The left: principles vs. principles
Commenter “Mac” writes:
I recently had an exchange with a leftist who explicitly rejected the significance of plain facts to the debate. For him the only *fact* that mattered was that his cause was morally right. It dawned on me that principle in the sense that I or most people here would understand the term simply wasn’t part of his equipment. What he had was a very high level of moral outrage, which he kept referring to: “I don’t care about the factual details of this thing, I just know what’s morally right.” I know some very intelligent leftists who are very decent well-meaning people, and have had similar exchanges with several of them.
It dawned on me that when they use the word “principle” they mean commitment and zeal for the cause of equality, etc. To deviate in that support by acknowledging something that works against the cause is what they mean when they speak of betraying a principle. This particular conversation had to do with LGBT activism, and the person was quite willing to simply defy certain facts that didn’t fit the paradigm in his mind–and thought of that as sticking to principle. He didn’t necessarily even deny the facts. He just refused to let them affect the greater truth to which he was committed. The Covington thing brought that out in several people: It didn’t matter what the video showed, what mattered was that white people were on one side and an oh-so-spiritual native American was on the other.
Maybe this all sounds obvious, but the recent exchange was kind of a light-bulb moment for me. I’d never seen it quite that clearly. Suddenly their behavior and rhetoric made sense in a squirrely sort of way–it wasn’t simple stupidity or dishonesty, it was quasi-religious zeal.
Whether you call leftism “religious” or “quasi-religious” – or what I prefer, the more generic “fanatic” – Mac is describing something I had noticed even as a child among certain leftist relatives of mine, in particular an uncle I’ve written about before. If one observes the phenomenon over and over, it’s striking how every fact can be deflected or twisted or changed or even incorporated by the true believer to conform to the cause rather than to challenge it.
I think that Mac is correct that the word “principles’ is key. For a leftist and particularly a Communist, the Party became the only principle, the one in which all hope and all loyalty was invested. Family, friendship, religion, kindness, and even conventional notions of fairness were to be jettisoned if the Party said that doing so was to the Greater Good of the Party, and that some ultimate as-yet-unrealized Utopian time will come as a result of all this suffering. Those older principles must bow down before the new principle, which is Party Uber Alles.
For many other people (and one would hope it’s the majority, although I have extremely grave doubts about that) there are other principles that transcend blind faith in a particular socio-political theory of human history: truth, beauty, the Golden rule, and I’m sure you can come up with others. For them, if facts keep emerging that contradict a socio-political theory they hold, it must be abandoned or at the very least revised drastically.
That’s what happened to some Communists in the US: after Khrushchev openly spoke in the 1950s of the manifold crimes of Stalin, they abandoned their faith in Communism (although perhaps not leftism in general). The larger principles won out over the Party principle. My particular relative (an uncle) was made of sterner stuff, and never seemed to blink an eye or express a doubt about the Soviets. He remained devoted to Communism till the day he died, for manifold personal reasons some of which I believe I understand and some of which I do not understand and probably will never understand.
He died about a year before the fall of the Soviet Union. My mother used to say he had good timing, because that event would have shaken him to the core. But I think not. I think he would have easily incorporated it into his belief system as a mere temporary setback, and gone on believing as before.
Well, well, well …
You must have been finishing this up or posting just as I was myself noting what Mac had said in your other threads. Apparently I came a little late to the “party”.
But the reason I came back right after leaving is because I wanted to drop this following Google search suggestion for you.
This turns out to be the perfect spot.
[Yes I know you are not a psychologist per se, but when I came across a paper Jon Haidt had submitted for peer review and which has not been released yet, I decided to Google the phrase in case he had spoken on this extremely significant subject … one linked to the very core of progressive policy formulations which for the last 70 years or more have been at war with our natural law and rights tradition.]
Search: “Jon Haidt and Psychopathic personality traits predict utilitarian moral judgment.” or some variant.
Effen eh man. How about the entire philosophy? … ‘The greatest good for the greatest number …’
As I often say, there’s no arguing with religionists–especially the adherents of THIS religion:
https://grrrgraphics.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/shrine_of_the_statists1.jpg
They are members of a cult. Think of it that way.
I have an uncle who’s the same way. I try to find neutral ground, something to talk about that does not trigger politics, but that’s not possible because everything is political. Everything. His God must be served.
This is just “cognitive dissonance” avoidance: twist the situation into a pretzel, or ignore the contradiction as necessary to keep the belief system intact.
I see Stalin was brought up. The way I heard it, the way people in the Soviet Union rationalized bad things that came to their notice was well, Comrade Stalin must not know about this outrage! They just didn’t understand that Stalin did know and approved of that outrage.
Deep down (and further up towards the surface, as well) I’m a very fine, very decent, very helpful person—with the absolutely correct principles. Therefore, I can screw up anybody and anything I want to, as much, as badly and as often as I decide is fitting.
QED.
(It also helps that I’m brilliant, clever and talented….but even if I weren’t…)
P.S. And one must tell it like it is: some people just think wrong and therefore don’t have any rights. They deserve to be treated only as the scum they are. (Now ordinarily I would cringe at anyone who might think this way; but since I’m a very fine, very decent, very helpful person—with the absolutely correct principles….)
“…incorporated…”
Related:
https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/history-ideas/2019/06/the-death-of-morton-sobell-and-the-end-of-the-rosenberg-affair/
(AKA, if one happens to be a psychopath, isn’t it always preferable—and more useful!—to be a psychopath with a social conscience? A lover of humanity? A promoter of “The Brotherhood of Man”?…. “What’s in it for me”—sheer power?—is always more effectively radiated when deftly blended with—disguised by?— altruism, love, friendship. IDEALS!)
To be sure, not all believers are psychopaths. Ideology is a tremendous motivator, not just for creating “paradise on earth” but especially when there’s a clear-cut “enemy of the people” from whom one must—courageously, assiduously, ruthlessly—protect the Revolution.
C S Lewis observed that while Christianity may tell you to feed the poor, when it comes time to actually do it you don’t need a Christian….you need a cook.
Complicating things, though, is that most people these days, not just those on the left, no longer trust what is said to be “fact”.
“…brought up…”
He was a seminarian, studying for years to be an Orthodox priest.
No doubt THAT was an immensely useful experience….
(Georgia was the second political entity to accept Christianity as state religion closely following Armenia in the early-to-mid 4th Century; and Georgian Orthodoxy was—is—deeply embedded in the Georgian psyche, no matter how much or little religious one is, helped to be sure by the extroardinary liturgical music…as well as the millenia-long traditions of excellent wines and foods, and the country’s amazing natural characteristics.)
“Complicating things…”
Uncomplicating things, though, is that most Republicans, too overwhelmed trying to save (as they see it) the Republic, have NO desire to destroy the Democratic Party AND its politicians AND its supporters.
But having said that, it might also be added that the Democratic Party is dead set on destroying itself (along with the country). For all the BEST reasons!!… (How to you spell “Samson Option”?).
“One death is a tragedy. 10,000 deaths is a statistic.”
“To plot against one’s enemies. To wreak an implacable vengeance. Then, to sleep soundly. Nothing is sweeter.”
Stalin
The comparison to communism is apt. I’ve often thought that much of our current progressivism is a sort of diffused or vaporized communism. It’s not solid, you can’t put your intellectual hands, so to speak, on it and wrestle with it as you could with the hard explicit doctrines of Marxism and its ideological children. Nor does it demand the explicit creedal submission that those doctrines did. It’s more or less invisible, but without being noticed it gets into places where a hard object can’t.
“Whether you call leftism “religious” or “quasi-religious” – or what I prefer, the more generic “fanatic”….”
It is indeed fanaticism. The reason I go further and call it specifically *religious* fanaticism is that it involves an entire worldview, a complete structure of meaning for human life. DNW describes it very well in his comment on the other thread.
The fanatic Dems – they usually don’t believe in any organized God, but truly believe the Big Gov’t they support can solve the Most Important Problem.
We need more jokes about these fanatics. We need theatre plays and movies and maybe even songs about how they are hypocrites and their policies are terrible.
It’s particularly hard to do when so many are nice, educated, well-paid college graduates who want a better world.
It’s so sad that their chosen methods of getting towards a better world become confused with the goal of making the world better, they become true believers in their particular method. Then establishing their method becomes the goal, and like so many fanatics, are willing for that “method end” (like Climate Change; or Equal Rights; or Abortion) to justify other means that they would normally be against.
It’s more important to make changes with good means, then to get to the desired policy “end”. The fanatic Dems forgot, or never learned it.
Of course, it certainly helps to be super-ideological IF you believe that being so will help you avoid jail…. (to paraphrase, perhaps, Dr. Johnson—no, not Boris).
I keep noticing how strong the humor criticizing the left has become. “The Babylon Bee” and so on. I see this as a direct consequence of how closed-minded, bigoted and absurd the Social-Justice-Complex has become. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Because Hollywood and the media control standard comedy, we are mostly seeing this humor on the web. But unless the left manages to flip the US into East Germany, humor criticizing the Progressive Establishment will continue and, I say, will eventually break through and wash away a lot of SJW conceits and cachet.
It won’t win the war, but it will hurt them right in their narcissism.
I’ve had such discussions. When the facts are beyond refute, there’s almost a personality break. I’ve thought that they know this stuff on one level-hands up. Don’t shoot is a lie–but it is forced down to don’t-believe levels. Recognizing it HURTS.
> He died about a year before the fall of the Soviet Union.
Reminds me of Kaganovitch (1893-1991) who almost made it through the whole thing.
“I know some very intelligent leftists who are very decent well-meaning people, and have had similar exchanges with several of them.”
Well, you’re going to have to get over that sentiment in the years to come. Might as well start now. They may come off as “decent” and “well-meaning,” but deep down they are shallow and stupid.
This ties in quite well with the excellent “Leninthink” essay you highlighted a couple of weeks ago: https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/09/28/leninthink/
“I know some very intelligent leftists who are very decent well-meaning people, and have had similar exchanges with several of them.”
And in “the revolution” they would shoot you right between the eyes…because “principles.”
Be aware & be ready.
“For a leftist and particularly a Communist, the Party became the only principle, the one in which all hope and all loyalty was invested. Family, friendship, religion, kindness, and even conventional notions of fairness were to be jettisoned if the Party said that doing so was to the Greater Good of the Party, and that some ultimate as-yet-unrealized Utopian time will come as a result of all this suffering.” neo
This passage struck me as perfectly applicable to another totalitarian ideology, one that’s been with us for 1400+ years…
“For a Muslim and particularly for a fundamentalist, Islam became the only principle, the one in which all hope and all loyalty was invested.
Family, friendship, religion, kindness, and even conventional notions of fairness were to be jettisoned if Allah said in the ‘sacred’ Qur’an that doing so was to the Greater Good of Allah, and that some ultimate as-yet-unrealized Utopian time (paradise) will come as a result of all this suffering.”
Communism rejects belief in God. Islam hijacked belief in God.
Both I suspect are of Satan.
[Leftists] may come off as “decent” and “well-meaning,” but deep down they are shallow and stupid. –Gerard vanderleun
Certainly some leftists (and rightists obviously) are “shallow and stupid.” But I wonder about people like David Brin, a CalTech graduate, NASA consultant, award-winning science-fiction author, and a fanatical Democrat, who hates conservatives about as much as anyone I’ve run into on the web. (When I interacted with him online, I kept feeling like I had to wipe his spittle off my glasses.)
Brin is neither shallow nor stupid, unless one defines him that way. But he is fanatical — that’s a good word for him. He can manage a rational argument, but when it comes to conservatives, he seems to feels such a righteous fury and with a well-worn litany of “proofs” justifying his fury, there is no place for a conservative to debate him as an equal.
To Brin, we are shallow and stupid, plus malevolent.
http://www.davidbrin.com
Looks like they’re trying to shut down Dershowitz. (I was wondering why he was so quiet over the past while. It seems he’s fighting the battle of his life….)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/judge-denies-alan-dershowitz-s-motion-dismiss-epstein-related-defamation-n1067476
I live in a Texas town that was an unsuccessful attempt at a better social live, in my town churches were illegal, a bunch of well funded Germans came over to Texas in the 1850’s to make a better way of life, not too far from us is Utopia, Sisterdale, Welfare, Comfort and a bunch of other lovely towns that were started before Marx with good intentions of becoming a better way to live, for all of the people. What became Dallas started with a bunch of people from France who wanted to be social and all of those communities found out that most of the original people who joined them wanted to sit around and talk about mankind instead of working, doing hard work planting and raising crops and it was only when the common working folks showed up who did not want to starve and knew how to plant crops and work hard that these towns survived with ownership of their own land and being responsible for this own welfare.
I have recently read a book about the early, prior to 1850 communes and most all of were certain that the U.S. bill of rights was wrong with the recognition of the rights of the individual and not the better good of the people of the community. Our nation was an outlander founded on a unique perspective of folks who were fed up of kings and church being in charge and so far we have made it this far.
All of the amendments are important.
To Brin, we are shallow and stupid, plus malevolent.
Doing a cursory check of his blog, I have a suspicion that Brin’s motor is tribal self-understanding. You can’t really argue with that.
Eric Hoffer, a self-taught writer, covered this area well in his books, particularly, “The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements” (1951). It’s been decades since I read it, but the web provides a handy listing of quotes. Here are a few that jump out at me today.
______________________________________________________
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.
***
There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
***
Scratch an intellectual, and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/17715-the-true-believer-thoughts-on-the-nature-of-mass-movements
___________________________________
These might be an answer to my question about David Brin.
However, my favorite Hoffer quote, from a different book, is:
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
_______________________________________________________
IMO this describes the decline of all the 60s/70s countercultural movements — civil rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay liberation.
When Hoffer was right, he was right.
Being a simpleton, old, former farm boy I like to keep it simple. The leftists believe utopia is achievable if only the right people are at the levers of power. Slaughtering millions is not a bug, it is a feature, as long as you are not being slaughtered.
The leftists believe utopia is achievable if only the right people are at the levers of power. Slaughtering millions is not a bug, it is a feature, as long as you are not being slaughtered.
parker: I never knew or knew of any American leftists who believed that, aside from extremists like Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground.
Can you back that up, aside from looking into your imagination about what evil lies in the hearts of American leftists?
Since you feel entitled to call me a liar in this matter and to speculate, oh so sadly, on my being murdered by leftists and deservedly so, it would be nice to know.
Huxley,
When did I call you a liar? But my imagination has nothing to do with it, history does. Is it really necessary to list the leftists’ violence of the 20th century or what is going on, for example, in Venezuela? There are other examples but I’ll stop here.
When millions of people are being described as bitter clingers, irredeemable, deplorables, deniers, racists, sexists, homophobes, islamophobes, xenophobes, knuckle daggers, with scanty evidence, they are being described as “the others”. We all should recognize where that leads to if the left holds supreme power.
Robert Francis O’Rourke wants Leo’s to knock on my door to take my firearms as do 90, 99 % (?) of leftists. BTW, I don’t own an “assault rifle” but I do know it won’t stop there. National firearm registration ends with coming for my bolt action, lever action rifles, and revolvers. No thank you.
You only know it’s a principle if it costs you something you want. Principles that always tell you people should do what you want are no principles at all.
Gerard vanderleun: “They may come off as “decent” and “well-meaning,” but deep down they are shallow and stupid.”
Simply not true. I have known some of these people very well for decades. They’re neither shallow nor stupid. But where politics is concerned it’s like they’re under some kind of spell.
” But where politics is concerned it’s like they’re under some kind of spell.”
They have turned into Rhinoceroses, to use Ionesco’s analogy:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/60689.html
I see people turning into Rhinos all too frequently, now, and once that has occurred, there seems to be no way of reaching them.
On Leftism and its religious aspects, see J. McWhorter (black Prof. of English etc., Columbia U.) on how “conversations about race” really mean (from whites) “no questions, or at least not real ones”, at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/27/antiracism-our-flawed-new-religion .
Under a spell? I think they chose to be zombies. Looking forward to no daily bag limit Just kidding of course. Wink wink nudge.
David Foster: Rhinos, or RINOs?
Oblio on October 16, 2019 at 9:56 pm said:
You only know it’s a principle if it costs you something you want. Principles that always tell you people should do what you want are no principles at all.
* * *
“Let us here observe, that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things, never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.” – Joseph Smith jr
I read an interesting article one time by a (not Mormon) clerical author who noted that you should start worrying whenever you find that your God just happens to hate the very same people you do.
One of our sons was in the play “Rhinoceros” in High School.
He liked it a lot – and also “Little Shop of Horrors” – but Ionesco was always hard for me to wrap my head around.
Great post David!
Linking Heinlein to Ionesco is very original – sometimes I think RAH did indeed have a crystal ball or a time machine.
In the main, you cannot persuade a Leftist out of his positions. However, you can save yourself valuable time by using this incisive question:
“What evidence — whether or not it currently exists — would cause you to re-examine your convictions?”
There are three categories of reply to this inquiry. The first involves a specification of events or developments after which the Leftist would indeed question his own beliefs. The second is the reply “I can’t think of any such thing” or “There isn’t any such thing.” That indicates that the Leftist’s convictions are, as Neo has written, religious in nature and therefore proof against facts or reasoning. The third is complete, incredulous, outraged silence.
Note that after a response of types 2 or 3, you can walk away feeling that your mission has been accomplished.
John Guilfoyle said:
““I know some very intelligent leftists who are very decent well-meaning people, and have had similar exchanges with several of them.”
And in “the revolution” they would shoot you right between the eyes…because “principles.”
Be aware & be ready.”
You nailed it John. When they left gains some measure of power again in the Executive (other than the Deep State bureaucratic kind), the gloves will come off.
As Kurt Schlicter says, they want us dead. Plan accordingly.
All those good decent well-meaning leftists? What will they do when the Chekists come to town? Will they they stand naked,while staring at the basement wall, stripped of clothing before they are killed and take a bullet to the back of the head?* Or just step aside while the Deplorables, and their families die?
History tells us that those decent and well-meaning people of the left had better speak up and show their allegiance to the Left’s Party Principles (and Principals) and do so in a sufficiently energetic manner or they get mass produced slaughter too.
*For those who aren’t aware, this was but one mass production method of killing used by the Cheka. Victims were stripped naked, lined up against a wall of sandbags in a basement in groups of five. Then five Chekists would shoot one bullet into the back of each head. The bodies would be cleared for the next five. And on and on.
I have found that to some degree smart people are more at risk of becoming blinkered fanatics – they are too good at seemingly valid sounding facile arguments. They are used to being told how smart they are, being asked their opinion as more valid than those of other people. They are used to being able to win arguments that they should lose based on facts due to instead of facts their glibness. In that environment is it perhaps surprising that many of them fall prey to building an elaborate house of cards and believing that anyone else who doesn’t see its beauty is just not bright enough to understand their genius or must have bad motives?
You had me until the last paragraph. If your uncle really would have “easily incorporated [the fall of the USSR] into his belief system as a mere temporary setback, and gone on believing as before” – then he would have been correct. Maybe we’re the ones who can’t accept reality.
It’s utilitarian moralism, they do not adhere to a set of beliefs in what is true, beautiful, and good. Their beliefs are not set in permanence. It is, what means to justify our ends? They think they can shape humanity into a utopia, the moral arc is progressive and ever changing, bending to their will. Fact are set to what is known and quantifiable, or to a set of rules develop over time in society, what we may call common sense.
> As I often say, there’s no arguing with religionists
We are all religionists, at least to the degree that (as the Apostle Paul wrote) we have faith in things unseen. Maybe unless you’re a solipsist, that is. Minus solipsists and the mentally ill, we all believe in some form of an objective universe. And, as an aside, I think at some point, everybody questions reality. That’s actually a reasonable thing to do, once in a while, perhaps, because it’s problematic: we can’t experience objective reality in an objective way, because all experience is subjective. I can’t see reality the way you do, and you can’t see it that way I do, not precisely.
Nobody can prove objective reality exists, after all; we just accept that it does. It’s a presupposition. That makes us believers. We believe in facts, and most people ignore the fact that facts require belief.
And to a leftist, Orange Man Bad is a fact. It is not subject to debate. It’s a fact, dammit. Can’t you bloody well see that!??
To me, Jesus Christ, the living God, is a fact. I believe this because His way of thinking about reality meshes with my own. I believe that the Good (as the Greeks called it) or righteousness (as the Hebrews called it) is objective fact. Even those who say this isn’t so will act as if they believe it is so under certain circumstances; in fact, all you have to do is wrong them.
And if goodness is not objective fact, then the following statement is truth that is as plain as dark ink on white paper: it doesn’t exist at all. There is no middle ground. All there would be is subjective instincts, feelings, thoughts, desires, and preferences. Jefferson was reputedly not a Christian, but his words were the words of someone who believed goodness is objective: “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.”
If goodness is not objective, this was just empty rhetoric. Without a Creator, goodness is purely subjective and there is no reckoning, no accountability, for badness.
The Left taken as a whole has a principle problem because they have rejected God, they understand instinctively that without God there can be no objective principles, but their instincts still tell them that goodness is real. They can’t square the circle; they don’t even believe there’s a circle that needs squaring.
What do we call people who cannot see reality? We call them ‘crazy.’
Does the Left seem crazy? Maybe it’s because they are.
I’m going to call B.S. here. Let’s use communist Russia to highlight the point. On the face of it the be all and end all of their principles was the party, as is mentioned. But we now know that the whispers in the most private places by nearly everyone were that the whole thing was a farce, a lie, a charade and a shame. We also note this double mindedness in cultish religions. People know right from wrong intuitively and the harder they’re pushing something clearly wrong the more you can be assured they’re nuts and they know it. What does it say about the rest of us that we allow them to be treated as anything but nuts to a severe detriment to everything they get involved in?
“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We don’t have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.” – fictional character Miss Hardcastle, from That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis
> “But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.
This is the actual, original definition of political correctness, now mostly lost in the noise. If a statement is true but does not advance the cause, it is not politically correct, and must not be spoken. It must be denounced if spoken, and the speaker attacked. If a statement is false but advances the cause, it is politically correct and MUST be spoken and accepted.
Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Remarks to the Law School and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame
South Bend, IN ~ Friday, October 11, 2019
The AG speaks to some portion of this subject while discussing the wider question of religious liberty under our revolutionary framework. He’s a thoughtful man worthy of our attention.
I find it fascinating how many persons here correlate (correctly) the Dems belief in the cause of destroying the Republicans with religious fanaticism. They are fully cognizant that this fanaticism permits the Dems to ignore evidence to the contrary and to disbelieve and revise facts as necessary support the narrative.
Yet the same people who are appalled at this mass rejection of all physical and recorded evidence which seems capable of overcoming all cognitive dissonance among the Leftists are, themselves, the most strident believers and supporters of the Christian religion.
The irony…
> …themselves, the most strident believers and supporters of the Christian religion.
Do you also find it ironic when someone criticizes someone else’s arithmetic, but uses arithmetic himself?
RT said, “Do you also find it ironic when someone criticizes someone else’s arithmetic, but uses arithmetic himself?”
Clever… 🙂
But, I don’t equate arithmetic with superstition.
Can you please tell me how to change text to italics like you did to indicate my text in your comment? Thanks!
> But, I don’t equate arithmetic with superstition.
Just showing you the basis of your alleged irony doesn’t hold up. Even people who believe in a religion believe there is such a thing as false religion. Such as, for example, leftist politics. Or, for that matter, atheism.
> Can you please tell me how to change text to italics like you did to indicate my text in your comment? Thanks!
Did I do that? I can’t see it.
But you can do it by bracketing I in left-wedge and right-wedge, and at the end of the portion you want italicized, the same thing except add a slash “/” before the I.
You’re welcome, hope this helps. You can do the same thing with boldface but using a B.
Finally, here is the full text of the important, far-sighted, and no-holds barred speech AG Barr recently gave to law students at Notre Dame.
Compare this to any of the meretricious mush that the Left, the current crop of Democrats, and Democrat candidates are spewing.
See https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-remarks-law-school-and-de-nicola-center-ethics?mod=article_inline
One of the two post-script quotes I use on e-mails, picked up from Glenn Reynold’s Instapundit, goes like this: “”It’s not surprising that the French Terror began with the purge of the moderates and the urgency of virtue. As Robespierre put it, virtuous men have no choice but to employ any means necessary.” …. and, as we know, “any means” included, especially, the guillotine. That fratricidal disaster was only ended by the artillery officer Bonaparte’s choice of “a whiff of grapeshot” to end the crowd-mob violence. And followed, of course, by a mass-mobilization and an all-Europe total war. “Virtue,” construed as ‘my ethical conscience’ uber alles, is a bloody mistress.
Francis W. Porretto on October 17, 2019 at 6:33 am said:
That’s good advice.
Out of frustration I took the same tack some years ago when mired in an endless and endlessly mutating debate on the right to keep and bear arms. The topic of the day became the natural law predicate of our political association and its implications; which the anti-RKBA snarks hastened to deny on two supposed grounds: 1st, that a, the Declaration had no relevance to the legal construct which we inhabit, and b, that the bill of rights merely enumerated positive law permissions and allowances which were as easily revocable as they were instituted (it appears that The Declaration is part of the US Code, however) ; and 2nd, that “there’s no such things as ‘natural rights’ in the first place”.
So, how to argue the validity of the concept of “natural rights” to guffawing lefties who construed “natural” in terms of lions and tigers and jungles, and the validity of a “right” in terms of its value in assuring you you would not be devoured.
“Prove you have “natural rights” … hahaha … will the lion respect your right not to be eaten?!!”
Obviously their complete ignorance of the concept of human teleonomic development i.e. human nature and realized development, and the relation between valid positive law and the concept of rights as irrefutable legal constructive inferences proceeding from the juncture of man’s nature and the law of non-contradiction, was a problem.
He had to be brought to the point where he admitted at least that nonsense declarations in the form of positive law could not be valid legal institutions, and that properly applied, “natural rights” was a philosophical-legal term relative to human nature and the institutions of law, and not to lions and tigers and bears.
So, I asked, “What standard of proof would you accept?”; figuring that if I could show him that his own assumptions about “validly constructed law” were ludicrously self-refuting, then we could make some progress.
I intended to do this initially by posing (and did pose) questions such as, “Do you have a right to breathe, apart from some explicit human permission?” or ” If it were made a law that you in particular were required to leap 8 feet straight up in the air 4 times a day, or face prison, would you consider that a valid law?”
But his answer was that I had to offer a complete proof that would satisfy him, and that he would not say what standard or bar had to be met in order for him to consider the argument a satisfying proof. And there were to be no intermediate questions which he would have to assent to or deny, there were no defined lines to be crossed, no goal posts placed as target. He refused to be commit to anything,
In other words, as you say, there was no arguing with him.
How could you possibly hope to reason on matters of human morals and rights with people who don’t believe in a human nature, nor in objectively conditioning purposes (even of the circumscribed but essential kind positivist legal philosopher Herbert Hart was willing to admit) , nor even in the law of non-contradiction?
You cannot.
They are no longer edified, or even thinking men; so much as mutating bags of appetite, with a will to devour.
DNW:
Very interesting post. Thanks.
I think your strategies were pretty sound — my opinion.
I guess the approach I’d start with is, is there anything wrong with me taking your wife to bed? Do you have a right to expect her to remain faithful as your wife, and me to be faithful as a friend?
Me sleeping with your wife is legal these days. Didn’t used to be, back when those awful superstitious religious bigots ran things, but we’re more advanced than that now. All that matters is mutual consent. I want to sleep with her and she wants to sleep with me? Nothing wrong with that.
Or is there?
If that would offend you, please explain the basis of your complaint.
She made a vow with you? And you have a right to expect that she honor it?
What else you got?
Mike Mahoney:
Those people whispering in the USSR were not the True Believers. The True Believes were just that, true believers. I knew and know some. The real question is what percentage of people become true believes in something like leftism or Communism? I doubt it’s anything like 50%, but it’s a considerable number.
Eva Marie:
Funny thing – in the original draft of the post, the last sentence was originally to the effect that “Maybe he was correct.” But I took it out as being confusing to some people, and left the ending lingering and ambiguous, so that people could mull it over whether he was right or not.
I noted long ago that the democrat/left is a cult.
Principles or Principals?
Reformed Trombonist,
You are right, you used a different clever way to designate a quote. But, thanks for explaining the italics trick.
As Christopher Hitchens said, out of all the thousands of gods that neither of us believe in, I just believe in one less god than you do.
Also, I don’t classify Atheism as just one more belief. Atheism is a lack superstitious belief, which, I think, is different in substance than religious belief.
“Atheism is a lack superstitious belief, which, I think, is different in substance than religious belief.”
I think agnosticism is a lack of superstitious belief. Atheism is a faith-based belief as much as any other religion.
Mike
Ah, Atheism, the one true religion.
Regarding ideology, leftism, and mangled or twisted facts perhaps the following will help clarify. Neo writes above: “I had noticed even as a child among certain leftist relatives of mine, in particular an uncle I’ve written about before. If one observes the phenomenon over and over, it’s striking how every fact can be deflected or twisted or changed or even incorporated by the true believer to conform to the cause rather than to challenge it.”
The following pertains to the “true-believers” not the non-believing power-mongering opportunists along for the ride.
In doing some research about Hitler’s brand of national socialism being mischaracterized as right-wing by Stalin and others, I did some reading about the term ideology. Eric Voegelin’s (New Science of Politics), and Hannah Arendt’s (Origins…) ideas are very illuminating. Unlike the term’s contemporary and loose usage to describe many political ideas not constitutive of ideology, here the meaning of ideology is very specific. The analysis below leans completely on the thinking of Eric Voegelin, Hannah Arendt, an Thomas Heilke.
From my essay “As a polar opposite of empirical science, ideology is not “truth-seeking” primarily from ‘observation, experience, or reflection’ of events in the real world writes Thomas Heilke in “Eric Voegelin on the Idea of Race.” For ideology, the logical coherence of a system of deductions from the original premise becomes its OWN verification. (Heilke, 169). Rephrased, an ideology explains everything from the deductive expansion of a first premise without regard to the real world for verification. The ideology purportedly merits a claim of truth because of its own internal logical consistency. In Hannah Arendt’s words, ‘Ideologies always assume that one idea is, sufficient to explain everything in the development from the premise, and that no experience can teach anything because everything is comprehended in the constant process of logical deduction. . . The ideology treats the [historical] course of events as though it follows the same “law” as the logical expression of its “idea.” ‘
Again from my essay: “The ideologist, though claiming to be scientific, turns scientific methodology upside down. So if the ideologist’s deductions appear not to work — unlike the scientist who modifies his hypothesis or throws it out — the ideologist manufactures the result by forcing the real world to fit his ideas. As a direct consequence, history becomes an unfolding re-directed by the ideologist’s original single idea. History then, is always unfolding limited to the dictates of ideologist.” (From Socialism, Butchery, and Utopia: The Mischaracterization of National Socialism as Right-Wing.” Copyright 2019.
Hence, to the ideologue facts may be co-opted, or they may be dismissed because they contradict the internal coherence of the system. This is why leftist secular apocalyptic utopians Comte, Condorcet, Marx, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, want to re-craft human nature — which they see as malleable — and the world to fit their uptopian visons.
Ray Nathanson
My view is that the existence of a Supreme Being can be neither proved nor disproved. As such, the belief or disbelief in the existence of a Supreme Being is irrelevant in evaluating political views or in evaluating evidence in our everyday lives.
That being said, as a non-churchgoer it is my observation that believers in a Supreme Being tend to have a greater doses of humility in their makeup than atheists do. As believers view themselves as humble sinners before a Supreme Being, they also tend to be more humble in politics. Observe the arrogance of many on the “progressive” side of the aisle- an arrogance which often goes along with their KNOWING there is NOT a Supreme Being. As such, they have nothing to rein them in. As for me, I do not know.
In general, I don’t consider it a good idea to mix religion and politics. But I thought I would respond this time.
BTW, them as have a strong dislike for “Puritans” and “Fundamentalists” would be advised to read Chapter 22 of C.D. Darlington’s The Evolution of Man and Society. He points out that most of the scientific and engineering advances in Great Britain from 1650-1850 came from religious Dissenters. Like those yucky Puritans. Quakers. Presbyterians. Etc.
When did I call you a liar? But my imagination has nothing to do with it, history does. Is it really necessary to list the leftists’ violence of the 20th century or what is going on, for example, in Venezuela? There are other examples but I’ll stop here.
parker: Ah, the gentler word you used was “prevaricate” as in:
Prevaricate definition, to speak falsely or misleadingly; deliberately misstate or create an incorrect impression; lie.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/prevaricate
So you don’t have any real knowledge of America leftists on-board for the gulags. Leftists span a large range, which seems to escape you. I figured as much.
Tell me about the camps where millions are exterminated or examples of ex-leftists like me being routinely murdered in the UK or France or Italy, where reallio-trullio leftists also live and make no bones about being leftist.
> Also, I don’t classify Atheism as just one more belief.
“I don’t know whether there is a God or not,” is not a belief.
“I know there is not a God,” is a belief.
I don’t know which camp you are in, but the subtle-ish derision in your writing would indicate the latter. You’re using “superstitious” as a question-begging epithet.
Let’s start with what we know: we know nothing. The solipsists say that we cannot know anything outside of our own mind. If they’re right, then it takes a leap of faith just to believe that objective reality exists at all. If they’re wrong, well, then, go ahead: prove objective reality exists without already assuming that it does. If you succeed, congratulations, you’ll be the first.
What else takes faith? Believing something as orderly and rational as the universe could have happened spontaneously. Thinking that it may have is not irrational, but believing deeply that it did takes faith. The universe appears to have been designed to meet a specification. To see that is to sense the vastness of the intelligence behind it. The appearance of design is not proof of design, but it is evidence.
Then there is rational thought itself. We expect things that we can observe in the physical world to withstand the test of inference; we expect to make reliable predictions predicated on a predictable universe. But why should we assume the universe is necessarily predictable? That’s faith, too. Physicists believe physics itself has changed at least once since the big bang, and that it could change again at any time.
Do you ever dream? Ever see someone you know is dead, and even in your dream you’re a little surprised to see him or her, but you don’t question it? Why shouldn’t reality be like that? If our universe were irrational, would we even notice?
It’s one thing to think all of this orderliness, without which rational thinking couldn’t exist, may have come about without God. It’s faith to believe it must have.
If superstition means a belief in things unseen, then you have your superstitions and I have mine.
Orwellian note of the day (oh, but there are so very many….)—regarding Obama’s ABACA**—brought to you by The Ministry of Principles:
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/us-healthcare-system-hemorrhaging-close-1-trillion-year
** Anything But….
(Note: None of this may be at all accurate…including this note.)
}}} I know some very intelligent leftists who are very decent well-meaning people, and have had similar exchanges with several of them.
Among many other flaws, Leftists consistently forget the paving material on the proverbial Road To Hell…
Jus’ Sayin’…
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