“When you buy gold you’re saying nothing is going to work and everything is going to stay ridiculous,” said Mackin Pulsifer, vice chairman and chief investment officer of Fiduciary Trust International in New York. “There is a fair cohort who believes this in a theological sense, but I believe it’s unreasonable given the history of the United States.”
So to believe something 'in a theological sense' is to believe it unreasonably. It follows that liberals have plenty of 'theological' beliefs. In the 'theology' of a liberal, theology can be dismissed unread as irrational.
And then there is the misuse of 'metaphysics.' I'll save that rant for later.
A massage parlor is given the name Nirvana, the implication being that after a well-executed massage one will be in the eponymous state. This betrays a misunderstanding of Nirvana, no doubt, but that is not the main thing, which is the perverse tendency to attach a religious or spiritual significance to a merely sensuous state of relaxation.
Why can’t the hedonist just enjoy his sensory states without glorifying them? Equivalently, why can’t he admit that there is something beyond him without attempting to drag it down to his level? But no! He wants to have it both ways: he wants both sensuous indulgence and spirituality. He wants sensuality to be a spiritual experience and spirituality to be as easy of access as sensuous enjoyment.
A catalog of currently misused religious terms would have to include ‘heaven,’ ‘seventh heaven,’ ‘hell,’ 'dark night of the soul,' and many others besides.
Take ‘retreat.’ Time was, when one went on a retreat to get away from the world to re-collect oneself, meditating on the state of one's soul and on first and last things. But now one retreats from the world to become even more worldly, to gear up for greater exertions in the realms of business or academe. One retreats from ordinary busy-ness to prepare for even greater busy- ness.
And then there is ‘spirituality.’ The trendy embrace the term but shun its close cousin, ‘religion.’ I had a politically correct Jewish professor in my kitchen a while back whose husband had converted from Roman Catholicism to Judaism. I asked her why he had changed his religion. She objected to the term ‘religion,’ explaining that his change was a ‘spiritual’ one.
Etymologically, ‘religion’ suggests a binding, a God-man ligature, so to speak. But trendy New Age types don’t want to be bound by anything, or submit to anything. I suggest that this is part of the explanation of the favoring of the S word over the R word. Another part of the explanation is political. To those with a Leftward tilt, ‘religion’ reminds them of the Religious Right whose power strikes them as ominous while that of the Religious Left is no cause for concern. Not to mention the irreligious and anti-religious Left for whom leftism is their 'religion.'
A third part of the explanation may be that religion is closely allied with morality, while spirituality is often portrayed as beyond morality with its dualism of good and evil. One of the worst features of New Age types is their conceit that they are beyond duality when they are firmly enmired in it. Perhaps the truly enlightened are beyond moral dualism and can live free of moral injunctions. But what often happens in practice in that spiritual aspirants and gurus fall into ordinary immorality while pretending to have transcended it. One may recall the famous cases of Rajneesh and Chogyam Trungpa. According to one report, ". . . Trungpa slept with a different woman every night in order to transmit the teaching to them. L. intimated that it was really a hardship for Trungpa to do this, but it was his duty in order to spread the dharma."
Attributed to Voltaire. "The better is the enemy of the good." Supposedly from the earlier Italian Il meglio è nemico del bene, attested since 1603. (Wikipedia) The thought is perhaps better captured by "The best is the enemy of the good."
In an imperfect world it is folly to predicate action upon perfection. Will you hold out for the perfect spouse? Then you will remain alone. And if you yourself are less than perfect, how can you demand perfection in others?
Politics is a practical business: it is about the gaining and maintaining of power for the purpose of implementing programs and policies that one believes to be beneficial, and for opposing those whose policies one believes to be deleterious. It's about winning, not talking. It's not about ideological purity or having the supposedly best ideas; it's about gaining the power to implement good ideas, ideas that are implementable in the current configuration of suboptimal circumstances. The practical politician understands that quite often Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, the better/best is the enemy of the good.
The Never Trumpers and the conservative opponents of the American Health Care Act displayed a failure to understand this important principle of practical politics.
Practical politics as opposed to what? As opposed to the effete and epicene political salon talk of Bill Kristol and George Will. Erudite and entertaining but useless in stopping the leftist-Islamist juggernaut.
The main external threat to civilization? Radical Islam. The main internal threat? Leftism. That the latter is in cahoots with the former makes for a nasty synergy. Prager:
Conservatives who voted for Trump believed that defeating the Left is the overriding moral good of our time. We are certain that the Left (not the traditional liberal) is destroying Western Civilization, including, obviously, the United States. The external enemy of Western Civilization are the Islamists (the tens or perhaps hundreds of million of Muslims who wish to see the world governed by Sharia), and the internal enemy of the West is the left. What the left has done to the universities and to Western culture at the universities is a perfect example.
From Russia’s point of view, considering their strategic and economic interests, a pliable Obama 2.0 would have been far better than Trump, with his pro-oil-and-gas domestic agenda, his promised defense buildup, and his unpredictable Jacksonian promises to help friends and hurt enemies.
Well, duh. The sheer stupidity of the Dem line on all of this should inspire the right-thinking to have contempt for the jackass party forever more. Be grateful that the jackasses are out and the Jacksonian is in.
What is so bad about the strife of systems, controversy, conflict of beliefs? Are they always bad, never productive? Is it not by abrasion (of beliefs) that the pearl (of wisdom) is formed? At least sometimes?
Doxastic conflict can be mentally stimulating, a goad to intellectual activity. We like being active. It makes us happy. Happiness itself is an activity, a work, an ergon, taught Aristotle. It is not a passive state. There is the joy of movement: running, hiking, climbing, dancing. The joy extends to mental movement. We like problem-solving in our homes, in our jobs, in the aethereal precincts of mathematics and philosophy and science. We like puzzles of all sorts. We like to test our wits as much as we like to test our muscles. The rest after the test is the keener, the keener the test. Mental disturbance, the aporetic predicament, can be enlivening and exhilirating. Damn me, but there must be a way out, a way forward, a work around, a solution! Engineers and chess players and route finders know what I am talking about.
It is equally true that conflicts of belief can be troubling, painful, depressing, unmooring. Cognitive dissonance can induce extreme mental suffering. ('Doxastic dissonance' is a better name for it.) We want certain knowledge, but the indications are many that it is out of reach in this life. We are thrown back on that miserable substitute, belief. Belief butts up against counter-belief. The joys of dialectic transmogrify into acrimonious division.
So Sextus and the boys are on to something. They see the problem, not that their their diagnosis, let alone their cure, can be reasonably endorsed. Unfortunately, they see the problem onesidedly. They see what is bad about belief and the conflicts of belief. But they ignore the good. Insofar forth they could be called epistemic wimps.
This fits well with the decadence of the late Hellenic schools of Greek philosophy. Things went south after the passing of the titans, Plato and Aristotle. Social and cultural decline brought with it a turn away from pure theory and a concern with the practical and therapeutic. The desire for knowledge gave way to a desire for freedom from disturbance.
That is a peace not worth wanting as I argued the other day.
I now hand off to the Franz Brentano, Vier Phasen der Philosophie.
It takes intellect to discern that people are dominated by their emotions, but the intellectual who is capable of understanding this is often prevented from understanding it by his tendency to project his intellectuality into others. We often have a hard time appreciating that others are not like us and do not value what we value, or if they do, not to the same extent. My younger self used to make this mistake.
Our beliefs, political and religious beliefs in particular, divide us and ignite sometimes murderous passions. A radical cure would be to find a way to abstain from belief, to live without beliefs, adoxastōs. Is this possible, and if possible, desirable?
No on both counts. Such is the interim conclusion of my ongoing series on Pyrrhonian skepticism, the infirmity of reason, and cognate topics. But I continue to inquire . . . . That's what a philosopher does. That's how he lives.
I brought Cioran into my latest Pyrrhonian post to lay bare the contrast between the Christian's pursuit of a "peace that surpasses all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) and the Pyrrhonian's peace which is beneath understanding inasmuch as it is predicated upon not understanding -- and not caring any more about understanding. I then asked whether this could be a peace worth wanting.
I ended my Pyrrhonian post with the quip: "To Emil Cioran I would say: safety is overrated." My point, in contemporary jargon, is that really fruitful living requires frequent and extended forays from one's 'comfort zone' into regions of stress and challenge and doxastic risk.
Kai Frederik Lorentzen comments:
I think you do Cioran wrong insofar as he seems to be ambivalent about Skepticism. In Histoire et Utopie (1960), he writes: "Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls."
Cioran's spiritual yearning appears real to me.
I have read quite a bit of Cioran but not enough to venture a definitive judgment. So I don't know whether his spiritual yearning is genuine or just a literary posture. My impression is that he is a mere litterateur. But even if he is sincere, his scepticism seems distinct from Pyrrhonian Skepticism. Acolytes of the latter try not to dogmatize whereas it is not clear to me that Cioran avoids or tries to avoid a dogmatic scepticism/nihilism. A bit of (inconclusive) evidence:
X, who instead of looking at things directly has spent his life juggling with concepts and abusing abstract terms, now that he must envisage his own death, is in desperate straits. Fortunately for him, he flings himself, as is his custom, into abstractions, into commonplaces illustrated by jargon. A glamorous hocus-pocus, such is philosophy. But ultimately, everything is hocus-pocus, except for this very assertion that participates in an order of propositions one dares not question because they emanate from an unverifiable certitude, one somehow anterior to the brain’s career. (E. M. Cioran, Drawn and Quartered (New York: Seaver Books, 1983), translated from the French by Richard Howard, p.153)
A statement of Cioran’s scepticism. But his scepticism is half-hearted and dognatic since he insulates his central claim from sceptical corrosion. To asseverate that his central claim issues from “an unverifiable certitude” is sheer dogmatism since there is no way that this certitude can become a self-certitude luminous to itself. Compare the Cartesian cogito. In the cogito situation, a self’s indubitability is revealed to itself, and thus grounds itself. But Cioran invokes something anterior to the mind, something which, precisely because of it anteriority, cannot be known by any mind. Why then should we not consider his central claim – according to which everything is a vain and empty posturing – to be itself a vain and empty posturing?
Indeed, is this not the way we must interpret it given Cioran’s two statements of nihilism cited above? If everything is nothing, then surely there cannot be “an unverifiable certitude” anterior to the mind that is impervious to sceptical assault.
Again, one may protest that I am applying logic in that I am comparing different aphorisms with an eye towards evaluating their mutual consistency. It might be suggested that our man is simply not trying to be consistent. But then I say that he is an unserious literary scribbler with no claim on our attention. But the truth of the matter lies a bit deeper: he is trying have it both ways at once. He is trying to say something true but without satisfying the canons satisfaction of which is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of anything’s being true.
My interim judgment, then, is this. What we have before us is a form of cognitive malfunction brought about by hypertrophy of the sceptical faculty. Doubt is the engine of inquiry. Thus there is a healthy form of scepticism. But Cioran’s extreme scepticism is a disease of cognition rather than a means to it. The writing, though, is brilliant.
A salutary saltus. Good for the country. The muse is with me this morning. 'Salutary' fits nicely with the downing of the deeply-flawed health care bill.
But my purpose is not to preen and plume but to self-effacingly send you over to Scott Adams' place where you will find yet another installment of highly original analysis of the events of the day.
(Yes, I split the infinitive, deliberately, for stylistic purposes.)
The Pyrrhonians see clearly that part of our misery in this life is due to our inability to attain certain knowledge. Wanting certainty, but unable to secure it, we are thrown back upon conflicting beliefs that inflame passions. The heat of the passions seems to vary inversely with the rational unprovability of the beliefs that stoke them. The Pyrrhonians try to find happiness in the midst of this misery. We are to suspend judgment (belief) and thereby attain peace of mind. Theirs is not a theoretical but a therapeutic conception of philosophy. The Skeptic therapy diagnoses our illness as belief and prescribes the purgation of belief as the cure. Martha C. Nussbaum (The Therapy of Desire, Princeton UP, 1994, 284-285) puts it well:
In short, says the Skeptic, Epicurus is correct that the central human disease is a disease of belief. But he is wrong to feel that the solution lies in doing away with some beliefs and clinging all the more firmly to others. The disease is not one of false belief; belief itself is the illness -- belief as a commitment, a source of concern, care, and vulnerability.
. . . Greek Skepticism, attaching itself to the medical analogy, commends this diagnosis and proposes a radical cure: the purgation of all cognitive commitment, all belief, from human life.The Skeptic, "being a lover of his fellow human beings, wishes to heal by argument, insofar as he can, the conceit and the rashness of dogmatic people" (PH 3.280).
We note the radicality of both the diagnosis and the cure. Since belief as such makes us ill, the cure must lie in the purgation of all beliefs including, I assume, any beliefs instrumental in effecting the cure. Just as a good laxative flushes itself out along with everything else, doxastic purgation supposedly relieves us of all doxastic impactation, including the beliefs underpinning the therapeutic procedures. You might say that the aperient effect of epoche is to restore us to mundane regularity.
I reject the Skeptic Way, its destination, and its 'laxatives.' I agree that we are ill, all of us, and that that part of our misery in this life is due to our inability to attain what we desire and feel is our birthright, namely, certain knowledge, in particular, certain knowledge of ultimates. But I reject both the diagnosis and the cure. The problem is not belief as such, and the solution is not purgation of belief.
Pyrrhonism is rife with problems. Here is one about the value of ataraxia. It is a value, but how high a value?
The Passivity of Ataraxia
The notion that ataraxia (mental tranquillity, peace of soul, freedom from disturbance) is either essential to happiness or the whole of happiness is a paltry and passive conception of happiness. The peace of the Pyrrhonian is not the "peace that surpasses all understanding" (Phillipians 4:7), but a peace predicated upon not understanding -- and not caring any more about understanding. Could that be a peace worth wanting?
The Skeptic who, true to his name, begins with inquiry abandons inquiry when he finds that nothing can be known with certainty. But rather than have recourse to uncertain belief, the Skeptic concludes that the problem is belief itself. Rather than go forward on uncertain beliefs, he essays to go forward belieflessly. Inquiry, he maintains, issues in the psychological state of aporia (being at a loss) when it is seen that competing beliefs cancel each other out. The resulting evidential equipoise issues in epoche (withdrawal of assent) and then supposedly in ataraxia.
Now mental tranquillity is a high value, and no one who takes philosophy seriously can not want to possess more of it. But the Skeptic's brand of tranquillity cannot be the highest value, and perhaps not much of a value at all. The happy life cannot be anything so passive as the life of ataraxia. We need a more virile conception of happiness, and we find it in Aristotle. For the Stagirite, happiness (eudaimonia) is an activity (ergon) of the soul (psyche) in accordance with virtue (arete) over an entire life. (Cf. Nicomachean Ethics.) His is an active conception of the good life even though the highest virtues are the intellectual and contemplative virtues. The highest life is the bios theoretikos, the vita contemplativa. Though contemplative, it necessarily involves the activity of inquiry into the truth, an activity that skepticism, whether Pyrrhonian or Academic, denigrates.
The Porcinity of Ataraxia
Disillusioned with the search for truth, our Skeptic advocates re-entry into the everyday. Unfortunately, there is something not only passive, but also porcine about the Skeptic's resting in ataraxia. Nussbaum again:
Animal examples play an important part in Skepticism, illustrating the natural creature's freedom from disturbance,and the ease with which this is attained if we only can, in Pyrrho's words, "altogether divest ourselves of the human being" (DL 9.66). The instinctive behavior of a pig, calmly removing its hunger during a storm that fills humans with anxiety, exemplifies for the Skeptic the natural orientation we all have to free ourselves from immediate pain. It also shows that this is easily done, if we divest ourselves of the beliefs and commitments that generate other complex pains and anxieties. Pointing to that pig, Pyrrho said "that the wise man should live in just such and undisturbed condition" (DL 9.66).
How is that for a porcine view of the summum bonum? I am put in mind of this well-known passage from John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, Chapter II:
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they know only their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
Is the Skeptic Committed to Ataraxia's being a Value?
The Skeptic aspires to live belieflessly, adoxastos. He aims to live beyond all commitments, or at least beyond all commitments that transcend present impressions. (It is a nice question, one best left for later, whether our Skeptic can, consistently with his entire approach, cop to a commitment to something as Chisholmianly noncommital as his here and now being-appeared-to-sweetly when, for example, he eats honey. Does he not here and and now accept, affirm, believe that he is being-appeared-to-sweetly when he consumes honey? Sticking to impressions, he does not accept, affirm, believe that the honey IS sweet, but 'surely' he must accept, affirm, believe that he IS (in reality) presently being appeared-to-sweetly. No?)
Setting aside for now our parenthetical worry, what about the commitment to the pursuit of ataraxia? He who treads the Skeptic Path is committed to the value of ataraxia, and this value-commitment obviously transcends his present impressions. It is the organizing principle behind his therapeutic procedures and his entire way of life. It is what his quasi-medicinal treatments are for. Ataraxia is the goal, the 'final cause' of the therapy. So here we have yet another doxastic-axiological commitment that is part and parcel of the Skeptic Way. We see once a again that a life without commitment is impossible.
Nussbaum considers how a Skeptic might respond:
I think he would now answer that yes, after all, an orientation to ataraxia is very fundamental in his procedures. But the orientation to ataraxia is not a belief, or a value-commitment. It has the status of a natural inclination. Naturally, without belief or teaching, we move to free ourselves from burdens and disturbances. Ataraxia does not need to become a dogmatic commitment, because it is already a natural animal impulse . . . Just as the dog moves to take a thorn out of its paw, so we naturally move to get rid of our pains and impediments: not intensely or with any committed attachment but because that's just the way we go. (305)
This quotation is right before the pig passage quoted above. Nussbaum does not endorse the response she puts in the mouth of the Skeptic, and she very skillfully presents the difficulty. The Skeptic, whether he aims to be consistent or not, must adopt a Skeptical attitude toward ataraxia "if he is to avoid disturbance and attain ataraxia." (Nussbaum, 301) He cannot be committed to ataraxia or any of the procedures that supposedly lead to it without running the risk of disturbance.
I would add that our Skeptic cannot even be committed to the possibility of ataraxia. The pursuit of ataraxia enjoins a suspension of judgment as to its possibility or impossibility. For any claim that humans are capable of ataraxia is a claim that goes beyond the impressions of the present moment, a claim that can give rise to dispute and disturbance. But it is even worse that this. It occurs to me that our Skeptic cannot even grant that he or anyone has ever experienced ataraxia in the past since this claim too would go beyond the impressions of the present moment.
Suppose you went to this doctor for treatment. You ask him how successful his procedures are. "How many, doc, have experienced relief after a course of your purgatives and aperients?" The good doctor will not commit himself. He has no 'track record' he will stand by. No point, then, is asking about the prognosis.
How then can the Skeptic save himself from incoherence? It seems he must reduce the human being to an animal that simply follows its natural instincts and inclinations. Divesting himself of his humanity, he must sink to the level of the animal as Pyrrho recommends. Indeed, he must stop acting and merely respond to stimuli. Human action has beliefs as inputs, and human action is for reasons. But all of this is out if we are to avoid all doxastic and axiological commitments.
We now clearly see that the Skeptic Way is a dead end. We want the human good, happiness. But we are given a load of rhetoric that implies that there is no specifically human good and that we must regress to the level of animals.
But even this recommendation bristles with paradox. For it too is a commitment to a course of action that transcends the moment when action is impossible for a critter that merely responds instinctually to environmental stimuli.
It might not be in their best interest. Buy guns and ammo and the accessories and you support those industries and the lobbying efforts of the National Rifle Association. The NRA, however, played a key role in getting Trump elected. The NRA takes decidedly anti-leftist stands on crime and the nanny-statism liberals hold dear.
This puts liberals in a delightful bind. Delightful to us, that is. Fearing 'fascism,' they are now buying guns as numerous news stories have reported, but in so doing they shoot themselves in the foot, figuratively speaking.
There is a parallel here with liberals' new-found love of federalism. As William McGurn has recently noted,
For both historical and philosophical reasons, federalism runs counter to the progressive instinct. Those on the left like government, and their preferred legislature is the Supreme Court. (Brilliant! Emphasis added.)
Fearing Trumpian 'fascism,' our liberal pals are now getting excited about states rights despite their long-standing mendacious insinuation that all talk of states rights can only mean a return to Jim Crow and the lynching of blacks.
UPDATE 3/24. A Friendly Warning to Liberals
A gun is not a talisman. Its mere presence won't protect you. To paraphrase Col. Jeff Cooper, owning a gun no more makes you armed than owning a guitar makes you a musician. You will need to get training. In the course of this training and numerous trips to the shooting range and gun stores for ammo, etc. you will find yourself associating whether you like it or not with rednecks, country folk, blue collar types, cops, ex-cops, military, ex-military, church-goers and other subspecies of the people Obama derisively referred to as "clingers" and Hillary as "deplorables."
The danger here is that you will learn that, in the main, these are decent people. Your liberal bigotry fueled by hate and ignorance will stand refuted by experience. This may cause such painful cognitive dissonance that you may no longer be able to remain a bien-pensant librul.
Martin P. Seligman explains. Seligman! Now there's an aptronym for you. Selig is German for happy, blessed, blissful, although it can also mean late (verstorben) and tipsy (betrunken). So Seligman is the happy man or happy one. Nomen est omen?
Give some careful thought to what you name your kid. 'Chastity' may have an anti-aptronymic effect. As for anti-aptronyms, I was introduced a while back to a hulking biker who rejoiced under the name of 'Tiny.' A student of mine's name for me was 'Smiley' to underscore my serious-as-cancer demeanor.
My traffic has been insanely high over the past week or so. Can I now make money by selling advertising? But I stand by my pledge, and if I ever violate it you may shoot me.
My pledge: You will never see advertising on this site. You will never see anything that jumps around in your visual field. You will not be assaulted with unwanted sounds. I will not load crap into your computer. I will not beg for money with a 'tip jar.' This is a labor of love and I prize my independence.
Defeatist Londoners and other appeasers are settling down to the 'new normal': slaughter, including beheadings, on the streets of great and not-so-great cities.
But what's the big deal? In yesterday's London incident only four were killed and only a few more injured. Compare terror deaths with bath tub deaths and you will see that the likelihood of getting whacked by a jihadi is vanishingly small as compared to bath tub deaths or traffic fatalities or gun deaths.
Nor have I read the above-linked responses. So I don't know whether they are the most intelligent or if they are all, or even any of them, intelligent. You decide.
In 2006, Melanie Phillips wrote a book called Londonistan: How Britain Is Creating a Terror State Within. She argued that Britain was a sitting duck for Islamic terrorists, owing to its idiotic embrace of political correctness, multiculturalism, and religious relativism.
And ends:
Keep calm and propagandize on — that’s the attitude in Sadiq Khan’s London, where terrorism, as he put it last year, some months after his election as mayor, is “part and parcel of living in a big city.”
Khan's attitude is defeatist. Was terrorism "part and parcel of living in a big city" twenty years ago? There are plenty of stateside defeatists too, and some call themselves 'conservative.' But we got lucky last November and the deplorable Hillary went down in defeat, and with her the then-regnant mentality of Barack Hussein Obama.
It may be too late for the UK and Europe. But it is not too late for us.
Your post on a bad reason for thinking atheism is not a religion was excellent. I'm taking the liberty of sending a link to a review of mine that argues along the same lines as you do: Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies. By George H. Smith. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1991. 324 pp.
Best wishes,
David
It would be intolerably self-serving of me to say that great minds think alike, so I'll just say that sincere truth-seekers sometimes converge in their views. One thing I learned from Dr. Gordon's review is that George H. Smith is the (contemporary) source of the idea that atheism ought to be defined, not as the denial of the existence of God, but as mere lack of God-belief.
America First does not mean that that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. This is compatible with respecting other countries' interests and right to self-determination.
So America First has nothing to do with chauvinism which could be characterized as a blind and intemperate patriotism, a belligerent and unjustified belief in the superiority of one's own country. America First expresses an enlightened nationalism which is obviously compatible with a sober recognition of national failings.
An enlightened nationalism is distinct from nativism inasmuch as the former does not rule out immigration. By definition, an immigrant is not a native; but an enlightened American nationalism accepts legal immigrants who accept American values, which of course are not the values of the Left or the values of political Islam.
An enlightened nationalism is not isolationist. What it eschews is a fruitless meddling and over-eager interventionism. It does not rule out certain necessary interventions when they are in our interests and in the interests of our allies.
So America First is not to be confused with chauvinism or nativism or isolationism.
It is also not to be confused with xenophobia. The America Firster has no irrational fear of persons or things foreign. The same holds for every enlightened nationalist.
An enlightened nationalism is not a form of idolatry. 'America First' is not in competition with 'God First.' The principles belong to different orders. The first is a 'horizontal' principle defined over countries; the second is a 'vertical' principle having to do with countries and God. Obviously the following two propositions are logically consistent:
1) Every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries.
2) No country is an appropriate object of worship; only God is worthy of worship.
Finally, an enlightened nationalism is not white-supremacist. I will now quote Rabbi Aryeh Spero, not only because he makes good points, but to distance myself from those Alt-Rightists who are anti-semitic and white-supremacist:
It is not “white supremacism” when people with self-respect display love and admiration for their background and history, wish to defend it, and are proud of it. It is normal and healthy. The opposite is rootlessness. Nor are sincere calls for the maintenance of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian ethos, as liberals today accuse, “code words for racism”.
The purpose of the shaming we now see coming from liberals against fellow Americans is to muzzle us, so that what we believe is no longer able to be heard or transmitted. It is an enforcement of our political impotence. Longer term, the never-ending demonization is designed to end our civic and religious heritage. Through left-wing bullying and scorn, our heritages are being replaced by the new theologies of progressivism and non-distinctiveness.
That's right; I quibble only with the good rabbi's misuse of 'theology.' Just as progressivism is not a religion, as I have lately argued ad nauseam, it is also not a theology. 'Theology' refers either to God's knowledge of himself, which lies beyond our ken, or to our attempted knowledge of God. But progressivism has no truck with God, being secularist and atheist in its core forms.
Is it an unalloyed and exceptionless good that people be 'brought together'? Not even the Facebook CEO thinks so. Mark Zuckerberg touts his social media site as bringing people together. How sweet. Yet he has had a huge wall built around his Hawaiian compound. Apparently, many of those who engineer 'bringing together' are very special people who are not keen on being brought together with those they bring together.
And then there is the current pope, Bergoglio the Benighted. Safely and comfortably ensconced within the walls of the Vatican, he condemns the Great Wall of Trump, opining that what we need are bridges, not walls.
How about some bridges into the Vatican to make it easy for jihadis to gain access?
My man Hanson with another fascinating column. Excerpts:
Monasteries of the mind are an effort to reconnect with the past and disengage psychologically from the present. For millions of Americans, their music, their movies, their sports, and their media are not current fare. Instead, they have mentally moved to mountaintops or inaccessible valleys, where they can live in the past or dream of the future, but certainly not dwell in the here and now.
Count me in. (I have also been known to hole up physically in inaccessible valleys for weeks at a time.) But why? Several reasons, one of them being the lamestream media:
Monastics are tuning out the media. Listening to Brian Williams warn of fake news would be like paying attention to Miley Cyrus’s reminder about the need for abstinence. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who is often said to be the ethical conscience of the paper’s op-ed page, recently begged the IRS to commit a felony by sending him Trump’s tax returns. He went so far as to provide his own address to facilitate the crime: “But if you’re in IRS and have a certain president’s tax return that you’d like to leak, my address is: NYT, 620 Eighth Ave., NY NY 10018.”
Someone belatedly might have gotten the message. Rhodes scholar Rachel Maddow got a hold of two pages from Trump’s 2005 tax return. On MSNBC she went the full Roswell-UFO mode in hyping the scoop until she finally grasped that a twelve-year-old-tax return revealed that her Trump-as-Snidely-Whiplash had paid a greater tax (percentage-wise and absolutely) than “you didn’t build that” Barack Obama paid. Such an inadvertent demonstration is not the purpose for which a Rachel Maddow was hired.
If Paul Krugman can win the Nobel prize, and Bill Clinton and Rachel 'Mad Dog' Maddow are Rhodes Scholars, then those awards have become well-nigh meaningless.
Atheism is not a religion. But the following is not a good reason for thinking so:
Atheism (and here I mean the so-called “weak atheism” that does not claim proof that god does not exist), is just the lack of god-belief – nothing more and nothing less. And as someone once said, if atheism is a religion, not collecting stamps is a hobby. That really ought to end the discussion right there. Clearly, a mere lack of belief in something cannot be a religion.
Right, a mere lack of belief in something cannot be a religion. But atheism is not a mere lack of belief in something. If atheism is just the lack of god-belief, then tables and chairs are atheists. For they lack god-belief. Am I being uncharitable?
Suppose someone defines atheism more carefully as lack of god-belief in beings capable of having beliefs. That is still unacceptable. Consider a child who lacks both god-belief and god-disbelief. If lacking god-belief makes him an atheist, then lacking god-disbelief makes him a theist. So he is both, which is absurd.
Obviously, atheism is is not a mere lack of belief, but a definite belief, namely, the belief that the world is godless. Atheism is a claim about the way things are: there is no such thing as the God of Judaism, or the God of Christianity, or the God of Islam, or the gods of the Greek pantheon, or . . . etc. The atheist has a definite belief about the ontological inventory: it does not include God or gods or any reasonable facsimile thereof such as the Plotinian One, etc.
Note also that if you deny that any god exists, then you are denying that the universe is created by God: you are saying something quite positive about the ontological status of the universe, namely, that it does not depend for its existence on a being transcendent of it. And if it does not so depend, then that implies that it exists on its own as a brute fact or that it necessarily exists or that it causes itself to exist. Without getting into all the details here, the point is that if you deny that God exists, this is not just a denial of the existence of a certain being, but implies a positive claim about the ontological status of the universe. What's more, if there is no creator God, then the apparent order of the universe, its apparent designedness, is merely apparent. This is a positive thesis about the nature of the physical universe.
Atheism, then, is not a mere lack of god-belief. For it implies definite positive beliefs about reality as a whole and about the nature and mode of existence of the physical universe.
Why then is atheism not a religion? No good purpose is served by using 'religion' to refer to any set of action-guiding beliefs held with fervor and commitment. For if one talks in that hopelessly loose way, then extreme environmentalism and Communism and leftism are religions.
Although it is not easy to craft a really satisfactory definition of religion, I would say that all and only religions affirm the existence of a transcendent reality, whether of a personal or impersonal nature, contact or community or identification with which is the summum bonum and the ultimate purpose of human existence. For the Abrahamic faiths, Yahweh, God, Allah is the transcendent reality. For Taoism, the Tao. For Hinduism, Brahman. For (Mahayana) Buddhism, the transcendent state of nirvana. Since atheists precisely deny any such transcendent reality, contact with which is our highest good and ultimate purpose, atheism is not a religion.
"But aren't militant atheists very much like certain zealous religionists? Doesn't militant atheism function in their lives much as religion functions in the life of the religiously zealous?" No doubt, but if one thing is like another, that is not to say that the one thing is the other or is a species of the other.
And another thing. If atheism is not a religion, then, while there can be atheist associations, there cannot be, in any serious sense of the word, an atheist church.
Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, Harper, 1955, p. 61, #93:
The fact of death and nothingness at the end is a certitude unsurpassed by any absolute truth ever discovered. Yet knowing this, people can be deadly serious about their prospects, grievances, duties and trespassings. The only explanation which suggests itself is that seriousness is a means of camouflage: we conceal the triviality and nullity of our lives by taking things seriously. No opiate and no pleasure chase can so effectively mask the terrible truth about man’s life as does seriousness.
Summary
It is certain that we become nothing at death. We all know this. Yet we take life with utmost seriousness. We are aggrieved at the wrongs that have been done to us, and guilty at the wrongs we have done. We care deeply about our future, our legacy, and many other things.
What explains our intense seriousness and deep concern given (i) the known fact that death is annihilation of the person and (ii) the fact that this unavoidable annihilation renders our lives insignificant and not an appropriate object of seriousness?
There is only one explanation. The truth (the conjunction of (i) and (ii)) is terrible and we are loathe to face it. So we hide the triviality and nullity of our lives behind a cloak of seriousness. We deceive ourselves. What we know deep down we will not admit into the full light of consciousness.
Evaluation
There is an element of bluster in Hoffer's argument. It is not certainly known that death is annihilation, although it is reasonably conjectured. But even if death were known to spell the end of the person, why should this render our lives insignificant? One could argue, contra Hoffer, that our lives are significant in the only way they could be significant, namely, in the first-personal, situated, and perspectival way, and that there is no call to view our lives sub specie aeternitatis. It might be urged that the appearance of nullity and insignificance is merely an artifact of viewing our lives from outside.
So one rejoinder to Hoffer would be: yes, death is annihilation, but no, this fact does not render life insignificant. Therefore, there is no tension among:
1) Death is annihilation of the person.
2) Annihilation implies nullity and insignificance.
3) People are serious about their lives.
We don't have to explain why (3) is true given (1) and (2) since (2) is not true.
A second type of rejoinder would be that we don't need to explain why (3) is true given (1) and (2) because (1) is not known to be true. This is the line I take. I would argue as follows
A. We take our lives seriously.
B. That we take them seriously is prima facie evidence that they are appropriately and truly so taken.
C. Our lives would not be serious if death were annihilation. Therefore:
D. Death is not annihilation.
This argument is obviously not rationally compelling, but it suffices to neutralize Hoffer's argument. The argument is not compelling because once could reasonably reject both (B) and (C). Here is Hoffer's argument:
A. We take our lives seriously.
C. Our lives would not be serious if death were annihilation.
~D. Death is annihilation. Therefore:
~B. That we take our lives seriously is not evidence of their seriousness, but a means of hiding from ourselves the terrible truth.
Hoffer and I agree about (C). Our difference is as follows. I am now and always have been deeply convinced that something is at stake in this life, that it matters deeply how we live and comport ourselves, and that it matters far beyond the petty bounds of the individual's spatiotemporal existence. Can I prove it? No. Can anyone prove the opposite? No.
Hoffer, on the other hand, is deeply convinced that in the end our lives signify nothing despite all the sound and fury. In the end death consigns to meaninglessness a life that is indeed played out entirely within its paltry spatiotemporal limits. In the end, our care comes to naught and seriousness is but camoflage of our nullity.
I can't budge the old steveodore and he can't budge me. Belief butts up against belief. There's no knowledge hereabouts.
So once again I say: In the last analysis you must decide what to believe and how to live. Life is a venture and and adventure wherein doxastic risks must be taken. Here as elsewhere one sits as many risks as he runs.
It’s time that angry liberals stop calling every Republican a misogynist, a Nazi, or a white supremacist. On left-wing websites everywhere, these terms are being dispensed like gumballs from a machine. If we really want to take back the country, we have to deal with issues. Name-calling may make us feel good, but it’s not going to change the country. Buckling down and working for your ideas may not succeed, either, for the three branches of government are all moving rightward. But political action has a better chance of succeeding than does slander.
My opinion of Coyne has gone up a notch. But it remains relatively low. Here are my Coyne entries.
A March 15 WAPO piece begins like this: "States’ rights is making a comeback, but this time it’s progressives, not slaveholders or white supremacists, raising the cry."
This implies that those who for years have been speaking out for federalism and Tenth Amendment rights are either slave holders or white supremacists.
I'd call that left-wing bias, wouldn't you?
The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people."
What is Federalism?
Federalism, roughly, is (i) a form of political organization in which governmental power is divided among a central government and various constituent governing entities such as states, counties, and cities; (ii) subject to the proviso that both the central and the constituent governments retain their separate identities and assigned duties. A government that is not a federation would allow for the central government to create and reorganize constituent governments at will and meddle in their affairs. Federalism is implied by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Federalism would make for less contention, because people who support high taxes and liberal schemes could head for states like Massachusetts or California, while the conservatively inclined who support gun rights and capital punishment could gravitate toward states like Texas.
We see the world differently. Worldview differences in turn reflect differences in values. Now values are not like tastes. Tastes cannot be reasonably discussed and disputed while values can. (De gustibus non est disputandum.) But value differences, though they can be fruitfully discussed, cannot be objectively resolved because any attempted resolution will end up relying on higher-order value judgments. There is no exit from the axiological circle. We can articulate and defend our values and clarify our value differences. What we cannot do is resolve our value differences to the satisfaction of all sincere, intelligent, and informed discussants.
A return to federalism, I suggest, is the sanest and best way to overcome this difficulty. If we are lucky we will be able to bring unity and diversity together in a dialectical unity thereby avoiding the extremes of totalitarianism and secessionism.
It is the ancient problem of the One and the Many in one of its political forms. E pluribus unum: out of many, one. But a One worth wanting is a One not suppressive of, but respectful of, the many in their manifold modes of manyness.
So today being St. Patrick's Day I think I will engage in some 'cultural appropriation.' I have been invited to a street party at which corned beef and cabbage will be served, and I shall partake. I'm not big on parties, but a little socializing with one's neighbors is conducive to comity.
The wise do not multiply enemies beyond necessity; neither do they ignore easy opportunities to strengthen social relations. We are social animals whether we like it or not.
An hour of my time, beer and banter, some Irish grub, and then back to the inner citadel.
The fan is on and my shirt is off. The Sonoran spring is sprung. Spring fever in the form of cacoethes scribendi has me in her sweet grip.
A weird mix of Greek and Latin, cacoethes scribendi means compulsion to write. ‘Cacoethes’ is a Latinization of the Greek kakoethes, which combines kakos (‘bad’) with ethos (‘habit’). It can mean ‘urge,’ ‘itch,’ ‘compulsion,’ ‘mania.’ Similar constructions: cacoethes loquendi, compulsive talking, and cacoethes carpendi, a mania for fault-finding. You can see ‘carp’ lurking within the infinitive, carpere, to pluck (Cf. Eugene Ehrlich, Amo, Amas, Amat and More, Harper & Row, 1985, pp. 71-72.) To this list I add cacoethes blogendi, compulsion to blog, a compulsion with which I have been for a long time afflicted. Aficionados of Jack Kerouac’s not-so-spontaneous spontaneous prose will recall how he got his revenge on poet and critic Kenneth Rexroth in his Dharma Bums: he bestowed upon him the name, Reinhold Cacoethes. Sweet gone Jack was a wonderful coiner of names. I’ll have to return to this topic in October, Kerouac month in my personal liturgy.
As for my own cacoethes scribendi et blogendi: once a scribbler, always a scribbler. My fifth grade teacher had us begin each day by writing a 200 word composition. At the end of the year, she announced in class that my compositions were the best she had ever seen in her teaching career. I decided right then and there to become a free-lance writer, which in a sense is what I have become.
Moral: be careful what you wish for. Wishes and dreams are seeds. They just might fall on fertile ground.
A news item is a report of a recent event. Must the report be true to count as a genuine news item? I should think so. Must the report be current as well? Obviously. It is true that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election, but no longer news that she did. So there are two ways for fake news to be fake: by being false and by being dated.
Now that 'fake news' is a buzz word, or a buzz phrase, we need to be alert to this ambiguity.
But there seems to be another way in which a report can be fake news. Suppose an obnoxious leftist is out to damn Trump by showing that he does not pay Federal income tax. So she gets hold of his 2005 Form 1040 which reveals that he paid millions in taxes and trumpets this information on her political TV show. This too has been called 'fake news.' Here:
Unlike Geraldo Rivera, who was pilloried after his Al Capone vault debacle, Maddow knew that what was in the Trump tax returns wasn’t damning, yet she still hyped it on Twitter and played her audience for fools, thereby becoming the epitome of fake news.
What Maddow reported is true. And we the people did not know until a few days ago what Mr Trump paid in taxes back in aught five; so there is a sense in which the item reported is current. So what makes Maddow's reportage 'fake news'? Apparently, the fact that she was out to damn Trump but somehow did not realize that revealing the contents of his 2005 Form 1040 would make him look good! He paid more in taxes than Bernie and Barack!
I am inclined to conclude that the phrase 'fake news' does now mean much of anything, if it ever did.
Above I pointed to an ambiguity. But it is worse than that. The phrase is vague and becoming vaguer and vaguer. Chalk it up to the vagaries of polemical discourse in this time of bitter political division.
An ambiguous word or phrase admits of two or more definite meanings; a vague word or phrase has no definite meaning. 'Fake news' is a bit like 'buzz word' which has itself become a buzz word.
As for Rachel Maddow, she is becoming the poster girl of TDS. How else do you explain the fact that this intelligent woman did not understand that her 'scoop' would hurt her and her benighted cause while benefiting the president? But I suppose lust for ratings comes into it too. Mindless hatred of Trump plus a lust for ratings.
I have been objecting to the calling of leftism a religion. Curiously, some people call atheism a religion. I object to that too.
The question as to what religion is is not at all easy to answer. It is not even clear that the question makes sense. For when you ask 'What is religion?' you may be presupposing that it has an essence that can be captured in a definition that specifies necessary and sufficient conditions. But it might be that the concept religion is a family resemblance concept like the concept game (to invoke Wittgenstein's famous example). Think of all the different sorts of games there are. Is there any property or set of properties that all games have and that only games have? Presumably not. The concept game is a family resemblance concept to which no essence corresponds. Noted philosophers of religion such as John Hick maintain the same with respect to the concept religion.
If you take this tack, then you can perhaps argue that Marxism and secular humanism and militant atheism are religions.
But it strikes me as decidedly odd to characterize a militant anti-religionist as having a religion. Indeed, it smacks of a cheap debating trick: "How can you criticize religion when you yourself have a religion?" The tactic is an instance of the 'So's Your Old Man' Fallacy, more formally known as the argumentum ad hominem tu quoque.
I prefer to think along the following lines.
Start with belief-system as your genus and then distinguish two coordinate species: belief-systems that are theoretical, though they may have practical applications, and belief-systems that are by their very nature oriented toward action. Call the latter ideologies. Accordingly, an ideology is a system of action-guiding beliefs. Then distinguish between religious and non-religious ideologies. Marxism and militant atheism are examples of non-religious ideologies while the Abrahamic religions and some of the Eastern religions are examples of religious ideologies.
I am using 'ideology' in a non-pejorative way. One could also speak of Weltanschauungen or worldviews except that 'view' suggests spectatorship whereas action-guiding belief-systems embody prescriptions and proscriptions and all manner of prudential dos and don'ts for participants in the flux and shove of the real order. We are not mere spectators of life's parade, but are 'condemned' to march in it too.
To repeat: there are theoretical belief-systems and belief-systems that are ineluctably action-guiding and purpose-positing. Among the latter we distinguish two subspecies, the religious and the non-religious.
But this leaves me with the problem of specifying what it is that distinguishes religious from non-religious ideologies. To put it Peripatetically, what is the specific difference? Perhaps this: all and only religions make reference to a transcendent reality, whether of a personal or impersonal nature, contact or community or identification with which is the summum bonum and the ultimate purpose of human existence. For the Abrahamic faiths, Yahweh, God, Allah is the transcendent reality. For Taoism, the Tao. For Hinduism, Brahman. For Buddhism, the transcendent state of nirvana. But I expect the Theravadins to object that nibbana is nothing positive and transcendent, being only the extinguishing or dissolution of the (ultimately illusory) self. I could of course simply deny that Theravada Buddhism is a religion, strictly speaking. I could lump it together with Stoicism as a sort of higher psychotherapy, a set of techniques for achieving equanimity, a therapeutic wisdom-path rather than a religion strictu dictu.
There are a number of tricky and unresolved issues here, but I see little point in calling militant atheism a religion, though I concede it is like a religion in some ways.
But as I have been pointing out lately, if one thing is like another, that is not to say that the one thing is the other or is a species of the other.
Given your criterion 3 for an ideology to be a religious doctrine, it is doubtful that Islam could be viewed as a religion (it is also a socio-political system with a supremacist agenda, but that is another matter).
In Islam, man can err, has to be obedient to Allah, but man is not fallen, and needs no redemption.
When he is born, a human being is pure (and a Muslim by nature). His primordial nature (fitra) is not wounded, corrupted, fallen, and needs no regeneration.
Even more, according to the most extensive interpretation of the (belated and somewhat anti-Qur'anic) doctrine of ismah (the impeccability of prophets), prophets, including Muhammad, never sin intentionally.
Here again are my tentatively proposed seven criteria for an ideology's being a religion:
1. The belief that there is what William James calls an "unseen order." (Varieties of Religious Exerience, p. 53) This is a realm of absolute reality that lies beyond the perception of the five outer senses and their instrumental extensions. It is also inaccessible to inner sense or introspection. It is also not a realm of mere abstracta or thought-contents. So it lies beyond the discursive intellect. It is a spiritual reality and thus mind-like. It is accessible from our side via mystical and religious experience. An initiative from its side is not to be ruled out in the form of revelation.
2. The belief that there is a supreme good for humans and that "our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves" to the "unseen order." (Varieties, p. 53)
3. The conviction that we are morally deficient, and that this deficiency impedes our adjustment to the unseen order. Man is in some some sense fallen from the moral height at which he would have ready access to the unseen order. His moral corruption, however it came about, has noetic consequences.
4. The conviction that our moral deficiency cannot be made sufficiently good by our own efforts to afford us ready access to the unseen order.
5. The conviction that adjustment to the unseen order requires moral purification/transformation.
6. The conviction that help from the side of the unseen order is available to bring about this purification and adjustment.
7. The conviction that the sensible order is not plenary in point of reality or value, that it is ontologically and axiologically derivative. It is a manifestation or emanation or creation of the unseen order.
As I understand Islam, a normative Muslim could accept my (1) and (2). But as Professor Boisson makes clear, (3) implies that Islam is not a religion.
We can now argue in two ways: If anything is a religion, then its satisfies my criteria; Islam does not satisfy my criteria; ergo, Islam is not a religion. Or one could insist that Islam is a religion and that my (3) ought to be jettisoned.
What about Buddhism? It is a religion of self-help, a religion of self-power as opposed to other-power. Among the last words of the Tathagata:
Therefore, O Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves. Rely on yourselves, and do not rely on external help.
Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Seek salvation alone in the truth. Look not for assistance to anyone besides yourselves.
[. . .]
I now exhort you, saying: ‘All component things must grow old and be dissolved again. Seek ye for that which is permanent, and work out your own salvation with diligence.’
My (4) rules out self-help wisdom-paths. We cannot achieve salvation by our own power. We need divine grace. So if Buddhism is a religion, then (4) must be jettisoned. If, however, (4) is upheld, then Buddhism does not count as a religion.
We note en passant that my (4) also rules out Stoicism and Pyrrhonian Skepticism as religions.
This leads to the thorny question of what one is doing when one sets forth criteria as I have done. I am obviously not involved in a project of pure stipulation. On the other hand I am not trying to give a lexical definition of 'religion.' Dictionary definitions are of little use in inquiries such as this one. (See The Dictionary Fallacy.) I am trying to pin down the normative essence or nature of religion.
But does religion have an essence? Not clear. It may be that the concept of religion is a family resemblance concept, one to which no essence corresponds. But even if religion does have an essence, how do I know that my criteria articulate this essence? In particular, how do I justify (3) and (4)?
But suppose religion does have a normative essence and that I have captured it. Then Islam and Buddhism are no more counterexamples to my definition than the existence of a three-legged cat is a counterexample to a definition of 'cat' that includes being four-legged as one of its essential marks. A three-legged cat is not a normatively normal cat; it is a defective cat. Islam and Buddhism are arguably not normatively normal religions; they are defective religions. They leave out essential features of the 'true' religion.
It is important to realize that none of these questions will ever be resolved, here below leastways, to the satisfaction of every competent practitioner of the relevant disciplines. It is therefore eminently stupid, besides being morally wrong, to violate and murder our ideological opponents, except in self-defense against the adherents of the 'religion of peace' to employ a contemporary example.
The following weighty question flashed across my mind this morning: which word is to 'aunt' as 'avuncular' is to 'uncle'? A little Internet pokey-wokey brought me to materteral.
Saw your post today. I really do think that modern Leftism is best understood as a religion. I realize also that understanding something as if it were a religion is different from saying it is a religion, and so I've just written a response to your post, in which I try to make the case that Progressivism is, in effect, a religion to the people who espouse it -- that it activates all the same behaviors and cognitive postures.
I'm hoping we might come to a "meeting of the minds" on this one, because I believe that seeing the Left as embodying a religion is, when it comes to having to deal with them, a helpful (and accurate) stance for the rest of us.
I will have to read Malcolm's lengthy response, but for now a couple of quick rejoinders.
1) Is leftism a religion to the people who espouse it? I rather doubt it. I don't think your average committed lefty would cop to being religious in his beliefs and practices. If you could find me a communist or other atheistic leftist who understands his stance as religious I would be very surprised. Of course there are 'progressives' who are members of Christian and other churches. They water down Christianity to bring it in line with their 'progressivism.' They are lefties first, and Christians second, if at all. But we are not talking about them.
2) Why is it "helpful" for us in our battles with destructive leftists to view them as adhering to and promoting a religion? I say it is not helpful. It is obfuscatory and inaccurate. It blurs important distinctions. And it is unnecessary.
But if people want to say that leftism functions in the psychic economy of a committed leftist in a manner closely analogous to the way religion functions in the psychic economy of a committed religionist, then I have no objection. Just don't say that leftism is a religion. Or if you insist on using the sentence 'Leftism is a religion,' make sure you make it clear that you are using it to express the above proposition.
Just as a salt substitute is not salt, a substitute for religion in the life of a leftist is not a religion.
Material plenty allows the leisure to contemplate one's moral and intellectual and spiritual poverty. So money, far from being the root of all evil, is often conducive, and sometimes necessary, for the uprooting of some evils.
Related: Radix Omnium Malorum. This is one of my best entries. It definitively refutes the widespread notion that money is the root of all evil.
Suppose you and yours join a quasi-monastic community out in the middle of nowhere where you live more or less 'off the grid,' home-school your kids, try to keep alive and transmit our Judeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman traditions, all in keeping with that marvellous admonition of Goethe in Faust:
Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, erwirb es, um es zu besitzen!
What from your fathers you received as heir,
Acquire if you would possess it. (tr. W. Kaufmann)
So now you are out in the desert or the forest or in some isolated place free of the toxic influences of a society in collapse. The problem is that you are now a very easy target for the fascists of the Left. You and yours are all in one place, far away from the rest of society and its infrastructure. All the fascists have to do is trump up some charges, of child-abuse, of gun violations, whatever. The rest of society considers you kooks and benighted bigots and religious fanatics and won't be bothered if you are wiped off the face of the earth. You might go the way of the Branch Davidians.
Is this an alarmist scenario? I hope it is. But the way things are going, one ought to give careful thought to one's various withdrawal options.
I flip on a sit-com. Then I count the seconds before the onset of sexual innuendo, allusions, and the like.
We are concupiscent from the ground up. And this by (fallen) nature. Our natural condition is exacerbated by the sex saturation of contemporary society.
I played my game most recently the other night when I watched the beginning of "Hot in Cleveland." 'Hot' says it all. But what's hot today will be stone-cold tomorrow.
Here is what I would say to Badiou et al. Define your terms. Make an assertion and defend it. Tell us what your thesis is. Say something definite. Try to be clear. Philosophy is hard enough even when one is clear. Avoid name dropping, that mark of the pseudo-intellectual. Go easy on the rhetorical questions. If you ever find something definite to say, employ the indicative mood.
Trump is doing well despite obstructionist Dems, deep-state saboteurs, and the nay-saying nimrods of Never Trumpism. The stock market is way up, illegal immigration is way down, and a solid conservative, Neil Gorsuch, is a SCOTUS shoo in.
Add to the list an incitement of interest among lefties in federalism.
Calexit, Bluexit and other secessionisms are just silly and won't happen. United we stand; divided we fall. We can keep the Union together if we practice some enlightened segregation. I have been arguing for federalism for years. We need the political equivalent of divorce. Members of a divorced couple can remain on amicable terms if they severely restrict their contact to what is patently in their common interest, such as the care of children. You get the analogy. It limps, but no analogy is perfect. A perfect analogy is an identity and you can't (fruitfully) compare a thing to itself.
For both historical and philosophical reasons, federalism runs counter to the progressive instinct. Those on the left like government, and their preferred legislature is the Supreme Court. On top of this, the South’s invocation of states’ rights to resist the civil rights movement has tainted the phrase, which many regard as code for “Jim Crow.”
But Mr. Trump’s election may be occasioning a welcome rethink, especially among Democrats who understand they have lost far more than the White House. For all the attention to Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote victory, Democratic influence over state legislatures is now reduced to Civil War levels. In this environment, some progressives appreciate that they might have more to gain from a federalism that empowers minorities—sexual, racial, political, whatever—in locales where their views dominate.
One concern is whether lefties can learn to control their totalitarian instinct. I am not particularly sanguine about that. So keep your powder dry.
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