The Hillary/Bill fortune — generated by pay-for-play influence peddling on the proposition that Bill would return to the White House under Hillary’s aegis and reward friends while punishing enemies — hit a reported $150 million some time ago, a fortune built not on farming, mining, insurance, finance, high-tech, or manufacturing, but on skimming off money. The Clintons are simply grifters whose insider access to government gave them the power to make rich people richer.
[. . .]
The Clintons suffer from greed, as defined by Aristotle: endless acquisition solely for the benefit of self. With their insatiable appetites, they resented the limits that multimillionaire status put on them, boundaries they could bypass only by accumulating ever greater riches. The billion-dollar foundation squared the circle of progressive politicians profiting from the public purse by offering a veneer of “doing good” while offering free luxury travel commensurate with the style of the global rich, by offering sinecures for their loyal but otherwise unemployable cronies, and by spinning off lobbying and speaking fees (the original font of their $100-million-plus personal fortune and the likely reason for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to put all her communications, mercantile included, on a private server safe from government scrutiny). Acquiring money to the extent that money would become superfluous was certainly a Clinton telos — and the subtext of the entire Podesta trove and the disclosures about the Clinton Foundation.
Power and pride were the other catalyst for Clinton criminality. I don’t think progressive politics mattered much to the Clintons, at least compared with what drives the more sincere Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Hillary, like Bill, has no real political beliefs — though she doesn’t hesitate to pursue a mostly opportunistic progressive political agenda. By temperament and background, the Clintons are leftists and will follow a leftist vision, sort of, but one predicated on doing so within the constraints of obtaining and keeping power.
That's right. Hillary is Ambition in a pant-suit. What drives her are lust for power and greed. Her leftism is merely the means to her personal ends. But the main reason she must be stopped is not because of her vices, but because of her destructive leftism which will "fundamentally transform," which is to say, destroy, America as she was founded to be.
Hanson ends with this curious sentence:
And one wonders whether, in fleeting seconds here at the end of things, they still believe that it was all worth what they have become.
Is Hanson predicting Hillary's defeat in the election with the suggestion that they sense her defeat? Or is Hanson alluding to the horror of those who, at the end of their lives, come to realize that they have sold their souls in pursuit of worthless things? Or both? Or neither? Perhaps all he means by "the end of things" is the end of the presidential campaign, the last Hillary-Billary power-grab.
On occasion a good writer may indulge in a bit of obscurity to make the reader think — or, less nobly, to make himself appear profound.
The more I read Publius Decius Mus, the more impressed I become.
Who is this man? Why does he write under a pseudonym? And what does it say about the so-called 'liberal,' 'progressive' scum who have created a climate in which a person cannot speak his mind under his own name seriously and thoughtfully without fear of reprisal?
Of course, I am making a couple of assumptions. One is that Decius is male. The other is that fear of reprisal explains the pseudonym. Although the assumptions are reasonable, I don't know them to be true.
If anyone has any inside dope, shoot me an e-mail. If you tell me not to post it, I won't.
In general, though, Schopenhauer's advice is excellent: If there is something you don't want known, tell absolutely no one.
Scared yet? If not, take a gander at this creepy clown, a Chicago philosophy adjunct whose main claim to fame is his philosophy gossip site. His latest prank is a scurrilous smear of Rightly Considered. He foolishly confuses one of the commenters, Jacques, with one of the contributors.
My opponent says Yes; I return a negative answer. This entry continues the discussion in earlier theological posts, but leaves the simple God out of it, the better to dig down to the bare logical bones of the matter. Theologians do not have proprietary rights in the Inexpressible and the Ineffable.
Argument For
The opponent offers a reductio ad absurdum:
a. It is not the case that everything is an object. (Assumption for reductio) Therefore b. Something is not an object. (From (a) by Quantifier Negation.) c. 'Something' means some thing, some object. Therefore d. Some object is not an object. Contradiction! Therefore e. Everything is an object. (By reductio ad absurdum)
The argument could also be put as follows. An object is anything that comes within the range of a logical quantifier. So someone who denies that everything is an object must be affirming that something is not an object, which is tantamount to saying that some item that comes within the range of a quantifier — 'some' in this instance — does not come with the range of a quantifier. Contradiction. Therefore, everything is an object!
Argument Against
First, two subarguments for premises in my main argument against.
Subargument I
Every declarative sentence contains at least one predicate. No predicate functioning as a predicate is a name. Therefore No declarative sentence consists of names only.
For example, 'Hillary is crooked' cannot be parsed as a concatenation of three names. A sentence is not a list of names. And the unity of a proposition expressed by a sentence is not the unity of a collection of objects. A proposition attracts a truth-value, but no collection of objects attracts a truth-value. The mereological sum Hillary + instantiation + crookedness is neither true nor false. But Hillary is crooked is true.
Adding a further object will not transform the sum into a proposition for well-known Bradleyan reasons.
So what makes the difference between a mereological sum of sub-propositional (but proposition-appropriate) items and a proposition? A noncompound proposition is clearly more than its sub-propositional constituents. The proposition a is F is more than the sum a + F-ness. The former is either true or false; the latter is neither. (Bivalence is assumed.) What does this 'more' consist in? The 'more' is not nothing since it grounds the difference between sum and proposition. The 'more' is evidently not objectifiable or reifiable.
The ancient problem of the unity of the sentence/proposition was already sighted by the 'divine' Plato near the beginning of our tradition. The problem points us beyond the realm of objects.
The paradox, of course, is that I cannot say what I mean, or am 'pointing to.' For if I say: 'Something lies beyond the realm of objects,' then I say in effect: 'Some object is not an object.' But I am getting ahead of myself.
Subargument II
Names refer to objects and predicate expressions refer to concepts. Anything that can be quantified over can in principle be named. Concepts cannot be named. Therefore Concepts cannot be quantified over.
In support of the second premise: 'Some horse is hungry' cannot be true unless there is a particular horse in the domain over which the existential/particular quantifier ranges, and this horse must in principle be nameable as, say, 'Harry' or 'Secretariat.' There needn't be a name for the critter in question; but it must be possible that there be a name.
Now for the main argument contra:
A. There are declarative sentences. B. No declarative sentence consists of names only; predicative expressions are also required. (Conclusion of subargument I) C. Predicates refer to concepts, not objects. D. Concepts cannot be quantified over. (Conclusion of Subargment II) Therefore E. Concepts are real ingredients of propositions but they are not objects. Therefore F. Not everything real is an object among objects.
Summary
The unity of the sentence/proposition is one of several problems that point us beyond what I have been calling the Discursive Framework (DF). These problems, properly understood, show the inadequacy of this framework and refute its claim to unrestricted applicability. The unity of the sentence/proposition needs accounting. (There is also the unity of concrete truth-making facts or states of affairs that cries out for explanation.)
Now we should try to account for sentential/propositional unity as parsimoniously as possible. We shouldn't bring in any queer posits if we can avoid them, a point on which my opponent will insist, and in those very terms. Unfortunately, we cannot eke by with objects alone. To repeat: a sentence is not a list; a proposition is not a collection of objects. So we need to bring in some queer entities,whether Fregean unsaturated concepts, or Strawsonian nonrelational ties, or relational tropes, or some odd-ball Bergmannian nexus, even my very own Unifier. (See A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer, 2002.)
The problem, of course, is that these queer items entangle us in contradictions when we try to state the theories in which they figure. The contradictions give aid and comfort to the Opponent who takes them as justifying his claim that the DF is unrestricted in its applicability.
Frege's paradox of the horse illustrates this very well. Frege notoriously asserted, "The concept horse is not a concept." Why not? Because 'the concept horse' names an object, and no object is a concept. An application of existential/particular generalizattion to Frege's paradoxical sentence yields: Some concepts are not concepts. But that's a contradiction, as is the original sentence.
But Frege was no 'stoner' to use an expression of the Opponent. His contradiction is, shall we say, motivated. Indeed, it is rationally motivated by the noble attempt to understand the nature of the proposition and the nature of logic itself.
Why can't concepts be named? Suppose we try to name the concept involved in 'Hillary is crooked.' The name would have to be something like 'crookedness.' The transformation of the predicate into an abstract substantive loses the verbal chararacter, the characterizing character of the predicate '___ is crooked' functioning as a predicate. If 'crookedness' has a referent, then that referent is an object. But as I said, the proposition Hillary is crooked is not the mereological sum Hillary + crookedness. The former attracts a truth-value; the latter doesn't.
The unity of a proposition, without which it cannot be either true or false, is not the unity of an object or a collection of objects, which is just a higher-order object. This peculiar truth-value attractive unity cannot be accounted for in terms of any object or collection of objects. And yet it is real. So not everything real is an object.
Impasse?
We seem to be in an aporetic bind. We need to bring in some queer elements to solve various problems that are plainly genuine and not pseudo. But the queer items generate paradoxes which, from within the DF, are indistinguishable from bare-faced contradictions. The paradoxes/contradictions arise when we attempt to state the theories in which the queer entities figure. They arise when we attempt to talk about and theorize about the pre-objective or non-objectifiable. I cannot state that no concept is an object, for example, without treating concepts as objects. But doing so drains the concept of its predicative nature. I cannot say what I mean. I can't eff the ineffable.
One move the Opponent can make is to flatly deny that there is the Inexpressible, thereby defying the author of Tractatus 6.522. Das Mystische does not exist, and, not existing, it cannot show itself (sich zeigen).
If the Opponent is a theist, then his god must be a being among beings, a highest being, a most distinguished denizen of the Discursive Framework, but not ipsum esse subsistens.
How might the Opponent deal with the problem of the unity of the sentence/proposition? Perhaps he will say that a noncompound proposition is a partially but not wholly analyzable unity of sense, but that the 'more' that makes the proposition more than the sum of its constituents has no Deep Meaning, it does not 'point' us anywhere, and certainly not into Cloud Cuckoo Land but is merely a curious factum brutum for which there is no accounting, no philosophical explanation.
I don't think this would be a good answer, but this entry is already too long.
At the moment I would happy if I could get the Opponent to make a minimal concession, namely, that I have mounted a strong, though not compelling, rational case for the thesis that reality is not exhausted by objects, and that I have not "destroyed all of logic" in so doing.
But I am undermining the claim of the DF to have universal applicability. This undermining takes place within the DF by reflection of something essential to the DF, namely, propositions. As long as I refrain from making positive assertions about the Transdiscursive, I avoid contradiction.
Some discussion here. My sense of style suggests the avoidance of both.
Example: "When was the last time Democrat, or Republican, tax hikes balanced the budget instead of merely incenting even more government spending?"
Language is fun even in cases in which it doesn't much matter, as here. In politics, however, it matters greatly: he who controls the language controls the debate.
Being hung up on the '60s, there is and will be only one clown for me, Bozo the Clown. After Bozo I had no truck with clowns. I'm a serious man. But I can relate to this segment from the Seinfeld episode, "The Fire." It is one of the funniest in the whole series. But I suppose you had to be there. In the '60s I mean. With Bozo. The Clown. Now some songs featuring clowns.
Roy Orbison, In Dreams. "A candy-colored clown they call the sandman . . . ."
James Darren, Goodbye Cruel World. "I'm off to join the circus, gonna be a broken-hearted clown."
Burl Ives, A Little Bitty Tear. A little bitty tear let me down, spoiled my act as a clown/ I had it made up not make a frown, but a little bitty tear let me down.
The Op-Ed pages of The New York Times are piss-poor to be sure, but Ross Douthat and David Brooks are sometimes worth reading. But the following from Brooks (28 October) is singularly boneheaded although the opening sentence is exactly right:
The very essence of conservatism is the belief that politics is a limited activity, and that the most important realms are prepolitical: conscience, faith, culture, family and community. But recently conservatism has become more the talking arm of the Republican Party. Among social conservatives, for example, faith sometimes seems to come in second behind politics, Scripture behind voting guides. Today, most white evangelicals are willing to put aside the Christian virtues of humility, charity and grace for the sake of a Trump political victory.
Come on, man. Don't be stupid. The Left is out to suppress religious liberty. This didn't start yesterday. You yourself mention conscience, but you must be aware that bakers and florists have been forced by the state to violate their consciences by catering homosexual 'marriage' ceremonies. Is that a legitimate use of state power? And if the wielders of state power can get away with that outrage, where will they stop? Plenty of other examples can be adduced, e.g., the Obama administration's assault on the Little Sisters of the Poor.
The reason evangelicals and other Christians support Trump is that they know what that destructive and deeply mendacious stealth ideologue Hillary will do when she gets power. It is not because they think the Gotham sybarite lives the Christian life, but despite his not living it. They understand that ideas and policies trump character issues especially when Trump's opponent is even worse on the character plane. What's worse: compromising national security, using high public office to enrich oneself, and then endlessly lying about it all, or forcing oneself on a handful of women?
The practice of the Christian virtues and the living of the Christian life require freedom of religion. Our freedoms are under vicious assault by leftist scum like Hillary. This is why Trump garners the support of Christians.
The threat from the Left is very real indeed. See here and read the chilling remarks of Martin Castro of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights. Given Castro's comments the name of the commission counts as Orwellian.
As we go to press, the stunning news has broken that the FBI’s investigation is being reopened. It appears, based on early reports, that in the course of examining communications devices in a separate “sexting” investigation of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, the bureau stumbled on relevant e-mails — no doubt connected to Huma Abedin, Mr. Weiner’s wife and, more significantly, Mrs. Clinton’s closest confidant. According to the New York Times, the FBI has seized at least one electronic device belonging to Ms. Abedin as well. New e-mails, never before reviewed by the FBI, have been recovered.
Team Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion. But facts don’t matter because facts never matter in politics. What matters is that Clinton’s framing of Trump provides moral cover for any bullying behavior online or in person. No one can be a bad person for opposing Hitler, right?
Some Trump supporters online have suggested that people who intend to vote for Trump should wear their Trump hats on election day. That is a dangerous idea, and I strongly discourage it. There would be riots in the streets because we already know the bullies would attack. But on election day, inviting those attacks is an extra-dangerous idea. Violence is bad on any day, but on election day, Republicans are far more likely to unholster in an effort to protect their voting rights. Things will get wet fast.
