Maverick Philosopher

Why Did Communism Fail?

Richard Pipes, Communism: A History, Modern Library, 2001, p. 154:

In sum, Communism failed and is bound to fail for at least two reasons: one, that to enforce equality, its principal objective, it is necessary to create a coercive apparatus that demands privileges and thereby negates equality; and two, that ethnic and territorial loyalties, when in conflict with class allegiances, everywhere and at all times overwhelm them, dissolving Communism into nationalism, which is why socialism so easily combines with "Fascism."

The enforcing of equality requires an agency of enforcement, the revolutionary vanguard, that is vastly unequal in power to those who are being equalized. And this for the simple reason that people will resist expropriation: they will not willingly surrender what they consider to be the product of their labor.  The deplorable masses will have to be forced, for their own good, to become good socialists. But once the vanguard gets a taste of power and its privileges and perquisites, it will not willingly surrender them  and the wealth that comes in their train.  Greed is ancient and endemic in the human condition. It antedates capitalism.  It is therefore not a product of capitalism, and cannot be erased by erasing capitalism.  The upshot is that the method by which Communists aim to enforce equality insures that equality will never be reached.

As for the second reason, there is an innate tendency in humans to revert to the tribal and the territorial. International communism is no match for the nationalism that comes naturally to people. 

The underlying problem is that Communism is irremediably flawed in its philosophical anthropology: there is no understanding of human nature, and what is worse, no recognition that there even is such a thing as human nature.  The utopian conceit of the Communists was and is that man is infinitely malleable: collectively, he can remake himself. Change the relations of production and you change man from the petty, greedy, individualistic bastard he hitherto has been into a transformed being willing to merge with his species-being (Gattungswesen) and work for the common good. 

What is now called cultural Marxism retains this notion of the malleability of man in the form of social constructivism. 

Now apply the above insights to the current political situation as the Democrat party moves in the Communist direction!

Bergoglio the Secularist on the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes

Dr. Vito Caiati reports:

Something that the Argentinian did this week really annoyed me.

Specifically, in his homily on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, Bergoglio continued his devious discouragement of belief in miracles, flagitiously denying the great nature miracle by which Christ fed a multitude with just five loaves of bread and two fish.

As you know, the Gospel of Mathew describes the miracle as follows: “Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass; and taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.  And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.  And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children” (Mt 14:19-21; cf. Mk 6:40-44 and Lk 9:14-17, which have essentially the same wording, and Jn 6:10-14, which diverges only slightly).

Whatever happened here, it is quite clear that the very small quantity of matter contained in five loaves and two fish, was exponentially enlarged after Christ’s “blessing.” Thus, something miraculous occurred.

Now, here is Bergoglio’s exegesis of this event:

“Jesus.., .after having recited the blessing, gave the bread to be distributed, revealing in this the more beautiful significance: bread is not only a product of consumption: it is a means of sharing. In fact, surprisingly, in the telling of the multiplication of the loaves, multiplication is never mentioned. On the contrary, the verbs utilized are “break, give, distribute.” (cf. Lk 9:16)  In short, the act of sharing rather than the multiplication is emphasized. This is important: Jesus does not perform an act of magic; he does not transform the five loaves into five thousand loaves and then day: “Now distribute them.” No, Jesus prays, blesses those five loaves and begins to distribute then, trusting in the Father. And those five loaves never finish. This is not magic; it is faith in God and in his providence” https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20190623_omelia-corpusdomini.html).

Notice that the concept of miracle nowhere enters into this analysis; rather, Bergoglio engages in a sleight of hand, counterpoising the notion of “magic” with that of “faith in God.” His deprecation of multiple loaves, of which none of the Gospels in fact speak, insinuates that such a multiplication, certainly within the powers ascribed to Christ by the Evangelists, would have to be magical rather than miraculous. Now, magic is defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as “All practices . . . , by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural power over others.” Jesus was, of course, accused of magic (as in Mt 12:24 or Lk 11:15),  but the Gospels reject this falsity and instead proclaim that “Jesus accompanies his words with many “‘mighty works and wonders and signs’, which manifest that the kingdom is present in him and attest that he was the promised Messiah” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 547). In other words, when personally present here on Earth, Christ revealed His divine power through miracles. It is precisely this power that is denied in turning the feeding of the five thousand with five loaves and two fish into a simple “act of sharing.” Here, we have the Incarnation filtered through the decadent left-wing “humanist” ideology that is the hallmark of this pontificate.  

John Searle: Two Anecdotes

I wouldn't be mentioning the following two unflattering anecdotes had it not been for the recent revelations with regard to Searle's having been been stripped of his emeritus status  at the University of California, Berkeley. He was found to have violated sexual harrassment policies. See The Fall of John Searle.

In 1983 during my tenure at the University of Dayton, John Searle was invited to be a keynote speaker at a conference organized by the philosophy department. Searle opened the proceedings by telling a joke and insulting his hosts. He recounted how his travel agent, upon hearing Searle's request for a ticket to Dayton, Ohio, exclaimed, "What are you, a ticket fetishist?" A coastal elitist, Searle apparently considered Ohio to be 'flyover country' and Dayton Hicksville.  

In one of the sessions, while a young academic was reading his paper, Searle ostentatiously ignored him by reading from The New York Times.  He sat in the front of the room, with the paper held high, blocking his view of the speaker.  

That says something about the man, and its says something about contemporary analytic philosophy.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Sweet and Wholesome

I once asked a guy what he wanted in a woman. He replied, "A whore in bed, Simone de Beauvoir in the parlor, and the Virgin Mary on a pedestal."  An impossible combo. Some just want the girl next door.

Bobby Darin, Dream Lover. With pix of Sandra Dee.

Audrey Hepburn, Moon River

Gogi Grant, The Wayward Wind, 1956. I'll take Lady Gogi over Lady Gaga any day.

Doris Day, Que Sera, Sera, 1956.  What did she mean? The tautological, Necessarily, what will be, will be? Or the non-tautologically fatalistic, What will be, necessarily will be? Either way, she died in May.

William James on Self-Denial

Few preach self-denial anymore. We have become a nation of moral wimps. We need a taste of the strenuosity of yesteryear, and who better to serve it up than our very own William James, he of the Golden Age of American philosophy:

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But, if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time!" Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. (Principles of Psychology, vol. 1)

At James' door we receive bread. At Quine's a stone. How American philosophy has fallen off since the Golden Age of James, Royce, and Peirce!

 

 

 

The Ascesis of the Lower

It is useful to suppose oneself composed of a lower and a higher self.  Much good comes from denying the former, good that accrues to the latter.

The Christian View of Death and Immortality

Thanatology presupposes philosophical anthropology: what death is taken to be depends on what the human being is taken to be. Although Christianity certainly has affinities with Platonism, so much so that Nietzsche could with some justice speak of Christianity as Platonism for the people, the Christian view of man is in an important respect un-Platonic. In terms of Aquinas' Latin, Platonism holds that homo est anima utens corpore, man is a soul using a body. On this view the person is essentially the soul, and the body is a temporary and accidental housing or vehicle. There are Platonic passages in which the soul is described as "imprisoned" in the body. The body is the prison house of the soul. The soul is in the body like an oyster in its shell. These and other metaphors can be found in the Platonic dialogues.  If one thinks in this way, then death is not a calamity but something good. Death is liberation, release, the separation of one thing, the soul, from another, the body, to which it should not have been attached in the first place. The fall into time is a fall into the flesh.  For Platonism, death undoes the fall into time. Death is to that extent good, and the philosopher welcomes it. Indeed, the philosophical life is a preparation for death. (Plato, Phaedo, 67e)

Christianity, however, in terms of Aquinas' Latin, maintains that (a) homo non est anima tantum, man is not the soul alone, and (b) anima forma corporis, the soul is the form of the body. The human person, then is essentially a form-matter composite, and not essentially a soul. On the Platonic view soul can exist without body, though not conversely, while on the Christian view as understood by Aquinas, neither soul nor body can exist without the other.* The two need each other: the body needs the soul to animate it and 'personalize' it, to make it a person's body as opposed to a corpse. And the soul needs the body to achieve its proper unfolding. Despite the difference between soul and body, man is a unitary being in a way in which he is not unitary on the Platonic conception.

There is another important difference. For Platonism, the fall into time — see Phaedrus — is a fall into an evil condition. But for Christianity, everything is and is good because it comes from God who is all-good. So our embodiment cannot be evil. For Christianity there is of course a Fall, but it is not a Fall into embodiment. It is a fall from a perfect form of embodiment to an imperfect form.

For Christianity, then, we are not immortal souls accidentally housed in mortal bodies, and death cannot be understood as affecting only our bodies. Death is not release of one part of the self from another, but the destruction of the entire unitary self. Being, bestowed as it is by God, is good, and so, if we are essentially embodied, death is a total calamity.

On the Christian view, then,  we are not naturally immortal: we are mortal body and soul. Any immortality that we come to acquire requires a supernatural agent operating in a supernatural way. But weren't humans naturally immortal before the Fall? Didn't death enter the picture only when sin did?

It is true that on the Christian scheme death first enters the picture as punishment for sin. But it does not follow that we are naturally immortal in our prelapsarian state. The doctor angelicus discusses this question in the Summa Theologica, Q 97, art. 1. If prelapsarian, paradisiacal man were immortal by nature, then he could not have lost his immortality, which is precisely what happened when he sinned. Some of the angels sinned but did not lose their immortality because they are naturally immortal. But man is not: his prelapsarian immortality was a divine gift. By nature he is mortal, i.e., subject to death, able to die. Aquinas speaks of a "supernatural force given by God to the soul, whereby it was enabled to preserve the body from all corruption so long as it itself remained subject to God."

In sum, man in his own nature is mortal, body and soul, in both his prelapsarian and postlapsarian states. But owing to a supernatural gift, man in his prelapsarian state was given the power to preserve himself as long as he willed to so so. Prelapsarian man could die, but not against his will. We, however, are condemned to death nolens volens by Adam's sin.

______________________

*On Aristotelian hylomorphic metaphysics, the form and the matter of a primary sublunary substance are not themselves substances: they cannot exist on their own apart from the substance of which they are 'principles' or ontological factors.  In particular, the soul, as form of an animal body, cannot exist disembodied. But then what accounts for the continuity of the human person from the time of death to the resurrection of the body?  As I understand Aquinas, he simply makes an exception in the case of the deceased human animal: in this case the soul as form can exist apart from a material substratum.  This exception goes along with the exception in the case of God himself, the forma formarum, form of all forms. God is self-subsistent pure form, form without matter and the human soul between death and resurrection is pure form as well, although not self-subsistent pure form.

The first exception strikes this philosopher as and ad hoc move  that does not fit within Aristotelian hylomorphism.  If the forms of sublunary substances are not themselves substances, then this should hold across the board and allow of no exceptions. It has been said that Aquinas is a Aristotelian on earth, but a Platonist in heaven.  Is this a problem? I should think it is, but others will disagree.

The Political Burden of Proof: Polite Version

As contemporary 'liberals' become ever more extreme, they increasingly assume what I will call the political burden of proof.  The onus is now on them to defeat the presumption that they are so  morally and intellectually obtuse as not to be worth talking to.

Time Apportionment as between Athens and Benares

If a philosopher who meditates spends five hours per day on philosophy, how many hours should he spend on meditation?  One correspondent of mine, a retired philosophy professor and Buddhist, told me that if x hours are spent on philosophy, then x hours should be spent on meditation.  So five hours of philosophy ought to be balanced by five hours of meditation.  A hard saying!  I find it very easy to spend five to eight hours per day reading and writing philosophy. But my daily formal meditation sessions are almost never more than two hours in duration.  There is also mindfulness while hiking or doing other things such as clearing brush or washing dishes, but I don't count that as formal meditation.

What are the possible views on this topic of time apportionment?

1. No time should be wasted on philosophy. Pascal famously remarked that philosophy is not worth an hour's trouble.  (I am pretty sure he had his countryman Renatus Cartesius in mind.) But he didn't proffer his remark in defense of Benares, but of Jerusalem.  Time apportionment as between Athens and Jerusalem is a separate topic. Note that Pascal made an exception in his own case.  He left behind a magnificent collection that comes down to us as Pensées.  So no philosophy is worth an hour's trouble except Pascal's own. It would have shown greater existential consistency had the great thinker devoted himself after his conversion to prayer, meditation, and charitable works.  But then we would have been the poorer for it.

2. No time should be wasted on meditation.  Judging by their behavior, the vast majority of academic philosophers seem committed to some such proposition.

3. Time spent on either is wasted.  The view of the ordinary cave-dweller or worldling.

4. More time ought to be devoted to philosophy.  But why?

5. The two 'cities' deserve equal time.  The view of my Buddhist correspondent.

6.  More time ought to be devoted to meditation than to philosophy.

What could be said in defense of (6)?  Three quotations from Paul Brunton (Notebooks,  vol. II,  The Quest, Larson, 1986, p. 13):

• The intuitive element is tremendously more important than the intellectual . . . .
• The mystical experience is the most valuable of all experiences .  . . .
•  . . . the quest of the Overself is the most worthwhile endeavour open to human exertions.

Merton on the Monastic Journey

Thomas Merton, The Monastic Journey, p. 155:

If a solitary should one day find his way, by the grace and mercy of God, into a desert place in which he is not known, and if it is permitted to him by the divine pity to live there, and to remain unknown, he may perhaps do more good to the human race by being a solitary than he ever could have done by remaining the prisoner of the society where he was living.

Merton's life suggested that he wasn't really sold on the above idea. Merton the restless, Merton the conflicted. Human, all-too-human. See my Merton category for rich substantiation.

The Orwellian Left and Abortion

For leftists, words are weapons. Nothing new here. If you have been paying attention, however, you will have noticed that their weaponization of language is becoming increasingly Orwellian.

Case in point: OPPOSITION to abortion is now 'racist.' 'Racist' has long been a verbal cudgel in the hands (mouths?) of leftists, elastic in its meaning, but now an Orwellian twist is added. It makes some sense to say that abortion is 'racist' because it disproportionately affects pre-natal blacks. But to say that OPPOSITION to abortion is racist is just insane.

Not only is truth not a leftist value, sense isn't either. Being a lefty means not having to make sense.

The Democrats are now a hard-left party. So I ask one more time: Why are you still a Dem?

Of 'Pussy' and 'Pusillanimous' and Politics

A friend of mine recently maintained with a straight face that 'pusillanimous' derives from 'pussy.'  As an etymological claim that is of course preposterous. But there are two questions here that we ought to distinguish.

The first is whether  'pusillanimous' has roughly the same meaning as  'pussy' when the latter is used as it is used in American slang.  I'd say it does.

The second question is whether 'pusillanimous' is etymologically derivable from 'pussy.'  No. It comes from the Latin pusillus (very  small) + animus (mind, soul) --> L. pusillanimis --> late Middle English pusillanimous. And that reminds me of a certain pusillanimous former president.

I asked a reader about a month before the 2016 election whether the graphic above was too tasteless to post to my high-toned blog, adding,  "But then these are times in which considerations of good taste and civility are easily 'trumped.'"  My reader responded with a fine statement (emphasis added):

Of course it’s tasteless, but it’s funny.  We should go to battle with a song in our hearts.  Never had patience for the hand-wringing by the beskirted Republicans and professional “conservatives”.  How could anyone be surprised by the locker room braggadocio of a man who appeared on the Howard Stern show 600 times?  Trump is a deeply flawed messenger of the right message, but politics is a practical affair.  He’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard in this go-around.  After all it’s only the very foundation of the republic at stake.  So let’s have some fun while beating the drum for him.

My reader is right.  Trump is all we've got.  And the very foundation of the Republic is at stake. He has a dubious character, but then so does Hillary.  This may not be obvious because, while Trump broadcasts his faults, she hides hers.  This is part of her being a slimy, mendacious, stealth ideologue.  That is part of what led to her defeat. People saw through her flip-flopping opportunism and refusal to come clean.

Given that both are sorry specimens on the character front, it comes down to principles, policies, and programs. And now, well into President Trump's first term, it is obvious that we who rolled the dice for Trump have been vindicated in spades.  

Liberals and Segregation

When a liberal hears 'segregation,' he thinks of racial segregation, thereby confusing the genus with one of its species, and of course, being the bien-pensant fellow he is, he reflexively comes out against it in words for public consumption. But in his private life he practices segregation, racial and otherwise: he lives in a lily-white, non-deplorable, gated and guarded enclave with  his own ilk and would not think of sending his children to public schools, there to enjoy a truly 'diverse' educational 'experience.' 

Surely it is racist to want to deprive your children of close contact with 'people of color.' No?

Two Marks of Maturity

One is the ability to take a joke and the other is the ability to live without dogmatic pseudo-certainty while striving for genuine certainty.

The Optimist and the Art of Life

The optimist is no cosmologist seeking the final truth about the world but a cosmetologist who puts a pretty face on it. He applies cosmetics to the cosmos. He knows the art of life and  how to make the most of life, and does not shy away from such life-enhancing illusions as are conducive to his making the most of it.  The philosopher, however, seeks the truth of life. Come hell or high water, or both, or neither.

There is the art of life and the truth of life, and there is a tension between them, a tension to be investigated by those of us who seek the truth of life. The investigation of this tension cannot be recommended to the artful livers. They would do well to ignore, and leave unexamined,  the Socratic "The unexamined life is not worth living." 

Philosophy between the Impersonal and the Personal

Philosophy aspires to the impersonal truth but, like a rocket that fails to achieve escape velocity, it remains forever in orbit around the personal, tied to it, expressive of it.  This ineluctable tie-in to the personal works against philosophy's pursuit of the universal. And so, while in aspiration one, in execution philosophy is many, which is to say that there is no philosophy, only philosophies. There is no philosophy except in aspiration and in the drive to the truth that breaks free from the personal. In execution, philosophy does not break free; it breaks apart into philosophies.

And so I cannot disagree with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who, in Part One of Beyond Good and Evil, "On the Prejudices of the Philosophers," tells us that "every great philosophy" has bisher, hitherto, been eine Selbsterkenntnis ihres Urhebers, a confession or self-cognition of its author, and eine Art ungewollter und unvermerkter mémoires, a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.

That's right. But what did old Fritz mean by 'hitherto'? That he was an exception? But he was surely no exception. His philosophy was just  another confession of its author, just another rocket aimed at truth that failed to achieve escape velocity and fell back into orbit around the personal-all-too-personal.

What a rich specimen of humanity he was. He did a lot of damage, but he dug deep and he dug fearlessly and at personal cost. We honor him for that.

The Fall of John Searle

By now you will have heard that the distinguished philosopher, John R. Searle, has been stripped of his emeritus status  at the University of California, Berkeley. He was found to have violated sexual harrassment policies.  A long-time reader of this blog astutely observes that things went worse for Peter Abelard, and then adds:

Also, behaviour which would not have shocked me if it had involved an investment banker (although investment bankers often get a bad press in that respect), shocks me in a philosopher. OK, philosophers are not priests. But there is a sort of commitment to, er, What Is Higher, and I don’t see any such commitment in what has been described of Searle. E.g. watching pornography in front of students, with the explicit intention of making them aware of the pornography, or of making a signal of some kind, not sure what. (E.g. did he imagine that the pornography would create some desire in a female student one third of his age? Then he is a silly old fool. But then no fool like an old fool).

I am slightly surprised that my correspondent, an old man, a conservative, a man of the world, and a philosopher reports being shocked. As I would put it, we are concupiscent from the ground up, and in a social climate in which the old-time restraints have been removed, is it any surprise that a man like Searle who sports a huge ego -- I've seen him in action -- and is an atheist and a naturalist to boot, should get in touch with his inner lecher, especially in a far-Left Left-coast venue such as Berkeley, California?

Of course, I am not condoning his bad behavior; I condemn it. I'm just not shocked by it. The man considers religion to be in bad taste. No curb on his behavior from that direction!  With a Luciferian (phosphorescent, light-bearing) intellect and an ego to match, widely-respected, he probably considered himself bullet-proof. Pride comes before the fall. And no fool like an old fool, as my correspondent notes.

Didn’t I tell you of Kingsley Amis’s remark that sexual desire was like ‘being handcuffed to a lunatic’? Right, but he also said the benefit of middle age was being released. So he acknowledged the absurdity of the desire. Searle apparently did not acknowledge such absurdity. I mean, it’s fairly absurd in a young man, but wholly and fantastically absurd in a man aged 86, or whatever it is.

Amis is right, except that middle age is too young for release. I say you are young until 30, middle-aged 30-60, and old thereafter.  If you feed your sex monkey, he can torment you throughout that middle-aged period and beyond depending on your level of vigor.  It is interesting, and indeed important, to note that according to St. Augustine, who had wide experience in these matters, no man achieves continence without divine assistance. So rather than say that insatiable lust is absurd, I prefer to say that it is  border-line demonic.

Lord Russell, if I rightly recall, refused to remain faithful to his wife even in his 80's.  Now that truly is absurd. You chase a woman. Suppose you catch her. What the hell do you do then? Sniff her hair like creepy Joe Biden?  It is natural for a young man to be on the prowl, and you would entertain certain doubts about a young man who wasn't; but an old man on the prowl cuts a ridiculous figure, and is failing to make use of his old age for what it is good for: finally breaking his bondage to the flesh.

Searle story here. Something about the philandering Freddy Ayer, here. And if, after all that salaciousness, you are by any chance  interested in Searles'  ideas, go here. 

 

Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained

Why do the powerful arguments against abortion have such little effect?

The 'pro-choice' movement, to use the polite euphemism, is fueled by concupiscence.  Not entirely, of course. To what extent, then?

One naturally wants the pleasures of sexual intercourse without any consequences. One seeks cost-free indulgence in the most intense sensuous pleasure known to man. Unrestricted abortion on demand is a convenient remedy to an inconvenient pregnancy should other birth-control methods fail.  Combine the following: a fallen being, a powerful drive, advanced birth-control and abortion technology, the ever-increasing irrelevance of religion and its moral strictures, 24-7 sex-saturation via omni-invasive popular media -- combine them, and the arguments against the morality of abortion come too late. As good as they are in themselves, they are impotent against the onslaught of the factors mentioned.

It's always been that reason is reliably suborned by passion; it's just that now the subornation is quicker and easier.

And then there is the feminist angle. Having come into their own in other arenas, which is good, women are eager to throw off the remaining shackles of family and pregnancy. They insist on their rights, including reproductive rights. And isn't the right to an abortion just another reproductive right?  Well, no it isn't; but the sexual itch in synergy with emancipatory zeal is sure to blind people to any arguments to the contrary. (That there are some reproductive rights I take for granted.)

And now for a little paradox. Sexual emancipation 'empowers' women. But in a sex- and power-obsessed society this 'empowerment' also empowers men by increasing the cost-free availability of women to male sexual exploitation. Enter the 'hook-up,' the name of which is a perfect phrase, hydraulic in its resonance, for the substitution of impersonal fluid-exchange for the embodiment of personal love.

It is no surprise that men with money and power who operate in enclaves of like-minded worldings take full advantage of the quarry on offer.  But lust like other vices is hard to control once it is given free rein. And so the depradations of Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and a hundred others is the natural upshot. 

Women rightly push back but too many veer to the extreme of #metoo. 

The result is a strange blend of sexual licentiousness-cum-sanctimony. 

A lefty will say that I preaching, posturing, moralizing. But for a lefty all moral judgment is moralizing, except when they do it not knowing what they do; and all preaching is hypocritical, except when they do it.

But don't ever expect to get through to benighted people whose will to power has so suppressed their will to truth that they cannot look into the mirror and see themselves. 

Related:

The Role of Concupiscence

Ohne Fleiß Kein Preis

The Role of Concupiscence in the Politics of the Day

Shakespeare on Lust

Shakespeare on the Fire Down Below

Like a Moth to the Flame (on the lessons to be learned from Anne-Marie Zamora's murder of the logician Jean van Heijenoort)

Addendum

The Latin above is 1 John 2:16: "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." (KJV)

Omne quod est in mundo, concupiscentia carnis est, et concupiscentia oculorum, et superbia vitae . . . .

Why do the powerful arguments against abortion have such little effect?

The 'pro-choice' movement, to use the polite euphemism, is fueled by concupiscence.  Not entirely, of course. To what extent, then?

One naturally wants the pleasures of sexual intercourse without any consequences. One seeks cost-free indulgence in the most intense sensuous pleasure known to man. Unrestricted abortion on demand is a convenient remedy to an inconvenient pregnancy should other birth-control methods fail.  Combine the following: a fallen being, a powerful drive, advanced birth-control and abortion technology, the ever-increasing irrelevance of religion and its moral strictures, 24-7 sex-saturation via omni-invasive popular media -- combine them, and the arguments against the morality of abortion come too late. As good as they are in themselves, they are impotent against the onslaught of the factors mentioned.

It's always been that reason is reliably suborned by passion; it's just that now the subornation is quicker and easier.

And then there is the feminist angle. Having come into their own in other arenas, which is good, women are eager to throw off the remaining shackles of family and pregnancy. They insist on their rights, including reproductive rights. And isn't the right to an abortion just another reproductive right?  Well, no it isn't; but the sexual itch in synergy with emancipatory zeal is sure to blind people to any arguments to the contrary. (That there are some reproductive rights I take for granted.)

And now for a little paradox. Sexual emancipation 'empowers' women. But in a sex- and power-obsessed society this 'empowerment' also empowers men by increasing the cost-free availability of women to male sexual exploitation. Enter the 'hook-up,' the name of which is a perfect phrase, hydraulic in its resonance, for the substitution of impersonal fluid-exchange for the embodiment of personal love.

It is no surprise that men with money and power who operate in enclaves of like-minded worldings take full advantage of the quarry on offer.  But lust like other vices is hard to control once it is given free rein. And so the depradations of Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and a hundred others is the natural upshot. 

Women rightly push back but too many veer to the extreme of #metoo. 

The result is a strange blend of sexual licentiousness-cum-sanctimony. 

A lefty will say that I preaching, posturing, moralizing. But for a lefty all moral judgment is moralizing, except when they do it not knowing what they do; and all preaching is hypocritical, except when they do it.

But don't ever expect to get through to benighted people whose will to power has so suppressed their will to truth that they cannot look into the mirror and see themselves. 

Related:

The Role of Concupiscence

Ohne Fleiß Kein Preis

The Role of Concupiscence in the Politics of the Day

Shakespeare on Lust

Shakespeare on the Fire Down Below

Like a Moth to the Flame (on the lessons to be learned from Anne-Marie Zamora's murder of the logician Jean van Heijenoort)

Addendum

The Latin above is 1 John 2:16: "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." (KJV)

Omne quod est in mundo, concupiscentia carnis est, et concupiscentia oculorum, et superbia vitae . . . .

Two from Malcolm Pollack

A Taxonomy of Civil War

Vallicella on the 'Proposition Nation': Between Scylla and Charybdis

Michael Kearns, Profile in Civil Courage

Erie County Clerk Michael "Mickey" Kearns took his first legal step to fight a new state law that allows immigrants in the country illegally to obtain a New York State driver's license.

At the time the illegal aliens receive, illegally, their driver's licenses, they will be able to register to vote, again illegally. Now in possession of photo ID, they will be able vote illegally in our elections.

The contemptible Dems profess to be worried about Russian interference in our elections. But these Democrat scumbags actively support illegal-alien interference in our elections. They are mendacious, hate-America leftists.

So please don't complain about a culture of contempt. Comrades Cuomo and de Blasio and all the rest of their ilk are fully deserving of contempt. Sorry David French, but these people are not fellow citizens but domestic enemies.

buffalonews.com

 

Erie County clerk: 'I will not be granting licenses to illegal immigrants'

'Expressive Individualism' is Becoming a Buzz Word

Or rather a buzz phrase. What does it mean, and where is it from?

Where [Alasdair] MacIntyre used the term emotivism to name our moral predicament, in their classic 1985 study of American society, Habits of the Heart, the sociologist Robert Bellah and his co-writers identified two powerful strands of American thought that in some ways correspond with the managerial and therapeutic types: utilitarian individualism and expressive individualism.

[. . .]

. . . American culture is arguably even more strongly influenced by the second form of individualism, which arose in opposition to the drive toward ever greater efficiency and control. “Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.” The archetypal expressive individualist, according to Bellah, is Walt Whitman, whose most famous work, Leaves of Grass, begins with the words, “I celebrate myself.” For Whitman, in contrast to Franklin, the goal of life is not to maximize efficiency for the sake of material acquisition but rather to luxuriate in sensual and intellectual experiences, to take pleasure in one’s bodily life and sexuality and to express oneself freely, without any concern for social conventions.

The article infra vigorously attacks Trump as the president of expressive individualism.  No mention is made, however, of that expressive individualist, the sexually insatiable Bill Clinton, who gave his girlfriends copies of Leaves of Grass and who, unlike Trump, went beyond 'grabbing pussy' to actual rape, or so it has been plausibly alleged.  If, as Never-Trumpers believe, character is so important, how can they turn a blind eye to the defective characters of the Clintons?

Like so many such articles, it offers no plan of action, no way forward, no recipe for national renewal. The author hates Trump and mixes in some solid criticisms of the man with some scurrilous ones.

But now let's get practical. You've heard me say more than once that politics is a practical game. It is not just talk. Trump is all we conservatives have. He alone has the courage and the ability to punch back effectively against the omni-destructive Left and impede their destruction of our republic. You say that he's an expressive individualist? Suppose I agree. So what? Hillary is not? Are we not better off now than we would have been under Hillary? Obviously we are on so many fronts: abortion, religious liberty, SCOTUS, Israel, the economy, gun rights, and on and on.

What would the Never-Trumpers have us do? Retreat from politics altogether? There is no retreat from the totalitarian Left precisely because it is totalitarian. Leftists want the whole enchilada. Never-Trumpers don't seem to grasp that politics is always about better or worse. Trump may be bad, but he is better than Hillary or any electable Dem.  They go on about how he lies.   Many of his 'lies' are not lies at all but self-serving exaggerations or self-aggrandizing counterfactual speculations. To paraphrase: Had it not been been for all the illegal votes, I would have won the popular vote too! A self-serving, unverifiable, braggadocious, counterfactual conditional.  But because counterfactually conditional, not a lie. A lie is a deliberate misrepresentation of an actual state of affairs. One cannot lie about a merely possible state of affairs.  And when the Orange Man does lie, his lies tend to be harmless unlike the egregiously destructive lies of the Clintons, Obama, and recently Nancy Pelosi who lied brazenly and destructively when she said that the invasion of illegals from the south is a "manufactured crisis."

Members of the "French resistance" will say, "What doth it profit a man to win the culture but suffer the loss of his soul by supporting Trump?" My answer: I don't endorse Trump the man and all of his sybaritic and self-aggrandizing ways; I support his beneficial policies and programs.

The central stupidity of the Never-Trumpers is that they do not grasp that what matters primarily are policies and programs and judicial appointments that will be in effect long after a given president is out of office, not the personal life and shortcomings of the person who serves a term or two.

 

americamagazine.org

Donald Trump: the president of expressive individualism

 

Private Property

The right to private property is another thing leftists don't understand, unless it is their private property. 

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, tr. Ryan Bloom, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010, p. 177:

The Revolution is good.  But why?  One must have an idea of the civilization one wishes to create.  The abolition of property is not an end.  It is a means.

This is foolish. Private property is the foundation of individual liberty.  The problem is not private property, but too few people owning property, property they have worked for, and thus value and care about.  I include among private property the means for the defense of life, liberty, and property against assorted malefactors from unorganized criminals to rogue elements in the government.  

A Clutter Quotation Attributed to Einstein

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

Quote Investigator turned up nothing with respect to the above. Beware of all attributions, especially those to the great physicist. But the thought's the thing regardless of who said it or wrote it.

Related:

Misattributed to Socrates

A Misattribution Corrected

Pseudo-Latin French Bullshit: The Cartesian Castle

On Diachronic or 'Emersonian' Consistency

Once More on the Bogus Aristotle 'Quotation'

True Whether or not Aristotle (or Camus) said it

The Rosenbergs: Still Guilty After All These Years

On this date in 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death as atomic spies for the Soviet Union.  They were most certainly guilty as we now know. But no amount of proof of their guilt will stop the Left from lying about them as victims of  American 'fascism.' In those days we weren't the decadent weaklings we have become, unsure of ourselves, and unwilling to defend our nation against deadly threats.

Why, for example, is Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, still alive?  He committed his crimes to the cry of Allahu akbar in 2009, was sentenced to death in 2013, but is still alive.  Why hasn't he been executed?  Why the endless appeals?  

We need a judicial fast track to execution for convicted terrorists.  Justice demands it. 

We have lost our way.  We now longer believe in ourselves. We have elected and re-elected a hate-America leftist fool who actually had the temerity to refer to Hasan's terror as "work place violence."  Many of us feared that he would  be elected for a third term in the guise of Hillary Milhous Clinton. But Trump put a stop to that. Thank God for the Orange Man! 

Believing on Insufficient Evidence

The notion that we should always and everywhere apportion belief to evidence in such a way that we affirm only that for which we have sufficient evidence ignores the fact that belief for beings like us subserves action. If one acted only on those beliefs for which one had sufficient evidence one  would not act as one must to live well.

When a young person believes that he or she can do such-and-such, it is almost always on the basis of insufficient evidence.  And yet such belief beyond the evidence is a sine qua non of success.  There are two necessary conditions of success in life: one must believe that what one proposes to do is worth doing, and one must believe that one is capable of doing it.  In both cases one believes and acts on evidence that could hardly be called sufficient. 

This strikes me as a good maxim:  Don't let insufficient evidence prevent you from believing what you are better off believing than not believing. 

For a detailed discussion of what is behind the above remarks, see The Pragmatic and the Evidential: Is it Ever Rational to Believe Beyond the Evidence?

Christianity has civilized us . . .

. . . but it has also weakened us.  Our virtues, which once were strengths, are now weaknesses.  Some of our virtues have come to vitiate as much as some of our vices. 

We in the West no longer crucify malefactors or break them on the wheel. We now wring our hands, absurdly, over whether lethal injection is "cruel and unusual punishment."  A nation that has lost the will to execute its worst and most destructive criminals is a nation not long for this earth.  Can the will to live exist in a people who under no circumstances can muster the will to kill?

One of the fruits of civilization is toleration, that touchstone of classical liberalism.  It is a beautiful thing. It becomes a weakness, however, when it extends to the toleration of those who crucify and behead and throw homosexuals off of buildings.

Crucifixion in Islam:

It is all too common to view the practice of crucifixion as a form of torture and execution from antiquity which hasn’t been used in nearly two millennia, yet this is hardly the case. In fact, crucifixion is a standard means of execution in Saudi Arabia, and there is a growing movement among Islamists to bring back crucifixion as the preferred means of punishment for a variety of crimes, including apostasy from Islam, “fitna,” which is a pliable term which can refer to unbelief or mischief-making, or anything which goes against Islam and Shariah. This is explicitly taught in the Qur’an:

The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this: that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off… (Qur’an 5:33).

Ominously for Christians, strongly associated with fitna is “shirk,” the associating of partners with Allah. Believing Jesus to be the Son of God is, for Muslims, one of the worst forms of shirk, and is therefore punishable by death, including crucifixion. (There is a dark irony here, as Muslims do not believe Jesus was crucified, yet they prescribe crucifixion as punishment for Christians.)

Read it all. Disturbing images.

Born of Propinquity, Dead of Distance

Most friendships are born of propinquity and die the death of distance.

Hey 'Liberal'!

Either STFU about Nazis or report the crimes of the Commies.

At the Corner of Spirit and Flesh

Bodily lusts exist at the intersection of spirit and flesh. Neither merely bodily nor merely mental, they trouble neither angel nor beast. They trouble man, who is neither.

Flip-Floppin' Joe

The inner compass of the professional politician is a weather vane. The political winds having shifted, no one should be shocked that Joe Biden is now against what he was for, the Hyde Amendment. 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Fathers and Fatherhood

Harry Chapin, Cat's in the Cradle. The best song about fatherhood I am aware of. Bond with your son when he's five. Wait till he's 50 and he won't give you the time of day. Harry Chapin was a major talent who died young.  Here is his great Taxi. We Boomers are damned lucky to have the greatest popular music soundtrack of any generation.

What Happened to Harry Chapin?

Emmylou Harris, To Daddy

Arizona's own Marty Robbins, That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine. The old Gene Autry tune from the '30s. 

Joan Baez, Daddy, You've Been on My Mind. The great Dylan song slightly modified. Not addressed to a literal father, you understand. At :40, the girl depicted is not Joan Baez but Suze Rotolo, Dylan's first New York girlfriend. How do I know that? Because I am a self-certified Dylanologist from way back.

Shep and the Limelites, Daddy's Home, 1961. Anyone who prefers rap crap to this has a hole in his soul.

Rivingtons, Papa Oom Mow Mow. Stretching a bit. 

James Brown, Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, 1965

Horace Silver, Song for My Father, 1964

Hank Williams, I'm a Long Gone Daddy

No, I am not going to link to Alan Sherman, Hello Mudda, Hello Faddah, 1963.

Frank Zappa, Hungry Freaks, Daddy, 1966

Paul Peterson, My Dad. To end on a 'wholesome' if schmaltzy note.  

The Greatest Risk We are Taking

Patrick J. Buchanan:

But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants, many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million, composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.

Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation and one people?

There is none. Most people with a bit of life experience know that one can get along and interact productively with only some people. There has to be a broad base of shared agreement on all sorts of things. For example, there ought to be only one language in the U. S. for all public purposes, English. It was a huge mistake when voting forms were allowed to be published in foreign languages. Only legal immigrants should be allowed in, and assimilation must be demanded of them.

No comity without commonality as one of my  aphorisms has it.

The Left, however, wants the end of America as she was founded to be, "one nation and one people." That is why leftists support the illegal invasion from the south.  But being mendacious leftists they will never openly admit this, but instead speak with Orwellian obfuscation of "comprehensive immigration reform."

The enemy has been identified.

Do not think of leftists and 'progressives' as fellow citizens; they are merely among us as disorderly elements and domestic enemies.  There can be no peace with them because they represent an 'existential threat.' Not to our physical existence so  much as to our way of life, which is of course more important than our mere physical existence as animals.

But I must add, contra certain of the Alt Right, that "one people" should not be understood racially or ethnically. An enlightened nationalism is not  a white nationalism.  America is of course  'a proposition nation.' You will find the propositions in the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence.  

I don't give a flying enchilada whether you are Hispanic or Asian.  If you immigrated legally, accept the propositions, drop the hyphens, and identify as an American, then I say you are one of us. I'll even celebrate the culinary diversity you contribute.

That being understood, it is also true that whites discovered these America-constitutive propositions and are well-equipped to appreciate and uphold them, and better equipped than some other groups. That is a fact that a sane immigration policy must reflect.

My view is eminently reasonable and balanced. It navigates between the Scylla of destructive leftist globalist internationalism and the Charybdis of racist identity-political particularism.

Patrick J. Buchanan:

But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants, many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million, composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.

Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation and one people?

There is none. Most people with a bit of life experience know that one can get along and interact productively with only some people. There has to be a broad base of shared agreement on all sorts of things. For example, there ought to be only one language in the U. S. for all public purposes, English. It was a huge mistake when voting forms were allowed to be published in foreign languages. Only legal immigrants should be allowed in, and assimilation must be demanded of them.

No comity without commonality as one of my  aphorisms has it.

The Left, however, wants the end of America as she was founded to be, "one nation and one people." That is why leftists support the illegal invasion from the south.  But being mendacious leftists they will never openly admit this, but instead speak with Orwellian obfuscation of "comprehensive immigration reform."

The enemy has been identified.

Do not think of leftists and 'progressives' as fellow citizens; they are merely among us as disorderly elements and domestic enemies.  There can be no peace with them because they represent an 'existential threat.' Not to our physical existence so  much as to our way of life, which is of course more important than our mere physical existence as animals.

But I must add, contra certain of the Alt Right, that "one people" should not be understood racially or ethnically. An enlightened nationalism is not  a white nationalism.  America is of course  'a proposition nation.' You will find the propositions in the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence.  

I don't give a flying enchilada whether you are Hispanic or Asian.  If you immigrated legally, accept the propositions, drop the hyphens, and identify as an American, then I say you are one of us. I'll even celebrate the culinary diversity you contribute.

That being understood, it is also true that whites discovered these America-constitutive propositions and are well-equipped to appreciate and uphold them, and better equipped than some other groups. That is a fact that a sane immigration policy must reflect.

My view is eminently reasonable and balanced. It navigates between the Scylla of destructive leftist globalist internationalism and the Charybdis of racist identity-political particularism.

Orwell's 1984 at 70

Here

Asymmetrical Polarization: Which Side Is Mainly Responsible?

Political polarization is said to be asymmetrical when one of the political poles bears more responsibility than the other for exacerbating the polarization. But given the fact of polarization, it comes as no surprise that the Left blames the Right and the Right the Left. We all seem to agree that polarization is not good, but we disagree as to who the main culprit is.

We are polarized over polarization!

As a conservative, it is blindingly evident to me that the Left bears the lion's share of the blame. Leftists have moved much farther to the Left than rightists to the Right. But leftists don't agree, and being the recalcitrant bunch that they are, one cannot reasonably hope to change their minds.  But you never know, and in any case the following may help to buck up my fellow conservatives and supply them with ammo for the ongoing war.  

Here are some issues on which leftists (Democrats in U. S. politics) have gone far to the Left while conservatives (Most Republicans in U.S. politics) have maintained moderate positions.

Immigration.  The Republican position is moderate: curtail illegal immigration, but allow legal immigration. The Democrat position is extreme: allow wide-open immigration of any and all. Make no distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). The extremism goes as far as the Orwellian absurdity that one can have border security without border barriers.  Oppose President Trump at every turn, even though any reasonable person can see that construction of a border wall is necessary, although not sufficient, to stem the tide of incoming illegals.  And on top of it all, lie brazenly as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has done that the border crisis is a "manufactured crisis."

Voting. Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats are advocating lowering the voting age to 16. Others want to extend the franchise to felons, allowing those who cannot properly order their own lives to have a say in the proper ordering of society. Still others wish to permit illegal aliens to vote. The extremism of this is evident.

U.S. Constitution. Prominent Democrats advocate the abolition of the Electoral College and changing the number of seats on the Supreme Court. 

And so it goes. Here are three others that you can work out for yourself.

Capital Punishment.  

Abortion and Infanticide.

Free Speech.

Politics as Polemics: The Converse Clausewitz Principle

Would that I could avoid this political stuff.  But I cannot in good conscience retreat into my inner citadel and let my country be destroyed -- the country that makes it possible for me to cultivate the garden of solitude, retreat into my inner citadel, and pursue pure theory for its own sake.

Political discourse is unavoidably polemical. The zoon politikon must needs be a zoon polemikon. 'Polemical’ is from the Greek polemos, war, strife. According to Heraclitus of Ephesus, strife is the father of all: polemos panton men pater esti . . . (Fr. 53) I don't know about the 'all,' but strife  is certainly at the root of politics.  Politics is polemical because it is a form of warfare: the point is to defeat the opponent and remove him from power, whether or not one can rationally persuade him of what one takes to be the truth. It is practical rather than theoretical in that the aim is to implement what one takes to be the truth rather than contemplate it.  What one takes to be the truth: that is the problem in a nutshell.  Conservatives and leftists disagree fundamentally and non-negotiably.  

Implementation of what one takes to be the truth, however, requires that one get one’s hands on the levers of power. Von Clausewitz held that war is politics pursued by other means. But what could be called the Converse Clausewitz principle holds equally: politics is war pursued by other means.

David Horowitz, commenting on "Politics is war conducted by other means," writes:

In political warfare you do not just fight to prevail in an argument, but rather to destroy the enemy's fighting ability.  Republicans often seem to regard political combats as they would a debate before the Oxford Political Union, as though winning depended on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles.  But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.

You have only thirty seconds to make your point.  Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention) would not get it.  Your words would go over some of their heads and the rest would not even hear them (or quickly forget) amidst the bustle and pressure of everyday life.  Worse, while you are making your argument the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, borderline racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich.  Nobody who sees you in this way is going to listen to you in any case.  You are politically dead.

Politics is war.  Don't forget it. ("The Art of Political War" in Left Illusions: An 
Intellectual Odyssey Spence 2003, pp. 349-350)

Integralism in Three Sentences

Here:

Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.

The crucial proposition is the first. By 'end of human life' is meant the ultimate or final goal or purpose of human life, not its cessation or stoppage.  It is presupposed that all human lives share the same final purpose. And what might that be? For a traditional Catholic, the Baltimore Catechism gives the answer:

LESSON FIRST
ON THE END OF MAN

1. Q. Who made the world?
A. God made the world.

2. Q. Who is God?
A. God is the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things.

3. Q. What is man?
A. Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image
and likeness of God.

6. Q. Why did God make you?
A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world,
and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

The Catholic integralist is making the following claims. First, every human life has an ultimate purpose. Second, the  purpose is not different for different people: all, regardless of race, sex, or any other difference, share the same purpose. Third, the final common purpose is known and not open to doubt or debate: it is not a matter of conjecture or speculation or private opinion.  Fourth, the final common purpose is to know, love, and serve God in this world, and to be happy with him in the next. And of course the Catholic integralist is committed to the presuppositions of these claims, e.g., that there is a God, that he created everything distinct from himself, that man has a destiny that transcends this life, and so on.

Suppose all of the above is true. Then the political order here below must subserve the divinely ordained eternal order.   The temporal power, the State, must be subordinated to, and therefore cannot be separated from, the true church, the Roman Catholic Church.  If so, classical liberalism is an erroneous and pernicious political philosophy.

One consequence of this view seems to be that state power can be justifiably used to coerce dissidents.  Some of them hold that human life has no purpose at all. Others hold that it has a purpose but one that is determined by the individual. Still others think that there is a common ultimate purpose but that it is secular and humanistic and therefore atheistic.

And then there are the classically liberal theists who hold that when it comes to the final purpose of human life and how to attain it, there is reasonable belief, but no knowledge. If there is no knowledge in this area then coercion of atheists, agnostics, and non-Catholics could not be justified.  Finally, there are those who, while holding that there is knowledge in this area, knowledge that justifies the coercion of dissidents, reject the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Some Protestants for example, or Islamists.

My view is that we ought not stray too far from the classically liberal view of the Founders. We do not KNOW that the Catechism worldview is true. ONLY IF it were known to be true could it be justifiably imposed via the awesome power of the State. In a well-ordered Republic, the dissent of secular humanists, atheists, and non-Catholic theists ought to be tolerated. At the same time, State power must never be used to violate the consciences of Catholics by, say, forcing them to support the grave moral evil of abortion on demand with their tax dollars.

Government by ts very nature is coercive. I stand for limited government and limited coercion.

So that's my initial take on Catholic integralism. It is a non-starter.

Better 'Has Been' than 'Never Was'

Why, if the present alone is real? 

The wholly past no longer exists. But this truism, accepted by all who understand English and its verb tenses, is not what the presentist in the philosophy of time maintains. He intends something substantive and non-tautological: what no longer exists does not exist at all, and what does not yet exist does not exist at all.  But if the first half of the substantive thesis is true, then why is it better to be a has-been rather than a never-was? X cannot be better than y unless x is different from y.

Presentism, taken full-strength, implies that there is no difference between what has been and what never was. For the wholly past has fallen into the same hole out of which the 'never was' never arose. How then can presentism be common sense as many of its noted contemporary defenders say? It appears to conflict with the widespread commonsensical intuition that 'has been' is better than and therefore different from 'never was.' 

Sometimes, when we reflect upon our accomplishments, we append the thought, "And no one can ever take that away from me." You are no longer at the top of your game, but you once were -- and no one can take that away from you. They said you couldn't do it but you did, and they can't take that away from you. 

Interestingly, not even divine omnipotence extends to the erasure of the past. What was is forever inscribed in indelible ink in the roster of being.  Aquinas admitted it: not even God can restore a virgin. 

Two points. First, what was has an ontological status superior to that which never was -- which has no ontological status at all. Second, what was, though logically contingent at the time of its occurrence, is now in a sense necessary, but without ceasing to be logically contingent.  The mere passage of time works  a modal promotion, from contingency to necessitas per accidens, accidental necessity.  Socrates freely drank the hemlock, hence his drinking was logically contingent.  But once past, the deed cannot be undone by god or mortal, chance or fate. Cannot. Under the aspect of eternity, however, the heroic act remains logically contingent.

How curious the reality of the past!  On the one hand, the wholly past seems to possess a lesser degree of being than the present and is therefore inferior to the present in point of reality. On the other, the wholly past, unlike the present, is unalterable. Bad news and good news.

The main point however, is that the past is real, a realm of actualities, not mere possibilities. How that fact jibes with presentism is a nice question.  We can expect from the presentists  some fancy footwork.

Why has presentism been so 'popular' these past ten or twenty years?

Politics is War: Civility and Decency are Secondary Values

Sohrab Ahmari, Against David-Frenchism, conclusion:

Progressives understand that culture war means discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their institutions. Conservatives should approach the culture war with a similar realism. Civility and decency are secondary values. They regulate compliance with an established order and orthodoxy. We should seek to use these values to enforce our order and our orthodoxy, not pretend that they could ever be neutral. To recognize that enmity is real is its own kind of moral duty.

I have been coming to something close to this view over the last few years. If the Left sees politics as a form of warfare, we are fools to continue supposing it to be gentlemanly debate  under the umbrella of shared principles and values. Civility is for the civil; it is not for those who represent an existential threat.

An existential threat need not take the form of a threat to one's physical existence; a threat to one's way of life is an existential threat. This is because human life is not merely physical or biological; it is also cultural and spiritual.  It is our culture that values civility; a progressive threat to our culture of civility, being uncivil,  demands an uncivil response. Civility is like tolerance. Tolerance is a high value, but it has limits: one cannot tolerate the intolerant.

Prayer over Meditation?

This from a reader:

As a theist who meditates, would you prioritize prayer over meditation or vice versa? For example, I'm a theist; I like to run, meditate, and pray before work every day. If crammed for time, would you say that one or two are more worthwhile or more important, or that its just a matter of preference?

Also I'm using Sam Harris' Waking Up app to meditate. I generally like it but he is unrelentingly determined to get listeners to realize the illusion of the self. Would you recommend using a different resource? The app just helps me stay consistent.

One difference between prayer and meditation is that prayer can be performed instantly by the invocation of a divine name -- Lord! -- or very quickly by the use of a short phrase such as 'Lord, give us light!' or by the use of the Jesus Prayer of Eastern Orthodoxy, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' Of course, one can repeat the Jesus Prayer as a sort of Christian mantram.  If one does that, then one is engaging in a form of meditation especially if one whittles the phrase down to one word in order to achieve mental onepointedness.

Meditation, on the other hand, takes much more time: location, posture, breath, and the control of thoughts.  Reining in the wild horse of the mind  might consume twenty minutes or more. One can pray in any place, in any posture, and in any mental state and in any bodily condition, even under torture.  Jesus prayed on the cross.  Not so with meditation.  So if you are pressed for time you can always pray.

Which is more important, prayer or meditation? The answer depends on what exactly is meant by these terms and what your final metaphysics is. Here, as elsewhere, terminology is fluid and a source of misunderstanding. As I understand prayer it always involves the I-Thou relation and the duality of creature and Creator. To pray is to presuppose that there is Someone who hears and can answer prayers. In petitionary prayer one addresses a petition to another Person. One asks for a mundane or spiritual benefit for oneself or for another.  Inner listening, too, is a kind of prayer in which the I-Thou polarity is preserved.  This listening is a kind of obeying. To hear the Word of God is to obey the Word of God.  Horchen (hear, hearken), gehorchen, Gehorsam (obedience).

Meditation is an excellent propadeutic to prayer as inner listening because one cannot listen unless one is in a quiescent and receptive state.  Mental quiet is the proximate goal of meditation. It is good in itself but it is also good for inner listening.  No theology is required for meditation up to the point of mental quiet, but once it is achieved one can bring one's Judeo-Christian theology into it.

In classical Western theism as I understand it, Duality always has the last word and is never superseded or aufgehoben.  The individual soul is never absorbed into the Godhead.  The Eastern systems, by contrast, tend toward Ultimate Monism.  "I am the eternal Atman."  The Self of all things is who I am at bottom, and one can realize through meditation the ultimate identity of the individual self (jivatman) and the eternal Atman = Brahman).   How this differs from the nirvanic obliteration of the individual self in Buddhism is a matter of dispute. Early Pali Buddhism with its anatta/anatman doctrine denies that there is any self at all, little or big. The ego or I is accordingly an illusion and the goal of meditation is to penetrate this illusion.  

To answer your question, prayer is more important for a convinced orthodox Christian than meditation.

I avoid all electronics early in the morning before and during prayer and meditation. They have absolutely no place there.

As for Sam Harris, see Sam Harris on Rational Mysticism and Whether the Self is an Illusion.

Religious Liberty and David Brooks

A re-run from 29 October 2016. I lay into the insipid David Brooks.

..............

The Op-Ed pages of The New York Times are plenty poor to be sure, but Ross Douthat and David Brooks are sometimes worth reading.  But the following from Brooks (28 October 2016) is singularly boneheaded although the opening sentence is exactly right:

The very essence of conservatism is the belief that politics is a limited activity, and that the most important realms are pre­political: conscience, faith, culture, family and community. But recently conservatism has become more the talking arm of the Republican Party. Among social conservatives, for example, faith sometimes seems to come in second behind politics, Scripture behind voting guides. Today, most white evangelicals are willing to put aside the Christian virtues of humility, charity and grace for the sake of a Trump political victory.

Come on, man.  Don't be stupid.  The Left is out to suppress religious liberty.  This didn't start yesterday.  You yourself mention conscience, but you must be aware that bakers and florists have been forced by the state to violate their consciences by catering homosexual 'marriage' ceremonies.  Is that a legitimate use of state power?  And if the wielders of state power can get away with that outrage, where will they stop? Plenty of other examples can be adduced, e.g., the Obama administration's assault on the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The reason evangelicals and other Christians support Trump is that they know what that destructive and deeply mendacious stealth ideologue  Hillary will do when she gets power. They support Trump  not because they think the Gotham sybarite lives the Christian life, but despite his not living it.  They understand that ideas and policies trump character issues especially when Trump's opponent is even worse on the character plane.  What's worse: compromising national security, using high public office to enrich oneself, and then endlessly lying about it all, or forcing oneself on a handful of women?

The practice of the Christian virtues and the living of the Christian life require freedom of religion.  Our freedoms are under vicious assault by leftists  like Hillary. This is why Trump garners the support of Christians.  

The threat from the Left is very real indeed.  See here and read the chilling remarks of Martin Castro of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights.  Given Castro's comments the name of the commission counts as Orwellian. 

ADDENDUM (6/7/19) We who rolled the dice for Trump have been vindicated in spades. He has kept his promises. The cause of religious liberty is much better off than it was under Obama, and much much better off that it would have been under Hillary. 

Intrinsic Intentionality and Merely Possible Thoughts

I claimed earlier that there are no intrinsically intentional items that lack consciousness.  The claim was made in the context of an attempted refutation of the notion that abstract entities, Fregean senses being one subspecies thereof, could be intrinsically intentional or object-directed. One argument I gave was that (i) No abstract entity is conscious; (ii) Only conscious entities are intrinsically intentional; ergo, (iii) No abstract entity is intrinsically intentional. 

David Gudeman demurs, targeting premise (ii):

I may have a counter-example for you, a class of items that 1. Are intrinsically intentional, 2. Are not conscious. The class of things I have in mind is possible thoughts. For example, right now I am thinking about thoughts, but if I had bought that cherry pie earlier today, I would probably be thinking about the cherry pie. My thought of the cherry pie is possible but not actual, so it is not conscious, but it is about the cherry pie, and therefore intrinsically intentional. Also, if there were no actual objects in the universe there would still be possible minds with possible thoughts--intentional objects that exist in a universe without minds.

I take Dave to be arguing as follows:

1) Every thought (thinking) is intrinsically object-directed.

Therefore

2) Every merely possible thought (thinking) is intrinsically object-directed.

3) Some merely possible thoughts (thinkings) are not conscious.

Therefore

4) Some intrinsically object-directed items are not conscious.

A delightfully seductive argument!

I question the inference from (1) to (2) on the ground that there are no merely possible thoughts.  (1) is true, but (2) is false if there are no merely possible thoughts. 

It is of course possible that I think about cherry pie.  But it doesn't follow that there is a possible thought about cherry pie which somehow subsists on its own.   Possibilities are grounded in actual items. I actually exist and have various powers. Among them are powers to think about this or that.  So, from 'Possibly, I am thinking about x' it does not follow that there is a possible thought about x. 

I believe I have said enough to show that Dave's argument, as I have reconstructed it, is not rationally compelling.

Why is Friendship So Fragile among Intellectuals?

A certain commie and I were friends for a time in graduate school, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary non-intellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas.  They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter.  He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas.  So the tendency is for one intellectual to view an ideologically divergent intellectual as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing.

Why?  Because ideas matter to the intellectual.  They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists.  If one's eternal  happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one 'gets it right' doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you'd better belong to the right church.   It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant 'for their own good.'  You will recall that Galileo Galilei was shown the instruments of torture by the functionaries of the Inquisition.

The typical intellectual nowadays is a secularist who believes in nothing that transcends the human horizon. But he takes into his secularism that old-time fervor, that old-time zeal to suppress dissent and punish apostates.  It is called political correctness.

And as you have heard me say more than once: P.C. comes from the C. P. 

...............

The above is excerpted from a longer entry, A Red-Diaper Baby I Once Knew: Anecdotes Illustrating Leftist Illusions.

A certain commie and I were friends for a time in graduate school, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary non-intellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas.  They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter.  He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas.  So the tendency is for one intellectual to view an ideologically divergent intellectual as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing.

Why?  Because ideas matter to the intellectual.  They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists.  If one's eternal  happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one 'gets it right' doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you'd better belong to the right church.   It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant 'for their own good.'  You will recall that Galileo Galilei was shown the instruments of torture by the functionaries of the Inquisition.

The typical intellectual nowadays is a secularist who believes in nothing that transcends the human horizon. But he takes into his secularism that old-time fervor, that old-time zeal to suppress dissent and punish apostates.  It is called political correctness.

And as you have heard me say more than once: P.C. comes from the C. P. 

...............

The above is excerpted from a longer entry, A Red-Diaper Baby I Once Knew: Anecdotes Illustrating Leftist Illusions.

Only One Race, the Human Race?

Will you also say that there is only one sex, the human sex? 

Socializing and Sociability

An excess of socializing can be be harmful to one's sociability. 

Are You a Right-Wing Extremist? Take this Test!

The following is from a Salon article. The enumeration is mine; I did, however, preserve the order of the bulleted list in the Salon piece. After each item you will find brief and not-so-brief commentary by your humble correspondent.

The XRW chart contains 20 examples of behavior which could indicate right-wing extremist values and suggest that a person is being radicalized into joining that dangerous movement.

Some of these warnings are:

1) Describe themselves as 'Patriots'

A patriot is one who loves his country.  Patriotism is a good thing, a virtue. Like any virtue, it is a mean between two extremes. One of the extremes is excessive love of one's country, while the other is a deficiency of love for one's country. The patriot's love of his country is ordinate, measured, within bounds.  The patriot is neither a chauvinist (jingoist) nor a neutralist. Both are anti-patriots. He loves his country with an ordinate love. He loves it and seeks its improvement, but not its "fundamental transformation." One does not love that which one wishes fundamentally to transform. One who does seek such a "fundamental transformation" is no patriot.   

The patriot is also not a xenophobe since ordinate love of one's country does not entail hatred or fear of other countries or their inhabitants.

Patriotism, defined as the ordinate love of, and loyalty to, one's country is morally justified.  It is justified analogously as love of, and loyalty to, one's family is justified. You love your spouse and you are loyal to her. The partiality this implies is not only morally permissible; it is also morally obligatory.  Similarly with the partiality the patriot displays toward his country.

There is nothing 'extreme' about being a patriot.

2) Refers to Political Correctness as some left wing or communist plot.

Political Correctness does in fact originate with the Communist Party.

Communism as a political force, though not quite dead, is moribund; but one of its offspring, Political Correctness, is alive and kicking especially in the universities, the courts, in the mainstream media, in Hollywood, in the Democrat Party, and indeed wherever liberals and leftists dominate. To understand PC one must understand the CP, for the former is child of the latter.

In her fascinating memoir, Dorothy Healey Remembers: A Life in the American Communist Party (Oxford 1990), Healey mentions the tendency leftists have of purging one another on grounds of insufficient ideological purity: it is almost as if, for a leftist, one can never be too far left. Healey writes:

The great irony of the McCarthy period is that we did almost as much damage to ourselves, in the name of purifying our ranks, as Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover and all the other witch-hunters combined were able to do. One of the most catastrophically stupid things we ever did was to choose this moment to launch an internal campaign against white chauvinism. (125)

'White chauvinism' was the term used in the '50s in CPUSA circles for racism. After singing the praises of the Party for its commitment to racial equality, Healey continues:

However, with the white chauvinism campaign of 1949-1953, what had been a legitimate concern turned into an obsession, a ritual act of self-purification that did nothing to strengthen the Party in its fight against racism and was manipulated by some Communist leaders for ends which had nothing to do with the ostensible purpose of the whole campaign. Once an accusation of white chauvinism was thrown against a white Communist, there was no defense. Debate was over. By the very act of denying the validity of the charge, you only proved your own guilt. Thousands of people were caught up in this campaign — not only in the Party itself, but within the Progressive Party and some of the Left unions as well. In Los Angeles alone we must have expelled two hundred people on charges of white chauvinism, usually on the most trivial of pretexts. People would be expelled for serving coffee in a chipped coffee cup to a Black or serving watermelon at the end of dinner. (p. 126 emphasis added.)

Healey goes on to describe how she herself was brought up on a white chauvinism charge, was forced to admit guilt, sign a statement, etc. She details how it was impossible to criticize even the most incompetent of Black party members. (pp. 126-129)

Not much has changed in this regard. There is nothing a liberal fears more than to be labeled a racist, and, like 'fascist,' 'racist' is a term they apply indiscriminately to their political opponents as an all-purpose smear word.

3) Describe multicultural towns as 'lost'

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. No comment.

4) Looks at opponents as 'Traitors'

Surely some of the political opponents of conservatives are traitors and are rightly viewed as such by us.  But not all. Some are stupid. Some are ignorant. Some simply lack life experience and knowledge of history. Some have been brain-washed, or to put it more mildly: ill-served by their supposed 'educators.' 

No 'extremity' here.

5) Use the term 'Islamofascism'

Well, Islam, a combined political-religious ideology, is in fact totalitarian. If one conflates fascism with totalitarianism, then 'Islamofascist' is an accurate descriptive term.  If so, it is not 'extreme.' The calm and measured Michael Medved, no extremist, used 'Islamofascist' some years back and so did I. I no longer use the term because I reserve 'fascism' for the political ideology of Benito Mussolini.

6) Make generalisations about Muslims and Jews

Generalize we must. There is no thinking without generalization. But one can generalize well and arrive at truths or generalize poorly and promulgate falsehoods.

True generalization: Most of the terrorist acts in recent decades have been perpetrated by Muslims. 

False generalization: All of the terrorist acts in recent decades have been perpetrated by Muslims.

True generalization: Jews as a group are more intelligent than blacks as a group.

False generalization: Jews for centuries have been murdering Christian children and using their blood in religious ceremonies. 

Clearly, there is nothing wrong or 'extreme' with generalizing about Muslims and Jews -- and everything else -- so long as one does it correctly with attention to fact.

7) Have XRW extreme group stickers or badges on clothing and personal items

What, for example, the MAGA logo on a hat?

8) Make inaccurate generalisations about 'the Left' or Government

I need an example of one of these 'inaccurate generalisations.' Everyone is, or ought to be, opposed to inaccurate generalizations. 

9) Talk of an impending racial conflict or 'Race War'

Who is talking about a 'race war'?  Examples needed. There is of course much talk nowadays about the possibility of a hot civil war, and some of this talk emanates from the race-baiting Left.

10) Threaten violence when losing an argument, although claiming that XRW groups protest peacefully

This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The threats of violence are mostly from the Left. Consider the threats against President Trump.

11) Become increasingly angry at perceived injustices or threats to so called 'National Identity'

This is another example of a deep lack of self-awareness on the part of leftists.  It is certainly rich to hear identity-political leftists complain about those who speak of national identity.  As a matter of fact, nations do have their own unique identities, and every nation has a right to preserve its identity. There is nothing 'extreme' about that.

Salon article here.

Communism as a political force, though not quite dead, is moribund; but one of its offspring, Political Correctness, is alive and kicking especially in the universities, the courts, in the mainstream media, in Hollywood, in the Democrat Party, and indeed wherever liberals and leftists dominate. To understand PC one must understand the CP, for the former is child of the latter.

In her fascinating memoir, Dorothy Healey Remembers: A Life in the American Communist Party (Oxford 1990), Healey mentions the tendency leftists have of purging one another on grounds of insufficient ideological purity: it is almost as if, for a leftist, one can never be too far left. Healey writes:

The great irony of the McCarthy period is that we did almost as much damage to ourselves, in the name of purifying our ranks, as Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover and all the other witch-hunters combined were able to do. One of the most catastrophically stupid things we ever did was to choose this moment to launch an internal campaign against white chauvinism. (125)

'White chauvinism' was the term used in the '50s in CPUSA circles for racism. After singing the praises of the Party for its commitment to racial equality, Healey continues:

However, with the white chauvinism campaign of 1949-1953, what had been a legitimate concern turned into an obsession, a ritual act of self-purification that did nothing to strengthen the Party in its fight against racism and was manipulated by some Communist leaders for ends which had nothing to do with the ostensible purpose of the whole campaign. Once an accusation of white chauvinism was thrown against a white Communist, there was no defense. Debate was over. By the very act of denying the validity of the charge, you only proved your own guilt. Thousands of people were caught up in this campaign — not only in the Party itself, but within the Progressive Party and some of the Left unions as well. In Los Angeles alone we must have expelled two hundred people on charges of white chauvinism, usually on the most trivial of pretexts. People would be expelled for serving coffee in a chipped coffee cup to a Black or serving watermelon at the end of dinner. (p. 126 emphasis added.)

Healey goes on to describe how she herself was brought up on a white chauvinism charge, was forced to admit guilt, sign a statement, etc. She details how it was impossible to criticize even the most incompetent of Black party members. (pp. 126-129)

Not much has changed in this regard. There is nothing a liberal fears more than to be labeled a racist, and, like 'fascist,' 'racist' is a term they apply indiscriminately to their political opponents as an all-purpose smear word.

Beware of Projecting . . .

. . . your values and attitudes into others. We are not all the same 'deep down,' and we don't all want the same things. You say you value peace and social harmony? So do I. But some are bellicose right out of the box. They love war and thrive on conflict, and not just verbally.  

Liberal 'projectionism' -- to give it a name -- can get your irenic ass killed.

Orwellianism of the Day

"Abortion is health care." 

I didn't make that up. It is from a protester's sign.

Make Orwell Fiction Again

This from Nancy Pelosi's website (emphasis added):

The Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2010, ensures that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care and significantly reduces long-term health care costs. This historic legislation, in the league of Social Security and Medicare, will lead to healthier lives, while providing the American people with more liberty to pursue their hopes and dreams.

This is another good example of an Orwellian use of language.  Americans love liberty and so Pelosi, in an attempt to deceive, works 'liberty' into her statement,  advancing a claim of Orwellian absurdity, namely, that limitations on the liberty of individuals and private entities are in reality enhancements of liberty.

War is peace.   Slavery is freedom.  Less liberty is more liberty.  Dependence on government is self-reliance. Fascist thugs are anti-fascist. The Orwellian template: X, which is not Y, is Y.  

The Trick in Meditation

I had a good session on the black mat this morning from 2:55 to 3:35  ante meridian. When I went to the mat, I was riding high on the wild horse of the mind, and of course enjoying the ride as I always do.   But I reined in the beast within five minutes or so and slipped into one of the antechambers of quiescence where thoughts persist but at a slower pace and of a nobler sort. For example, "Who is thinking these thoughts?" "I am thinking these thoughts." "Who am I?" And then the thought arose: to identify the thinker of thoughts is to objectify that which, as the thinker of thoughts, cannot be objectified. Of course, THAT is just another thought: it is the thought of the irreducibly subjective, and thus nonobjectifiable ultimate subject of thinking. Just another bloody thought! And so still at a remove from the Source of thoughts. But then I slipped a little deeper down as these thoughts vanished. Next thing I knew I caught myself falling over. I had fallen asleep. This was about forty minutes into the session. And that brings me to my point.

The trick in meditation is to achieve cessation of all thoughts while remaining fully alert.  So you need to do two things: rein in the wild horse of the mind, and then abide in full alertness in the resultant mental quiet. 

But this is only the first stage in meditation proper.

Why are So Many Jews Democrats?

Paul Gottfried may have part of the explanation:

Most Jews dislike the Republican Party because they associate it with the idea of a Christian America. And since the 1960s, as Peter Novick exhaustively shows in The Holocaust in American Life, blame for the Nazis’ attempted extermination of the Jews has shifted in both Jewish and non-Jewish accounts from Nazi pagans to white Christians. The Holocaust is now routinely—perhaps most starkly in a book by Daniel Goldhagen—placed at the doorstep of Christian civilization. In my view, this shift is based on reckless generalization and feeds into an unjustified Jewish hostility toward religious Christians. But it’s nonetheless convinced many Jews that even Christians who appear to be effusively philosemitic are really anti-Jewish. Democrats, meanwhile, are supposedly friendlier to Jews because they are cleansing public life of traditional biblical morality, most of which ironically comes from Hebrew Scripture. From 2016 to 2018, while the Trump administration was trying to hammer home that Democrats were unfriendly to Israel and, by implication, to American Jews, Jewish identification with the Democratic Party went from 71 percent to 79 percent.

Related: Paul Gottfried on Propositionalism