Negative thoughts are of the other, but in oneself. They cannot harm what they are of, but they can pollute and disturb what they are in.
A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Arguments for Post-Mortem Survival
Michael Sudduth's new book.
The Fundamental Contradiction of Socialism
Since forcible equalization of wealth will be resisted by those who possess it and feel entitled to their possession of it, a revolutionary vanguard will be needed to impose the equalization. But this vanguard cannot have power equal to the power of those upon whom it imposes its will: the power of the vanguard must far outstrip the power of those to be socialized. So right at the outset of the new socialist order an inequality of power is instituted to bring about an equality of wealth — in contradiction to the socialist demand for equality.
The upshot is that no equality is attained, neither of wealth nor of power. The apparatchiks end up with both, and their subjects end up far worse off than they would have ended up in a free and competitive society. And once the apparatchiks get a taste of the good life with their luxury apartments in Moscow and their dachas on the Black Sea, or their equivalent in other lands, they will not want to give it up. Greed has ever been with us, and it is folly to suppose that it is a fruit of capitalism or that its cure is socialism.
Ever Hear of André Glucksmann?
Paul Berman, The Death of Glucksmann. (HT: Ingvar Odegaard) Excerpts:
André Glucksmann was a great man, and he played a great role in history. I think that, in the world of ideas, no one in modern times has played a larger and more effective role in marshalling the arguments against totalitarianisms of every sort—no one outside of the dissident circles of the old Soviet bloc, that is.
[. . .]
Glucksmann worried about dreamy visions of world peace. Dreamy visions seemed to him a ticket to war. He had a lot to say about the Soviet Union and its own weapons. He argued that, in the face of the Soviet Union, nuclear deterrence and common sense were one and the same. Pessimism was wisdom, in his eyes. He wanted to rally support in the West for the dissidents of the East, which was not the same as staging mass demonstrations against Ronald Reagan.
[. . .]
Intellectually speaking, he did not care if old-fashioned leftists of a certain kind accused him of betrayal. His own rebellion was to reject political ideologies altogether. The leftists denounced him as a right-winger, and sometimes the press picked up the cliché, but this, of course, was never accurate. You have only to read two pages by Glucksmann to appreciate that he is not a man of conservative instincts. He is outraged by injustice; he is moved by the despair of the most desperate; he doesn’t give a damn about hallowed traditions. These traits of his were constitutional. His final book is about Voltaire—I wrote about it for Tablet—and, in that book, he mounted a defense of the Roma, or Gypsies, in France, people so downtrodden they have ended up deformed and ugly, doomed to the pathologies of organized crime. In France, to defend the Roma has not been in fashion. But France’s most principled intellectual was on their side.
It is true that, in the French election of 2007, he came out for the conservative candidate for president. This was Nicolas Sarkozy, and Glucksmann’s endorsement aroused the harshest denunciations of his life. He could not walk in the street without being rebuked by the leftwing passersby. As it happened, he came to the conclusion, after a couple of years, that his endorsement was a mistake, which he regretted.
What’s Next, Book Burning?
"Roughly 150 Black Lives Matter protesters reportedly stormed a library at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, Thursday night to berate students studying there for their supposed racial privilege." Here.
The solution, of course, is to expel the BLM thugs. But that would be a 'racist' thing to do. So is it the leftist view that blacks are thuggish by nature and simply cannot be expected to behave in a civilized manner? So who are the real racists here?
Related: Some Questions About White Privilege
TRIGGER WARNING! The above contains careful thought and big words and will upset and offend the 'safe space' crybullies, the BLM thugs, and the liberal- left scum who apologize for them.
Addendum (11/20): If the secular sphere has a 'sacred' space, that would be the university library, the repository of the best thoughts of humanity. The university is finished if such a space is allowed to be invaded and disrupted by thugs and savages.
Colander Girl
With apologies to Neil Sedaka, Calendar Girl.
A 'pastafarian' idiot was allowed to wear a colander in an official DMV photo in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Bring on the hoodies, the sombreros, the ski masks . . . . Story here.
Does this have anything to do with the decline of the West? Something. It is just another little indication of the abdication of those in positions of authority. A driver's license is an important document. The authorities should not allow its being mocked by a dumbass with a piece of kitchenware on her head. But Massachusetts is lousy with liberals, so what do you expect? A liberal will tolerate anything except common sense and good judgment.
A penne for her thoughts as she strains to find something to believe in. If only she would use her noodle.
On the Moral Permissibility of Patriotism
This entry continues the discussion with Jacques about patriotism begun in Is Patriotism a Good Thing? The topic is murky and difficult and we have been meandering some, but at the moment we are discussing the ground of patriotism's moral permissibility. What makes patriotism morally permissible, assuming that it is? We have been operating with a characterization of patriotism as love of, and loyalty to, one's country. (A characterization needn't be a definition in the strict sense of a specification of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the correct application of the definiendum. Or so say I.)
Here is part of our last exchange:
Hi Bill,
I say it's permissible for the Aryan to be loyal to his country (or nation) because such loyalty doesn't require him to endorse slavery or do anything else especially bad. If I'm loyal to my friend, and it turns out he is a rapist, my loyalty doesn't require me to help him rape people; nor does loyalty require me to help him evade the police. At least, I can't see why loyalty to a person would require this. My suggestion is that the common culture is what enables people to form the kinds of communities that can be objects of patriotism — not that the common culture itself has to be loved, let alone that every cultural norm or commitment must be respected by the patriot. I can even imagine a patriot who doesn't much like his own culture, but loves the members of his community nonetheless, because they're his. Just as someone might recognize that his family has all kinds of bad traits, that other families are better in some objective sense, but might still just love his family in a special way.
[. . .]
Posted by: Jacques | Tuesday, November 17, 2015 at 09:37 PM
Now my surrejoinder:
I take you to be committed to the proposition that a logically sufficient condition of the moral permissibility of a person's being loyal to his family is just that he be a member of it. And similarly for the moral permissibility of loyalty to larger groups up to and including the nation.
But this is entirely too thin a basis for the moral permissibility of loyalty. Why? Because it allows such permissibility even if the group to which one is loyal has no worthwhile features at all. And surely this is absurd.
You might respond that in actuality no group is devoid of worthwhile attributes. You would be right about that, but all I need is the possibility of such a group for my objection to go through.
I think you agree with me that patriotism is not jingoism. In my original post I characterized jingoism as bellicose chauvinism. So imagine some jingoist who trumpets "My country right or wrong." He could invoke your theory in justification of his attitude. He might say, agreeing with you: My country is mine, and its being mine suffices to make it morally permissible for me to prefer my country over every other, and to take its side in any conflict with any other, regardless of the nature of the conflict and regardless of any moral outrages my country has perpetrated on the other. Do you want to give aid and comfort to such jingoism?
Is your loyalty to your rapist friend (or to your Muslim friend whom you have just discovered to have participated in the Paris terrorist attack) logically consistent with turning him into the police? Assume that 'ratting him out' will lead to his execution. Would you remain a loyal friend if you did that? Can a 'rat' be loyal? I would say No, and that you (morally) must turn him in. It is morally obligatory that you turn him in. It is therefore morally impermissible that you abstract away from his attributes and deeds and consider merely the fact that he is your friend.
I take that to show that the moral permissibility of loyalty to a friend cannot be grounded merely in the fact that he is your friend.
Three Profiles in Civil Courage Among University Administrators
There is no coward like a university administrator, to cop a line from Dennis Prager. But that is not to say that there have never been any who have demonstrated civil courage. But we have to go back a long way to the late 60s and early 70s.
With apologies to that unrepentant commie Peter Seeger who wrote it and to all who have sung it:
Where have all the Silbers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the Silbers gone, long time ago
Where have all the Silbers gone, gone into abdication every one
When will they ever learn, when will they e-v-e-r learn?
Excerpt from Fr. Hesburgh's famous letter:
I believe that I now have a clear mandate from this University community to see that: (1) our lines of communication between all segments of the community are kept as open as possible, with all legitimate means of communicating dissent assured, expanded, and protected; (2) civility and rationality are maintained; and (3) violation of another’s rights or obstruction of the life of the University are outlawed as illegitimate means of dissent in this kind of open society.
Now comes my duty of stating, clearly and unequivocally, what happens if. I’ll try to make it as simple as possible to avoid misunderstanding by anyone. Anyone or any group that substitutes force for rational persuasion, be it violent or non-violent, will be given fifteen minutes of meditation to cease and desist. They will be told that they are, by their actions, going counter to the overwhelming conviction of this community as to what is proper here.
If they do not within that time period cease and desist, they will be asked for their identity cards. Those who produce these will be suspended from this community as not understanding what this community is. Those who do not have or will not produce identity cards will be assumed not to be members of the community and will be charged with trespassing and disturbing the peace on private property and treated accordingly by the law.
After notification of suspension, or trespass in the case of non-community members, if there is not within five minutes a movement to cease and desist, students will be notified of expulsion from this community and the law will deal with them as non-students.
There seems to be a current myth that university members are not responsible to the law, and that somehow the law is the enemy, particularly those whom society has constituted to uphold and enforce the law. I would like to insist here that all of us are responsible to the duly constituted laws of this University community and to all of the laws of the land. There is no other guarantee of civilization versus the jungle or mob rule, here or elsewhere.
A Note on Civil Courage
Responding to a commenter who states that one exposes oneself to tremendous risk by speaking out against leftist insanity, Malcolm Pollack writes:
Most bloggers who write from a contrarian position about these things seem to use noms de plume. In fact, I do have another blog I’ve set up for this purpose, but I almost never post anything to it. I prefer to speak under my own name — not because I’m trying to be “brave”, which this really isn’t at all, but just because it feels more honest, and because I have a right to, and because I’m ornery. (Running into that theater in Paris to try to save the people inside, knowing you are overwhelmingly likely to be killed: that’s brave. Writing grumpy blog-posts from the comfort and safety of my home is not.)
I would underscore the First Amendment right to free speech under one's own name without fear of government reprisal. Use it or lose it. (Unfortunately, the disjunction is inclusive: you may use it and still lose it.) But use it responsibly, as Pollack does. The right to express an opinion does not absolve one of the obligation to do one's level best to form correct opinions. Note however that your legal (and moral) right to free speech remains even if you shirk your moral (but not legal) obligation to do your best to form correct opinions.
I would add to Pollack's reasons for writing under his own name the credibility it gives him. You lose credibility when you hide behind a pseudonym. And when you take cover behind 'anonymous,' your credibility takes a further southward plunge, and shows a lack of imagination to boot.
Pollack is right: it doesn't take much civil courage to do what he and I do. I've made mine, and he is on the cusp of making his, if he hasn't already. (You could say we are 'made men.') We don't need jobs and we have no need to curry favor. And our obscurity provides some cover. Obscurity has its advantages, and fame is surely overrated. (Ask John Lennon.)
This is why I do not criticize the young and not-yet-established conservatives who employ pseudonyms. Given the ugly climate wrought by the fascists of the Left it would be highly imprudent to come forth as a conservative if you are seeking employment in academe, but not just there.
What is civil courage? The phrase translates the German Zivilcourage, a word first used by Otto von Bismarck in 1864 to refer to the courage displayed in civilian life as opposed to the military valor displayed on the battlefield. According to Bismarck, there is more of the latter than of the former, an observation that holds true today. (One example: there is no coward like a university administrator, as recent events at the university of Missouri and at Yale once again bear out.) Civil courage itself no doubt antedates by centuries the phrase.
The Perils of the Royal Game
"An Italian man was arrested in Dublin on Sunday and charged with killing his Irish landlord and attempting to eat his heart after an argument about a game of chess." (here)
When the irascibility of the Italian collides with the pugnacity of the Irishman, look out! The above incident adds resonance to a well-known chess title, Chess for Fun and Chess for Blood, by Edward Lasker, not to be confused with Emmanuel Lasker.
Am I retailing stereotypes? Damn straight I am. If you deny that stereotypes have a fundamentum in re, then you are either stupid or a liberal, predicates which may in the end be coextensive.
The Problem of Evil and the Argument from Evil
It is important to distinguish between the problem of evil and the argument from evil. The first is the problem of reconciling the existence of God, as traditionally understood, with the existence of natural and moral evils. As J. L. Mackie points out, this "is essentially a logical problem: it sets the theist the task of clarifying and if possible reconciling the several beliefs which he holds." (The Miracle of Theism, Oxford 1982, p. 150) Mackie goes on to point out that "the problem in this sense signally does not arise for those whose views of the world are markedly different from traditional theism." Thus the theist's problem of evil does not arise for an atheist. It might, however, be the case that some other problem of evil arises for the atheist, say, the problem of reconciling the existence of evil with life's being worth living. But that is a separate matter. I discuss it in A Problem of Evil for Atheists.
The argument from evil, on the other hand, is an attempt to show the nonexistence of God from the fact of evil, where 'fact of evil' is elliptical for 'the existence of natural and moral evils.'
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND THE ARGUMENT FROM EVIL
The main difference between the problem of evil and the argument from evil is that the former is an ad hominem argument whereas the second is not. I am using ad hominem in the way Peter Geach uses it on pp. 26-27 of his Reason and Argument (Basil Blackwell 1976):
This Latin term indicates that these are arguments addressed to a particular man — in fact, the other fellow you are disputing with. You start from something he believes as a premise, and infer a conclusion he won't admit to be true. If you have not been cheating in your reasoning, you will have shown that your opponent's present body of beliefs is inconsistent and it's up to him to modify it somewhere.
As Geach points out, there is nothing fallacious about such an argumentative procedure. If A succeeds in showing B that his doxastic system harbors a contradiction, then not everything that B believes can be true. Now can an atheist prove the nonexistence of God in this way? No he cannot: at the very most he can prove (with the aid of various auxiliary premises that he and his interlocutor both accept) that God exists and Evil exists cannot both be true. But it does not follow therefrom that God exists is not true. For the atheist to transform the ad hominem problem of evil into a non-ad hominem argument from evil, he would have to establish, or at least assert, that evil exists, and not merely that the theist believes that evil exists. To see my point consider the following conditional, where P is the conjunction of auxiliary premises:
C. If evil exists & P, then God does not exist.
The atheist who raises the problem of evil for the theist asserts (C), or rather a proposition of that form. But to assert a conditional is not to assert its antecedent, or its consequent for that matter; it is to assert an entailment connection between the two. Now although it is the case that for each argument there is a corresponding conditional, and vice versa, arguments must not be confused with conditionals.
Transforming (C) into an argument from evil yields:
Evil Exists
P
Therefore
God does not exist.
Clearly, an atheist who gives this argument, or rather an argument of this form, must assert both premises. Doing so, he ceases his ad hominem examination of the consistency of another person's beliefs, beliefs he either rejects or takes no stand on, and 'comes clean' with his own beliefs.
THE ARGUER FROM EVIL NEEDS TO AFFIRM OBJECTIVE EVIL
If the atheist's aim is merely to poke holes in the logical consistency of the theist's belief set, then it doesn't matter whether he thinks of evil as objective or subjective. Indeed, he needn't believe in evil in any sense. He could hold that it is an illusion. But if the atheist's goal is to support his own belief that God does not exist with an argument from evil, then he needs to maintain that evil is objective or objectively real.
Consider all the enslavement of humans by humans that has taken place in the history of the world. Suppose it is agreed that slavery is morally wrong. What makes this true? Define a moral subjectivist as one who agrees that the claim in question is true, but holds that the truth-maker of this moral truth, and of others like it, is an individual's being in a psychological state, say, the state of being repulsed by slavery. For the moral subjectivist, then, sentences like 'Slavery is wrong' are elliptical for sentences like 'Slavery is wrong-for-X,' where X is a person or any being capable of being in psychological states. Furthermore, the moral subjectivist grants that moral claims have truth-makers, indeed objective truth-makers; it is just that these truth-makers involve psychological states that vary from person to person.
Now if our atheist subscribes to a theory of evil along those lines, then, although there will be objective facts of the matter regarding what various individuals feel about the practice or the institution of slavery, there will be no objective fact of the matter regarding the wrongness or moral evil of slavery.
If so, the fact of evil subjectively construed will have no bearing on the existence of God, a fact, if it a fact, that is objective.
Suppose a torturer tortures his victim to death solely for the satisfaction it gives him. And suppose that moral subjectivism is true. Then the torturing, though evil for the tortured, is good for the torturer, with the upshot that the torturing is neither good nor evil objectively. Now if I were on the scene and had the power to stop the torturing, but did not, would my noninterference detract from my moral goodness? Not at all. (The same goes a fortiori for God.) For nothing objectively evil is transpiring: all that is going on is that one person is securing his pleasure at the expense of another's pain. If you insist that something evil is going on, then that shows that you reject moral subjectivism. But if you accept moral subjectivism, then nothing evil is going on; the torturing is evil only in the mind of the victim and in the minds of any others who sympathize with him. If you accept moral subjectivism and continue to insist that the torturing is evil, then you would also have to insist that it is good, since it is good from the perspective of the torturer. But if it is both good and evil, then it is (objectively) neither.
What I am claiming, then, is that the atheist arguer from evil must construe evil objectively. This will result in trouble for the atheist if it can be shown that objective evil cannot exist unless God exists. For then the atheist arguer from evil will end up presupposing the very being whose existence he is out to deny. No doubt this is a big 'if.' But it is worth exploring. The problem for the atheist is to explain how there can be objective good and evil in a Godless universe. I wish him the best of luck with that.
And another line worth exploring is a theistic argument to God from the fact of objective good and evil. No such argument could PROVE the existence of God, but it could very well have the power of cancelling out the argument from evil.
I Wish I Could Stick to Philosophy . . .
. . . and avoid politics. But philosophy needs a 'safe space' within which to flourish. And that space needs to be defended against the two-fold totalitarian threat. There is the threat from radical Islam and the threat from the leftist enablers of and apologists for radical Islam. (If you insist that radical Islam = Islam, I may come to agree with you; in which case 'radical' in 'radical Islam' is a redundant qualifier. But pleonasm is but a peccadillo, if that.)
So if you are a decent human being with an ounce of gratitude for the fruits of Western civilization, then you should do your bit. At a minimum, show a little civil courage and speak out against the Muslim barbarians and the liberal-left scum who enable them while attacking our great institutions such as the universities.
Related articles
From the Gatestone Institute
Alan Dershowitz, Selective Outrage on Campus
Ingrid Carlqvist, Sweden Descends into Anarchy
Judith Bergman, How Can Anyone Be Shocked?
The Problem: Islam or a Construction of Islam?
Meanwhile, Islamic society is whitewashed by pretending the dangers it poses to Western societies are non-Islamic (the Left with talk of "extremism"), or so outside the Islamic norm as to render Islam itself beyond debate, beyond concern (the Right with talk of "Islamism").
Take a recent essay on Paris by Andrew C. McCarthy.
“Allahu Akbar!” cried the jihadists as they killed innocent after French innocent. The commentators told us it means “God is great.” But it doesn’t. It means “Allah is greater!” It is a comparative, a cry of combative aggression: “Our God is mightier than yours.” It is central to a construction of Islam,mainstream in the Middle East, that sees itself at war with the West. It is what animates our enemies. ['Construction' here means 'construal,' 'interpretation.']
We are supposed to believe that "a construction of Islam, mainstream in the Middle East," is what animates our enemies — not Islam.
Is that so?
If this were ten, five, three years ago, I might ask what Koran, sunnas, and hadiths that this "construction of Islam" is based upon? I might break out the poll data that demonstrates strong Muslim affinity for sharia the world over. I might point to a 2013 study of 9,000 Muslims in six European countries which found that 65 percent say that religious rules are more important that the laws of the country in which they live.
But is there a point? Fourteen years after 9/11, Islam is spectrum-wide defended in the public square even as it destroys the public square, while the threat to the public square is usually identitied as coming from Europe's so-called "far right."
But never fear. Memorial light displays are ready anywhere, anytime.
‘Politicization,’ National Debt, and the Paris Attacks
The Republicans have been accused of 'politicizing' the debt crisis. But how can you politicize what is inherently political? The debt in question is the debt of the federal government. Since a government is a political entity, questions concerning federal debts are political questions. As inherently political, such questions cannot be politicized.
If to reify is illicitly to treat as a thing that which is not a thing, then to politicize is illicitly to treat as political what is not political. Since governmental debt questions are 'already' political, they cannot be politicized.
Some commentators are now claiming that the Paris attacks are being 'politicized.' But again, how can something that is inherently political be 'politicized'? An attack by a terrorist entity upon a Western democracy is clearly a political event.
Someone might respond to me as follows. "I see your point, but when people say that an event is being politicized, what they mean is that it is being exploited for partisan advantage. Thus those opposed to Muslim immigration will 'use' the Paris attacks to support their case against such immigration."
I agree that this is what most people mean by 'politicization.' But then what is wrong with it? Nothing as far as I can see.
We must learn the lessons from these terrible events. One lesson of Paris, or rather a confirmation of a lesson that already should have been learned, is that radical Islam (militant Islam, Islamism, pick your term) is a grave threat to civilization. French civilization, and European civilization generally, borders on the decadent; but it is still to be preferred to the fanaticism, tribalism, and backwardness of the Islamic world. That is what we call an understatement.
So I say we need more 'politicization' in the second sense of the term. We need more 'exploitation' of such horrific crimes.
And there is a bridge from Paris to Mizzou.
In a characteristically piss-poor OpEd piece in the NYT entitled Exploiting Paris, Frank Bruni whines, "Using Paris to delegitimize them is puerile." He is referring to the 'safe space' girly-girls and crybullies.
This shows how willfully stupid he and his colleagues are. (Not all of them, of course: Douthat and Brooks are worth reading.) They fail to grasp the connection between the assault on free speech by the Islamists and that by the crybullies and pampered fascists of our elite universities. And they will never own up to the obvious fact that the Left serves to enable radical Islam.
Both are incredibly destructive forces that attack the foundations of genuine civilization. Observe also that the Left is not only destructive, but insanely self-destructive: they think they will use the Islamists for their ends; but they will be the first of the infidels to be slaughtered.
What makes patriotism morally permissible? I take you to be saying that what make it morally permissible is merely the fact of a country's being one's own. If that is what you are saying, I disagree. Suppose I am a native citizen of some Aryan nation the culture of which includes a commitment to enslaving non-Aryans. Surely my loyalty to this country is morally impermissible.
[. . .]
Posted by: BV | Tuesday, November 17, 2015 at 02:43 PM