Also, "then" was three days before "now."
My personal theory about all these non-exploding bombs is that they are the work of a civic-minded individual trying to illuminate to the recently pro-mob crowd just why they really don't want to go down that road. If so, it's working.
UPDATE: On reflection, Democratic leaders decide to reject the call for sensible behavior.
UPDATE: Andy McCarthy on the subject.
Unclear on the concept
From Coyote Blog, on Texas U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke's proposals for encouraging entrepreneurship as a path to social justice:
Amazing. We are going to promote entrepreneurship by showering the economy with regulations (1000 new bills a year in progressive CA) and making sure many of the returns from an entrepreneurs' money and effort go to other people. This is like saying we really want to promote the growth of the rabbit population and we are going to do it by putting out lots of rabbit traps and making sure all the carrots the rabbits are eating are given to others.Ted Cruz is so personally unpopular that I was worried about his campaign for a while, but Beto seems to be taking care of it. I think Trump's "stone-cold phony" description struck a chord here.
Flag-Burners Unite
It's a little odd to run for Governor of a state when you've a history of burning that state's flag, but such is the new normal.
What few seem to realize is that the current Georgia flag is just as much a Confederate symbol as the one people got so upset about in the 1990s. I suppose that, if elected, Abrams would want to change the flag again. Maybe this time they can just put Dr. King's face on the flag and leave it at that.
As for the mountain, it is maintained by the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, a state agency that is not supported by taxes but by usage fees and the like. When I go camping in the park, I help maintain the Association. The Highland Games, the annual Cherokee-led Pow Wow, and similar cultural events do likewise. So too does the use of the golf course, the lakes, and so on. They have contracted out theme park attractions and similar services, and get a cut of the profits from all of those things. What they don't control is the carving; the State Legislature would have to approve legislation to remove it.
I hate to see such a beautiful place continually mired in ugliness and controversy. This feud is a feud about honor, specifically, about whom we will honor and whom we will treat as shameful. The Confederate leadership included some men who merit honor by virtue, but many who did not -- especially Jeff Davis, who is on the memorial carving. The Confederacy itself deserves little honor. The Klan deserves none. Perhaps there is a compromise position that can handle all that, but so far I haven't seen it.
Abrams has been a vocal critic of Confederate imagery on state symbols.As noted below, I was just at Stone Mountain for the annual Highland Games. The site has been tied to the Klan since 1915, when it was privately owned and chiefly used for rock quarries. One of the owners was tied up with the re-founding of the Klan, and offered the site as a location for the ceremony. In 1958, a Georgia government then intensely interested in defending segregation purchased the mountain specifically to be a monument to the Confederacy. The flag Abrams was burning dates to the same era, being adopted in 1956.
Shortly after white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Va., she called for the removal of the carving of Confederate war leaders from Stone Mountain’s massive granite face. Noting the state-owned site’s link to the Ku Klux Klan, she said we “must never celebrate those who defended slavery and tried to destroy the Union.”
What few seem to realize is that the current Georgia flag is just as much a Confederate symbol as the one people got so upset about in the 1990s. I suppose that, if elected, Abrams would want to change the flag again. Maybe this time they can just put Dr. King's face on the flag and leave it at that.
As for the mountain, it is maintained by the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, a state agency that is not supported by taxes but by usage fees and the like. When I go camping in the park, I help maintain the Association. The Highland Games, the annual Cherokee-led Pow Wow, and similar cultural events do likewise. So too does the use of the golf course, the lakes, and so on. They have contracted out theme park attractions and similar services, and get a cut of the profits from all of those things. What they don't control is the carving; the State Legislature would have to approve legislation to remove it.
I hate to see such a beautiful place continually mired in ugliness and controversy. This feud is a feud about honor, specifically, about whom we will honor and whom we will treat as shameful. The Confederate leadership included some men who merit honor by virtue, but many who did not -- especially Jeff Davis, who is on the memorial carving. The Confederacy itself deserves little honor. The Klan deserves none. Perhaps there is a compromise position that can handle all that, but so far I haven't seen it.
"Caravan"
Wretchard wonders if there isn't something off about the global order.
Open borders advocates wait with bated breath as central American refugee "caravans" headed for the United States in a replay of the migrant crisis that changed the political landscape Europe.... Ironically the caravans could wind up boosting Donald Trump the way the European refugee flows crippled Angela Merkel. Her position as "Leader of the Free World" now seems over as "her junior coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), saw support in Bavaria halved." It would be one more hint that liberal policy analysts miscalculated badly.There is more, including a report on Chinese money in Canada.
Just how weak the globalist orthodoxy has now become was illustrated by Italy's budgetary defiance of the European Union. "In what is becoming a dangerous game of chicken for the global economy, Italy’s populist government refused to budge on Tuesday after the European Union for the first time sent back a member state’s proposed budget because it violated the bloc’s fiscal laws and posed unacceptable risks." The Atlantic notes that far from being fearful of Brussels the Italians are raring for a fight. The Independent suggests that Rome's open revolt is now a bigger threat to the EU than Brexit. "It could finish the euro ... Add the migrant crisis" and you have a perfect storm.
The chief challenges to globalization now stem from the cascading failures of the system itself principally in the effect of China, Russia and MENA's refusal to democratize. With hostiles inside the wire Western political parties are realizing that they are no longer complete masters of their own house. Russian collusion and Saudi influence are but different names for foreign influence now rampant in what used to be domestic affairs.
Random Bee Stings
This infographic is going to leave a mark: How to Tell a Modern-Day Nazi from an Antifa Member
On Gender, Left Steps Up Effort Against Notorious Hate Group: Reality
What Should You Wear to Church? A handy guide for each denomination
Report: First Star Destroyer in Space Force to Be Named 'USS Civility'
On Gender, Left Steps Up Effort Against Notorious Hate Group: Reality
What Should You Wear to Church? A handy guide for each denomination
Report: First Star Destroyer in Space Force to Be Named 'USS Civility'
Random Philosophy Links
Psychology research by philosophers is robust and replicates better than other areas of psychology
I didn't know there was a field called "experimental philosophy."
Philosophers Name the Best Philosophy Books
The War on Reason - A very interesting article by psychologist Paul Bloom that argues for a place for free will against the assault by sociology and psychology. It is long and wide-ranging and I found it thought-provoking. Plus, brief mentions of Aristotle.
The Theory of Mind Myth - a challenge to the idea that we can understand another person's mind
Update: Does reading give us access to other people's minds?
I didn't know there was a field called "experimental philosophy."
Philosophers Name the Best Philosophy Books
The War on Reason - A very interesting article by psychologist Paul Bloom that argues for a place for free will against the assault by sociology and psychology. It is long and wide-ranging and I found it thought-provoking. Plus, brief mentions of Aristotle.
The Theory of Mind Myth - a challenge to the idea that we can understand another person's mind
Update: Does reading give us access to other people's minds?
Revolution
I've been swimming around in G.K. Chesterton quotations today:
“There are two kinds of revolutionists, as of most things – a good kind and a bad. The bad revolutionists destroy conventions by appealing to fads – fashions that are newer than conventions. The good do it by appealing to facts that are older than conventions.” Illustrated London News, April 30, 1910
STEM Gerrymander
The infamous Jordan Peterson warns the STEM field that it is about to get sucker-punched.
Format Change
I've restored a very old all-black format as a test to see if it is easier to read. The white-on-red text, though I find the design attractive, may be harder on the eyes than is necessary. Feedback is welcome, of course. But the design isn't an innovation, for what that's worth; we blacked out the blog for a long time way back when. It was done to protest the anti-Free Speech initiatives of the late Senator McCain.
NPC Conan
One of the more effective memes developed lately is the meme of the NPC, short for "Non-Player Character." These are characters one encounters in video role playing games that are supposed to simulate human beings, but whose responses are scripted and thus limited and predictable. Politically Correct culture forces its adherents into a similar role of only being allowed certain thoughts and expressions. Thus, they come to act as if they were NPCs even though they are, presumably, actual humans.
Naturally members of the PC culture are describing this meme as "fascist," which somewhat amusingly makes the point that they have a very limited range of acceptable responses. They claim it is "dehumanizing," which is a favorite term they use that doesn't seem to mean what I'd expect it to mean. Human beings are characteristically capable of free thought and, therefore, free expression. Limiting one's own capacity for thought and expression is more dehumanizing (to one's self) than mocking others for refusing to engage in freer thought and expression. The guy who mocks you as an NPC isn't dehumanizing you; he's pointing out the degree to which you have agreed to dehumanize yourself.
I thought of all of this because of today's edition of "Conan the Salaryman," an often-amusing Twitter account that imagines Conan the Barbarian forced into modern life. Normally the joke is that Conan would probably kill people on a regular basis if forced into such a life, which allows the author to make jokes about the indignities of commuting or working in an ordinary office. Now and then, though, you get stuff like this:
I find transgender claims philosophically interesting, at least the ones that arise from people who physically are biologically male or female but who claim to be the opposite sex essentially. The claim seems to point to a sort of dualism, in which the sex of the body and the sex of the soul/spirit/mind/etc come apart. That's so at odds with the materialism that wrongly dominates much of our philosophical conversation today that I'm inclined to entertain it, if only because I see the value of the challenge it poses to ordinary received wisdom dominant in our culture. (In addition, at least some people aren't either male or female in the strict biological sense; these people have a sensible claim to accommodation as they have been born into a world that otherwise doesn't really have a place for them.)
That said, it's absurd to adopt the persona of Conan and talk movingly of transgender rights. Robert E. Howard would have laughed in your face, probably just before punching it. Howard was an early 20th century adherent of understanding even many mystical aspects of the world in terms of hard science; he wrote of demons as coming from 'outer space,' and of evolution causing 'races' of men to rise nearly to godhood, or fall back to bestiality. Indeed, there's no separating Howard's racism from his adherence to Darwinism, at the hour when Darwin was being treated with intense skepticism by the Christianity of the period. Howard believed a man could come from an ape, and he believed a line of men might therefore be closer to apes than another line; or that a line could fall back into apehood, under the right conditions. He believed apes could come to take on manlike intelligence, thus being even greater perils for his heroes.
As far as I know, Howard didn't even imagine a transgender character, but I can't imagine they would have come off kindly in Conan's eyes had he encountered one. But it's the only acceptable viewpoint for the PC today, and therefore even NPC Conan the Barbarian has to mouth the line. It's the only line in the script.
Naturally members of the PC culture are describing this meme as "fascist," which somewhat amusingly makes the point that they have a very limited range of acceptable responses. They claim it is "dehumanizing," which is a favorite term they use that doesn't seem to mean what I'd expect it to mean. Human beings are characteristically capable of free thought and, therefore, free expression. Limiting one's own capacity for thought and expression is more dehumanizing (to one's self) than mocking others for refusing to engage in freer thought and expression. The guy who mocks you as an NPC isn't dehumanizing you; he's pointing out the degree to which you have agreed to dehumanize yourself.
I thought of all of this because of today's edition of "Conan the Salaryman," an often-amusing Twitter account that imagines Conan the Barbarian forced into modern life. Normally the joke is that Conan would probably kill people on a regular basis if forced into such a life, which allows the author to make jokes about the indignities of commuting or working in an ordinary office. Now and then, though, you get stuff like this:
I find transgender claims philosophically interesting, at least the ones that arise from people who physically are biologically male or female but who claim to be the opposite sex essentially. The claim seems to point to a sort of dualism, in which the sex of the body and the sex of the soul/spirit/mind/etc come apart. That's so at odds with the materialism that wrongly dominates much of our philosophical conversation today that I'm inclined to entertain it, if only because I see the value of the challenge it poses to ordinary received wisdom dominant in our culture. (In addition, at least some people aren't either male or female in the strict biological sense; these people have a sensible claim to accommodation as they have been born into a world that otherwise doesn't really have a place for them.)
That said, it's absurd to adopt the persona of Conan and talk movingly of transgender rights. Robert E. Howard would have laughed in your face, probably just before punching it. Howard was an early 20th century adherent of understanding even many mystical aspects of the world in terms of hard science; he wrote of demons as coming from 'outer space,' and of evolution causing 'races' of men to rise nearly to godhood, or fall back to bestiality. Indeed, there's no separating Howard's racism from his adherence to Darwinism, at the hour when Darwin was being treated with intense skepticism by the Christianity of the period. Howard believed a man could come from an ape, and he believed a line of men might therefore be closer to apes than another line; or that a line could fall back into apehood, under the right conditions. He believed apes could come to take on manlike intelligence, thus being even greater perils for his heroes.
As far as I know, Howard didn't even imagine a transgender character, but I can't imagine they would have come off kindly in Conan's eyes had he encountered one. But it's the only acceptable viewpoint for the PC today, and therefore even NPC Conan the Barbarian has to mouth the line. It's the only line in the script.
Stone Games
That event is Weight Over Bar, i.e. throwing a 56-pound weight over the rising bar. They were throwing at 18 feet when I took that photo.
These games have been an important part of my life for decades. Old friends, old swords, old stories, old ways.
Priorities
One of Maggie's Farm's recent posts concerned crushes in the workplace. I liked this comment:
Life is too complicated for simple answers, but you fulfill your duties and obligations first. Then you make sure your actions reduce chaos and drama. THEN you satisfy your wibbly bits.
I Wonder If That's True?
AVI speculates:
Still, I've spent a lot of time with the dead -- at least the ones who wrote books, or who had books or sagas written about them. I usually like them fine, often better than my contemporaries. It's a subset, of course, of the whole population; but then again, the population was a lot smaller in the old days and traveled a lot less. It wasn't as important that you learn to like people who were from far away, because it wasn't as likely to come up that you'd need to do so.
As an aside, I sometimes tell a story about how progressive and conservative thought are both the result of psychological illusions, and AVI's speculation reminds me of it. I'll run through it quickly here just because I haven't written it down in a while, and maybe it'll be interesting to some of you or at least useful to someone someday. The story goes like this:
For the most part people learn their values by contact. You can think of values as 'rubbing off' in an almost literal sense: you get yours by rubbing up against someone else who already has them. That's how they teach you to have them. Now you're more likely to rub up against people who are closer to you than who are further away. That closeness holds for both time and space: those who are closer to you in time rub up against you a lot more than those who are distant, unless you're one of those who goes out of their way to seek out the old books, or institutions that bring old things forward anew.
The illusion that gives rise to progressivism, then, is just that this process makes it seem like those who are closer to you in time are increasingly like yourself. Since what you believe is right is what you believe is right, and you got your values by rubbing up against those closer to you than further from you, naturally as you look further and further back the moral world of those older generations looks less and less in agreement with your own. Because you believe your own values are right, this fact makes it appear as if there is an 'arrow of progress' in history that points in your direction. Every generation gets closer to you, as if they were learning lessons that are bringing them closer to the true values you hold in your heart.
Of course it's just an illusion. As things get further away from you in the future, those people will have rubbed up less against you and those you rubbed against. Their values will change in a different direction. There's no arrow of history. It's an illusion, almost an optical illusion. It comes from this fact of perspective.
The illusion that gives rise to conservatism comes from picking a point in history -- real or imagined -- and holding it up as the exemplary one. It doesn't matter if it is the Founding, the Age of Mohammed and his Companions, the Early Christian Church, the Viking Age, the 1950s or the High Middle Ages. King Arthur. Camelot. Whatever. Once you've picked a point and a set of values as exemplary, this very same process I have been describing means that history looks like a long falling away from that moral ideal. Every generation is less and less like the one that lived in the great days.
That's an illusion too. It's an illusion of the very same kind.
What isn't illusory in the moral world is the transcendent values, the ones that hold true by virtue of the structure of reality and human nature. Courage is a virtue in every generation, because the courageous are more likely to succeed in achieving whatever it is they want to achieve. So too the self-disciplined. So too the ones who love at least certain particular others enough that they lead lives they enjoy and value. Courage, honor, moderation, discipline, love, friendship. These things really matter. They are not illusions.
Almost everything else is. Some of the illusions are harmless; others give rise to terrible tragedies. But they should be recognized by the wise for the illusions that they are.
Most of your ancestors did about as well as they could under the circumstances, but their times were not ours and you wouldn't have liked them much. You would have found them slow, ignorant, indifferent to violence, intolerant of people twenty miles distant, dirty, and smelly. On the other hand, they would find you pampered, soft, arrogant, overfed, sexually uncontrolled, irreligious, and wasteful. And they would be right, I suppose, though I don't think I would hang around to hear them talk about it.Well, I don't have to care what anyone thinks of me who isn't my wife or a few close friends. I've built my life that way on purpose.
Still, I've spent a lot of time with the dead -- at least the ones who wrote books, or who had books or sagas written about them. I usually like them fine, often better than my contemporaries. It's a subset, of course, of the whole population; but then again, the population was a lot smaller in the old days and traveled a lot less. It wasn't as important that you learn to like people who were from far away, because it wasn't as likely to come up that you'd need to do so.
As an aside, I sometimes tell a story about how progressive and conservative thought are both the result of psychological illusions, and AVI's speculation reminds me of it. I'll run through it quickly here just because I haven't written it down in a while, and maybe it'll be interesting to some of you or at least useful to someone someday. The story goes like this:
For the most part people learn their values by contact. You can think of values as 'rubbing off' in an almost literal sense: you get yours by rubbing up against someone else who already has them. That's how they teach you to have them. Now you're more likely to rub up against people who are closer to you than who are further away. That closeness holds for both time and space: those who are closer to you in time rub up against you a lot more than those who are distant, unless you're one of those who goes out of their way to seek out the old books, or institutions that bring old things forward anew.
The illusion that gives rise to progressivism, then, is just that this process makes it seem like those who are closer to you in time are increasingly like yourself. Since what you believe is right is what you believe is right, and you got your values by rubbing up against those closer to you than further from you, naturally as you look further and further back the moral world of those older generations looks less and less in agreement with your own. Because you believe your own values are right, this fact makes it appear as if there is an 'arrow of progress' in history that points in your direction. Every generation gets closer to you, as if they were learning lessons that are bringing them closer to the true values you hold in your heart.
Of course it's just an illusion. As things get further away from you in the future, those people will have rubbed up less against you and those you rubbed against. Their values will change in a different direction. There's no arrow of history. It's an illusion, almost an optical illusion. It comes from this fact of perspective.
The illusion that gives rise to conservatism comes from picking a point in history -- real or imagined -- and holding it up as the exemplary one. It doesn't matter if it is the Founding, the Age of Mohammed and his Companions, the Early Christian Church, the Viking Age, the 1950s or the High Middle Ages. King Arthur. Camelot. Whatever. Once you've picked a point and a set of values as exemplary, this very same process I have been describing means that history looks like a long falling away from that moral ideal. Every generation is less and less like the one that lived in the great days.
That's an illusion too. It's an illusion of the very same kind.
What isn't illusory in the moral world is the transcendent values, the ones that hold true by virtue of the structure of reality and human nature. Courage is a virtue in every generation, because the courageous are more likely to succeed in achieving whatever it is they want to achieve. So too the self-disciplined. So too the ones who love at least certain particular others enough that they lead lives they enjoy and value. Courage, honor, moderation, discipline, love, friendship. These things really matter. They are not illusions.
Almost everything else is. Some of the illusions are harmless; others give rise to terrible tragedies. But they should be recognized by the wise for the illusions that they are.
The Logic of the Current Revolution
Dr. Codevilla has a long piece on what he calls the current revolutionary moment. He posits at least one scenario in which it ends well for the most part:
Were a conservative to win the 2020 presidential election, dealing with the Progressives’ renewed resistance would be his administration’s most pressing problem. But had the Left’s resistance failed utterly during the previous four years, it may be possible to convince it to switch from its present offensive mode to a defensive one. Were this to be the happy case, the conservative side of American life, operating from a dominant position, might be able to obtain agreement to some form of true federalism.I used to think something like this could work; of late I've become unconvinced. I think the real issue now is that there are progressive urban areas even in the reddest states, and red areas even in the bluest ones. Federalism still might work, but not state-oriented federalism. We need some way of preventing the Mountain Tribe from having to be ruled by the City Tribe; and vice versa, not that I think the Mountain Tribe has much interest in ruling over cities or their people.
Unattainable, and gone forever, is the whole American Republic that had existed for some 200 years after 1776. The people and the habits of heart and mind that had made it possible are no longer a majority. Progressives made America a different nation by rejecting those habits and those traditions. As of today, they would use all their powers to prevent others from living in the manner of the Republic. But, perhaps, after their offensive resistance’s failure, they might be reconciled to govern themselves as they wish in states where they command a majority, while not interfering with other Americans governing themselves in their way in the states where they are a majority.
Seven Years in Prison for a 40 Year Old Mistake
A Vietnam Veteran awarded the Silver Star is being sent to Federal prison for buying an M-14 like the one he carried in the Army.
The raid and arrest on Pick’s Plano home came two weeks after his wife of 40 years died of cancer. They were using marijuana, which authorities found and added another criminal charge.Good candidate for a Presidential pardon, that.
Friends of the vet showed up to support him after he pleaded guilty in a Plano federal courtroom and was sentenced to 87 months in prison by a judge.
“He’s had it all these years never robbed a bank or done anything with it,” said Shackelford. “Somebody that made one mistake and now 50 years later, he’s paying a really big price for it.”
Silence, Dogs!
I just don't get the concept that the best way to fight "dehumanization" is through speech bans. Nothing is more characteristically human than speech; respect for freedom of speech is the sin qua non of respecting someone's humanity. It is far less dehumanizing for Louis Farrakhan to suggest that his Jewish opponents are "termites" than it would be for us to tell Louis Farrakhan that he wasn't permitted to speak in public.
The right to think for yourself is one of the clearest cases of natural rights: nature itself defends this right. As long as you have a human brain -- unless some opponent should lobotomize it or physically destroy it -- you will think. Speech is just one step removed from this natural human right, as it's just a way of putting your thoughts in the air. No one has to agree with them. No one is necessarily going to be persuaded. Hearing Farrakhan doesn't make me scorn or dislike Jews; it persuades me only that he's a nasty person. But I know he's a person. I know it in part because I got to hear him speak his thoughts.
Freedom of speech should be non-negotiable, especially in America. Whatever they do elsewhere, here we speak our minds.
The right to think for yourself is one of the clearest cases of natural rights: nature itself defends this right. As long as you have a human brain -- unless some opponent should lobotomize it or physically destroy it -- you will think. Speech is just one step removed from this natural human right, as it's just a way of putting your thoughts in the air. No one has to agree with them. No one is necessarily going to be persuaded. Hearing Farrakhan doesn't make me scorn or dislike Jews; it persuades me only that he's a nasty person. But I know he's a person. I know it in part because I got to hear him speak his thoughts.
Freedom of speech should be non-negotiable, especially in America. Whatever they do elsewhere, here we speak our minds.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)