A tribute to Charlie Parker by Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen. Hyper-romanticism and cool jazz.
Charlie Parker looked like Buddha. Charlie Parker . . . was called the perfect musician and his expression on his face was as calm beautiful and profound as the image of the Buddha represented in the East the lidded eyes the expression that says: all is well.
This was what Charlie Parker said when he played: all is well. You had the feeling of early-in-the-morning like a hermit's joy or like the perfect cry of some wild gang at a jam session Wail! Whap! Charlie burst his lungs to reach the speed of what the speedsters wanted and what they wanted was his eternal slowdown. A great musician and a great creator of forms . . . .
. . . Charlie Parker whistling them on to the brink of eternity with his Irish St. Patrick Patootlestick. And like the holy mists we blop and we plop in the waters of slaughter and white meat and die one after one in Time. And how sweet a story it is
. . . Charlie Parker forgive me. Forgive me for not answering your eyes. For not having made an indication of that which you can devise. Charlie Parker pray for me. Pray for me and everybody.
In the Nirvanas of your brain where you hide indulgent and huge no longer Charlie Parker but the secret unsayable Name that carries with it merit not-to-be-measured from here to up down east or west.
Charlie Parker lay the bane off me – – and everybody.
This is a draft of a paper from years ago (early aughts) that it looks like I may never finish. But it is relevant to present concerns. So here it is.
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ROYCE REVISITED: INDIVIDUALITY AND IMMORTALITY
“What is it that makes any real being an individual?” Near the beginning of his 1899 Ingersoll lecture, The Conception of Immortality, Josiah Royce identifies this as the fundamental question whose answering must precede any serious discussion of the immortality question.i Since the latter concerns whether we survive bodily death as individuals, it is clear that the logically prior question is: What is it to be an individual?
This question, “formal and dreary” as it may seem, yet “pulsates with all the mystery of life.”ii I share Royce’s enthusiasm since I count it as one of his greatest insights that “the logical problem as to what constitutes an individual being” is identical to “the problem as to the worthy object of love.” (CI 32-33) This essay sets itself three tasks. The first is to expound the main features of Royce’s doctrine of individuality in a rigorous and contemporary manner. The second is to raise some critical objections to it. The third is to sketch an alternative which preserves Royce’s insights.
Another difficulty with the function-argument theory is staring us in the face, but generally unappreciated for what it is. As Geach says, the theory presupposes an absolute category-difference between names and predicables, which comes out in the choice of ‘fount’ [font] for the schematic letters corresponding to name and predicable. For example ‘Fa’, where the upper case ‘F’ represents the predicable, as Geach calls it, and lower case ‘a’ the name. As a direct result, there is only one negation of the proposition, i.e. ‘~Fa’, where the tilde negates whatever is expressed by ‘Fa’. But ‘F’ is a function mapping the referent of ‘a’ onto the True or the False, so ‘~Fa’ says that a does not map onto the True. The object a is there all right, but maps to a different truth-value. Thus ‘Fa’ implies ExFx, ‘~Fa’ implies Ex~Fx, and excluded middle (Fa or ~Fa) implies that something, i.e. a, does or does not satisfy F. The function-argument account has the bizarre consequence that the name always has a referent, which either does or does not satisfy the predicable. There is no room for the name not being satisfied. Indeed, the whole point of the function theory is to distinguish the idea of satisfaction, which only applies to predicables, from reference, which is a feature of proper names only. As Frege points out here:
The word 'common name' is confusing .. for it makes it look as though the common name stood under the same, or much the same relation to the objects that fall under the concept as the proper name does to a single object. Nothing could be more false! In this case it must, of course, appear as though a common name that belongs to an empty concept were as illegitimate as a proper name that designates [bezeichnet] nothing.
The scholastic two-term account, by contrast, allows for the non-satisfaction of the proper name. ‘Frodo is a hobbit’ is true if and only if something satisfies both ‘hobbit’ and ‘Frodo’. It is essential to Aristotle’s theory of the syllogism, as Geach notes, that the middle term (the one which appears in both premisses) can be subject in one premiss, predicate in another. The notion of ‘satisfaction’ or ‘supposition’ applies to both subject and predicate, even if the subject is a proper name like ‘Frodo’. Thus the negation of ‘Frodo is a hobbit’ can be true in two ways. Either some individual satisfies ‘Frodo’ but does not satisfy ‘hobbit’. We express this in English by so-called predicate negation ‘Frodo is not a hobbit’, where the negative is placed after the copula. Or no individual satisfies ‘Frodo’, which we can express by placing the negation before the whole proposition, ‘it is not the case that Frodo is a hobbit’. So the scholastic theory neatly accounts for empty proper names. Not so for the function-argument theory, a difficulty which was recognised early on. Frege developed a complex and (in my view) ultimately incoherent theory of sense and reference. Russell thought that proper names were really disguised descriptions, which is actually a nod to the scholastic theory.
Of course there is a separate problem for the two term theory, of making sense of a proper name not being ‘satisfied’. What concept is expressed by the proper name that is satisfied or not satisfied, and which continues to exist as a concept even if the individual ceases to exist? Bill and I have discussed this many times, probably too many times for his liking.
BV: What is particularly interesting here is the claim that Russell's theory of proper names is a nod to to the scholastic theory. This sounds right, although we need to bear in mind that Russell's description theory is a theory of ordinary proper names. Russell also allows for logically proper names, which are not definite descriptions in disguise. The Ostrich rightly points out that that for Frege there there is an absolute categorial difference between names and predicables. I add that this is the linguistic mirror of the absolute categorial difference in Frege between objects and concepts (functions). No object is a concept, and no concept is an object. No object can be predicated, and no concept can be named. This leads directly to the Paradox of the Horse: The concept horse is not a concept. Why not? Because 'the concept horse' is a name, and whatever you name is an object.
This is paradoxical and disturbing because it imports ineffability into concepts and thus into logic. If concepts cannot be named and objectified, then they are not wholly graspable. This is connected with the murky notion of the unsaturatedness of concepts. The idea is not that concepts cannot exist uninstantiated; the idea is that concepts have a 'gappy' nature that allows them to combine with objects without the need for a tertium quid to tie them together. Alles klar?
Now it seems to me that Russell maintains the absolute categorial difference between logically proper names and predicates/predicables. ('Predicable' is a Geachian term and it would be nice to hear how the Ostrich defines it.) Correct me if I am wrong, but this presupposition of an absolute categorial difference between logically proper names and predicates/predicables is a presupposition of all standard modern logic. It is 1-1 with the assumption that there are atomic propositions.
Here is one problem. On the Russellian and presumably also on the scholastic theory, an ordinary proper name stands to its nominatum in the same relation as a predicate to the items that satisfy it. Call this relation 'satisfaction.' Socrates satisfies 'Socrates' just as he and Plato et al. satisfy 'philosopher.' Now if an item satisfies a term, then it instantiates the concept expressed by the term. But what is the concept that 'Socrates' expresses? One candidate is: the unique x such that x is the teacher of Plato. Another is: the greatest philosopher who published nothing.
Notice, however, that on this approach singularity goes right out the window. 'Socrates' is a singular term. But 'the greatest philosopher who published nothing' is a general term despite the fact that the latter term, if satisfied, can be satisfied by only one individual in the world that happens to be actual. It is general because it is satisfied by different individuals in different possible worlds. Without prejudice to his identity, Socrates might not have been the greatest philosopher to publish nothing. He might not have been a philosopher at all. So a description theory of names cannot do justice to the haecceity of Socrates. What makes Socrates precisely this individual cannot be some feature accidental to him. Surely the identity of an individual is essential to it.
If we try to frame a concept that captures Socrates' haecceity, we hit a brick wall. Concepts are effable; an individual's haeceity or thisness is ineffable. Aristotle says it somewhere, though not in Latin: Individuum ineffabile est. The individual as such is ineffable. There is no science of the particular qua particular. There is no conceptual understanding of the particular qua particular because the only concepts we can grasp are general in the broad way I am using 'general.' And of course all understanding is conceptual involving as it does the subsumption of particular under concepts.
Some will try the following move. They will say that 'Socrates' expresses the concept, Socrateity, the concept of being Socrates, or being identical to Socrates. But this haecceity concept is a pseudo-concept. For we had to bring in the non-concept Socrates to give it content.
There are no haecceity concepts. As the Ostrich appreciates, this causes trouble for the scholastic two-name theory of predication according to which 'Socrates' and 'wise' are both names, and the naming relation is that of satisfaction. It makes sense to say that the concept wise person is uninstantiated. But it makes no sense to say that the concept Frodoity is uninstantiated for the simple reason that there cannot be any such concept.
It looks like we are at an impasse. We get into serious trouble if we go the Fregean route and hold that names and predicates/predicables are radically disjoint and that the naming/referring relation is toto caelo different from the satisfaction relation. But if we regress to the scholastic two-name theory, then we have a problem with empty names.
It's October again, my favorite month, and Kerouac month in my personal literary liturgy. And no better way to kick off Kerouac month than with 'sweet gone Jack' reading from "October in Railroad Earth" from Lonesome Traveler, 1960. Steve Allen provides the wonderful piano accompaniment. I have the Grove Press Black Cat 1970 paperback edition. I bought it on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, 12 April 1973. I was travelling East by thumb to check out East Coast graduate schools where I had been accepted, but mostly I 'rode the dog' (Greyhound bus), a mode of transport I wouldn't put up with today: two guys behind me chain-smoked and talked all the way from Los Angeles to Phoenix. New Orleans proved to be memorable, including the flophouse on Carondelet I stayed in for $2. It was there that Lonesome Traveler joined On the Road in my rucksack.
I never before had seen Tabasco bottles so big as on the tables of the Bourbon Street bars and eateries. Exulting in the beat quiddity of the scene, I couldn't help but share my enthusiasm for Nawlins with a lady of the evening, not sampling her wares, but just talking to her on the street, she thinking me naive, and I was.
Here is a long excerpt (7:10), which contains the whole of the first two sections of "October in Railroad Earth," pp. 37-40, of the Black Cat edition.
You don't know jack about Jack if you don't know that he was deeply conservative despite his excesses. The aficionados will enjoy The Conservative Kerouac.
And a tip of the hat to old college buddy and Kerouac and jazz aficionado 'Monterey Tom' Coleman for sending me to Kerouac on Sinatra, and Hit the Road, Jack.
Thanks for linking to the George Shearing ‘September’. I had forgotten he grew up in London (in Battersea, just down the road from me). I love the Bird-like flights on the piano. Indeed I think he wrote ‘Lullaby of Birdland’. Another Londoner is Helen Shapiro who does a great version of ‘It might as well rain until September’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De0_zZ7qQDA. Great alto voice, never made it in the US as far as I know. There is a strange account of her conversion to Christianity here.
I was first hipped to Shearing by Kerouac who referred to him in On the Road. I too love the'Bird'-like flights on the piano. The allusion is to Charley 'Bird' Parker, also beloved of Kerouac. (Kerouac month hereabouts starts today.) Helen Shapiro is new to me, thanks. She does a great job with the Carole King composition. Believe it or not, King's version is a demo. That's one hell of a demo. A YouTuber points out that Shapiro was not part of the 1964 'British Invasion.' I wonder why.
The Ostrich of London sends the following to which I add some comments in blue.
Vallicella: ‘One of Frege's great innovations was to employ the function-argument schema of mathematics in the analysis of propositions’.
Peter Geach (‘History of the Corruptions of Logic’, in Logic Matters 1972, 44-61) thinks it actually originated with Aristotle, who suggests (Perihermenias 16b6) that a sentence is composed of a noun (ὄνομα) and a verb (ῥῆμα), and the verb is a sign of something predicated of something else. According to Geach, Aristotle dropped this name-predicate theory of the proposition later in the Analytics, an epic disaster ‘comparable only to the fall of Adam’, so that logic had to wait more than two thousand years before the ‘restitution of genuine logic’ ushered in by Frege and Russell. By ‘genuine logic’ he means modern predicate logic, which splits a simple proposition into two parts, a function expression, roughly corresponding to a verb, and an argument expression, roughly corresponding to a noun. ‘To Frege we owe it that modern logicians almost universally accept an absolute category-difference between names and predicables; this comes out graphically in the choice of letters from different founts [fonts] of type for the schematic letters of variables answering to these two categories’.
The Fregean theory of the proposition has never seemed coherent to me. Frege began his studies (Jena and Göttinge, 1869–74) as a mathematician. Mathematicians naturally think in terms of ‘functions’ expressing a relation between one number and another. Thus
f(3) = 9
where ‘3’ designates the argument or input to the function, corresponding to Aristotle’s ὄνομα, ‘f()’ the function, here y=x2, corresponding to Aristotle’s ῥῆμα, and ‘9’ the value of the function. The problem is the last part. There is nothing in the linguistic form of the proposition which corresponds to the value in the linguistic form of the mathematical function. It is invisible. Now Frege thinks that every propositional function or ‘concept’ maps the argument to one of two values, either the True or the False. OK, but this is a mapping which, unlike the mathematical mapping, cannot be expressed in language. We can of course write
___ is wise(Socrates) = TRUE
but then we have to ask whether that equality is true or false, i.e. whether the function ‘is_wise(–) = TRUE’ itself maps Socrates onto the true or the false. The nature of the value (the ‘truth value’) always eludes us. There is a sort of veil beyond which we cannot reach, as though language were a dark film over the surface of the still water, obscuring our view of the Deep.
BV: First a quibble. There is no need for the copula 'is' in the last formula since, for Frege, concepts (which are functions) are 'unsaturated' (ungesaettigt) or incomplete. What exactly this means, of course, is a separate problem. The following suffices:
___wise(Socrates) = TRUE.
The line segment '___' represents the gappiness or unsaturatedness of the concept expressed by the concept-word (Begriffswort).
Quibbling aside, the Ostrich makes two correct interrelated points, the first negative, the second positive.
The first is that while 'f(3) = 9' displays the value of the function for the argument 3, namely 9, a sentence that expresses a (contingent) proposition does NOT display its truth-value. The truth-value remains invisible. I would add that this is so whether I am staring at a physical sententional inscription or whether I am contemplating a proposition with the eye of the mind. The truth or falsity of a contingent proposition is external to it. No doubt, 'Al is fat' is true iff Al is fat.' But this leaves open the question whether Al is fat. After all the biconditional is true whether or not our man is, in fact, obese.
The second point is that there has to be something external to a contingent proposition (such as the one expressed by 'Socrates is wise') that is involved in its being true, but this 'thing,' — for Frege the truth-value — is ineffable. Its nature eludes us as the Ostrich correctly states. I used the somewhat vague phrase 'involved in its being true' to cover two possibilities. One is the Fregean idea that declarative sentences have both sense and reference and that the referent (Bedeutung) of a whole declarative sentence is a truth-value. The other idea, which makes a lot more sense to me, is that a sentence such as 'Socrates is wise' has a referent, but the referent is a truth-making fact or state of affairs, the fact of Socrates' being wise.
Now both of these approaches have their difficulties. But they have something sound in common, namely, the idea that there has to be something external to the contingent declarative sentence/proposition involved in its being true rather than false. There has to be more to a true proposition than its sense. It has to correspond to reality. But what does this correspondence really come to? Therein lies a major difficulty.
How will the Ostrich solve it? My impression is that he eliminates the difficulty by eliminating reference to the extralinguistic entirely.
Our national life is becoming like philosophy: a scene of endless disagreement about almost everything. The difference, of course, is that philosophical controversy is typically conducted in a gentlemanly fashion without bloodshed or property damage. Some say that philosophy is a blood sport, but no blood is ever shed, and though philosophers are ever shooting down one anothers' arguments, gunfire at philosophical meetings is so far nonexistent. A bit of poker brandishing is about as far as it gets.
Some say we need more 'conversations' with our political opponents about the hot-button issues that divide us. The older I get the more pessimistic I become about the prospects of such 'conversations.' I believe we need fewer conversations, less interaction, and the political equivalent of divorce. Here is an extremely pessimistic view:
I believe the time for measured debate on national topics has passed. There are many erudite books now decorating the tweed-jacket pipe-rooms of avuncular conservative theorists. And none as effective at convincing our opponents as a shovel to the face. But setting that means aside, there is no utility in good-faith debate with a side whose core principle is your destruction. The “middle ground” is a chasm. It is instead our duty to scathe, to ridicule, to scorn, and encourage the same in others. But perhaps foremost it is our duty to hate what is being done. A healthy virile hate. For those of you not yet so animated, I can assure its effects are invigorating.
Unfortunately, Stephens says things that are quite stupid. He says, for example, that disagreement is "the most vital ingredient of any decent society." That is as foolish as to say, as we repeatedly hear from liberals, that our strength lies in diversity. That is an absurdity bordering on such Orwellianisms as "War is peace" and 'Slavery is freedom." Our strength lies not in our diversity, but in our unity. Likewise, the most vital ingredient in any decent society is agreement on values and principles and purposes. Only on the basis of broad agreement can disagreement be fruitful.
This is not to say that diversity is not a value at all; it is a value in competition with the value of unity, a value which must remain subordinated to the value of unity. Diversity within limits enriches a society; but what makes it viable is common ground. "United we stand,' divided we fall." "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
Stephens goes on to create a problem for himself. Having gushed about how wonderful disagreement is, he then wonders why contemporary disagreement is so bitter, so unproductive, and so polarizing. If disagreement is the lifeblood of successful societies, why is blood being shed?
Stephens naively thinks that if we just listen to one another with open minds and mutual respect and the willingness to alter our views that our conversations will converge on agreement. He speaks of the "disagreements we need to have" that are "banished from the public square before they are settled." Settled? What hot button issue ever gets settled? What does Stephens mean by 'settled'? Does he mean: get the other side to shut up and acquiesce in what you are saying? Or does he mean: resolve the dispute in a manner acceptable to all parties to it? The latter is what he has to mean. But then no hot-button issue is going to get settled.
Stephens fails to see that the disagreements are now so deep that there can be no reasonable talk of settling any dispute. Does anyone in his right mind think that liberals will one day 'come around' and grasp that abortion is the deliberate killing of innocent human beings and that it ought be illegal in most cases? And that is just one of many hot-button issues.
We don't agree on things that a few years ago all would have agreed on, e.g., that the national borders need to be secured.
According to Stephens, "Intelligent disagreement is the lifeblood of any thriving society." Again, this is just foolish. To see this, consider the opposite:
Agreement as to fundamental values, principles and purposes is the lifeblood of any thriving society.
Now ask yourself: which of these statements is closer to the truth? Obviously mine, not Stephens'. He will disagree with me about the role of disagreement. How likely do you think it is that we will settle this meta-disagreement? It is blindingly evident to me that I am right and that he is wrong. Will he come to see the light? Don't count on it.
It is naive to suppose that conversations will converge upon agreement, especially when the parties to the conversations are such a diverse bunch made even more diverse by destrutive immigration policies. For example, you cannot allow Sharia-supporting Muslims to immigrate into Western societies and then expect to have mutually respectful conversations with them that converge upon agreement.
I am not saying that there is no place for intelligent disagreement. There is, and it ought to be conducted with mutual respect, open-mindedness and all the rest. The crucial point Stephens misses is that fruitful disagreement can take place only under the umbrella of shared principles, values, and purposes. To invert the metaphor: fruitful disagreement presupposes common ground.
And here is the problem: lack of common ground. I have nothing in common with the Black Lives Matters activists whose movement is based on lies about Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and the police. I have nothing in common with Antifa thugs who have no respect for the classical traditions and values of the university. I could go on: people who see nothing wrong with sanctuary jurisdictions, with open borders, with using the power to the state to force florists and caterers to violate their consciences; the gun grabbers; the fools who speak of 'systemic racism'; the appeasers of rogue regimes . . . .
There is no comity without commonality, and the latter is on the wane. A bad moon is rising, and trouble's on the way. Let's hope we can avoid civil war.
If a proposition is true, does it follow that it is rational to accept it? (Of course, if a proposition is known to be true, then it is eminently rational to accept it; but that's not the question.)
Hefner's death reminds me of a true story from around 1981. This was before I was married. Emptying my trash into a dumpster behind my apartment building one day, I 'spied a big stack of Playboy magazines at the bottom of the container. Of course, I rescued them as any right-thinking man would: they have re-sale value and they contain excellent articles, stories, and interviews.
I stacked the mags on an end table. When my quondam girl friend dropped by, the magazines elicited a raised eyebrow.
I quickly explained that I had found them in the dumpster and that they contain excellent articles, arguments for logical analysis, etc. She of course did not believe that I had found them.
What I told her was true, but not credible. She was fully within her epistemic rights in believing that I was lying to save face. In fact, had she believed the truth that I told her, I would have been justified in thinking her gullible and naive.
This shows that truth and rational acceptability are not the same property. A proposition can be true but not rationally acceptable. It is also easily shown that a proposition can be rationally acceptable but not true. Truth is absolute; rational acceptability is relative to various indices.
"But what about rational acceptablity at the Peircean ideal limit of inquiry?"
Well, that's a horse of a different color. Should I mount it, I would trangress the bounds of this entry.
As for Hugh Hefner, may the Lord have mercy on him. And on the rest of us too.
By mainstreaming pornography in Playboy magazine, and valorizing the pursuit of (male, heterosexual) hedonistic pleasure with his highly publicized playboy lifestyle, Hefner made a singularly important contribution to the overthrow of received norms of sexual morals that made modern (post-1960s) feminism possible. But he also accomplished this overthrow by exploiting women, reducing them to sex objects for use (and sometimes abuse) in the satisfaction of the insatiable (and now unconstrained) male libido.
If Linker's claim is that no sort of post-1960s feminism could have arisen without Hef's mainstreaming of pornography, valorization of male hedonism, and overthrow of received sexual norms, then I doubt it. A sort of equity feminism could have arisen without the Hefnerian excesses and without women aping the basest elements in men. I'd be interested in hearing what Christina Hoff Sommers would have to say about this.
That Playboy was a necessary condition of the possibilility of Playgirl is a more credible claim than that the Playboy lifestyle was a necessary condition of the possibility of the rise of any sort of worthwhile post-1960s feminism.
Leftist whining about 'cultural appropriation' and Alt-Right denial of the universality of certain cultural goods may be mirror images of each other. The shared assumption is that cultural goods are not universal but can be owned.
The theorem of Pythagoras has his name on it but neither he nor his descendants own it.
The same goes for the life-enhancing bourgeois values lately preached by Amy Wax.
Some important points re: the NFL flag and anthem controversy.
1) In its third clause, the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech or of the press." This protects the U. S. citizen from any attempt from the side of the U. S. government to squelch free expression. It does not protect a citizen who is in the employ of a private concern from attempts by the employer to limit speech or expression. The kneeling football players while on the field of play have no First Amendment free speech rights. Their employers may fire them just as Google was within its legal rights when it fired James Damore.
The difference is that Google was morally wrong for firing an engineer who spoke the politically incorrect truth, while the club owners are morally wrong if they do not fire the overpaid, disrespectful football players.
2) What the kneelers appear to be protesting is imaginary. Jason Riley:
The players have said they are protesting the unjust treatment of blacks by law enforcement and cite the spate of police shootings that have come to light in recent years. Team owners and NFL officials will have to decide whether to continue indulging such behavior on company time, but the larger question is whether what is being protested has some basis in reality beyond anecdotes and viral videos on social media.
Hard data, however, shows that the protests are hollow. Heather Mac Donald:
The FBI released its official crime tally for 2016 today [25 September 2017], and the data flies in the face of the rhetoric that professional athletes rehearsed in revived Black Lives Matter protests over the weekend. Nearly 900 additional blacks were killed in 2016 compared with 2015, bringing the black homicide-victim total to 7,881. Those 7,881 “black bodies,” in the parlance of Ta-Nehisi Coates, are 1,305 more than the number of white victims (which in this case includes most Hispanics) for the same period, though blacks are only 13 percent of the nation’s population. The increase in black homicide deaths last year comes on top of a previous 900-victim increase between 2014 and 2015.
3) Whether or not the kneelers have anything real to protest, they of course have a right to their opinion. They ought to express it in the proper venue. They also have a moral obligation to get the facts straight and form correct opinions, an obligation they are not fulfilling.
4) Just as the kneelers have a right to their opinion, as foolish and destructive as it is, President Trump has a right to his sane and reasonable one: "Fire the sons of bitches!" My thought exactly. His expression is harsh but justified. There is such a thing as righteous anger.
5) The vicious and destructive Left promotes the lie that Trump's call for a firing of the louts is 'racist.' Not at all. If you believe that lie, you are not only stupid, but vile and deserve moral condemnation.
The kneelers are both white and black, and even if they were all black, race doesn't come into it. The kneelers are being condemned for their lack of civility, their disrespect for the USA, it values, its flag, its anthem, its war heroes, and for injecting politics into what ought to be an apolitical event.
There was a jackass on Tucker Carlson's show the other night who absurdly claimed that 'Fire the sons of bitches" is code for 'Fire the niggers." That is beneath refutation, but it does indicate what scum leftists are.
6) There is also the issue of federal, state, and local subsidies of football franchises using tax dollars. And it is not just the misuse of public funds to build stadiums. The NFL gets billions in subsidies from U. S. taxpayers. That ought to anger you even if you are a football fan. Football is of interest only to some people, does not serve the common good, lowers the general level of a culture, and its subsidy to the benefit of some is not part of the legitimate functions of government.
7) The NFL and the scumbags of the Left don't care what you think and will ignore what you have to say, no matter how reasonable. The only effective way to punish this collection of bastards is by defunding them. Boycott the games and don't buy the merchandise. If you really must watch the game of football, watch the college variety.
John Stuart Mill was another philosopher who believed something similar. In 1859 he published his Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, in which he proposed a voting system heavily weighted towards the better educated. “If every ordinary unskilled labourer had one vote … a member of any profession requiring a long, accurate and systematic mental cultivation – a lawyer, a physician or surgeon, a clergyman of any denomination, a literary man, an artist, a public functionary … ought to have six,” he wrote. When stated this baldly, it is surely obvious that the desire to maintain so-called political expertise is actually a thinly disguised attempt to entrench the interests of an educated middle class.
"Surely obvious?" It is not obvious at all. Why should my informed, thoughtful, independent vote be cancelled out by the vote of some know-nothing tribalist who votes according to the dictate of his tribal leader? Not that I quite agree with Grayling.
Fraser and Grayling appear to represent extremes both of which ought to be avoided. I get the impression that there is a certain animosity between the two men.
