Although I don’t intend to sell my vote, I do appreciate that the opening bid is in the six figures. I suppose it’s a sort of respect to assume the bribe would need to be quite high.
If bribery is the platform, Bernie’s going to be hard to beat. Maybe Kamala will promise to cancel my mortgage.
Aristotle’s Ethics: Politics and the Nature of Man
To quickly review the first post on the Hillsdale course Aristotle’s Ethics, there were three main points.
- We are looking for an appropriate level of precision and evidence. The precision and evidence expected of mathematics is different from that expected for biology, history, etc.
- There is a hierarchy of “good” in things, pursuits, methods, etc. Some things, pursuits, methods, etc., are more valuable than others. I think it is easier to think of it as a hierarchy of value, maybe, but the Nicomachean Ethics (EN) consistently calls it good, the good, goods, etc.
- This hierarchy is established first by the theory that if something exists for the sake of something else, that something else is a higher good, or more valuable.
The example was the work of the bridle maker, which, in ancient Athens,
was for the sake of having cavalry, and cavalry was for the sake of military victory,
and that was for the sake of preserving the city-state. So, the work of the
bridle maker is good, but that of the cavalryman is a higher good, that of the
general even higher, and the existence of the city-state yet higher. I surmised
that this would make the work of citizenship, political engagement, the highest
form of work.
The very highest goods exist for their own sake, like
happiness.
ThinkSpot
Sounds like Dr. Peterson has a new project aimed at securing freedom of speech and thought.
In a rambling column today, Martha Gill, one of The Guardian’s authoritarian scribes, attempts to take Dr. Jordan Peterson to task for launching Thinkspot—a new free speech-friendly social media platform.Well, thanks to the Guardian. I hadn't heard of this endeavor before now.
"The End of an Era"
I suppose eras are always ending these days. Quillette has an excerpt from a book by Phyllis Chesler, whose given name marks her era quite well. In the Baby Boom, close to ten thousand girls a year were given the name "Phyllis" some years; in 2012 it was 13.
This is a real change, but a small one. She has seen bigger things.
This is a real change, but a small one. She has seen bigger things.
After 9/11, I felt as if the Afghanistan I’d fled so long ago had followed me right into the future and into the West. That distant and dangerous country began to dominate American and European headlines. Muslim women started wearing burqas (head, face, and body coverings) and niqabs (face masks) on the streets of New York City, London, and Paris.The bulk of the work appears to be biographical tributes to the Second Wave feminists she worked with, as well as a sorrowful retrospective on what has become of their common work. I suppose she must be intending to close off her own era indeed, given some of her comments. She will not now be welcome on many a campus.
As global violence against women gained horrendous momentum, many Western feminists became increasingly afraid to criticize that violence lest they be condemned as colonialists and racists. This fear often trumped their concern for women’s human rights globally.... Many feminist academics and journalists now believe that speaking out against head scarves, face veils, the burqa, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, and polygamy is somehow racist. I did not foresee the extent to which feminists who, philosophically, are universalists would paradoxically become isolationists. Such timidity (presumably in the service of opposing racism) is perhaps the greatest failing of the feminist establishment.
The Army Loves Reflective Belts
T&P reports that the Army has finally realized that it isn't necessary for every soldier to wear one in the daytime. Now if only they could realize that it isn't necessary to wear one in a war zone. I suppose there were probably numbers to back up that being struck by a vehicle while inside the wire was a bigger threat than being shot by a sniper. Maybe.
What would we do without research
Actually, this research appears to have been pretty open-minded. The researchers left wallets all over the world and tried to figure out what influences people to try to return them to their owners. They found interesting trends in national location, level of average local education, and size of wad of cash (would you have guessed that the greater the cash, the greater the chance of return?).
I tried to do a thought experiment about finding a wallet. My first impression is that I'd never dream of failing to try to find the owner. When I try to imagine find a stash of money large enough to be seriously tempting, I also start imagining making myself a target for death from some cartel. Finding big money always gets people in trouble in movies and books.
I tried to do a thought experiment about finding a wallet. My first impression is that I'd never dream of failing to try to find the owner. When I try to imagine find a stash of money large enough to be seriously tempting, I also start imagining making myself a target for death from some cartel. Finding big money always gets people in trouble in movies and books.
The perception gap
This study concludes that people on both the left and the right overestimate the extreme views of their opponents. The effect is less marked for those who are not very engaged politically. The upshot is that people on either side of the political divide probably have more views in common than they realize.
Joltin' Joe and the Segregationists
As AVI points out, there's no reason for anyone to defend him; he has no principles, really, he just stuck his foot in it. Furthermore, he wouldn't defend any of us in similar circumstances. Still and all, I'm going to say a few words about it, just in the interest of speaking the truth.
NRO's Kevin Williamson attempts a kind of dance here that is not completely warranted. Not that he's wrong, exactly.
However, it's not just progressives who have to bear the weight of the segregationist history. The fact is the South had a lot of progressives who wanted to make progress on race, too. They wanted to do it a bit at a time, because if you moved too fast too far it could provoke dangerous disruptions. The history of lynching wasn't history quite yet, and they both wanted to do better by their black neighbors, and feared to go too fast. Pretty much every one of these figures was driven out of office after Brown v. the Board of Education.
The full-throated embrace of segregation was, then, reactionary rather than progressive. It was a reaction of exactly the kind the good-hearted moderates had warned about. For a generation or so, no one who wanted to be elected to office from the South could avoid being a segregationist. If you wanted a political career, you'd play along because it was what the majority strongly wanted.
Some people I generally think well of played along, and felt bad about it later. Zell Miller, for example, was a segregationist in his youth because he wanted to be a politician. He was a very successful politician, but by the time he had risen to the rank of governor, he began to try to fix his mistakes. Zell tried to remove the Confederate battle flag from Georgia's state flag, and it almost ended his career. (Later governors succeeded by trickery, rather than by getting a vote past the citizens; and actually, the current Georgia flag is almost identical to the first Confederate National Flag, which to my way of thinking is worse. At least the Confederate army had the virtues of brave soldiers; the Confederate government had no virtues I can see.) He did his best to heal the wounds he'd helped to cause, and I hope he managed to heal some of them.
I figure Zell is as close to a political progenitor as I have. He came out of the Jacksonian wing of the Southern Democrats, and while he believed in using government for progress (he created the Hope scholarship, which sent me to college), he was a conservative as much as anything. He gave the keynote speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, when Bill Clinton was supposed to be a new and more centrist kind of Democrat; he gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention, in which he personally burned John Kerry's presidential hopes to the ground as thoroughly as Sherman had burned the city where Zell later governed. He was an outstanding Senator, a good governor, and a fine lieutenant governor. I'm not much in favor of government or politicians as a rule, but he was as good a one as I ever knew.
And he was definitely at one time a segregationist.
Joe Biden may not really believe what he said (which, by the way, implied strict disagreement with segregationists). But it's exactly the kind of sentiment that made me feel better about Bernie Sanders. I can't think of two political positions that Bernie and I have in common, but his friendship with and respect for Jim Webb made me think he could be OK. The ability to look past even serious differences and find common ground is in fact praiseworthy. It's hard. There's no guarantee it will work, certainly not that it can work forever. But if we can show each other respect, sometimes we can develop friendships even when we disagree very deeply. And that's the only way a big, complex, diverse society like ours could possibly work.
If we really can't do that anymore, America is over. Joe Biden is right about this, even if he doesn't mean it. Bernie Sanders is right about it, by example. Those trying to make this kind of outreach unacceptable are plain wrong, and they're running us up on the rocks with their poison.
And that's the truth, as far as I can tell.
NRO's Kevin Williamson attempts a kind of dance here that is not completely warranted. Not that he's wrong, exactly.
Most of the segregationist Democrats of the FDR–LBJ era were committed New Dealers and, by most criteria, progressives. They largely supported welfare spending, public-works programs, the creation of the major entitlement programs, and, to a lesser extent, labor reform. They did work to ensure that African Americans were effectively excluded from many of the benefits of these programs, but they provided much of the political horsepower that carried forward the progressive project from the Great Depression on. This should not be terribly surprising: Many of the Democrats who were instrumental in the reforms of the Wilson years, the golden age of American progressivism, were virulent racists, prominent among them Woodrow Wilson himself. Given such figures as Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, one might as easily write that progressives of both parties were racists.It's definitely true that progressives of the early 20th century were committed racists. That's where eugenics came from -- from the very same people who believed in evolution from the apes when most of the country still did not. The very same willingness to question tradition in the light of science was at work in both projects. Because man could evolve from an ape through breeding, man could revert to an ape via the same process. Abortion and careful selection were about ensuring the continued improvement of the species, and barring 'the wrong kinds' from breeding as much as possible was about the very same thing. You didn't have to believe in race, or use it as a proxy for excellent genetics, but people at that time generally did believe in it. Until the depth of evil was revealed by the Nazi embrace of eugenics, this was just another way of being scientifically minded, forward thinking, progressive.
However, it's not just progressives who have to bear the weight of the segregationist history. The fact is the South had a lot of progressives who wanted to make progress on race, too. They wanted to do it a bit at a time, because if you moved too fast too far it could provoke dangerous disruptions. The history of lynching wasn't history quite yet, and they both wanted to do better by their black neighbors, and feared to go too fast. Pretty much every one of these figures was driven out of office after Brown v. the Board of Education.
The full-throated embrace of segregation was, then, reactionary rather than progressive. It was a reaction of exactly the kind the good-hearted moderates had warned about. For a generation or so, no one who wanted to be elected to office from the South could avoid being a segregationist. If you wanted a political career, you'd play along because it was what the majority strongly wanted.
Some people I generally think well of played along, and felt bad about it later. Zell Miller, for example, was a segregationist in his youth because he wanted to be a politician. He was a very successful politician, but by the time he had risen to the rank of governor, he began to try to fix his mistakes. Zell tried to remove the Confederate battle flag from Georgia's state flag, and it almost ended his career. (Later governors succeeded by trickery, rather than by getting a vote past the citizens; and actually, the current Georgia flag is almost identical to the first Confederate National Flag, which to my way of thinking is worse. At least the Confederate army had the virtues of brave soldiers; the Confederate government had no virtues I can see.) He did his best to heal the wounds he'd helped to cause, and I hope he managed to heal some of them.
I figure Zell is as close to a political progenitor as I have. He came out of the Jacksonian wing of the Southern Democrats, and while he believed in using government for progress (he created the Hope scholarship, which sent me to college), he was a conservative as much as anything. He gave the keynote speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, when Bill Clinton was supposed to be a new and more centrist kind of Democrat; he gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention, in which he personally burned John Kerry's presidential hopes to the ground as thoroughly as Sherman had burned the city where Zell later governed. He was an outstanding Senator, a good governor, and a fine lieutenant governor. I'm not much in favor of government or politicians as a rule, but he was as good a one as I ever knew.
And he was definitely at one time a segregationist.
Joe Biden may not really believe what he said (which, by the way, implied strict disagreement with segregationists). But it's exactly the kind of sentiment that made me feel better about Bernie Sanders. I can't think of two political positions that Bernie and I have in common, but his friendship with and respect for Jim Webb made me think he could be OK. The ability to look past even serious differences and find common ground is in fact praiseworthy. It's hard. There's no guarantee it will work, certainly not that it can work forever. But if we can show each other respect, sometimes we can develop friendships even when we disagree very deeply. And that's the only way a big, complex, diverse society like ours could possibly work.
If we really can't do that anymore, America is over. Joe Biden is right about this, even if he doesn't mean it. Bernie Sanders is right about it, by example. Those trying to make this kind of outreach unacceptable are plain wrong, and they're running us up on the rocks with their poison.
And that's the truth, as far as I can tell.
Seven Riders Dead in Massachusetts
The Jarheads MC took a heavy blow this weekend, because of a pickup truck that was on fire when emergency services arrived.
UPDATE: A photo from a FB group I'm in, one of whose members went out to the scene.
Volodoymyr Zhukovskyy, 23, of West Springfield, Massachusetts, was behind the wheel of a 2016 Dodge 2500 with an attached trailer, officials said at a press conference. Zhukovskyy is not currently facing any charges, but officials said the crash remains under investigation.It's a tragedy for Jarheads MC, a Marine Corps veterans club. Ride safe, those of you who do. You just can't predict what the cagers will do.
UPDATE: A photo from a FB group I'm in, one of whose members went out to the scene.
Going to the Wild
Following my own recommendation, I went out to the Wild on Friday through today. There's some significant landscape in this photo. The highest peak you can make out is Clingman's Dome, which is the tallest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and one of the highest in the Eastern United States (Mount Mitchell, which you can see from atop it on a clear day, is slightly taller). The Appalachian Trail crosses there. If you're southbound, you'll climb three mountains that day to get to it, and then have a long decline to the closest shelter down by some springs below.
Back to the photo. If your eye should follow that ridge to the right, where the squiggly peaks are, the low point on the ridge is Newfound Gap. That's where the road between Gatlinburg and the Cherokee reservation passes. (Much of the valley you can see before the ridgeline is the Qualla Boundary Lands).
We'll pause for a musical interlude at the mention of Gatlinburg.
Far off to the left are the Unicoi mountains in Tennessee. The gap in the Clingman's Dome ridge headed that way is Deal's Gap, which is the location of the Tail of the Dragon, the most famous motorcycle road in the world.
I've ridden the Dragon quite a few times, but the hardest trip I ever had on it was in a Chevy whose power steering went out. I've seen guys ride right off the edge, though.
Aristotelian Warmup
While you're waiting for Tom's next post on the topic, here's something that turned up on Instapundit today. "Is human nature good or bad?" Since we talked about "the good" last week, the challenge (for those of you who wish to accept it) is to try to give an Aristotelian account of the answer. I think last week's discussion gave you enough mental furniture to do it.
I'll leave this for a few days and then come back and reply to any attempts. It's more important to think it through yourself than to have me tell you an answer.
I'll leave this for a few days and then come back and reply to any attempts. It's more important to think it through yourself than to have me tell you an answer.
"Pro-Choice" Socialism
Oliver Wendell Holmes smiles from beyond the grave.
The British government is long due to be overthrown as a tyranny. This is just part of what an earlier set of over-throwers called "a long train of abuses." Lately, the worst abuses are all at home.
A British judge ordered Friday that an abortion be performed on a mentally disabled woman who is 22 weeks pregnant, despite objections from the woman and her mother....She doesn't have the mental capacity to make her own decisions about religion? The Church allows confirmation at seven, which is in the 'six to nine' age range, and the British government doesn't see fit to tell children they can't make that call yet. If she can make that decision for herself, then her opposition to abortion follows.
“I am acutely conscious of the fact that for the State to order a woman to have a termination where it appears that she doesn't want it is an immense intrusion,” the justice said. “I have to operate in [her] best interests, not on society's views of termination."
The unnamed woman, a Roman Catholic, reportedly has developmental disabilities and the mental age of a 6- to 9-year-old.... The woman’s mother, a former midwife, opposes the abortion procedure and told the court that she could take care of the child with the support from the daughter, Sky News reported.
A social worker who works with the woman also said the pregnancy should not be terminated.
But the judge said the woman didn’t have the mental capacity to make her own decisions even it look like she wanted to continue the pregnancy.
The British government is long due to be overthrown as a tyranny. This is just part of what an earlier set of over-throwers called "a long train of abuses." Lately, the worst abuses are all at home.
Diminishing returns
Michigan's spending on roads increased even as road quality decreased. I think we've seen this same trend in school spending. Could there be a common thread?
Crime journalism
This report had to have been turned in by his partner, who's just jacking with him now.
Solstice
It's time to go to the Wild, as you are able. Pentecost is gone, and if you remembered you re-swore your oaths. So now it comes summer, and knights ride out for adventure in the forest. One thing comes and another, but only if you go out to meet them.
So go, as you are able.
An Invitation from a Polish MP
A propos a Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) scurrilous remark and a post below, I offer this from a Polish Member of Parliament.
It can be seen here, too, if that image isn't blow-up-able: https://twitter.com/D_Tarczynski/status/1141704905436160001/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1141704905436160001%7Ctwgr%5E393039363b636f6e74726f6c&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Ftrending%2Fmember-of-polish-parliament-invites-ocasio-cortez-to-visit-real-concentration-camps%2F
Ocasio-Cortez won't trouble herself to visit the detention centers on our own border, though, so I doubt she'll do anything more than ridicule this invitation. If she has the grace to respond to it at all.
Eric Hines
It can be seen here, too, if that image isn't blow-up-able: https://twitter.com/D_Tarczynski/status/1141704905436160001/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1141704905436160001%7Ctwgr%5E393039363b636f6e74726f6c&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Ftrending%2Fmember-of-polish-parliament-invites-ocasio-cortez-to-visit-real-concentration-camps%2F
Ocasio-Cortez won't trouble herself to visit the detention centers on our own border, though, so I doubt she'll do anything more than ridicule this invitation. If she has the grace to respond to it at all.
Eric Hines
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