigration law, not to mention its open defiance of federal drug laws. Since January 1st it has been a 'sanctuary state.' "Under the new state law, nowhere in California may police ask about an individual’s immigration status, nor may local authorities cooperate with federal officials on immigration enforcement." (here)
Suppose the Democrat party continues to defy the Constitution and undermine the rule of law. Suppose it provides sanctuary not only for illegal aliens but for Sharia-supporting Muslims. (Muslim Brotherhood Congressman Keith Ellison is a friend of Antifa, and Deputy Chair of the DNC.) Then a case grows for outlawing the Dems.
Whatever you say about the Dems, every American patriot ought to hold that the basic liberal assumption, according to which every political party is tolerable, is itself intolerable.
As I have said many times, toleration has limits.
UPDATE (1/6). A Canadian reader responds:
The people we call "liberals" nowadays don't actually hold this assumption, it seems to me. I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would outlaw any kind of serious right-wing political party if they could, and certainly they'd try to prevent such a party from participating in the electoral process on equal footing with liberal or leftist parties. When Richard Spencer got punched by some leftist scumbag the "liberal" media published articles musing about whether "punching Nazis" is okay. Even Marco Rubio publicly stated that violence against alt-right activists is "justified" by the content of their political beliefs. Do you not agree that if there were an alt-right political party — especially if it seemed to have any chance of gaining power — there'd be a phalanx of "liberals" demanding that the party be outlawed, that its members be arrested or, at the very least, prevented from speaking or participating in the electoral process?
BV: We have a terminological problem. I am using 'liberal' in the old way, the way George Schwab uses it above. I am not using it the way I usually use it, typically with sneer quotes, as synonymous with 'progressive' or 'leftist.' Do contemporary 'liberals' hold the assumption? One answer is yes, until they get enough power to outlaw their opponents' parties.
Hitler was legally elected in '33. After that he outlawed opposition parties. If Schmitt's proposal had been adopted, and the National Socialists had been outlawed, Hitler might have been stopped.
In Europe the "liberals" have found ways to ban or dissolve right-wing parties at times, and at other times they use the state to persecute any leaders or high-profile members (e.g., for "hate speech"). Their behavior is just not what you would expect of people who believe they should tolerate _any_ kind of political party or movement; they clearly don't even believe that any old kind of political _speech_ should be tolerated.
BV: Again, terminology. I don't think we have a substantive disagreement.
So I think you misdescribe the situation. The "liberals" believe that any leftist or anti-white or anti-western political party (or movement, or speech) must be tolerated. Not that any political party must be tolerated. They would happily tolerate a Sharia Party or a Communist Party or a Black Nationalist Party. Hell, they'd probably vote for one or all of them if they could. They would not tolerate a Christian Fundamentalist Party or a Fascist Party or a Normal White People's Party. (Or anyway, they don't believe that these latter kinds of things should be tolerated.)
BV: Once again, a terminological difference. I agree with you since you are talking about contemporary not classical 'liberals.'
My other concern is this: You think there is a danger of some kind of "subversive" party taking power, a party that rejects the basic principles of your society or country. And therefore, you want intolerance with respect to that kind of party, in order to protect your society. But that party has already taken power! Or rather, the two parties that exist in your country are both subversive–both flatly opposed to the most basic principles of America and the most basic interests of the American people.
BV: Now we have something to disagree about. I hope you are not saying that the Dems are in power. That is plainly false since 8 November 2016. If you are saying that both of the major parties are subversive of traditionally American principles and values, then that has to be argued out. Surely they are not equally subversive.
For one thing, the Manhattan sybarite has struck a blow for religious liberty. (An evangelical Trump supporter might say that the Lord works in mysterious ways.) Now religious liberty is one of the American values I am talking about. The Orange Man has also gotten rid of the ObamaCare individual mandate, an egregious violation of individual liberty. Trump's opposition to the individual mandate is right in line with classical American values. He got conservative Neil Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court. He has appointed conservative federal judges. And so on.
I would like you to support and nuance your claim that both of the major parties are subversive — "both flatly opposed to the most basic principles of America and the most basic interests of the American people."
So in this situation, banning "subversive" parties would really just mean banning any party that aimed to truly represent the American people or uphold the real principles of America. I mean, doesn't it seem fairly obvious that your politicians and courts are in the hands of people who already reject the most basic rules and values of the real historic American nation? California will openly violate federal laws in order to flood the country with illegal aliens; politicians and courts will do nothing. Just one example. In this situation you are the subversive–so I'm worried that the policy you're proposing would only be used against people like you.
BV: Well, no. You are ignoring the the recent "Flight 93" events. We stormed the cockpit and subdued the hijackers — for the moment.
The logical structure of the problem before us is perhaps that of a dilemma. Either (A) we adopt the classically liberal assumption that every political party is tolerable, or (~A) we don't. If (A), then we have to countenance the possibility that a party legally come to power that outlaws all opposition parties. This possibility became actual after '33 in Germany. If (~A), then we members of the Coalition of the Sane expose ourselves to the possibility that our party gets banned, and we get sent to the leftist concentration camp.
I'll have to think more about this .
In any case, welcome to Political Aporetics 101.
Disclaimer: I am not a political philosopher; I only play one in the blogosphere. I write these things to clarify my own thoughts with the help of powerful intellects such as my Canadian sparring partner. I am a metaphysician and philosopher of religion by trade. That is where most of my professional publications are.
I had a teacher in the fifth grade who, when one of us inappropriately wandered off, would query, "Whither goest thou?" alluding, as I did not realize at the time, to the Gospel of John (13:36):
Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.
'Whither' means to where just as 'whence' mean from where. (Please avoid the pleonasm of 'from whence.') The distinction is obliterated by the promiscuous use of 'where' for both. That cannot be good from a logical point of view. It is therefore right and fitting and conducive unto clarity that my favorite antediluvian curmudgeon, the Laudator Temporis Acti, should complain:
The use of whither is withering away in English, alas, just like whence, although both words usefully distinguish notions that we now force where alone to bear, e.g. in the New International Version of John 13.36:
Simon Peter asked him, "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus replied, "Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later."
