Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘End’ Songs

Skeeter Davis, The End of the World

Traveling Wilburys, End of the Line

Floyd Cramer, Last Date. Skeeter Davis' version.

Bob Dylan, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.  Dont' like Dylan's voice? Try Joan Baez's angel-throated version.

Roy Orbison, It's Over

Beatles, The End

George Harrison, All Things Must Pass

Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet (but It's Getting There). 

The Doors, The End.  "The West is the best."

Bonus tracks:

Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.  This'll grow on you if you give it a chance.

This one goes out to General Petraeus:  Bob Seger, The Fire Down Below.  In its grip, they'll throw it all away.

Stanislav Sousedik’s “Towards a Thomistic Theory of Predication”

Enough of politics, back to some hard-core technical philosophy.  If nothing else, the latter offers exquisite escapist pleasures not unlike those of chess. Of course I don't believe that technical philosophy is escapist; my point is a conditional one: if it is, its pleasures suffice to justify it as a form of recuperation from  this all-too-oppressive world of 'reality.'  It's what I call a 'fall-back position.'

I have been commissioned to review the collection of which the above-captioned article is a part.  The collection is entitled Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag 2012) and includes contributions by Peter van Inwagen, Michael Loux, E. J. Lowe, and several others.  My review article will address such topics as predication, truth-makers, bare particulars, and the advantages and liabilities of constituent ontology.  I plan a series of posts in which I dig deep into some of the articles in this impressive collection.

Stanislav Sousedik argues for an "identity theory of predication" according to which a predicative sentence such as 'Peter is a man' expresses an identity of some sort between the referent of the subject 'Peter' and the referent of the predicate 'man.'  Now to someone schooled in modern predicate logic (MPL) such an identity  theory will appear wrongheaded from the outset.  For we learned at Uncle Gottlob's knee to distinguish between the 'is' of identity ('Peter is Peter') and the 'is' of predication ('Peter is a man').

But let's give the Thomist theory a chance.  Sousedik, who is well aware of Frege's distinction, presents an argument for the identity in some sense of subject and predicate.  He begins by making the point that in the declarative 'Peter is a man' and the vocative 'Peter, come here!' the individual spoken about is (or can be) the same as the individual addressed.  But common terms such as 'man' can also be used to address a person.  Instead of saying,  'Peter, come here!' one can say 'Man, come here!'  And so we get an argument that I will put as follows:

1. Both 'Peter' and 'man' can be used to refer to the same individual. Therefore

2. A common term can be used to refer to an individual.  But

3. Common terms also refer to traits of individuals.  Therefore

4. The traits must be identical in some sense to the individuals.  E.g., the referent of 'Peter' must be in some sense identical to the referent of 'man.'

But in what sense are they identical?  Where Frege distinguishes between predication and identity, Sousedik distinguishes between weak and strong identity. 'Peter is Peter' expresses strong identity while 'Peter is a man' expresses weak identity.  "Strong identity is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive, weak identity has none of these formal properties." (254)  It thus appears that strong identity is the same as what modern analytic philosophers call (numerical) identity.  It is clear that 'Peter is a man' cannot be taken to express strong identity. But what is weak identity?

S. is a constituent ontologist.  He holds that ordinary substances such as Peter have what he calls "metaphysical parts."  Whereas Peter's left leg is a physical part of him, his traits are metaphysical parts of him.  Thus the referents of the common terms 'man,' 'animal,' living thing,' etc. are all metaphysical parts of Peter.  Clearly, these are different traits of Peter.  But are they really distinct in Peter?  S. says that they are not: they are really identical in Peter and only "virtually distinct" in him.  The phrase is defined as follows.

(Def. 1)  Between x, y there is a virtual  distinction iff (i) x, y are really identical; (ii) x can become an object of some cognitive act Φ without y being the object  of the same act Φ . . . . (251)

For example, humanity and animality in Peter are really identical but virtually distinct in that humanity can be the intentional object of a cognitive act without animality being the object of the same act.  I can focus my mental glance so to speak on Peter's humanity while leaving out of consideration his animality even though he is essentially both a man and an animal and even though animality is included within humanity. 

The idea, then, is that Peter has metaphysical parts (MPs) and that these items are really identical in Peter but virtually distinct, where the virtual distinctness of any two MPs is tied to the possibility of one of them being the object of a cognitive act without the other being the object of the same act.

Is S. suggesting that virtual distinctness is wholly mind generated?   I don't think so.  For he speaks of a potential distinction of MPs in concrete reality, a distinction that becomes actual when the understanding grasps them as distinct.  (253) And so I take the possibility mentioned in clause (ii) of the above definition to be grounded not only in the mind's power to objectify and abstract but also in a real potentiality in the MPs in substances like Peter.

One might be tempted to think of weak identity as a part-whole relation.  Thus one might be tempted to say that 'Peter' refers to Peter and 'man' to a property taken in the abstract that is predicable not only of Peter but of other human beings as well.  'Peter is a man' would then say that this abstract property is a metaphysical part of Peter.  But this is not Sousedik's or any Thomist's view.  For S. is committed to the idea that "Every empirical individual and every part or trait of it is particular." (251)  It follows that no metaphysical part of any concrete individual is a universal.  Hence no MP is an abstract property.  So weak identity is not a part-whole relation.

What is it then?

First of all, weak identity is a relation that connects a concrete individual such as Peter to a property taken abstractly.  But in what sense is Peter identical to humanity taken abstractly?   In this sense:  the humanity-in-Peter and the humanity-in-the-mind have a common constituent, namely, humanity taken absolutely as common nature or natura absoluta or natura secundum se.  (254)  What makes weak identity identity is the common constituent shared by the really existing humanity in Peter and the intentionally existing  humanity in the mind of a person who judges that Peter is human.

So if we ask in what sense the referent of 'Peter' is identical to the referent of 'man,' the answer is that they are identical in virtue of the fact that Peter has a proper metaphysical part that shares a constituent with the objective concept referred to by 'man.'  Sousedik calls this common constituent the "absolute subject."  In our example, it is human nature taken absolutely in abstraction from its real existence in Peter and from its merely intentional existence in the mind.

Critical Observations

I am deeply sympathetic to Sousedik's constituent-ontological approach, his view that existence is a first-level 'property,' and the related view that there are modes of existence. (253)  But one of the difficulties I  have with S.'s  identity theory of predication is that it relies on common natures, and I find it difficult to make sense of them as I already spelled out in a previous post.    Common natures are neither one nor many, neither universal nor particular.  Humanity is many in things but one in the mind.  Hence taken absolutely it is neither one nor many.  It is this absolute feature that allows it be the common constituent in humanity-in-Peter and humanity-in-the-mind.  And as we just saw, without this common constituent there can be no talk of an identity between Peter and humanity.  The (weak) identity 'rides on' the common constituent, the natura absoluta.  Likewise, humanity is particular in particular human beings but universal in the mind (and only in the mind).  Hence taken absolutely it is neither particular nor universal. 

But it also follows that the common nature is, in itself and taken absolutely, neither really existent nor intentionally existent.  It enjoys neither esse naturale (esse reale) nor esse intentionale.  Consequently it has no being (existence) at all. This is not to say that it is nonexistent.  It is to say that it is jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein to borrow a phrase from Alexius von Meinong, "beyond being and nonbeing." 

The difficulty is to understand how there could be a plurality of distinct items that are neither universal nor particular, neither one nor many, neither existent nor nonexistent.  Note that there has to be a plurality of them: humanity taken absolutely is distinct from animality taken absolutely, etc.  And what is the nature of this distinctness?  It cannot be mind-generated.  This is because common natures are logically and ontologically prior to mind and matter as that which mediates between them. They are not virtually distinct.  Are they then really distinct?  That can't be right either since they lack esse reale.

And how can these common or absolute natures fail to be, each of them, one, as opposed to neither one nor many?  The theory posits a plurality of items distinct among themselves.  But if each is an item, then each is one.  An item that is neither one nor many is no item at all.

There is also this consideration.  Why are common natures more acceptable than really existent universals as constituents of ordinary particulars such as Peter?    The Thomists allow universals only if they have merely intentional existence, existence 'in' or rather for a mind.  "Intentional existence belongs to entities which exist only in dependence upon the fact that they are objects of our understanding." (253)  They insist that, as S. puts it,  "Every empirical individual and every part or trait of it is particular." (251)  S. calls the latter an observation, but it is not really a datum, but a bit of theory.  It is a datum that 'man' is predicable of many different individuals.  And it is a datum that Peter is the subject of plenty of essential predicates other than 'man.'  But it is not a clear datum that Peter is particular 'all the way through.'  That smacks of a theory or a proto-theory, not that it is not eminently reasonable.

One might 'assay' (to use G. Bergmann's term) an ordinary particular as a complex consisting of a thin or 'bare'  particular instantiating universals.  This has its own difficulties, of course, but why should a theory that posits common natures be preferrable to one that doesn't but posits really existent universals instead?  Either way problems will arise.

The main problem in a nutshell is that it is incoherent to maintain that some items are such that they have no being whatsoever.  'Some items are such that they have no being whatsoever' is not a formal-logical contradiction, pace van Inwagen, but it is incoherent nonetheless.  Or so it seems to me. 

Long-Time MavPhil Commenter, Robert V. Koepp, Passes Away at 60

I was saddened to hear from Malcolm Pollack just now that Bob Koepp, who commented extensively at both our sites, died on 29 February of this year.  Ever the gentleman, Bob contributed to the discussions at the old Powerblogs site and here at the Typepad incarnation of MavPhil.  He had an M. A. in philosophy and studied under Wilfrid Sellars.  He was such a mild-mannered  man that I sometimes wondered if my more acerbic asseverations offended him.  His comments are here.  Bob will be remembered.  My condolences to his family and friends.  As the obituary below says,  for Bob, "the questions mattered more than the answers."  He exemplified the philosophical spirit.

On a lighter note, I once made mention of Maynard G. Krebs, the Bob Denver beatnik character from the 1959-1963 sitcom, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.  Koepp remarked  that back then he thought Krebs the quintessence of cool. 


Koepp, BobKoepp, Robert V. Our beloved Bob, age 60, of St. Paul, passed away on February 29. He was diagnosed just three months earlier with lung cancer, which he faced with admirable strength, caring above all for the comfort of those he loved. He is mourned by mother Helen (Rohe) Koepp of Hutchinson, siblings Reinhard of Tarpon Springs, FL; Ken (Jan) of Hot Springs Village, AR; Karen of Minneapolis; Marla (Bob) Lichtsinn of Fountain Valley, CA; Vern (Cindy) of Rush City; Irene (Dave) Schwartz of Litchfield; Marty of Minneapolis; Aaron (Laury) of Fort Collins, CO; Esther of Eagan; and Joanne (Randy) Fischer of Wausau, WI, as well as other dear relatives and friends. He was predeceased by father Reinhard W. Koepp and grandparents Herman and Augusta Koepp and Walter and Anna Rohe.

Bob, whose abiding wish was for racial equality, believed deeply in loving God and your neighbor. He grew up in Brownton, was a lifelong student of philosophy of science, ethics and bioethics (Gustavus, U Pitt, U of M), and coordinated oncology research at Children's Hospital, Minneapolis. Bob also loved nature and fishing, helping family members with jobs and projects of all kinds, especially woodworking, and music, especially Bach. He was astoundingly bright, and for him, in life or in energetic dialogue, the questions mattered more than the answers. He was selfless, generous and exemplary in so many ways, and he will be dearly missed. A memorial gathering is being planned. Remember him by supporting racial equality or nature organizations, or by doing a random act of kindness.

                                                Published in Star Tribune on March 4, 2012

A Reader Wants an Introduction to Philosophy

M. T. writes,

I've followed your blog for a few months now.  I feel compelled to say thank you for the content of your posts.  They are usually trenchant, always interesting, and occasionally they lead me to delve into topics and categories that I have never explored previously.

Some background: I'm an Arabic linguist for the Navy.  I currently live in Georgia, but was born and reared in Florida.  I pretty much agree with everything you've said on political topics.

A question for you: I didn't study philosophy, but am extremely well read in history and politics (particularly ancient history).  You obviously were a academician, but if I wanted to get grounded in the current state of philosophy, where do I start?  The field is so vast, so opaque and confusing.  Am I better off just reading Plato and perhaps William James?

Again, thank you for a wonderful blog.  I always try to learn something new every day, and your writing makes it easier for me to accomplish that task.

I of course appreciate the kind words, and the regular arrival of letters like this in my mail box is emolument aplenty for my pro bono efforts.

First of all, I wouldn't worry too much about the current state of philosophy because much that is current is ephemeral and even foolish.  I would concern myself more with an introduction to the perennial problems of philosophy.  To understand the sometimes strange things that philosophers say one  must first understand the questions that perplexed them and the problems they were trying to solve.  With that in mind I recommend two short well-written books, the first from 1912 and the second from 1987:  Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy; Thomas Nagel, What Does It All Mean?  I commend the following advice to you from p. 4 of Nagel's book:

The center of philosophy lies in certain questions which the reflective human mind finds naturally puzzling, and the best way to begin the study of philosophy is to think about them directly.  Once you've done that, you are in a better position to apprecdiate the work of others who have tried to solve the same problems.

Sage advice.  There is no point in studying philosophy unless there are some questions that 'bug' you and to which you want and need answers. Think about them directly, and try to answer them for yourself.  Then test your answers against the answers more experienced thinkers have proposed.

For example, suppose you are interested in the question of the freedom of the will.  Formulated as a problem, it is the problem of reconciling the freedom of the will presupposed by ascriptions of moral responsibility with the apparent determinism of the natural world of which the agent is a part.  So you think about it. You don't get very far on your own, so you seek help.  You turn to Schopenhauer's magisterial On the Freedom of the Will for orientation.  You get that and more: data, distinctions, the history of the problem and the various solutions, and Schopenhauer's own solution.  And so it goes.

The ComBox is open in case anyone wants to suggest titles for my reader. 

Kevin Kim on the Mourning of the Morning After

Kevin Kim has been following me since late 2003 before I was a proper blogger commencing 4 May 2004 and only a mere slogger (slow blogger without the proper software: I'd upload batches of short posts to a website that I have long since taken down).

In his Conservatives Mourn, Kevin links to me, Malcolm Pollack, and Bill Keezer, and then asks:

Come on, gents– surely you saw this coming?

Well, I didn't for a second think that there would be a landslide in favor of Romney, and I was puzzled by the cocksure pronunciamentos of Dick Morris and others who made up for their lack of crystal balls by displaying their brass balls.  But no, I didn't think the Obama win was inevitable, especially after his miserable showing in the first debate.  I thought Romney had a good chance of winning given all the objective considerations that condemn Obama, the litany of which I will not again recite.  If I was naive, it was because I foolishly underestimated the foolishness of the electorate and how it has been dumbed-down and stupefied by the flim-flam man and his empty rhetoric and outright lies and promises of all sorts of goodies that he is going to get the rich bastards to pay for.

Bill Keezer, whom I have met in the flesh a couple of times and who truly deserves (as does Pollack) the epithet 'gentleman,' speaks in his post of civil war:

If you go back through my blogs for the past few months, you will see the prediction of a coming civil war.  The differences in the red vs. the blue states is now so fundamental, that I think civil war is quite possible.  I also think the red states will win, hands down.  They still have the values that make for effective soldiering.   Imagine street gangs against disciplined, seasoned fighters.  There will be no contest, and if the red states take mercy on the blue, woe to both.  It is time for justice.  (A concern of the last couple of blog posts, which is not moot.)

God help us if Bill is right and the present war of words and votes ramps up into a shooting war. Leftists need to be careful.  If push comes to shove, and shove to shoot, the Red Staters will clean your clock.    After all, they have the guns.

How can we avoid tearing ourselves apart?  My recommendation is a return to federalism.  But of course the Left, which is totalitarian from the ground up, won't allow that.  And so we may be in for some 'excitement.'

Addenda:

1. Obama wins, gun stocks soar.

2. Ed Feser joins the mourning and adds some recrimination in his meaty post, Chief Justice Ockham.  Be sure to follow the internal "Razor Boy" link.

3. Malcolm Pollack points us to a couple posts of his more substantial than the one linked to above. Here and here. 

Bread, Circuses, and Decline

This from an English reader commenting on my owl of Minerva post:

America's fondness for bread and circuses is by no means singular and all may be well for a while, as Theodore Dalrymple observed, at least as long as the bread holds out. Yet the twilight quickly becomes darkness and after the owl of Minerva takes off, what then? Some sort of apocalypse seems overdue – but I rather feebly hope not in my lifetime.

Philosophers, for the time being, have their consolations; but when the multitude howls for 'bread' and at the same time burns down the bakeries, for how long will gentlemen and scholars be permitted the peace and quiet in which to enjoy their books, music, and speculations? 

I'm glad that I'm on my way out rather than on my way in because the decline of American civilization will affect the whole world.

Best Wishes from one depressed. . . .

A genuine apocalypse, that is, a revelation ab extra of a Meaning hitherto hidden and inaccessible to us, might be a good thing.  Nur ein Gott kann uns retten, said Martin Heidegger in his Spiegel interview near the end of his life.  But I fear all we will get is a descent into brutality and chaos.  There is, I agree, consolation for the old: I am very happy to be 62 rather than 26.  One can hope to be dead before it all comes apart.  Fortunately or unfortunately, I am in the habit of taking care of myself and could be facing another 25 years entangled in the mortal coil.  When barbarism descends this will be no country for old men. 

In the earlier entry I wasn't reflecting on the possibility of the utter collapse of the U.S. but on the more likely possibility of decline to the level of a European welfare state whose citizens come increasingly to resemble Nietzsche's Last Men.

I fully agree that Minervic flights and the consolations of philosophy cannot be enjoyed when the barbarians are at the gates of one's stoa.  The owl of Minerva is a tough old bird, but no phoenix capable of  rising from its ashes.

I myself have argued more than once in these pages that conservatives, especially those of them given to contemplative pursuits,  need to make their peace with activism in order to secure and defend the spaces of their quietism.  

Libertarians are the Ralph Naders of the Conservative Side

I just heard Dennis Prager say that on his radio show.  Exactly right.  The point is to do good, not feel good about yourself by making some meaningless, ineffectual, narcissistic, self-congratulatory, adolescent 'statement.'  It is a futile gesture to 'stand on principle' and 'vote your conscience' when the candidate representing your principles is unelectable.  Politics is not about theoretical purity but about practical efficacy.

I would add to Prager's thought that, even if libertarian ideas were better than conservative ideas — and they are not inasmuch as what is good in libertarianism is already included in conservatism – it would remain foolish to vote for libertarians.  It would be a case of letting the better and the best become the enemy of the good.  If you vote for the unelectable candidate with better ideas  over the electable candidate with good ideas, then you have done something manifestly foolish.

There is another side to this argument, however.  The following is from Andrew P. Napolitano, a man I respect:

Can one morally vote for the lesser of two evils? In a word, no. A basic  principle of Judeo-Christian teaching and of the natural law to which the  country was married by the Declaration of Independence is that one may not  knowingly do evil that good may come of it. So, what should a libertarian  do?

If you recognize as I do that the Bush and Obama years have been horrendous  for personal freedom, for the soundness of money and for fidelity to the  Constitution, you can vote for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. He is on the  ballot in 48 states. He is a principled libertarian on civil liberties, on  money, on war and on fidelity to the Constitution. But he is not going to be  elected.

So, is a vote for Johnson or no vote at all wasted? I reject the idea that a  principled vote is wasted. Your vote is yours, and so long as your vote is  consistent with your conscience, it is impossible to waste your vote.

On the other hand, even a small step toward the free market and away from the  Obama years of central economic planning would be at least a small improvement  for every American’s freedom. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single  step. That is Romney’s best argument. I suspect it will carry the day next  Tuesday.

I am afraid the good judge does not understand the phrase 'lesser of two evils' in this context.  It does not imply that the candidates are evil, but that, while both are imperfect, the one is better than the other.  Both Romney and Obama are highly imperfect.  In an ideal world, the choice would not be between them. (Indeed, in an ideal world there would be no need for government at all, and no need to choose any candidates for any offices.)  But one candidate (Romney) is less imperfect than the other.  In this sense, Romney is the lesser of two evils, i.e., the least imperfect of two imperfect candidates. 

But this sense is consistent with the principle that one may not knowingly do evil that good come of it.

Napolitano claims that it is impossible to waste one's vote as long as one votes one's conscience.  But this ignores the point I have repeatedly made, namely, that voting and politics generally is a practical business: it is about accomplishing something concrete in the world as it actually is.  It is about doing good, not feeling good about yourself.  Once that is understood, it is crystal clear that to vote for an unelectable candidate is to waste one's vote.

This is especially obvious when Republicans lose to Democrats because Libertarians voted for unelectable Libertarians instead of electable Republicans.  There were a couple of cases like that in yesterday's election.  Such Libertarians not only wasted their votes, they positively made things worse.

The Owl of Minerva Spreads its Wings at Dusk

Obama won, conservatism lost, and a tipping point has been reached in America's decline. Our descent into twilight and beyond is probably now irreversible.  The economy is bad, the opposition fought hard and well, and the incompetent leftist won anyway.  Why? The Left promises panem and the culture's circenses have kept the masses distracted from higher concerns and real thought.  That's the answer in a sentence.

Should any of this trouble the philosopher? Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous phrase that comes down to us from Plato's Republic (486a).  The rise and fall of great nations is just more grist for the philosopher's mill.  His true homeland is nothing so paltry as a particular nation, even one as exceptional as the USA, and his fate as a truth-seeker cannot be tied to its fate.  Like the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Athens is not bound to a geographical location.

National decline is not just grist for the philosopher's mill, however, it is also perhaps a condition of understanding as Hegel suggests in the penultimate paragraph of the preface to  The Philosophy of Right:

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old.  By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk.

Daughter of Jupiter, Minerva in the mythology of the Greeks is the goddess of wisdom.  And the nocturnal owl is one of its ancient symbols.  The meaning of the Hegelian trope is that understanding, insight, wisdom  arise when the object to be understood has played itself out, when it has actualized and thus exhausted its potentialities, and now faces only decline.

When a shape of life has grown old, philosophy paints its grey on grey.  The allusion is to Goethe's Faust wherein Mephisto says

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Grey, dear friend, is all theory
And green the golden tree of life.

Philosophy is grey, a "bloodless ballet of categories" (F. H. Bradley) and its object is grey — no longer green and full of life.  And so philosophy paints its grey concepts on the grey object, in this case America on the wane.   The object must be either dead or moribund before it can be fully understood.  Hegel in his famous saying re-animates and gives a new meaning to the Platonic "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

In these waning days of a great republic, the owl of Minerva takes flight.  What we lose in vitality we gain in wisdom.

The consolations of philosophy are many.

My Campaign Sign

IMG_0877
Subtle, eh?  I thought of placing two such chairs side by side, the second to signify the vacuity of the benighted and mendacious Joe Biden, but then I thought that might confuse people.

Did you vote?  Of course, I don't want any of you liberal knuckleheads to vote thereby canceling out the thoughtful votes of conservatives, but I do defend your right to vote.

Is voting a civic duty?  Think of it this way.  You have benefited all your life from the rule of law and from living and flourishing in a relatively well-ordered society.  And you don't feel any obligation to do your bit to preserve and protect that order?

Does it matter whether you vote?  Well, does it matter who the sheriff of your county is, or which judges are retained? 

In the Event of an Obama Victory

How can Dick Morris and other conservative pundits be so cocksure that Romney will win big?  Do they have crystal balls?  It's more a case of brass balls.  Do they think that by confidently predicting a Romney landslide they will energize the conservative base?  Why wouldn't it have the opposite effect?  ("If Romney's going to win in a landslide, there's no need for me to head for the polls.") There is something I am not understanding here.

I am preparing for the disaster of an Obama victory.  Lawrence Auster speaks of the "horror" of such a thing:

Why horror? To repeat: For America to re-elect a president who has presided over an economic and fiscal disaster and who has made it crystal clear that he intends to keep following the same policies in his second term, would mean that America has become in the full sense of the word a parasitical leftist country. Meaning, a country which believes, as Obama believes, that the conditions making possible the production of all the goods of society can be ignored, because somehow the goods of society will always be there, like rocks and stars, no matter how much we condemn and punish those who provide them, and therefore all we need to do is appropriate and distribute the goods—more and more and more of them—to the unfortunate and the oppressed, with the unfortunate and oppressed including such as groups as woman who lack totally free contraceptives; blacks who have been deprived by white racism of an education that will turn them into the intellectual and economic equals of whites; and blacks who have been deprived by America’s racist geography of full access to the white tax base.

Although I consider Auster an extremist in some ways, the above statement eloquently expresses the fundamental  and deeply pernicious ignorance of human nature and of economics at the root of Obama's vision.

If Obama wins, what then?  We soldier on, of course.  We continue the fight but without falling into the totalitarian error of leftists for whom politics is everything.  But of course this is why it is so difficult to defeat them.  They seek and find their very meaning in the political sphere.  Politics is their religion.  Curiously, it's a religion without any morality: they will do anything to win.  This puts us at  a two-fold disadvantage: we don't bring the full measure of our energy and commitment to the fight, and we have moral scruples.    I call it The Conservative Disadvantage.

Addendum:  I just found the following at Keith Burgess-Jackson's weblog:

Why do almost all Romney supporters think he will win, and why do almost all
Obama supporters think he will win? It would be refreshing, from time
to time, to hear a representative of possibility 2 or possibility 4. I, for
example, want Romney to win, but I believe that Obama has a good chance of
winning. I won't go as far as to say that Obama will win, since I have
no basis for such a decisive judgment, but I won't be surprised if he does.

Is this evidence that great minds think alike?

Vote Libertarian, Waste a Vote

Did you perchance vote for Gary Johnson for president? Then you wasted your vote on an unelectable candidate and helped Barack Obama's re-election.

The truth of a view does not depend on its popularity.  But the political implementation of a view does depend on the electability of the candidate or candidates who represent it.  If politics were merely theoretical, merely an exercise in determining how a well-ordered state should be structured, then implementation would not matter at all.  But politics is practical, not theoretical: it aims at action that implements the view deemed best.  Someone who votes for an unelectable candidate demonstrates by so doing that he does not understand the nature of politics.

Even if Johnson is electable in the sense of (i) satisfying the formal requirements for being president, and (ii) being worthy of the office, he is not electable in the specific sense here in play, namely, possessing a practical chance of winning.

When one votes for any unelectable candidate one merely squanders one's vote.  If you are a libertarian, then your views are closer to those of Romney than to those of Obama.  By voting for the unelectable Johnson, you help someone win whose views are diametrically opposed to your own instead of helping one whose views are partially consonant with your own.  Now that is stupid, is it not?  It shows a lack of practical sense.

If you won't vote for an candidate that does not perfectly represent your views, then either

A. you are a utopian who fails to understand that politics is about action, not theory, in the world as it is, as opposed to some merely imagined world; or

B. you falsely think there is no difference between the major party candidates.

The same reasoning applies to those who vote for Jill Stein.  You are wasting your vote on an unelectable candidate.  You are making a statement all right, but nobody cares and it won't matter.  But I hope you lefties do vote for her: you will be helping Obama lose.

Ten Reasons Not to Vote Democrat

The Dems are the left-wing party in the U. S. Almost all Dems nowadays are leftists or liberals — there is no practical difference at present.  It's not 1960 any more and you geezers out there with your sentimental attachment to the 'Democrat' label need to wise up.  So any reason to oppose liberals is a reason to oppose Dems.

1. Liberals lack common sense. As witness their lunatic stand on photo ID at polling places.  I have written several posts on this topic.  Here is one.

2. Liberals play the race card every chance they get.  Evidence here, but see also my Race and Leftism categories for plenty more.

3. Liberals are anti-liberty.  As witness Obamacare's  individual mandate, to give just one example.

4. Liberals have a casual attitude toward crime.  See Britain and the Barbarians and other posts in the Crime and Punishment Category.  Liberals are opposed to  capital punishment even though this is exactly what justice demands in certain cases.  With their unhealthy love of underdogs as underdogs, liberals will champion the scum of the earth with shoddy arguments while ignoring the concerns of decent citizens.

5. Liberals smear their opponents and then issue hypocritical calls for 'civility.'  What passes for argument among liberals is the hurling of SIXHRB epithets: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, bigoted. (acronym via Dennis Prager)  For example, if you oppose illegal immigration then you are a xenophobe; if you carefully argue against Obamacare then you a racist; if you give reasons why marriage is between a man a woman you are dismissed as a bigot.  If you oppose the slaughter of innocent human beings which is abortion you are waging war against women and interfering with their 'health' and 'reproductive rights.'   If you point out the very real threat of radical Islam, then you are dismissed as an  'Islamaphobe' with a mental illness.

6. Liberals are weak on national defense and naive about foreign policy.

7. Liberals are fiscally irresponsible.  Unlike his predecessor, Obama made no attempt to put the existing entitlements on a sound fiscal basis.  Instead, he started up a new one!

8. Liberals are anti-religion. 

9. Liberals have  no proper appreciation for the Second Amendment.

10. Liberals have no proper appreciation of the Tenth Amendment and the notion of federalism.

Addendum (6 Nov):  Tony H. writes to say that I forgot one:

11. Liberals are economic illiterates.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575282190930932412.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

True.  Of course, I wasn't trying to give a complete list of reasons to oppose Obama and his gang.  There are a lot more reasons than ten.  How about this one:

12. Liberals are linguistic hijackers.  They routinely distort the English language for their ideological purposes.  This is actually worse than lying.  To lie successfully one must use language properly, in accordance with the going conventions.  Misuse of language  is a subversion of the rules of the communicative game.  There are examples in my Language Matters category.

One particularly egregious example is the use of 'voter suppression' to refer to common-sense demands for proper ID procedures at polling places.  This shows that the scumbags of the Left will do anything to win. 

For even more reasons, see the Constructive Curmudgeon who has worked himself into a fine, and justified, lather over Obama's abominations.  See here, for example.

Subsidiarity and the Left’s Assault on Civil Society

You say you're Catholic and you are going to vote for Obama? Are you stupid?  Apart from the fact that the Dems are the abortion party, the Obama administration's attack on civil society is at odds with Catholic social teaching which rests on the principle of subsidiarity.  David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of
subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more
complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler
organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more
decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited
government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for
centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

The principle of subsidiarity strikes a reasonable balance between statism and collectivism as represented by the manifest drift of the Obama administration, on the one hand,  and the libertarianism of those who would take privatization to an extreme, on the other.  By the way, one of the many mistakes Rick Santorum made in his campaign was to attack all government-sponsored education.  He was right to question whether the Federal government has any legitimate role to play in education, but to question the role of state and local government in education was a foolish extremism that befits a libertarian, not a conservative.

Subsidiarity also fits well with federalism, a return to which is a prime desideratum and one more reason not to vote for Obama.  'Federalism' is another one of those words that does not wear its meaning on its sleeve, and is likely to mislead.  Federalism is not the view that all powers should be vested in the Federal or central government; it is the principle enshrined in the 10th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Whether or not you are Catholic, if you accept the principle of subsidiarity, then you have yet another reason to oppose Obama and the Left.  The argument is this:

1. The Left encroaches upon civil society, weakening it and limiting it, and correspondingly expanding the power and the reach of the state.  (For example, the closure of Catholic Charities in Illinois because of an Obama administration adoption rule.)

2. Subsidiarity helps maintain civil society as a buffer zone and intermediate sector between the purely private (the individual and the familial) and the state.

Therefore

3. If you value the autonomy and robustness of civil society, then you ought to oppose Obama and the Left.

The truth of the second premise is self-evident.  If you wonder whether the Left does in fact encroach upon civil society, then see my post Obama's Assault on the Institutions of Civil Society.

Addendum:  This just over the transom from an old sparring partner of mine from the early days of the blogosphere, Kevin Kim:

Thank you for your recent post on the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which I had never heard of despite years of dealing with Catholics.  I had a good chuckle when I read this:

"This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization."

And this from a gigantic, thoroughly hierarchized organization!

But what really burbled to the surface of my mind was the thought that, for a supposedly Catholic principle, subsidiarity sounds remarkably Protestant.  Heh.

But isn't it obvious what the Catholic response would be?  The church is in the business of mediating salvation.   What the church does cannot be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization.  Nulla salus extra ecclesiam, where the church in question is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church founded by Christ himself on St. Peter as upon a rock and presided over by the Holy Spirit.  It might also be argued that the principle of subsidiarity is a secular or temporal political principle and not one that has any bearing on soteriology.  For the same reason there is nothing Protestant about it.