Maverick Philosopher

Site Stats at Sweet Sixteen

Although Maverick Philosopher has been on-line for over 20 years now, its third incarnation, this Typepad version, first saw the light of day on Halloween, 2008, 16 years ago. I thank you for reading. 

Although the heyday of blogging is long gone, the peak having occurred near the end of the aughts, I bump along at a somewhat respectable level especially given the austerity of my offerings.

Lifetime Pageviews: 7, 497, 427

 

Pageviews/Day: 1,282.93

 

Total Posts: 12, 520

 

Total Comments: 16, 688

 

I'll be returning to some hard-core philo-content soon, but first things first: every mentally sane and morally decent man Jack and woman Jill of us must do his or her bit to beat back the forces of darkness.  No jacking, jilling, or slacking off.  Do your part, but with detachment from the outcome. To make a slogan out of it:

 

Beat back better!

Around the 'Stackosphere'

I just now coined the word. Who's going to stop me? If there is a blogoshere, then there is a stackosphere. 

You send traffic to me, I send traffic to you. Free speech! Open inquiry! Death to DEI! Down with the Dems and all the reprobable forces of anti-civilization!  Long live the Republic!

Philosophical Micro Notes

Knowland Knows.  Especially recommended for you young guys.

The Journal of Absolute Truth

Linkage does not constitute plenary endorsement.

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!

Sonoran Spring Surge Subsides

It ran for four consecutive days with total page views per diem clocking in at 10,000, 75,000, 150,000, and 40,000.  And now back to blessed obscurity. What was that all about?

One hypothesis for which I have some evidence is that I triggered an ugly bunch of Jew haters with a favorable remark about Alan Dershowitz in this Substack entry.

10,000 Page Views Yesterday!

What explains yesterday's traffic surge? 

My average is 1200-1300 page views per diem. Recent posts are nothing to get excited about. It is not as if their quality is superior to what I regularly crank out.  Have I 'triggered' some woke 'influencer'? Pissed off a powerful pol? Is the NSA rifling through* my vast archives preliminary to my incarceration?  But surely I am way too obscure for it to be cost-effective to send me to the gulag.   

Is some AI monster grabbing my  content to regurgitate or repackage?

I solicit your hypotheses.  

___________

*'Riffling through' in British English.

Malcolm Pollack is Back in the Saddle . . .

. . . with a series of outstanding posts. Start with A Higher Duty and scroll down.  If I have his story straight, he did not attend college. And it shows. 

UPDATE

A correspondent sends the following comment from a post at Powerline that will help you understand the gravity of the situation at the southern border.  It underscores the outrageousness of the 5-4 SCOTUS decision upon which Pollack comments in the entry cited above:

Diego Palma an hour ago

"The disaster on what used to be the southern border has become such a catastrophe that even a large percentage of clueless nitwits among the citizenry are starting to take notice. I appreciate the seemingly increasing interest on the part of the owners of PLB to address and report on the invasion.

Most people outside of Arab immigrants to America and anti semitic democrats were horrified at what happened in Israel on October 7th and what has been happening to the surviving hostages.

I want to tell all of you plainly, clearly and forcefully that there is a terrorist organization, equally as savage and barbaric as Hamas, that is in total control of our southern border with Mexico. Not only are they in control of our border, but they are venturing further and further into the interior of the United States. They are richer than Midas, numerous and armed to the teeth.

On our land here, there is a wash which extends almost to the town of Cananea in Sonora. A wash is similar to a dry river bed. It only contains water after a decent rain. The Narco coyotes used to use this wash as their "highway" into Arizona. One morning I was out checking on the livestock and at the point where the wash enters from Mexico was something I thought I would never see in real life. The Sicarios had taken mesquite limbs, sharpened both ends, put one end into the ground and impaled the heads of 7 illegals who had tried to enter Arizona without paying their fee to the narcos. I rode to Cananea, got the chief of police and took him to see what I had found. The man bent over and threw up for almost a half hour. He returned to Cananea, drove to Nogales, Sonora, and got the head of the Federales and some of his men to return with him to the scene. Our own CBP had neither the time nor the resources to investigate as Biden has them too busy ushering illegals across the border into our country.

After this incident, I most every night go out and keep watch. It's sort of hard to sleep knowing such monsters are prowling very close to where one sleeps. One night as I was headed to my normal lookout. I heard crying and whimpering which I was certain was coming from women. I crawled up to look over a rise and there in a small sand clearing were a group of women tied up, The men were laying on the ground, and I later found out they had all been stabbed to death. The Coyotes were one by one gang raping these women and girls. As I was alone, there wasn't too much I could do other than fire one of my guns into the air. I rode home in the pitch black as fast as I could and called my friend in Cananea. He notified the federales and we led them to where it had happened. We found the bodies of the men and several of the women. They had been brutally murdered.

Your government is betraying you. Your Republican senators eager to make a horrible deal with the government for the sake of expedited aid to Ukraine are betraying you.

I really don't know what else I can say to you people. I look at most of the politicians in Washington and I see bird brains. Nikki Haley, the darling of the neocon GOP establishment wants to bring one million Arabs from Gaza to live permanently in our country. What is wrong with this woman? What is wrong with the people who know what is going on and look the other way? What is wrong with the people who don't even want to look at all? One of these days these monsters will be looking you in the face. What will you do then?"

Bill Keezer Passes On

Word came last night from Bill's wife Jennifer:

Sadly Bill passed away November 29th. His heart just finally wore out. He spoke of you often and considered you a valued friend.

Bill Keezer was a biologist with lively philosophical, theological, and political interests. We met in the early days of the blogosphere circa 2003 and stayed in touch ever since.  And then we met twice in person when he came to visit me in Arizona.  A stalwart supporter of MavPhil, he kept me supplied with links and memes. Our last serious topic of conversation was theological fatalism.

 

I received his last e-mail on 17 October:

 

Bill,

Just wanted to tell you that one of the more rewarding things I have done recently is sign up for your Substack.  The articles are just about right for my level of understanding and reduced attention span. (My mind is slowing down) 

Peace,

Bill

A third and much younger blogger buddy of both of us, Kevin Kim, said the following about Bill back in aught-nine in a piece entitled, The Wisdom of Bill Keezer:

I don't want to embarrass Bill Keezer by making a habit of slapping his emails up here on the blog, but I do want to hold up a recent email of his.

Bill has been sending emails regularly since this crisis began, and was already a correspondent even before that. He maintains an excellent blog called Bill's Comments (with lengthier thoughts posted at Bill's Big Stuff). He and I probably fall on different parts of the political spectrum (Bill leans more rightward while I'd call myself a centrist), but we share a non-traditional view of Christianity and a great love of scientific thought. The major difference here is that, while I'm a scientific skeptic by temperament, Bill is more: he's an actual scientist. Along with that, and despite (or because of?) his non-traditional stance toward Christianity, Bill is highly active in his own church. I don't want to reveal too much about his personal project, but he's putting together a book that I'm very eager to read.

I often feel I don't deserve the wisdom that Bill dispenses so freely. But he's an excellent, thoughtful writer, and he seems fine with directing so much of that excellence and thoughtfulness toward my family, despite the fact that we've never met face-to-face. Bill generally sends his emails to my address, but I often share them, when they arrive, with Dad. As I said earlier, I don't want to embarrass Bill by making a habit of slapping his emails up on this blog (would you write private emails to someone who consistently made them public?), but I thought you might appreciate his latest. [You can read the rest here.]

Another blogger friend of ours from the early days is Keith Burgess-Jackson who recently called a halt to a 20-year blogging run, in which he never missed a day. In his final post, dated 5 November 2023, exactly 20 years to the day from said blog's inception, he too has good things to say about Bill Keezer:

Fortunately, I've also met many good and decent people through this blog, from Peg Kaplan to Bill Vallicella to Bill Keezer to Steve Burri to Kevin Stroup to Reed Anderson. At least one of them (John Sullivan)  is a friend to whom I speak (usually by texting) on a near-daily basis. Despite having to deal with creeps and crazies such as [Brian] Leiter, including, in 2017, a mob of malicious students who tried (spectacularly unsuccessfully) to get me "canceled" (for committing the unpardonable sin of being a conservative professor!), I have enjoyed every minute of my blogging experience.

All this is by way of saying that . . . I'm calling a permanent halt to posting. I haven't posted much in recent years anyway, but that will stop. I have other and better things to do in my retirement. Looking back, I'm honored to have been present in the heyday of blogging. Alas, in 2023, it is no longer (or not much of) a "thing." Other forms of social media have supplanted it. I can say, proudly, that I never missed a day of blogging. Counting leap years (in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020), I posted at least one item for 7,306 consecutive days. On some days, I posted well over a dozen items, many of them philosophical (i.e., analytic) in nature. On other days, especially recently, I posted only one item, such as the daily feature "Ten Years Ago Today in This Blog." (Speaking of which, here is my post from 10 years ago today, about this blog.)

My blog was never about philosophy only. It was about whatever interested me at the time, and, frankly, almost everything interests me. I wrote about history, law, economics, politics, world affairs, baseball, cycling, running, technology, journalism, academia, language, religion, music, and many other topics.

For those of you who frequented this blog, thank you. I hope I entertained and edified. I'm 66 and a half years old now and in great health. (I ride my bike at least 20 miles per day. I rode 349 of 365 days in 2022, racking up 7,500 miles. I'm riding almost as much this year.) I have a Twitter (oops! X) presence and an account on Donald Trump's Truth Social, but I rarely post anything on those sites. I use them to see what others are saying. I also have a Substack account, but haven't posted anything there in several months. That may change.

Finally, let me express my gratitude to a benefactor (and friend). The person most responsible (and therefore most to blame) for getting me into blogging back in 2003 is John J. Ray of Brisbane, Australia, whose main blog is Dissecting Leftism. I learned much from John over the years, including, significantly, the importance of respecting religion and religious people even though one is not oneself religious. John was always ready and willing to help me with the technical aspects of my blog. Thank you, John. You are an inspiration. I wish you and yours the very best.

Onward!

 

 

Halloween: 15th Typepad Anniversary

The Typepad incarnation of MavPhil is now 15 years old. It has racked up 6,637,776 page views, which averages out to 1211 page views per day.  It boasts 11,838  posts and 14,342  comments. And this despite shadow banning.

I thank you for your patronage. Double your money back if not completely satisfied.

"If you like to think, you'll like my blog; if you don't like to think, you need my blog."

I Ain't Superstitious, leastways no more than Howlin' Wolf, but two twin black tuxedo cats just crossed my path.  All dressed up with nowhere to go.  Nine lives and dressed to the nines.  Stevie Ray Vaughan, Superstition.  Guitar solo starts at 3:03.  And of course you've heard the story about Niels Bohr and the horseshoe over the door:

A friend was visiting in the home of Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr, the famous atom scientist.

As they were talking, the friend kept glancing at a horseshoe hanging over the door. Finally, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, he demanded:

“Niels, it can’t possibly be that you, a brilliant scientist, believe that foolish horseshoe superstition! ? !”

“Of course not,” replied the scientist. “But I understand it’s lucky whether you believe in it or not.”

Purr-honian Cat:

Thomas Mann on Blogging

Thomas Mann: Diaries 1918-1939 (Abrams, 1982, tr. R & C Winston), p. 194:

I love this process by which each passing day is captured, not only in its impressions, but also, at least by suggestion, its intellectual direction and content as well, less for the purpose of rereading and remembering than for taking stock, reviewing, maintaining awareness, achieving perspective . . . .

I agree, although for me rereading and remembering have as much value as the taking stock, etc. There is the pleasure of writing but also that of rereading and rethinking what one has written.

As for remembering a passage such as one above, its notation allows me to pull the book off the shelf and return to the pleasurable semantic penumbra which is the quotation's context. 

Summer Slowdown

"Blogging will be light," as we used to say in the early days of the blogosphere. I have a couple of books I need to finish and some practical business to attend to. But this won't be a total unplug as in earlier years. I plan to blog on both here and at Substack, but at a more leisurely pace.

Enjoy your summer!

How to Write a Good Comment

I offer a comment of mine as an example.  It is a brief response to a Substack entry by Elliot Crozat.  Here is the comment:

Very nice post, Elliot. Your reconstruction is valid. You say that (2) is "solid." It is, but it is not self-evident. For one epistemically possible view is that the dead are nonexistent objects: they do not exist, but they have being, and have properties. Indeed, they actually have properties; it is not just that they could have properties. So on this view, there is no bar to a dead person's having the property of being communal or standing in the communal relation to other dead persons. This quasi-Meinongian view is skillfully developed by Palle Yourgrau in Death and Nonexistence (Oxford, 2019). It of course has problems of its own.

(5) and (7) are undoubtedly true.

And I agree with you that (1) is reasonably rejected on eternalism which is a plausible alternative to presentism. Surely wholly past individuals are not nothing despite their not being temporally present. They exist, but not at present. Presentists, despite a lot of fancy footwork, have a hard time accounting for this plain fact. This is one reason why eternalism is well-represented among contemporary philosophers. Eternalism allows for a watered-down personal immortality which has been embraced by Einstein, Charles Hartshorne, and most recently by John Leslie. The main difficulty of eternalism is to give a clear account of existence simpliciter. But it appears that the presentist faces the same difficulty assuming that "Only the present exists" is not a miserable tautology that boils down to "Only what exists (present tense) exists (present tense."

As for Aristotle, he is standardly taken to be a presentist (see Feser, e.g.) and thus your invocation of the Stagirite in support of eternalism is questionable.

PROVISIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS

 

Time, Death, and Existence

 

Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited contains many good lines. Here’s one from near the end of the play: “You can’t be one of the dead because what has no existence can have no community.” As I take it, “one of the dead” means “one belonging to a community of dead persons.”

 

 

JUNE 27, 2023

 

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

 

So what makes my comment good?

 

1. I interact directly with what the  author has written.

2. In doing so, I show that I have made a good faith attempt to understand him.

3. I tell him whether I agree or disagree and why.

4. I do not go off on irrelevant tangents.

5. I keep my comments brief and to the point.

6. I try to be helpful.

7. I do not use his site to promote myself or to advertise my wares or to dump large undigested quotations from other writers.

Why Mix Politics with Philosophy?

I have been asked why I intersperse political entries with narrowly philosophical ones.  But in every case the question was put to me by someone who tilts leftward.  If my politics were leftist, would anyone complain?  Probably not.  Academe and academic philosophy are dominated by leftists, and to these types it seems entirely natural that one should be a bien-pensant  lefty.  Well, I'm here to prove otherwise.  Shocking as it will  seem to some, leftist views are entirely optional, and a bad option at that. The hard left in its now-dominant 'woke' incarnation is inimical to just about everything worth preserving. There is of course  a broad spectrum of leftist position, not all equally anti-civilizational, and some not at all anti-civilizational. Some good things can be said about some leftists of yesteryear.  

I could of course post my political thoughts to a separate site.  Now a while back I did effect such a segregation, sending my political rants and ruminations to my Facebook page. But given that philosophy attracts more leftists than conservatives, it is good for them to be exposed to views  that they do not encounter within the enclaves they inhabit.  Or are contemporary liberals precisely illiberal in their close-minded-ness to opposing views?  One gets that impression. We  conservatives are the 'new liberals.' We conservatives are classically liberal in that we support free speech and open inquiry. You say you want an example? Consider Newsmax. It is a conservative outlet that regularly allows leftists such as Ellis Henican and Barney Frank to have their say. No so with the leftist outlets: they do not allow political adversaries to have their say.

Posting the political to a separate weblog would also violate my 'theory' of blogging.  My blog is micro to my life's macro.  It mirrors my life in all its facets as a sort of coincidentia oppositorum of this situated thinker's existence.

Why did I leave Facebook? The mendacious FB admins went on a phishing expedition: they wanted me to reveal my smartphone number. I refused. In any case FB is not a serious venue in the main and the comments I received on carefully crafted posts were  mostly crap. My most valued interlocutors refused to follow me over there. FB is a place for narcissists to post selfies  and pictures of what they had for lunch. Am I being fair? Fair enough.

Sweet Nineteen

Today is my 19th 'blogiversary.'

Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these nineteen 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 maintained.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all of 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, some in the flesh.  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 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 on an earlier year's anniversary if you care to look.

I've missed only a few days in these nineteen 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 maintained.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all of 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, some in the flesh.  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 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 on an earlier year's anniversary if you care to look.

Brandon on Nemes on Orthodoxy and Heresy

Just over the transom from Steven Nemes:

My book, Orthodoxy and Heresy, was recently published in the Cambridge Elements series by Cambridge University Press.

 

Brandon of the Siris blog recently wrote a post responding to it with an objection. I have also replied to his objection in the comments. You might be interested.

I remember Brandon from the early days of the blogosphere which we both entered in 2004.  The first weblogs began to appear circa 2000, and by 2003-4 the 'sphere was in high gear. By 2010 or so it was considered by many to be pas​sé what with the migration of cyber-bullshitters to Twitter, Facebook, etc. leaving the 'sphere to serious content producers. Siris is a seriously good blog.

 

Blogging, like Rock and Roll, is here to stay. 

Regular programming to resume when Typepad gets its act together

Meanwhile, Happy Halloween from Screamin Jay Hawkins.

Substack latest is about zombies and the value of being conscious.

John Pepple's Last Post and a Look Back

I stopped by John Pepple's place this evening and found not his latest, but his last, post. A twinge of nostalgia tinged with sadness ensued. We bloggers form a loose fellowship and when one of us moves on, whether by quitting the blogosphere, or, more drastically, by quitting the sublunary, certain emotions arise.  So long, John, it's been good to know you.  What follows is my first mention of his weblog, dated 13 July 2010:

JOHN PEPPLE WANTS A NEW LEFT

During our lazy float down the Rio Salado today, Mike Valle and I had a lot to talk about. He mentioned a new blog he had come across entitled I Want a New Left. The author, John Pepple, aims to develop a self-critical leftism.  Now, having read quickly through most of his posts, I am a bit puzzled by the same thing that puzzles Mike:  why does Pepple hang on to the 'leftism' label?

But labels aren't that important.  What is important are the issues and one's stances on them. On that score, conservatives like me and Mike share common ground with Pepple.  In his biographical statement he says that in college he majored in mathematics and took a lot of physics courses. "But this was during the late 60s and early 70s, when much questioning was occurring, and I ended up as a grad student in philosophy."  Sounds very familiar!  The 'sixties were a heady time, a time of ferment, during which indeed "much questioning was occurring."  I started out in Electrical Engineering at the same time but also "ended up as a grad student in philosophy."  I did, however, have a bit more luck career-wise and didn't experience the same difficulties getting into print.

Why did so many of us '60s types end up in philosophy?  Because we were lost in a strange land, traditional understandings and forms of world-orientation having left us without guidance, and we needed to ascend to a vantage point to reconnoiter the terrain, the vantage point that philosophy alone provides.

Political change, a species of the genus doxastic change, is a fascinating topic.  I recently stumbled upon an effort by a distaff blogger who documents her transition from a comfortable enclave of mutually reinforcing Democrats to the more open world of contemporary conservatism, and the hostility with which her turncoat behavior was rewarded.  She calls her blog Neo-Neocon.

Still At It

This weblog turns 18 today.  I won't repeat what I said on this date when she turned sweet sixteen though it still holds.

I thank you for reading.

And remember: triple your money back if not completely satisfied.

Any complaints?  Fill out the form below:

Still at it after all these years

This weblog turns 17 today.  I won't repeat what I said on this date last year though it still holds.

I thank you for reading.

And remember: triple your money back if not completely satisfied.

Any complaints?  Fill out the form below:

Whatever Happened to Steven Den Beste?

Old-time blogospherians will remember Den Beste and his U.S.S. Clueless. I hadn't thought about him in years, but then something triggered my memory. Long story short, he died the death in 2016.

Note to Commenters

Please don't leave a comment without addressing it to someone. And if there are two Davids present in a thread, don't address it to David!

Sweet Sixteen

Today is my 16th 'blogiversary.' 

Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these sixteen 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 maintained.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all of 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, some in the flesh.  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 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 last year's anniversary if you care to look.

Back on Facebook

I gave up Facebook for Lent, but now I'm back. 

I offer daily punch-back against leftist loons on a wide variety of topics. Culture critique in the bowels of the Zuckerbergian beast.  No lefties need apply. I am looking for a few good men and women to join me in the fight for sense and sanity and the defense of the Republic. 

Most linkage and political commentary is now over at Facebook.  The idea behind the FB offload is to keep this site free of the polemics necessary in political warfare. As I see it, polemics has no place in philosophy, including political philosophy. The latter is theoretical; politics is practical. Politics is a form of warfare in which polemic and invective have their place.  The philosophical opponent is a friend to whom one is tied by a philiatic bond.  Theirs is a cooperation under the aegis of a truth that belongs to neither and is above both: amicus Plato sed amica magis veritas. The political opponent is an enemy whose opposition is 'existential.'  Must it be so? No, but it is so at the present time. A politics based on mutual respect conducted under an umbrella of common principles and values is unlikely but not impossible.

The Left has to be battled in multiple ways from multiple platforms. So occasionally polemical material will appear here.

I received 'friend' requests from a couple of hotties the other day who proudly strut their stuff and sport their 'racks' on pages including links to their 'nude pics.'  Sorry girls, you are not MavPhil material.  

Some Comments End Up in the Spam Corral . . .

. . . so I have to remember to look there to see if any good comments have been sent there to languish unread. My apologies to Kevin Kim, et al. whose comments have now been published.  

On a Roll

America is on a roll with Trump in control, and I'm on a roll on my Facebook page beating lefties into the dirt.  All of my posts are public, so you should be able to read them if you have a FB account. To comment, though, you will have to send me a 'Friend ' request.  Hard experience has taught me that discussions with 'liberals' are a waste of time, such is their level of insolent ignorance and willful self-enstupidation; so no 'liberals' need apply.

For Political Linkage and Commentary . . .

. . . go to my Facebook page.

Retractiones

My Retractiones category sports but four entries.

Is that evidence of my intellectual honesty, or does it show a lack of awareness of, or worse, an inability to face, my own errors of fact and judgment?

Facebook

I'm on a roll. Seven posts today and seven yesterday. 

 

2019 'Big Unplug' Starts Today

I'll be offline and incommunicado for the month of July. The plan is for normal operations to resume on or about 1 August. 

I ask my valued correspondents to refrain from sending me any links to events of the day or commentary thereon.  I am going on a 'news fast' which is even more salutary for the soul than a food fast is for the body.

From time to time we should devote special time to be still and listen beyond the human horizon.  Modern man, crazed little hustler and  self-absorbed chatterbox that he is, needs to enter his depths and listen.

"Be still, and know that I am God."  (Psalm 46:10)

"Man is a stream whose source is hidden." (Emerson) This beautifully crafted observation sets us a task: Swim upstream to the Source of one's out-bound consciousness where one will draw close to the Divine Principle.

Noli foras ire, in te ipsum reddi; in interiore homine habitat veritas.  "The truth dwells in the inner man; don't go outside yourself: return within." (St. Augustine) 

Maverick Philosopher 15th Anniversary Celebration and Renewal of Vows

Today is my 15th 'blogiversary.' I look forward to tomorrow and the start of Year 16.  Operations commenced on 4 May 2004. 

Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these fifteen 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 scribbling, on loose leaf, in notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, in journals daily maintained.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all of 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, some in the flesh.  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 and thought to yourself, "I can do this too, and I can do it better!" And some of you have. I salute you.

And now some thoughts on this thing we call blogging.

In the early days of the blogosphere, over 18 years ago now, weblogs were mainly just 'filters' that sorted through the WWW's embarrassment of riches and provided links to sites the proprietor of the filter thought interesting and of reasonable quality.  So in the early days one could garner traffic by being a linker as opposed to a thinker.  Glenn Reynold's Instapundit, begun in August 2001, is a wildly successful blog that consists mainly of links.  But there are plenty of linkage blogs now and no need for more, unless you carve out  a special  niche for yourself. 

What I find interesting, and what I aim to provide, is a blend of original content and linkage delivered on a daily basis.  As the old Latin saying has it, Nulla dies sine linea, "No day without a line."  Adapted to this newfangled medium: "No day without a post."  Weblogs are by definition frequently updated.  So if you are not posting, say, at least once a week, you are not blogging.  Actually, I find I need to restrain myself by limiting myself to two or three posts per day: otherwise good content scrolls into archival oblivion too quickly. Self-restraint, here as elsewhere, is difficult.

Here is my definition of 'weblog':  A weblog is a frequently updated website consisting of posts or entries, usually short and succinct, arranged in reverse-chronological order, containing internal and off-site hyperlinks, and a utility allowing readers to comment on some if not all posts.

'Blog' is a contraction of 'weblog.'  Therefore, to refer to a blog post as a blog is a mindless misuse of the term on a par with referring to an inning of a baseball game as a game, a chapter of a book as a book, an entry in a ledger as a ledger, etc.  And while I'm on my terminological high horse: a comment on a post is not a post but a comment, and one who makes a comment is a commenter, not a commentator.  A blogger is (typically) a commentator; his commenters are -- commenters.

There are group blogs and individual blogs.  Group blogs typically don't last long and for obvious reasons, an example being Left2Right.  (Of interest: The Curious Demise of Left2Right.) Please don't refer to an individual blog as a 'personal' blog.  Individual blogs can be as impersonal as you like. 

I am surprised at how much traffic I get given the idiosyncratic blend I serve. This, the Typepad version of MavPhil, commenced on Halloween 2008.  Since then the Typepad site has garnered over five million page views (5, 192, 776 to be exact as of 14:06 hours) which averages to 1,353.4 page views per day.  Spikes sometimes reach as high as 20, 000 page views in a day.   Total posts: 9, 216.  Two years ago: 7,486.  Total comments: 11, 394.

How did I get my site noticed?  By being patient and providing fairly good content on a regular basis.  I don't pander: I write what interests me whether or not it interests anyone else.  Even so, patience pays off in the long run. I don't solicit links or do much to promote the site.  I have turned down a few offers to run advertising. This is a labor of love. I don't do it for money. "Not that there is anything wrong with that." (Seinfeld)

Blogging is like physical exercise.  If you are serious about it, it becomes a daily commitment and after a while it becomes unthinkable that one should stop until one is stopped by some form of physical or mental debilitation.

Would allowing comments on all posts increase readership?  Probably, but having tried every option, I have decided the best set-up is the present one: allow comments on only some posts, and don't allow comments to appear until they have been moderated. 

MY PLEDGE

You will never see advertising on this site.  You will never see anything that jumps around in your visual field.  You will not be assaulted with unwanted sounds.  I will not beg for money with a 'tip jar.'  This is a labor of love and I prize my independence.

I also pledge to continue the fight, day by day, month by month, year by year, against the hate-America, race-baiting, religion-bashing, liberty-destroying, Constitution-trashing, gun-grabbing, lying fascists of the Left.  As long as health and eyesight hold out.

I will not pander to anyone, least of all the politically correct.

And I won't back down.  Are you with me?  Then show a little civil courage. Speak out. Exercise your constitutional rights. We are engaged in a battle for the soul of America and indeed for the soul of the West.

Facebook

I'm on a roll over there.

The Spam Corral is Acting Up Again

Esteemed commenters Fr. Kirby and Mr. Bagwill got sent to the spam corral for no good reason. Or rather their comments did. I apologize for that. Their comments are now visible. I shall have to descend into Comment Limbo on a daily basis now to see who is hanging out in those murky precincts.

Tony Flood is Back in the Groove

Hi Bill,

 

I hope things are good with you (and that you'll tell me if not).

 

I've finally crawled out from under the covers. My new site https://anthonygflood.com/ is mostly autobiographical vignettes, but one day I'll return to the questions that brought us together years ago. The main thing is that I practice in public consistently. (I've also hung out my copyediting shingle to bring in the shekels.)

 

If you like it, please subscribe.  

 

Thanks. 

 

All the best to you,

 

Tony

Facebook Update

Some of you have messaged me to say that you are unable to send me a FB friend request.  That was my fault. I had the software set to accept friend requests only from friends of friends. I have fixed that. You should be able to get through now.

I apologize if I don't get around to responding to all your kind messages. There is only so much time . . . .

The Presumptuousness of Blogging

Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties/Der Streit der Fakultäten, tr. Gregor (University of Nebraska Press, 1979), p. 177:

To want to entertain others with the inner history of the play of my thoughts, which has subjective importance (for me) but no objective importance (valid for everyone), would be presumptuous, and I could justly be blamed for it.

There is no doubt about it: we bloggers are a presumptuous and vain lot. We report daily on the twists and turns of our paltry minds. In mitigation, a couple of points.

First, I don’t force my posts on anyone. If you are here, it is of your own free will.  Second, there is something fascinating to me about the origin of my own and others' ideas and how they in their abtractness percolate up out of the concretion of their authors' Existenz. The blogs of most interest to me combine the existential with the theoretical, the autobiographical with the impersonal. The question of the origin of ideas must not be confused with the question of their validity or lack thereof.  But both questions are fascinating, and how exactly they connect is even more so. Now if I find the intertwinement of the existential and the theoretical interesting, then perhaps you do as well; herein may reside some justification for reports on "the inner history of the play of my thoughts."

I oppose the nomenclature whereby individual weblogs (as opposed to group weblogs) are referred to as ‘personal’ weblogs. This blog is more impersonal than personal and I fret over the ratio. Objektive Wichtigkeit should predominate over subjektive. But by how much?

By the way, Streit der Fakultäten is a fascinating book. I’m an old Kant man; I wrote my dissertation on the ontological status of the transcendental unity of apperception in the Critique of Pure Reason. That was back in 1978. But it was only in 2008 that I cracked my copy of The Conflict of the Faculties. This is a nice edition: German Fraktur on the left, good English translation on the right.

Thank You . . .

. . . to all who send me links and such to keep me apprised of the passing scene in all its fascinating madness. 

Plugged In and Posting

The Big Unplug 2018

The 2018 Big Unplug starts now.

I hope to be back in about three weeks. I will be incommunicado during this period so please don't send me any e-mail or leave any comments.

Bang on the link below for a little of the 'theory' of the Big Unplug.

Sick of politics? Take a gander at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.  

All the best to my readers!

Image credit

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The Big Unplug Starts Today

The Wipeout of Obama's Legacy

He who lives by the Executive Order shall die by the Executive Order.

The witticism is mine. Fred Barnes provides the documentation.

And a friendly tip of the hat to old blogger buddy Bill Keezer for keeping me well-supplied with cartoons and memes. I met old Bill back in the early days of the blogosphere, 'long about aught-four, when a lot of us first found each other and began enriching one another's lives.

Therein resides the beauty of blog: one draws to oneself the like-minded.

Does Obama have a legacy? A legacy is something good. 'Legacy' is not a pejorative.

Screwy Stats

How can I have 6,385 page views at 5:50 in the morning?

Some strange days a couple of weeks ago. A day with 10,000 page views, then one with 15,000, and then one with 22,500. 

It's making me nervous.

Obscurity is bliss, and it offers me some cover.  And that reminds me: I need to get out to the range.

If You Like to Think . . .

. . . you'll like my blog.

If you don't like to think, you need my blog.

(Double your money back if not completely satisfied.)

Thank You for Reading

Readership has been well over 1500 page views per day over the last month or so.  Yesterday, total page views topped 3000 and it looks like today will be the same. I thank you for your support.

Some of you are here for political commentary on the passing scene. For my more philosophical and literary writings, please visit Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.

Of Blood and Blog

My daily labors in the blogosphere since 2004, impressive as they are to some, have garnered nary a word of encouragement, or the opposite, from any relative. In compensation, I have a big fat file folder of tributes from strangers.

I suspect this is not unusual. The people we know we take for granted. Is it not written that "no prophet is welcome in his hometown"? (Luke 4: 24: nemo propheta acceptus est in patria sua. Cf. John 1:46.) 

One could call it the injustice of propinquity. We often underestimate those nearby, whether by blood or space, while overestimating those afar.

Just Philosophy

Keith Burgess-Jackson's new blog.

Merry Christmas to All Readers, Old and New . . .

. . . and best wishes for the New Year.  This arrived last night from a liberal reader:

I've read your blog daily for six years now because I want a rational conservative voice in my life to challenge my own (very opposite) beliefs. You've provided that in spades, and I'm grateful for it.

Would that all liberals were as good-natured and open to challenge. We might then be able to hope for a lessening of tensions in the coming year. But I am no pollyanna: 2018, I predict, will be a year of acrimony to rival the worst years of the '60s.

Some Posts and Ghosts of Christmas Past

'Merry Xmas'

Egyptian Muslims Serve as Human Shields at Coptic Christmas Mass

Socializing as Self-Denial

Merry Scroogemas!

Ebeneezer Scrooge and the Limits of Doxastic Voluntarism

In the Interests of Prandial Harmony

Minimalist and Maximalist Modes of Holiday Impersonality

Of Christograms and Political Correctness

A Blogger's Lament

This from a fellow blogger:

My output is down lately. I'm finding it harder not to just look away from it all. There are good books to read, history to study, music and chess to play, hikes to take, questions to ponder, family to love, drinks to drink and food to eat, and so much more. Watching my nation and civilization rot and fester just isn't so much fun anymore.

That said, it's also hard not to be terribly angry about it all, and of course I do have things to say about it. So this is probably just a weary spell that will pass.

What times we live in!

Why follow the disturbing events of the day, thereby jeopardizing one's peace of mind, when one can do little about them? Tranquillity of mind and the news don't go well together.  Withdrawal and retreat remain options to consider. But on the other side of the question:

The temptation to retreat into one's private life is very strong.  But if you give in and let the Left have free rein you may wake up one day with no private life left.  Not that 'news fasts' from time to time are not a good idea.  We should all consume less media dreck.  But there is no final retreat from totalitarians.  They won't allow it.  At some point one has to stand and fight in defense, not only of the individual and the family, but also of the mediating structures of civil society, that precious buffer zone between the individual and familial and Leviathan.

"Why I Left Academic Philosophy"

Interesting. Take it with several grains of salt and factor in the fact that it is by a 'transwoman.' The following is borne out by my experience:

But ultimately I don't need academic philosophy to do philosophy. My blogging over the past ten years has reached a larger audience than I could ever hope to achieve through the academic journal system.

On a really good day I'll get 3,000 page views. Usually I bump along at about half of that or less.  But I reach people and influence them. Proof is the thick manila folder of fan mail I have received. 

My humble thanks to all readers of good will.

Is Blogging a Good Use of Time?

I sometimes think that it is not, but then I get a comment like the following:

Your blog is much more instructive than most of my formal education. Thank you for that.

Numerous comments like this, for which I am grateful, convince me that it is a good use of time.

A Site Stat Coincidence

Yesterday and the day before this site received the same number of page views, 1,559.   That's never happened before. Deep Meaning or mere coincidence? I reckon the latter. (Total page views since Halloween, 2008: 4.3 million.)

In any case, I thank you all for your patronage. Any complaints? Double your money back if not completely satisfied.

Back to Blog: Plugged In and Posting

August is upon us and this philosophical gyrovagus settles down once again in his cyber-scriptorium for further adventures at the limits of intelligibility.

2017 'Big Unplug' Begins Today

I'll be offline and incommunicado for the month of July. The plan is for normal operations to resume on or about 1 August.

I ask my valued correspondents to refrain from sending me any links to events of the day or commentary thereon.  I am going on a 'news fast' which is even more salutary for the soul than a food fast is for the body.

 

From time to time we should devote special time to be still and listen beyond the human horizon.  Modern man, crazed little hustler and  self-absorbed chatterbox that he is, needs to enter his depths and listen.

"Be still, and know that I am God."  (Psalm 46:10)

"Man is a stream whose source is hidden." (Emerson) This beautifully crafted observation sets us a task: Swim upstream to the Source of one's out-bound consciousness where one will draw close to the Divine Principle.

Noli foras ire, in te ipsum reddi; in interiore homine habitat veritas.  "The truth dwells in the inner man; don't go outside yourself: return within." (St. Augustine) 

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