Maverick Philosopher

Putin Joins Liz Cheney and David French in Endorsing Kamala

Given what he's about, Putin's support for the silly goose makes perfect sense; given what she's supposed to be about, Cheney's make no sense at all but accords perfectly with her terminal TDS.

The Trumpianly deranged are a strange bunch.  The syndrome is not easy to understand. The pathology is on display in these articles:

Nicholas Kristoff, Why We Shouldn't Demean Trump Voters

Matt Bai responds to Kristoff.

Finally! A Cure for TDS

Check with your doctor to see if Independence is right for you.

Seriously, though, is TDS really a psychiatric condition, a form of topical insanity? Or is it rather a form of willful self-enstupidation? If the latter, then it is a grave moral defect, a form of vincible ignorance, and morally censurable as such.  

To put it crudely, TDS-ers are either sick in the head or else moral scum. Pick one.

Related: Michael Savage on liberalism as a mental disorder. I prefer the phrase, 'progressive disease.'

Michael Anton on "Celebration Parallax"

Here:

More tellingly, this charge is an example of something I call the “celebration parallax,” which is explained here. In brief, the celebration parallax holds that the same fact pattern is either true and glorious or false and scurrilous depending on who states it and, crucially, the perceived intent of the speaker.

So if someone says that the U.S. is experiencing levels of immigration that are unprecedented in human history, if it’s presumed or suspected that he might have doubts, then he is an evil racist. But when Bill Clinton or Joe Biden makes exactly the same point, well, that is A-OK! Because they are “good guys” who welcome “an unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop” (Joe Biden’s words). By the way, I leave to readers to intuit the difference between “unrelenting” (Joe’s word) and “ceaseless” (my word) and the reasons why the former is A-OK but the latter is somehow “racist.”

Sohrab Ahmari on 'Lawfare'

An exercise in naïveté:

Reacting to Donald Trump’s hush-money conviction in Manhattan on 30 May, the French writer Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry asked on X: “Has there been a single left-of-centre person… who has said: ‘Hey, nakedly partisan prosecutions of your political opponents goes against the values of liberal democracy, rule of law, justice, and everything my side claims to support?’”

A number of progressive figures have, in fact, decried lawfare against Trump and the Trumpians.

[. . .]

But the honour roll of the principled anti-lawfare left is all too short. That’s a shame, because right-wing populists won’t be the only victims.

[. . .]

Such partiality in the application of law and institutional norms should alarm progressives. 

Sohrabi comes across as naïve. Since when is the Left in any classical sense liberal? Since when are these 'progressives' in any sense progressive.    They are more aptly described as regressive, anti-civilizational nihilists.

Leftists are so far gone that they are willing to protract their nihilism unto the destruction of the very secular values that they supposedly champion. Pascal Bruckner:

Generations of leftists saw the working class as the messianic leaven of a radiant humanity; now, willing to flirt with the most obscurantist bigotry and to betray their own principles, they [have] transferred their hopes to the Islamists.

The Muslim as the new proletarian.

The worst of the great religions, "the saddest and poorest form of theism," (Schopenhauer) is defended when a defining project of the Left was the cleansing of the earth of the "opium of the people." (Karl Marx, full quotation here.)

Add to that the absurdity that the Left, whose own secular values are secularizations of Christian notions, attacks Christianity viciously while cozying up to Islamists.

It's insane, but then the Left is insane in any case.

Know the enemy and show him no quarter.

I know. You don't want to believe it is a war. It's a war. Which side are you on?

Reading Now: Alex Marlow, Breaking Biden

Subtitle: "Exposing the hidden forces and secret money machine behind Joe Biden, his family, and his administration." (Threshold, 2023).  Excerpt:

Intellectually, Republicans understand that to have a nation, you need a border.  [. . .] But the establishment isn't going to solve a problem if the solution is going to cost them a lot of (any?) money, even if the fate of our nation depends on it.

Unless, of course, we are talking about Ukraine's border with Russia. Then it's essential, heroic even, to have a border and defend it. After all, that border isn't keeping out cheap workers and future voters.  (p. 249)

The RINOs and the Democrats are one in that they both want open U. S. borders, albeit for different reasons. The RINOs want cheap labor while the Dems want future votes. Thus talk of a 'uniparty' is apt. The RINOs are in cahoots with the woke globalist plutocrats and have no concern for American workers or American culture. They think they will always be able to find sanctuary somewhere with their wealth and connections, and in the meantime they are content to be lapdogs of the Left and continue to receive invitations to the toniest Beltway soirees. The 'cuckservative' label fits them nicely.  Civility and 'character' are so important to Mitt Romney, for example, that he refuses to support Trump because of his 'bad character' while ignoring that of Biden which is far worse. Liz Cheney is another disgusting specimen of this Never-Trumper species.

Marlow sums up his book here.

Hillary the Delusional versus Trump the Sane

Two fairly short video clips.

Could Hillary really believe what she is saying?

Now Trump is not a very articulate man, but what he is saying is true. If you don't think so, then you are, like Hillary, either stupid, or topically insane, or evil. 

What do I mean by 'topically insane'? I explain over at Substack.

Topical Insanity

One type of temporary insanity is topical insanity. I explain it at the top of my Stack  and apply it to the case of firearms. 

Is Leftism a Form of Mental Illness?

Wokery is the most extreme form of leftism. Some if not all elements of wokery are indicative of mental illness on the part of those who actually believe them. I will mention just four.

• Thinking that one can effect a sex-change by merely mental gymnastics, by 'identifying' as a woman or as a man. Cognate with this species of insanity is the notion that sex of a neonate is 'assigned' at birth as opposed to being biologically inherent in the organism that exits the birth canal. A name can be assigned but not sex. Not even an inappropriate nominal assignment has the power to alter the sex of the nominatum. The boy named 'Sue' remained a boy.
• The bizarre notion that permitting or minimizing the consequences of criminal behavior will lead to less crime. 
• The astonishing conceit that mathematics is racist. Why exactly?  Because blacks as a group are not good at it?
• The knuckleheaded notion that wholly legitimate criticisms of a 'person of color' such as Alejandro Mayorkas may be deflected   by hurling the slur 'racist,' a word which wokesters never define the better to use as an all-purpose semantic bludgeon.
• Et cetera ad nauseam.

Wolff on Anti-Natalism

Top o' the Stack.

A glimpse into the mind of a leftist activist.

Why Did DeSantis Get 'Smoked'?

Plausible explanation:

Like it or not, many Republicans have a unique bond with Trump, not just because they had to endure a lot of grief for supporting him in the past but also because they see how Democrats and the media have weaponized entire institutions against him in the most outrageous and dangerous ways. Even if these GOP voters are open to supporting other candidates this time around, the last thing they want is to be told that Trump is awful, which comes off as an indictment of them and their judgment. 

It’s odd that DeSantis was never able to figure that out, or that no one in his orbit was able to persuade him to take a different approach. Instead, as my colleague Emily Jashinsky put it Monday, DeSantis “allowed Beltway vest aficionados and their friends in the donor class to steer his career off course” with endless attacks on Trump.

Jashinsky's article is astute.

Don't Let the Best Become the Enemy of the Good!

Top o' the Stack.

Hamas, DEI, Kronstadt, and Cognitive Dissonance

I'll bet that most of you don't know what 'Kronstadt' refers to. If so, this article, clearly written, and not too long, will help.

The Psychology of the Pollyanna and the Political Ponerology of Leftism

We all know pollyannas. They are more often women than men and the charm of these lovable ladies is in no small measure due to their openness to the positive in people and things and their seeming incapacity to discern the negative and evil. A most extreme example has come to my attention, one

. . . Natali Yohanan, “a 38-year-old mother of two, who never locked the doors of her house in Nir Oz, a kibbutz near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. There wasn’t even a key.” And then: “On Oct. 7, a Gazan woman walked through Yohanan’s unlocked front door and made herself at home for hours, eating, singing, and watching Netflix. Sometimes, the woman served drinks to armed terrorists who stopped by for a break from the massacre they were conducting outside.” Ms. Yohanan speaks of the impact of 10/7 on her in the 10-minute video below.

Watch the video and then ask yourself the question that I ask myself: how could an adult Israeli be so naïve, so trusting, so lacking in insight into human nature? The woman is not stupid; how then explain this blind spot? At one point Yohanan, a teacher, says that all children are good. Plainly false! Has this teacher never been on a schoolyard? Children can be vicious in a way that no animal can be vicious.  That is why they need to be socialized and, yes, indoctrinated, but in correct and ameliorative doctrines. (That 'indoctrination' is a dirty word is another piece of stupidity that you are well-advised in dropping.)

Yohanan is an Israeli. Surely she knows something about how her state came to be and why it came to be. Her kibbutz is right next to the Gaza Strip. Did she know nothing of Hamas and their genocidal intentions? They make plain their antisemitism and their anti-Zionism in their charter.  Does she know nothing about Islam? (See this excellent article by Raymond Ibrahim.) 

As I say elsewhere, homo homini lupus does not capture the depth of human depravity, and is an insult to the wolves to boot. Man is not a wolf to man; man is a demon to man. 

I am touching upon one of the roots, perhaps the deepest, of the delusional Left, namely the insane notion that everyone, deep down inside, is basically good. Not only is this conceit a characteristically leftist bit of delusionality, it also serves to distinguish conservative from leftist. No conservative accepts that crazy conceit.

And let's not forget that those who accept the crazy conceit that people are basically good refute their own false theory by being the most murderous of all. In the 20th century alone communist governments have murdered some 85-100 million people according to The Black Book of Communism.

Is it Rational to be Politically Ignorant?

I consider the question in today's Substack entry.

Liz Cheney: Profile in Political Projection

Projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one attributes one's own unacknowledged feelings, desires, intentions, attitudes, etc. to others.  Extending the notion into the political sphere, the political projector accuses the other side of doing what he and his ilk are doing but will not own up to doing. I happened across a very clear example on CBS this morning.  It severely tested my ataraxia.

Projection is standardly understood as the offloading of the negative onto the other, but it is also often a mistake to project positive feelings, values, and attitudes into the other. Such projection may get your irenic self killed, as I argue in a Substack article, aptly entitled Beware of Projecting . . . your values and attitudes into others.

Radical Islam's Threat to the Left

Substack latest.

Why don't leftists — who obviously do not share the characteristic values and beliefs of Islamists — grant what is spectacularly obvious to everyone else, namely, that radical Islam poses a grave threat to what we in the West cherish as civilization, which includes commitments to free speech, open inquiry, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, freedom to reject religion, universal suffrage, the emancipation of women, opposition to cruel and unusual penal practices, and so on?   In particular, why don't leftists recognize the grave threat radical Islam poses to them?  Why do leftists either deny the threat or downplay its gravity? Given their atheism and pronounced libertine ‘wobble,’ they would be among the first to lose their heads under Islamic law (Sharia).

Here is a quickly-composed  list of twelve related reasons based on my own thinking and reading and on discussions with friends. 

Wolff on Israel

Robert Paul Wolff, 30 October 2023:

I have found the series of comments on the Israeli situation interesting and helpful. I have not responded to them because I am so upset by what is happening that I can barely watch the news reports of it anymore. Let me make one small observation. There has been talk by Israeli officials and others about how this is an existential threat to the state of Israel. Let us just keep in mind that Israel is the only nation in the region with nuclear weapons and more generally is far and away the most powerful militarily. The attack on October 7, horrific and ugly and sadistic as it was, was no more a threat to Israel's existence then [than] was the attack on the twin towers on September 11 a threat to the existence of the United States.

Two points by way of rebuttal.

First, while it is true that Israel is the only nation in the region with nuclear weapons at the moment, that is very likely soon to change thanks to the concessions and fecklessness of the Obama-era appeasement policies vis-à-vis Iran promoted by puppet Biden and his (mal)administration. 

Second, the October 7th massacre was not an isolated event, but part of the larger project of clearing the space "from the river to the sea" of Jews and their state once and for all. This larger project is part of a still larger one that without exaggeration can be  called genocidal: to exterminate the Jewish people.*  And beyond this there is the anti-civilizational project of destroying our superior Western culture, one pillar of which is Judeo-Christian, and whose last bastion, bloodied, decadent, and tottering though she be, is the Great Satan, the USA.

I will leave it to others to comment on the psychology of Jews like Wolff who embrace leftism.  Some will say that he is a self-hating Jew who has internalized Jew hatred and turned it upon himself. I take no position on that speculation, but I do think a distinction is called for, namely, the distinction between a self-hating Jew and a Jew-hating Jew.  Obviously, a Jew could hate himself  for reasons other than his being Jewish. But every Jew who hates himself because of his Jewishness is a self-hating Jew.

__________

*To characterize the October 7th attack as "genocidal," as I heard one commentator do this morning, is a semantic stretch of the sort that is frowned upon here. Precision in the use of language is essential to intellectual hygiene.

#Walk Away Campaign

'Liberals' who have awakened from 'wokery.' Numerous interesting  video testimonials. Plenty of data for political psychologists. 

Bro Joe recommends this one by a charming Los Angeles actress. 

Extremism and Leftist Projection: Capital Punishment

This is the second in a series.  (The first is here.) You will have noticed that leftists call us extremists though there is nothing extreme about our views. They are all of them moderate. What our political enemies do is to project their extremism into us. Projection is a well-known psychological defense mechanism. What I am doing in this series is cataloging political forms of projection as practiced by hard-leftists, 'wokesters,' 'progressives,' whatever you want to call them.

So consider capital punishment. At the one extreme are those who deem  it always and everywhere wrong. This bunch includes every Democrat politician at the present time.  (I am open to correction if you can prove me mistaken.) At the opposite extreme, or in the vicinity of the opposite extreme, are those who readily employ capital punishment for all manner of supposed 'crimes.' There are of course plenty of historical examples, but at the present day the Iranians have distinguished themselves in this regard, which is not to say that other Muslim countries are much better.

Under Iran's penal code, people can be executed for crimes that are not considered among "the most serious" under international law, such as drug trafficking.

The UN expert said vague charges, such as "enmity against God" and "corruption on Earth", were meanwhile used to sentence individuals to death for participation in protests, for other forms of dissent or where there was a lack of evidence for the accusations.

Judges trying capital and other cases also relied heavily on forced confessions extracted through torture and other forms of duress to prove guilt, he added.

[. . .]

At least 17 women were executed in total, eight more than in 2020, it adds. They included Zahra Esmaili and Maryam Karimi, who were convicted of murdering abusive husbands. Esmaili's lawyer is cited as saying that she suffered a heart attack as she watched several men being executed in front of her, and that officials still hanged her lifeless body.

Two men convicted of crimes committed when they were children were also put to death, according to the report. One of them, Arman Abdolali, found guilty of murdering his girlfriend in 2013 when he was 17, was taken to the gallows seven times in the months prior to his execution, it says.

In Iran, homosexuals are executed. By contrast, here in the decadent USA and elsewhere in the decadent West, homosexuals are not merely tolerated  but officially celebrated, celebrated by the government, as if their 'lifestyle' were on a moral par with every other 'lifestyle.'  

And so again we see that the position of  what I call the American conservative is moderate, sane, and reasonable. As an American conservative rooted in the principles and values of the Founding documents, I  say you are morally obtuse if you think that there is no conceivable circumstance in which capital punishment would be justified. And I say that you are both morally and intellectually obtuse if you agree with Roman, Nazi, or Iranian penology. This American conservatism itself avoids two extremes, that of throne-and-altar reaction (and its close cousin 'post-liberalism') and an extreme laissez-faire libertarianism-libertinism that overvalues the economic while undervaluing if not suppressing the cultural.  It takes on board the best of classical liberalism while avoiding the noxious extremes.

Extremism and Leftist Projection: The Border

Mainstream leftists promote extreme ideas and policies; mainstream conservatives do not. But this fact does not stop leftists from projecting their extremism into us. They call us extremists! Uncomfortable with their extremism, and not wanting to admit it, they suppress their awareness of  their extremism by projecting it into us. There are numerous examples of this political-psychological projection. This entry will discuss just one. 

Consider the question of national borders. My thesis is that conservatives at the present time in the USA are moderates on all or most questions pertaining to national borders and their enforcement.

A moderate position is one that is more or less midway  between two extremes. One extreme is the de facto if not de jure open borders  view according to which anyone at any time may immigrate  without being in any way vetted as to health status, criminal status, or in any other way. The opposite extreme is the closed border view according to which no immigration of anyone at any time is permitted by law and the law is strictly enforced. 

Now no one is for the second extreme. No one in the USA holds that all immigration should be illegal, than no one should ever be granted political asylum, etc.

But the Biden administration's position is very close to the first extreme. That cannot be denied by anyone who is  both well-informed and intellectually honest.

The conservative position is commonsensical and moderate, lying as it does between the extremes. Conservatives, to harp on the obvious, are not opposed to immigration; they are opposed to illegal immigration. Among conservatives there are debates as to how latitudinarian immigration policy ought to be. But that is a further question.

I could go on from here and show that on every or almost every issue that divides the nation, mainstream conservatives are moderates. I solicit your help. Tell me in the ComBox what those further issues are and how the mainstream conservative treads the via media.

How Many Friends Have You Lost Over Politics?

I have lost about a half dozen. How about you? I am interested in your stories, but even more in your analysis.

Austin Ruse bemoans friendships lost. His piece ends:

Maybe my friend is right. Maybe we can’t be friends right now, maybe never. For me, though, that would be unspeakably sad. Message to my old pal: my door is always open. 

Unspeakably sad? I see things differently. People who lost their minds over Trump, people too stupid to see past the man's obnoxious style and credit his ideas and numerous positive accomplishments; people who refused to see Biden for what he is, a fraud, a phony, a brazen liar, an empty suit rooted in no principle, morally corrupt, physically feeble, and non compos mentis; people who donned useless masks out of ovine fear, people who went along, to get along, with wokery and trans-delusionality and the celebration of thugs and criminals and every manner of loser -- such people were never worthy of my friendship in the first place. They were false friends from the start and I am glad circumstances made them show their true colors.  Good riddance!

Some say Trump is the Great Divider. Nonsense. He is the Great Clarifier.

Stackman Strikes Again!

Here

Trump, Adultery, Morality, and the Alinskyite Left

Substack latest

Expressive Individualism

Is Trump an example?

Substack latest.

The Toxic Racialist Obsessions of Joe Biden

Victor Davis Hanson makes many fine points, but fails to lay bare the root of Biden's racist flip-flopping, namely that the man is an utter phony and fraud who is rooted in no principle except that of self-promotion at all costs. 

Psychiatry as Ideology in the USSR

Sidney Bloch, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford
Journal of medical ethics, 1978, 4, 126-131

I got the reference from an article on the defenestration of Jordan Peterson.  Commentary on Bloch's paper from the same article:

The Oxford psychiatrist Sidney Bloch’s classic 1977 academic paper “Psychiatry as Ideology in the USSR” demonstrated how psychiatry in Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union actually worked—in an eerily similar way to how it now also works in Justin Trudeau’s Canada. Firstly, whilst only a minority of psychiatrists were full-blown Communist Party members, almost all those in positions of actual authority were, reflecting Stalin’s key principle that loyalty to leftist party ideology was more important than actual professional ability when it came to handing out the top jobs; the Ontario College of Psychologists might agree.

A full 25 percent of Soviet medical students’ curriculum was devoted to studying not actual medicine, but unrelated Marxist-Leninist dogma—more than studying actual surgery. Russia replaced the old Hippocratic Oath with a new one in which medics swore to “in all my actions be guided by the principles of Communist morality” rather than, say, actual medical reality—hence, a “good” psychiatrist might commit an entirely sane political dissident to a mental home just to shut them up, something justified on party grounds, not medical ones.

Victims were accused of suffering from entirely fictional disorders like “sluggish schizophrenia”—whose symptoms, conveniently enough, were so vague they could only be noticed by trained Communist physicians, not the wider public, to whom the patient might appear 100 percent sane, a diagnosis that makes about as much sense as saying someone who is clearly still walking around wide awake has slipped into a symptomless coma. The only real way for patients deliberately misdiagnosed to escape from incarceration was to agree with their doctors that, yes, they really were mad after all, and that their “incorrect” opinions were simply unfortunate symptoms of their insanity, much as Jordan Peterson is expected to admit his own “incorrect” views are symptoms of his own mental unfitness to practice today.

Sam Harris and the Higher Snobbery

A Substack article by Greg Nyquist, The Critical Realist.

'Democrats' Aping National Socialists

Excellent commentary here:

In two years, the Nazis went from being a fringe party to having a stranglehold on the German government and people. It was then that they unleashed their previously subdued anti-Semitism, from boycotts to book burnings to de facto discrimination to de jure separation (Nuremberg laws) and, finally, to the Final Solution.

We can be almost sure that, if we asked any German in 1932 whether it would be okay to enslave and murder Jews, he would most certainly have said no. But within two years, Jews would officially be defined as an inferior race and have their political and economic freedoms curtailed. Within a decade, millions would be murdered.

As Martin Niemöller suggests in his 1946 poem “First they came,” the Nazis were able to accomplish their goals by taking baby steps of oppression with little discernible pushback from a willfully gullible public.

So it is that we find ourselves in America in 2022 with fascism ascendant. And unlike what the media would want you to believe, it’s not Donald Trump who’s leading the parade. For just over two years, we’ve seen the evil of fascism take hold as it’s never held sway before. Consider the following:

In the summer of 2020, Democrats rained hell down on America by allowing, encouraging, and funding urban terrorists who destroyed property, attacked citizens and the police, and killed dozens of people.

In 2020 and beyond, despite years of watching Democrats assail election integrity, anyone who questioned the highly unlikely outcome of the 2020 election was branded as an anti-democratic conspiracy nut and accused of supporting insurrection.

The riot that occurred on January 6, 2021, was labeled an “insurrection” and hundreds of citizens who had been welcomed into the US Capital or standing on its grounds were arrested, labeled as terrorists, and thrown in solitary confinement for months without charge or bail. At the same time, among the crowd were provocateurs in whom the FBI was suspiciously uninterested.

By politicizing the Department of Justice, the Biden administration and other Democrats have used the “insurrection” pretense to harass, intimidate, arrest, and jail Trump’s supporters, members of his administration, and his legal team. This harassment eventually led to the unprecedented step of the Justice Department and the FBI raiding the home of the former president and future presidential contender.

Beginning in 2020, in response to COVID, primarily Democrat-run states and municipalities across the country instituted draconian lockdown edicts that eviscerated individual rights, destroyed small businesses, and ostracized or arrested individuals who resisted. Simultaneously teachers’ unions nationwide forced school shutdowns, leading to extraordinary declines in student learning and dramatic increases in youth depression. Those seen questioning the efficacy of or damage from such lockdowns and shutdowns were unconstitutionally muzzled when the administration covertly worked with social media companies to silence and de-platform them.

The Biden administration issued mandates for rapidly developed vaccines of dubious efficacy and unknown danger; then coerced private enterprises to enforce them. Questioning that policy or non-acquiescence with it was seen as a proxy for opposition to the regime, so the government and allied businesses threatened and destroyed livelihoods.

When Americans stood up to school boards, complaining about their children being exposed to sexualization in schools or being accused of being racists because of the color of their skin, Biden’s Justice Department branded them as terrorists.

The Biden administration’s threatening, intimidating, and jailing of its opposition set the backdrop for Joe Biden’s extraordinary speech on September 1, when he stated, “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.” This was not a campaign speech; this was the President officially addressing American citizens…and calling 70 million of them terrorists.

What is Fascism? Are MAGA Republicans Fascists?

The Left's favorite 'F' word is of course 'fascist.' But of course they don't define it, the better to use it as a verbal cudgel.  But we know that responsible discussion of a topic begins with a definition of terms.

What is a fascist? More to the point, what is fascism? The term expresses what philosophers call a 'thick' concept. Such concepts combine evaluative and descriptive content.  Examples include cruel and cowardly. If I describe an action as cowardly, I am both describing it and expressing a negative moral evaluation of it. Right and wrong, by contrast, are 'thin' concepts inasmuch as they contain no descriptive content.  If I commend you for doing the right thing, my commendation includes no descriptive content. Fascist is clearly thick. If we are called fascists, or 'semi-fascists' in the parlance of our illustrious president Joe Biden, at least some slight descriptive content is implied, even if the lion's share of the semantic load is expressive, not of sober moral judgment, but of blind hatred and contempt.  I now unpack the descriptive content of fascist and fascism, and then go on to argue that no Republican, MAGA or not, can be fairly accused of being a fascist.

Main marks of fascism

According to Anthony Quinton,

It [Fascism] combines an intense nationalism, which is both militarily aggressive and resolved to subdue all aspects of public and private life to the pursuit of national greatness. It asserts that a supreme leader is indispensable, a heroic figure in whom the national spirit is incarnated. It seeks to organize society along military lines, conceiving war as the fullest expression of the national will as brought to consciousness in the leader. It sees the nation not primarily as a cultural entity, defined by a common language, traditional customs, perhaps a shared religion, a history of heroes and great events, but also in questionably biological terms. (Anthony Quinton, "Conservatism," in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, eds. Goodin and Pettit, Blackwell, 1995, p. 264.)

Quinton tells us that there are anticipations of fascism in Fichte, Carlyle, and Nietzsche, and that its main exponents are Mussolini and Hitler. Fascism is further described as "aggressive," "militant," and "totalitarian without qualification." The masses are to have no say in their governance; they are to obey. There are no rules for the orderly transfer of power. "Leaders are presumably to emerge as victors in the struggle for power within the ruling party." (264) Quinton also mentions the 'organicism' of fascism whereby it appeals to those "ready to submerge their individuality" in the national life and to find thereby their whole raison d'etre in "the service of the state," in the way that the function of a particular organ is to contribute to the well-being of the body of which it is a part." (264-265)

Are MAGA Republicans fascists?

I can be brief. Of course they are not.

Start with nationalism. Trump's is an enlightened nationalism and it is certainly not "militarily aggressive." America First does not mean that that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. The general principle is that every country has a right to grant preference to itself and its interests over the interests of other countries while respecting their interests and right to self-determination. America First is but an instance of the general principle. The principle, then, is Country First.

And of course enlightened nationalism has nothing to do with white nationalism. We must resist this race-baiting leftist smear.  There is no 'biologism' in Trump's nationalism.

Is Trump at the center of a 'cult of personality'? No more than Obama was. Trump supporters are drawn to the ideas he espouses, which are all classically American; they are in fact most of them critical of the man himself. 

To understand how destructive the Left is, you must understand that they feel no compunction at the Orwellian subversion of language, the brazen telling of lies, and psychological projection: what they accuse us of doing is almost always what they themselves are doing. They project in order to deflect attention from their own malfeasance and dereliction of duty.

Once again, TRUTH IS NOT A LEFTIST VALUE. Part of their trick is to say something so manifestly in conflict with reality that people will think: no one would have the chutzpah to say that unless it were true. That is the psychology of the big lie. And notice the smile. This is part of the psychological ploy. You look into the camera as Joey B did during one of the debates with Trump and you smile -- and the pearl-clutching old ladies (of all ages and sexes) melt, and think, "He's such a nice man!"

Servility Will Cower to Force

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America:

For my part, I am persuaded that in all governments, whatever their nature may be, servility will cower to force, and adulation will follow power. The only means to prevent men from degrading themselves is to invest no one with that unlimited authority which is the sure method of debasing them. (Quoted in Zbigniew Janowski, Homo Americanus, p. 15)

No man, and no group of men. We need checks and balances all up and down the line.  

And yes the people are ovine and servile and will cower to power. That has been amply demonstrated of late by the masses' mindless donning of useless masks. Don we now our fey apparel! Let us signal our specious virtue and adherence to the party line of Lord Fauci and his minions.  And when the party line shifts, we shift with it!

The other day I espied a lady, driving alone, windows rolled up, wearing a big black mask. But I was in a charitable mood. I thought to myself, "Well, maybe she just left a doctor's office where entrance required the fashion accessory in question, and she forgot to take it off." But then I waxed rather less charitable. "Is she so oblivious to the mechanics of respiration that she would leave that rag around her face when alone?"

As for Dr. Fauci, RFK Jr. has his number. You all should read his The Real Anthony Fauci.  Look it up. Buy it. Study it.  The author's an outlier, a decent Dem, like Tulsi Gabbard.

Political Ponerology

Ponerology is the theological study of evil. Political ponerology is thus the political-scientific study of evil. A tip of the hat to Tony Flood for referring me to this Mises Wire review by Michael Rectenwald of Andrew M. Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology.  I just now ordered a copy from Amazon.

A new edition of Political Ponerology, by Andrew M. Łobaczewski, edited by Harrison Koehli, is now available on Amazon.1 This strange and provocative book argues that totalitarianism is the result of the extension of psychopathology from a group of psychopaths to the entire body politic, including its political and economic systems. Political Ponerology is essential reading for concerned thinkers and all sufferers of past and present totalitarianism. It is especially crucial today, when totalitarianism has once again emerged, this time in the West, where it is affecting nearly every aspect of life, including especially the life of the mind.

[. . .]

Speaking of ideology, Political Ponerology explains a phenomenon that had vexed me. How did Communist ideologues manage to convince the masses that they undertook their crimes for “the workers,” “the people,” or egalitarianism? But even more perplexing, how did the ideologues convince themselves that their crimes were for the good of the common man? Łobaczewski explains that totalitarian ideology operates on two levels; the terms of the original ideology are taken at face value by true believers, while the party insiders substitute secondary meanings for the same terms, and normal people are subjected to gaslighting. Only the cognoscenti, the psychopaths, know and understand the secondary meanings. They recognize that actions purportedly undertaken on behalf of “the workers” translate into the domination of the party and the state on behalf of the psychopaths themselves. The truth is the opposite of what the party insiders claim to be the case, and they know it. Political Ponerology thus explains the origin of “doublespeak,” which George Orwell portrays so well. Coincidentally, Łobaczewski finished Political Ponerology in 1984.

[. . .]

Łobaczewski argues that an adequate study of totalitarianism had hitherto been impossible because it had been undertaken in the wrong registers. It had been treated strictly in terms of economics, literature, ideology studies, history, religion, political science, and international politics, among other approaches. One is reminded of the literary accounts and studies of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and Nazi Germany—of the classic works by Hannah Arendt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Václav Benda, Václav Havel, and many others. These made indispensable contributions but had, owing to no fault of their own, necessarily failed to grasp the root of the problem—namely, the psychopathological dimension of the inception and development of “pathocracy,” or rule by psychopaths.

The responses of normal human beings to the gross injustices and disfigurement of reality perpetrated by the ruling bodies had hitherto only been understood by members of the social body in terms of conventional worldviews. Emotionality and moral judgments blinded victims to what beset them. The deficiencies in the approaches of scholars, as well as the moralism of laypersons, had left pathocracy essentially misapprehended and likewise left humanity without any effective defenses against it. Łobaczewski redresses these deficiencies and provides these defenses. In this sense—that is, in using a scientific methodology to treat socialism—Łobaczewski’s work is analogous to Ludwig von Mises’s Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, first published one hundred years ago.

Politics and Meaning: More on the Conservative Disadvantage

Here again is my Substack entry "The Conservative Disadvantage."  In it I wrote, "We don't look to politics for meaning. Or rather, we do not seek any transcendent meaning in the political sphere." Thomas Beale charitably comments (edited):

Just a short note on that post: your observation about meaning is  one of the most penetrating I have read for a long while -- it's one of those truths hiding in such plain sight that no one sees it. This phenomenon of the true conservative "not looking to politics for meaning" is deeper than the usual formulations according to which Marxist and other utopian ideologies are replacements for the old religions. This is because the whole question of where 'meaning' (and therefore worth) in life is found is the most fundamental question of the human condition. It's a Scruton-esque observation as well -- perhaps he even said something like this, although I don't remember it as pithily expressed as your version - - but he certainly thought that meaning for real people was in their daily lives well lived within clubs, theatres, the garden, nature.

In fact, re-reading your text, it's almost a shortest-possible definition of what it means to be (small-c) conservative by describing its negation. I particularly like the line 'A conservative could never write a book with the title, The Politics of Meaning.' 

Your characterisation of the conservative atheist I think is very nice as well.

My thanks to Thomas Beale for these kind comments.  Here are some additional remarks about meaning and the political to clarify and fill out what I wrote and perhaps ignite some discussion.

1) There is a distinction between 'existential' and  semantic meaning. Our concern here is solely with the first. There is also a distinction within existential or life meaning between ultimate and proximate meaning. When we ask philosophically about the meaning of  life we are asking about the ultimate and objective point, purpose, end, or goal of human willing and striving, if there is one.  We are asking whether there is an ultimate and objective purpose, and what it is.  Both of these questions admit of reasonable controversy. Some say that human life has no objective purpose. Any purpose it has must be subjective. Others say that it does have an objective purpose, but then disagree bitterly as to what it is. But that there are proximate and relative meanings in human lives is uncontroversial.  For one person, writing poetry is highly meaningful, for another a silly and meaningless waste of time.  

2) When I say that the conservative does not look to politics for meaning, I am referring to ultimate meaning: he does not look to politics for ultimate meaning.  One could be a conservative in my sense and find political activity proximately meaningful.  One could not be a conservative in my sense and find political activity ultimately meaningful.  For the conservative understands something that the leftist does not. He understands that  political activity cannot be our ultimate purpose because the political is not of ultimate value. This raises the question of the relation of the teleological to the axiological. The meaning-of-life question has both a teleological and an axiological side.

3) Teleological and Axiological Aspects of Existential Meaning

Teleology. Meaning bears a teleological aspect in that a meaningful life is a purpose-driven life.  It is difficult to see how a human life devoid of purposes could be meaningful, either proximately or ultimately, and indeed purposes organized by a central purpose such as advancing knowledge or alleviating suffering.  The central purpose must be one the agent freely and self-transparently chooses for himself. It cannot be one that is assigned ab extra. The central purpose must be both nontrivial and achievable.  A life devoted to the collecting of beer cans is purpose-driven but meaningless on the score of triviality while a life in quest of a perpetuum mobile is purpose-driven but meaningless on the score of futility.  But even if a life has a focal purpose that is freely and consciously chosen by the agent of the life, nontrivial, and achievable, this still does not suffice for ultimate meaningfulness.

Axiology. A meaningful life also bears an axiological aspect in that a meaningful life is one that embodies some if not a preponderance of positive non-instrumental value at least for the agent of the life.  A life wholly devoid of personal satisfaction cannot be called meaningful.  But even this is not enough.  The lives of some terrorists and mass murderers are driven by non-trivial and non-futile purposes and are satisfying to their agents.  We ought, however, to resist the notion that such lives are ultimately meaningful. A necessary condition of a life’s being ultimately meaningful is that it realize some if not a preponderance of positive non-instrumental objective value.  If so, a radically immoral life cannot be a meaningful life. Or so say I.

This might be reasonably questioned. According to David Benatar, "A meaningful life is one that transcends one's own limits and significantly impacts others or serves purposes beyond oneself." (The Human Predicament, Oxford UP, 2017, p. 18) By this definition, the lives of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot were meaningful, as Benatar grants. (19) Well, can a radically immoral life be a meaningful life? I say No; Benatar leaves the question open:

One response is to acknowledge that wicked lives can be meaningful, but then say that we should seek only positive meaning. Another option is to say that a life is not meaningful unless its purposes or ways of transcending limits are positive, worthy, or valuable. (19)

I pack quite a lot into the concept of an ultimately meaningful human life.  Such a life is one that is purpose-driven by a central purpose that organizes and unifies various peripheral purposes; a purpose that is freely  chosen by the liver of the life as opposed to imposed from without by the State, for example; a purpose that is neither trivial nor futile, and thus achievable; a purpose that is objectively morally permissible, and beyond that, objectively the best and highest life that a human is capable of; finally, a purpose that is redemptive.  But there is no space now to expand upon this last clause.  

4) But must a conservative seek an ultimate objective meaning or purpose? No, because he might not believe that one exists.  He would not be irrational in so thinking.  David Benatar serves as a a good, perhaps the best, example.

5) I have just set the bar very high, impossibly high some will say.  As I see it, one can count oneself a conservative while rejecting the conception of an ultimately meaningful life as I have defined it. 

What one cannot do as a conservative is seek ultimate meaning in the quotidian round, in "daily lives well lived within clubs, theatres, the garden, nature" to quote Beale glossing Scruton.  There is no ultimate meaning to be found there, but then again there might not be an ultimate meaning. One would then have to take whatever meaning one could get from mundane pursuits and makes friends with finitude.

Another thing a conservative qua conservative cannot do is look for meaning where the leftist looks for it.

6) A  fundamental error of the leftist is to seek ultimate meaning where it cannot be found, namely, in the political sphere, in sociopolitical activism, in the wrong-headed and dangerously quixotic attempt to straighten "the crooked timber of humanity" (Kant) by collective human action, to bring forth the "worker's paradise," to eliminate class distinctions, to end 'racism,' and 'sexism' and 'homophobia,'  'transphobia,' and other invented bogeypersons, to end alienation and the natural hierarchy of life and spirit in all its forms, and to transform the world in such a way that all meta-physical and religious yearnings for Transcendence are finally squelched and eradicated,  and to do so no matter how many 'eggs' have to be broken to achieve  the unachievable 'omelet.'

The leftist rightly sneers at mere bourgeois self-indulgence, material acquisition for its own sake, status-seeking, pleasure-seeking however refined, the 'lifestyles of the rich and famous,' etc. We conservatives who seek the true Transcendence can agree with leftists about that. But we reject their destructively cockamamie schemes and say to them: better the bourgeois life, or even the life of Nietzsche's Last Man, than your mad pursuit of the unattainable.

7) As for The Politics of Meaning, that is an actual title of a book by a pal of Hillary Clinton, Michael Lerner. It came out in 1996.  I wasn't referring to it specifically but mocking the notion that existential meaning worth attaining could be attained by political means.

Establishment Conservatives

ESTABLISHMENT CONSERVATIVES are singularly ill-equipped for fighting. Hobbled by their virtues, they cannot bring themselves to give as good as they get. Politics is war, but establishment conservatives don't want to believe it. Donald Trump tried to teach them, but they proved unteachable. Instead of getting with the program, they wasted time and energy undermining the one person capable of halting the leftist juggernaut.

These 'conservatives' are good at one thing only: conserving their own perquisites, privileges, pelf, and position. Everything they are supposed to conserve they allow to be destroyed, among them,  the rule of law, our rights and liberties as enumerated in the Constitution, our national heritage, the very distinctions, principles, and values that underpin our republican form of government.  They will soon be gone forever,  and the Left will have won, if we don't push back pronto. But it may be too late for effective resistance, sunk as we are in the warm bath of our own decadence.  We shall see.

Disingenuousness

One politician accuses another of being disingenuous. But isn't such an accusation itself disingenuous inasmuch as disingenuousness is itself necessary for polite, politic, civil, political behavior? Could one have diplomacy and  civility without fakery and phoniness?  Perhaps the greatest diplomatic line of all time was uncorked by Ronald Reagan in his confrontation with Mikhail Gorbachev, he of the Evil Empire: "Trust, but verify!"

The Reagan riposte makes sense diplomatically but not semantically. If I trust you, I do not verify what you say or do. If you think otherwise, then you do not know  what 'trust' means.

One root of Trump hatred is his refusal or inability to play the political game in the conventional way. In a world that runs on appearances, social success demands more than a modicum of fakery, dissembling, white lies, and such.  If Trump could learn to play the game in a more conventional way, but without any reduction in the size and efficacy of his political cojones, he would be unstoppable.

But this world in which there is more seeming than being is also a world of severe limitations.  You cannot expect a man of action with a popular appeal to be also sensitive, articulate, refined, and literary. And vice versa. Those who are the latter tend to be of the milquetoast sort.  Someone as précieux, as 'precious,' as Bill Kristol is not cut out to lead.  

Preciosity does not suit the populist.

 

Malcolm Pollack on 'Mass Formation'

Our old friend Malcolm Pollack has an article in American Greatness entitled "'Mass Formation' is a Two-Headed Coin." Pollack offers the following characterization of mass formation:

“Mass formation” . . . is a newish term for an age-old and long-studied phenomenon: the occasional, and usually quite sudden, arising of passionate and sometimes completely irrational fixations of attention, desire, hatred, or other affinities and aversions in crowds of various sizes, from local mobs to entire societies.

What I will call the COVID Craze is an example of a mass formation. Not everyone who takes precautions is a victim of mass delusion, but surely many are. We see them everyday: people alone on windy beaches wearing face masks, for example. Such behavior is completely irrational and oftentimes issues in hateful displays against people who do not subscribe to the ovine lunacy of the hysterical whose fear has so addled them that they cannot distinguish between efficacious prophylaxis, misplaced moral enthusiasm, and virtue-signaling.

Under what conditions is a social phenomenon such as the COVID Craze usefully referred to as a mass formation? Pollack, citing Dr. Matthias Desmet of the University of Guelph, cites four: free-floating anxiety, social isolation, lack of meaning and purpose in one's life, and anger and frustration.

When all these conditions are met, the collective psyche becomes like a supercooled liquid: given the right nucleus around which to coalesce, a “phase transition” can propagate throughout the system in a very short time. That nucleus is some object that can be plausibly identified as a cause of everyone’s anxiety and frustration, and the allure of attacking and eliminating it through collective action becomes, for many people, irresistible. The reason for [cause of] this is sensible [understandable] enough, because it [the attack and attempted elimination]  addresses [alleviates] , in a single stroke, all of the stress-conditions listed above: it offers, at last, a concrete object to which free-floating anxiety can attach, about which something can be done; it provides a much-needed basis for the reconstruction of social bonds; it puts before the group a great purpose toward which everyone can direct their energy; and, perhaps most attractive of all, it creates a common enemy toward which the people can channel their anger. (I added the words in brackets to aid my understanding.)

Those who stand in the way of this collective purpose, as well as those who merely lack enthusiasm for the cause, have consciously excluded themselves from this new social bond, and so they are easily, and usually eagerly, seen as enemies who must be isolated or eliminated. This polarization in turn encourages increasingly conspicuous signaling of one’s fidelity to the group and its cause. The more costly those signals are at a personal level, the more they signify commitment to the new social bond, and the more respect they purchase from the in-group—even if (or, perhaps, especially if) they do nothing that is actually effective in solving the underlying problem.

Malcolm mentions COVID, but I would have liked to have seen other examples. I will suggest one of my own. The President of the United States has recently made a delusional statement to the effect that white supremacy is the greatest threat the nation faces.  Because Joseph Biden is non compos mentis,  there is a certain risk in attributing this thought to him as something he himself believes. It is however safe to say that he is serving as the mouthpiece of a large group of  people who either believe it, in which case they are delusional, or merely pretend to believe it for their own personal gain, in which case they are not delusional but immoral both in their mendacity and in their willingness to put personal profit over the good of the country that has made their success possible. The latter bunch include the 'woke' capitalists and all manner of 'woke' careerists in government, academia, the churches, and elsewhere who seek to promote themselves by spreading lies and slanders.

Malcolm tries to be even-handed in his piece, as witness:

It is also a dangerous conceit to imagine, as many on the Right seem to be doing with this viral idea, that it currently manifests itself only with regard to the COVID panic, and only on the Left. 

It’s important to keep in mind that the four conditions enumerated by Desmet are amply met throughout modern society, across political and ideological lines, and that as long as our various factions struggle to live together, any mass-formation on one side is likely to increase anger and stress on the other, in a destructive feedback loop.

Pollack is right on the first count: the COVID Craze (as I call it) is not the only manifestation of mass formation 'psychosis.' On the second, however, he may be giving aid and comfort to a false moral equivalentism.  Left and Right are not moral equivalents. The Left is far worse. I grant that there are some extremists among those on the Alternative Right. But they are few and far between, and of little consequence, in comparison to the extremists who dominate the Left. The Left is morally and indeed intellectually inferior to the Right by orders of magnitude. The contemporary 'woke' Left in the USA, which controls the Democrat Party, is mindlessly extremist and destructive in respect of almost all issues of importance. To name just a few mindlessly extreme and destructive ideas and policy proposals: the ethno-masochistic notion that mathematics is racist, which of course implies that hard science (physics, e.g.) is racist as well; the Pelosian idea that "borders are immoral" and the corresponding Democrat policy of allowing anyone from anywhere into the country without any control or vetting; the absurd notion that defunding the police and eliminating cash bail are 'reforms' that will reduce crime; the incessant Orwellian subversion of language as for example the misuse of 'insurrection' to refer to trespassing; the erection of monuments and memorials to the worthless while tearing down those that commemorate great and worthy Americans. I could cite another dozen examples with ease. 

I'll leave it here. The combox is open for Malcolm's response and for any comments of anyone.

 

Krauthammer's Fundamental Law Repealed

"To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil." (Charles Krauthammer)

 

Cute and clever, the oft-quoted saying is a nice piece of journalese, but not quite right, although it gets at part of the truth. Krauthammer's 'law' conversationally implies that conservatives do not think that contemporary liberals or leftists are evil. But surely many of us do. Leftists routinely slander us with such epithets as: sexist, racist, white supremacist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, and others. This is morally vicious behavior and to that extent evil.

 

It is important to face the fact  that many if not most so-called liberals are not good people. You are not a good person, for example, if you routinely dismiss legitimate concerns for the rule of law in the matter of immigration by accusing conservatives of having an irrational fear of foreigners. That is a bare-faced lie and a vicious refusal to take conservatives seriously as rational beings and address their numerous and powerful arguments.

 

A second problem with Krauthammer's 'law' is that intelligent conservatives do not think of most liberals as stupid but as having the wrong values, or, when they have some of the right values, not prioritizing them correctly. Generally speaking, political differences reflect differences in values and principles and presuppositions, not differences in intelligence or 'information.'

 

And that is why the phrase 'low information voter' is asinine. Beloved by 'liberals' it suggests that if the deplorables had more 'information' they would vote Left. That is a conceit risible in excelsis. 

Could I Pass an Ideological Turing Test?

On 11 January 2017 I wrote a post that begins:

Could I present liberal-left ideas in such a way that the reader could not tell that I was not a liberal?  Let me take a stab at this with respect to a few 'hot' topics.  This won't be easy.  I will have to present liberal-left ideas as plausible while avoiding all mention of their flaws.  And all of this without sarcasm, parody, or irony.  Each of these subheadings could be expanded into a separate essay.  And of course there are many more subheadings that could be added.  

The post attracted some very good comments. The consensus was that I flunked.  

Four years have past since I made that entry. That is a long time in this age of social, political, and technological hyperkineticism. If I were to rewrite it today it would have to reflect the increasingly delusional quality of leftist 'thought' as we jerk, not merely accelerate, toward our cultural collapse. 

Jerk?

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

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

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

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

 

Is There a Political 'Use it or Lose it' Principle?

If you want to maintain your physical fitness, you must exercise regularly. Use it or lose it!  Not so long ago  I thought that the same principle had a political application: if you want to maintain your freedoms, you must exercise them.  Use 'em or lose 'em! But times have changed.  And when times change, the wise re-evaluate. I'll give two examples.

In the present political climate, if I exercise my right to free speech I may lose the right. Use it and lose it.  This is because vast numbers nowadays do not recognize any such right.  For these people, dissent is hate; so if your speech is dissenting speech it is hate speech, which cannot be tolerated.  Dissent is hate, and hate is violence, and violence is racism! Of course, dissent is not hate, and hate is not violence, etc. but these truths are irrelevant in an age of groupthink and mass delusion.  Truth is passé in the Age of Feeling. So if you speak your mind calmly, reasonably, and with attention to facts, but sail against the prevailing winds, you may find yourself de-platformed, 'cancelled,' and put on a watch list of dissidents, and perhaps a 'no fly' list.  After all, conservatives are 'potential terrorists.' And white conservatives are of course 'white supremacists.'

So here is my thought: The exercise of a right in a society in which that right  is no longer widely recognized but is instead perceived as hurtful, hateful, 'racist,' etc. has no tendency to secure that right; on the contrary, the exercise of the right endangers both the right and the exerciser thereof.  The same goes for the mere invocation or mention of the right. 

Here we may have the makings of an argument against speaking out. But we will have to think about this some more.  Civil courage is a beautiful virtue but it is sometimes trumped by that of prudence.

My second example is the right to keep and bear arms, an individual right, one that is protected and secured, but not conferred, by the Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.  To exercise this right openly, as by 'open carry,' is inadvisable.  You may think that you are standing on your rights, and by exercising them securing them,  but in a society dominated by group-thinking leftists, your constitutionally-guaranteed rights are not respected or even acknowledged. You are arguably undermining your rights and their exercise.  You are reinforcing their mindless fears and fantasies. After all, prominent progressive politicians view the NRA as a domestic terrorist organization! What then will they think of you if they see you packing heat? It would be best to conceal both your weapons and your views.

The practice of ketman is advisable. Rod Dreher:

Ketman is the strategy that everyone in our society who isn’t a true believer in “social justice” and identity politics has to adopt to stay out of trouble. On Sunday, I heard about a professor in a large state university in a state that yesterday went for Trump, who is filled with constant anxiety. He believes that his interactions with colleagues and students are filled with the potential to destroy his career. Why? Because all it takes is an accusation of racism, sexism, or some other form of bigotry to wreck a lifetime of work. This is the world that the identity politics left has created for us. 

More on ketman later.

Hypocrisy? Double-Standardization?

Accusing a leftist of being a hypocrite is like accusing a meat-eating Texas cattle rancher of being a carnivore.

The concerns of bourgeois morality find as little purchase with leftists as the concerns of vegetarians with meat-eaters. 

A curious 'disconnect' is therefore displayed by earnest Fox commentators who upbraid leftists for their hypocrisy and double standards when, preaching the need for draconian measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, they support Joe Biden's opening up the Southern border to a flood of unvetted and untested illegal aliens among whom are human traffickers, drug smugglers, gun runners, and carriers of a variety of diseases including COVID-19.  

The naïve Tucker Carlson, for example, appears shocked and surprised at leftist hypocrisy and double-standardization. He hasn't yet fully grasped, although he is learning, that for leftists, the (apparent) issue is not the (real) issue.  In this case the apparent issue is public health while the real issues is the expansion of power for leftists who, in U. S. politics, are Democrats. Not the expansion of power for its own sake, mind you, but for the sake of the fundamental transformation of America that Barack Obama announced. (Tucker seems to think that the Dems just want power for the sake of power. Not so.)

Objectively, it is absurdly counterproductive to open the borders during a public health crisis, especially when the invaders are from a country like Mexico, as opposed to, say, Canada.  But that is so only if the paramount concern is public health.  When the paramount concern is to gain permanent power for leftist ends, then it all makes sense.  Lives are worth sacrificing for the glorious end, which justifies the disreputable means.

Repeat this a few times until it sinks in: Leftists are not constrained by our values and norms. They use our values and norms  against us. You can read all about it in Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.  Truth, for example, is normative for us, but not for them. That is not to say that they won't tell the truth; they will when it serves their purposes. Otherwise they lie, repeatedly and brazenly.  Their purpose trumps the norm, which is to say: they are not bound by the norm. It has no deontic hold on them, they being of the tribe of Lucifer. Alinsky dedicated his Rules to the fallen light-bearer.

We are bound by the norm of truth. This is why, when we violate it, the charge of hypocrisy reaches us and is a concern for us and an occasion for us to examine our consciences. 

What Tucker and Co. need to come to understand is that our political opponents are political enemies: They cannot be reached by appeals to reason or to conscience, by admonitions or accusations of hypocrisy and double-standardization.  We and they do not live in the same moral universe. To invoke a rather more terrestrial metaphor: we and they do not stand on common ground. Ours is the terra firma of reality. Theirs is a swamp of illusion abutting a gulag overlain by a utopian fog, mephitic and Mephistophelean.

I appear to be warming to my rhetoric. Time to pack it in. But one more thing, a bit of self-criticism.

I once said that if you removed from leftists all of their double standards, they would have no standards at all.  Not quite right! For there would be one standard left standing:

Win at all costs and by any means!

Asymmetrical Polarization

Holy Hillary, we are polarized over polarization!

Is it Rational to be Politically Ignorant?

A re-post from March 2016.  Was in Georgia 10 pt; now in 12 pt. Slightly emended. Stands up well. Internal hyperlink verified.

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

There are those who love to expose and mock the astonishing political ignorance of Americans.  According to a 2006 survey, only 42% of Americans could name the three branches of government.  But here is an interesting question worth exploring: 

Is it not entirely rational to ignore events over which one has no control and withdraw into one's private life where one does exercise control and can do some good?

I can vote, but my thoughtful vote counts for next-to-nothing in most elections, especially when it is cancelled out by the vote of some thoughtless and uninformed person.  I can blog, but on a good day I will reach only a couple thousand readers worldwide and none of them are policy makers.  (I did have some influence once on a Delta airline pilot who made a run for a seat in the House of Representatives.)  I can attend meetings, make monetary contributions, write letters to senators and representatives, but is this a good use of precious time and resources?  It may be that Ilya Somin has it right:

. . . political ignorance is actually rational for most of the public, including most smart people. If your only reason to follow politics is to be a better voter, that turns out not be much of a reason at all. That is because there is very little chance that your vote will actually make a difference to the outcome of an election (about 1 in 60 million in a presidential race, for example). For most of us, it is rational to devote very little time to learning about politics, and instead focus on other activities that are more interesting or more likely to be useful.

Is it rational for me to stay informed?  Yes, because of my intellectual eros, my strong desire to understand the world and what goes on in it. The philosopher is out to understand the world; if he is smart he will have no illusions about changing it, pace Marx's 11th Thesis on Feuerbach.

Another reason for people like me to stay informed is to be able to anticipate what is coming down the pike and prepare so as to protect myself and my stoa, my citadel, and the tools of my trade.  For example, my awareness of Obama's fiscal irresponsibility is necessary if I am to make wise decisions as to how much of my money I should invest in precious metals and other hard assets.  Being able to anticipate Obaminations re: 'gun control' will allow me to buy what I need while it is still to be had.   'Lead' can prove to be useful for the protection of gold, not to mention the defense of such sentient beings as oneself and one's family.

In brief, a reason to stay apprised of current events is not so that I can influence or change them, but to be in a position so that they don't influence or change me.

A third reason to keep an eye on the passing scene, and one mentioned by Somin, is that one might follow politics the way some follow sports. Getting hot and bothered over the minutiae of baseball and the performance of your favorite team won't affect the outcome of any games, but it is a source of great pleasure to the sports enthusiast.  I myself don't give a damn about spectator sports.  Politics are my sports.  So that is a third reason for me to stay on top of what's happening.  It's intellectually stimulating and a source of conversational matter and blog fodder. 

All this having been said and properly appreciated, one must nevertheless keep things in perspective by bearing  in mind  Henry David Thoreau's beautiful admonition:

Read not The Times; read the eternities!

For this world is a vanishing quantity whose pomps, inanities, Obaminations and what-not will soon pass into the bosom of non-being.

And you with it.

Guest Post: Vito Caiati on David Brooks

I asked long-time reader Dr. Vito Caiati, historian, to comment on David Brook's Atlantic article, America is Having a Moral Convulsion.  Vito responded with alacrity and acerbity, and I have thrown in my two cents. Comments enabled.

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1.  The essay is entirely descriptive rather than analytical in that it presents various economic and sociological findings and trends, but nowhere does it offer an explanation for them. Like [Rod] Dreher, Brooks is content to offer merely the symptoms of a deep crisis rather than to explore its causes, which to me seemed inexorably bound up with the nature and motions of contemporary American capitalism.  Thus, he rattles on about the decline in social trust, linking this phenomenon to the upsurge in financial, emotional, identity, and social insecurity among broad sectors of the American population, especially the young and the lower middle class and working class poor; however, all these trends, destructive of social unity and trust, float on thin air, their emergence requiring [Brooks thinks] no elucidation.

To analyze them would require him to delve into the corrosive force that contemporary capitalism, which by its very nature is deleterious to the survival of traditional forms of the family, community, and polity in America.  One has merely, for example, to reflect on the acceleration of social time (technological and social, including rapid social change and the dizzying pace of life), the contraction and distortion of social space (the former expressed in the gutting of small and medium commerce and the export of entire industrial sectors, with the accompanying hollowing out of established modes of life and the latter expressed in the hyper development in privileged geographical enclaves and underdevelopment elsewhere), and the hyper-commodification of sexuality (disastrous for traditional familial and conjugal relations and Judaeo-Christian moral precepts) that are generated by the process of capitalist accumulation today.

In other words, one cannot shy away from a critical examination of what American capital, global in its reach and interests, has done and is doing to our national civic and political institutions.  I have to do a lot more reading in this area, but I am convinced that it is crucial that conservatives abandon their nostalgic romance with capitalism, since the object of their affection, an earlier moment in the history of capital, competitive or at least largely national, has long since passed and has been replaced with something far different in kind and inimical to their interests and values.

BV: This is a very important point: global, 'woke' capitalism is a very different animal from the capitalism celebrated by old-time economic conservatives and libertarians.

I follow your lead and read everything; if some Western Marxists, such as David Harvey or Hartmut Rosa, have something to say on this question that is of value, I take what is valuable and discard the rest.  I admit a critical examination of capitalism today involves all sorts of philosophical and ideological conundrums for us on the Right, but if we wish to defend certain modes of life and thought, I do not see how we can avoid it. The big global corporations and the Leftist elites that own and control them are not our friends, nor are the host of apologists that cover for them.

2.  Brooks implicitly denies the conscious role of human agency in the acute crisis of the last half year, that is, he covers up for the Left, which has purposely pursued the assault on the Constitution, our history, and our basic rights. All his spleen is saved for the usual target of these bien pensant types, Trump, while he nowhere denounces the lies, plots, and violence of the Left, which exploited the health emergency and the isolated death of one man to destabilize the nation. I cannot take seriously a man who writes,

Donald Trump is in the process of shredding every norm of decent behavior and wrecking every institution he touches. Unable to behave responsibly, unable to protect himself from COVID-19, unable to even tell the country the truth about his own medical condition, he undermines the basic credibility of the government and arouses the suspicion that every word and act that surrounds him is a lie and a fraud. Finally, he threatens to undermine the legitimacy of our democracy in November and incite a vicious national conflagration that would leave us a charred and shattered nation.

I sure that you noticed that here Brooks takes all the evident nefarious intentions and acts of the Left and projects them onto the President. Here, we see him happily paying the price to remain among those with respectable opinions.

BV:  I too cannot take Brooks and his political projection seriously. He seems to have degenerated badly. But he always was a pseudo-conservative, a member of the yap-and-scribble bow-tie brigade, along with Bill Kristol, George Will, Mona Charen, Max Boot, and the rest. These types love to write and talk, but when it comes time to act and support a man who has already done so much in the face of vicious opposition to implement conservative policies, they clutch their pearls, straighten their ties, and chicken out.  Like Vito, I get the distinct impression that their main political goal is to remain among the respectable so as to preserve their privileges, perquisites, and invitations to the high-toned soirees of the bien pensant.  They seem to fear nothing more than becoming a persona non grata in the manner of Alan Dershowitz. Accepting something like political dhimmitude, Brooks and the cruise-ship conservative cohort are content to play the role assigned to them by the Left, talk quietly about taxes and such, and allow the Left's culturally Marxist juggernaut to roll on.

Brooks goes on about norms. But he will give either his direct or indirect support to a party that is hell-bent on destroying the norms and institutions of the Republic. The Left has become brazen about what they stand for: packing the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, eliminating the Electoral College, removing the Second Amendment to the Constitution, tolerating and expanding 'sanctuary' jurisdictions, eliding the distinction between citizen and non-citizen -- and I am just warming up.

Like Rod Dreher, Brooks apparently believes that civility and good manners trump every other consideration: better that race-delusional Marxist thugs destroy our cities than that an alpha male punch back against the chaos and defend the American Way.  Trump is boorish, but there is nothing radical about him unlike the Orwellian 'moderate' Joe Biden who is a driverless vehicle or rudderless vessel soon to be piloted by Kamala Harris and the squadristi to hard-Left destinations.

Anyway those are my thoughts on the essay, whatever they are worth. These are really bad times; we must win in November, if only to buy some time, but I am not at all optimistic that we will be able to control either the “soft” or the more and more evident “hard” (for example, the framing of General Flynn and Cardinal Pell and the indictment of the McCloskeys) totalitarianism of the Left.

BV: The indictment of the McCloskey's is particularly troubling.  Can you believe that this is happening in the USA? Violent Marxist thugs, who pay no taxes, break down a gate and threaten the life, liberty, and property of productive, tax-paying citizens. The political authorities, supported by these taxes, take the side of the thugs, bringing no charges against them, but indict the McCloskeys. Don't forget: some of the BLMers were armed, and the McCloskeys were within the law and the Constitution.  And don't fool yourselves: BLM is an avowed Marxist outfit dedicated to the destruction of America as she was founded to be.  The BLMers 'peaceful' protests are nothing but race-baiting means to their nefarious ends.

These are dangerous times. The upcoming election will be a battle for the soul of America.  Curiously, both Trump and Biden say this, and both are right.  The Coalition of the Sane must win in November.  Do your bit -- and prepare for the aftermath.  Ignore the polls. Remember 2016?

No Fool Like an Old Fool

Ed is an 80-year-old neighbor of mine. We've been casual acquaintances for years, running into each other on the trails, exchanging greetings and snatches of conversation. The other day politics came up for the first time, and to my surprise I learned that Ed, originally a Republican, had become an Independent, and was now a Democrat. I said, perhaps with a bit of surprise, "How can you support the Dems, given their current leadership?"

Ed, the quintessentially nice guy, said, "Let's stay friends, Bill, and avoid politics." I agreed that this was the wisest course, and we parted amicably. But my opinion of old Ed had dropped, and I resolved to limit my contact with him, limited as it already was. I knew there was no reaching him.

What explains the utter political stupidity of otherwise good, intelligent, and basically conservative people? Doesn't Ed understand what is in his and his family's interest?

One factor is mindless Trump hatred. A second is that old people live in the past and simply cannot see what is happening. A third is a life too much absorbed in the private and the quotidian. Luckily, old Ed probably won't be around to wake up to the day when the private life is no more.

No fool like an old fool.

"I Will Pray for You"

In many but not all contexts, to say "I will pray for you" to a person manifests the following passive-aggressive attitude on the part of the speaker: (a) I have strongly negative feelings toward you but I will not directly express them, either because I fear a confrontation, or fancy myself above such negative feelings, or because it would not be expedient for me to express them; (b) I consider myself morally superior to you, and you so inferior to me as to need divine assistance; (c) in truth, I have no real concern for the state of your soul, but by saying that I will pray for you, I posture as if I really do care.

What inspired this observation was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's repeated  talk of praying for Donald Trump. I call this passive-aggression via the misuse in the political sphere of religious language. The sanctimonious insincerity of the dingbat is galling. 

What Trump should tweet to Nancy: Let's make a deal, Nancy. You pray for the state of my soul, and I'll pray for the state of your intellect!

Related: Nancy Pelosi and the Divine Spark

UPDATE (1/2/2020)  Dave Gudeman comments:

At first I thought you were being overly critical, but on further thought it's hard to imagine saying "I will pray for you" as a rebuke to a casual acquaintance. The only time I can think of where it would be appropriate is when said by a fellow church member, a close friend, or a family member to someone engaging in behavior or expressing opinions that they themselves would have considered immoral very recently. In this context, it can be a heartfelt and genuine expression of concern over their move away from a morality that you both shared, but if you don't have a relationship where the other person can reasonably be expected to listen to your rebuke or if what you are rebuking the person for is a long-standing difference, then it becomes what you described, nothing but a passive-aggressive criticism.

I'll add that claiming you love someone after you have attacked them as viciously as Nancy Pelosi has attacked Trump is shockingly hypocritical.

BV: When Pelosi says  "I will pray for you," or "I pray for him all the time," she is not rebuking Trump in so many words.  Her overt speech acts do not express her inner attitude, but mask it, or attempt to mask it. To any astute observer, however, she fails to hide her inner attitude which is as I have described it above.  This passive-aggressive mendacity is what I am objecting to.  

There is also the misuse of religious language in a political context, a Pelosian trademark.  I'll write more about that later.

As Gudeman suggests above, there are uses of 'I will pray for you' that are unobjectionable.  A thorough discussion would sort out different cases.   There were people we genuinely loved the 'evangelical' atheist Christopher Hitchens and who told him that they would pray for him.  That is an entirely different type of case, and it needs a different analysis.  This sort of case, even if mildly objectionable, does not come close to the Pelosian level of self-deceptive hostility that cannot discharge itself in an overt way.  

The Difference between Left and Right Anti-Trump Rage

The Left's blind rage against Trump is not primarily because of the man and his personal style, but because of his threat to their agenda. If Trump had Hillary's ideas and policies, and Hillary Trump's, the Left would have overlooked Trump's personal behavior and supported him in the same way that they overlooked the bad behavior of Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton.  They would have dismissed the Access Hollywood tape as locker-room talk in the same way they dismissed Bill Clinton's much worse sexually predatory actions as peccadilloes belonging to his personal life.

The Never Trumpers, on the other hand, hate Trump primarily because of the man he is, and not primarily because of his ideas and policies.  They hate him because he is a crude and obnoxious outsider, an interloper, who crashed their party and threatened to upset their cozy world.

Proof of this is that Trump's solid conservative accomplishments mollify the bow-tie brigade not one bit.  Their hatred and mindless opposition is in no way reduced by the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh confirmations, the movement of the U. S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the surging stock market, the replacement of NAFTA by USMCA, the low unemployment numbers, the defense of religious liberty, the beefing-up of border security despite vicious Democrat obstructionism, and so on down the list.

Our leftist pals rage, rage against the dying of the blight.  2020 will give them more to rage about.

Political Hatred: A Look Back at Nixon

Has any president of the United States been the object of deeper hatred than Donald Trump? Abraham Lincoln perhaps. But in recent decades only Richard Nixon comes close.  Both Nixon and Trump elicit mindless rage, and for similar reasons.  The elites hate both because they have no class.  That's the short answer. For nuance we turn to Paul Johnson's 1988 In Praise of Richard Nixon, which contains a wealth of insights that can be put to use in the present to understand the Trump phenomenon. Here are some excerpts (emphases added, and brief comments in blue):

What makes Nixon’s insistence that the world is run by realpolitik and national interest even more objectionable to liberals is that he is as much an idealist as they are; but in his way, not theirs. Streetwise in the global metropolis, Nixon is nonetheless in many respects an old-fashioned evangelical American patriot. He rose by hard work from humble origins to the world’s highest office. He is deeply grateful to the fair and free society which made such an ascent possible, and he is anxious to pay his debt to it. He also believes, as all Americans up to recent decades were taught to believe, that providence has been good to America as a whole, and that America as a society and a great power has incurred reciprocal obligations. He states openly: “Almost nowhere else on earth are people as secure and as prosperous as in the United States. Both our great power and our great blessings challenge us to adopt policies in both foreign and domestic affairs whose ultimate goal is to make the world safer and better.”

Liberals find this tone of voice, coming on top of the realpolitik, insufferable. They feel it is sanctimonious, hypocritical, sly, self-seeking. They believe it springs from a devious nature incapable of truth. [They called him Tricky Dick] The idea that it might be totally and passionately sincere is inconceivable to them. From the start, then, liberal antipathy to Nixon was and is based on a profound misunderstanding of his moral character.

Dislike is deepened by social contempt. It is often assumed by foreigners, and believed by Americans themselves, that class plays no part in American politics. This may be generally true, but there are certainly exceptions, and the anti-Nixon syndrome is one of them. Nixon was a hard-working man who raised himself not from romantic poverty but from the dullest of lower-middle-class backgrounds. He did so early and quickly and without acquiring any of the social graces or eccentricities or gimmicks or rhetorical flourishes or parlor tricks which make a climber interesting. Nor did he ever learn to hide his obvious ambition or cloak it in the progressive sentiments of the day.

Like everyone else in politics, Nixon wanted fame and power, but he did not know how to make his yearnings culturally respectable. There was nothing about him—his school, his tastes, his choice of language, his friends, his interests, his heroes, his reading—that was remotely fashionable. He could at times be gauche, say the wrong thing, make the awkward, grating gesture. To East Coast liberals from assured, easy backgrounds and Ivy League schools, he appeared to be everything they most detested: brash, self-seeking, uncultured, greedy for money and power, devoid of noblesse oblige, hard and materialistic. They could not bear the thought of being ruled by him and his like. Immediately after the 1960 presidential election, a victorious John F. Kennedy contemptuously summed up this feeling: Nixon, he said, “went out like he came in—no class.”

To a European, this comment, coming from the son of a man who was little better than a financial gangster, is full of ironies. The Kennedys, to an outside observer, far from embodying the principle of American legitimacy, appear rather to illustrate the rapacity with which a predatory immigrant clan exploits the opportunities America offers: the unscrupulous father amassing wealth so that his indulged and conscienceless offspring may buy their way into office and power. Visiting Washington as British Prime Minister shortly after Kennedy was elected, Harold Macmillan commented: “It’s rather like watching the Borgia brothers take over a respectable North Italian town.” As time goes by, and the sins of the Kennedys multiply with the generations, the comparison seems ever more apt.

But whatever their moral shortcomings—and these were seen less clearly in the 1960’s than now—the younger Kennedys possessed enviable social advantages. They not only had a lot of money but had never been put to the coarsening trouble of earning it. They made the appropriate cultural noises. They had the right academic and media connections, and could buy more if necessary. They had their own court historians and tame editors. They spoke the liberal vernacular with zeal if not from inner conviction. Most important of all, they exercised, like any other self-assured aristocracy, however ersatz, a powerful appeal over the intelligentsia, which will always prefer a graceful prince to a self-made man. To the intellectuals, and to East Coast liberals generally, the 1960 election was between “us” and “them,” a Manichean struggle between enlightenment and materialism.

In fact it was one of the most corrupt elections of modern times, with the Democratic machine forced to play all its grubby cards to get Kennedy elected at all. He won by a whisker in circumstances which will always make the validity of his election dubious. It says a lot for Nixon’s old-fashioned notions of patriotism and decorum—“no class” notwithstanding—that he refused to challenge the result. And so it was that Camelot came into being, the glittering antithesis of Nixonian suburbia: in the foreground, cerebral rhetoric, haute couture, patronage of the arts; in the background, sexual athletics with Mafia molls, shielded by a compliant press.

[. . .]

_____________

So in 1968 Nixon became President after all, and great was the gnashing of teeth in the liberal middle and upper classes. His was the first postwar administration from which the East Coast establishment was largely excluded, its places taken by men, often Californians, anti-intellectuals, and provincials, who aroused in the liberal soul a peculiar detestation. That Nixon set about fulfilling his campaign promise of scaling down, then ending, the Vietnam war was neither here nor there: once again, it was the tone that was objectionable.

Nixon made no secret of the fact that he disliked the metropolitan media. Worse, he developed an alarming skill at speaking over the head of the media directly to the American people, taking it upon himself to voice the hopes and fears of what he termed “the silent majority.” [Just like Trump, but without Twitter.] While never exactly popular—incapable, perhaps, of being popular with any wide section of the community—he became an extremely effective populist.

If the Nixon victory of 1968 was hard for the liberals to bear, his landslide of 1972 was insupportable, particularly since Nixon had openly accepted the Democratic candidacy of Senator George McGovern as an opportunity for the contest he had sought: Middle America against progressive pandaemonium. “Here is a situation,” Nixon exultantly told his staff, “where the Eastern establishment media finally has a candidate who almost totally shares their views.” He added that the “real ideological bent of the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and the three TV networks” was “on the side of amnesty, pot, abortion, confiscations of wealth (unless it is theirs), massive increases in welfare, unilateral disarmament, reduction of our defenses, and surrender in Vietnam.” At last, then, “the country will find out whether what the media has been standing for during these last five years really represents the majority thinking.”

Nixon’s overwhelming victory, carrying the Electoral College 521 to 17 and picking up over 60 percent of the popular vote, ought to have settled the matter. But it did not. Although the events which led up to Watergate and Nixon’s abdication are extremely complicated, one salient fact must be borne in mind. The Eastern liberal establishment never really admitted the legitimacy of the Nixon administration. From the start, the media interests which spoke for the establishment treated the Nixon presidency as in some metaphysical sense an outlaw regime whose true, unconstitutional character would eventually be exposed. The powerful barons of the Eastern press and TV felt themselves morally and constitutionally entitled to snatch back the power he had secured from the voters by (as they saw it) chicanery. All they needed was a pretext.  [Sound familiar?]

Nixon played into their hands. His deep sense of insecurity, reinforced by what was now almost a paranoid hatred and fear of the press, led him to confuse a perfectly justified desire to prevent the media from publishing state secrets—as they had done in the case of the Pentagon Papers and other documents—with the routine skulduggery of party-political espionage. The result was the Watergate mess.

_____________

In essence, Watergate was a mess and nothing more. The Nixon administration’s record of misuse of power and raison d’état was no worse than that of Truman and Eisenhower, and considerably better than Franklin D. Roosevelt’s. There was none of the personal corruption which had marked the rule of Lyndon Johnson, let alone the gross immoralities and security risks of John F. Kennedy’s White House. Nixon’s sins were venial and sprang mostly from misplaced loyalty. The notion that he plotted an assault on the Constitution and the rule of law is a malicious invention.

Indeed, the way in which the opportunities offered by Watergate were exploited by the Eastern media, aided by a hostile Congress—a key element in the story—and by a section of the legal establishment to whom Nixon was anathema, is a frightening example of how the will of a popular majority can be frustrated and overturned by the skillful manipulation of press and TV. This was the first media Putsch in history, as ruthless and anti-democratic as any military coup by bemedaled generals with their sashes and sabers. It is obvious that Nixon, a responsible and experienced statesman preoccupied with the international problems of the early 1970’s, not least the appalling Middle East crisis of autumn 1973 and its disastrous economic aftermath, consistently underestimated the unscrupulousness of his media enemies and their willingness to sacrifice the national interest in the pursuit of their institutional vendetta.

So great was the inequity of Nixon’s downfall that future historians may well conclude he would have been justified in allowing events to take their course and in subjecting the nation to the prolonged paralysis of a public impeachment, which at least would have given him the opportunity to defend himself by due process of law. But once again his patriotism took precedence over his self-interest, and he cut short the national agony by a voluntary abdication. In defeat he was dignified and not at all disposed to recriminate. The episode wrecked his official career, but going through the fire strengthened and refined his moral character. By a curious paradox Richard Nixon was one of the very few people who emerged from the Watergate affair with credit. But he remained, and remains, as mysterious as ever.

_____________

Fallen statesmen rarely rise again. But it pays them to live long. Nixon, like Herbert Hoover before him, has survived nearly all his enemies. And he has made much better use of his retirement than Hoover did. Few men have been more successful at putting the past behind them and looking firmly into the future.

His new book is only one example of the assiduity and genuine excitement with which Nixon scans the distant horizons of geopolitics. There are few retired Washington giants—Henry Kissinger is an exception—who keep themselves so well briefed on the state of the world, or who have more worthwhile observations to make about it. In its modest way, 1999: Victory Without War is an excellent geopolitical primer, which, if academics were not so prejudiced, could well serve as an introductory textbook in courses in political science.

By the term “victory” in the title, Nixon does not mean an ideological or economic conquest but rather a process of persuasion whereby the freedoms generally recognized as desirable and productive can be more widely, and eventually universally, spread. He looks first at the present posture of the two superpowers. Then, in three carefully argued chapters, he shows how the United States can peacefully prevent the Soviets from making risky forward moves, how it can match and refute Soviet propaganda in the uncommitted world, and, not least, how it can effectively negotiate with Moscow to reduce tension and arms budgets.

Nixon next turns to the three economic-growth areas—Western Europe, which he calls “the fragmented giant”; Japan, the “reluctant giant”; and China, the “awakened giant”—which will in his judgment expand the present two superpowers into five, and shows how each of them can play a constructive role in the negotiation-from-strength process he envisages. He then provides a survey of Third World theaters of conflict where competition between economic and political systems is most intense.

_____________

Nixon’s final chapter concerns the United States itself, and is a plea that Americans will reinforce their material success by a return to the pristine idealism of the men who created what he calls “the animating principles of our country.” In his view, the new thinking which Gorbachev is urging his Soviet comrades to adopt should be matched by a fundamental reappraisal of America’s conduct and role. Nixon wants Americans to be remembered “not just as a good people who took care of themselves without doing harm to others” but as a “great people” who went “beyond the call of duty” in helping to enlarge the freedoms enjoyed all over the world.

This is the kind of traditional nationalist idealism which Nixon’s critics find insincere and repellent. To me, as an outsider who feels none of this emotional hostility to the ex-President, it seems patently sincere, almost painfully so. Moreover, I think it strikes echoes among a very large number of ordinary Americans. One of Nixon’s greatest strengths is his nose for what the voters feel at any given time. There can be few men whose judgment of the American political scene is so shrewd and penetrating, as well as surprisingly objective. [Nixon had a Trumpian nose, to put it anachronistically.]

Most ex-Presidents are anxious to offer their advice to those who succeed them, and find themselves consulted often out of mere courtesy. Nixon’s advice, by contrast, is eagerly solicited and often taken. He probably exercises more political influence than any other Western statesman not actually in office. Considering the depths of degradation from which he has climbed, this is a remarkable achievement.

In thus rehabilitating himself, Nixon has displayed courage, endurance, persistence, patience, skill, and—there is no other word for it—magnanimity. This greatness of heart is something his enemies never dreamed he possessed, and helps to explain their misunderstanding of his nature. “No class”: today, the cruel snobbery of the phrase reflects solely on the man who uttered it, and whose own reputation declines with every fresh unveiling of the record. To the contrary: the last fifteen years have shown that Richard Nixon has a lot of class. But it remains to be seen whether history will give him the justice his contemporaries denied him.

A Reader Weighs in on Dreher and Douthat and the Never Trump Phenomenon

Dr. Vito Caiati, historian, writes,

I appreciated your critical post on  Rod Dreher last week. Yesterday (Tuesday, August 6), he was at it again (“The MAGA Kahn & The Abyss’), linking Trump to cultural decline, while exalting a recent column in The New York Times by the never-Trump nincompoop Ross Douthat ("The Nihilist in Chief"), in which he decries "obvious moral vacuum, the profound spiritual black hole, that lies beneath [Trump’s] persona and career.”

As much as I appreciate Dreher’s work on the corruption in the Catholic Church and the existential dangers of 'woke' culture, his judgments are often suffused with a sanctimonious ahistoricity; thus, he refuses to acknowledge that the only effective responses to the vicious and increasingly violent American left have been those of the uncouth, often inarticulate, street fighter Trump. He is by far not a perfect man, but he is the only man we have; he fights back against the left’s crimes, lies, and violence.

I think that guys like Dreher who have only a thin knowledge of history are ultimately shocked by hard political and ideological conflict. He likes to pick saints and other less savory figures out of the flow of time and set them up as exemplars of the good and the bad. But history is dense and far more complicated than he imagines, and in times of crisis, Western values and culture have repeatedly been defended and preserved by political and military figures of dubious personal morality.

Hard times require hard men.

I agree entirely. But we are left with the task of explaining the Never-Trump mentality. I find the obviously decent and intelligent David Frenches and the Mona Charens among them hard to figure. 

I respect the high-minded Mona Charen, I applaud the civil courage it took for her to make her CPAC speech last year, and I condemn any thugs who may have threatened her physically for speaking her mind and heart. (According to reports, she was quickly escorted from the venue.) But people like her have no effect on what actually happens and are useless when it comes to defeating the Left. She doesn't understand the nature of politics. It is war, not gentlewomanly debate.  I wish it were the latter, and it could be if we all agreed on fundamentals; but we manifestly don't.  

You don't like the vulgar Trump? Too bad. He's all we've got, as Caiati says above.  No other Republican has the courage or the ability to accomplish what he has accomplished. Face reality and its limitations. Don't let the best become the enemy of the good. The milque-toast McCains  haven't done jack and won't do jack, except talk and obstruct and aid the enemy. Former red-diaper baby David Horowitz understands the nature of the political:

The movement galvanized by Trump can stop the progressive juggernaut and change the American future, but only if it emulates the strategy of the campaign: Be on the offense; take no prisoners; stay on the attack. To stop the Democrats and their societal transformation, Republicans must adhere to a strategy that begins with a punch in the mouth. That punch must pack an emotional wallop large enough to throw them off balance and neutralize their assaults. It must be framed as a moral indictment that stigmatizes them in the way their attacks stigmatize Republicans. It must expose them for their hypocrisy. It must hold them accountable for the divisions they sow and the suffering they cause. (Big Agenda, Humanix, 2017, p. 142)

Trump alone, a political outsider who doesn't need a job, has the civil courage and is in a position to deliver the needed punches. That's why we support him. That's why we overlook his flaws, just as the Democrats overlook the flaws of their candidates. He punches back and accomplishes what the milque-toast Republicans only talk about.

Charen and French and Co. are intelligent and morally decent. They are not foolish and destructive like Ocasio-Cortez, Gillibrand, Warren, O'Rourke, Booker, Sanders, and Biden.  What the former fail to understand, however, is that their political opponents are in fact domestic enemies who  do not care at all about the values they cherish: civility, decorum, free speech, the rule of law, and the rest. 

They can't see past Trump's obnoxious mannerisms, and they cannot see into the true nature of their opponents.  They project into their opponents the values that they themselves uphold. Perhaps that is the source of their blindness.

It's all fascinating even if disturbing, and a plentiful source of grist for the philosopher's and the psychologists' mills.

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

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

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

Some of these warnings are:

1) Describe themselves as 'Patriots'

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

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

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

There is nothing 'extreme' about being a patriot.

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

Political Correctness does in fact originate with the Communist Party.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3) Describe multicultural towns as 'lost'

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

4) Looks at opponents as 'Traitors'

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

No 'extremity' here.

5) Use the term 'Islamofascism'

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

6) Make generalisations about Muslims and Jews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salon article here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why are So Many Jews Democrats?

Paul Gottfried may have part of the explanation:

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

Related: Paul Gottfried on Propositionalism

Damon Linker on Never-Trumping Neo-Cons

Why do never-trumping neo-con nitwits such as the bootless Max Boot allow Donald Trump to live rent-free in their heads and drive them crazy?  That's my formulation of the question, not Linker's,  but he provides a good answer to it ( emphases added):

More fully than any other faction in the American commentariat, neocon pundits believe axiomatically in the goodness of America — in the nobility of our national aims, and in the capacity of that nobility to sanctify the means we use to achieve them. They believe that all good things go together under the benign rule of the global Pax Americana. What's good for the United States is automatically good for all people of good will everywhere, who with our help get to enjoy ever-greater freedom, democracy, and prosperity. This is the neocons' faith. They believe it as fervently as any adherent of any religion.

But of course not everyone in American politics takes this view, and so there is partisanship, with the neocons working to uphold this pristine, highly idealized, and empirically unfalsifiable vision of the U.S. against various heretics and apostates from the faith. Until the rise of Trump, most of these heretics and apostates were found on the left, with a few (like Pat Buchanan) popping up from time to time on the paleocon right. From their home in the Republican Party, the neocons sometimes won these battles and sometimes lost. But the cause was righteous, so every defeat was admirable in its way and merely temporary — a prelude to the next victory.

Those who described Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 primaries as a hostile takeover of the Republican Party were correct — at least from the standpoint of the party's Washington establishment, which very much included the neocons. But unlike the establishment's other factions — wealthy donors and business interests out for another tax cut; lobbyists hoping to advance the interests of an industry or group of citizens — the neocons couldn't just play along with the changing of the guard. They were much too high-minded to accept the debasement of the presidency and the party. There was thus no place for them in the new order.

The neocons not only lost a policy battle. They also lost their perch, their perks, and their power in the party. That made, and still makes, Trump's victory intensely personal.

When the Trump haters set out to write their umpteenth denunciation of the president, calling him bad for the country, bad for the GOP, and bad for the world, they undoubtedly mean it. But they also have other motives. The rise of Donald Trump has above all been exceedingly bad for them. They're still angry about it, and they're still out for revenge, every single time they sit down to write.

Both leftists and neo-cons are obsessed with Trump the man. If they were really as high-minded as Linker says they are, they wouldn't take it all so personally. Besides being unhealthy, Trump-obsession is vicious and immoral. They should stop slandering him as a racist, xenophobe, Islamophobe, etc. and stop trying to 'get him' on some trumped-up charges.  The more his enemies vilify him, the more support he will get from the Coalition of the Sane.  What lefties and neo-cons should be discussing are his policy ideas.  See Michael Anton, The Trump Doctrine. 

We who support Trump do not do so because of his lack of class, his braggadoccio, his orange hair, inarticulate  tweets, exaggerations, and other blemishes, but because he is a patriot* with good ideas and the will to implement them.  He has delivered on his campaign promises despite the nasty obstructionism of the Dems, the media, and members of his own party.   We support him because he is willing to punch back hard against the enemies of America foreign and domestic.  We support him because he is not an ever-losing pussy like Jeb! Bush or a milque-toast maverick like John McCain.

____________

*Unlike Obama. No patriot seeks a fundamental transformation of his country.  What you love you do not seek fundamentally to transform.  Trump: MAGA. Obama, Hillary, and the Left: Destroy America as she was founded to be.

ADDENDUM (5/3). Jacques reacts:

A quick unsolicited thought about Linker's statement that the neocons were "too high minded to accept the debasement of the presidency and the party".  It is utterly absurd to describe these people as "high minded".  These are the same people who have supported futile bloody foreign adventures, for transparently phony reasons.  These are the people who always support Israel and its ethnonationalist policies while denouncing even the slightest hint of ethnic consciousness in white Americans.  Linker claims that they believe in the "goodness" of America.  I doubt that most of them really believe in anything.  They're utterly dishonest.  Calling themselves "conservatives" (of any kind) is dishonest.

 

But more importantly, it's absurd to think that the Republican party was "debased" by Trump.  We are talking here about a racket.  The function of the Republican party for many decades has been to fool its pathetic and deluded but fundamentally decent and patriotic base.  The party pretends to care about the well-being and religion and values of these people, but has never done anything for them.  On the contrary, the party represents crony capitalists, oligarchs, Washington insiders and lobbyists.  The policies of the party have always been designed to benefit the wealthy con artists in the party and the wealthier donors and interests who control it.  

 

Just think of George W. Bush, that semi-literate fool, orchestrating war with Iraq on the basis of absurd lies about Hussein's connection to bin Laden.  Millions died.  Ordinary Americans were killed and maimed for nothing.  At the same time, Bush was spouting leftist horseshit about "no child left behind" and getting teachers fired because they couldn't meet his Soviet-style diktats about the test scores that low IQ students were supposed to achieve.  (Of course the teachers cheated.  What were they supposed to do?)  He also gave us such memorable phrases as "the religion of peace" and celebrated Ramadan at the White House.  And all the while the country was being flooded with immigrants whose presence makes life ever more miserable for the Republican base.  

 

That was the neocon Republican party.  The party of pointless killing and "regime change" with no plan beyond "elections".  The party of leftist lies about race and IQ.  The party of multicultural inclusion and corporate capitalism.  Could that party be "debased"? 

 

From my perspective, Trump's tone is crude but--during his campaign at least--his message was infinitely more noble and high minded than anything these party insiders had ever said.  True, they don't use swear words and they (maybe?) don't bang call girls.  But their "ideas" were never anything more than a thin veneer meant to distract from their psychopathic greed and narcissism.

 

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