Maverick Philosopher

Would a Fascist Want an Originalist on the Supreme Court?

First posted on 4 July 2018.

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Donald Trump is called many things including racist, misogynist, xenophobe, and fascist. Suppose he is a fascist. Then he is not a very good one. For he is about to nominate an originalist to the high court. A fascist, however, would not want an originalist on the court but someone who views the Constitution as a 'living' or 'open' document, one into which and out of which fascist ideas could be read.

Should we conclude that Trump is  a fascist who does not understand what fascism entails?  Or should we conclude that Trump is not a fascist?

Some will say that he is a proto-fascist, not one quite yet but soon to be one. No worries! If originalists dominate the court then fascism doesn't have a chance.

One could go on like this. If Trump is Hitler, why did he move the U. S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and why is he for Second Amendment rights?

If he is the devil himself, why is he for religious liberty?

If he is the personification of all evil, then why . . . .

I am pretty sure the Dems' hyperbolic slanders will hurt them come November. So I warmly encourage them to keep 'em coming.

American Fascism?

Originally posted on 23 September 2016, and thus before Trump's trouncing of Hillary. It was true then and truer now. I was right not to worry about Trump's getting in touch with his inner Benito. As for Joe Biden's recent scurrilous accusation of 'semi-fascism,' I urge you to read Joe Biden: American Fascist which exposes the Big Guy's toxic blend of psychological projection and Orwellian abuse of language.  Biden and his handlers are "sowing the wind" seemingly oblivious to the danger of "reaping the whirlwind." 

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I am not worried about American fascism.  We Americans are not a bunch of Germans about to start goose-stepping behind some dictator.  Our traditions of liberty and self-reliance are long-standing and deep-running.  A sizeable contingent of Trump supporters are gun rights activists who would be open to an extra-political remedy should anyone seek to instantiate the role of Der Fuehrer or Il Duce.  True, Trump enjoys some appeal among those having an authoritarian personality structure.   But his supporters are also cussedly individualistic and liberty-loving.  I expect the latter characteristic to mitigate the former. 

There is also the following interesting question wanting our attention:  why is it better to have the personality structure of the typical leftist?  Why is it better to be a rebellious, adolescent, alienated, destructive, irreverent, tradition-despising, anti-authoritarian, ungrateful, utopian, dweller in Cloud Cuckoo Land?

As you may know, Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals is dedicated to Lucifer.  Lucifer, not Lucifer Schwarz of Poughkeepsie, New York.  Makes perfect sense.

Addendum (9/24/16):  While the dominant press, the liberal press, is 'in the tank'  for Hillary and her ilk, this won't be the case should the Orange Man make it to the White House.  The lamestream media will be at his throat from Day One.  This will serve as a brake on any incipient fascismo.

Rod Dreher: Floating Above the Fray as Usual

Here:

We are somewhat insulated from this in America because we don't face the hideous energy crunch that Europeans do. Do you really think, though, that the US is going to be fine when one of our largest trading partners goes belly up? We are going to crash too, and crash hard. A word to my fellow conservatives: if you think the return of the buffoonish Donald Trump is going to be sufficient to deal with what is here, and what is coming, you are almost as deluded as the libs. You are as much a prisoner to emotionally satisfying Narrative as they are. We are in bad, bad trouble, and it's going to get far worse before it gets better. (Emphasis added)

What is your solution, Rod? I have just read your three most recent articles and all I get is more analysis, lamentation, and hand-wringing. What is to be done, my man? And which side are you on? Do you disagree with the policies Trump implemented? Calling the man a buffoon won't cut it; I want to hear a reasoned, fact-based case against Trump.

For some reason, Dreher, blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome, and perhaps in the grip of the womanish side of his personality, cannot look past Trump's somewhat repellent style of self-presentation, his lack of gravitas, his alpha-male strut and stride, to see Trump's virtues.   (Please follow the hyperlink to Tom Klingenstein's sober and superb presentation.)  In consequence, Dreher cannot grasp that Trump is our only hope for turning things around.  This is a well-founded hope because of Trump's accomplishments while in office. He has proven himself as Dick Morris amply explains. De Santis has not proven himself to the same extent, and his being a career politician makes him more likely to cave under pressure. And yet Dreher does command a very clear view of the nasty predicament we are in:

Our leaders are liars and ideologues who are destroying the West. The ruling class -- the State, the media, the financial sector, woke capitalism, the universities, every institution -- is actively betraying the people they are meant to serve. This is not just crackpot Internet speculation. It is actually happening, right now -- and as far as I can tell, the American people are being kept in the dark, figuratively. It's about to become literal in Europe. Watch this clip from Tucker Carlson, one of the few major journalists who tell the truth. He's pointing out that Americans aren't being told that Europeans are teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

Very good, Rod. I couldn't agree more with your description of the present state of affairs. But it is just more talk. What do you propose we do?  

The other side of the argument, of course, is that Trump is so repellent to so many that the net effect of supporting him will hurt the conservative cause. And of course it is the cause that matters, not the man Trump.  But unless it can be shown that there is someone more likely to succeed in implementing the cause, we should support Trump.

A political cause that is not implemented is practically nothing. Politics, though informed by theory, is practical, not theoretical. Is that not blindingly evident?

 

Words of the Day: 'Claque' and 'Clique'

Definitions and differentiation here.

God as Human Projection?

What could be logically weaker than the theory that God is a projection of human needs? Supposedly God does not exist because his existence reflects human exigencies. This argument presupposes that God could exist only if man did not need Him. What could be more absurd? But then, why is this idea so widespread?

Augusto Del Noce, in The Crisis of Modernity edited and translated by Carlo Lancellotti, (MQUP, Kindle Edition), p. 299. HT: Michael Liccione, Facebook, 12/16/21.

The Continental philosopher will often say in an obscure and confusing way what the analytic philosopher can say clearly.  Allow me to demonstrate.

 

God cannot be a human projection. This follows directly from what we mean by 'God' and what we mean by 'projection.' By 'God' we mean a being whose existence does not depend on the existence of anything else.  Of course, that is not all we mean by 'God,' but it is an essential part of what we mean. So if God exists, he exists in splendid independence of humans and their wants and needs. By 'projection' we mean either a projecting or that which is projected in a projecting. Either way a projection cannot exist without a projector. It follows that God cannot be a human projection.  We know this by sheer analysis of the terms 'God' and 'projection.' For nothing that is a projection could satisfy the concept God.

 

Does it follow that God exists? No.  But that is not the point. The point is that God cannot be a human projection, pace Ludwig Feuerbach and his followers.  God obviously cannot be a human projection if he exists. Suppose God does not exist. Then there is nothing in reality to which the term 'God' applies. The nonexistence of God leaves both the meaning of 'God' and the concept God intact.  So it is not the case that if God does not exist then the concept God becomes the concept of a human projection. The concept God remains the concept of something such that, if it existed, it would not be dependent on anything else for its existence, and therefore, the concept of something such that, if it existed, it could not be a human projection.

 

So what is Ludwig Feuerbach's signature sentence, "God is an unconscious anthropomorphic projection," about? Despite its surface grammar, the sentence cannot, given the cogency of the above reasoning, be  about God, but about our concept God. What it says about this concept is that nothing satisfies it. But then Feuerbach begs the question against the theist.

Accidental or Negligent?

An important distinction:

. . . an accidental discharge is when lightning strikes your firearm in such a way as to cause it to fire. Just about anything else is a negligent discharge.

Any unintentional discharge of a firearm can usually be traced to negligence on some individual’s part. Not knowing the proper manual of arms for a certain gun. Not focusing on safety while handling it. Using the wrong ammunition. Failing to properly maintain a particular firearm. Leaving a firearm laying around where some unauthorized person might pick it up. And you can think of other examples of negligence that could lead to a discharge that often results in injury or death. Using the term “accident” sort of implies that it was really nobody’s fault, while “negligent” puts it right back on somebody who should have been more responsible.

Which 'somebody' might the author have in mind?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

A mixed bag for your enjoyment, but mainly mine.  I post what I like and I like what I post. And I post what I've posted before. Links go bad, and even when they don't I never get tired of the old tunes I like. It's Saturday night, friends, pour yourself a stiff one and relax a little the bonds that tether us to the straight and narrow.  I am drinking the fermented juice of the agave cactus mixed with the Italian aperitivo, Aperol. Straight up, in a generous shot glass, three parts of Hornitos to one part Aperol. This combo is a synaptic lubricant nonpareil.  Schmeckt gut! What's your libation? Forget for a time the swine who have taken over our great country, and enjoy the moment.

Thelonious Monk, I'm Getting Sentimental Over You

Wes Montgomery, 'Round Midnight

Cannonball Adderley, 74 Miles Away. In 7/4 time.

Ry Cooder, I Think It's Going to to Work Out Fine

Jeff Beck, Sleepwalk. The old Santo and Johnny instrumental from 1959.

Danny Gatton, master of the Telecaster. Phenomenally good, practically unknown.

Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound. When your name is 'Bob Dylan' you have your pick of sidemen. A great band. "The walls of pride, they're high and they're wide. You can't see over, to the other side."

Joe Brown, Sea of  Heartbreak.  Nothing touches Don Gibson's original effort, but Brown's is a very satisfying version.

Elvis Presley, Little Sister 

Carole King, You've Got a Friend

Buddy Guy, et al., Sweet Home Chicago. Looks like everyone is playing a Strat except for Johnny Winter.

Ry Cooder, He'll Have to Go.  A fine, if quirky, cover of the old George Reeves hit from 1959.

Marty Robbins, El Paso. Great guitar work.

A Minimum of Metaphysics for Meditation

Substack latest, on this, the feast day of St Monica.

The Optics of Compassion

We make a brave attempt at seeing the best in one another. The attempt is aided by not looking too closely.

Italicizing and Underlining

The writer italicizes what he hopes the reader would underline were there no italicization.

Existence, Time, Property-Possession, and the Dead

Here are four propositions that are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent. 

1) For any x, temporal or atemporal, if x has a property, then x exists.

2) For any temporal x, if x exists, then x exists at present.

3) Frege, a temporal item, does not exist at present.

4) Frege has properties at present.

(1) is plausible: how could anything have a property if it is not 'there' to have it? This use of 'there' is non-locative.  I assume that to exist = to be, and that Meinongian nonentities, "beyond being and nonbeing," are unintelligible.

(2) is plausible: the past is no longer, the future not yet; the present alone is real/existent!  It is important to note, however, that the plausibility of (2) is not that of a tautology. Tautologies are plausible in excelsis; substantive metaphysical claims are not. One cannot reasonably controvert a tautology; one can reasonably controvert a substantive metaphysical claim. What (2) formulates, call it 'presentism,' is somewhat plausible but surely not logically true. So the senses of 'exist(s)' and 'exist(s) at present' are distinct. If I say that a thing exists, I say nothing about when it exists; I say only that it is 'there' in the non-locative sense among the 'furniture of the world.' Indeed, 'x exists' leaves open whether the thing is in time at all. 'God exists' is noncommittal on the question whether God is temporal or atemporal. 

(3) is plausible: (a) Frege is temporal in that he cannot exist without existing in time; (b) Frege does not now exist.

(4) is plausible: Frege is now famous and he is dead. Those predicates are true of him: he has (instantiates) the properties they express. 

The tetrad is collectively inconsistent. One way to solve the problem is by rejecting the least plausible proposition. By my lights, that proposition is (2). To reject (2) is to reject presentism. But if presentism is false, it does not follow that eternalism is true!  

Moral Progress

A large part of moral progress is progress in the realization of how much you need it. So, initially at least, the recession of the goal as you approach it indicates progress toward it.

Cacoethes Scribendi

Substack latest. 

Self-Deprecation

A little self-deprecation is good, but more is not better. Nobody likes the boaster. Take self-deprecation too far, however, and people will have contempt for you.

Wife and Life, Truth and Practice

My wife is easy-going, tolerant, forgiving, good-hearted, and unselfish. Hungry, she bought herself a Costco hot dog and then, without my asking,  gave me the lion's share,* concerned that I was hungry! I chose well in matters marital. 

Human nature leaves a lot to be desired. And yet there is goodness and nobility in some people. The world is ugly, but there is also beauty in it. Life can seem meaningless, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," and yet it also at times appears under the aspect of ultimate Sense and Rightness.

You will have to decide which of these seemings to live by. Try both and see which is more conducive to happiness. The one that makes you happier has a solid claim on being the truer. That the truth should in the end thwart us strikes me as implausible.  But the question cannot be resolved theoretically. You resolve it by living, thoughtful living, each for himself and by himself. 

Titans once bestrode Harvard Yard.** Josiah Royce was one, William James the other. The latter held that truth is "the good in the way of belief." I commend that thought to your delectation, examination, and practical implementation. 

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*Time was, when the lion's share of something was the whole of it. Despite my linguistic conservatism, I have acquiesced in the latter-day usage according to which the lion's share of something is most of it. If lions could speak, they would protest the semantic dilution.

**Pygmies now rule.

Memory and Existence: An Aporetic Tetrad

Try this  foursome on for size:

1) Memory is a source of knowledge.

2) Whatever is known, exists.

3) Memory includes memory of wholly past individuals and events.

4) Whatever exists, is temporally present.

The limbs of the tetrad are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true.  To appreciate the logical inconsistency, note that 'exists' in (2) and in (4) have exactly the same sense, and that this is not the present-tensed sense.  It is the tense-neutral and time-independent sense. Something that exists in this sense simply exists: it is one of the things listed in the ontological inventory.  Hence talk in the literature of existence simpliciter.  In both of its occurrences above, 'exists' means: existence simpliciter.

The limbs are individually plausible. But they are not equally plausible. (4) is the least plausible, and thus the most rejectable, i.e., the most rejection-worthy. Rejecting it, we arrive at an argument against presentism given that (4) is a version of presentism, which it is.

1*) Some of what is remembered is known.

2*) All that is known, exists.

Therefore

2.5) Some of what is remembered exists.

3*) All of what is remembered is wholly past.

Therefore

3.5) Some of what exists is wholly past.

Therefore 

~4*) It is not the case that whatever exists, is temporally present. (Presentism is false.)

All is Fleeting

The 'is' gladdens; the 'fleeting' saddens. 

Salman Rushdie, the Left, and Free Speech

Last week's Sunday CBS Morning Show featured a segment on Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, who was recently attacked in an apparent assassination attempt by a Muslim living in New Jersey.  You may recall that the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Rushdie in 1989 in which the ayatollah called for Rushdie's death because of his depiction of Muhammad in the above-mentioned book.  Here are some observations and questions.

1) Muslims have a long memory for anything they consider an attack on them or their religion. 33 years have passed since the issuing of the fatwa calling for the author's death. They neither  forgive nor  forget.  I note in passing that a fatwa is a high-level edict that need not include a call for anyone's death.

2) True-believing, sharia-supporting Muslims have values antithetical to the Enlightenment values of our constitutional Republic, a central one of which is the value of free speech. So one might naturally wonder  what  the Muslim assailant was doing living in New Jersey. How did he get there? Did he arrive legally or illegally? Either way there are serious questions that need to be asked, but are never asked by leftists, whose ostensible aim is "fundamental transformation" (Obama), which amounts to destruction of the USA as she was founded to be. You might think that after the events of 9/11, the importance of border security would be well understood, even by leftists.  But for them open borders offer them an opportunity to so alter the demographics of the country that the Democrat Party can be expected to achieve permanent hegemony. To attain this glorious result they are willing to risk further terrorist attacks.

3) It is of course hypocritical, though typical,  for a left-leaning media outlet such as CBS to stand up for Salman Rushdie and his right to freedom of expression while uttering nary a word of criticism of the regime's suppression of conservative dissent. By the  regime I mean the deep-state apparatus in cahoots with its woke-capitalist enablers and adjuncts.  Among the latter I include Big Tech, Big Pharma, the universities, and such mainstream media outlets  as CBS.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ten Violent Democrat-Run Cities

New York, New York. "Start spreading the news . . ."

L. A. Woman

Born in Chicago

Houston

Streets of Philadelphia

Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again. "The post office has been stolen and the mail box is locked." Prescient!

Detroit City

Dallas Alice

By the Time I Get to Phoenix

Lady Came from Baltimore

Like crime? Vote Democratic!

Can an Atheist be Moral?

Yes, but would he have a reason to be?

Substack latest.

ARs and Cattle Cars

Those who wield the former are less likely to be forced into the latter.

Orwellianisms come naturally to totalitarians. Arbeit macht frei reads the inscription over the Auschwitz concentration camp.  "Work makes one free." So you are most truly free when you are worked to death as a slave.

The unarmed man is a defensively naked man.

Now I defend your right to go around (defensively) naked, but only on condition that you defend, or at least not interfere with, my right to go around 'clothed.'

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Facebook comment:

Paraphrasing Machiavelli: Why should a man who is wrong pay any attention at all to a man who is right, and not armed?

Just so. In the world as it is, appeals to what is right carry no weight unless backed by might.  Suppose you are hiking in the wild. You come across a girl being raped by some brute. If you are unarmed, all you can do is appeal to the brute's conscience. "Sir, don't you see that what you are doing is both morally and legally impermissible? Please stop!" If, on the other hand, you are armed, then then you have the means to intervene effectively should you decide to do so. Whether you should intervene is a difficult decision that depends on the exact circumstances. I am making just one very simple and indisputable point: an unarmed man lacks the means to defend himself or anyone else.

Rod Dreher on Critics of the Benedict Option

A re-post from 20 July 2015.  Things are falling apart so fast that July 2015 seems  like a long time ago, even to an old man for whom tempus fugit is an understatement. The original posting occurred roughly four and a half years before the annus horribilis of 2020. And here we are more than half-way through 2022. The Amerikan police state is metastasizing as we speak. 87,000 new IRS agents armed with semi-automatic pistols and carbines to persuade the hyper-lawyered billionaire fat cats to 'pay their fair share' -- to ape the idiom of Fauxcahontas Warren? Think again you of the ovine and bovine and usefully-idiotic persuasion. It is one of the several modes of what I am now calling the Assault on the Middle. More on this, anon.

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Excerpt:

You keep talking about the Benedict Option, but you never say what it is. Give us the formula.

I keep telling you that there is no formula! We are going to have to be experimental, because we have never faced a post-Christian culture. The first point is for Christians to wake up and face reality. There will be no “take back our country” moment, because we have lost, and lost decisively. We are rapidly de-Christianizing. True, we have a long way to go before we get to European rates of secularization and religious indifference, but the trajectory is the same. Rather than change the world, the world is changing the churches. The power of popular culture is overwhelming, and in ways that many Christians scarcely grasp — and this, as MacIntyre says, is part of our predicament.

Granted, there is no formula:  there are different ways of implementing the Benedict Option.  But there ought to be discussion -- not provided by Dreher in the above-referenced piece -- of a potential problem with one form of the Option's implementation.  

Suppose you and yours join a quasi-monastic community out in the middle of nowhere where you live more or less 'off the grid,' home-school your kids, try to keep alive and transmit our Judeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman traditions, all in keeping with that marvellous admonition of Goethe in Faust:

Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast,
erwirb es, um es zu besitzen!

 

What from your fathers you  received as heir,

Acquire if  you would possess it. (tr. W. Kaufmann)

So now you are out in the desert or the forest or in some isolated place free of the toxic influences of a society in collapse.  The problem is that you are now a very easy target for the fascists of the Left.  You and yours are all in one place, far away from the rest of society and its infrastructure.  All the fascists have to do is trump up some charges, of child-abuse, of gun violations, whatever.  The rest of society considers you kooks and benighted bigots and religious fanatics and won't be bothered if you are wiped off the face of the earth.  You might go the way of the Branch Davidians.

Is this an alarmist scenario?  I hope it is.  But the way things are going, one ought to give careful thought to one's various withdrawal options. 

It might be better to remain in diaspora in the cities and towns, spread out, in the midst of people and infrastructure the fascists of the Left will not target.  A sort of subversive engagement from within may in the long run be better than spatial withdrawal.  One can withdraw spiritually without withdrawing spatially.  One the other hand, we are spatial beings, and perhaps not merely accidentally, so the question is a serious one:  how well can one withdraw spiritually while in the midst of towns and cities and morally corrupt and spiritually dead people?

And then there is the vexed and vexing question of armed resistance.  This is especially vexing for Christians.  Should we meet violence with violence, or let ourselves and our culture be destroyed?  On Christian metaphysics, this world is not an illusion.  It is not a dream one can hope to wake up from.  On the other hand, it is not ultimately real: it, and we who sojourn through it, are in statu viae. What then should be the measure and mode of our defense of it?

If you think violence is to be met with violence, then I advise you to remain in diaspora in the cities and towns, spread out, in the midst of people and infrastructure the fascists of the Left will not target.

We are indeed living in very interesting times.  How can one be bored?

The View from Mount Zappfe

Substack latest.

Tribalism and Diversity

Tribalism is on the rise while classical liberalism is on the wane.  Given this fact, does it make sense to admit into one's country ever more different tribes? A piety oft-intoned by leftists is that diversity is our strength. An Orwellianism, that, if tribal diversity is at issue.*  For that would amount to the absurdity that the more domestic strife, the stronger we become. It is plain, after all, that different tribes do not like each other, and do not see themselves in the other. Tribal identification is other-exclusive. There is no comity without commonality. 

 

I am against tribal identification. I realize, however, that I am sawing against the grain of the crooked timber of humanity. Classically liberal ideals such as toleration are no match for the ingrained tendency to revert to the tribal. So the realist in me says that immigration policy must favor those who are assimilable to our values and principles and must exclude those who aren't. 

 

There are severe constraints on the diversity of the ingredients that can properly blend and  enhance each other in the proverbial melting pot.  This was well understood until about the mid-1960s.

 

Now aren't my points the sanest you've heard all day? They are indeed eminently sane, but not to the destructive and self-enstupidated. They now dominate the Democrat Party here in the USA. 

 

But while what I have said is sane, it has the air of the fantastic. "How can you concern yourself with immigration policy which you intend to have the force of law when the current lawless administration promotes wide-open borders and the elision of the key distinctions without which there can be no legal immigration policy?" The objector has in mind such distinctions as the following: legal versus illegal immigrant, citizen versus non-citizen,  asylum entry versus illegal entry. The granting of asylum to a political refuge from another country is an exceptional practice that grants immunity from the extradition that would normally be demanded in the case of illegal entry. To subsume all irregular entry under asylum entry destroys a crucial distinction.

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*I grant that some types of diversity could strengthen a body politic.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: 'The King' Dead 45 Years

Elvis Presley died on 16 August 1977, 45 years ago. We can't let this weekend pass without a few tunes in commemoration.

First a couple of 'Italian' numbers modeled, respectively, on O Sole Mio and Torna a Surriento: 

It's Now or Never

Surrender

Continuing in the romantic vein:

Can't Help Falling in Love.  A version by Andrea Bocelli. A woman for a heterosexual man is the highest finite object. The trick is to avoid idolatry and maintain custody of the heart.

A Gospel number:

Amazing Grace

From the spiritual to the secular:

Little Sister

Marie's the Name of his Latest Flame

Devil in Disguise. "Woman is man's devil." (Turkish proverb)

And then there was hokey stuff like this reflecting his time in the Army in Germany:

Wooden Heart

Marlene Dietrich, Muss i denn 

You Tuber comment:

I was taught this song, in German, by a lovely young woman. I was 21 years old. She was a bit younger in years but older in so many - - - so very many - - - ways. We had just finished a room-service breakfast in a sun-filled hotel room overlooking the Rhine in Koln (Cologne) in 1954. I was impatient to get dressed and leave. The song changed my mind. I never hear this song without thinking of that lovely morning. My tour was over. I left Germany 4 days later. I never saw or heard of her again.

Can't leave out the overdone and hyperromantic:

The Wonder of You. (Per mia moglie)

Out of time. Next stop: dinner with Dan Bongino.

Posted by Bill Vallicella on Saturday, August 19, 2017 at 05:56 PM 

Elvis Presley died on 16 August 1977, 45 years ago. We can't let this weekend pass without a few tunes in commemoration.

First a couple of 'Italian' numbers modeled, respectively, on O Sole Mio and Torna a Surriento: 

It's Now or Never

Surrender

Continuing in the romantic vein:

Can't Help Falling in Love.  A version by Andrea Bocelli. A woman for a heterosexual man is the highest finite object. The trick is to avoid idolatry and maintain custody of the heart.

A Gospel number:

Amazing Grace

From the spiritual to the secular:

Little Sister

Marie's the Name of his Latest Flame

Devil in Disguise. "Woman is man's devil." (Turkish proverb)

And then there was hokey stuff like this reflecting his time in the Army in Germany:

Wooden Heart

Marlene Dietrich, Muss i denn 

You Tuber comment:

I was taught this song, in German, by a lovely young woman. I was 21 years old. She was a bit younger in years but older in so many - - - so very many - - - ways. We had just finished a room-service breakfast in a sun-filled hotel room overlooking the Rhine in Koln (Cologne) in 1954. I was impatient to get dressed and leave. The song changed my mind. I never hear this song without thinking of that lovely morning. My tour was over. I left Germany 4 days later. I never saw or heard of her again.

Can't leave out the overdone and hyperromantic:

The Wonder of You. (Per mia moglie)

Out of time. Next stop: dinner with Dan Bongino.

Is the Left Out for Power Alone?

Tucker Carlson and many other conservatives say that the Left is out for power alone, but it is not true. I grant, of course, that leftists love power and will do anything to gain it and maintain it. But why do they want it? Not for the sake of power alone, but to implement their agenda which they believe will be good for them and their clients. It is for the sake of the agenda -- the things to be done -- that leftists want power.

 

With their hands on the levers of power, the Democrats can keep the borders open, empty the prisons, defund the police except for the state police, confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens, do away with the filibuster, give felons the right to vote while in prison, outlaw home schooling, alter curricula to promote the 'progressive' worldview (by among other things injecting 1619 Project fabrications into said curricula), infiltrate and ultimately destroy the institutions of civil society, pass 'hate speech' laws to squelch dissent, suppress religion, and so on into the abyss of leftist nihilism.

From the Mail Bag: Tony Benvin on Need

On Aug. 7th you wrote ". . .the best response to the leftist who asks, "'Why do you need a gun?' is wrong question!"

 

I have been saying for years that debating that question is allowing the left to set the premise of the debate.

 

I also wanted to point out that questioning "need" is inherently a socialistic/communistic premise (". . . to each according to his need") which betrays the underlying nature of the gun controller's attack.  It's also an argument that is only ever selectively used. No one questions the need for air conditioning in a car (or an office for that matter), no one questions the need for a 75 inch OLED television, etc.  In fact, one of my touchstones for years has been asking would-be socialists to explain just why Leonid Breshnev NEEDED an antique car collection along with my offer to join their ranks if they could adequately respond.  

 

After years of making that offer I have still not needed to join, and thought you might enjoy my essay in American Thinker about deconstructing socialists and their ilk:

 

 Thanks for your blog.  Your observations and discussions often make my day.

 

UPDATE (8/11) Tony adds:

 

Wow!  A post!  I didn't expect that or I would have written a little less informally.  Thank you for the attention and citation.

 

You mention trying times; that they are, but I am also quite hopeful because I see success written in our national DNA.  My grandparents came to this country with little more than the clothes on their backs and to a language they didn't speak (I'll bet this applies to you, too).  Like Columbus, they set sail and took the chance that there be dragons out there, and now here we are two former professors (in my case, just the 2nd generation removed from the plow) with Ph.D.s and successful careers; we are the legacy of their bravery both personally and nationally.

 

BV: Yes, it applies to me as well. All four of my grandparents immigrated from Italy, and my mother as well, coming over at age ten.  All learned English and assimilated.  The children were given Anglo names and not just because of the prejudice against Italians, but out of respect for Anglo-American culture.  Before the rot set in in the 'sixties, it was understood that immigration without assimilation would lead to trouble of the identity-political and tribalist sorts we are now experiencing. It was also understood that the borders had to be enforced and that only legal immigrants were to be allowed in. What's more -- and this is also very important and now completely ignored -- it was  understood that there is no right to immigrate and that legal immigration was to be allowed from only some countries and that these countries were to be ranked in terms of the potential contributions of their citizens to the well-being of the host country.  It was understood that an immigration policy is not a suicide pact, and that ethnomasochists are to have no hand in its formulation. But now we must witness the spectacle of a destructive fool who calls himself ALEJANDRO Mayorkas, a brazen liar who heads the Orwellian Department of Homeland Security, who repeats against the evidence of the senses that the border is secure!  It is evident that he and the entire Biden Administration is working to destroy the United  States as she was founded to be. 

 

And so, Tony,  I am considerably less sanguine than you are. We are over-extended abroad and collapsing under the weight of our own decadence within. All of our institutions are being undermined by leftist termites. But we fight on, nonetheless, to the tune of 'It ain't over til it's over.' It will be very 'interesting' to see if the fight can be confined to the political sphere.

 

As I'm sure you know, good men create good times, good times create soft men, soft men create bad times, and bad times create good men.  We are in the latter stage of that cycle, but unfortunately for you and I, that can mean generational change.

 

UPDATE (8/12). Vito Caiati chimes in:

 

Your and Tony’s stories on immigrant ancestors brought to mind that of my maternal grandfather Giovanni, who arrived with my grandmother, Anna, and three very little daughters in New York City just after the turn of the last century. Giovanni, who was a skilled machinist, in the days when that meant literally making and assembling the parts of machines, leaves his job at the naval shipyard in Palermo, travels to Naples to board a liner, crosses the Atlantic with a wife and three children, arrives in New York, where he is met by a cousin, Fausto, who is employed in a company that makes machines to produce paper bags. The cousin leads the immigrants to a small apartment in the Bronx, which he has procured for them, and early the very next morning, Giovanni, who speaks no English, leaves with the cousin, descends into the subway, emerges in mid-Manhattan, and ends up in a factory adjacent to the West Side piers, where he is immediately hired by the company (no big state welfare with this crowd) and where he works more than fifty years, sitting alongside of immigrant German machinists, all of them fashioning parts for prototype machines.  Like your grandparents and mother, everyone learned to speak, read, and write English, although the girls were given Italian names and Sicilian, along with English, was spoken at home.

Another America, another New York, both of which I love dearly, now unrecognizable in my old age.   

 

Adeimantus, Machiavelli, Bloom, and Strauss

Recent events make it clear that the West is on the wane. The sun is setting on the Land of Evening. As the West goes under, the philosopher, like the proverbial owl of Minerva, spreads his wings in the gathering dusk so as to attain an altitude from which to survey the passing scene.  He soars and he strains, to com-prehend and understand, and if he is of the tribe of Plato, he seeks to discern what might lie beyond the scene he surveys.  His flight is fueled by the thoughts of his great predecessors.

 

I found the following in Allan Bloom's interpretive essay on Plato's Republic which is appended to his translation thereof. (Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato, Basic Books, 1968, p. 371, correction and emphasis added.)

Adeimantus' objection, then, is the same as Machiavelli's: the best regime is a mere dream, for a good city cannot avoid ruin if it does not do the things which will enable it to survive among vicious cities. It is foreign policy which makes the devotion to the good life within a city impossible [sic; read: possible]  One must be at least as powerful as one's neighbors and must adopt a way of life such as to make this possible. Poverty, smallness, and unchangingness cannot compete with wealth, greatness, and innovation. The true policy is outward-looking, and cities and men are radically dependent on others for what they must be. Without a response to this objection— which Machiavelli thought to be decisive for the rejection of classical political thought — the very attempt to elaborate a utopia is folly. (p. 371)

My gloss: An enlightened nationalism, while chary of intervention, cannot be isolationist.

And the following I found in Leo Strauss' essay "What is Political Philosophy?" in What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies, University of Chicago Press, 1988, originally published by The Free Press, 1959, pp. 40-41, emphasis and hyperlink added.

The founder of modern political philosophy is Machiavelli. He tried to effect, and he did effect, a break with the whole tradition of political philosophy. He compared his achievement to that of men like Columbus. He claimed to have discovered a new moral continent. His claim is well founded; his political teaching is "wholly new." The only question is whether the new continent is fit for human habitation.

In his Florentine Histories he tells the following story: Cosimo de Medici once said that men cannot maintain power with pater-nosters in their hands. This gave occasion to Cosimo's enemies to slander him as a man who loved himself more than his fatherland and who loved this world more than the next. Cosimo was then said to be somewhat immoral and somewhat irreligious. Machiavelli himself is open to the same charge. His work is based on a critique of religion and a critique of morality.

His critique of religion, chiefly of Biblical religion, but also of paganism, is not original. It amounts to a restatement of the teaching of pagan philosophers, as well as of that medieval school which goes by the name of Averroism and which gave rise to the notion of the three impostors. Machiavelli's originality in this field is limited to the fact that he was a great master of blasphemy. The charm and gracefulness of his blasphemies will however be less strongly felt by us than their shocking character. Let us then keep them under the veil under which he has hidden them. I hasten to his critique of morality which is identical with his critique of classical political philosophy. One can state the main point as follows: there is something fundamentally wrong with an approach to politics which culminates in a Utopia, in the description of a best regime whose actualization is highly improbable. Let us then cease to take our bearings by virtue, the highest objective which a society might choose; let us begin to take our bearings by the objectives which are actually pursued by all societies. Machiavelli consciously lowers the standards of social action. His lowering of the standards is meant to lead to a higher probability of actualization of that scheme which is constructed in accordance with the lowered standards. Thus, the dependence on chance is reduced: chance will be conquered.

I will take a stab at a gloss of the italicized passage. It is a grave error to aim at a utopian resolution of our political predicament. To seek the unachievable best is to preclude the attainment of the achievable good. The pursuit of unrealizable ideals will make hypocrites of us and what is far worse, murderers who will be able to justify mass murder  to achieve perfection as if anything truly straight could ever be made by human effort from the crooked timber of humanity.

 

Pascal, Buber, and the God of the Philosophers

Substack latest.

It is a mistake to oppose the God of the philosophers to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Rights and Needs

You can have a right to a thing whether or not you have or will have a need for it. So the best response to the leftist who asks, "Why do you need a gun?" is wrong question! Stop the pointless conversation right there. "The question is not whether I need one; the question is whether I have a right to one." Then explain that the right to appropriate means of self-defense follows from the right to self-defense which in turn follows from the right to life.

Depending on the sort of leftist you are dealing with you could then go on to explain why you do need a gun. But the wisest policy is not to debate leftists. Leftists need to be defeated not debated. 

Truth is not a Leftist Value

Posted today on my Facebook page. I could not resist making some additions for the present venue.

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

My title is a Dennis Prager riff. But it needs a bit of nuancing, a job for a philosopher, not a talk show host.  Truth is a value for leftists in an instrumental sense: they will tell the truth if it serves their agenda. If it doesn't, they feel justified in lying. So perhaps we should say that for a leftist, truth is not an absolute value. They don't respect it as an objectively binding norm.

 

For a leftist, especially the 'woke' species thereof, truth is simply a matter of perspective: it is the perspective of a particular power-hungry individual or tribe. The perspective is true to the extent that it enhances the power of the power-unit whose perspective it is.

 

The underlying metaphysics and epistemology is Nietzschean. Now this here's Facebook, and not the place to get all academic. But perhaps now you understand why a leftard like the Ladder Man is enamored of Nietzsche.

 

Die Welt is der Wille zur Macht und nichts anders!

Das Kriterium der Wahrheit is die Steigerung des Machtgefühls! 

 

"The world is the Will to Power and nothing besides!"

"The criterion of truth is the increase in the feeling of power."

It is also worth pointing out that coherence is not a leftist value either. Lefties say all sorts of things that make no sense in pursuit of their agenda. For example, "Walls are immoral." (Pelosi); "Diversity is our strength." (Pelosi and numerous other leftards.) Here too the absolute-instrumental distinction kicks in.

 

The problem with "Walls are immoral" is not that it is false, but that it makes no sense, and therefore does not satisfy a necessary condition of a proposition's having a truth-value. A wall cannot be either moral or immoral; only a person who uses a wall for one purpose or another.

 

But try explaining that to a destructive knucklehead like Madame Speaker! You won't get through to her because power is the cynosure of her political machinations. She was always a dingbat, but now she is a dingbat wrapped in senility. And a clear and present danger to the Republic, as witness her ill-advised Taiwan junket.

 

A decrepit donkey should not poke a dragon with a stick.

Buber on Buddhism: Notes on a Trenchant Critique

Substack latest. 

Martin Buber's critique of Buddhism, and of mysticism generally, is formidable.

 

Could the Visible Surface of a Physical Thing be a Mental Item?

The Sparring Partner offers the following tetrad for our delectation. 

1) I take this to be the visible surface of a desk.

2) It is almost certain that this in fact [is] the visible surface of a desk, but it is possible that it is not (it may be the result of a highly realistic virtual reality program).

3) If this were not the visible surface, it would be a mental item.

4) It is impossible that the visible surface of a desk could ever be a mental item.

The S. P. thinks that these four are collectively inconsistent.  That is not true. They are consistent on the following theory. 

My man sees something.  One cannot see without seeing something. This is a special case of the thesis of intentionality. What my man sees, the intentional object, has the properties of a desk surface; it has the look of a desk surface. What he sees may or may not exist. (Better: what he sees is possibly such that it exists and possibly such that it does not exist). The intentional object is bipolar or bivalent: either existent or non-existent. In itself, the intentional object is neutral as between these two poles or values.  If the intentional object does not exist, then it is merely intentional. If the intentional object exists, then it is real.

So far I have accommodated (1) and (2). 

If the intentional object is real, then it it part and parcel of the desk itself.  If so, then the intentional object is not a mental content. This should also obvious from the fact that the intentional object is distinct from the corresponding act: it is not contained in the act, and in this sense it is not a content (reeller Inhalt in Husserl's sense) of the act.  The act is mental, but is object is not mental, or at least not mental in the same sense. The act is an Erlebnis. it is something one lives through (er-leben); one does not live through an intentional object. Call the intentional object the noema. The noema is not a mental content but it it also does not exist in itself. It exists only as the objective correlate of the act.  It is other than the act, and not contained in the act, but is nonetheless  necessarily correlated with the act such that, if there were no acts (intentionale Erlebnisse), then there would be no noemata. 

I have just now accommodated (3) and (4).  I have shown how the members of the tetrad could all be true.  An apparently  inconsistent set of propositions can be show to be  consistent by making one or more distinctions. In this instance, a distinction between mental item as content and  mental item as noema. 

The answer to the title question, then, is yes.

Here is a simpler and more familiar example of how this works. The aporetic dyad whose limbs are The coffee is hot and The coffee is not hot is apparently inconsistent.  The inconsistency is removed by making a distinction between two different times one at which the coffee is hot, the other at which it is not.

Is the above theory, which I have only sketched, tenable? Does it definitively solve the problem? I don't believe so. And this for the reason that the solution gives rise to problems of its own. 

If a polyad is solved by the making of a problematic distinction, then the solution is stop-gap and not definitive.

Jerking (and Twerking) toward Social Collapse

Thanks to 'progressives,' our 'progress' toward social and cultural collapse seems not to be proceeding at a constant speed, but to be accelerating. But perhaps a better metaphor from the lexicon of physics is jerking. After all, our 'progress' is jerk-driven. No need to name names. You know who they are.

 

From your college physics you may recall that the first derivative of position with respect to time is velocity, while the second derivative is acceleration. Lesser known is the third derivative: jerk. (I am not joking; look it up.) If acceleration is the rate of change of velocity, jerk, also known as jolt, is the rate of change of acceleration.

 

If you were studying something in college, and not majoring in, say, Grievance Studies, then you probably know that all three, velocity, acceleration, and jerk are vectors, not scalars. Each has a magnitude and a direction. This is why a satellite orbiting the earth is constantly changing its velocity despite its constant speed.

 

The 'progressive' jerk too has his direction: the end of civilization as we know it.

Half-Way Cultural Appropriation

You appropriate our science and technology, why not then appropriate the values, virtues, attitudes, and behaviors that led to the science and technology? Here are some of them: hard work, self-control, self-knowledge, deferral of gratification, focus, protracted study, objectivity, rational thinking, coherent speech, respect for legitimate authorities, respect for elders, and punctuality.

 

Why the half-way cultural appropriation? Go all the way, and you will benefit yourself enormously.

 

There is nothing 'white' about the above values and virtues, attitudes and behaviors. After all, Asians implement them as well as Caucasians, if not better. The values and virtues, attitudes and behaviors, are normatively universal and good for everyone. No race or ethnicity owns them. They are common goods.