Schmitt is a political existentialist in the following sense: ‘The political’, that mode of human experience that expresses itself in interpersonal relations of power and struggle, is logically and temporally prior to all political institutions. It is expressed in the distinction between friend and enemy, which is from Schmitt’s point of view a fact of human psychology. We are naturally hostile not only to strangers, but to others. In this regard, his position is close to Thomas Hobbes. [Walter] Benjamin subverts this idea by adding a perspective of compassion: We may be hostile to strangers, but most of us are also strangers, aliens, immigrants, or refugees. We live in times of global migration, and nation states have lost their importance for the definition of political identity. But Schmitt would counter that any call for an inclusion of the “tradition of the oppressed” never brought us closer to a humanitarian turn in history. Instead, Marxist, anarchist, or liberal progress thinkers have several traits in common: they dream of a better future, but by doing so they instrumentalize the present. In reality, they attempt to overcome the political dimension, because for them the struggle for political power is dirty, and fundamentally, they want to abolish political power altogether. But politics with utopian aims often culminates in the creation of a Leviathan – an uncontrollable and powerful sovereign entity that forces us to abandon our humanity in exchange for the membership in a system that tends to become totalitarian.
That's a good insight on the part of Schmitt. Anarchists and 'progressives' try to "instrumentalize the present," that is, to make of it a means to achieve a utopian state (condition) that will justify the violent and by bourgeois standards immoral means necessary in the present to reach the political eschaton in which the political as such will be aufgehoben. But the quest for 'pie in the future' reliably results in the creation of a totalizing monster state complete with gulag and Vernichtungslager in which our humanity is extinguished.
Carl Schmitt is eerily relevant at the present moment in American politics. And the unlikely Donald J. Trump has unwittingly made political philosophy come alive like never before. Read this:
The sovereign and the state of emergency
In his book “Political Theology” (1922), Schmitt famously declares that the sovereign is he who determines the state of emergency, and thus has the political power to act outside the boundaries of the law in times of crisis. With this definition of the sovereign, Schmitt distinguishes between the rule of the law, and the rule of people. Should we allow society to be ruled only by a system of by laws, which means that the actions of rulers also have to be law-abiding? Or should we accept that we need people to be in control of the system, who can at times override or disable the law in order to deal with an emergency, or with a situation for which the law has no provision? According to Schmitt, the essence of political power is the ability to suspend normal law and assume special powers, just like the ancient dictators did. In his definition, the exception defines the limit, and this boundary constitutes what politics is. The answer to “Who decides the exception?” is the precondition of the law being obligatory and being, in fact, obeyed. Even proto-liberals such as John Locke, admitted that the executive must be permitted the power to suspend the laws if necessary for the good of society. The conflict between executive and legislative branches of the government plays itself out in US constitutional law in the different interpretations of the power of the President, or in cases where the President overrides or evades congressional authority.
I am not suggesting that President Trump, in declaring a national emergency anent the southern border, is operating outside the law. But some whom I respect are claiming just that. I am simply drawing attention to Schmitt's relevance to the question.
We are living in exciting times, philosophical times! If I were a young man I would be worried, but I am not, and "the owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk."
For centuries, Western political theory has struggled with the problem of how to free individuals from the yoke of capricious power. Humanity’s greatest minds conceived of a government constrained by neutral principles. The ground rules in a constitutional polity are set in advance; they cannot be gamed to give one side of a political struggle an unfair and possibly insuperable advantage. The United States does need a wall on its southern border, accompanied by a radical revision of the legal-immigration system to prioritize skills, language, and assimilability. But if we remove the constitutional boundaries around each branch of government, as Trump’s emergency funding appropriation threatens to do, we will have lost the very thing that makes Western democracies so attractive to the rest of the world. The Supreme Court, when the inevitable legal challenges reach it, should strike Trump’s declaration down.
Heather Mac is telling us that the ground rules cannot be gamed to give one side an advantage. Well, if she means that they ought not be gamed, then she is right. But they are gamed, and so they can be. If SCOTUS is dominated by leftists who think of the Constitution as a 'living document,' then their rulings will constitute serious 'gaming' in the form of legislating from the bench. How is that for a removal of constitutional boundaries between branches of government? Besides, the law has to be enforced to count as law in any serious sense. If the Congress does not provide the funding necessary for proper enforcement of the immigration laws, then that too is a serious 'gaming' of the system. If the Left does not respect the rule of law, then why is the chief executive not justified in declaring a national emergency?
It is all very well to speak of "the rule of law not of men," but when Congress refuses to uphold the rule of law then we may have a Schmittian state of exception wherein the chief executive may and perhaps must override the Congress. I say "may have" because it is not clear to me that Trump's declaration of a state of emergency is illegal or extralegal.
Maybe not. It might not be in their best, long-term self-interest, assuming that they are more than a discussion society and want to see their values implemented politically. Libertarians stand for limited government, individual liberty, private property, and free markets. On these points I basically agree with them, although I am not a libertarian. But they don't seem adept at thinking in cultural as opposed to economic terms.
They need to ask themselves whether the culture of libertarianism, its ensemble of values and attitudes, is likely to flourish north of the Rio Grande if an endless stream of mainly Hispanic immigrants is allowed into the country. I suspect that these newcomers will swell the ranks of the Democrats and insure the triumph of socialism when that is presumably what libertarians oppose.
Libertarians may be in a bind similar to the bind Sierra Club types are in. The latter, being 'liberals,' must oppose Trump's Wall of Hate which is of course immoral and divisive and racist. But the porosity of the southern border leads to very serious environmental degradation -- which is presumably what Sierra Club types oppose.
Libertarians are like Marxists in their overemphasis on the economic. And like Marxists, their understanding of human nature is deeply flawed. They think of human being as rational actors -- which is obviously not the case. The vaunted rationality of the human animal is only in rare cases consistently actual; in most it remains mainly potential, and in some not even that. There can be no sound politics without a sound philosophical anthropology, i.e., a correct understanding human nature.
To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
It's cute and clever, 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 so on. This is morally vicious behavior and to that extent evil. My view is 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 vicious refusal to take conservatives seriously as rational beings and address their 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, not differences in intelligence or 'information.'
A sane and defensible populism rests on an appreciation of an insight I have aphoristically expressed as follows:
No comity without commonality.
There cannot be comity without a raft of shared assumptions and values, not to mention a shared language. This is why unrestricted and unregulated immigration of any and all, no matter what their beliefs and values, can be expected to lead to an increases in social and political disorder. But what is comity?
The Laudator Temporis Actiquotes (HT: Bill Keezer) Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970), The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), page number unknown:
Finally, there is a subtler, more intangible, but vital kind of moral consensus that I would call comity. Comity exists in a society to the degree that those enlisted in its contending interests have a basic minimal regard for each other: one party or interest seeks the defeat of an opposing interest on matters of policy, but at the same time seeks to avoid crushing the opposition, denying the legitimacy of its existence or its values, or inflicting upon it extreme and gratuitous humiliations beyond the substance of the gains that are being sought. The basic humanity of the opposition is not forgotten; civility is not abandoned; the sense that a community life must be carried on after the acerbic issues of the moment have been fought over and won is seldom very far out of mind; an awareness that the opposition will someday be the government is always present.
The present political climate is not one of comity but one of contention and cold war, one that threatens to become 'hot.' Although war is irrational and often pointlessly destructive, there is a logic to it. How can one tolerate and show "a basic minimal regard" for people who represent an existential threat, where such a threat is not primarily to one's life, but to one's way of life and the liberties without which life is not worth living, religious liberty for example, not to mention the liberty to speak one's mind without fear and the rest of the rights and freedoms enshrined in the first ten amendments to the U. S. Constitution?
St. John Paul II, addressing the themes of nation, nationality, and patriotism, stated: “It seems that nation and native land, like the family, are permanent realities. In this regard, Catholic social doctrine speaks of ‘natural’ societies, indicating that both the family and the nation have a particular bond with human nature, which has a social dimension.” Contrasting patriotism to nationalism, he noted that the former “is a love for one’s native land that accords rights to all other nations equal to those claimed for one’s own. Patriotism, in other words, leads to a properly ordered social love.” Nationalism, on the other hand, privileges one’s own country and thus can be a disordered and unhealthy form of idolatry.
There is a sense in which nationalism privileges one's own country, but it is a perfectly innocuous privileging. That one's country comes first is as sound an idea as that one's family comes first: each family has the right to prefer its interests over the interests of other families. If my wife becomes ill, then my obligation is to care for her and expend such financial resources as are necessary to see to her welfare. If this means reducing my charitable contributions to the local food bank, then so be it. Whatever obligations I have to help others 'ripple out' from myself as center, losing claim to my attention the farther out they go, much like the amplitude of waves caused by a rock's falling into a pond diminishes the farther from the point of impact. Spouse and/or children first, then other family members, then old friends, then new friends, then neighbors, and so on.
The details are disputable, but not the general principle. The general principle is that we are justified in looking to our own first.
The main obligation of a government is to protect and serve the citizens of the country of which it is the government. It is a further question whether it has obligations to protect and benefit the citizens of other countries. That is debatable. But if it does, those obligations are trumped by the main obligation just mentioned. I should think that a great nation such as the USA does well to engage in purely humanitarian efforts such as famine relief. But such efforts are supererogatory.
Can nationalism "be a disordered and unhealthy form of idolatry"? As opposed to what? An ordinate and healthy form of idolatry? Idolatry is bad as such. And I am sure the author would agree, and that if he had been more careful he wouldn't have written such a bad sentence.
Why should nationalism lead to idolatry? Does putting one's family first over other human groups lead to the idolatry of one's own family? No.
"America first!" is a special case of 'Country first!" But there is nothing idolatrous about the former or the latter. Every country or nation is justified in preferring its interest over those of other countries. The reference class is countries, not everything. An enlightened nationalism does not place country over God, thereby making an idol of country.
Note the order of the words in pro deo et patria.
The opposite of nationalism is globalism or internationalism whose main inspiration in the last couple of centuries has been godless communism which better earns the epithet 'idolatrous.'
The main purpose of government is to protect life, liberty, and property. Subsidiary purposes are subordinate to the Lockean triad. The Democrats, however, are anti-life, anti-liberty, and anti-property. So if you value life, liberty, and property, then you must not vote for any Democrat. The Republicans in their timid way do stand for life, liberty, and property. And they are becoming less timid under Trump's tutelage. Lindsey Graham, for one, has recently located his manly virtue and put it to work during the Kavanaugh confirmation. So the choice is clear. Vote Republican, never vote for any Democrat, and don't throw away your vote on unelectable third-party candidates.
I will now briefly list some, but not all, of the reasons why the Democrats are anti-life, anti-liberty, and anti-property.
Anti-Life. The Dems are the abortion party. They support abortion on demand at every stage of fetal development. They are blind to the moral issues that abortion raises. They wrongly think that abortion is merely about women's health and reproductive rights. To make matters worse, they violate the beliefs of fellow taxpayers by their support of tax-payer funding for Planned Parenthood which is an abortion provider.
Anti-Liberty. The Dems are opposed to free speech, religious liberty, and gun rights. They regularly conflate free speech with 'hate speech' and religious liberty with 'theocracy.' And this while going soft on genuine theocratic regimes such as Iran's. All of this puts them at odds with the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. And in general we can say that contemporary Democrats are anti-Constitutional inasmuch as an open or living constitution, which they advocate, is no constitution at all, but a mere tabula rasa they hope to deface with their anti-American leftist ideology.
Anti-Property. Today's Democrats, as hard leftists, are ever on the slouch toward socialism, which, in full flower (to put it euphemistically) requires central planning and government ownership of the means of production. That is where they want to go even though, as stealth ideologues, they won't admit it.
But let's assume that the statement I just made is exaggerated and that Dems really don't want socialism as it is classically defined. Still, they are anti-property in various ways. They think that we the people have to justify our keeping whereas government doesn't have to justify its taking. That is precisely backwards. They don't appreciate that the government exists for us; we don't exist for the government. They confuse taxation with wealth redistribution. And by the way, government is not us, as some idiots such as Thom Hartman say. 'The government is us' is as perversely knuckle-headed as 'Diversity is our strength.' The latter stupidity is plainly Orwellian. What about the former? Pre-Orwellian? Both are Pelosi-stupid, which is the ne plus ultra of stupidity.
Finally, you need to understand that private property is the foundation of individual liberty.
My brand of conservatism includes an admixture of classical liberalism. Thus my conservatism is neither of the 'throne and altar' nor of the 'alternative right' variety. But I am open to challenge from intelligent and good-natured critics to my right. Among the intelligent and civil alt-right critics I include Jacques who writes:
In your recent post on abortion, you quote yourself saying there is "no defensible basis for discrimination against women and blacks when it comes to voting". I think that's too strong. I guess it depends on what exactly you mean by "defensible". But there are certainly some seemingly good reasons for that kind of discrimination.
1) Back in the day, almost all of the people paying taxes and working outside the home and fighting in wars were men. So it wasn't arbitrary or unfair, arguably, that only men were granted the right to have a say in matters of public policy. If you are going to be conscripted to fight and possibly die in a war, but your wife isn't, maybe it's reasonable that you play a role in deciding whether to go to war and she doesn't.
More generally, it seems like the natural order in human life is that men are the leaders and women are the followers. Obviously that's a very rough approximation of how things naturally work. But isn't it at least a rough approximation? Most women don't want to lead their families. They want to find a man who is a good leader and submit to his authority. When it comes to public affairs, men have always been the ones who were on the whole the most capable and motivated. Women on the whole have always been more capable and motivated with respect to personal, domestic and small-scale communal life. Again, I realize there are many individual exceptions and complications and qualifications; but isn't this basically how things have always worked, and doesn't it seem likely that these patterns are rooted in human nature? If this is even a rough approximation of the natural order, we have a second reason for allowing only (some) men to vote. And, of course, everyone accepts that rough approximations can be an adequate basis for social order. There are some children who are better equipped to participate in politics or drive a car than some adults, but those are rare exceptions, so it's reasonable to deny voting rights to children. (Mainly because we need general rules and social norms, and we don't have the time or resources to evaluate every single case in great depth.)
The Issue
The issue is whether every adult citizen who satisfies certain minimal requirements, e.g., not being a felon, should be allowed to vote regardless of race, sex, religion, property ownership, etc. I incline to a classically liberal view. Nota bene: classically liberal, not leftist. I'm for 'universal' suffrage. But of course the suffrage cannot be strictly universal. Thus I deny that children should have a right to vote (say, via proxy votes given to their parents). If you think children should have the right to vote, then why not pre-natal children? They too live within our borders and are affected, often drastically, by social policies. And, pace the benighted Jesse Jackson, I deny that felons should be allowed to vote. Felons have shown by their destructive behavior that they cannot order their own lives; why then should they be given any say in how society should be ordered?
What about cats and dogs? They have interests and needs. They are affected by public policies. But that does not ground a right to vote via proxies. (The idea would be that if Tom has two cats, a dog, and a baby daughter, then he gets five, count 'em five, votes, one for humself and four proxies.) And of course I am opposed to lowering the voting age, as some cynical Democrats want to do, so that under-18 teenagers can vote. And this despite the fact that some 14-year-olds are better equipped to vote that some 40-year-olds. The law cannot cater to exceptional cases.
Skin-in-the-Game
Jacques is mounting what I will call a 'skin-in-the-game' argument. I am sympathetic to it.
Those who do not face conscription have no 'skin in the game' with respect to fighting in wars and possibly coming home dead or injured. So why should those who do not face conscription have any say in the matter? Those who own no real property have no skin in the game when it comes to being liable for taxes on real estate. So why should they have a say on what tax rates should be? Some 45% of Americans pay no individual federal income tax. Why should they have a say in the determination of federal income tax rates?
Why should college students in Berkeley, California or Madison, Wisconsin be allowed to vote on local matters given that they will be there for only four years and thus lack a long-term stake in those communities, pay no taxes to speak of, and lack the life experience to make wise decisions?
Jacques continues:
(2) All historical experience suggests that blacks and whites behave very differently when it comes to voting. Blacks vote as a tribal block. They vote for the person they think will benefit blacks. Again, there are exceptions, but this is true as a rough approximation. Whites may have done this to some extent in the past, but now almost none of them do. Huge numbers of whites will knowingly vote for policies that benefit non-whites at the expense of whites. Whites generally seem to have a much deeper interest in principles and justice. They are highly individualistic and low in tribalism compared to blacks. Does it really make sense to extend equal voting rights to groups that have such different and incompatible understandings of the political process? Arguably, a healthy democracy requires a very broad basic agreement on principles and aims, a shared culture and historical understanding, etc. But then it would be reasonable to think that blacks should not vote in white societies. (Maybe they should have their own societies where they can vote and whites can't.)
The Tribalism Question
I agree that blacks as a group are more tribal than whites as a group at the present time. Their political behavior is driven by their self-identification as blacks. This is a fact, but is it the nature of blacks to be tribal? Or could blacks eventually become less tribal, and perhaps as anti-tribal and individualistic as whites? It cannot be denied that black tribalism is largely a response to various contingent circumstances such as their ancestors having been brought to North America as slaves, and their being a minority. Minority status is surely a driver of tribal identification among all racial, ethnic, and social groups. As the contingent circumstances change, one can reasonably expect blacks to become less tribal.
Also to consider is the fact that there is plenty of tribalism among whites as well, for example, white females, white law professors and trial lawyers who vote as a bloc, white union members who vote as their union bosses tell them, and so on.
In an ideal democracy only some people would be allowed to vote. But there is no practical way to determine all and only those who should be allowed to vote beyond the minimal requirements of citizenship, adulthood, etc. There is no going back, obviously: the franchise cannot be removed from blacks and females, for example. And in any case there are plenty of blacks and females who are more qualified to cast an intelligent, well-informed, and wise vote than many whites and males.
So I would say that justice demands universal suffrage in the qualified sense I explained above. I stick to my classically liberal line that "there is no defensible basis for discrimination against women and blacks when it comes to voting."
Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk. (Jürgen Habermas - "Time of Transitions", Polity Press, 2006, pp. 150-151, translation of an interview from 1999).
Kai Frederik Lorentzen usefully contributes the following contextualization of the above Habermas quotation:
It strikes me as strange to see - he of all people! - Jürgen Habermas presented on your blog as a defender of the West's Judeo-Christian roots. Not that he didn't say that in 1999, but the utterance is not representative for his thinking. Habermas is not only an elitist proponent of a quick EU unification (---> United States of Europe) crashing the sovereignty of the European peoples (his idea is to legitimate that later by a referendum), he's also absolutely pro migration and does not want to know about the dangers of Islamization. In fact he's an enemy of enlightened patriotism & the idea of an Europe of nations. I've read "Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit", "Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns", "Moralbewußtsein und kommunikatives Handeln", "Nachmetaphysisches Denken", "Faktizität und Geltung" and others. I know the theory of Habermas, and I know his political agenda. I don't think it's an agenda you would like to support.
Quite right. That is not an agenda I would like to support. The quotation intrigued me, though, and I wanted to capture it for my files. I should add that I was intensely interested in Habermas in the early 'seventies around the time I began graduate studies (1973). I read Erkenntnis und Interesse and some other things by him. But then my interests shifted to Husserl and Heidegger und die Seinsfrage and from there to classical metaphysics of Being and then to the analytic approach to existence in Frege and Russell and Quine and so I became more and more analytic and less and less Continental. My youthful interest in the Frankfurter Schule has pretty much petered out, except for a residual fascination with Theodor Adorno's Negative Dialektik. Also gone is my enthusiasm for Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics whose lectures I attended when he visited Boston College in the 'seventies. My copy of Wahrheit und Methode bears his autograph. Mesmerized by Heidegger as he was, he didn't know Husserl very well. He was surprised when I pointed out a passage in Cartesiansiche Meditationen in which Husserl speaks of a transzendental-faktisches ego. "Wooden iron!" the last student of the neo-Kantians said to me.
Here's what Habermas wrote in 2006 and in terms of religious & migration policies this still is - „Keine Muslima darf dazu genötigt werden, beispielsweise Herrn de Maiziere die Hand zu geben“ (2017) - his position today.
> ... The fourth pressing problem is the fundamentalist challenge to cultural pluralism in our societies. We have approached this problem from the perspective of immigration policy for far too long. In times of terrorism, there is a threat that it will only be dealt with under the heading of domestic security. Yet the burning cars in the banlieues of Paris, the local terror of inconspicuous youths in English immigrant neighbourhoods and the violence at the Rütli School (more) in Berlin have taught us that simply policing the Fortress of Europe is no real answer to these problems. The children of former immigrants, and their children's children, have long been part of our society. But since they are simultaneously not a part of it, they pose a challenge to civil society, not the Minister of the Interior. And the challenge we face is to respect the different nature of foreign cultures and religious communities while including them in national civil solidarity.
At first glance the integration problem has nothing to do with the future of the European Union, since every national society must deal with it in its own way. And yet it could also hold the solution to a further difficulty. The second objection of Euro-sceptics is that there could never be a United States of Europe, because the necessary underpinnings are lacking. In truth the key question is whether it is possible to expand civil solidarity trans-nationally, across Europe. At the same time, a common European identity will develop all the quicker, the better the dense fabric of national culture in the respective states can integrate citizens of other ethnic or religious origins. Integration is not a one-way street. When it is successful, it can inspire strong national cultures to become more porous, more sensitive and more receptive both domestically and abroad. In Germany, for example, the more a harmonious coexistence with citizens of Turkish origin becomes a matter of course, the better we will be able to understand other European citizens – from the Portuguese winegrower to the Polish plumber. In opening up domestically, self-contained cultures can also open up to each other.
The integration problem hits a raw nerve in European nation-states. These developed into democratic constitutional states through the forced creation of a romantically inspired national consciousness that absorbed other loyalties. Without the moving force of nationalism, the Bavarians and the Rhinelanders, the Bretons and Occitanians, the Scots and the Welsh, the Sicilians and the Calabrians, the Catalans and the Andalusians would never have merged to become citizens of democratic nations. Because of this tightly-knit and easily combustible social fabric, the oldest national states react far more sensitively to the integration problem than immigration societies like the USA or Australia, from whom we can learn a great deal.
Whether we're dealing with the integration of gastarbeiter families or citizens from the former colonies, the lesson is the same. There can be no integration without a broadening of our own horizons, and without a readiness to tolerate a broader spectrum of odours, thoughts and what can be painful cognitive dissonances. In addition, Western and Northern European secular societies are faced with the vitality of foreign religions, which in turn lend local confession new significance. Immigrants of other faiths are as much a stimulus for believers as for non-believers.
The Muslim across the way, if I can take the current situation as an example, confronts Christian citizens with competing religious truths. And he makes secular citizens conscious of the phenomenon of public religion. Provided they react sensibly, believers will be reminded of the ideas, practices and attitudes in their Church that fell afoul of democracy and human rights well into the 20th century. Secular citizens, for their part, will recognise that they have taken matters too lightly by seeing their religious counterparts as an endangered species, and by viewing the freedom of religious practice as a kind of conservation principle.
Successful integration is a reciprocal learning process. Here in Germany, Muslims are under great time and adaptation pressure. The liberal state demands of all religious communities without exception that they recognise religious pluralism, the competence of institutionalised sciences in questions of secular knowledge and the universal principles of modern law. And it guarantees basic rights within the family. It avenges violence, including the coercion of the consciences of its own members. But the transformation of consciousness that will enable these norms to be internalised requires a self-reflexive opening of our national ways of living.
Those who denounce this assertion as "the capitulation of the West" are taken in by the silly war cry of liberal hawks. "Islamofascism" is no more a palpable opponent than the war on terrorism is a "war". Here in Europe, the assertion of constitutional norms is such an uncontested premise of cohabitation that the hysterical cry for the protection of our "values" comes across like semantic armament against an unspecified domestic enemy. Punishing violence and combating hatred require calm self-consciousness, not rabble-rousing. People who proclaim against their better knowledge that the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Orhan Pamuk is proof of an unavoidable clash of civilizations are themselves propagating such a clash. We should not follow in the footsteps of George W. Bush in militarising the Western spirit as well.
In Germany, the tensions between Christianity and Islam that have been mounting since 2001 recently set off an exciting, high-level competition among confessions. The subject at issue is the compatibility of faith and knowledge. For Pope Benedict XVI, the reasonableness of belief results from the Hellenisation of Christianity, while for Bishop Huber it results from the post-Reformation meeting of the Gospel with the post-metaphysical thinking of Kant and Kierkegaard. Both sides however betrayed a bit too much intellectual pride. The liberal state, for its part, must demand that the compatibility of faith and reason be imposed on all religious confessions. This quality must not be claimed as the exclusive domain of a specifically Western religious tradition. <
The essence of private property rights contains three components: the owner’s right to make decisions about the uses of what’s deemed his property; his right to acquire, keep and dispose of his property; and his right to enjoy the income, as well as bear losses, resulting from his decisions. If one or more of those three elements is missing, private property rights are not present. Private property rights also restrain one from interfering with other people’s rights. Private property rights have long been seen as vital to personal liberty. James Madison, in an 1829 speech at the Virginia Constitutional Convention, said: “It is sufficiently obvious that persons and property are the two great subjects on which governments are to act and that the rights of persons and the rights of property are the objects for the protection of which government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.”
Something for twenty-something, know-nothing socialist hipsters such as Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow 'ocasionalists' to think about.
But they are all corrupt, potentially if not actually, in part if not in whole, and constantly in need of reform. The Roman Catholic Church is no exception despite its claim to divine sanction and guidance.
When an institution abandons its charter and strays from its founding purpose and substitutes the purpose of mere self-preservation for the secular benefit of its members, then it becomes an organizational hustle and ceases to deserve our respect.
You should be skeptical of all institutions. Like the houses here in the Sonoran desert, they either have termites or will get them.
But institutional corruption reflects personal corruption. Institutional corruption is the heart's corruption writ large. So you should be skeptical of all persons, including the one in the mirror.
Especially him, since he is the one you have direct control over.
I just read your recent post on the corruption of institutions and this jumped right out at me:
When an institution abandons its charter and strays from its founding purpose and substitutes the purpose of mere self-preservation for the secular benefit of its members, then it becomes an organizational hustle and ceases to deserve our respect.
For quite some time now, I've been thinking that this corruption is essentially an inevitable outcome. It's a slow process that few seem to notice but, over time, the original goals of the institution become goals in name only and the end becomes the furthering of the institution itself.
That is, there's an inevitable inversion of the means and ends that take place over time. Initially, the institution is a means to the end of the stated goals but, eventually, the institution becomes the end itself with the stated goals only a means to feeding and growing the institution.
It's reassuring to read that there are others that 'see the termites'.
The corruption does seem inevitable, but the inversion of means and ends is usually only partial and not total. Consider a charity set up to feed the poor. It may start out by fulfilling its founding purpose, but gradually it becomes corrupt as more and more of the contributions are used to feather the nests of the charity's officers and to perpetuate the operation in a building in a fine location with lavish furnishings, etc. Suppose 90% of the contributions go to so-called 'operating expenses' and only 10% go to the needy. Such an outfit is well on its way to becoming a pure 'hustle' although it is not there yet. Anyone who contributes to it is a chump.
I contribute $800 per year to St. Mary's Food Bank. According to Charity Navigator, it passes on over 95% of monies received to the needy. So I'm not a chump. It is a nice question, though, whether when one does good, one should let others know about it. There are plausible arguments on both sides of the question. I set a good example by advertising my alms giving. On the other hand there is Matthew 6:3: "But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." (KJV)
Can bloated, inefficient Federal agencies justify their existence in terms of the good they do, if any? The Department of Education is mainly just a hustle for the benefit of the people who work for it. What about the Social Security Administration? Clearly not as bad, but . . . .
Examples are easily multiplied. It is a very large topic indeed.
Fareed Zakaria complains of a threat to democracy -- from the Left. Conservatives, he notes, are regularly denied a platform. If you have been following the news, you know that Stephen K. Bannon is a recent example of one denied.
But how is this assault on the classically liberal values of free speech and open inquiry a threat to 'democracy'?
That's the part I don't get. If you think about the matter for more than ten seconds you should be able to grasp that majority rule is no guarantee of the classically liberal values just mentioned and other such values that I haven't mentioned. The majority could easily decide that free speech and open inquiry are not values, or are values only if their exercise is not perceived as 'hurtful' by any group of highly sensitive people.
Democracy is consistent with both the upholding and the abolition of classically liberal values.
It follows that the suppression of dissent (whether from the Left or the Right) is not an attack on democracy but an attack on free speech, open debate, and the untrammeled search for truth.
'Democracy' is treated as an honorific by almost all journalists and pundits. But it does not deserve its high honorific status.
In any case, the USA is not a democracy but a constitutional republic.
Suppose it is true, as Zakaria thinks, that President Trump is attacking the free press, and suppose further that he is out to destroy the Fourth Estate. (This is plainly not the case, but just suppose.) How would that be an attack on democracy given that the man was democratically and duly elected?
And how democratic is it when unelected Deep State operatives work day and night to undermine his presidency?
(I am beginning to write like a damned journalist what with the one-sentence paragraphs. But I have got to get my message out to people corrupted by journalese.)
There is a lot of talk, and a slew of new books, about (democratic) norms these days and how President Trump is flouting them. Your humble correspondent has speed-read two or three of them. This crisis-of-democracy genre wouldn't exist at all if the populist revolt hadn't put paid to Hillary's (mainly merely personal) ambitions.
But what are norms in this context? This from an article in Dissent:
The crisis-of-democracy authors are disciples of “norms,” the unwritten rules that keep political opponents from each other’s throat and enable a polity to plod along.
[. . .]
One problem with identifying the protection of political norms with the defense of democracy is that such norms are intrinsically conservative (in a small-c sense) because they achieve stability by maintaining unspoken habits—which institutions you defer to, which policies you do not question, and so on. As Corey Robin pointed outwhen Levitsky and Ziblatt’s book appeared, democracy has essentially been a norm-breaking political force wherever it has been strong. It has broken norms about who can speak in public, who can hold power, and which issues are even considered political, and it has pressed these points from the household and neighborhood to Congress and the White House.
Even when norms do not lean to the right—for instance, the norm of honoring previous Supreme Court decisions is part of the reason the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade has not been overturned—they are a depoliticized way of talking about political conflict.
And we certainly can't have that, can we? The article is a hard Left critique of the establishment liberal crisis-of-democracy authors.
The founding example of entryism was provided by Leon Trotsky and the “French turn”. In 1934, the Russian revolutionary persuaded his supporters to dissolve the Communist League into the Socialist Party in order to maximise their influence. The term has since been applied to any group that enters a larger organisation with the intention of subverting its policies and objectives.
Labour’s most notable experience of entryism came with the Trotskyist Militant, which won control of the party’s youth wing (Labour Party Young Socialists) and a number of constituency parties. After its proscription by the National Executive Committee in 1982, hundreds of the group’s members were expelled during Neil Kinnock’s leadership, including two MPs (Terry Fields and Dave Nellist). Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, was a Militant supporter though never formally joined.
“Operation Ice Pick” was the name given to Labour’s efforts to prevent entryists from voting in the 2015 leadership election, after the means of assassination used against Trotsky. Those barred included members of the Socialist Party, the successor group to Militant. The pro-Corbyn organisation Momentum has similarly banned outsiders from joining after MPs warned that it could become a vehicle for entryism.
Usage
Responding to charges of infiltration, Jeremy Corbyn said: "The entryism I see is lots of young people who were hitherto not very excited by politics, coming in for the first time."
Ice pick? How many times do I have to explain that it was an ICE AXE, a much nastier implement, that Ramon Mercader drove into the skull of Leon Trotsky on 20 August 1940. Wikipedia: "On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked in his study by Mercader, who used an ice axe as a weapon.[137] "
The near-Orwellian abuse of this word should disturb you. The elitist operatives of the Deep State attempt to bring down President Donald Trump by any and all means for supposedly destroying our 'democracy' -- when he was democratically elected according to the rules of our system of government, and they are not men and women 'of the people.' To hijack Hillary: they are not 'deplorable' enough for that.
At this point some leftist is sure to jump up and scream, "But Trump lost the popular vote." Yes he did. So screaming, leftists betray their ignorance of our system of government. Ours is a republic, not a pure democracy. The people have a say, to be sure, but only via representatives. I now hand off to Walter E. Williams for a civics lesson leftists are in dire need of:
Many people whine that using the Electoral College instead of the popular vote and majority rule is undemocratic. I’d say that they are absolutely right. Not deciding who will be the president by majority rule is not democracy.
But the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or any other of our founding documents.
How about a few quotations expressed by the Founders about democracy?
In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wanted to prevent rule by majority faction, saying, “Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”
John Adams warned in a letter, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.”
Edmund Randolph said, “That in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”
Then-Chief Justice John Marshall observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”
The Founders expressed contempt for the tyranny of majority rule, and throughout our Constitution, they placed impediments to that tyranny. Two houses of Congress pose one obstacle to majority rule. That is, 51 senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators.
The president can veto the wishes of 535 members of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.
To change the Constitution requires not a majority but a two-thirds vote of both houses, and if an amendment is approved, it requires ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.
Finally, the Electoral College is yet another measure that thwarts majority rule. It makes sure that the highly populated states—today, mainly 12 on the east and west coasts, cannot run roughshod over the rest of the nation. That forces a presidential candidate to take into consideration the wishes of the other 38 states.
Those Americans obsessed with rule by popular majorities might want to get rid of the Senate, where states, regardless of population, have two senators.
Should we change representation in the House of Representatives to a system of proportional representation and eliminate the guarantee that each state gets at least one representative?
Currently, seven states with populations of 1 million or fewer have one representative, thus giving them disproportionate influence in Congress.
While we’re at it, should we make all congressional acts by majority rule? When we’re finished with establishing majority rule in Congress, should we then move to change our court system, which requires unanimity in jury decisions, to a simple majority rule?
My question is: Is it ignorance of or contempt for our Constitution that fuels the movement to abolish the Electoral College?
To answer Professor Williams' question, it is contempt and a desire to destroy our system of government, the greatest the world has ever seen. That is part of their project to "fundamentally transform" the USA.
For the founders, government has one fundamental purpose: to protect person and property from conquest, violence, theft and other dangers foreign and domestic. The secure enjoyment of life, liberty and property enables the “pursuit of happiness.” Government cannot make us happy, but it can give us the safety we need as the condition for happiness. It does so by securing our rights, which nature grants but leaves to us to enforce, through the establishment of just government, limited in its powers and focused on its core responsibility.
This is an excellent statement. Good government secures our rights; it does not grant them. Whether they come from nature, or from God, or from nature qua divine creation are further questions that can be left to the philosophers. The main thing is that our rights are not up for democratic grabs, nor are they subject to the whims of any bunch of elitists that manages to insinuate itself into power.
Michael Anton (Publius Decius Mus), in a review of Thomas G. West, The Political Theory of the American Founding speaks of an "error,"
. . . from a certain quarter of the contemporary Right, which holds that any appeal to equal natural rights amounts to “propositionism”—as in, the “proposition that all men are created equal”—which in turn inevitably leads to the twin evils of statist leveling and the explicit or tacit denial that there is anything distinct[ive] about the American nation. In this telling, “all men are created equal” is dangerous nonsense that means “all men are exactly the same.” Among other dismal policies we are allegedly compelled to enact if we recognize the existence of equal natural rights are redistribution, racial quotas, and open borders.
Refuting this is easy, and well-trodden, ground.
[. . .]
West does so, in perhaps the clearest articulation of natural human equality penned since the founding itself. The idea is elegantly simple: all men are by nature equally free and independent. Nature has not—as she has, for example, in the case of certain social insects— delineated some members of the human species as natural rulers and others as natural workers or slaves. (If you doubt this, ask yourself why—unlike in the case of, say, bees—workers and rulers are not clearly delineated in ways that both groups acknowledge and accept. Why is it that no man—even of the meanest capacities—ever consents to slavery, which can be maintained only with frequent recourse to the lash?) No man may therefore justly rule any other without that other’s consent. And no man may injure any other or infringe on his rights, except in the just defense of his own rights. The existence of equal natural rights requires an equally natural and obligatory duty of all men to respect the identical rights of others.
I find this articulation of human equality far from clear. What bothers me is the sudden inferential move in the passage quoted from the factual to the normative. I agree arguendo that it is a fact about human beings that
1) No man ever consents to slavery
but I don't see how we can validly infer from (1) the normative claim that
2) No man may justly rule any other without that other's consent.
I maintain that slavery is a grave moral evil and a violation of a basic human right, one possessed by all humans and possessed by all equally. My point, however, is that the moral impermissibility of slavery does not immediately follow from the fact, if it is a fact, that no human ever consents to be enslaved. If I don't consent to your enslaving me, how does that make it morally wrong for you to enslave me?
The problem is that the notion of a natural right is less than perspicuous. Part of what it means to say that a right is natural is that it is not conventional. We don't have rights to life, liberty, and property because some body of men has decided to grant them to us. We have them inherently or intrinsically. We don't get them from the State; we have them whether or not any state exists to secure them as a good state must, or to deprive us of them as a bad state will.
Rights are logically antecedent to contingent social and political arrangements, and thus logically antecedent to the positive law (the law enacted by a legislature). One can express this by saying that rights are not conventional but natural. But then 'natural' just means 'not conventional.'
Suppose our rights as individual persons come not from nature but from God. Then their non-conventionality would be secured. Now it would be good if we could proceed in political philosophy without bringing God into it. But then we face the problem of explaining how norms could be ingredient in nature.
Perhaps someone can explain to me how my right not to be enslaved could be grounded in my being an animal in the material world. How could any of my rights as an individual person be grounded in my being an animal in nature? I am open for instruction.
One could just insist that rights and norms are grounded in nature herself. But that would be metaphysical bluster and not an explanation.
To put it another way, I would like someone to explain how 'natural right' is not a contradictio in adiecto, provided, of course, that by a natural right we mean more than a non-conventional right, but a right that is non-conventional and somehow ingredient in or grounded in nature.
And let's never forget the obvious: as natural beings, as part of the fauna of the space-time system, we are manifestly not equal either as individuals or as groups.
So I say that if you want to uphold intrinsic and unalienable rights, rights that do not have their origin in human decisions and conventions, and if you want to uphold rights for all humans regardless of their empirical strengths and weaknesses, and the same rights for all, then you must move beyond nature to nature's God who is the source of the personhood of each one of us human animals, and the ground of equality of persons. No God, no equality of persons and no equality of rights.
It seems clear that something like this is what the second paragraph of the Declaration means with its talk of men being CREATED equal and being ENDOWED by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights. The rights come from above (God) and not from below (nature).
This is why it is either stupid or highly uncharitable when neo-reactionary conservatives read the plain words of the Declaration as meaning that all humans are empirically equal as animals in nature. It can't mean that for the simple reason that no one in his right mind, and certainly not the great men of the Founding, could believe that all humans are empirically equal either actually or potentially.
Suppose there is no God. Then talk of equal rights is empty. We may continue to talk in those vacuous terms, somehow hiding the vacuity from ourselves, but then we would be 'running on fumes.' People may continue to believe in equal rights, but their belief would be groundless.
The trouble with the view I am recommending is that it requires a lot of heavy-duty metaphysics of God and Man. This metaphysics is widely contested and certainly not obvious. But the same goes for the naturalism that denies God and puts man back among the animals. It too is widely and very reasonably contested and certainly not obvious.
Welcome to the doxastic-epistemic side of the human predicament.
Now I would like you to surf on over to Malcolm Pollack's place and read this and the posts immediately subsequent to it, i. e., scroll up.
P. S. I didn't get around to propositionism/propositionalism. This discussion of Paul Gottfried will have to do for now.
It is a mistake to confuse 'classical' Marxism with cultural Marxism.
The former is characterized by the labor theory of economic value; the call for the abolition of private property; collective ownership of the means of production, i.e., socialism in the strict sense of the term; historical materialism (HISTOMAT) and dialectical materialism (DIAMAT); belief in objective truth (see V. I. Lenin); the Hegel-inspired belief that history is being driven in a definite direction by an in-built nisus towards a secular eschaton*, in the case of Marx & Co., the dictatorship of the proletariat and the classless society . . . You know the drill.
But as Paul Gottfried points out, cultural Marxism is a horse of a different color. In particular, it is not usefully or reasonably labelled socialist. Gottfried's insights (in this article) need to be taken on board, not that I agree with everything the man says elsewhere.
____________________
*A really deep understanding of secular eschatology such as we find it in Marx requires a critical retrieval of Christian eschatology. Please forgive my 'critical retrieval.' Back in old Boston town, in the early-to-mid-seventies, I was a bit of a Continental philosopher. I sipped a little of the Leftist Kool-Aid, but never got drunk on it, despite all the Habermas, Horkheimer, and Adorno I read. Gott sei dank!
Perhaps I can thank Heidegger for saving me. My intense occupation with his writings and his Seinsfrage drove me back to Aquinas for the onto-theological approach to Being and to Frege and the boys for the logical approach.
This essay, which William F. Buckley published in December, 1985 in National Review, is bristling with insights and distinctions essential for clear thinking about political matters. (HT: Malcolm Pollack)
The late Lawrence Auster offers a sympathetic but critical perspective.
I'm very busy now. Commentary on Sobran's dazzling essay will have to wait.
Hayek’s last book, The Fatal Conceit, published in 1988 when he was approaching ninety, returned to the topic of the spontaneous order, which is “of human action but not of human design.” The fatal conceit of intellectuals, he said, is to think that smart people can design an economy or a society better than the apparently chaotic interactions of millions of people. Such intellectuals fail to realize how much they don’t know or how a market makes use of all the localized knowledge each of us possesses.
[. . .]
Reagan and Thatcher admired Hayek, but he always insisted that he was a liberal in the classical sense, not a conservative. The last chapter of “The Constitution of Liberty” was titled “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” He pointed out that the conservative “has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike.”
You won't hear about Hayek and his ideas in the the leftist seminaries, which is what most of our universities have become. Yet another reason to bring down the Left.
Although I am experiencing some salutary pressure from the neo-reactionary direction, I continue to hold that a sound conservatism must incorporate the insights of the classical liberals. How to pull this off in concreto is of course a difficult question given the limitations of libertarianism.
Libertarians seem to think that we are all rational actors who know, and are willing and able to act upon, our own long-term best self-interest. This is manifestly not the case. That is why drug legalization and open borders are disastrous. They are particularly disastrous for a welfare state, which is what we have, and which is not going to "wither away." Sure, if libertarians were in charge there wouldn't be a welfare state; but the Libertarian Party of the USA -- founded by USC philosopher John Hospers in 1970 by the way -- will never gain power. They are the "Losertarian Party" to cop a moniker from Michael Medved. Remember the clown they ran for president in 2016, the former governor of New Mexico? I've already forgotten his name. Something Johnson?
Libertarians have something to learn from conservatives. But go too far in the particularistic conservative direction and you end up with the tribalism of the Alt-Right . . . .
Perhaps we need to resurrect some version of fusionism. It might help with the current political 'fission' and 'centrifugality.' No doubt you catch my drift.
This entry continues the 'religious test' discussion. (Last installment here.) The Canadian writes,
I agree that there's no incoherence in a statement such as "(1) The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and disallows religious tests. (2) The Constitution guarantees these things subject to the proviso that the religion in question is compatible with the principles of the American founding." But why is the most reasonable interpretation one that projects such a proviso on to the text? What are the criteria for a reasonable interpretation? On the one hand, a reasonable interpretation might be one that results in a constitution that reasonable people could accept. Naturally, if this is the criterion, no reasonable interpretation can produce a constitution that, in practice, would create a society where that same constitution would be destroyed. On the other hand, it might simply be one that's adequately supported by the textual evidence (and other evidence, e.g., reasonably hypotheses about the authors' intentions). Or maybe a reasonable interpretation is subject to both constraints. In any case there is a tension between the two. As you say, there's really no good textual evidence (or any other kind, as far as I know) to indicate that the Constitution really does implicitly limit the scope of religious freedom so as to preclude the freedom to practice traditional Islam, or that it limits the scope of 'No religious test' so as to allow for tests with respect to Islam. I'd argue that a reasonable interpretation in the second sense--the most reasonable one, in that sense--is unreasonable in the first sense.
"What are the criteria for a reasonable interpretation?" I agree that there is no evading this difficult question. One answer is that a reasonable interpretation is an internally coherent one. The First Amendment guarantees the "free exercise" of religion and "freedom of speech," inter alia. Now if "no religious test" (Article VI, section III) is interpreted in so latitudinarian a fashion as to allow Sharia-supporting Muslims to gain political power, then we are on the road to an internal contradiction. For these Muslims, once in power, will of course try to shut down the free exercise of religions other than Islam, and they will attempt to prohibit freedom of speech if it involves any criticism, no matter how respectful, of Muhammad or of any aspect of their religion. They will have used the Constitution to destroy the Constitution. They will have exploited our freedom of religion to eliminate freedom of religion, and our freedom of speech to eliminate freedom of speech.
It seems to me that the Constitution cannot be interpreted so as to allow the emergence of the following logical contradiction:
a) Under no circumstances shall (i) the freedom to practice the religion of one's choice (or to refrain from the practice of any religion) be prohibited by the government, or (ii) the freedom to express one's view publicly be abridged.
b) Under some circumstances (e.g., when enough Muslim fundamentalists gain power) the freedom of religion and the freedom of speech many be prohibited and abridged.
Note that the (a)-(b) dyad is logically inconsistent: the limbs cannot both be true. What we have here is a strict logical contradiction.
But to embrace a logical contradiction is the height of unreasonableness.
I conclude that to interpret the Constitution in such a way that it allows for the emergence of the above contradiction is unreasonable. The solution is obvious to me: one cannot allow a destructive political ideology such as Islam to count as a religion for purposes of Constitutional interpretation. I am conceding that Islam is a religion and not a mere political ideology masquerading as a religion, and I am conceding that it is a religion in its own right and not a Christian heresy; the point is that it is a religion-cum-political ideology that is incompatible with the principles and values of the American founding.
Therefore, Islam ought not count as a religion when it comes to interpreting the Constitution. It may well be a way to God for those brought up on it and who know no better way, and it deserves respect for that reason. But this is no reason to abstract from its totalitarian and theocratic political nature, a nature at war with our political principles.
The Canadian continues:
In any case, I think that for your argument you need the first notion of reasonable interpretation. But then there's a problem: Leftists, whose ideas about reasonable political principles are very different from ours, can now argue on a similar basis that we should just ignore the seemingly plain meaning of the Constitution in cases where it conflicts with their values. For instance, they can argue that since it's just not reasonable to let citizens buy AR-15s, the 2nd Amendment must be interpreted in such a way that citizens don't have that right. That seems worrisome. If there isn't even a generally agreed meaning for the constitution, the only way to politically resolve such disagreements is by some kind of debate over ultimate aims or values; but I know you agree with me that that isn't likely to happen either. So it seems wise to insist that the constitution's meaning is the meaning of the text, not the meaning that we think it would have or should have in order to be most reasonable. But then we're back to the problem that the text just doesn't seem to exclude Islamic freedom of religion, or to allow for a "religious test" in that case--or even to exclude the possibility that the Constitution is just internally inconsistent in some respects...
In many cases there is no "plain meaning." The meaning has to be 'excavated.' Does "establishment of religion" have a plain meaning in the First Amendment? (That's a rhetorical question.) "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ." The meaning is open to interpretation. Or take the Second Amendment:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Does 2A bear its meaning on its sleeve? Of course not. What is the Militia? Is the right individual or collective? Does the initial clause supply a reason, or the only reason, in justification of the right to keep and bear arms? I have argued elsewhere that it supplies a reason, not the only reason. I am sure many if not most would disagree.
So I deny the Canadian's assumption that the Constitution has a plain meaning that can just be 'read off' the text. There is no avoiding interpretation in the light of principles that are not themselves articulated in the Constitution. The Law of Non-Contradiction, for example, is not stated in the Constitution. We bring that principle to the text, and reasonably so.
Or consider the Principle of Charity in interpretation. To save keystrokes I won't formulate the principle. My astute readers know more or less what it is. Well, does "All men are created equal" in the Declaration have a plain meaning? There are benighted souls who think it implies the empirical equality of all human beings. But this violates the Principle of Charity since if the declaration in the Declaration were so interpreted it would come out false! The Charity principle, however, is not to be found in any of the founding documents; we bring it to the text and we do so reasonably.
There is no avoiding interpretation. The text does not have a plain meaning. The other extreme, however, is far worse. There are those who say that the Constitution means whatever SCOTUS says it means. But then there is no text; there is a tabula rasa upon which people in black robes write whatever they want. The most SCOTUS can do is decide upon an enforceable meaning among candidate possibilities that find support in the text. That alone is the reasonable view.
For example, are 2A rights collective or individual? It was decided that they are individual. SCOTUS in this decision came to the 'right' decision. Yes, my use of 'right' is tendentious. More on this problem below.
What I am saying, then, is that there is a text, not a tabula rasa; the text has a meaning; the meaning is not obvious; the meaning is subject to interpretation in the light of principles brought to the text.
But whose principles are these? Those of a reasonable person. But what constitutes reasonableness? Here is where the crunch comes, as my Canadian interlocutor fully appreciates. SCOTUS has the power to lay down the law and enforce an interpretation of the Constitution. But who has the power to decide what the principles of rationality are? Logically prior question: Are the principles of rationality matters of decision at all?
The Canadian concludes:
We might be back to a recurring deeper disagreement here. I don't think that any system of abstract principles and values is enough to provide a framework for a workable society. I think some kind of pre-rational or pre-conceptual horizon of meaning and practice and natural community is the basis; explicit principles and values have a role, but only when they're understood by everyone to operate within that specific cultural world. The principles of "no religious test" or "freedom of religion" were just fine when they were only being applied to a fairly small range of fairly similar religions, practiced by relatively similar people. (And, sure, there were always some who were not so similar--Africans, Amerindians--but they were small in number and had no real influence.) Once every religion on earth was included in American society, that was bound to create insoluble problems. Of course, one option is to simply say that there will be freedom of religion for a specific list of religions, and only those ones. But that seems contrary to other traditional American principles. I suspect that the very idea of "religion" that we in the west tend to take for granted is really an artefact of our specific religious and cultural heritage. There is probably no useful general account of "religion" across all human cultures. So it would be unwise to propose any kind of freedom for that kind of thing.
I agree that abstract principles and values are not enough. They have to reflect a (temporally) prior pre-conceptual shared understanding that is taken for granted. The principles and values cannot be imposed ab extra, but must be a sort of distillate or articulation on the conceptual plane of what is already tacitly understood and accepted at the pre-conceptual level. Otherwise we will argue about the principles.
Argument about first principles is the province of philosophy and is legitimate there. In philosophy, nothing is immune to scrutiny. I should think that 'nothing immune to scrutiny' is a constitutive rule of the philosophical 'game' or enterprise. But if our politics becomes a philosophical free-for-all, then we are in trouble.
There is no place for dogmas in philosophy. But in politics and religion we seem to need them. We need propositions that are unquestionably accepted.
For example, if we don't all accept that there is a sense in which we are all equal, equal as rights-possessors, then we are in deep trouble. And if we don't all accept that certain ideologies such as Islam are incompatible with the principles enshrined in the U. S. Constitution, then we are in deep trouble. Examples are easily multiplied.
I think we agree on why we are in the mess we are in. As you put it, "Once every religion on earth was included in American society, that was bound to create insoluble problems." But benign non-Christian religions such as Buddhism are not the problem. The problem is Islam. The solution is extreme vetting of immigrants from Muslim countries. "Of course, one option is to simply say that there will be freedom of religion for a specific list of religions, and only those ones. But that seems contrary to other traditional American principles."
I disagree. Which traditional American principle are you referring to? Don't tell me "freedom of religion." Islam is not a religion in a sense that could allow it to be on a list of acceptable religions given American principles.
Can a multi-cultural society flourish? There is reason to be skeptical. A society cannot flourish without shared principles and values. But the latter presuppose and grow out of a shared public culture. Acquiescence in and assimilation to that shared culture -- Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian -- must be demanded of all would-be immigrants. Otherwise we will break apart and become easy pickings for foreign aggressors.
I suspect it is already too late to turn things around peacefully. Civil war is a real possibility.
Contemporary liberals support separation of church and state, and so do I. But they have no problem with using the coercive power of the state to impose leftist ideology. Now leftism is not a religion, pace Dennis Prager (see article below), but it is very much like one, and if you can see what is wrong with allowing contentious theological doctrines to drive politics, then you ought to be able to see what is wrong with allowing the highly contentious ideological commitments of leftism to drive politics, most of which revolve around the leftist trinity (Prager) of race, gender, and class.
If "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ," as per the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, then it ought to make no law that establishes the quasi-religion of leftism.
Even more important than separation of church and state these days is separation of leftism and state.
This is a large topic; for today, just one example of what I am getting at.
It is a tenet of contemporary liberalism that opposition to same-sex 'marriage' is 'discriminatory' and that opponents of it are 'bigots.' Now this is both obtuse and slanderous for reasons we supplied in earlier entries. But liberals have a right to their opinions, even if it is to be wished that they would give some thought to the corresponding obligation to form correct opinions. Be that as it may, liberals have a right to their benighted views, and we ought to tolerate them. After all, we too are liberals in a much older, and a defensible, sense: we believe in toleration, open inquiry, free speech, individual liberty, etc. And we are liberal and self-critical enough to countenance the possibility that perhaps we are the benighted ones.
But toleration has limits.
What we ought not tolerate is the sort of coercion of the individual by the state that we find in the case of the Washington State florist who refused to sell floral arrangements to be used at a same-sex 'marriage' ceremony. This woman has no animus against gays, and had sold flowers to the homosexual couple. But she was not about to violate her own conscience by providing flowers for a same-sex event. As a result she was sued by the Washington State attorney general, and then by the ACLU.
Now do you see what is wrong with that?
The state says to the individual:
You have a right to your religious and philosophical beliefs, but only so long as you keep them to yourself and don't allow them to be expressed in your relations with your fellow citizens. You may believe what you want in the privacy of your own mind, but you may not translate your beliefs into social or political action. But we are free to translate our leftist 'theology' into rules and regulations that diminish your liberty.
What then becomes of the "free exercise of religion" spoken of in the First Amendment? It is out the window. The totalitarian state has taken one more step in its assault on the liberty of the individual.
The totalitarian state of the contemporary liberal says to the individual: you have no right to live your beliefs unless we allow you to; but we have every right to impose our leftist beliefs on you and force you to live as we see fit.
Here are some home truths that cannot be repeated too often:
We are not the property of the state.
Our rights and liberties do not come from the state, but are logically antecedent to it, inscribed as they are in the very nature of things.
We do not have to justify our keeping of what is ours; the state has to justify its taking.
But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants, many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million, composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.
Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation and one people?
There is none. Most people with a bit of life experience know that one can get along and interact productively with only some people. There has to be a broad base of shared agreement on all sorts of things. For example, there ought to be only one language in the U. S. for all public purposes, English. It was a huge mistake when voting forms were allowed to be published in foreign languages. Only legal immigrants should be allowed in, and assimilation must be demanded of them.
No comity without commonality as one of my aphorisms has it.
The Left, however, wants the end of America as she was founded to be, "one nation and one people." That is why leftists support the illegal invasion from the south. But being mendacious leftists they will never openly admit this, but instead speak with Orwellian obfuscation of "comprehensive immigration reform."
The enemy has been identified.
Do not think of leftists and 'progressives' as fellow citizens; they are merely among us as disorderly elements and domestic enemies. There can be no peace with them because they represent an 'existential threat.' Not to our physical existence so much as to our way of life, which is of course more important than our mere physical existence as animals.
But I must add, contra certain of the Alt Right, that "one people" should not be understood racially or ethnically. An enlightened nationalism is not a white nationalism. America is of course 'a proposition nation.' You will find the propositions in the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence.
I don't give a flying enchilada whether you are Hispanic or Asian. If you immigrated legally, accept the propositions, drop the hyphens, and identify as an American, then I say you are one of us. I'll even celebrate the culinary diversity you contribute.
That being understood, it is also true that whites discovered these America-constitutive propositions and are well-equipped to appreciate and uphold them, and better equipped than some other groups. That is a fact that a sane immigration policy must reflect.
My view is eminently reasonable and balanced, don't you think? It navigates between the Scylla of destructive leftist globalist internationalism and the Charybdis of racist identity-political particularism.
'Democracy' is one of those words that is almost always used in a commendatory and non-pejorative way, even though a little thought should uncover several negative features of the term's referent.
This is a large and important topic. I will just touch on one point this morning.
The title is instructively false. If the people north of the Rio Grande, both U. S. citizens and illegal aliens, decide to do away with political borders, then we would have a people without borders that is a people with democracy.
Is that not obvious?
Just give everyone who lives in the U. S. the vote, regardless of citizenship status, and at the same allow all who want to come into the country to come. You will then have achieved, by democratic means, a borderless country and a borderless people.
Isn't this what the Democrat Party wants?
If the people decide, then they can decide to do away with political borders, or their enforcement, which for practical purposes amounts to the same. (A political border that is not enforced is, practically speaking, no border at all. It is like a speed limit that is not enforced. Unenforced speed limits limit no one's speed.)
So why does the above-cited opinion piece have such a moronic title? It is because people foolishly think that democracy is this incredibly wonderful thing about which no on must ever speak a critical word.
But if you can think at all, you must be able to grasp that there are certain principles and values that ought not be up for democratic grabs. One of these is that a nation without enforceable and enforced borders is no nation all, a corollary of which is that there is a distinction between citizen and non-citizen.
The U. S. is not a democracy but a representative republic.
Addendum (4/4)
Here is another example of the fetishization of the word 'democracy' in an otherwise good article:
Nations that don't control their borders cease to exist. Their laws no longer mean anything. Democracy ceases to function. It's a constant lesson from history, one the U.S. would be wise to heed.
It is not democracy that ceases to function but the constitutionally-based representative republic. If the people decide to do away with the rule of law, how is that undemocratic?
If the people decide, then they can decide who the people are. They can decide that the people are those present in a given geographical area, whether citizens or non-citizens. Or they can decide that only 'people of color' are real people and that whites are 'racists.'
Remember how George W. Bush used to go on about bringing democracy to the Middle East? The knucklehead just loved that word 'democracy.' Sounds good until the people decide for Sharia. Does democracy then become undemocratic?
Opposing as I do pure democracy, I am not advocating monarchy or anything like it. I am advocating a return to the principles of the American founding.
It is a plain fact that humans are not empirically equal either as individuals or as groups. Why then is there so much politically correct resistance to this truth? It is because it flies in the face of a central dogma of the Left, namely, that deep down we are all the same, want the same things, have the same abilities, share the same values, and so on. So if women are 'under-represented' among the engineers, for example, then the only way to explain this, given the leftist equality dogma, is in terms of something nefarious such as sexism. For if we are all equal empirically, then the 'under-representation' -- a word I enclose in sneer quotes because of its conflation of the factual and the normative -- cannot be explained in terms of a difference in interests and values or a difference in mathematical aptitude. (Remember what happened to Lawrence Summers of Harvard?)
The dogma is false, yet widely and fervently believed. Anyone who dares offend against it faces severe consequences. Amy Wax, for example:
A University of Pennsylvania law school professor will no longer teach required courses following outcry over a video in which she suggested — falsely, according to the school — that black students seldom graduated high in their class.
Amy Wax, a tenured professor, will continue to teach electives in her areas of expertise but will be removed from teaching first-year curriculum courses, Penn Law Dean Theodore Ruger said in a statement Wednesday.
Ruger said Wax spoke “disparagingly and inaccurately” when she claimed last year that she had “rarely, rarely” seen a black student finish in the top half of their class.
Professor Wax spoke the truth, but the truth is no defense in the court of the politically correct. In present-day academe, all must toe the party line and woe to him who doesn't. The universities have become leftist seminaries.
What explains the fervor and fanaticism with which the Left's equality dogma is upheld? Could we explain it as a secularization of the Judeo-Christian belief that all men are created equal? Long before I read Carl Schmitt, I had this thought. But then I found this provocative assertion by Schmitt:
All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development . . . but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. (Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, tr. G. Schwab, University of Chicago Press, 1985, p. 36.)
The idea that all humans are equal in virtue of having been created by God in the image and likeness of God is a purely theological notion consistent with deep and wide empirical differences among humans. Its secularization, I suggest, involves several steps. (These are my ideas, not Schmitt's.)
The first step is to transform the metaphysical concept of equality of persons into an empirical concept of equality of measurable attributes.
The second step is to explain away the manifest empirical inequality of human groups and individuals in terms of sexism or racism or ageism or some other 'ism.' This involves a turn toward social constructivism and a reality-denying turn away from the mind-independent reality of biological differences between the sexes and the races. Sex becomes 'gender' and the latter a social construct. Similarly with race. The absurdities that result are foolishly embraced rather than taken as so many reductiones ad absurdum of the original mistake of making sex and race social constructs. Thus one foolishly embraces the notion that one can change one's race. For a calm and thorough critique of this notion as represented by a contemporary academic, see my Can One Change One's Race?
The third step is to jettison the theological underpinning of the original equality conception.
In this way a true, non-empirical claim of Christian metaphysics about persons as rights-bearers is transformed into a false empirical claim about human animals. At the same time the ground of the non-empirical claim is denied.
It is easy to see how unstable this all is. Reject God, and you no longer have a basis for belief in equality of persons. Man reverts to being an animal among animals with all the empirical inequality that that brings with it.
So the Left has a problem. It is virulently anti-theistic and anti-religious and yet it wants to uphold a notion of equality that makes sense only within a theistic framework. The Left, blind to this inconsistency, is running on the fumes of an evaporating Christian worldview. Equality of persons and rights secularizes itself right out of existence once the theological support is kicked away.
Nietzsche understood this long ago. The death of God has consequences. One is that the brotherhood of man becomes a joke. If my tribe can enslave yours, then it has all the justification it needs and can have for doing so. Why should I treat you as my brother if I have the power to make you my servant and I have freed my mind of Christian fictions?
For those of us who oppose both the Left and the Alt-Right faction that is anti-Christian and Nietzschean, the only option seems to be a return to our Judeo-Christian heritage.
Here is an example of an argument from the Alt Right faction I am referring to:
There is a strong anti-Christian tendency in contemporary White Nationalism.
The argument goes something like this: Christianity is one of the primary causes of the decline of the white race for two reasons. First, it gives the Jews a privileged place in the sacred history of mankind, a role that they have used to gain their enormous power over us today. Second, Christian moral teachings—inborn collective guilt, magical redemption, universalism, altruism, humility, meekness, turning the other cheek, etc.—are the primary cause of the white race’s ongoing suicide and the main impediment to turning the tide. These values are no less Christian in origin just because secular liberals and socialists discard their supernatural trappings. The usual conclusion is that the white race will not be able to save itself unless it rejects Christianity.
I agree entirely with the sentence I have bolded. Leftist secularization is essentially a suppression of the supernatural with a concomitant maintenance of virtues and precepts that make sense only within a supernatural framework. But 'trappings' is not the right word; 'supports' is better. The Left is engaged in the absurd project of kicking away the support of universal rights, the dignity and equality of persons, and all the rest while trying to hold on to these commitments.
The deeper question, though, is whether Christianity weakens us and makes us unfit to live and flourish as the animals we are in the only world there is, this world of space, time, matter and change, or whether Alles Vergaengliche ist nur ein Gleichnis (Goethe), time is a moving image of eternity (Plato), and this world is a fleeting vale of tears that veils an Unseen Order.
An outstanding essay by David Horowitz. I am tempted to reproduce the whole thing. I shall restrain myself.
Three Pillars of Totalitarianism
The totalitarian implications of this increasingly powerful ideological trend in the national culture have become pronounced enough to have alarmed some liberals, most notably the writer Andrew Sullivan. Observing that cultural Marxism is now the required creed of America’s liberal arts colleges, Sullivan warns, “When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based “social justice” movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well. If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large. What matters most of all in these colleges—your membership in a group that is embedded in a hierarchy of oppression—will soon enough be what matters in the society as a whole.”
In America’s universities, which are the training grounds for America’s future leaders, the victory of the cultural Marxists is already complete. In Sullivan’s words, “The Enlightenment principles that formed the bedrock of the American experiment—untrammeled free speech, due process, individual (rather than group) rights—are now routinely understood as mere masks for “white male” power, code words for the oppression of women and nonwhites. Any differences in outcome for various groups must always be a function of “hate,” rather than a function of nature or choice or freedom or individual agency. And anyone who questions these assertions is obviously a white supremacist himself.”
There are three pillars of the totalitarian outlook. The first is its totalist agenda—the elimination of private space and the abandonment of the liberal idea that there should be limits to government authority. In its place, totalitarians insist that “the personal is political.” Since the hierarchy of oppression that inspires social justice warriors encompasses all social relationships between races and ethnicities, between men, women, and multiple politically correct genders, there is no area of social life that escapes political judgment and is protected from government intrusion. Already, in New York City—to take one municipality controlled by the political Left—there are 31 government designated genders, and fines for failing to recognize them.
The second pillar is the idea of the social construction of race, class, and gender. This anti-scientific idea that races and genders are socially created rather than biologically determined is already the unchallenged premise of virtually all academic courses relating to gender and race, and informs many of the planks of the official platform of the Democratic Party. Recognizing the role of biological factors in determining gender and race would require an adjustment to reality, whereas the goal of identity politics is revolutionary and “transformative.” Removing and/or suppressing the alleged creators of genders and races will make possible the social transformation whose goal is “social justice.” The alleged creators of genders and races are the designated villains of identity politics: patriarchal and racial oppressors (white supremacists) who employ these categories to marginalize, dehumanize and dominate vulnerable alleged victim groups.
The centrality of these victim groups is encapsulated in totalitarianism’s third pillar: objectification—the elimination of individual agency and accountability in favor of group identities and oppression status. This, of course, is the inevitable consequence of collectivist ideologies which make groups primary and remove from individuals their agencies as subjects. If there is inequality its source is an invisible hierarchy of oppression, never the inequalities and failures of individuals themselves. If homicide is the number one killer of young black males, whites must be responsible because whites allegedly control all the institutions and social structures that determine black outcomes—notwithstanding the fact that the same crime statistics plague municipalities run by blacks as those run by whites. What may go on in black communities to account for these and other appalling statistics—out of wedlock births, physical abuse by parents, drug trafficking, lax law enforcement policies instituted by liberal authorities—is rendered invisible by an ideology which regards race as the determining factor regardless of individual behaviors and failings. If women are “under-represented” in engineering positions at Google, this cannot be because of individual choices made by women—to think so is prima facie sexism—but must be the work of a patriarchal conspiracy, however invisible.
The third pillar, Objectification, is also relevant to the identity politics of the Alt-Right, a topic Horowitz does not address in his essay. It is important to see that both the Left and the Alt-Right share the pernicious "elimination of individual agency and accountability in favor of group identities." 'Objectification' is exactly the right word for the refusal on both the Left and the Alt-Right to view people as individuals, as persons, as subjects irreducible to their class or racial or sexual membership.
We are born with a natural inequality with soon turns into economic inequality. The reason it turns into economic inequality, I believe, is that humans have a natural desire for status. It is an essential part of the human condition, and I believe impossible to eradicate, indeed it is impossible to conceive human nature or existence without the existence of status, and our desire to improve it. It is part of any organisation, including academia or the church. This is an evil, I believe, but to eradicate it would involve destroying our freedom, which is a worse evil.
Yes, we are naturally unequal, both as individuals and as groups, and this inequality results in economic inequality. But I wouldn't explain this in terms of the desire for status. Status is relative social standing, and depends on how one appears in the eyes of others. But this is relatively unimportant and has little to do with money and property which are far more important. I can live very well indeed without name and fame, accolades and awards, high social position and the perquisites that come in its train. But I cannot live well without a modicum of material wealth.
It is not desire for status that explains economic inequality but the desire for money and property and the sort of material security it provides. Obviously, other factors come into the explanation including living in a politically stable capitalist country under the rule of law. There are socialist crap holes in which everyone except the apparatchiki are poor but equal, but impoverished equality is not an equality worth wanting. This is why commie states need walls to keep legals in while the USA needs a wall to keep illegals out.
Is the desire materially to improve oneself evil? I would say no as long as the the pursuit of wealth remains ordinate, and therefore subordinate to higher values. Is the resultant economic inequality evil? No again. Why should it be? I have a right to what I have acquired by my hard work, deferral of gratification, and practice of the ancient virtues. It is to be expected that I will end up with a higher net worth than that of people who lack my abilities and virtues.
The economy is not a zero-sum game. If I "mix my labour" (Locke) with the soil and grow tomatoes, I have caused new food to come into existence; I haven't taken from an existing stock of tomatoes with the result that others must get fewer. If my lazy neighbor demands some of my tomatoes, I will tell him to go to hell; but if he asks me in a nice way, then I will give him some. In this way, he benefits from my labor without doing anything. Some of my tomatoes 'trickle down' to him. A rising tide lifts all boats. Lefties hate this conservative boilerplate whoch is why I repeat it. It's true and it works. When was the last time a poor man gave anyone a job? Etc.
I deserve what I acquire by the virtuous exercise of my abilities. But do I deserve my abilities? No, but I have a right to them. I have a right to things I don't deserve. Nature gave me binocular vision but only monaural hearing. Do I deserve my two good eyes? No, but I have a right to them. Therefore, I am under no moral obligation to give one of my eyes to a sightless person. (If memory serves, R. Nozick makes a similar point in Anarchy, State, and Utopia.)
At this point someone might object that it is just not fair that some of us are better placed and better endowed than others, and that therefore it is a legitimate function of government to redistribute wealth to offset the resultant economic inequality. But never forget that government is coercive by its very nature and run by people who are intellectually and morally no better, and sometimes worse, than the rest of us.
The evil of massive, omni-intrusive government is far worse than economic equality is good. Besides, lack of money is rooted in lack of virtue, and government cannot teach people to be virtuous. If Bill Gates' billions were stripped from him and given to the the bums of San Francisco, in ten year's time Gates would be back on top and the bums would be back in the gutters.
Perhaps we can say that economic inequality, though axiologically suboptimal, is nonetheless not morally evil given the way the world actually works with people having the sorts of incentives that they actually have, etc. There is nothing wrong with economic inequality as long as every citizen has the bare minimum. But illegal aliens have no right to any government handouts.
Despite 'credentials' that ought to endear him to the Left, Mr. Sullivan has learned the hard way that he still has too much good sense to count as one of them:
As for objective reality, I was at an event earlier this week — not on a campus — when I made what I thought was the commonplace observation that Jim Crow laws no longer exist. Uncomprehending stares came back at me. What planet was I on? Not only does Jim Crow still exist, but slavery itself never went away! When I questioned this assertion by an African-American woman, I was told it was “not my place” to question her reality. After all, I’m white.
The reason I can't take Sully all that seriously is that, while he sees through the insane lies of the Left, he refuses to do the one thing necessary to combat them effectively in the present constellation of circumstances, namely, support Donald Trump and his administration. Sullivan's deranged hatred of the man blinds him to Trump's political usefulness in beating back the destructive Left.
Look: I don’t doubt the good intentions of the new identity politics — to expand the opportunities for people previously excluded. I favor a politics that never discriminates against someone for immutable characteristics — and tries to make sure that as many people as possible feel they have access to our liberal democracy. But what we have now is far more than the liberal project of integrating minorities. It comes close to an attack on the liberal project itself. Marxism with a patina of liberalism on top is still Marxism — and it’s as hostile to the idea of a free society as white nationalism is. So if you wonder why our discourse is now so freighted with fear, why so many choose silence as the path of least resistance, or why the core concepts of a liberal society — the individual’s uniqueness, the primacy of reason, the protection of due process, an objective truth — are so besieged, this is one of the reasons.
Although Sullivan goes too far when he implies that it is never justifiable to discriminate against a person on the basis of immutable characteristics, see below, I basically agree with his little speech. I agree with his four core concepts.
In particular, I oppose the tribalism of those who see others as mere tokens of racial/ethnic/sexual types and who identify themselves in the same way. Tribalism could be defined as precisely this reduction of a person to a mere token or instance of a racial/ethnic/sexual type, whether the person is oneself or another. It is a refusal to countenance the potential if not actual uniqueness of the individual. The Left is tribal in this sense but so is the Alt-Right. What they have in common is the reduction of individual identity, personal identity, to group identity. My brand of conservatism resists this reduction and attempts to navigate a via media between the identity-political extremes.
I have found it difficult to get these ideas across to my open-minded and good-natured alt-right interlocutors.
They will tell me that, as a matter of fact, people identify tribally. I agree. My point, however, is that such identification is not conducive to social harmony and that we ought to at least try to transcend our tribalism.
The claim that such-and-such ought to be done cannot be refuted by the fact that it is not done. The propositions that people ought not sexually molest children, ought not drive drunk, ought not embezzle, etc. cannot be refuted by invoking the fact that they do. The same goes for institutions. The existence of an institution does not morally justify its existence.
The claim that people ought to do A could, however, be refuted if it could be shown that people, or some group of people, cannot do A. Ought implies can. I cannot reasonably demand of blacks, say, that they think and act less tribally if they are simply incapable of so thinking and acting.
So my interlocutors' point might be that urging people to be less tribal is empty preaching that unreasonably demands that people do what they cannot do. To which my response will be that many blacks and Hispanics and women -- who can be thought of as a 'tribe' in an extended sense of the term -- do transcend their tribal identities. For example, while Hispanics would naturally like there to be more Hispanics in the USA, many of them are able to appreciate that illegal immigration ought not be tolerated.
You might say that for Hispanics like these, their self-identification as a rational animal, zoon logikon, in Aristotle's sense, trumps their self-identification as Hispanic.
There are higher and lower, noble and base, modes of self-identification. Philosopher versus cocksman, say. You can guess my view: self-identification in terms of race, ethnicity, and sex is toward the base end of the scale.
Do I deny that I am a white male? Not at all. What's more, those attributes are essential to me. To speak with the philosophers: I am a white male in every possible world in which I exist. I cannot be an animal at all unless I have some immutable characteristics. (And to think of them as socially constructed is the height of leftist lunacy.) Then why is it base to identify in terms of these characteristics? Because there are higher modes of self-identification.
What makes them higher or better? They are less divisive and more conducive to social harmony. We are social animals and we benefit from cooperation. While competition is good in that it breeds excellence, conflict and enmity are bad. If we can learn to see one another as unique individuals, as persons, as rational beings rather than as interchangeable tokes of racial/ethnic/sexual types, then we are more likely to achieve more mutually beneficial social interactions.
The higher self-identifications are also more reflective of our status as free moral agents. I didn't choose my race or sex, but I did choose and continue to choose to develop myself as an individual, to actualize my potential for self-individuation. My progress along that line of self-development is something I can be proud of. By contrast there is something faintly absurd and morally dubious about black pride, white pride, gay pride, and the like. You're proud to be white? Why? You had no say in the matter. Nancy Pelosi is apparently ashamed to be white. That is equally mistaken.
Am I saying that race doesn't matter? No. Race does matter, but it matters less than leftists and alt-rightists think and more than some old-time (sane) liberals and conservatives like Dennis Prager think. (See Dennis Prager on Liberalism, Leftism, and Race.) Certain racial and ethnic groups are better equipped to appreciate, i.e., both understand and value, the points I have been making. Part of it has to do with intelligence. Asians and Jews, as groups, are more intelligent than blacks and Hispanics as groups. That is just a fact, and there are no racist facts. (A fact about race is not a racist fact.) What's true cannot be racist or sexist.
I spoke above of the uniqueness of the individual. I know that sounds like vacuous sermonizing and utter bullshit to many ears. But to adequately discuss it we would have to enter metaphysics. Some other time. But please note that ameliorative politics must be grounded in political theory which rests on normative ethics which presuppose philosophical anthropology which leads us back to metaphysics.
I should stop now. I have given my alt-right sparring partners enough to punch back at. Have at it, boys. Comments crisp and concise are best. People don't read long comments. Many short, good; one long, bad.
Addendum:Is it ever morally justifiable to discriminate against a person on the basis of an immutable characteristic?
Of course it is. I flunked my Army pre-induction physical. The Army discriminated against me because I hear out of only one ear. Southern Pacific Railroad did the same when, following in the footsteps of my quondam hero, Jack Kerouac, I tried to get a job as a switchman. Examples are easily multiplied. Want to join the Army? There are age restrictions. You can't be over 40. Should every combat role in the mlitary be open to females? Obviously not.
You would have to be as willfully stupid as Nancy Pelosi to think that all discrimination is unjust.
This is the excellent advice of Alan Dershowitz (emphasis added):
But psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have no more right to pathologize a president or a candidate because they disagree with his or her political views than do prosecutors or politicians have a right to criminalize political opponents.
I have been writing in opposition to the criminalization of political differences for decades, because it is dangerous to democracy. It is even more dangerous to pathologize or psychiatrize one’s political opponents based on opposition to their politics.
Getting mental health professionals to declare political opponents mentally ill was a common tactic used against political dissidents by the Soviet Union, China, and apartheid South Africa. Perfectly sane people were locked up in psychiatric wards or prisons for years because of phony diagnoses of mental illness.
The American Psychiatric Association took a strong stand against the use of this weapon by tyrants. I was deeply involved in that condemnation, because I understood how dangerous it is to diagnose political opponents instead of responding to the merits of their political views.
It is even more dangerous when a democracy like the U.S. begins to go down the road of pathologizing political differences. It’s one thing to say your opponents are wrong. It’s quite another to say they are crazy.
Questions about President Trump’s mental health arose even before he was elected. Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, some of his most extreme critics were not content to say they disagreed with his policies – or thought he was unqualified because of his temperament, background, or skill set. Instead, they questioned his mental health.
I am old enough to remember the last time this happened. The 1964 presidential election was the second in which I voted. President Lyndon Johnson, who had succeeded the assassinated President John F. Kennedy, was running against Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz.
I didn’t like either candidate. Johnson’s personal characteristics were obnoxious, though he had achieved much, especially in the area of civil rights. Goldwater’s personal characteristics seemed fine, but I disapproved of his conservative political views.
I was shocked to read an article in Fact magazine – based on interviews with more than 1,100 psychiatrists – that concluded Goldwater was mentally unstable and psychologically unfit to be president. It was Lyndon Johnson whose personal fitness to hold the highest office I had questioned.
Goldwater seemed to me to be emotionally stable, with excellent personal characteristics, but highly questionable politics. The article was utterly unpersuasive, but in the end, I reluctantly voted for Johnson because Goldwater was too conservative for my political tastes.
Goldwater went back to the Senate, where he served with great distinction and high personal morality. Johnson got us deeply into an unwinnable war in Vietnam that hurt our nation and claimed more than 58,000 American lives. The more than 1,100 psychiatrists, it turned out, were wrong in their diagnosis and predictions.
The misdiagnosis of Goldwater should surprise no one, since none of the psychiatrists had ever examined, or even met, the Arizona senator. They just didn’t like his politics. Indeed, some feared that he would destroy the world if he had access to the nuclear button.
The most powerful TV ad against Goldwater showed an adorable young girl playing with a flower. Then, the viewer hears an ominous voice counting down from 10, the camera zooms into a tight close-up of the little girl’s eye, and you see the horrific mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion, implying that electing Goldwater would bring about a nuclear holocaust. It was an effective ad. It influenced me far more than the psychobabble in the Fact article.
I would add that those who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome are in no position to call Trump crazy or mentally unstable. That would be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
But haven't I just done what Dershowitz says one ought not do? Have I not just pathologized the views of those who oppose Trump by calling these people deranged?
No. I am not pathologizing their views, I am pathologizing them in respect of their boundless hatred of the man. Robert de Niro is a prime example. In his latest outburst, he calls Trump in public a "fucking idiot" and a "fucking fool" and on and on. And there is this even worse earlier stream of invective from De Niro.
I call this phenomenon topical insanity. There are certain topics that will 'trigger' ordinarily sane people and cause them to lose their mental stability. Guns have quite the triggering effect on many liberals. They simply cannot maintain their mental balance when the topic comes up. Pointing out well-known truths about race will do it as well.
So we need to distinguish between pathologizing views and pathologizing people.
There are a number of interesting questions here. One question is whether there are any political or other views which are such that their holding by anybody would be good evidence of mental instability on the part of the one holding the view.
A related but different question is whether there are any political or other views which are such that their holding by anybody would be good evidence of moral corruption or an evil nature.
Finally, there is the phenomenon of calling one's political opponents stupid. This is obviously different from calling them either insane or evil. For example, I have heard Ann Coulter called stupid. But stupid is one thing she is obviously not. Every political view has adherents that are less and more intelligent. For example, Nancy Pelosi is not very bright as should be obvious. Obama on the other hand, is quite bright and indeed brighter, I would judge, than Joe Biden or G. W. Bush. But having a high degree of verbal intelligence is no guarantee that one possesses wisdom or has the right values.
George Schwab, in his Introduction to Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (University of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 13, bolding added, footnotes omitted), writes:
In his endeavor to strengthen the Weimar state, Schmitt challenged a basic liberal assumption then widely held either for philosophical or tactical reasons, namely, that every political party, no matter how antirepublican, must be permitted freely to compete for parliamentary representation and for governmental power. This meant that the sole requirement of such parties in their quest for power was that they proceed legally. Because the most influential commentators and jurists of the Weimar constitution argued that it was an open document insofar as any and all constitutional revisions are permissible if these are brought about legally, a totalitarian movement which succeeds in legally capturing the legislature can then proceed legally to forge a constitution and state that would reflect its militant political ideology.
Schwab goes on to report that Schmitt in 1932, the year before Hitler's accession to power, "argued that only those parties not intent on subverting the state be granted the right to compete for parliamentary and governmental power."
That makes excellent sense and ought to be applied to our present situation. We ought not tolerate subversive political parties. Or perhaps I should say that we ought not tolerate subversive parties whose threat to the principles of the American Founding and our system of government are credible and dangerous. Time was when that was true of the Communist Party USA. But those days are gone. Tactically, it might be a mistake to ban subversive parties that are too weak to pose a threat since the banning might draw members to them. Perhaps we could call this tactic "repressive tolerance" to hijack some terminology from Herbert Marcuse. To tolerate them is more repressive of them than to ban them.
Suppose a Sharia party in the U. S. were to form and become a credible threat. Should it be banned? Of course. No party that rejects the very principles upon which our country is founded ought to be tolerated even if it could legally get some of its members elected. Would you hire an arsonist as a cook?
What about the Democrat Party?
The contemporary Democrat Party lurches ever leftward. This is spectacularly clear from recent events in California. The once Golden State is now in open defiance of federal immigration law, not to mention its open defiance of federal drug laws. Since January 1st it has been a 'sanctuary state.' "Under the new state law, nowhere in California may police ask about an individual’s immigration status, nor may local authorities cooperate with federal officials on immigration enforcement." (here)
Suppose the Democrat party continues to defy the Constitution and undermine the rule of law. Suppose it provides sanctuary not only for illegal aliens but for Sharia-supporting Muslims. (Muslim Brotherhood Congressman Keith Ellison is a friend of Antifa, and Deputy Chair of the DNC.) Then a case grows for outlawing the Dems.
Whatever you say about the Dems, every American patriot ought to hold that the basic liberal assumption, according to which every political party is tolerable, is itself intolerable.
As I have said many times, toleration has limits.
UPDATE (1/6). A Canadian reader responds:
The people we call "liberals" nowadays don't actually hold this assumption, it seems to me. I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would outlaw any kind of serious right-wing political party if they could, and certainly they'd try to prevent such a party from participating in the electoral process on equal footing with liberal or leftist parties. When Richard Spencer got punched by some leftist scumbag the "liberal" media published articles musing about whether "punching Nazis" is okay. Even Marco Rubio publicly stated that violence against alt-right activists is "justified" by the content of their political beliefs. Do you not agree that if there were an alt-right political party -- especially if it seemed to have any chance of gaining power -- there'd be a phalanx of "liberals" demanding that the party be outlawed, that its members be arrested or, at the very least, prevented from speaking or participating in the electoral process?
BV: We have a terminological problem. I am using 'liberal' in the old way, the way George Schwab uses it above. I am not using it the way I usually use it, typically with sneer quotes, as synonymous with 'progressive' or 'leftist.' Do contemporary 'liberals' hold the assumption? One answer is yes, until they get enough power to outlaw their opponents' parties.
Hitler was legally elected in '33. After that he outlawed opposition parties. If Schmitt's proposal had been adopted, and the National Socialists had been outlawed, Hitler might have been stopped.
In Europe the "liberals" have found ways to ban or dissolve right-wing parties at times, and at other times they use the state to persecute any leaders or high-profile members (e.g., for "hate speech"). Their behavior is just not what you would expect of people who believe they should tolerate _any_ kind of political party or movement; they clearly don't even believe that any old kind of political _speech_ should be tolerated.
BV: Again, terminology. I don't think we have a substantive disagreement.
So I think you misdescribe the situation. The "liberals" believe that any leftist or anti-white or anti-western political party (or movement, or speech) must be tolerated. Not that any political party must be tolerated. They would happily tolerate a Sharia Party or a Communist Party or a Black Nationalist Party. Hell, they'd probably vote for one or all of them if they could. They would not tolerate a Christian Fundamentalist Party or a Fascist Party or a Normal White People's Party. (Or anyway, they don't believe that these latter kinds of things should be tolerated.)
BV: Once again, a terminological difference. I agree with you since you are talking about contemporary not classical 'liberals.'
My other concern is this: You think there is a danger of some kind of "subversive" party taking power, a party that rejects the basic principles of your society or country. And therefore, you want intolerance with respect to that kind of party, in order to protect your society. But that party has already taken power! Or rather, the two parties that exist in your country are both subversive--both flatly opposed to the most basic principles of America and the most basic interests of the American people.
BV: Now we have something to disagree about. I hope you are not saying that the Dems are in power. That is plainly false since 8 November 2016. If you are saying that both of the major parties are subversive of traditionally American principles and values, then that has to be argued out. Surely they are not equally subversive.
For one thing, the Manhattan sybarite has struck a blow for religious liberty. (An evangelical Trump supporter might say that the Lord works in mysterious ways.) Now religious liberty is one of the American values I am talking about. The Orange Man has also gotten rid of the ObamaCare individual mandate, an egregious violation of individual liberty. Trump's opposition to the individual mandate is right in line with classical American values. He got conservative Neil Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court. He has appointed conservative federal judges. And so on.
I would like you to support and nuance your claim that both of the major parties are subversive -- "both flatly opposed to the most basic principles of America and the most basic interests of the American people."
So in this situation, banning "subversive" parties would really just mean banning any party that aimed to truly represent the American people or uphold the real principles of America. I mean, doesn't it seem fairly obvious that your politicians and courts are in the hands of people who already reject the most basic rules and values of the real historic American nation? California will openly violate federal laws in order to flood the country with illegal aliens; politicians and courts will do nothing. Just one example. In this situation you are the subversive--so I'm worried that the policy you're proposing would only be used against people like you.
BV: Well, no. You are ignoring the the recent "Flight 93" events. We stormed the cockpit and subdued the hijackers -- for the moment.
The logical structure of the problem before us is perhaps that of a dilemma. Either (A) we adopt the classically liberal assumption that every political party is tolerable, or (~A) we don't. If (A), then we have to countenance the possibility that a party legally come to power that outlaws all opposition parties. This possibility became actual after '33 in Germany. If (~A), then we members of the Coalition of the Sane expose ourselves to the possibility that our party gets banned, and we get sent to the leftist concentration camp.
I'll have to think more about this .
In any case, welcome to Political Aporetics 101.
Disclaimer: I am not a political philosopher; I only play one in the blogosphere. I write these things to clarify my own thoughts with the help of powerful intellects such as my Canadian sparring partner. I am a metaphysician and philosopher of religion by trade. That is where most of my professional publications are.
It is fun to play the public intellectual and drop the names of authors whose works one has never read with care. And it is very easy to get out beyond one's depth. At the moment I am thinking of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, and to a lesser extent, Rod Dreher. Their commentarial confidence is sometimes out of proportion to their competence. Gottfried, praising and drawing upon Gordon, here lays into Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism.
He also targets Dinesh D'Souza and Dennis Prager:
Perhaps one of the most ludicrous examples of the conservative movement’s recent attempt at being sophisticated was an exchange of equally uninformed views by talk show host Dennis Prager and Dinesh D’Souza, on the subject of the fascist worldview. The question was whether one could prove that fascism was a leftist ideology by examining the thought of Mussolini’s court philosopher Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944). Gentile defined the “fascist idea” in his political writings while serving as minister of education in fascist Italy. He was also not incidentally one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century; and in works like General Theory of the Spirit as Pure Act, adapts the thought of Hegel to his own theory of evolving national identity. It would be hard to summarize Gentile’s thought in a few pithy sentences; and, not surprisingly, the Canadian historian of philosophy H.S. Harris devotes a book of many hundreds of pages trying to explain his complex philosophical speculation.
Hey, but that’s no big deal for such priests of the GOP church as Prager and D’Souza. They zoom to the heart of Gentile’s neo-Hegelian worldview in thirty seconds and state with absolute certainty that he was a “leftist.” We have to assume that Prager, D’Souza and the rest of their crowd know this intuitively, inasmuch they give no indication of having ever read a word of Gentile’s thought, perhaps outside of a few phrases that they extracted from his Doctrine of Fascism. Their judgment also clashes with that of almost all scholars of Gentile’s work, from across the political spectrum, who view him, as I do in my study of fascism, as the most distinguished intellectual of the revolutionary right.
That's the scholar talking. I agree. But let me say a word in defense of Prager & Co. They reach people. They have influence. Who has heard of Paul Gottfried? Me and five other guys. I exaggerate, but in the direction of an important truth.
Or take Limbaugh. One day he demonstrated his ignorance of the concept of negative rights. But so what given that politics is a practical game the purpose of which is to defeat opponents and remove them from power?
And then there is the much-hated Trump. You say he has the vocabulary of a 13-year-0ld? That he is obnoxious and unpresidential? I agree. But he defeated ISIS. (And accomplished a dozen other important things in his first year in office.) Did Obama defeat ISIS? Would Hillary have? Of course not. She couldn't bring herself to utter the words 'radical Islamic terrorist.'
Skholiast at Speculum Criticum sends a friendly greeting that I have shortened a bit:
Like the recent correspondent you quote in your Christmas post, I've been reading you a long time -- I guess ten years now -- and I read you from across the political divide. Possibly I am further "left," or "radical," or whatever, than that reader -- I know I don't think of myself as "liberal," anyway. But when my liberal acquaintances get irritated with me, it's as likely to be because I've cited Burke, or Robert George, as Marx or Cornell West . . .
I'm closer to apolitical (duly acknowledging the dangers and possible incoherence of such a stance). Sure, you and I would have plenty to argue about -- and we would argue because the differences matter -- but I like to think we'd walk away still respectful, if shaking our heads. . . . Still, I read you for a lot more than curmudgeonly politics. It's for your critiques of scientism, your sane openness to mystery (does the [desert] landscape reinforce that?), and above all your study-everything-join-nothing stance, which has always resonated with me.
I share your love of -- and I think your reasons for loving -- Kerouac. And there's no other blogger from whom I'm more likely to learn a new name to track down. (For a long time, you were the only philosophy blogger I'd ever read who had cited [Erich] Pry[z]wara.)
You are right (I am afraid) that 2018 will bring more acrimony, not less, to politics . . . . My real concern is simply that philosophy itself remain possible (though *arguably* philosophy must seek justice & so must remain politically -- & socially -- "engaged," this is not obvious). Some regimes, and some social climates, are better than others for the possibility of philosophy. I am fairly persuaded that the acrimony doesn't help, but who knows? Perhaps philosophy is threatened more, in a different sense, when it is easier for it to fly under the radar w/o giving "offense." In any case I hope that real thinkers will always be able to recognize each other.
My concern too is that "philosophy itself remain possible." I would prefer to let the world and its violent nonsense go to hell while cultivating my garden in peace. Unfortunately, my garden and stoa are in the world and exposed to its threats. My concern, of course, is not just with my petty life, but with the noble tradition of which I am privileged to be a part, adding a footnote here and there, doing my small bit in transmitting our culture. In the great words of Goethe:
Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, erwirb es, um es zu besitzen!
What from your fathers you received as heir,
Acquire if you would possess it. (Faust, Part I, Night, lines 684-685, tr. W. Kaufmann)
The idea is that what one has been lucky enough to inherit, one must actively appropriate, i.e., make one's own by hard work, if one is really to possess it. The German infinitive erwerben has not merely the meaning of 'earn' or 'acquire' but also the meaning of aneignen, appropriate, make one's own.
Unfortunately the schools and universities of today have become leftist seminaries more devoted to the eradication of the high culture of the West than its transmission and dissemination. These leftist seed beds have become hot houses of political correctness.
The two main threats, as I have explained many times, are from the Left and from Islam. They work in synergy, whether wittingly or unwittingly.
So politics, which has too little to do with truth and too much to do with power, cannot be ignored. This world is not ultimately real, but it is no illusion either, pace some sophists of the New Age, and so some battling within it, ideological or otherwise, cannot be avoided. But philosophy is not battling, nor is it ideology. There is no place in philosophy for polemics, though polemics has its place.
Worth your time, but leftist bias is in evidence. The Democrats have moved much farther to the Left than the Republicans to the Right. Haidt seems quite oblivious to this. But he's young. Give him time.
The first comment, by one Christopher Conole, is on target (minor edits by BV):
Professor Haidt is very late to this "party". It all started about the time he was born, in the 1960s. Back then Herbert Marcuse was turning day into night by referring to American culture as an example of "repressive tolerance". He laid down the foundations of today's campus totalitarianism by stressing that there can be "no free speech for fascists." A facist [fascist] being defined as anyone who opposes the cultural marxists that were just beginning to assert [insert] themselves into academia as student protesters.
Those students of the '60s became in turn professors, administrators, and finally college deans and presidents. To think that having come so far via their long march through the institutions, that they would give it all up as if it were a big misunderstanding, is just terminally naive.
That's right. The centrifugal forces are in the ascendancy, and they can be expected to be operative for some time to come. And that reminds me that I need to get out to the range. The wise hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
I have on several occasions referred to Never-Trumpers as yap-and-scribble do-nothings who think of politics as a grand debate gentlemanly conducted and endlessly protracted and who think of themselves as doing something worthwhile whether or not their learned discussions in well-appointed venues achieve anything at all in slowing the leftist juggernaut. It now occurs to me that Juan Donoso Cortés(1809-1853) had their number long ago. This is a theme worth exploring.
As we speak, Mr. Amazon is delivering the book on the left to my humble abode, but I have yet to receive it, and I confess to not yet having read the man himself. So for now I merely pull a couple of quotations from Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, tr. George Schwab, University of Chicago Press, 1985:
According to Donoso Cortés, it was characteristic of bourgeois liberalism not to decide in this battle but to begin a discussion. He straightforwardly defined the bourgeoisie as a “discussing class,” una clasa discutidora. It has thus been sentenced. This definition contains the class characteristic of wanting to evade the decision. A class that shifts all political activity onto the plane of conversation in the press and in parliament is no match for social conflict. (59)
Just as liberalism discusses and negotiates every political detail, so it also wants to dissolve metaphysical truth in a discussion. The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion. (63)
To understand the Trump phenomenon we will have to study Carl Schmitt. Trump is a man who knows how to make decisions and move from talk to action. He is not one of the bow-tie boys who belongs to the club and is content to chatter. He knows how to fight. He knows that civility and refined manners count for nothing in a confrontation with leftist thugs from Chicago brought up on Alinsky. You hit them, and you hit them so hard that they reel in shock.
I know what some will say. Schmitt was a Nazi. By invoking Schmitt am I not acquiescing in the view that Trump is Hitler-like? But consider this: would Hitler have recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? Would Hitler have the support of the NRA?
The Trump = Hitler identity theory is clear proof of the poverty of leftist 'thought.'
White nationalists are not really nationalists since they are engaged in a globalist enterprise. They are reaching beyond traditional nation states and seek to unify all peoples of a certain race, partly by demonizing other races. But propositionalists like Buckley and the neoconservative journalists are likewise involved in a global pursuit. They are not content to live in a politically diverse world among different cultures. They seek to win adherents to their political religion supposedly predicated on universal propositions. The validity of what they believe requires that it be put into practice universally, since their propositions are intended for all of humanity. This rights-based globalism is nothing new. It was practiced by the Jacobins during the French Revolution and later, and more devastatingly, by the Bolsheviks. (Emphasis added)
This passage may help focus the ongoing discussion with my Right-identitarian colleague. I don't see why I ought to accept the bolded sentence above. The sentence encapsulates an argument, which could be put like this:
1) The supposedly universal propositions are intended to hold true for all of humanity. 2) If so, then the supposedly universal propositions must be put into practice universally. Therefore 3) The supposedly universally propositions must be put into practice universally. Therefore 4) One can justify nation-building, exporting American/Enlightenment values, toppling dictators using military force, teaching the benighted Muslim tribalists of the Middle East the values of open inquiry, free speech, equal rights for women, etc.
The argument is unsound because we have no good reason to accept (2).
I reject (2). I say: There are propositions relating to human flourishing that are true for all humans. An example of such a proposition might be: A happy and productive human life is unlikely and perhaps impossible if one never learns to control one's appetites and emotions. (Had Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown been brought up to exercise self-control, they would be alive today. Those two brought about their own deaths by their lack of self control, and 'racism' had nothing to do with it. Harvey Weinstein is a 'white' example: had he been brought up to control his concupiscence he wouldn't be in the deep trouble he is in now. )
But such propositions, while true for all humans and in this sense true universally, are not recognized by all humans, and not presently capable of being recognized or put into practice by all humans. The attempt to impart these propositions to some groups will be futile, especially if it involves force, or can be interpreted by the group in question as a cover for an attempt to dominate or control them for ulterior motives.
So I distinguish two questions. One is whether the propositions in question are universal. The other is whether they are capable of being recognized and implemented by all humans under present conditions. The answer to the first is Yes; the answer to the second is No. So one cannot infer the requirement that the propositions be put into practice universally from the the fact that they are universal. (2), then, is false.
The bolded sentence involves a confusion. Read it again: The validity of what they believe requires that it be put into practice universally, since their propositions are intended for all of humanity.
The sentence embodies a non sequitur. Consider this proposition: A government contributory to human well-being upholds the value of religious liberty and tolerates dissent on religious matters. This proposition is essential to the American founding and is one of the expressions of the hard-won wisdom of the Founders.
But not every ethnic or racial group on the face of the earth is ready for this universally valid truth, and perhaps some of these groups will never be ready for it. To impose it on them would be folly and elicit only blind reaction. On this point the neo-cons had it wrong. The benighted must be left to their fates. But it doesn't follow that the proposition in question is true only for those of European ancestry. It is true for all. Analogy: the truths of mathematics are true for all, even for those who cannot understand them and put them to work. First-graders cannot understand Rolle's Theorem, but it is true for them too. Those who know no physics are just as subject to its laws as those who do.
If one rejects even a moderate propositionalism, what will one put in its place? A racially purified state along National Socialist lines?
There is a reason why a lot of people get the heebie-jeebies when they hear alt-right and neo-reactionary talk. And this despite the fact that most of what one hears about the alt-right is mindless, psychologically-projective, leftist nonsense. Leftist scum use 'white supremacist' and 'alt-right' as semantic bludgeons and they should be condemned for their scurrilousness. Nevertheless, most of us become justifiably concerned when we hear talk of Blut und Boden.
As for heebie-jeebies, that puts me in mind of 'hebe,' a slur word for a Jew. The anti-semitism of alt-righties -- not all of them of course -- should also make a morally decent person nervous. If nothing else, the Alt-Right has a PR problem. They won't get anywhere politically if their rhetoric includes 'blood and soil.' I guarantee it.
Some words and phrases are not candidates for semantic rehabilitation.
3. The patrons of the false Europe are bewitched by superstitions of inevitable progress. They believe that History is on their side, and this faith makes them haughty and disdainful, unable to acknowledge the defects in the post-national, post-cultural world they are constructing. Moreover, they are ignorant of the true sources of the humane decencies they themselves hold dear—as do we. They ignore, even repudiate the Christian roots of Europe. At the same time they take great care not to offend Muslims, who they imagine will cheerfully adopt their secular, multicultural outlook. Sunk in prejudice, superstition and ignorance, and blinded by vain, self-congratulating visions of a utopian future, the false Europe reflexively stifles dissent. This is done, of course, in the name of freedom and tolerance.
[. . .]
17. The false Europe also boasts of an unprecedented commitment to equality. It claims to promote non-discrimination and the inclusion of all races, religions and identities. Here, genuine progress has been made, but a utopian detachment from reality has taken hold. Over the past generation, Europe has pursued a grand project of multiculturalism. To demand or even promote the assimilation of Muslim newcomers to our manners and mores, much less to our religion, has been thought a gross injustice. A commitment to equality, we have been told, demands that we abjure any hint that we believe our culture superior. Paradoxically, Europe’s multicultural enterprise, which denies the Christian roots of Europe, trades on the Christian ideal of universal charity in an exaggerated and unsustainable form. It requires from the European peoples a saintly degree of self-abnegation. We are to affirm the very colonization of our homelands and the demise of our culture as Europe’s great twenty-first century glory—a collective act of self-sacrifice for the sake of some new global community of peace and prosperity that is being born.
[ . . .]
21. Europe’s intellectual classes are, alas, among the chief ideological partisans of the conceits of the false Europe. Without doubt, our universities are one of the glories of European civilization. But where once they sought to transmit to each new generation the wisdom of past ages, today most within the universities equate critical thinking with a simpleminded repudiation of the past. A lodestar of the European spirit has been the rigorous discipline of intellectual honesty and objectivity. But over the past two generations, this noble ideal has been transformed. The asceticism that once sought to free the mind of the tyranny of dominant opinion has become an often complacent and unreflective animus against everything that is our own. This stance of cultural repudiation functions as a cheap and easy way of being ‘critical.’ Over the last generation, it has been rehearsed in the lecture halls, becoming a doctrine, a dogma. And to join in professing this creed is taken to be the mark of ‘enlightenment,’ and of spiritual election. As a consequence, our universities are now active agents of ongoing cultural destruction.
[. . .]
33. Marriage is the foundation of civil society and the basis for harmony between men and women. It is the intimate bond organized around sustaining a household and raising children. We affirm that our most fundamental roles in society and as human beings are as fathers and mothers. Marriage and children are integral to any vision of human flourishing. Children require sacrifice from those who bring them into the world. This sacrifice is noble and must be honoured. We endorse prudent social policies to encourage and strengthen marriage, childbearing, and childrearing. A society that fails to welcome children has no future.
[. . .]
36. In this moment, we ask all Europeans to join us in rejecting the utopian fantasy of a multicultural world without borders. We rightly love our homelands, and we seek to hand on to our children every noble thing that we have ourselves received as our patrimony. As Europeans, we also share a common heritage, and this heritage asks us to live together in peace as a Europe of nations. Let us renew national sovereignty, and recover the dignity of a shared political responsibility for Europe’s future.
UPDATE:
The Paris Statement is too namby-pamby for Jacques who comments here. He may well be right. PS is a fine theoretical statement, but where are the concrete proposals?
Here are ten theses to which I subscribe in the critical way of the philosopher, not the dogmatic way of the ideologue.
1. There is nothing wrong with money. It is absolutely not the root of all evil. The most we can say is that the inordinate desire for money is at the root of some evils. I develop this theme in Radix Omnium Malorum.
2. There is nothing wrong with making money or having money. There is for example nothing wrong with making a profit from buying, refurbishing, paying propery taxes on, and then selling a house.
3. There is nothing wrong with material (socio-economic) inequality as such. For example, there is nothing wrong with Bill Gates' having a vastly higher net worth than your humble correspondent. And there is nothing wrong with the latter's having a considerably higher net worth than some of his acquaintances. (When they were out pursuing wine, women, and song, he was engaging in virtuous, forward-looking activities thereby benefiting not only himself but also people who come in contact with him.) Of course, when I say that there is nothing wrong with material inequality as such, I am assuming that the inequalities have not come about through force or fraud.
4. Equality of outcome or result is not to be confused with equality of opportunity or formal equality in general, including equality under the law. It is an egregious fallacy of liberals and leftists to infer a denial of equality of opportunity -- via 'racism' or 'sexism' or whatever -- from the premise that a certain group has failed to achieve equality of outcome. There will never be equality of outcome due to the deep differences between individuals and groups. We must do what we can to ensure equality of opportunity and then let the chips fall where they may. This is consistent with support for government-run programs to help the truly needy who are in dire straits through no fault of their own.
5. We the people do not need to justify our keeping of what is ours; the State has to justify its taking. We are citizens of a republic, not subjects of a king or dictator or of the apparatchiks who have managed to get their hands on the levers of State power.
6. Private property is the foundation of individual liberty. Socialism and communism spell the death of individual liberty. The more socialism, the less liberty. "The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen." (D. Prager)
7. The individual is the locus of value, not any collectivity, whether family, tribe, race, nation, or State. We do not exist for the State; the State exists for us as individuals.
8. Property rights, contra certain libertarians, are not absolute: there are conditions under which an 'eminent domain' State seizure (with appropriate compensation) of property can be justified. This proposition tempers the individualism of the preceding one.
9. Governments can and do imprison and murder. No corporation does. Liberals and leftists and 'progressives' have a naive faith in the benevolence of government, a faith that is belied by that facts of history: Communist governments in the 20th century murdered over 100 million people. (Source: Black Book of Communism.) Libs and lefties and progs are well-advised to adopt a more balanced view, tranfering some of their skepticism about corporations -- which is in part justified -- to Big Government, especially the omni-intrusive and omni-competent (omni-incompetent?)sort of governments they champion.
10. Our social and political troubles are rooted in our moral malaise, in particular, in inordinate and disordered desire. It is a pernicious illusion of the Left to suppose that our troubles have an economic origin solely and can be alleviated by socialist schemes of redistribution of wealth.
Preliminary note: what has been exercising me lately is the question whether there is a deep common root to the political identitarianism of the Left and the Right, and if there is, what this root is. Nihilism, perhaps?
. . . my identity as a person trumps my identity as an animal. Part of what this means is that it would be a false self-identification were I to identify myself as a member of a racial or ethnic group or subgroup. For if a person identifies himself as a white male or a black female, then he reduces himself to what fundamentally he is not, namely, an animal, when what he fundamentally and most truly is is a person.
My right-wing identitarian sparring partner reasonably objects:
This is puzzling to me. If I 'identify' myself as a man, or a human being, I don't think I'm reducing myself to anything. I'm just stating an obvious fact about myself or, if you prefer, myself qua mammal or living organism or something of the kind. Is there some contradiction or tension between 'I am a human being' or 'I am an animal' and 'I am a person'?
Later on in his comments he says that "to defend an identitarian position in politics" it is not necessary to engage with the metaphysics of personhood. I am inclined to disagree.
No Escaping Metaphysics
As I see it, practical politics presupposes political philosophy which presupposes normative ethics which presupposes philosophical anthropology which is a discipline of special metaphysics. Philosophical anthropology, in turn, finds its place within general metaphysics. Rationally informed political action requires a theory of the human good that needs to be grounded in a theory of human nature which itself needs embedding in a comprehensive metaphysics. And if the political action is to be truly ameliorative, then the theory of human nature had better be correct. For example, the terrible scourge on humanity that Communism has proven to be flows from the Left's false understanding of human nature.
Concessions
But before getting in too deep, let me concede some points to my interlocutor. I concede that if he tells me he is a Caucasian male, then there is an innocuous sense of 'identify' according to which he has identified himself as Causasian and male, and that in so doing he needn't be 'reducing' himself to anything in any pejorative sense. He is simply giving me information about his sex and his ancestry. He is simply pointing out a couple of his attributes.
By the same token, he can identify himself as a citizen of this country or that, a member of this political party or that, an adherent of this religion or that, or an adherent of no religion at all. And so on for a long list of essential and accidental attributes: military veteran? blood type? Social Security number? Take larger and larger conjunctions of these attributes and you get closer and closer to zeroing in on the individuating identity of a particular human animal in society, that which distinguishes him from every other human animal.
Personalism and False Self-Identification
But what I am getting at is something different. Not WHAT I am objectively viewed in my animal and social features, but WHO I am as a person, as a unique conscious and self-conscious subject of experience and as a morally responsible free agent, as an I who can address a Thou and be addressed in turn by an I. (M. Buber) I am a subject for whom there is a world and not merely an object in the physical and social worlds.
The question concerns the 'true self,' WHO I am at the deepest level. Who am I? A mere token of a type? But that is all I would be if I were to identify myself in terms of my race. This is one example of what I am calling a false self-identification. A tribal black who identifies himself in his innermost ipseity as black has reduced himself to a mere token of a racial type, a mere instance of it, when being an interchangeable token cannot possibly be what makes him the unique person that he is. After all, there are many tokens of the type, black human being.
Not only does he reduce himself to a mere instance of one of his attributes, he reduces himself to a mere instance of one of his animal attributes. It is qua animal that he has a race, not qua person. But we are not mere animals; we are spiritual animals.
Such false self-identification is a form of spiritual self-degradation.
And the same goes for whites who seek their true identity in their racial 'identity.' That is a false self-identification because who I am as this unique individual cannot be reduced to being a repeatable and interchangeable token of a type. The reason, again, is that (i) there are indefinitely many tokens of the type, white human animal, but there is exactly one me, and (ii) a self-identification in terms of a bodily attribute pertains to my animality but not to my spirituality.
Suppose I address a black man or woman as a person. When I do that I am precisely not confronting an instance of black human animal with all the stereotypes that go with it. I am then attempting an I-Thou relation with the black man or woman and not an I-It relation with an instance of black human animal. I am showing respect for the person.
There are many types of false self-identification and I oppose them all. On the present occasion I come out against racial self-identification. You cannot be in your innermost ipseity (selfhood) white or black, and any such self-identification is false. Now what does this have to do with identity politics?
Connection with Identity Politics
First of all, what is identity politics? Logically prior question: What is politics? Politics is the art of achieving the common human good in the public sphere. Human flourishing is not possible apart from social interaction and when that interaction is public, as opposed to private, we are in the political sphere. Such interaction is both cooperative and conflictual. So perhaps we can say that politics aims at maximizing cooperation and minimizing conflict within a given society for the benefit of all involved.
Identity politics, however, is not concerned primarily with the promotion of the common human good within the public sphere but with the empowering of particular factions within it. An oppressed group will seek power to alleviate its oppression. Think of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA in the '50s and '60s. The identity politics of that movement was understandable and probably necessary for blacks to make the progress they did. Blacks exhorted each other to stand tall and take pride in being black. Some of us are old enough to remember the "Black is beautiful" bumperstickers of that era.
Before long the Civil Rights movement turned into a hustle with race-hustlers such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton leading the pack. Long story short, the instrumentally necessary identity politics of the Civil Rights movement came to displace politics in its proper sense which has to aim at comity and the common good and not at the appeasing of aggrieved parties. No surprise, then, at the rise of white resistance to the excesses and absurdities of Affirmative Action with its reverse discrimination, minority set-asides, and race-norming.
But tribalism is tribalism whether black or white. Our only hope is to get beyond tribalism. (I am not sanguine.) But when I pointed this out to my interlocutor and some of his fellow travellers a year or so ago in these pages, I was shocked, SHOCKED (well, not really) to find them disagreeing me. They apparently think that whites need their own tribalism, their own White Pride, their own consciousness-raising.
This makes no sense to me. How can you take legitimate pride in what is merely an element of your facticity (in Sartre's Being and Nothingness sense of 'facticity.') You had to be born somewhere, to some pair of parents or other, of some race or other, of some sex, and so on. You're stuck with that. If you need to feel pride, feel pride in what you have done with your facticity, with what you have made of yourself, with the free accomplishments of yourself as a person, as an individual.
Common Human Good?
I wrote, "Politics is the art of achieving the common human good in the public sphere." But can we agree on what the common human good is? Not if we are identity-political in our approach. Can we even agree that there is such a thing as the common human good? Not if we are identity-political.
If who I am at the deepest level of the self is a white man, if my race is constitutive of my very innermost ipseity, then I have nothing fundamentally in common with blacks. But then conflict can be avoided only by racial segregation.
It is worth noting that one could be a white -identitarian without being a white-supremacist. One could hold that one's innermist identity as a person is racially constituted without holding that white identity is any better than black identity.
I hope it is becoming clear that we cannot avoid in these discussions what my sparring partner calls "heavy-duty metaphysics." Whether you affirm or deny a common human good, you are doing metaphysics. And if metaphysics gets in, theology is sure to follow. Justin Dean Lee in his review of Mark Lilla writes,
. . . any serious — that is, internally coherent — movement away from identity politics and toward a robust discourse of the common good requires that we reintroduce metaphysics into our politics. This entails granting theology a privileged place in the public square at a time when most of the left and the far right are loath to grant it any place at all.
Nihilism as the Common Root of Left and Right Identity Politics
So, to recap: Justin Dean Lee rightly says we cannot have a politics of the common good without substantive agreement on what the Good is, or how it might be known. Liberalism, in both its classical and progressivist forms, is agnostic on that question, or at most assumes things (“all men are created equal”) that cannot be sustained absent a shared commitment to a metaphysical ideal. Last week in Paris, talking about these things with Alain Finkielkraut, the philosopher said that he sees no exit for the French, because they have concluded as a society that there is no realm beyond the material. Most Americans would deny that they believe this, but that’s not the way we live, not even Christians. It is true that we Americans are not as far gone into atheism as the French are, so we still have time to recover. But to recover, you first have to recognize the problem. You first have to recognize that the way you are living as a Christian is not going to survive the prolonged encounter with liquid modernity.
Ta-Nehisi Coates and Richard Spencer are both atheists who have found a strong source of belief in their respective races. Spencer, a Nietzschean, has said that Christianity is a religion of the weak. They have drawn the line between good and evil not down the middle of every human heart, as that great Christian prophet Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did, but between their race and the Other. There is immense power in that kind of tribalism, and it lies in large part because it denies the fallenness of one’s own people. Where in contemporary American Christianity can we find the resources to resist falling prey to the malign power of racialism, in all its versions?
[. . .]
Only a strong Christianity can counter this nihilistic tribal religion. But this we do not have today.
John Stuart Mill was another philosopher who believed something similar. In 1859 he published his Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, in which he proposed a voting system heavily weighted towards the better educated. “If every ordinary unskilled labourer had one vote … a member of any profession requiring a long, accurate and systematic mental cultivation – a lawyer, a physician or surgeon, a clergyman of any denomination, a literary man, an artist, a public functionary … ought to have six,” he wrote. When stated this baldly, it is surely obvious that the desire to maintain so-called political expertise is actually a thinly disguised attempt to entrench the interests of an educated middle class.
"Surely obvious?" It is not obvious at all. Why should my informed, thoughtful, independent vote be cancelled out by the vote of some know-nothing tribalist who votes according to the dictate of his tribal leader? Not that I quite agree with Grayling.
Fraser and Grayling appear to represent extremes both of which ought to be avoided. I get the impression that there is a certain animosity between the two men.
Your piece on Dreher and Buchanan accepts Dreher's overall reading (or misreading, as I see it) of Buchanan's argument -- you seem to accept that Buchanan actually means to somehow call into doubt the metaphysical doctrine of the equality of men. This seems clearly wrong to me.
But before coming to that point, I want to check with you about another thing, namely, Dreher's accusation that Buchanan is openly endorsing white supremacy in his essay. Things you've said elsewhere about the failure to define terms such as "white supremacy" make me hesitant to actually ascribe to you the belief that Buchanan is a white supremacist, but if that's right--if you aren't accepting the white supremacy charge--at any rate nothing in Sunday's piece makes that explicit. And when you end your piece by talking about Buchanan "apparently repudiating" the doctrine of equality, there is at least a hint that you're willing to accept the charge.
BV: Thank you for these fine comments, Patrick. As a philosopher you understand the importance of defining terms. And yet you haven't offered us a definition of 'white supremacist.' Absent a definition, we cannot reasonably discuss whether or not Pitchfork Pat is a white supremacist, and whether the white supremacy charge is clearly bunk as you claim it is.
We could mean different things by the phrase 'white supremacist' and cognates. I hope you will agree with me, however, that the phrase is actually used by most people emotively as a sort of semantic bludgeon or verbal cudgel for purely polemical purposes in much the same way that 'racist,' 'Islamophobe,' 'fascist,' and other emotive epithets are used. On this usage, no morally decent and well-informed person could be a white supremacist. The implication is that a white supremacist is a bigot, i.e., an unreasonably intolerant person who hates others just because they are different. It is a term of very serious disapprobation.
I would guess that you understand 'white supremacist' in something very close to this sense -- which is why you take umbrage at Dreher's claim that Buchanan is a white supremacist. Bear in mind that that is Dreher's claim. I don't make it. My point of agreement with Dreher is solely on the question of the meaning of "All men are created equal." It is spectacularly clear that, in the piece in question, Buchanan shows a lack of understanding of the meaning of the sentence. Buchanan reads it as an empirical claim subject to falsification by experience. It is not, as I explain in my parent post. Here again is what he wrote:
“All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope?
I was really surprised when I read that. It occurred to me that it might just be a slip occasioned by old age, anger at recent developments, or too much Irish whisky.
Now consider the following candidate definition of 'white supremacist.'
D1. A white supremacist is one who holds that the culture and civilization produced by whites is, on balance, superior to the cultures and civilizations produced by all other racial groups.
One could be a white supremacist in this sense and hold all of the following: (a) Slavery is a grave moral evil; (b) All men are created equal in the sense I explained; (c) No citizen should be excluded from the franchise because of race; (d) No citizen should be excluded from holding public office because of race; (e) All citizens regardless of race are equal before the law.
Buchanan might well be a white supremacist in the (D1)-sense. Here is a bit of evidence: "Was not the British Empire, one of the great civilizing forces in human history, a manifestation of British racial superiority?" Buchanan is not saying that the Brits merely thought themselves to be racially superior but that they really were.
I think the white supremacy charge is clearly bunk--or at any rate, I'll say this: nothing in that particular column of Buchanan's can reasonably support a charge of white supremacy. And I don't say that on the basis that "white supremacy" hasn't been adequately defined, or any other such technicality. I just mean it should be clear that Buchanan's point is not to endorse white supremacy, but simply to point out that if that charge applies to Lee and co, then it applies to Washington and Jefferson and co, and indeed then we need to throw out the whole western culture that gave us the metaphysical doctrine of equality.
BV: Again, unless you tell us what you mean by 'white supremacy,' there is no way to evaluate what you are saying. The matter of definition is not a mere technicality; it is crucial. I sketched two senses of 'white supremacist,' the 'semantic bludgeon' sense and (D1). Now I agree that Buchanan is not a white supremacist in the first sense, but it looks like he is in the second. So I totally reject your claim that "nothing in that particular column of Buchanan's can reasonably support a charge of white supremacy."
You are also failing to appreciate that, just like an alt-righty, he shows no understanding of "All men are created equal." He is clearly giving it an empirical sense. That's blindingly obvious. Now I am going just on this one column. Perhaps in other works he says something intelligent on this point. This is why Dreher is right against Buchanan despite the former's over-the-top rhetoric.
And then on to the next point: having thrown out the grounding upon which that doctrine stands, upon what shall we build our egalitarian utopia? We can't re-establish the equality doctrine on some universally-acceptable empirical ground! Buchanan doesn't doubt the equality doctrine: he points out that the iconoclasts seeking to build their new world on it, have no basis upon which to rationally accept it. It's not a new or brilliant claim--it's pretty standard and obvious, I'd have thought.
BV: I am not quite sure what you are driving at here, but a tripartite distinction may help:
a) The Declaration sentence is empirical but false.
b) The Declaration sentence is empirical and true.
c) The Declaration sentence is metaphysical, and thus non-empirical.
The alt-righties accept (a). The loons on the Left accept (b). You and I accept (c). You and I agree that the equality doctrine cannot be built on empirical ground. I would guess that you and I also agree that if the Declaration sentence is making an empirical claim, then that claim is false.
I wrote this up yesterday in a little blog post, and I'm encouraged a bit in my reading (not that, in truth, I doubted it before!) by finding this column (not by Buchanan) posted today on Buchanan's website.
Generally, I try to follow the advice of Thoreau, "read not the Times, read the eternities," and so I ignore such issues. But I do read your blog faithfully, and for some reason--maybe just a lingering respect for Buchanan, who has always struck me as a decent man--you prompted me to read a bit of political ephemera to try to sort it out. :)
I hope you're doing well!
BV: Thank you, sir. I think we agree on the main issues, except that I really think it is important to define 'white supremacist' and not bandy it about unclarified.
I too love the Thoreau aphorism (and I'll bet you found it on my site; if not, forgive me my presumption) but I would add that in dangerous times one has to attend to the Times lest our enemies win and make it impossible for us to read the Eternities. Boethius was able to do philosophy in a prison cell, but most of us lesser mortal are not Boethian in this regard.
Keep your powder dry! (May the loons of the Left vex themselves over whether this is some sort of 'dog whistle.' It does have a Pitchfork Pat, "locked and loaded" ring to it.)
“All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope?
With that, Buchanan repudiates not only the founding principle of our Constitutional order, but also a core teaching of the Christian faith, which holds that all men are created in the image of God.
I am with Dreher on this without sharing quite the level of high dudgeon that he expresses in his piece.
I am always surprised when people do not grasp the plain sense of the "that all Men are created equal" clause embedded in the opening sentence of the second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence. It cannot be charitably interpreted as a statement of empirical fact. If it were so interpreted, it would be false. For we all know, and certainly the Founders knew, that human beings are NOT equal as a matter of empirical fact either as individuals or as groups.
Suppose a statement can be interpreted in two ways. One way it comes out plainly false; the other way it comes out either true or plausible or not obviously untrue. Then what I understand the Principle of Charity to require is that we go the second way.
For Buchanan to demand "scientific or historic proof" shows deep misunderstanding. For again, the claim is not empirical. Is it then a normative claim as Mona Charen (quoted by Dreher) seems to suggest? It implies normative propositions, but it is not itself a normative proposition. It is a metaphysical statement. It is like the statement that God exists or that the physical universe is a divine creation. Both of the latter statements are non-empirical. No natural science can either prove them or disprove them. But neither of them are normative.
Note that the Declaration's claim is not that all men are equal but that all men are created equal. In such a carefully crafted document, the word 'created' must be doing some work. What might that be?
There cannot be creatures (created items) without a Creator. That's a conceptual truth, what Kant calls an analytic proposition. So if man is created equal, then he is created by a Creator. The Creator the founders had in mind was the Christian God, and these gentlemen had, of course, read the Book of Genesis wherein we read that God made man in his image and likeness. That implies that man is not a mere animal in nature, but a spiritual being, a god-like being, possessing free will and an eternal destiny. Essential to the Judeo-Christian worldview is the notion that man is toto caelo different from the rest of the animals. He is an animal all right, but a very special one. This idea is preserved even in Heidegger who speaks of an Abgrund zwischen Mensch und Tier. The difference between man and animal is abysmal or, if you prefer, abyssal. Man alone is Da-Sein, the 'There' of Being; man alone is endowed with Seinsverstaendnis, an understanding (of) Being. But I digress onto a Black Forest path.
Now if all men, whether male or female, black or white, are created equal by God, and this equality is a metaphysical determination (Bestimmung in the sense of both a distinctive determination and a vocation) then we have here the metaphysical basis for the normative claim that all men ought to be treated equally, that all men ought to enjoy equally the same unalienable rights, among them, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. (We note en passant that these are negative rights!)
All men are normatively equal because they are metaphysically equal. They are the latter because they are spiritual beings deriving from one and the same spiritual source. Each one of us is a person just as God is a person. We are equal as persons even though we are highly unequal as animals.
Without this theological basis it is difficult to see how there could be any serious talk of equality of persons. As the alt-righties and the neoreactionaries like to say, we are not (empirically) equal either as individuals or as groups. They are absolutely right about that.
Dreher is also right that the theologically-grounded equality of persons is "the founding principle of our Constitutional order," and thus of our political order. Repudiate it, as Buchanan seems to be doing, and you undermine our political order.
What then does our political order rest on if the equality of persons is denied?
I do not advocate secession. But in these trying times all options must be explored. Professor Williams' Were Confederate Generals Traitors? (HT: Bill Keezer) concludes:
Confederate generals were fighting for independence from the Union just as George Washington and other generals fought for independence from Great Britain. Those who’d label Gen. Robert E. Lee as a traitor might also label George Washington as a traitor. I’m sure Great Britain’s King George III would have agreed.
If a civil war is a war for control of a central government, the U. S. Civil War was not a civil war but a war of secession.
Professor Williams is a black man. There are loons on the Left who will call him a traitor to his race. But one can be a traitor to one's race as little as one can change one's race. The world is not social construction all the way down. To think otherwise is one of the marks of a leftist.
One of the reasons secession is under lively discussion is because we need to find ways to get away from these destructive fools. We need the political equivalent of divorce. The hard questions pertain to the how. I have made the somewhat anemic suggestion of a return to federalism, but there must be other possibilities shy of secession.
My brand of conservatism is personalist, which may help explain why I find myself at loggerheads with those on the so-called 'Alternative Right.' And my brand of personalism is conservative which may help explain why I look askance at libertarianism and at 'mainstream conservatism' to the extent that the latter is libertarian and insufficiently attentive to the importance of national sovereignty and the right of a nation to preserve its culture from dilution and indeed subversion. The libertarian overemphasizes the economic. He is followed in this by the mainstream conservative. The alt-rightist rightly resists this overemphasis but runs the risk of falling into an excessive and morally obnoxious particularism. One form this particularism takes is in the alt-right's anti-egalitarianism. See here:
The Alt Right is anti-equalitarian. It rejects the idea of equality for the same reason it rejects the ideas of unicorns and leprechauns, noting that human equality does not exist in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form.
We are being told that there is no non-trivial sense in which human beings are equal. This, I take it, is a characteristic and defining Alt Right claim to which I oppose the Trad Right thesis that there is a sense in which all human beings are equal, namely, as persons. I suspect that this may be the main difference between the Alt and the Trad versions of conservatism. Or if not the main difference, then an important one.
But my concern is not to oppose the Alt Right, whatever exactly it is supposed to be, but to defend the thesis that human beings are equal, not as animals in nature, but as persons. Here, as elsewhere, my aim is clarity, not agreement. Agreement is out of reach, but clarification of differences is an achievable and worthwhile goal.
Empirical Inequality is a Fact
Empirical inequality cannot be denied: by the various empirical measures there is plenty of inequality among individuals and groups. (Trivial example: men on average are taller than women. Height is an example of an empirically measurable attribute.) So if human beings are taken solely in their empirical and material natures, or if human beings are nothing more than material beings, then talk of the equality of all human beings is either false or trivial. (That all human beings are equal in that they all have been born at or near the surface of the earth is empirically true, but trivially true.)
Let me make a couple more pedantic points just to make sure that the issue is clear. That we are not all empirically equal is of course consistent with two or more of us being equal in some measurable respect or even in all such respects. If it should turn out that Tim and Tom are alike in all empirical respects, that would be consistent with the denial that we are all empirically equal. A second point is that the denial that we are all empirically equally is not a normative, but a factual, claim and as such axiologically neutral. There is no implication that this is a bad, or a good, state of affairs. It is just a fact.
The Question
Given the plain fact of empirical inequality, is there any defensible sense in which human beings could be said to be equal and in possession of equal rights?
Equality is not a Matter of Abstraction
There is a misunderstanding that needs to be squelched at the outset. Talk of the equality of humans as persons does not involve abstraction from all the empirical differences that divide individuals and groups. No doubt there is the concept human being in general which every individual human animal falls under. We arrive at this concept by abstracting from all the differences between individuals to arrive at a determination common to them all. But to speak of persons is not to engage in such an abstraction. It is to refer to the unique subject of experience that each of us is, and to which each one of us can refer using the first-person singular pronoun. That to which I refer when I say 'I' is a unique personal reality, a concrete individual, not an abstraction.
The Concept of Person
A person, then, is a concrete subject of experience. By 'subject,' I don't just mean something that has or supports experiences as in the Aristotelian notion of a substrate or hypokeimenon, but something that is an initiator or enactor or source of experiences. Analogously as rays of light emanate from a light source, 'rays' of intentionality emanate outward from the subject (in the modern sense) toward objects. A person is a subject in both of these ancient and modern senses.
To unpack it a bit: a person is a conscious and thus sentient individual, capable of self-consciousness, possessing feeling and will and memory and the capacity to reason and plan and seek the truth about itself and everything else. I have just limned the concept of person in the descriptive sense of 'person.' We may now add the normative sense. A person in the normative sense is a rights-possessor which, in virtue of having rights, induces in other persons various duties. For example, my right to life induces in you the duty to refrain from taking my life, and your duty derives from my right. In this sense rights and duties are correlative.
Equality of Persons, not of Animals
So when I speak of the equality of persons, that does not mean that all human animals are empirically equal, either as individuals or as groups, which is plainly false, nor does it mean that all human animals are equal just insofar as they are instances of the concept human being. The latter is true of course: each instance of human being is the same as, and equal to, every other such instance qua instance. But while true it misses the point, namely, that each human being is a unique person.
We need to distinguish among: (a) All humans are empirically equal, which is false; (b) All humans are equally instances of the concept human being, which is true but trivial; (c) Each human being is a unique person.
My claim, then, is that we are all equal as persons in the descriptive sense, and therefore all equal in the normative sense. That is, if any one of us is a rights-possessor in virtue of being a descriptive person, then every one of us is a rights-possessor in virtue of being a descriptive person. And all of this regardless of sex, race, age, and any other empirical feature. We are equal as persons even if my will is stronger than yours and my intellect more penetrating. We are equal as persons even if you are more compassionate than me.
The point, then, is that equality is grounded in personhood, not in animal constitution. To clarify this, we need to think some more about the relation of persons and human beings or human animals when the latter are viewed from the angle of the natural sciences of biology and anthropology.
Persons and Human Animals
The above definition of 'person' allows for persons that are not human beings and human beings (genetic humans) that are not persons, as well as persons that are human beings. In the following Venn diagram, A = persons and B = humans. The intersection C represents persons who are human. God, angels, demons, and pre-embodied and disembodied Platonic souls are examples of persons that are not human. They are not human because they are not animals at all, but pure spirits. Also examples of persons that are not human are embodied persons whose personhood is realized in non-human material stuff, e.g. extraterrestrials and persons realized, not in living matter, but in computers. Examples of humans that are not persons, on my definition of 'person,' would be anencephalic human neonates. They would not be persons because of their lack of capacity to develop language and reasoning skills. (For more on the anencephalic business, see Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons, the comments to which were good.) But these anencephalic individuals are nonetheless genetically human as the offspring of human parents.
To repeat, our equality is grounded in our shared personhood despite our considerable empirical differences. Personhood cannot be understood in natural-scientific terms.
I am not commited to saying that we can exist as persons without animal embodiment. I am committed to saying that persons cannot be reduced to animals.
Equality in the Declaration of Independence
The first sentence of the second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence reads, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Clearly, on a charitable interpretation, what this affirms is not (a) or (b) but something in the vicinity of (c). We are equal as persons, as subjects of experience and as rights-possessors, not as animals in nature. As objects in the natural world having natural and empirically detectable properties, we are obviously not all equal.
Our equality is grounded in our being, not objects in the world, but subjects for whom there is a world. Subjectivity looms large on the personalist conception. It is only as conscious and self-conscious subjects that we are purposive beings who pursue things, including happiness, and have a right to the sort of life that conscious beings enjoy. This is life via intentional acts emanating from a personal center and not life in a merely biological sense. Human living cannot be exhaustively understood biologically, and this despite the plain fact that we are animals in nature.
That empirical equality is not at issue should also be obvious from the talk of a Creator. We are said to be created equal. If we are created equal, but are at the same time plainly unequal empirically speaking, then the respect in which we are created equal cannot be an empirical respect. We are not equal as specimens of a biological species, but equal in some other respect. What respect could that be?
Talk of a creator brings a purely spiritual being, God, into the picture. In the context of Christianity, which is the context in which the Founders operate, that means that we are created in the image and likeness of God. And what that means is that we too are spiritual beings possessing free will and the dignity and worth that comes with it, despite our embodiment in nature.
On this scheme, political equality and equality of rights rest on a metaphysical foundation, namely the metaphysics of persons, where persons are spiritual individuals with a destiny that transcends their animal mortality. We are all equal as creatures of the same Creator.
Interim Conclusion
Our problem was to explain how how humans could be said to equal when they are manifestly unequal empirically speaking. The classical theist will have no trouble answering. We are more than animals. We are spiritual individuals created by God in his image and likeness. As such we are equal in dignity and worth and equal in rights, whether tall or short, white or black of brown or yellow, male or female young or old, etc.
If it is essential to the Alt Right to deny that there is any sense in which humans are equal that is not either false or trivial, then the Alt Right view excludes classical theism and conversely.
An Objection and a Reply
Correspondent Jacques raises the following objection:
Let's agree it's ["All men are created equal"] a normative claim to the effect that all 'persons' have certain 'rights'. What then entitles all of them to these rights? A normative fact like that doesn't float free from all empirical facts. There's got to be some reason why all normal human adults have these rights but chickens or pencils don't, some empirical property of these beings only that generates or confers certain rights. Is it the shared property of being a person? Or the shared property of being human? Something else? I suspect that any of the candidate properties will be either morally irrelevant, even by liberal-leftist standards, or else relevant but distributed so unequally that it will be hard to understand how it could be the basis for 'equal' rights.
This is a fair question. We do not ascribe rights such as a right to life to chickens. We raise them to eat them. We treat them as mere means to our ends, even if we treat them humanely. Why is it morally permissible to eat chickens but not to eat humans? Why is it morally permissible to force animals to work for us but impermissible to enslave humans? What grounds the normative properties?
I agree with Jacques that normativity does not "float free": it needs anchorage in the non-normative. But the non-normative need not be observable by the senses. The non-normative is not equivalent to the empirical. It is open to me to say that the moral impermissibility of eating humans is grounded in the non-normative fact of their being persons in the descriptive sense. Humans are persons while chickens are not; this factual difference grounds the normative difference. It also explains why it is permissible to make a beast of burden of a donkey, but not of a man. I may agree to carry your load, but if you force me to carry it, then you violate my normative personhood which is grounded in my descriptive personhood.
Jacques also asks, "Why should we think there is any suitable empirical basis for the normative claim that 'all men are equal' or that such normative claims could be true regardless of any empirical facts?" I agree that there is no empirical basis for the normative claim. But it doesn't follow that it has no basis. The normative claim has a metaphysical basis in the nature of persons.
One has to stand in awe at the intellectual power and wisdom of the leading ladies of the Democrat Party. I am thinking of Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and now, Chelsea Clinton. The latter has recently opined that racism, sexism . . . and yes, even jingoism are not opinions.
If you are a regular reader you know how I would respond to this scurrilous nonsense. So I won't waste any time on it. (But see related articles below.)
Why the post then? It is merely to keep you informed of the direction in which the cultural indicators are pointing, and, possibly, to inspire you to do your bit to flush the liberal-left scum from positions of power, or, in the case of Chelsea, to keep this twerp from gaining any.
I was joking with somebody recently about blog backup.
"Why do I need to back up my blog?" said I. "The NSA has every word."
Joking aside, the underlying issue is a vexing one. There is no true liberty without security, but a security worth wanting must make allowance for a large measure of liberty.
It is a case of competing values. One of my early posts (13 May 2004) explores the dialectic. I gave it the catchy title, Liberty and Security. Damn, if it's not good! By the way, one of the many pleasures of blogging is re-reading and re-enjoying one's old writings.
As for me, I can’t understand how my work of almost 50 years amounts to a “nativist strategy.” Most of what I’ve published is scholarship on various historical subjects and hardly a strategy for promoting whiteness or ethno-nationalism. What I have argued when writing political polemics is the following: States that are culturally homogeneous tend to be more stable than those that are not; multiculturalism is a means by which certain elites can generate ethnic and social problems that they then put themselves in charge of and from which they derive benefit. Moreover, multiculturalism is a quintessential political religion, in that it offers moral and spiritual redemption through revolutionary change under the direction of an all-powerful political class. I’ve also mocked the view that whatever American “liberal democracy” and the post-Western “West” have become at this point in time should be a model for universal conversion. The American government should not be running around the globe forcing on others our latest version of “democratic” enlightenment.
The editors of New York may disagree with my priorities and analyses, but I don’t see how this disagreement proves that I’m a white nationalist.
I'd say Gottfried 1; NYM 0.
In my What Does 'America First' Mean? I argue, among other things, that an enlightened nationalism is not to be confused with nativism or white nationalism.
[Rex] Tillerson explained “America First” this way. It applies to “national security and economic prosperity, and that doesn’t mean it comes at the expense of others.” This defies common sense. Surely, if we’re first, someone else is second, third, and finally last.
Not at all. A perverse misunderstanding fueled by anti-Trump bias. In January, I explained it like this:
It ['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. We say 'America first' because we are Americans; the Czechs say or ought to say 'Czech Republic first.' 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. If I revert to America First, that is to be understood as an instance of Country First.
The Atlantic author does not approve of Tillerson's distinction between national interests and national values. But the distinction is easily defended. American values are superior to all others. But we ought to have learned by now that imposing them on others is not in our interest, whether in the aggressive way of Bush or the feckless and geo-politically know-nothing 'lead from behind' way of Obama.
Muslim and other nations are wedded to their own backward values and they are not about to abandon them for ours. Any attempt to teach them how to live will be interpreted as aggression, and by Muslims as 'crusading.' They are stuck deep in the past in their ancient hatreds, prejudices, and tribalisms. With the partial exception of Turkey, they were untouched by the Enlightenment, although Ataturk's revolution seems now to be failing as Turkey slides back toward the old ways.
Modern liberalism, as John Dewey and its other originators conceived it, is the enemy of individual rights in the Founders' sense. Dewey goes so far as to say that in the context of the twentieth century, the Founders' understanding of rights is evil. [Reference?] Dewey also disparages the importance of government by consent of the governed. Elections really do not matter for Dewey. Democracy is not about elections and consent, nor is it about securing the right to liberty. It is rather "that form of social organization, extending to all the areas and ways of living, in which the powers of individuals shall . . . be fed, sustained, and directed" by government.56 Liberalism therefore prefers government by supposedly neutral, supposedly scientific "experts" largely insulated from the interference of public opinion and elected officials.57Liberals have long seen the Constitution, as it was originally understood, as their enemy; thus their indifference or hostility to "original intent."
Believers in the Founders' idea of equality, on the other hand, are the strongest supporters of the Constitution. Clarence Thomas is the Supreme Court justice who is most faithful to the text and spirit of the Constitution. The reason is that Justice Thomas, uniquely among those now on the Court, sees an intimate connection between the principles of the Declaration, which are the principles of individual liberty, and the text of the Constitution. In other words, Thomas respects the Constitution not just because it is a law, not just because it was adopted by the majority, but because it is good. As Thomas explained in a 2001 lecture at James Madison University, "the principles upon which the American Constitutional order is based are universal principles, applicable to all people at all times." He is interested in the constitutional text, he said, precisely for this reason.
Conservatives sometimes invoke facts as if the factuality of a fact justifies it. Rush Limbaugh: "Life is not fair." Bill O'Reilly: "We live in a capitalist society."
But you can't say that life is not fair and leave it at that; for this allows the lefty to come back with, "Then let's make it fair!" After all, the mere fact that such-and-such is the case doesn't justify its being the case. Similarly with capitalism. You cannot just say that our economy is capitalist. You have to go on to explain why capitalism is a superior form of economic arrangement.
John Rawls wrote a very influential book entitled A Theory of Justice in which he articulates the notion that justice is fairness. Key to his book is what he calls the Difference Principle.
Rawls' Difference Principle implies that social and economic inequalities are justified only if they benefit the worst off in a society. (Cf. A Theory of Justice, Harvard UP, 1971, p. 60) There is more to it than that, but that is an implication of it.
But I can't see why one ought to accept the implication. Suppose A and B are from similar backgrounds. They work at the same type of job. Person A devotes himself to wine, women, and song. B, however, practices the old virtues, saves, invests, and then buys, improves, rents and sells mid-range real estate. Person A has enough throughout his life but dies with nothing. B dies with a net worth of 5 million USD, which is not that difficult to acquire these days given inflation and a reasonably healthy economy.
I would say that the economic disparity between A and B is justified whether or not the inequality benefits the worst-off. Of course, the disparity will benefit others, and maybe even the worst-off. As conservatives like to point out, poor people don't hire anybody. Our small-scale developer, however, will hire all sorts of people.
Liberals like Rawls seem to assume that there is something unjust about inequality as such. I don't see it. Of course, inequality that has arisen from fraud, etc. is unjust. But inequality as such? Why?
My tendency is to think that not only are some inequalities allowed by justice, but positively required by it. But this is a huge topic, and to discuss it properly one has to delve into the theoretical apparatus (original position, veil of ignorance, etc.) with which Rawls supports his two principles of justice.
My point du jour is simply that too many conservatives lack the intellectual equipment and/or training properly to defend conservative ideas. They have the right ideas but they can't articulate and defend them. I am talking about influential conservatives, the ones in the trenches of talk radio and television, people like Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Hannity. I am not talking about the conservatives in the ivory towers that few have heard of such as Victor Davis Hanson.
Innovations are presumed guilty until proven innocent. There is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional beliefs, usages, institutions, arrangements, techniques, and whatnot, provided they work. By all means allow the defeat of the outworn and no-longer-workable: in with the new if the novel is better. But the burden of proof is on the would-be innovator: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Conservatives are not opposed to change. We are opposed to non-ameliorative change, and change for the sake of change.
And once again, how can anyone who loves his country desire its fundamental transformation? How can anyone love anything who desires its fundamental transformation?
You love a girl and want to marry her. But you propose that she must first undergo a total makeover: butt lift, tummy tuck, nose job, breast implants, psychological re-wire, complete doxastic overhaul, sensus divinitatis tune-up, Weltanschauung change-out, memory upgrade, and so on. Do you love her, or is she merely the raw material for the implementation of your currently uninstantiated idea of what a girl should be?
The extension to love of country is straightforward. If you love your country, then you do not desire its fundamental transformation. Contrapositively, if you do desire its fundamental transformation, then you do not love it.
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