DISQUS

Anytime man -- thought you'd get a kick out that. First I heard of him was throgh that 'ding dong' vid -- couldn't stop laughing my ass off. Genius.

Ah, the porn-stashe. Classic!

The best revival-impulse for the porn-stashe: Swedish musician "Gunther", www.gunthernet.com. For a good laugh, check out the finest tribute to Eurotrash/Eurocheese ever created, Gunther's "Din, Ding, Dong" music video.

Thing is, I don't think the guy had it in mind he was making a parody.

(For whatever it's worth: my comments here not to be taken to mean I think Will is a cheese-bag for having a beard).

Interesting post.

Although for that socialist John Dewey -- as it is for all progressives -- growth (not nature, not history) is the only standard for morality. An example of how this plays out is that one can only tell the health of a political community by how ever more democratic it is constantly becoming. Dangerous idea, to say the least! (But then a lot of people are under the dangerous illusion that democracy and tyranny are necessarily inconsistent).

Economic competitiveness=WAR in minds of socialists/pacifists/liberals. (Or at least according to a passel of well-appointed socialists/pacifists/liberals). So: it's actually NOT JUST the case that competitive, free-market economies in the advanced West constitute a zero-plus "game" visa-vis the ever impoverishing detriment of the third world. Rather, the rub is, if you can get people -- everywhere -- into accepting ever greater dependency upon social welfare (i.e. ever approximate, as closely as possible, THE essence of all "big government": the banishment of ALL RISK associated w/ being human*) you can, thus, pacify the populace's anxieties and nullify that society's "institutional violence" (large discrepancies between poor and rich). See paper by E. Moerk (brilliant psycholinguist and political psychologist and prominent critic of Chomskian/nativist theories language learning), "Socialism and Pacifism" (_Peace and Conflict_ [Journal], 1997. Volume: 3. Issue: 1. Available through Questia.com). The history of the last 35 years demonstrates that Republicans are FAR more likely to go to war than Democrats -- and this is owing, in fine, to the GOP's love of competitive economics. And if that's true (but if true then surely an Exhibit A case of the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy), then Republicans are objectively evil and essentially have no right to exist.

Some excerpts:

"As is perhaps best known from Latin America, socialist and communist groups in these countries have repeatedly advocated armed struggle, here referred to as physical violence, to bring about social change and they have also engaged in it. Short-term revolutionary armed violence, in lowering the disparity between rich and poor and producing more social well-being, could lower the sum of violence, that is, the number of untimely deaths, over a longer time period. It is hoped to result in lasting positive peace."

"The term socialism has been used to refer to very different sociopolitical systems. Here socialism will be conceptualized predominantly in its original Western European form, that is, as Democratic Socialism in developed societies or as Social Democracy. The institutions of labor parties and trade unions reflect similar values and can be considered ideologically equivalent. Authoritarian socialism, as it was practiced under Stalin's tyranny and in the so-called socialist systems, proclaimed in many developing countries as a pretext for one-man dictatorships, is far from the central ideals of the founders of 19th century socialism. In many of these countries, the label served mainly as a facade designed to hide political repression and the rapacity of the dictator, not as an expression of the real functioning of the governments. These latter governmental systems are expressly excluded from the present consideration because they do not reflect the goals and mentalities of socialism. On the other hand, parties and goals, as found in the United States under the label Democrat, will be included on the Socialist-Social Democrat-Democrat side and opposed to the Conservative, Republican (in the United States), Tory (in Britain), side of the dimension."

from paper's abstract:

"It is argued on the basis of historical phenomena of the 19th and the 20th centuries that peaceful tendencies and pacifistic movements are predominantly related to a political orientation that is best labeled Democratic Socialist or Social Democracy and is also reflected in labor parties and trade unions. The socialist values stand in contrast to capitalist Social Darwinism, which emphasizes competition and success at all costs, a value system that increases structural violence and subsequently behavioral violence, including state violence. A causal model and supportive evidence are presented that reflect the connections between socialist mentality and socialist leadership as independent variables, social well-being through economic security as a mediating variable, and low intrastate as well as interstate violence as outcome variables. If socialism should be in a cyclic decline and capitalism should become the dominant ideology, as it appears to be happening at present, then the logic of the last 200 years of history suggests that violent competition and warfare might again become predominant in Western civilization."

Yup, the Sear's Twr ain't got nothin' on Chartes Cathedral. As per your (sorry, but) incredibly risible statement: "Almost every bit of progress--[. . . . ] aesthetically, WHATEVER YOU LIKE--is a direct or indirect product of economic growth." Karl Marx couldn't have said it any better!

"Non-progressives" prior to Hayek, Strauss et. al. existed as very disparate, threadbare, non-cohesive, basically non-thought-through entities. Prior to the early 1950's there existed some loose, existentialist detractors of progressivism and those few writings of W.H. Taft, Elihu Root, and Supreme Court Justicer Stephen Field. That's it.

People wanting to lump Southern hicks and Dixiecrats with modern "conservatives" are idiots. (Oh, sorry, at best they don't know what they're talking about). The most salient refutation* of such psychological projection coming from contemporary "liberals" is the existence of Woodrow Wilson (cf. above) and those pesky little Aryan writings of his libs don't want you to know about and which -- until a few months ago (thanks to scholar Ronald Pestritto) -- were suspiciously out of print for over half a century.

----

* Oh, wait, also: FDR's early admiration for both Hitler and Mussolini. Silly me, how could I forget.

"Conservatives of yesteryear" didn't exist. That is, if by "yesteryear" you mean entities that were non-progressive prior to, essentially, the impact of three important events: Hayek, William F. Buckley and - yes, thank you very much - Leo Strauss. Those three brought a vigor and penetration to criticising progressivism/leftism that hadn't ever existed before. (Especially considering Strauss. Strauss's major achievement was his rejection of historicism -- detractors of Strauss to the contrary nothwithstanding (an activity which usually only betrays a proud ignorance of his keenest insights). Moreover, there's practically *nothing* at VARIANCE with what those three essentially espoused and what today's conservatives espouse. Sorry, no "lateness" involved here.

Leiter redux: *Aryan* races were the major concern/source of fascination for late 19th century and early 20th century Progressives (Leftists), a phenomenon doubtlessly totally lost on Leiter and his ilk -- or something like to conveniently cover-up or forget since it is such a frustrating nuisance opposed to their allegedly "egalitarian" claims. Consider that Woodrow Wilson -- whose ideas were an explicit attack upon the Founding concepts, especially of enumerated powers (cf. Federalist 84) -- put the country on a totally different course. But what's CRUCIAL to understand: Woody Woo's proposals regarding (A) "organic, evolving" administrative institutions mitigating the "antiquated" system of checks & balances, and (B) of solidifying general (as opposed to enumerated) powers of government, were INEXTRICABLY connected to his *RACE* doctrine at the very root of his -- and other Progressives' -- thinking. Consider just this, from Woody's book _The State. Elements of Historical and Practical Politics_, ch. "The Probable Origins of Government" (1897):

6. The Evidence: India. --- As has been intimated, the evidence upon which the first-named view is based is drawn chiefly from the history of what I have called the central races of the world, --- those Aryan races, namely which now dominate the continents of Europe and America, and which, besides fringing Africa with their intrusive settlements, have long since returned upon the East and reconquered much of their original home territory in Asia. In India the English have begun of late years to realize more fully than before that they are in the midst of fellow-Aryans who stayed civilization and long-crystallized institutions have kept them back very near to their earliest social habits. In the caste system of India much of the most ancient law of the race, many of its most rudimentary conceptions of social relationships, have stuck fast, caught in a crust of immemorial observance. Many of the corners of India, besides, contain rude village-communities whose isolation, weakness, or inertia have delayed them still nearer the starting-point of social life. Among these belated Aryans all the plainer signs point to the patriarchal family as the family of their origins.

[The "first-named" view, to which Woody refers]:

1. Nature of the Question. --- The probable origin of government is a question of fact, to be settled not by conjecture, but by history. Its answer is to be sought amidst such traces as remain to us of the history of primitive societies. Facts have come down to us from that early time in fragments, many of them having been revealed only by inference, and having been built together by the sagacious ingenuity of scholars much as complete skeletons have been reared by inspired naturalists in the light of the meagre suggestions of only a fossil joint or two. As those fragments of primitive animals have been kept for us sealed up in the earth's rocks, so fragments of primitive institutions have been preserved, embedded in the rocks of surviving law or custom, mixed up with the rubbish of accumulated tradition, crystallized in the organization of still savage tribes, or kept curiously in the museum of fact and rumor swept together by some ancient historian. Limited and perplexing as such means of reconstructing history may be, they repay patient comparison and analysis as richly as do the materials of the archaeologist and the philologian. The facts as to the origin and early history of government are at least as available as the facts concerning the growth and kinship of languages or the genesis and development of the arts and sciences. At any rate, such light as we can get from the knowledge of the infancy of society thus meagerly afforded us is better than that which might be derived from any a priori speculations founded upon our acquantance with our modern selves, or from any fancies, how learnedly soever constructed, that we could weave as to the way in which history might plausibly be read backwards.



Yyeaahhh----so what that shit Leiter's talking about? 'Conversvatives' (whatever that means) of "each prior era in America in the last century were, without an exception I can recall, on the morally reprehensible side of every major social and economic issue."

Leiter missed his calling. It's absolutely no exaggeration to say, the man would've acquitted himself marvelously as one of Stalin's or Mao's show-trial lawyers.

Will: I agree with you -- I don't think there's a conflict between them; there certainly isn't a conflict that is necessary. Rather, I'm pointing out the basic, overall trend: the move to reliance on defining/rooting out problems (i.e. "social problems") at their "root causes"; doing this to the neglect of giving rigorous account of one's reason for moral ascriptions. But I don't see why they can't be mutually reinforcing-- and so, again, I agree with you.

However, there's a decided fall-off in modernity from making moral arguments ascribing real praise & blame (really, the latter). Morality becomes something utterly and thoroughly personal and private. Concomitant with such phenomenon -- as Tocqueville wisely foresaw -- is the utter aggrandizement of government. Moral questions cease to be political questions about which there is truly robust debate; instead everything becomes gradually about "process"; ends essentially collapse into being means. You end up with very unpolitical politics.

Granted, game theory doesn't have much to do with defining causes. But the method *itself* doesn't seem to tell us what *ends* are worthy--what noble, what base. Unless I'm mistaken. And I own that I possibly am in this regard.

Game theory is part-n-parcel of the movement of modernity in which the scientific language of "causes" (as in the "root causes of crime") gradually replaces the language of responsibility. Which is to say, it's no accident that people -- particularly contemporary politicians -- seek out, say, "causes" of crime as a way to avoid the sin of appearing "judgmental." The achilles heal of modernity: it wants to deliver people in power from the vexing discipline of giving moral justifications for their acts.

A wise person can (if he has a high endowment of intelligence) use game theory well; and put it to good use. He becomes proficient in a rigorous skill, techne. But it hardly strikes me that a person becomes wise from learning game theory.

The Myth of Racist Republicans:

http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/spring2004/alexander.html


Thacker -- you stole my thunder on that one.

It's good to be mindful, too, that Woody Woo's segregation policy was an act of RE-segregation. He merely overturned efforts at integration made by previous administrations of Republicans. Yeah, what bigots.

People should read Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism by Pestritto. Most revealing. Absolutely blows the lid off of libs' carefully groomed conceit (as promulgated by university & media) to being the antipode to fascism. What fiction.

The criticism of game theory is nicely articulated by Ken Masugi to the following effect:

Schelling’s critique of traditional economics does not go far enough. What about the character of the other persons we interact with? What if they are willing to send children into combat? What if they are willing to be suicide bombers? Game theory may well clear a cluttered mind, but it is no substitute for prudent judgment that examines the souls of ourselves and our enemies and what boundaries we set on our actions, if any.

Michael Kinsley says that Schelling's "Games and Strategy" was his favorite undergraduate lecture course. "[T]he world suddenly looked completely different." Thucydides will do the same thing too, and leave you a wiser and not just a more clever man.

correction:

"extreme latitude [of] being [ ] essentially [a] ghost with-an-erection..."

"When the moral law is denied, all human actions begin to seem 'inevitable', for it is only by living a moral life that man can be in control of his own life."

Something written by a particularly brilliant friend of mine (nom de plum "Shulamite").

Sorry to see you do it, Will. Sorry to see you give in to the Left's hyperbole and scare mongering. Seems pretty effective though.

But hey! After all, porn is just as popular in the Red states as in the Blue, right? Won't then legions of single-handed keyboard users (!) across the fruited plain vote out the scum politicians who would dare abrogate their prurient delights?

Will's daliance with DLC gives further proof of a phenomenon to have been under scrutiny by certain people for quite some time: radical libertarianism -- as a revolt against Progressivism -- unwittingly radicalizes Progressivism/Statism. It occurs precisely for reasons adumbrated in the quote above: Flouting and confusing the distinction (and inherent connection) between the moral law and the political.

The political is, alas, not "neutral" (not in the Rawlsian sense; it is, however, neutral by virtue of claiming to be final arbiter. But the law is partisan with respect its own interest, i.e. the moral cause of its own survival and promulgation).


P.S. Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of the freedoms -- porn and everything -- which you seek to defend. Cashiering many other liberties in exchange for the extreme latitude being an essentially ghost with-an-erection seems somehow pretty dehumanizing. One can pretty much enjoy sexual abandon to one's anarchic delight in socialist Berlin and Stockholm, after all.

Will: must a comprehensive conception of value (CCV) thus be unanimously deemed true in order for it -- or any CCV -- to become a legitimate basis for a just society? Or, if not, then what is the threshhold beyond which dissent from a CCV renders that CCV unsuitable (unjust?) as dispositive for (an otherwise just) society?

Excellent, illuminating post. I'm just stumped by your formulation here. If you could please just expound upon this point. Thanks!

Read Chernyshevsky's What is to be Done? for a most haunting answer to your question posed at the end of your outstanding essay, "then the idea that nobody is really responsible for anything is… what?"

Clever.

(But you already conceded, nonetheless, that a certain Jaffa-ite is something "more" than a broken clock. Or maybe he's just a good mind-reader).

Wait, omigod, Will just gave high praise to a hard-core, unreconstructed Jaffa-ite. Never thought I'd see that happen. ;-)