A life well-lived cannot have grievance as its organizing principle.
https://www.thefp.com/p/charles-fain-lehman-dont-tolerate-disorder-charlie-kirk-iryna-zarutska?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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Grievance and a Life Well-Lived
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Nat Hentoff on ‘Hate Crime’ Laws
An oldie but a goodie less than six minutes long by the late, great Nat Hentoff, civil libertarian.* We of the Coalition of the Sane and Reasonable need to punch back hard against the willfully self-enstupidated wokesters who confuse dissent with hate. As Hentoff points out, 'hate crime' is thought crime.
Here is a recent example of what we are up against:
“Under the proposed statute, ‘intimidate and harass’ can mean whatever the victim, or the authorities, want them to mean. The focus is on how the victim feels rather than on a clearly defined criminal act. This is a ridiculously vague and subjective standard,” he said.
“The absence of intent makes no difference under this law. You are still guilty of the crime because the victim felt uncomfortable.
“The bill will lead to the prosecution of conservatives, pastors, and parents attending a school board meeting for simply expressing their opposition to the liberal agenda,” Kallman said.
The proposed statute is obviously insane and anti-civilizational as any reasonable person will immediately discern. Like it or not we are now in the Age of Feeling.
Let it be noted en passant that 'liberal agenda' is not quite the right phrase; 'hard' Left' and 'woke' are more fitting adjectives. To say it again: don't confuse a classical with a contemporary liberal. The latter slouches toward the Gomorrah of wokery. A pox be upon all who so slouch.
Related: The Age of Feeling or the Age of Pussies?
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*Your humble correspondent first encountered the erudite hipster Hentoff in the pages of Down Beat magazine in the mind-'60s. If memory serves, he attended Boston Latin.
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Sam Harris and the Problem of Disagreement
Is conversation our only hope?
Substack stack-leader
Excerpt:
What about ethical instruction? Only a liberal fool would advocate conversations with young children about theft and murder and lying and bestiality as if the rightness or wrongness of these acts is subject to reasonable debate or is a matter of mere opinion. They must be taught that these things are wrong for their own good and for the good of others. Discussion of ethical niceties and theories comes later, if at all, and presupposes ethical indoctrination: a child who has not internalized and appropriated ethical prescriptions and proscriptions cannot profit from ethical conversations or courses in ethics. ‘Indoctrination,’ contrary to ‘woke’ dogma, is not a dirty word. To have had sound doctrines inculcated in one at an early age is obviously a good thing. You cannot make a twenty-year-old ethical by requiring him to take a course in ethics. He must already be ethical by early upbringing, and thus by indoctrination and example without conversation.
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Body, Soul, and Self Revisited
On 4 December of last year, a Substack entry of mine entitled Care of Body and Soul occasioned a comment by Tony Flood to which I replied on 10 December in Body, Soul, Self. Today, 25 June 2023 Tony responds to my response in a piece entitled Man's "True Self": A Reply to Critics.
Now at the moment I do not have the time or the energy to examine Tony's article in detail. But in the last few days I have been reading Hans Urs von Balthasar who has illuminating things to say on the topic. So for now I will simply add to the mix by referring Tony and anyone who is interested to Chapter 2 ("Flesh and Spirit") of Part III of Balthasar's Prayer (Ignatius Press, 1986) which includes the line "scripture itself seems to legitimize the adoption and christening of Hellenic terms at the very outset, especially in the Pauline use of 'flesh' (sarx) and 'spirit' (pneuma, nous)." (pp. 260-61)
3 responses to “Body, Soul, and Self Revisited”
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Rod Dreher on (Loss of) Faith in Institutions
Here (emphases added)
I was pleased to see the all-Muslim city council in Hamtramck, Mich., stand up to the progressive sleazebags and say no, they are not going to fly Pride flags over city property. It’s against local moral standards, they say — and they’re right. More and more, we see Muslim parents standing up and doing the job of speaking out that Christians will not do. People who never read Michel Houellebecq’s controversial 2015 novel Submission think mistakenly that Muslims are the villains, because it’s about a democratic Islamist takeover of France. They’re not the heroes, but not villains either. The demoralized, secularized, gutless French are the villains. They are spiritually and morally exhausted, and surrender to Islamist government because they don’t know what else to do.
Me, I absolutely don’t want to live under Islamic government, but if I had to choose between living under the governance of the Hamtramck City Council or the Los Angeles city council (see below), that wouldn’t be a hard call. Twenty-two years after 9/11, I can hardly believe I typed that line, but here we are.
Why are we Christians so soft, and so uncaring about decadence? I don’t get it. I really did think that the Left going after kids to sexualize them was the bright red line that was going to make most people revolt against the sexual orientation/gender identity madness, but it hasn’t, not really. It may yet, but we’re going to have to sink even deeper into the filth before we hit bottom. We are still being lied to, constantly, by our government, by the medical establishment, and by the media about transitioning kids — and most people just chew their cuds and carry on. A federal judge in Arkansas just overturned the state’s ban on transing kids. Big Trans and its allies among elites are going to have their way — and most of us yawn and move on. It makes no sense. Do people ever think that their kids might end up on Pensacola beach, doing dildo ring toss with the dykes, or getting drunk and engaged in group masturbation?
Of the great religions, Islam is the worst, and Sharia law is antithetical to classical American values. BUT, if we need to make common cause with (moderate, non-terrorist) Muslims to defeat the utterly destructive, anti-civilizational Woke-Left and their globalist enablers, then so be it! I'll say it again: we need a broad coalition of the sane and the reasonable to defeat our enemies. Hell, even the socialists over at The Militant are talking more sense than the wokesters!
5 responses to “Rod Dreher on (Loss of) Faith in Institutions”
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Winning and Losing
From great music, music that appeals to the highest in us (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart and a few others) to the people's music. My German neighbor when I lived in Freiburg im Breisgau, Frau Schmidt, upon hearing the strains of Beethoven, let loose with the expletive, Scheissmusik! There is no disputing (lack of) taste.
Hank Williams, You Win Again, 1952. Jerry Lee Lewis' 1979 interpretation. Flashy, but lacks the authenticity of the original.
Emmy Lou Harris, If I Could Only Win Your Love
Allman Bros., Win, Lose or Draw
Beatles, You're Gonna Lose that Girl
Beatles, I'm a Loser
Hank Williams, Lost Highway
So boys don't you start your ramblin' around/ On this road of sin are you sorrow bound/ Take my advice or you'll curse the day/ You started rollin' down that lost highway.
Tom Petty pays tribute to Hank.
Marty Robbins, Born to Lose
Steely Dan, Rikki Don't Lose that Number. Great guitar solo. It starts at 2:56.
New Lost City Ramblers, If I Lose, I Don't Care
Brenda Lee, Losing You
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Intimations of Elsewhere: Sensible Reminders of Hidden Beauty
Salzburg, Austria, December 1971. A young Austrian girl, radiant and beautiful, walked into the kitchen. I lost all desire for the food I had prepared. My soul sprouted wings. The visible beauty triggered a memory of a timeless Beauty. Anamnesis pierced for a moment the amnesia induced by the bodily senses.
Dayton, Ohio, 1978. Gripped by the audible beauty of the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major, the solo passage near the beginning of the Larghetto (26:33), upon return from a long, hard run, I could not eat the huge salad I had prepared. I set it down, my appetite gone.
Simone Weil (FLN, 318): "When once the whole of one's desire is turned toward God, one has no desire to eat when one is hungry."
The metaphysical elsewhere: beyond space, before time. Space- and time-bound as we are 'at present,' we must use spatial and temporal language to point beyond the spatiotemporal.
The intimations are rare. Don't ignore them, record them, honor and remember them. To dismiss them as the worldly are wont to do strikes me as the height of spiritual foolishness.
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A Question about Hell
If hell is separation from God, why wouldn't a body held in thrall by sensuous pleasure do as well as a body wracked with pain? Absorbed in sensuous pleasure, one is arguably farther from God than when in pain.
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The Beauty of the Solitary Life
Thomas Merton, The Journals, vol. 6, 24 June 1966, p. 344: "The beauty of the solitary life . . . is that you can throw away all the masks and forget them until you return among people."
For, as one of my aphorisms has it, "The step into the social is by dissimulation."
Before I quit my cell, I put on my face, don my mask, go gray, and try not to appear too intense.
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Nietzsche on Conviction
Top o' the Stack
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Of Fox and Fellatio: A Fox News First?
This is the first time I have heard fellatio referred to on a major TV network. The sweet and wholesome Kayleigh McEnany reports. The fellatio reference is around 2:34. Joey B, "devout Catholic" in journo lingo, stars as Porn Enforcer and takes a brave stand against book burning.
UPDATE (6/23)
Do you remember when our illustrious prez hung out with rapper Cardi B? Click here to revisit the high-level discourse that flowed between these two cultural 'icons.' Birds of a feather . . . . Speaking of which, wouldn't John Fetterman, feeble and fettered in body and mind, make a good running mate for Uncle Joe in 2024? Our kakistocracy would be well-served by the dynamic Dementocratic duo. As for those of you who voted for Joe knowing all that you did or should have known, I am in too good a mood at the moment to tell you what I really think of you.
9 responses to “Of Fox and Fellatio: A Fox News First?”
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Referring to Two Things
Ed writes,
Does ‘these two things’ refer to two things, or not? (Suppose the things are shoes.)
Perhaps not. For there are the two things, but also the plurality of them. The plurality is one thing, identical with neither the first thing, nor the second.
So the phrase ‘these two things’ actually refers to three things? Makes no sense to me.
BV: Perhaps it makes no sense to you because you think that 'thing' can only mean 'material thing.' We agree that 'these two shoes' refers to exactly two shoes, each of which is a material thing, and that there is no third material thing of which they are members. So if that is what our nominalist means when he denies that the two shoes form a plurality, then we agree.
Here is a slightly more complicated example. You have a bolt B and a nut N that fits the bolt, i.e., N can be screwed onto B. Now there is clearly a difference between B, N unconnected and B, N connected. But even here I will grant that there is no third material thing wholly distinct from B and wholly distinct from N when B, N are connected. There is no third material thing 'over and above' the connected bolt and nut. Here is exactly what you have and no material third thing in addition:
Disagreement may begin to set in when I point out that the weight of the object depicted above is strictly greater that the weights of the bolt and the nut taken separately. The total weight is additive such that if the nut weighs 2 ounces and the bolt 16 ounces, then the weight of the object depicted is equal to 2 + 16 = 18 ounces. The predicate '___weighs 18 ounces' is not true of the nut, and it is not true of the bolt, and it is not true of any material third thing 'over and above' the object depicted, and this for the simple reason that there is no such third material thing.
So what is the predicate '___ weighs 18 ounces' true of? I say that it is true of the plurality the sole members of which are N and B. I am not further specifying the nature of this plurality. Thus I am not saying that it is a mathematical set, nor am I saying that it is a mereological sum. I am saying that there is a distinction to be made between a plurality of items and the items.
Note that if our nominalist were to say that a plurality is exhausted by, or reduces to, its members, then will have given up the game by his use of 'its.' So he has to somehow avoid that locution.
Our nominalist will grant that the predicate '___weighs 18 ounces' is not true of the nut, not true of the bolt, and not true of any third material thing wholly distinct from the bolt and the nut. But he might say that it is not true of anything. The predicate is flatus vocis, a mere word, phrase or sound to which nothing extramental and extralinguistic corresponds. I reject this view. It implies that the nut threaded onto the bolt has in objective reality no weight that is the sum of the objective weights of the nut and bolt taken separately.
Our nominalist seems committed to an intolerable linguistic idealism. Suppose all language users were to cease to exist. It would remain that case that the weight of our nut-bolt combo would equal 18 ounces. It would remain the case that Earth is spheroid in shape and has exactly one natural satellite.
But why is he a nominalist in the first place? Is it because he thinks that only material particulars exist? If that is true then of course there cannot be a plurality of two material particulars. Hilary Putnam: "Nominalists must at heart be materialists . . . otherwise their scruples are unintelligible." (Phil Papers, vol. I, 338)
Is he a nominalist because he is an empiricist who thinks that only sensible particulars exist? I see the nut, I see the bolt, I see the nut threaded onto the bolt; but I don't see any plurality of material particulars. Is our man restricting what exists to that which is empirically detectable via our senses and their instrumental extensions (e.g., microscopes, telescopes, etc.)?
Is he both a materialist and an empiricist? How do those two positions cohere?
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‘Equity’ Can be Deadly
Words of 'woke' from Oceangate CEO. Surely qualifications and experience can't matter much. Surely. Might there be some hubris in naming a submersible Titan?
I dilate further at Substack.
In other news, armed IRS agents seize gun purchase records from Montana gun shop. Some say we are now living in a police state. I recommend that you read Stephen P. Holbrook, Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and Other Enemies of the State. Three brief reviews here.
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My Pronouns?
Up yours!
The point, of course, is to not validate, by answering, the stupid question.
This can be done in more or less polite ways.
You might say, politely, "Your question rests on a presupposition that I reject, namely, that the DEI agenda is a good thing. Now move along and have a nice day."
Yesterday I received a solicitation for funds from an alma mater. I wrote back, "I am in a position to make a substantial contribution, and will do so, but only on condition that you publicly renounce the DEI agenda and return to the true purposes of the university."
2 responses to “Nat Hentoff on ‘Hate Crime’ Laws”