Maverick Philosopher

A Question about Donald Trump

Things are getting interesting. How long until we collapse into hot civil war? The replacement of the rule of law with the rule of lawfare is a bad sign. The following repost, slightly redacted, is from January 2022, and more relevant that ever.

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

This from a reader:

It would be very interesting to hear your take on Trump -- why do you think that his leadership of the country, despite obvious personality flaws, is less risky for the US and the world than a reasonable alternative? Yes, the ideological, thoughtless, and totalitarian far-left is dangerous, but isn't unprincipled, pugilistic and me-and-my-family first leadership any better? Is your thinking driven by "the lesser of two (or three) evils"?

1) I avoid talk of the lesser or least of evils. I prefer to speak of the better or the worse. 

 

2) Politics is not theoretical; it is practical. There is political theory, of course, and it divides into political science (empirical and non-normative) and political philosophy (normative). But politics is neither of the two, despite the fact that politics is informed by political theory. Politics is a practical game! It is not mainly about having the right views. That does no good unless one can implement them. And no one with practical sense lets the best become the enemy of the good. Politics is a matter of better or worse, not perfect or imperfect.  Politics is about accomplishing something in the extant suboptimal circumstances with the best implementable ideas.

 

3) And which ideas are those? The ideas, values, and principles of the Founders. They arrived as close as anyone ever has to a sound and viable political theory. 

 

4) Now if you accept (2) and (3), then the choice is clear: you support Trump over Hillary, and Trump over Biden. For Trump, unlike Hillary and Biden,  supports those values and not just with words. He proved his support for them in the teeth of vicious opposition by pseudo-cons and leftists alike  in his four years as POTUS.  A long list of his accomplishments could be inserted here. To mention just one, and a very important one: the SCOTUS appointments.

 

5) If you complain about Trump's character, I will agree that he is flawed but go on to point out that the same is true of Hillary and Biden.  Character-wise, either the three are on a par, or the two Democrats are worse. This fact is invisible to many because Hillary and Biden are professional politicians deeply practiced in the arts of deception: mendacious to the core, they know how to hide their flaws, faults, and foibles.  But anyone with life-experience and knowledge of human nature can see that Biden is a fraud and a phony rooted in no principle except that of  the promotion of himself and his family's interests. The same goes for Hillary to a lesser extent. But as I said, they know how to don masks and play the game. Trump, on the other hand, crudely lets it all hang out. He tells you what he thinks. He is blunt, brusque, boorish, and sometimes pointlessly brutal. (I am thinking of that nasty slur he hurled against Carly Fiorina.) He probably knows that his alpha-male strut and swagger is off-putting to many, but he refuses to play the game.

 

6) What decides the question for me is that Trump alone supports the American system of government whereas this is plainly not the case with Hillary or with Biden who is the puppet of puppet masters out to undermine the American system.  That should be blindingly evident to anyone who has been paying attention.

 

7) There comes a time when a corrective is needed, an outsider self-powered, un-owned, and unafraid to kick the asses of the Dementocrats to his Left and expose the fecklessness of the cuckservatives to his Right.  A corrective and a clarifier. No more of the usual Left versus Right. The battle for the soul of America is now a contest between the borderless globalism of the greedy elites and an enlightened nationalism, populist and patriotic.  Hillary/Biden versus The Donald, to personify it.

 

But 'the virtuous'  and the upholders of 'norms' are too scrupulous to rouse the people against their tyrants.

Here:

Describing Wilkes and two of his allies, Walpole wrote, “This triumvirate has made me often reflect that nations are most commonly saved by the worst men in [them].” Why? Because, he concluded, “The virtuous are too scrupulous to go the lengths that are necessary to rouse the people against their tyrants.”

Until the coming of The Donald, that had certainly become the case in recent American politics. Until the Orange Menace loosed the fearful lightning of his terrible swift tweets, the “virtuous,” rather battle-fatigued traditional conservative movement—even when controlling both houses of the Congress—had been out-shouted and outmaneuvered by the unholy alliance of a Left-dominated, morally nihilist pop culture and educational establishment, and what is laughably referred to as the “mainstream” media, all nudging an increasingly radicalized Democratic Party further and further to the left.

 

Describing Wilkes and two of his allies, Walpole wrote, “This triumvirate has made me often reflect that nations are most commonly saved by the worst men in [them].” Why? Because, he concluded, “The virtuous are too scrupulous to go the lengths that are necessary to rouse the people against their tyrants.”

Until the coming of The Donald, that had certainly become the case in recent American politics. Until the Orange Menace loosed the fearful lightning of his terrible swift tweets, the “virtuous,” rather battle-fatigued traditional conservative movement—even when controlling both houses of the Congress—had been out-shouted and outmaneuvered by the unholy alliance of a Left-dominated, morally nihilist pop culture and educational establishment, and what is laughably referred to as the “mainstream” media, all nudging an increasingly radicalized Democratic Party further and further to the left.

The Problem of Consciousness: Galen Strawson's Non-Solution

Top o' the Stack.

Strawson beats Dennett, but not by much.

Libertarians Lurching to the Left and Slouching toward Gomorrah

Here:

We were also witnessing the end of the pure libertarian movement.

Cato, possibly in an attempt to become more relevant, embraced the left on many issues – open borders, gay marriage, and transgenderism, for example. When I say they’ve since embraced the left, I don’t mean they pay lip service to the issues; they full-throatedly advocate for them.

Reason, another libertarian think tank (the Reason Foundation) and magazine, is now an outpost dedicated in large part to advocating for prostitution. Don’t take my word for it, take a look for yourself.

The Libertarian Party hasn’t been relevant since the 1980 election, when John Anderson pulled the all-time high of 6.6 percent of the vote. Since then, Libertarians have nominated a series of former politicians and clowns, culminating in Chase Oliver, a left-wing open borders advocate whose only political experience was being a rounding error in a Georgia House race in 2020 and Senate race in 2022.

Oliver, who is gay, supports the right of biological males to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, wants your children exposed to drag queens at local libraries, and enthusiastically supports ranked-choice voting in elections. That’s a long way from the priorities of the old Libertarian Party, which focused mostly on economic theory, limiting government, and staying out of war.

Today, libertarians are those people I saw cheering Obama’s win.

After Oliver’s nomination, the Cato Institute’s homepage asked, “What’s Donald Trump Doing at the Libertarian Party Convention?” The sub-headline on their homepage read, “The Libertarian Party has always stood for personal liberty, economic liberty, and constitutional rights, but the most prominent speaker at its convention opposes all those things. Why are they doing it?”

On what planet is Donald Trump “opposed” to personal or economic liberty and constitutional rights?

Historians Need Not Apply

At the intersection of academia and wokery lies academentia. 

I have one quibble with Hinderaker. He writes,

But the phenomenon at work here–a huge cadre of well-educated people who think they are entitled to make good money, be treated with deference, and play a significant role in public life, but who in fact are not very employable and whose expectations are doomed to be frustrated–explains a lot about the demented quality of our current culture.

The phrase "well-educated people" is surely out of place. This "huge cadre" is not well-educated by any reasonable, historically-based standard.  But you've heard this sort of thing from me before, for example, here. Tony Flood offers some excellent commentary.

Dennett on the Consequence Argument against Compatibilism

Substack latest

Joe Biden on George Floyd

Malcolm Pollack and Mark Lewis cut to the heart of the matter. 

Prominent commentators are beginning to speak the truth about our political opponents: they are not good people.  Kurt Schlichter is one. Mark Levin is another.

UPDATE (5/28)

More proof that our political opponents are not good people, and this from an unlikely source.

ChatGPT on Me

William F. Vallicella is a contemporary philosopher known for his work in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of language. He has written extensively on topics such as existence, identity, time, free will, and the nature of truth. Vallicella is particularly noted for his clear and rigorous analytical style, and he often engages with both classical and contemporary philosophical positions in his writings. He has contributed to numerous academic journals and has authored several books on these subjects.

Not bad! "Several books' is inaccurate. If you count my dissertation I have authored only two books.  Two more are in the works. How might I justify my lack of productivity? 

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80:

Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!"
This is how philosophers should greet each other: "Take your time!"

A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have forgotten where he says this:

Wer eilt, bewegt sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft.
One who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis.

But now I'd better get moving. The clock is running, the time control is sudden death, and the Grim Reaper is my vis-à-vis, his scythe all aglisten and at the ready.

Antonius Block, depicted below and played by Max von Sydow in Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal (1957), resembles Ludwig Wittgenstein.

A Gov't Subsidy for Seniors' USCF Dues

Ed Yetman reports:

I don’t know if this is a new high or a new low, but it is something I’ve never seen before. Somehow, USCF has managed to find a way to get the U.S. government to pay membership fees for senior members. That’s right, Uncle Sam wants you to play chess so bad, he’s willing to pay for it. Here are the details:

Uncle Sam pays...of course.

Normally, I would applaud USCF finding such a strange niche and using it to promote USCF membership. But I’m having qualms.

My first concern is this: whenever the government subsidizes something, the subsidy distorts the free-market value. The sky-high cost of college tuition is such an example. USCF membership for seniors will go up, and that will lead, inevitably, to corruption. Also, you subsidize something, you get more of it: how many of these new USCF senior members will never play in a tournament? They will have full voting rights; I’m chary about letting people vote for things they have no stake in at all. Do we want USCF elections to be decided by people who could not care less about tournament chess? Oh wait—we already have that problem.

My second concern is the inescapable mission-creep of such things. How long before we have subsidies for other classes of players, like women and children? What then?

The leadership of USCF is already pretty far away from the traditional tournament player. This will only make it worse.

You're spot on, Ed.

Trump and the 'Losertarians'

The Libertarian Party is for losers. If you are a conservative who votes Libertarian, you are behaving foolishly. You say you stand on 'principles'? Principles are great. And some of the Libertarian ones are salutary. But principles without power are just paper.  Politics is a practical game. Wise up and get with the program. Don't throw away your vote on unelectables. If it comes down to Trump versus Biden, you must vote for Trump.  Nikki Haley gets it. To paraphrase her recent  endorsement: Trump is  not perfect, but Biden is a catastrophe.

You have heard me say many times that politics is a practical game. I don't mean that it is unserious. Some games are serious; chess is one, life is another.* Life is as serious as cancer, and the wrong people in power can put a serious dent in your living of your life.  You know who these are at the present time.

Politics is not about perfect versus  imperfect, but about better versus worse in the concrete circumstances in which we find ourselves.  That's what I mean when I say that politics is practical. I'm a theoretician myself, and unlikely to do much in the political sphere beyond vote and exercise my free speech rights.  But you must understand the political if you are to have any chance of ameliorative action within the political sphere.  Ameliorative praxis presupposes true theory. Libertarians, standing on 'principle,' have as little understanding of the nature of the political as do integralists. (See my Substack entries on integralism, here and here.) Their respective candidates are unelectable.   

Practically, you are a fool if you let the best become the enemy of the good by supporting candidates the probability of whose election is near zero.  Don't waste your time with third parties, which are nothing more than discussion societies in political drag.

Old Karl said that whereas the philosophers have variously interpreted the world, the point is to change it. He got it backwards. Job One is to understand the world; only then will you have any chance of changing it for the better. I hope you all agree that the commies changed things all right, but for the worse. Pace Barack Hussein Obama, progress is not change; progress is change for the better.  And to repeat myself, in the realm of praxis the realizable better is to be preferred over the unattainable best.

Politico reports here on foolish 'losertarian' opposition to Trump.  

“The vast majority of Libertarian Party members are not happy with this invitation,” said Bill Redpath, a 40-year veteran of the Libertarian Party and a former national party chair who’s helped organize their presidential ballot access for decades. “There are some people who call Trump the most Libertarian president of our lifetimes. That’s utterly ridiculous.”

What is Redpath's point? That Reagan was more libertarian than Trump? Maybe so. But Reagan is long gone. What is practically relevant is that Trump is more libertarian than any other electable candidate at present.   Who will stand up for 2A? Joey B.? RFK Jr.? Gavin Newsom?  2A is the lead that backs up the paper of the other ten. Catch my drift?

Do libertarians really value liberty? Or do they just like to talk?  In his address at the Libertarian National Convention, Trump said that if the libertarians are not happy with their usual 3% of the vote, they should nominate or at least vote for him. They nominated some unknown by the name of Chase something.  Oh yes, Chase Oliver. I'm already having trouble remembering a name I first heard two days ago.

______________

*Bobby Fisher famously said, "Chess is life." But we needn't go that far!

UPDATE (5/29) Walter E. Block: Libertarians should vote for Trump. https://www.wsj.com/articles/libertarians-should-vote-for-trump-4ef84994?mod=opinion_lead_pos8 But of course! Block has his head screwed on Right even if he is a libertarian.

If we pull the lever for Mr. Trump in these swing states, we may get a slightly more libertarian president and help free Mr. Ulbricht. If we vote Libertarian everywhere else, we make a statement and help preserve our ballot access.

Some Libertarians find Mr. Trump unacceptable on grounds of principle. True, he is no libertarian, but Mr. Biden—the wokester, the socialist, the interventionist—is much further from us on the political-economic spectrum than Mr. Trump.

Others are put off by Mr. Trump’s obnoxious behavior. He engages in name-calling. He puts ketchup on filet mignon.

Mr. Trump grew up in Queens. I’m roughly his contemporary and come from Brooklyn. I assure you that everyone in New York City is personally unbearable (except Staten Islanders). It is a geographical-genetic disposition. Ignore it. This act of his is mostly tongue-in-cheek. New Yorkers actually have contests to see who is the most insufferable. Prizes are given out.

Epictetus and His World

"A Substack devoted to exploring the historical context of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus."  By Erlend MacGillivray. Looks interesting.

An entry of mine: The Uselessness of Stoicism in the Face of Death

Dylan Turns 83

Scott Johnson of Powerline offers a couple of thoughtful retrospective pieces.

Not Dark Yet

Chimes of Freedom

Can one get tired of Dylan? That would be like getting tired of America. It would be like getting to the point where no passage in Kerouac brings a tingle to the spine or a tear to the eye, to the point where the earthly road ends and forever young must give way to knocking on heaven's door.

The scrawny Jewish kid from Hibbing Minnesota, son of an appliance salesman, was an unlikely bard, but bard he became. He's been at it a long, long time, and his body of work is as vast and as variegated as America herself. We old fans from way back who were with him from the beginning are still finding gems unheard as we ourselves enter the twilight where it's not dark yet, but getting there. But it is a beautiful fade-out from a world that cannot last.

Thanks, Bob, it wouldn't have been the '60s without you. 

A Use for Bullet Chess

Bullet is faster than Blitz. I've been playing over at Lichess: two-minutes with a one second increment, sudden death. I die a lot, but like Phoenix rise from my ashes to play again. The fastest bullet games are one minute per side, no increment.

What's the use of it?  I count six uses.

1) It wakes me up. I out-monk the monks when it comes to early arisal from the bed of sloth. This morning I got up at 12:20 AM. (Usually I arise at 1:30) So by 4:30 I needed a second cup of java, but even that didn't turn the trick. So I logged on to Lichess and blasted out two bullet games, winning one, losing the other. And now I'm bangin' on all eight. 

2) It gets me over a temporary writing hurdle. I hit a sag. Inspiration fails. How do  I push this line of thought further? Stymied, I fire up the chess engine, bang out some games, and Seldom Seen Slim is back in the saddle, inspiration restored. I find my way forward.

3) It is good mental exercise.  Exercise yourself every which way every day: mentally, physically, spiritually, morally. Mens sana in corpore sano, et cetera.

4) It is a challenge. The strenuous life is best by test. 

5) It's fun. A little fun never hurt anybody.

6) It distracts me from what the filthy Dems and their media enablers are doing to the country. Chess is an oasis of sanity in an insane world. To swap out the metaphor, chess is the perfect drug, especially when enhanced by consumption of those less-than-perfect drugs, caffeine and nicotine. 

Notes on Van Inwagen on Modal Epistemology

We have some modal knowledge.  How?

Substack latest.

Michael Walzer on Religion

At least one lefty gets it, somewhat. Top o' the Stack.

Is the Modal Ontological Argument Rationally Compelling?

I argue that it isn't.

Trads on Offense

I especially liked the section on the Boomer nuns of Benedictine College who were not happy with the Butker speech and are described as crotchety farbissinas.

A farbissina, I take it, is  a person who is farbissiner, a Yiddish word that means sullen, mean, embittered, of a sour disposition.

Do You Pass the Israel Test?

Under five minutes. I have long believed that a major cause of Jew hatred is envy.

Will a Perfect Storm Soon be upon us?

Anthony Flood thinks so.  Here is how his piece begins:

The dictionary defines a perfect storm as an “unusual combination of events or things that produce an unusually bad or powerful result.” The latter, as I see it, is life as we’ve become accustomed to enjoying it.

Four years ago, I stated my grounds . . . . 

And now Flood adds to the list:

My list didn’t give sufficient attention to the open southern border of the United States, which is being invaded daily in great numbers, or the explosion of urban crime.

I was not thinking of the resurrection of Nazi-level, genocidalist  antisemitism within the walls of the institutions tasked with handing on civilization’s treasures.

I inexcusably paid no attention at all to the moral depravity that acquiesces in (if not celebrates) infanticide and the gender confusion that spits on the revelation of God (Genesis 1:27, 5:2; Matthew 19:4-6) Whom the “perfect stormtroopers” hate because they love death (Proverbs 8:36). Structural instabilities have followed the culture of death as the night the day. (I’ll let others decide if the charge of post hoc, ergo propter hoc is relevant.)

The world-historical figure who may win the general election in 168 days (to which victory I will contribute) may slow the rate of decline and postpone some of its consequences, but he can’t reverse it.

On November 6, 2024, no perfect stormtrooper will say, “Well, you beat us fair and square! Better luck next time!” No, they’re prepared to “accept” such an electoral result the way the PLO famously “accepted” the state of Israel, that is, an enemy to be destroyed and whose people are to be exterminated. Their plans to destroy Western Civ in general and its American outpost in particular will be pursued.

Like Napoleon, Trump may reshape the trajectory of a post-revolutionary era and bevel a few of its sharp edges. In the offing, however, I see no counterrevolution worthy of the name. As I wrote in the cited post:

Call me a secular pessimist (although I’m an eschatological optimist), but I see no liberation in this dispensation, libertarian or otherwise, from those scourges. God will stop the wicked in their tracks:

So shall they [God’s enemies] fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him (Isaiah 59:19).

He’ll lift it. God’s promised government is a future intervention that God, not man, will inaugurate; its blessings will be manifest to all, and delivered directly. “Thy Kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10).

Think you can cheer me up in the short run? Have at it.

Word of the Day: Anfractuous

Merriam-Webster:

: full of windings and intricate turnings : TORTUOUS

 

The Unbreakable Anfractuous

Plots and paths can be anfractuous. They twist and turn but do not break. Never mind that the English word comes ultimately from the Latin verb frangere, meaning "to break." (Frangere is also the source of fracture, fraction, fragment, and frail.) But one of the steps between frangere and anfractuous is Latin anfractus, meaning "coil, bend." The prefix an- here means "around." At first, anfractuous was all about ears and the auditory canal's anfractuosity, that is, its being curved rather than straight. Anfractuous has been around for centuries, without a break, giving it plenty of time to wind its way into other applications; e.g., there can be an anfractuous thought process or an anfractuous shoreline.

Black Lives Maga!

The South Bronx comes out for the Orange Man. 

The video is about eight minutes long and puts me in mind of the old "Joe and Eddy" tune from the early '60s, There's a Meeting Here Tonight. 

Black support for Trump makes perfect sense. These black citizens understand that an endless influx of illegal aliens will have a disproportionate impact (to put it mildly) on them. After all, where will the illegals be sent? To Martha's Vineyard?  They will be sent and are being sent to black neighborhoods  where they take over the schools, the playgrounds, drain the social services, etc. 

Black citizens, most of whom are law-abiding, understand that the rule of law is good for them, and that the cadre leftists who have infiltrated and now control the Democrat Party have contempt for said rule, despite their mendacious mouthings  to the contrary, mouthings that are belied by their actions.

My use of 'disproportionate impact' above is slightly ironic, as I am sure my astute readers have noticed. The leftist line is that the enforcing of laws is 'racist' because strict enforcement and appropriate punishment has a 'disproportionate impact' on blacks. And of course it does. But that doesn't make it 'racist' on any reasonable definition of the term.  It can't be racist if it is true.

'Disproportionate impact' is exactly what one would expect given the well-established fact that blacks as a group are more criminally prone than other groups.  And this even after adjusting for police brutality, and other forms of police malfeasance.  

We conservatives are not racists or fascists with an 'authoritarian personality structure.' We stand for liberty and (therefore) for limited government. We appreciate that cops are a necessary evil.  I dilate further in  Cops: A Necessary Evil. 

UPDATE (5/21)

Is Trump the first populist Republican? No surprise The Militant sticks  up for him.  Meanwhile, James Carville, junkyard attack dog, barks himself silly. (Looks like the video I was looking for has been removed.)  What could the lovely Mary Matalin see in him?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Cool Tunes and More Mose

Brian Bosse, musically literate, and a musician himself, tells me that he's never heard of Mose Allison. In furtherance of Brian's education, I link to some Allison tunes below.

Ramsey Lewis Trio, The In Crowd

Dave Brubeck, Take Five

Corsairs, Smoky Places

Harry Nilsson, Everybody's Talkin'

B. B. King, Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out 

Sam Cooke, Fool's Paradise

Thelonius Monk, In Walked Bud

Mose Allison, Your Mind's on Vacation

Mose Allison, I Don't Worry About a Thing

Mose Allison, Don't Get Around Much Anymore

Too cool for you? Try this.

Mose Allison, The Song is Ended

Lenin: 100 Years Later

Here:

Academic Marxists of various stripes still appeal to Lenin’s 1917 pamphlet The State and Revolution in an effort to find a more “libertarian” Lenin. But this is at once a chimera and a bad joke. Like Marx himself, but even more intensely and ferociously, Lenin combines a Jacobin defense of terror and tyranny with a confidence that once the bourgeois “machinery” of domination is “suppressed,” the state will quickly “wither away.” In 1918, Max Weber had already exposed the absurd logic, and the ignorance of human nature, underlying such a claim. On some level, as Solzhenitsyn points out to great effect in The Gulag Archipelago, Lenin was a fabulist. He had persuaded himself, in words quoted by Solzhenitsyn, that “’the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the hired slaves of yesterday is a matter so comparatively easy, simple and natural, that is going to cost much less in blood […] will be much cheaper for humanity’ than the preceding suppression of the minority.” The result of this delusory expectation was that millions, even tens of millions, would perish under Lenin and Stalin.  Declaring war to the death on established customs, private property, religion, sundry “class enemies” and “enemies of the people,” and on political liberty and human nature itself, was never going to be simple or easy affair.

Lenin made of the Solovetsky monastery the SU's first and cruellest gulag. How different is the US from the SU?  Different, yes, but how different? Headed in the same direction under the able leadership of that devout Catholic, Joe Dementia? Harrison Butker seems to have triggered our lefty pals, bigly.  Interesting times. And that reminds me: to the range on Monday.

Related: Tony Flood wonders why Earth Day falls on Lenin's birthday.

On the 'Congressional Catfight'

Some friends to my Right think women have no place in politics. I strongly disagree. But there's no denying that the recent 'catfight' in Congress supplies these extreme Righties with ammo.  

Tulsi Gabbard is one member of the distaff contingent who has more right to be in politics than a lot of men I could mention. Here she takes on the stupidest bunch of women on TV. 

"Murder Your Darlings"

Good advice. I should take it. I am too enamored of my own formulations, which I tend to repeat. Anthony Flood, a hard-working editor who is doing some editing for me, just sent me this:

The phrase "murder your darlings" is often attributed to the English writer and critic Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. He used a version of this expression in his 1914 lecture titled "On Style," which is part of his book "On the Art of Writing." The original quote is:

"Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press. Murder your darlings."

This advice encourages writers to remove their most cherished or self-indulgent passages for the sake of overall clarity and quality in their writing. Over time, the phrase has been popularized and widely used by writers and writing instructors to emphasize the importance of being ruthless in editing and prioritizing the work's overall effectiveness over individual beloved segments.

I've said some unkind things about editors, but they do provide a check on one's vanity and self-indulgence.

Why Physical Culture?

Top o' the Stack.

Leftists Love Criminals

You will never understand the Left until you understand that they reliably take the side of  criminals, who comprise their clientele and path to power, over the law-abiding.   And with lefties it is always about power and control, first, foremost,  and forever.

Here we read about a 78-year-old Englishman who, in defending himself against a screwdriver-wielding home invader, caused the miscreant's death and is now facing a murder charge.

Dear old England, the mother country. It is sad to see your mother, senile and decrepit, go down the toilet, having lost all her moral sense and the will to live.

Examples such as this one, like entities, are easily multiplied; unlike entities, however, citations of leftist assaults on justice  are not likely to be multiplied beyond necessity.

Here is another example, a recent one, from Minnesota, for your delectation, or rather, disgust.

Once again one sees the justification for my political burden of proof:

As contemporary 'liberals' become ever more extreme, they increasingly assume what I 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.

Actually, that is far too mild a statement. Perhaps tomorrow I will tell you what I really think.

Over-Belief and Romans 1: 18-20

Substack latest.

Is the Pauline passage an example of Jamesian over-belief?

Why Isn't There a Palestinian State?

A history lesson in under five minutes.

A more nuanced narrative from eight years ago.

Is there an historian in the house?

Bad and Good Self-Censorship

'Censorship' and 'self-censorship' are not dirty words.  There are good and bad forms of each.

Bad self-censorship

The spreading virus of wokeness has transformed not only publishing but the entire information economy. At every level of it from school lectures to movies to Substack blogs, participants are vulnerable to having their careers ruined by a woke criticism. Everyone I know in publishing is aware of this danger and must reckon on the consequences. As a result, we now have self-censorship. It is far worse than the McCarthyism of the 1950’s because its enforcers among the woke have the ability to create instant twitters storms for which there are few effective defenses. (Edward Jay Epstein)

 Good self-censorship

Self-censorship and self-regulation of words, thoughts, desires, and emotions are essential to the moral life. 

Sebastian Gorka Makes the Case for Trump before the Oxford Union

Magnificent

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Weather Conditions

Earl Scruggs and Friends, Foggy Mountain Breakdown

Ella Fitzgerald, Misty. Beats the Johnny Mathis version. A standard from the Great American Songbook.

Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze. Not from the Great American Songbook. And presumably not about weather conditions.  'Scuse me while I kiss the sky? Or: 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy?

Cream, Sunshine of Your Love

Tom Waits, Emotional Weather Report

Art Garfunkel and James Taylor, Crying in the Rain. Written by Carole King and popularized by the Everly Bros.

Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. Written by Fred Rose and performed by Roy Acuff in the '40s.

Now my hair is turned to silver
All my life I've loved in vain
I can see her star in heaven
Blue eyes cryin' in the rain.

Someday when we meet up yonder
We'll stroll hand in hand again
In a land that knows no parting
Blue eyes crying in the rain.

Allman Bros., Blue Sky

Kansas, Dust in the Wind

Eric Clapton, Let It Rain

Dave van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters, Clouds ("Both Sides Now").  This beautiful version by "The Mayor of MacDougal Street" goes out to Oregon  luthier Dave Bagwill who I know will appreciate it. Judy Collins made a hit of it. And you still doubt that the '60s was the greatest decade for American popular music?  Speaking of the greatest decade, it was when the greatest writer of American popular songs, bar none, Bob Dylan, made his mark. Some generational chauvinism is justified! 

Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall Could Johnny Mercer write a song like this?

Eva Cassidy, Over the Rainbow. Another old standard from the Great American Songbook.

Tom Waits, On a Foggy Night

Rolling Stones, She's a Rainbow

Dan Fogelberg, Rhythm of the Rain

Cascades, Rhythm of the Rain. The original.

Dee Clark, Raindrops. Manny Mora:

"Raindrops" is a 1961 song by the American R&B singer Dee Clark. Released in April of that same year, this ballad peaked at position 2 on the Hot 100 and at position 3 on the R&B chart.  [. . .]

Clark's biggest hit was also his last. [. . .]

Clark had a brief revival in 1975 when his song "Ride a Wild Horse" became a surprise Top 30 hit in the UK Singles Chart, becoming his first chart hit in the UK since "Just Keep It Up." Afterwards, Clark performed mostly on the oldies circuit. By the late 1980s, he was in dire straits financially, living in a welfare hotel in Toccoa, Georgia. Despite suffering a stroke in 1987 that left him partially paralyzed and with a mild speech impediment, he continued to perform until his death on December 7th 1990, in Smyrna, Georgia, from a heart attack at the age of 52. His last concert was with the Jimmy Gilstrap Band at the Portman Lounge in Anderson, South Carolina.

Dave Bagwill sends us to a clip in which Dave van Ronk talks a bit about the days of the "Great American Folk Scare" and then sings his signature number, "Green, Green, Rocky Road."

Mass Migration and Crime

Eva Vlaardingerbroek. Under 13 minutes. HT: Dave Bagwill.

Dave adds:

Elon Musk later weighed in on Eva’s remarks.

“The problem with “Great Replacement Theory” is that it fails to address the foundational issue of low birth rates.

Record low birth rates are leading to population collapse in Europe and even faster population collapse in most of Asia. Immigration is low in Asia, so there is no “replacement” going on, the countries are simply shrinking away.

If this doesn’t turn around, then any countries on Earth with low birth rates will become empty of people and fall into ruin, like the remains we see of the many long dead civilizations.”

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2024

Eva’s speech already has 36.7 million views in less than 48 hours.

This speech is the reason why the Biden administration and Western elites are so desperate to control speech. They can’t allow the people to have access to free thoughts and differing ideas. Because the elites are leading Western civilization to ruin. It appears that was their plan all along.

The Dark Heart of Modern Chess

Hyperventilatory. Consume cum grano salis.

Here is much better writing about chess by Grandmaster Raymond Keene.

Who Are These Hamas Supporters?

This just in from Tony Flood:

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” chant the useful idiots at elite institutions and parades in the West. Who are these people? Atheists who support theocratic lunatics, democrats who endorse medieval tyrants, feminists who defend misogynists who parade with the desecrated corpses of women, gays who defend maniacs who would joyfully hang them or toss them off the roof of a tall building. They talk of a secular, democratic and socialist Palestine. As George Orwell observed: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” 

Walter E. Block, "The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas." (Emphasis added.) This is the text of the 927-word WSJ op-ed, published October 11, 2023, behind their paywall; Block posted it the next day on his Substack. 

Austrian School economist and first-generation Rothbardian (i.e., anarcho-capitalist libertarian), Block is a co-author of the 962-page The Classical Liberal Case for Israel (Springer 2021). For me, this book is prohibitively expensive; its argument, however, can be read for free in a documented-to-the-hilt article that the authors had published five years earlier in a peer-reviewed journal: Block WE, Futerman AG, and Farber R, The Legal Status of the State of Israel: A Libertarian Approach, Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law, No. 11, July 2016, 435-554. This link will open a 119-page pdf. 

I reiterate my stock disclaimer: Linkage does not constitute plenary endorsement.  I stand for free speech and open inquiry, and thus against those leftists, and in particular those leftists in cahoots with Islamists, who dishonor these classically liberal and traditionally American values. That being said, I fully endorse the material from Block quoted by Flood supra.

 

Addendum. Here is Hans-Hermann Hoppe's reply to Walter E. Block's "The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas," above cited.  I am not qualified to enter this debate, but I will repeat the following from my partially autobiographical essay From Democrat to Dissident:

We were friends for a time, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary nonintellectual 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 another whose ideas differ 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 had 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.”

 

Related (5/11):  Douglas Murray, Choose Life, not the Death Cults.  If, like me, you have no time to spend during working hours listening to slow-moving speeches, Murray provides an article adaptation of his speech before the Manhattan Institute, which adaptation is accessible via an internal link. 

 

And then there is this: Why Edmund Wilson Saw Judaism as the Key to America's Cultural Survival.

 

Finally, I see that Malcolm and 'Jacques' are debating, civilly but trenchantly, over at Pollack's place.

Four Kinds of Ontological Argument

A Substack typology.

Is Hegel the Protestant Aquinas?

Substack latest.

UPDATE (5/8/2024).  This from Kai Frederick Lorentzen:

You write:

" . . . It does annoy  me, however, that  Kainz doesn't supply any references.  For example, we read:

Hegel was critical of Catholicism at times, in his writings and lectures. For example, he once made a scurrilous remark about the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist . . . .

Very interesting, but what exactly does he say and where does he say it?  Inquiring minds want to know . . . . " 

That's from § 552 of the Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften where it says in context of the thought that religion is for the Selbstbewußtsein [self-consciousness] the basis of ethics and the state:

Es kann aber das Verhältnis der Unfreiheit [of the Selbstbewußtsein on the one and the content of truth on the other side - kfl] der Form nach stattfinden, obgleich der an sich seiende Inhalt der Religion der absolute Geist ist. Dieser große Unterschied, um das Bestimmtere anzugeben, findet sich innerhalb der christlichen Religion selbst, in welcher nicht das Naturelement den Inhalt des Gottes macht, noch auch ein solches in den Gehalt desselben als Moment eintritt, sondern Gott, der im Geist und in der Wahrheit gewußt wird, der Inhalt ist. Und doch wird in der katholischen Religion dieser Geist in der Wirklichkeit dem selbstbewußten Geist starr gegenübergestellt. Zunächst wird in der Hostie Gott als äußerliches Ding der religiösen Anbetung präsentiert (wogegen in der lutherischen Kirche die Hostie als solche erst und nur allein im Genusse, d.i. in der Vernichtung der Äußerlichkeit derselben, und im Glauben, d.i. in dem zugleich freien, seiner selbst gewissen Geiste, konsekriert und zum gegenwärtigen Gotte erhoben wird). Aus jenem ersten und höchsten Verhältnis der Äußerlichkeit fließen alle die anderen äußerlichen, damit unfreien, ungeistigen und abergläubischen Verhältnisse; namentlich ein Laienstand, der das Wissen der göttlichen Wahrheit wie die Direktion des Willens und Gewissens von außen her und von einem anderen Stande empfängt, welcher selbst zum Besitze jenes Wissens nicht auf geistige Weise allein gelangt, sondern wesentlich dafür einer äußerlichen Konsekration bedarf. Weiteres, die teils nur für sich die Lippen bewegende, teils darin geistlose Weise des Betens, daß das Subjekt auf die direkte Richtung zu Gott Verzicht leistet  und andere um das Beten bittet, - die Richtung der Andacht an wundertätige Bilder, ja selbst an Knochen, und die Erwartung von Wundern durch sie, - überhaupt, die Gerechtigkeit durch äußerliche Werke, ein Verdienst, das durch die Handlungen soll erworben, ja sogar auf andere übertragen werden können, usf., - alles dieses bindet den Geist unter ein Außersichsein, wodurch sein Begriff im Innersten verkannt und verkehrt und Recht und Gerechtigkeit, Sittlichkeit und Gewissen, Zurechnungsfähigkeit und Pflicht in ihrer Wurzel verdorben sind. 

(G.W.F. Hegel, Werke 10, Frankfurt a.M. 1986, pp. 356-357)

Here it is in  English:

As the inseparability of the two sides has been indicated, it may be worth while to note the separation as it appears on the side of religion. It is primarily a point of form: the attitude which self-consciousness takes to the body of truth. So long as this body of truth is the very substance or indwelling spirit of self-consciousness in its actuality, then self-consciousness in this content has the certainty of itself and is free. But if this present self-consciousness is lacking, then there may be created, in point of form, a condition of spiritual slavery, even though the implicit content of religion is absolute spirit. This great difference (to cite a specific case) comes out within the Christian religion itself, even though here it is not the nature-element in which the idea of God is embodied, and though nothing of the sort even enters as a factor into its central dogma and sole theme of a God who is known in spirit and in truth. And yet in Catholicism this spirit of all truth is in actuality set in rigid opposition to the self-conscious spirit. And, first of all, God is in the ‘host’ presented to religious adoration as an external thing. (In the Lutheran Church, on the contrary, the host as such is not at first consecrated, but in the moment of enjoyment, i.e. in the annihilation of its externality. and in the act of faith, i.e. in the free self-certain spirit: only then is it consecrated and exalted to be present God.) From that first and supreme status of externalization flows every other phase of externality - of bondage, non-spirituality, and superstition. It leads to a laity, receiving its knowledge of divine truth, as well as the direction of its will and conscience from without and from another order - which order again does not get possession of that knowledge in a spiritual way only, but to that end essentially requires an external consecration. It leads to the non-spiritual style of praying - partly as mere moving of the lips, partly in the way that the subject foregoes his right of directly addressing God, and prays others to pray - addressing his devotion to miracle- working images, even to bones, and expecting miracles from them. It leads, generally, to justification by external works, a merit which is supposed to be gained by acts, and even to be capable of being transferred to others. All this binds the spirit under an externalism by which the very meaning of spirit is perverted and misconceived at its source, and law and justice, morality and conscience, responsibility and duty are corrupted at their root.

BV: I see no reason to think that Kainz is to referring to the above passage from Hegel's Encyclopedia. In a later article I just now found, Corpus Christi and Reality, Kainz writes,

My reference was to one of Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of religion, in which he criticized the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, causing a Catholic student to report him to the authorities. Hegel had attempted what we might call a sick joke: he asked whether, if a mouse had come across a consecrated Host and eaten it, Catholics might be obliged to act worshipfully to the mouse, and so forth.

But again Kainz gives no reference! So I consulted Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827), but found no reference to any host-eating mouse in the passage in which Hegel refers to communion, which he calls Genuss which means enjoyment but also partaking of  as in the eating or drinking of something. (In some contexts, geniesßar has the connotation, edible.) 

Back to Lorentzen:

Heavy stuff, no? Well, with a little stretch you could say that Hegel is more Lutheran here than Martin Luther himself. Luther's theological approach, as I recently learned from Volker Leppin's brilliant study Die fremde Reformation: Luthers mystische Wurzeln (München 2016: C.H. Beck), was rooted in medieval mysticism in the line of Johannes Tauler and Meister Eckhart, whose idea to give birth to an inner divine child was strongly appreciated by Luther. Regarding extensive philosophical framing of the religious practice he became more and more critical. Here Luther's negative view of the traditional doctrine of the Eucharist finds its place: It's the Scholastics with their detailed Aristotelian understanding of the Eucharist that Luther has a problem with. The flesh and the blood of Christ is absolutely real, but no philosopher can prove how! Instead, the affection of the baptized members of the community validates the ritual. Same problem in the other direction with the merely symbolic understanding of bread and wine, as we find it expressed by Zwingli and his successors like Calvin. Here Luther suspects Neo-Platonist hubris against God.    

Lorentzen's take strikes me as basically correct. Here is a  little under four minutes of  Volker Leppin.

In his 1827 lectures on the philosophy of religion Hegel mentions three views about the host or communion wafer:

According to the first, the host -- this external, sensible thing -- becomes by consecration the present God, God as a thing in the manner of an empirical 'thing.' The second view is the Lutheran one . . . here there is no transubstantiation . . . the presence of God is utterly a spiritual presence -- the consecration takes place in the faith of the subject. The third view is that the present God exists only in representation, in memory, and to this extent he does not have this immediate subjective presence. (Hodgson one-volume edition, U. of Cal Press, 1988, 480-481.)

Alles klar? 

This may help: Transubstantion, Consubstantiation, or Something Else?

Also of interest: Must Catholics Hate Hegel?

Herr Lorentzen signs off:

With best wishes!
Ex toto corde

Kai (who likes your recent Sunday meditation - Hyperkinetic and Hyperconnected - a lot!)

Dale Tuggy on Origen on John

I have a Twitter/X  account, but I don't post there often. Today I took a peek and found this:

https://x.com/DaleTuggy/status/1786943516922306708.  The following is from Tuggy:

An interesting passage from Origen's commentary on John. Some readers still make the same mistake!

"Those, however, who are confused on the subject of the Father and the Son bring together the statement, "God . . . raised up Christ' [1 Cor 15:14]. . . and words like these which show him who raises to be different from him who has been raised, and the statement [in Jn 2:19], "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." They think that these statements prove that the Son does not differ from the Father in number, but that both being one, not only in essence, but also in substance, they are said to be Father and Son in relation to certain differing aspects, not in relation to their reality.

Comment: Yup, some still look at that text from John and conclude that Jesus and God are one and the same ("same in number"). Back to Origen,

For this reason, we must first quote to them the texts capable of establishing definitely that the Son is other than the Father, and we must say that it is necessary that a son be the son of a father and that a father be the father of a son. After this we must say to them that it is not strange for him, who admits that he can do nothing except what he sees the Father doing, and who says that whatever the Father does, the Son likewise also does, to have raised the dead, (which was the body), since the Father, who we must say emphatically has raised the Christ from the dead, grants this to him."

Comment: I think if you're a dualist you could accept this solution. If you're not, I think you can simply understand Christ to mean that after God would bring him back to life, he'd get up!

Hyperkinetic and Hyperconnected

The typical American's life is frantic, frenetic, hyperkinetic, and hyperconnected. For any really good reason? What's the rush?  Quo vadis? Whither goest thou, thoughtless hustler? 

From time to time we need to slow down and unplug. Try to go deviceless for a few days. Haul off to some desert spot and rest incommunicado, out of range of worldly noise.  Stop jabbering and listen for signals from beyond the human horizon.

In our ever-accelerating descent into national dementia we are building a spiritual Faraday cage to 'shield' us from intimations from Elsewhere. We are sinking ever deeper into our empty immanence. 

Twenty Years Into It

Today is my 20th 'blogiversary.' Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these twenty years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.' Blogging for me is like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and playing the guitar and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to.  Some of us are just natural-born scribblers.  We were always writing, on loose leaf, in notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, in journals

daily kept.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all that. 

Except that now I conduct my education in public.  This has some disadvantages, but  they are vastly outweighed by the advantages.  I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, locally and in far-away places, some in person.  You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't call forth spirits or at least snag some interesting fish.  The occasional scum sucker and bottom feeder are no counterargument.

I thank you all for your patronage, sincerely, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. I have a big fat file of treasured fan mail that more than compensates me for my efforts.

I am proud to have inspired a number of you Internet quill-drivers.  Some of you saw my offerings years ago and thought to yourself, "I can do this too, and I can do it better!" And some of you have. I salute you.

I had more to say on an earlier year's anniversary if you care to look.

Blog on!

I've missed only a few days in these twenty years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.' Blogging for me is like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and playing the guitar and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to.  Some of us are just natural-born scribblers.  We were always writing, on loose leaf, in notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, in journals

daily kept.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all that. 

Except that now I conduct my education in public.  This has some disadvantages, but  they are vastly outweighed by the advantages.  I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, locally and in far-away places, some in person.  You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't call forth spirits or at least snag some interesting fish.  The occasional scum sucker and bottom feeder are no counterargument.

I thank you all for your patronage, sincerely, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. I have a big fat file of treasured fan mail that more than compensates me for my efforts.

I am proud to have inspired a number of you Internet quill-drivers.  Some of you saw my offerings years ago and thought to yourself, "I can do this too, and I can do it better!" And some of you have. I salute you.

I had more to say on an earlier year's anniversary if you care to look.

Blog on!

On this Date in 1970

Kent State Shootings. Comparison with current campus  unrest. Neil Young's Ohio.

The Spook Stuff Chronicles

Danny Dennett meets Caspar the Friendly Ghost.

Stack leader.

In Dennett's case, de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est has expired.

On Climate 'Theology'

and the secularization of religious terminology.

Top o' the Stack