Another look at Robespierre
This was first written in 2006. But it’s a very timely piece.
Unfortunately, I fear that taking a look at Robespierre will always be timely [comments in brackets mine]:
Robespierre’s constituency outside the Convention was the mob, roaming the streets of Paris, the center of the Revolution…The mob in Paris consisted largely of destitute sans-culottes (“without knee breeches”), who maintained themselves by a mixture of crime, prostitution, begging, and odd jobs. Robespierre and his followers incited them to action whenever political expediency called for it. But even when unincited, having nothing better to do, they formed the crowd that watched the public executions, jeered and abused those about to die, rejoiced at the severed heads, adulated the leaders temporarily in power, and cursed them after they fell…
What Robespierre had unloosed were the most depraved urges of society’s dregs. The resulting anarchy temporarily served his purpose, much as the Kristallnacht served Hitler’s, the purges Stalin’s, and the cultural revolution Mao’s. Each perpetrated the terror to frighten opponents into abject submission and establish himself more firmly in power…
These atrocities were not unfortunate excesses unintended by Robespierre and his henchmen but the predictable consequences of the ideology that divided the world into “friends” and less-than-human “enemies.” The ideology was the repository of the true and the good, the key to the welfare of humanity. Its enemies had to be exterminated without mercy because they stood in the way. As the ideologues saw it, the future of mankind was a high enough stake to justify any deed that served their purpose. As Loomis puts it, “[A]ll who played a role in the drama . . . believed themselves motivated by patriotic and altruistic impulses. All . . . were able to value their good intentions more highly than human life. . . . There is no crime, no murder, no massacre that cannot be justified, provided it be committed in the name of an Ideal.”
The ideal, however, was simply what Robespierre said it was. And the law was what Robespierre and his followers willed it to be…The justification of monstrous actions by appealing to a passionately held ideal, elevated as the standard of reason and morality, is a characteristic feature of political ideologies in power… The shared feature is that the ideal, according to its true believers, is immune from rational or moral criticism, because it determines what is reasonable and moral…
…All the current political choices, consequently, were choices between good and evil, allowing Robespierre to demonize his opponents…
This piece of sophistry was then new, but to those who look back on the twentieth century [or forward into the 21st] it is depressingly familiar from the use that many murderous regimes have made of it. They all claimed that their aim was human well-being, but that incorrigibly wicked enemies, who have disguised their true nature and conspired against the noblest of aims, threatened its achievement. The supposed threat was so serious, and the aim so important, as to warrant extreme, albeit temporary, measures—to identify enemies, unmask their conspiracies, and exterminate them. To a handful of clear-sighted and courageous heroes of the revolution—like the KGB, the SS, and the Red Guard—falls the duty of performing these necessary tasks. They must harden their hearts and do what needs to be done in the interest of the greater good. The grave threat averted, the extreme measures will no longer be necessary, and then human well-being will be within everyone’s reach.
That’s why process and the rule of law are so important.
But the Robespierres of the world would be nothing without their followers and/or collaborators. Why would people follow or at least not oppose such a person?
Many followed because [Robespierre] let them act on their worst urges, which they had to suppress when law and order prevailed.
Others—overwhelmed by the political changes, by the widespread chaos and uncertainty, by the blood that had already been shed—yearned to understand what was going on, what justified it, and what its aim was. Many people accepted Robespierre’s explanation, bombast and implausibility notwithstanding, because any explanation of what they were living through was better than no explanation.
But the chief reason that people followed him was fear. No one was safe, and people hastened to testify by words and deeds that they were loyal, enthusiastic supporters. Robespierre wielded his power over life and death as arbitrarily as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao did. Arbitrariness is the key to terror: if there are no rules, justifications, or reasons, then everyone is at risk. People can try to minimize the risk only by outdoing others in toeing the line. Dictators understand that, and it explains much of the “spontaneous demonstrations” and public adulation that they extract from the duped and terrified people at their mercy.
The left always follows the same trajectory. Create scapegoats, incite the mob, shed rivers of blood, create a totalitarian apparatus to put the mob down, gulags and death camps, bring about economic failure, and then when a tipping point is reached collapse. Deja vu all over again.
VDH opines that cultural revolutions such as we are seeing usually end when they begin to eat their own. They only persist if a real killer such as Stalin, Mao, or Robespierre become the leaders. But, as in the case of Robespierre, the mob eventually came for him. Is there a Mao or Stalin out there on the left? Let us hope not.
Read more here:
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2020/jun/18/victor-davis-hanson-eating-their-own/?opinion
God, this is creepy. I woke up one morning last week and the phrase that popped into my head was “French Revolution.”
I’ve been trying to find the time to write a comment in here about my oldest son, who was raised in a conservative home and home schooled, went to a conservative Catholic college and grad school at Baylor. He is now a college English professor in TX and is very smart. He finished his PhD at Baylor with no debt at 27 (he’s now 35).
He’s not only liberal now, but considers himself an anarcho-communist! Thing is, he’s extremely well-spoken and not lacking in logic (yet). He even supports, for example, nuclear power, so he’s not 100% down-the-line with the radical left.
I asked him a simple question the other day. What do you think about this article? It was the one about Lee Fang and how he had interviewed a black man in Oakland and the response to that. I have about 20 dense paragraphs that I haven’t read closely enough to freak out yet, but I cannot see that he ever even answered my question. There’s a bunch of stuff in there about “whataboutism” and the “flexion of power.”
He definitely has guilt for being white and having grown up in an upper-middle class family (in Portland, OR, of all places!). Racism of any kind was never modeled to him by his dad or me. But thing is, he seems to be all talk. He doesn’t attend protests he just posts stuff on Facebook (and maybe other places I don’t frequent).
I wonder if he WANTS total anarchy and the annihilation of everything this country was founded on. I’m afraid to ask because I don’t really want to hear the answer.
The newneo is a safe port in the raging storm of these disturbing days. Thank you neo and commentors. You are my kind of people.
Neo after examining what happened during the French Revolution said: “That’s why process and the rule of law are so important.”
It is depressing now, to see the foundations of our liberal democracy and more specifically the rule of law crumble before our eyes. The Supreme Court it seems is quite willing to change the plain meaning of statutory language to suit its policy preferences and thus to implement the law in ways contrary to the intent of the legislature when passed.
In a recent case interpreting the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Justice Alito made precisely this point when he said:
“Many will applaud today’s decision because they agree on policy grounds with the Court’s updating of Title VII. But the question in these cases is not whether discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity should be outlawed. The question is whether Congress did that in 1964.”
The bulwarks of our society that protect us from the mob and transient public opinion are crumbling before our eyes and many applaud. Some of us weep.
To act on your worst impulses, and to do it freely and with a sense of virtue. That’s a powerful drug. God help our miserable nation.
gwynmir: Great account. Spot-on with the nice kids I meet at UNM, but whose comments I often find appalling.
I hope you comment more, especially about “flexion of power.” That’s a new one on me!
Cancel culture has been emboldened. I use Bing search and these stories were on the newsfeed highlighting the ‘woke’ sporting culture in America.
+ Bruce Arena, ex-US Men’s National Team coach, said that “it’s inappropriate to play the nation anthem” before sporting events. No doubt professional leagues will have a talk about whether or not the anthem will be played.
+ SEC (Southeastern Conference) commissioner has told the state of Mississippi that their Confederate-themed stated flag must be altered or else they may lose out on championship bowl games stating “Our students deserve an opportunity to learn and compete in environments that are inclusive and welcoming to all.”
+ The Minnesota Twins had decided to remove ex-owner Calvin Griffith memorial around the stadium due to racial comments he made.
+ Washington Redskins has removed supposed racist George Marshall’s statue from the team’s stadium grounds.
The criteria to not be defaced is quite simple: as long as you didn’t say anything “racist” or had any ties to slavery you’re good. Unless, of course, in years from now another leftie grievance group has the national spotlight you may be removed if: you said something that can be interpreted as LBGT+ phobic, sexist or xenophobic, and/or if you didn’t support same-sex marriage, abortion and called for voter ID, enforcing border patrol and proper immigration (no to DACA).
Basically, if your record is clean when Grievance Inc. has vetted your politics and beliefs, you’re good.
OT, but I find that Ace of Spades “cannot be reached.” Not from the link here, or from my bookmark.
Used to be I’d think nothing of that. But nowadays paranoia is just common sense.
J.J.:
I don’t think the mob came for Robespierre. His former allies came for him. He was taking the whole thing too far, and they felt that the crocodile was going to eat them. They had good reason to think so. So they turned on him before he turned on them. The mob rejoiced at Robespierre’s death, but they had little or nothing to do with it other than as spectators.
Eeyore:
I can’t reach Ace’s either. It could be something innocuous, or maybe not. I assume we’ll find out shortly.
I’m very worried about Ace. Please keep us informed, anyone with knowledge.
His Facebook page is still available, but it hasn’t been updated in several days.
AoS is a popular alternative dot.com.. it will be silenced. So will the newneo. It’s coming, you are a fool to believe otherwise.
Arm yourselves. It will come down to blood. No one will protect you, other than you.
CW 2.0 will be fought on Main street. Act accordingly or whimper and die.
I am also unable to load Words. WTF is going on? I hate to be paranoid, but it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you. This seems to me to be an add-on to the fake social distancing requirement designed to separate us from our friends. I pray I’m wrong.
Always remember that stupidity is usually the correct answer. That’s the most common reason people do destructive and self-destructive things.
I just saw a couple of conservatives on Twitter fretting about why Trump doesn’t hold his next rally outdoors to reduce the COVID risk, I’m just a hick from the sticks but it literally took me just 10 seconds to figure out the reason is because the Secret Service is terrified to have Trump in that kind of open-air environment where everything is 100 times harder to control and you ultimately can’t do anything if someone straps a bomb to a cheap drone.
Mike
I’d rather Trump hold off on the rallies.
Apparently it was a hamster problem. Thankfully. Whew.
Ace? Someone says server problems. Backup here
https://acedark.wordpress.com/
gwynmir:
I wonder–
Is this a recent thing with your son, or something longstanding? If it’s recent, I wonder if stress from all the COVID stuff might be taking a toll. I suppose, also, if he’s been teaching for many years, the university environment has influenced him as well.
You might want to ask him if he’s read any of Thomas Sowell’s works.
Or since he’s into literature, maybe Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, or Dostoevsky’s The Demons. Although there’s always a chance the latter would inspire rather than discourage him.
“grad school at Baylor” – gwynmir
Sad to say, that’s your problem right there.
I was a born-and-bred Southern Baptist through grad school, and kept up with the SBC through my family.
Baylor got woke before woke was a thing.
Neo, it’s not brand new and he HAS read Thomas Sowell and The Demons is (was?) one of his favorite books. As for longstanding, hmmm…it depends on how one would define the term. He was still what I would consider relatively conservative before he finished grad school at Baylor, but beginning to lean more left for sure.
He is well-versed in conservative politics, having listened to Mark Steyn, Rush Limbaugh, VDH, exposed to Thomas Sowell, and countless others since he was young. He *knows* all the conservative arguments.
AesopFan, yes, I realize that now. He was there while Ken Starr was president and spoke frequently about how Starr was viewed there. We were evangelical Christians for many years and he converted to Catholicism while at University of Dallas, and now he’s atheist.
There seems to be an on-going discussion about whether or not The Terror / Soviet Revolution / Venezuela could happen here, and how fast that might be.
Here’s some food for thought:
https://lawliberty.org/the-era-of-moral-thuggery/
Another money quote:
“Racism is truly opposed not by anti-racists, but by non-racists, that is, people who do not judge or behave towards others according to their race.”
News or satire?
You be the judge.
https://babylonbee.com/news/cancel-culture-isnt-real-removed-from-bookshelves-after-authors-old-tweet-surface
https://babylonbee.com/news/new-program-helps-people-of-color-adopt-a-white-liberal-to-speak-on-their-behalf
https://babylonbee.com/news/activists-fight-racism-by-making-sure-pop-culture-depicts-only-white-people
https://babylonbee.com/news/study-confirms-you-are-most-oppressed-person-on-planet
Serious and literal — essays on the New Terror Regime in some of its guises.
(first few grafs of each; author John Hayward aka Doc Zero)
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1272862387947941889.html
We speak often of democracy and the peaceful transfer of power – no need to worry about tyranny when you can just vote the bums out of office!
But we keep seeing ultimate power congeal in the hands of people we will never get to vote against.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1273232745876074496.html
Now we live in a time where you’ll be fiscally punished by the hard Left if you don’t bend the knee to the most radical (and, in truth, illiberal) forms of “social liberalism.” The Left gleefully did what the Right was bullied out of: use fiscal power to impose social politics.
You can see this in all the deplatforming controversies, and in how the Left has used political and economic power to deform urban populations over the past two generations. Social control was the explicit goal all along; everything else was bent toward achieving it.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1273605059142656005.html
Either racial discrimination is always wrong, or it’s sometimes useful and justified. The former is a more difficult path demanding honorable effort from everyone, but leads to a happy ending. The latter offers short-term benefits to some, but it’s an endless loop of bitterness.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1273965615062175744.html
Besides the obvious political bias, this is how anarcho-tyranny works. Enforcing law against violent demonstrators is hard. Cracking down on peaceful law-abiding people with jobs, families, and reputations to worry about is easy. Velvet gloves for some, mailed fist for others.
I do not understand Christians who turn left. Three out of the four synoptic gospels tell us “ Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s….” The doctrine of separation of state and Church is fundamental and really inescapable, if one is honest about the sources of doctrine.
Now, if one jettisons Christianity entirely, then the matter is different. Yet, for example, liberation theology requires both a state to carry out altruistic ends through a great big powerful coercive and secular tool, heedless of the sources that contradict this.
Squaring circles. Any one want to explain to us how such nonsense gets washed into Christ-centered doctrine?
Committee of Public Safety or Politburo of the Central Committee?
Distinction without a difference anymore.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/06/16/ok-state-coach-gundy-takes-a-knee-or-two/
This is OKLAHOMA for crying out loud.
Universitas delenda est.
It should be kept in mind that virtually all the ongoig nonsense is taking place in communities and industries dominated by the Left, and that what’s happening seems largely the result of liberal authority figures refusing to stand up to radical bad actors.
You might want to check out Minnesota where the riots have been stopped for a while, federal charges have been filed against a bunch of people, and the tearing down of a statue of Columbus received public pushback from leading elected Democrats.
It’s a big country and the mob doesn’t rule most of it.
Mike
We’ve gotten past the two-day cycle allotted to each new Wokenism story, but this is the only post I’ve seen addressing the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, and cancel-culture is pretty standard among the Robespierre-wannabes.
The familiar name from American news reports is “Center for Countering Digital Hate” but no one seemed interested in examining why CCDH, a UK entity, is so obsessed with American media outlets.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/06/17/why-is-a-uk-group-trying-to-get-federalist-zerohedge-and-other-u-s-media-sites-demonetized/
*The Brits employed by the Clinton campaign to sling dirt about Donald Trump were not hired openly, of course.
“This is OKLAHOMA for crying out loud.“
This is a two-fer. Not only does it involve academia but college football, an industry built on exploiting young men, many of whom are African-American. I think Gundy’s players may have the worst graduation rate in major college ball, which leaves him with zero moral authority.
Mike
Saint-Just always struck me as more than just an adjunct to Robespierre, even though he was so young. He gave one particular speech in which he talked about how much blood was going to be required for the Revolution to truly succeed.
I also found Robespierre’s invention of a new, secular religion to be interesting and original. I don’t remember precisely by now, but there was a Festival with a Goddess of Reason and suchlike. It was, as I said, “interesting” even as it was also completely crazed.
As I remember, it was Paul Barras who was one of the prime movers in overthrowing and arresting Robespierre, Saint-Just and a few others, sending them very swiftly to the guillotine. Yes, Robespierre had reached a point wherein nobody, no one, felt safe.
I wonder if Stalin knew this history. The first big purge initiated by the murder of Kirov in 1931 ought to have sufficiently “woke up” Zinoviev, Bukharin and others, but somehow, whatever the details (I don’t know) they lingered and/or could not by then move or resist.
The phenomenon of “La jeunesse doree” (gilded youth) who emerged after the fall of Robespierre rhymed with the punks of 1976-77. The Gilded Youth despised the sans-culottes just as the punks despised the longhaired hippies. “Hippie” was a dirty word for Johnny Rotten, the Sex Pistols and their ilk, and they abjured marijuana and psychedelic drugs, furthermore had no belief that “free love” led to any kind of transcendence.
We’ll see now what kind of reaction eventually emerges after the relentless attacks on white people in Western Civilization. Not everyone out there is a masochist who will bow down.
All it may take is one incident of supreme ugliness, black on white, and the backlash may begin. White martyrs may be necessary. Yes, unfortunately.
Also, Danton said before his own execution, addressing Robespierre, “You won’t last three months.” He was correct, almost to the day.
And Danton faced his death with style, telling the executioner, “Be sure you hold my head up to show in all directions. People will want to remember what they have seen.”
I am surprised that this is still available on Wikipedia. As you can see, the current events are well described in a publication dating to 1970
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Chic_%26_Mau-Mauing_the_Flak_Catchers
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
Edward – Wolfe was pointing out examples from his day of elite complicity with radical revolution and the corruption of well-meant but misdirected government programs (the first buying and the second laying the bricks of good intentions to pave the road to hell), but he was not the earliest to do so.
The mills of the gods (of the copy-book headings) grind slowly, but inexorably.
* * *
T J on June 20, 2020 at 2:48 am said:
“I do not understand Christians who turn left.”
* * *
That has been discussed extensively on many fronts.
The short answer is that all leftist turn lanes are marked with signposts that say “this way to a kinder, fairer world” – which is guaranteed to appeal to Christians.
The signs never indicate the landmarks along their road, which entail the destruction of every moral principle that could, in fact, usher in a world of kindness and fairness. Nor do they identify the final destination, which is the absolute totalitarian control of thought, word, and deed.
This is well illustrated by the current crisis.
The call to affirm that “black lives matter” resounds with most people, but especially with those who have been brought up to believe that all of God’s children are brothers and sisters, and are equal in his sight. That is literally the message of a song I sang constantly in Sunday School classes in the fifties and sixties:
We would have to squeeze in “brown” now, but the principle was deliberately and fervently inculcated in us, and, as a general rule, our generation lived up to it.
This is supported by legislation and statistics.
Aside from the publicly avowed white nationalist/supremacists (not the ones alleged by the SPLC and its ilk), literally no one has disputed or objected to the assertion that black lives matter.
On the other hand, the organization Black Lives Matter (#BLM) professes and practices the anti-religious, anti-kindness, anti-fairness principles of socialism (landmarks) and openly declares their goal to be the destruction of traditional civilization and installation of a Marxist tyranny (final destination) .
I repeat: they do this openly, but very few people look around before they take the left turn, and then ignore it while they run merrily down the road. Christians, being inherently trusting, are especially naive in this way.
“Any one want to explain to us how such nonsense gets washed into Christ-centered doctrine?” – TJ
C. S. Lewis did that very cogently in many works, but the gist is that one first takes Christ OUT of the center and reframes his doctrine as social justice, using the memes of the day and retaining enough traditional Christian window-dressing to disguise the landmarks and obscure the new destination.
I don’t think the mob came for Robespierre. His former allies came for him.
Exactly. The Musee Carnavalet, the museum of the city of Paris, used to have the arrest warrant that Robespierre was writing on Commune stationary when the others of the Committee on Public Safety burst in and shot him. It had blood stains of his on the document. The last time I visited, it was no longer on display. Perhaps it was on loan somewhere. The wound broke his jaw and he was Guillotined with a bandage on his jaw.
My son and his family visited Baylor last week. I will warn him.
The left always follows the same trajectory, but the right always does the same errors.
First and foremost, the information system must not be left in the hands of ideologues, but now we have 90% of the information policed by Google, Facebook and the liberal MSM. It’s inconceivable how the Republican party can be so naive about that: they should be working like mad, building a serious information alternative, instead nothing.
Second, the task of conservatives, particularly in this kind of crisis, is not to make concessions: leftist are not appeased by concession because all their strategy (always a destructive, because leftism has no working project of society to propose) is meant to cancel, vilify and destroy the opponent; their bet is that a just society will magically emerge from the shattered ruins of the past, as if the violence employed had no consequences. The task of conservatives is to tell the truth, to recall the founding pinciples and the history, to reaffirm the law according to the values found to be the pillars of any sane society – and to do that with a strong, unified, audible voice.
In fact, unity is nowhere to be seen: where is a united front publicly facing this madness? The Republican party is a bunch of individuals, without a shared vision, without a common task, so worried about their personal political future that they are constantly tempted to make concession in order to survive. Trump is left alone, they hope he will eventually win, but in case he loses nobody will be around; Trump is the only one understanding that building a massive popular movement is essential, the other Republicans are just happy with their influence in business lobbies.
The representatives , political and religious – the ones who have not caved in yet – have to be called to their common task, with urgency. But I don’t know if Trump will be able to do that, and if he would be listened to.
The CHAZ/CHOP has reached stage 4
Stage 1 – Creation
Stage 2 – Power organization (the vacuum nature abhors fills)
Stage 3 – The age of unplanned donations (theft)
Stage 4 – The first murder/death/rape – etc.
normally, powers step in to prevent even step 2, and that has been a mistake in the past as it allows anyone to claim anything past step 1… it would have been X, it could have been y, they would never let it happen, etc.
then stage 2 happens… someone with strength takes over, but regardless of their actual position, is forced to act in ways that may or may not match it – like water filling the glass, they must be fluid or give up to someone else…
stage three was the next… the stage where those who are most utopian leave things around, and thefts are common… redisignated as unplanned donations and sympathy gone, it proceeds…
today we reach stage four… homicide…
each stage results in a concentration of crazy and the leaving of the sane..
the creation had the most of both… the anarchists, the utopians, the dreamers, the idealists
in order for power to be maintained, some unfair things happen, and a few leave realizing that what is going on is worse than what they were protesting against.
stage 3 has the former prey upon the latter… they lose ability to stay, they become disillusioned… they realize that this is not what they signed on for, and leave… their complaints get no sympathy… they wake up to some degree..
fro stage 1 to stage 3 the more sane leave.. the less radical leave…
as time goes by.. the concentration of nuclear material increases..
[i use that term for a reason, physics guy knows exactly where i am going with this]
as this concentration gets bigger and bigger… worse things happen
until… someone gets killed or raped… and then the most sane who dont want to be a part of it, go… the last of the buffer leaves.. the material concentrates.
we are at that point now… you have one death.. a host of other illegalities
the ability of the power to maintain without getting crazier is being tested
the most sane are going to leave today to get away from homicide
they dont want to be next, they dont want to be blamed
the next stage, is less pretty than the prior (unless stopping the whole of it is the last stage)
the police cant get in… investigations cant happen.. the people there who remain dont know what will happen to them if things get out of control… stress increases… there are going to be more incidents… more dead would not be surprising, but doesn’t necessarily have to happen… blame will run around naked looking for a target.. a split will next happen and then faction, with a new faction thining they can do better than the old one where this happened.
get ready for chapter 5
Mike K:
If I’m not mistaken, Robespierre tried to kill himself and muffed it, only badly injuring himself. Then he hurt himself in a jump, trying to get away.
Paolo Pagliaro:
In addition, a great many Republicans are not conservatives. And some Republicans and conservatives are idealists who find it hard to believe the left is as ill-willed and organized as it is. That makes it hard to fight back effectively.
Neo: “I don’t think the mob came for Robespierre. His former allies came for him. ”
True, but, IMO, they were all a part of the senseless violence in the name of reform. I don’t see the leaders as distinctly separate from the mob they are stirring up. Excuse my less than precise language.
Mao and Stalin both avoided just such ends by turning on those close to them who might turn against them. Mao supported the Red Guards (essentially his mob) until they physically and verbally attacked such CCP leaders as Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and Peng Dehuai. Mao suddenly realized the Red Guards were a possible danger to him and no longer useful. He used the PLA to bring them under control.
As VDH pointed out, a remorseless killer in charge of a revolutionary mob can cause lasting damage that endures. Right now the mob has caused a lot of damage much like that of the Red Guards and their campaign against the Four Olds.
From Wiki: “(old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas). For the rest of the year, Red Guards marched across China in a campaign to eradicate the ‘Four Olds’. Old books and art were destroyed, museums were ransacked, and streets were renamed with new revolutionary names and adorned with pictures and the sayings of Mao.[12] Many famous temples, shrines, and other heritage sites in Beijing were attacked.[13] ”
We can readily see where the BLM/Antifa mobs get their ideas. What we need now is the resolve among our leaders on the right to stand up to these people before a leftist leader emerges who can sustain the damage and overturn our present culture and government. It’s disgusting to see how the GOP politicians are bending a knee to the mobs.
gwynmir:
Wow.
Has your son ever explained why he likes The Demons? Does he identify with the protagonists (I sure hope not!) or does he not see the political movement of which he is part as resembling them at all? For that matter, has he ever explained why he’s an anarchist? Or does he even identify as such? Or why he’s an atheist and not an agnostic? An interesting book for atheists (written by an agnostic) is David Berlinski’s The Devil’s Delusion.
Good luck. Sounds like a very difficult situation.
Paolo Pagliaro on June 20, 2020 at 12:14 pm said:
The left always follows the same trajectory, but the right always does the same errors.
* * *
Nicely phrased bon mot, and very interesting observations.
Sadly, I think you are right about most of them.
We may have run out of Laocoons and Cassandras, to switch from France to Troy.
@ gwynmir,
You’re in kind of a tough spot personally, being emotionally invested in your son as you are. It makes getting down to brass tacks with him, and really testing his logic – which might involve some brutally unpleasant philosophical or existential challenges thrown in his face, along with the demand that he respond on point or else, or at least explain in no uncertain terms why he will not – a fraught proposition.
This is not something a traditional religious conservative who is unwillng go full Nietzsche for the sake of argument, or a caring mother, with a eye on a happier past and a possibly redemptive future is likely to have the stomach for doing.
That said, there are two interesting things going on here. One of them is how a kid bombarded by a diet of conservativism so steady and overwhelming as described, could fail to feel somewhat suffocated by it. LOL
The other is his curious choice of career. It’s not immediately obvious why a kid as intelligent as you describe would wish to devote himself to the career he has chosen.
I think that your son might have some very interesting things to say in Neo’s comments sections, IF, he were willing to respond on point to questions he might be asked, and if questioners could control their likely vehemence and stick to trying to tease out the unstated assumptions and premises he is grounding his views on.
He may have some interesting and challenging, not to say enlightening, things to say.
I for one would be interested in knowing everything from just how much Marx he has studied in depth, to what if any connection he sees between atheism and socialism, to whether he maintains that moral statements are in any sense more than emotive expressions of ultimately (in a traditional cosmic sense) meaningless preferences …
These are all those questions we we discuss here but never really get the other side of.
Also I saw no mention of his general interests. As a kid did he like soccer and baseball? Did he wrestle or run track in high school? Did his dad take him on hunting trips in the great northwest? Has he taken up skydiving, or motorcycles, or sailing, or carpentry, as a hobby in his adulthood?
See if he will at least allow you to reproduce your correspondence here.
Though I cannot see on what coherent grounds of proprietary interest, privacy, or objective morality an atheist anarcho-communist, could possibly object …. permission or no permission.
Artfldgr on June 20, 2020 at 1:26 pm said:
The CHAZ/CHOP has reached stage 4
* * *
Very good exposition. I suppose stage 5 either goes full-blown Revolution, or withers like OWS did (but that may have just been a strategic retreat).
“blame will run around naked looking for a target” — Artfldgr
Sometimes your word-images are most extraordinary!
[i use that term for a reason, physics guy knows exactly where i am going with this]
Well, yes.
These cultists can end like Jim Jones followers, drinking cyanide-lacerated Cool Aid when the police will eventually surround the place to clear it. A logical thing to do for paranoid psychopaths.
Antifa is peaceful, unarmed protests, the evil MSM says. False, this is a lie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly4p6rdPGso
Here, a traditional civil rights attorney shares graphic evidence that Antifa’s dealing in “ghost gun” and illegal weapons dealing reaching to Chaz/CHOP in Seattle..
“We are in a full color revolution” like in Ukraine, not many years ago, he says, and Trump needs to invoke the Insurrection Act and get to the roots of this serious growing threat.
This not a protest. This is an insurrection. They are involved in terrorism. Funders must be brought down.
Soros? This is much larger than just him. High-Tech is the largest contributor to political campaigns in the US and they have the largest lobbying groups in DC. People in high-tech and lawyers and “up standing” professionals are deeply involved in this movement,
This is a full scale information war to indoctrinate Americans to hate themselves and achieve a communist revolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly4p6rdPGso
Go to 5 minutes or even 5m30s for 18 minutes of this deeply, disturbingly serious Truth-telling. (Long, slow intro…skip it.)
“ gwynmir, You’re in kind of a tough spot personally….” and DNW gets lost in intellectual details. Is there another route? (Maybe the film I mention near the bottom?)
My hunch is that you son lacks love of individualism and therefore has simply traded one kind of conformism for another. The spark missing is self-love, and thus the capacity to respect and admire others ability to develop similarly. “Education” in Latin roots means to draw out from within.
If so, then probably a better route is indirect. But discovering a workable “spark” is likely going to be a matter of trial and error. Be patient.
Intellectual ammunition: “The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West” by Michael Walsh.
He says we need to sing our songs, tell our tales of Greek derived bravery, traditional virtues, heroism! This has greater and more universal appeal then anything else from the West. Walsh’ story is about the Left’s false illusions.
A review, here https://www.acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2017/05/22/book-review-devils-pleasure-palace-michael-walsh
Another book is Charles Murray’s book “Human Accomplishment,” the 4,033 people who made our world, as shown by great music or philosophy, the sciences- as decided by later composers, artists, etc, others in all fields (save politics), measured by cataloging and measuring all extant reference works, down (or up) to 1900.
The inescapable conclusion? The West is best.
About 60% of human accomplishment has been achieved by Modern Western Europe, and in science, 96% by modern Western Europe. That’s why the world comes to the US or Europe for the best in science and education and not the reverse.
If measuring numbers matters, then this ultimate demonstration in mensuration matters, and thus if the Christian dictum “Know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free” matters, here are hard, compelling numbers to define culture hero’s. The virtue of a Truth-seeking and Truth-telling and criticising truth claims is the unique engine of improvement and progress for our civilisation.
Is there a refutation for PoMo anti-rationalism? Stephen Hicks’ “Explaining Post-Modernism” book is the briefest and best (see his long form lecture on YouTube).
Then, “On Popper” by Mark Notturno, followed by Rafe Champion online at the Rathouse (City hall, clubs in German) or his polished guides to Science philosopher Karl Popper, self-published online. Popper solves the problem of induction – gaining truthful knowledge from observations – by showing that criticism and testing ideas works, even without supposed or even Revealed foundationalism (ie, “justified True Belief”).
Notturno is an academic philosopher who has been funded by Soros, and had spent 10 years, some weeks each summer, with his benefactor. Some three years(?) ago, he published in the American Spectator that he, never embraced socialism, and did not see that Karl Popper could, either. The Open Society is undermined by big statist government, he’s told Soros. (This essay ought to be accessible online.)
Finally, you might give your son a link to view “The Lives of Others,” (Best Foreign Language Film, 2006). In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.
The Stasi surveillance state destroys their lives. Proof? The East German rate of suicide grew to become the highest in the world. This so embarrassed the communist State, that they stopped keeping official records. The Truth leaked out to the West, in historical fact, foreshadowing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of communism.
This film is mandatory viewing for the young. It so affected a young friend of mine, an English major, and it was the doorway leading her to question all of her “educational” indoctrination, and back to embracing and more deeply understanding American liberty.
Good luck!
PS perhaps someone will speak to Witness by Whitaker Chambers? It’s in my reading list. I haven’t yet caught up to this modern classic. I suspect the son iii question needs more topical correction than this provides.
Neo:
I’ll have to ask him about what he likes (or liked) about Demons. As for his identification as an anarchist, yes, he has explained that at length both to me and on Facebook. He refers me to books and pamphlets.
A month or two ago he posted about being an anarcho/communist and I messaged him saying I was pretty shocked. I knew he had some commie sympathies, but didn’t know he’d gone that far. I told him I’d read a few things and here’s what he said:
He told me he thought he’d been out as anarchist/communist for a long time! That he didn’t think the Lib/Com article I had read was horrible, but there were better things out there. He said to start with “Civil Disobedience” by Thoreau, (which he’s read and taught for years), and then he would “hook me up with some Peter Gelderloos, Kropotkin, Bookchin, and Zerzan (who is anarcho-primitivist, and while I don’t consider myself a full member of that school of thought, primitivist writings have been very influential on how I think about society).”
Referred me to these:
source.org/wiki/Aesthetic_Papers/Resistance_to_Civil_Government?fbclid=IwAR0yQupcKJqRetsNnVkEk5Bpr99g1hD7rNaZYhfvE36nCrlorvhS8i58uHc
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work
Etc.
DNW: thanks for the sympathy. Just to clarify, the conservatism taught at home was pervasive for sure, but not suffocating. At least it wasn’t meant to be. We always tried to present other sides of issues and debate and get into other people’s arguments and why they might think that way, etc.
We didn’t as any sort of rule (not saying we never did unintentionally) criticize people’s motives for thinking another way, or hate them, or want harm to come to them.
My son is really a very sweet guy, and he is ALWAYS willing to talk with me about his views. Interestingly over the years we have often had similar *outcomes* we desired for some issue, but the ways to get there were more different than the moon is from the sun.
He has most definitely studied Marx. As for his interests as a kid: classical music and conducting, Latin, literature, writing. He was not interested in sports much; he and his long-time girlfriend/housemate/coworker (they work at the same college) are avid runners and they run lots of miles and run in races, etc.
And I will ask him if I can reproduce some of this stuff here. He does have some poetry that’s been published. If you like, I can find some links and post them. Not sure how much if any light that may shed!
TJ, thank you, too for your helpful comments. I really do appreciate you all taking time to read about my son. Besides this very blog and the comments, which I have been reading since 2005 (but only just commented on this month!), I honestly have no one to talk to about the situation who understands.
Yes, I believe he does lack love of individualism. I hadn’t thought of it like that, but it makes sense. Though, I don’t think (at least yet) he lacks a love of *actual* individualism, or at least duoism, if that’s a word.
He and his aforementioned girlfriend are amazingly close. Met at the University of Dallas, went to Baylor together, taught at Wiley College in Marshall together for 5 years, and now teach together at Temple University in Temple TX. They have been together and virtually inseparable for about 13 years.
Oh…Charles Murray. I love him. I have had Human Accomplishment in my home library for years. My son will not read or even consider an idea from the man because he wrote The Bell Curve. He once told me that even if what Murray and his co-author said about differences in IQ among races were true and accurate, it should not be made public information.
So, yeah, out goes Murray.
I’ll see if he’s seen or heard of the film of which you speak, and I’ll find it myself as well.
Thank you again!
Gwynmir,
If you don’t mind my asking. Was your son always home schooled? Do he and girlfriend have, or plan to have kids?* If I’m crossing a line here, just ignore me.
I have a brilliant, critical son, too. I home schooled him from the 5th grade on. He went to an elite west coast university and then told me he’d never home school his kids. He has gone from conservative to libertarian to Lutheran (!) who is absolutely going to home school his kids.** Pray God he stays there but I wouldn’t bet on it.
FWIW, I think in every mother’s life there comes a day when you just have to hand your child over to God. May he keep yours close.
*Funny things happen when you have kids. An existential moment for sure.
** He’s getting married next month and says he wants five kids. And I’m ROTFLOL! He’s never gonna make it past two.
@ gwynmir,
Hi. Yes ok, I get the picture, and it is about what I expected, down to his being an avid runner insofar as he had any interest in athletics at all. That is why I mentioned track as part of a polar opposite pairing. Though, if you had come back with backpacking, rafting, kayaking, or possibly some form of mountain or rock climbimng it would not have surprised me either. All non-violent, being at one with with nature while “testing” yourself style activities.
The reason I mentioned the angle of interest I did, was in response to your remark that he was very logical. So, while TJ may see it as going off into intellectualist weeds, I specified the questions I did as a means of sorting out just how serious he was about taking seriously certain inexorable inferences, and then constructing his evaluation of people as well as his own world shaping project, on these bases; rather than on feelings, dreams, or sentiment.
Neo has often mentioned that most people, even those who think about politics and social issues, never really examine precisely where their assumptions lead, and what they entail if acted upon consistently.
The Thoueau business is unsurprising. Oddly, his writing seems to be a kind of gateway to utopian collectivism more often than to libertarianism. He was often cited by members of that group half a generation older than me; and, I could never figure out how they eventually extracted collectivism from nonconformity. It seemed to be vaguely linked to a more generally “romantic” (speaking of English course framings) approach to considering social existence.
The poetry won’t do me any good. I cannot force myself to read it in the best of times. There is something about poets that engenders actual hostility in me. I want to grab them by the throat and say, “Make your godda**ed argument, if you have one! “. In this I guess I am very much in the minority.
But, as your son is unlikely to be providing us with a series of categorical or hypothetical syllogisms, and as I can’t read poetry, and as the suggested reading list as he provided to you is not really an argument, perhaps he can instead cite the arguments which he found persuasive in Marx or Bakunin.
That would be interesting.
[Note. For the record, yes, I know that the Continental style is generally considered oratorical and descriptive, critical and polemical, not analytical. But from statements such as ” atheism is humanism and humanism is socialism” enough can be extracted to provide a good look into the mindset and assumptions of the one uttering it. We can more or less ignore Das Kapital, as its analyses are another matter entirely, and beg the anthropological questions and implied justifications previously found in the EPM.]
DNW:
“All non-violent, being at one with with nature while “testing” yourself style activities.” Not like weight lifting, testing yourself moving inanimate objects indoors? Whatever.
Molly: he was homeschooled from 2nd grade on through high school. They plan to never have children (they have a cat!).
Mine has gone from conservative Christian to Catholic to (I think) atheist. I’m going to flat-out ask him tonight when he calls.
DNW: Ha! I forgot to add hiking and kayaking to his activities. Also going to local craft beer places when they visit me in Portland/Vancouver! He LOVES the fact that he was born and raised in Portland.
There’s no fool like a sharing fool. Shame on me, I guess. But my aim was only to try and offer encouragement to an older crowd by making some largely self-deprecating remarks.
So, allow me to clarify what I said some days ago, if that is what you are referencing.
1. I’ve never been a weight lifter in the commonly understood sense. Yes, I have used dead weights since about the age of 14. And until about 3-4 years ago, regularly to semi regularly, aiming for 3 or so times a week.
The difficulty, but necessity of picking them back up, or something equivalent for us all, is what I was getting at.
2. My own workouts were not rigorous and I never claimed them to be. I used eight 10 lb plates on a solid bar, and I used it for everything. Curls, reverse curls, military presses, “rowing”, etc. We are talking four sets of 12 or 15 reps depending on how energetic I felt, for each routine. Sometimes more weight; but it’s not really necessary in my view, since that, done repetitively, will give you a 20% margin at least.
That’s it. I’m not one of those guys bench pressing hundreds to “test” himself in a gym; much less sitting on a bench in front of a mirror doing one arm curls. I leave that to Cuomo and anyone else interested in it.
3. I did it mainly for two reasons, aside from developed habit. First, it makes life easier, when you have to lift a car battery, or shove the lawn tractor along, or maybe, something like pick grandma off the floor if she has fallen.
The second did have something to do with general security. I realized that in certain instances rather than sit around as a spectator, someone had to step in and do something in not yet too serious situations which might escalate; in order to protect not only one’s self but people you care about. When you are 17 to 25, you don’t worry about mixing it up. Getting beat up at 40 is a different matter.
When you get older, but are a fit male of 38, or even 50, you can still do things and intervene in situations where a weaker man of your age would be laughed at. I’m not talking about stopping desperados robbing a 7-11. I’m referring to more prosaic situations such as convincing [tactfully, almost en passant] a handful of giddy, if not high, teenagers to stop lighting off cherry bombs in a family crowd awaiting fireworks. Or, walking a stripper to her car when some generally responsible associates have gotten too much of a load on.
It’s around the edges, OM, that I think it makes a difference.
Oh yeah, dragging deer through the woods, humping one’s carcass over hills during the hunt, and just generally feeling better. For that kind of thing too.
And certain women, well, you know the drill.
He sounds like a nice, well-meaning kid, even though he is not technically a kid.
From what you have stated it seems to me that he has adopted ideals, and then based aspirations on these ideals, without worrying too deeply about how these ideals or principles are grounded in the first place.
Kind of like endorsing the “principle” of the greatest good for the greatest number, and advocating social interventions affecting all, in order to end “unnecessary” suffering among some.
These ideas seem relatively obvious to those who don’t take a magnifying glass to the fine print; and appear to them as though they should be obvious to everyone else too, as either a default, or as some kind of “evolved” expression of “who we are”.
The difficulty comes in of course – and as often been remarked upon here by a variety of commenters – in the smuggling in of a normative teleology which is rejected as part of the more general “progressive” metaphysics and anthropology.
If you really cannot derive an ought from an is, in a categorical manner which commands assent, then on what grounds do you insist that someone comfortable or successful accommodate someone troubled and annoying?
And if you do insist on directed or progressive evolution as a fact which is conditioning of prospective human values, well then, as a progressive you are going to have one heck of a tough time making sure that your version of inherent moral directedness, comes off as more convincing than the much more modest natural development claims staked by traditional natural law theorists as they considered human nature in relation to human law.
In any event, I’d be interested in hearing how he thinks anarchism and collectivism are a good and natural fit.
gwynmuir: If your son has a Ph.D. and teaches college English, he has been thoroughly saturated with Critical Theory. He lives and breathes Crit and inculcates others with Crit. If he wants to keep his job (and likely his spouse too), he’d better keep it that way.
______________________________________________
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
–Upton Sinclair
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That said, I wouldn’t give up. He has been exposed to conservative ideas and he sounds like a decent, curious fellow. Thirty-five years-old is plenty young and he’s still growing.
When I was 35 I was entranced with Noam Chomsky and an active member of an affinity group, which tabled and marched regularly. I never got arrested but some of my friends did.
DNW
There’s no fool like a windy fool. Whatever. Bring on the next tome.
gwynmuir:
That stuff seems like Don Quixote on steroids – so far beyond anything that ever would be or could be that it is hard to imagine that people actually believe this could ever be reality. Also, it’s based on some very iffy anthropology that probably doesn’t even reflect what is true about present-day hunter/gatherer tribes.
I remember being told once in anthropology class that we can’t look at recent hunter/gatherer societies and imagine we know anything about hunter/gatherer societies of the past, much less of the distant past when that was the way most humans were organized. One thing that we do know is that large populations can’t be sustained that way, and I wonder what these primitive anarchists think will happen in order to get the population down that low. Nuclear war? Or do the just envision living in small hopefully-Utopian (probably soon to be dystopian) communities amidst the rest of the people of the world who live quite differently?
At any rate, recent hunter/gatherer societies are very rare, and they probably represent a very special and atypical subset of said societies of the past. That subset is probably composed of unusually successful examples of the genre – after all, they have survived and the others haven’t – and/or unusually remote ones in lands no one else has wanted till recently (another reason they’ve survived).
Rousseau. Did a lot of damage in the world.
We had a disturbed police dog roaming the neighborhood for a time. It would show up in your yard or wherever folks were gathering, and make noises in order to get your attention. But if you took pity on it, and extended yourself to treat it humanely, it would yip and snap.
Then it would go away and do it again to someone else.
Poor mutt.
I never tire reading about the overthrow and execution of Maximilien Robespierre, especially the way he was taunted by the mob on the way to the Guilllotine.
Back in 2006 Anne Lamott, progressive author of the charming “Operating Instructions” memoir on her son’s birth, offered to lead a counter-revolution against the dread Bushitler by celebrating Bastille Day in America or, more precisely, in Mill Valley, California.
Her daffy, Marin-County-ish notion was that the counter-revolution would be based on kindness and libraries. Apparently, she had never read a word about the French Revolution nor Bastille Day itself.
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In this revolution, there will not be any positions except kindness, and libraries. We will not even have a battle cry, as that can lead to chanting, and haranguing: Hey, hey, ho, ho, all that chanting’s got to go! We would simply look one another in the eyes, shake our heads, and say, “This just can’t be right.” We will not try to figure out what it all means: Iraq, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Terri Schiavo, abortion rights, the Downing Street Memo, domestic spying, immigration, the Kyoto Accords, the Geneva Connections, Tom DeLay — none of it. We all know what kindness means, and I think we can all agree that libraries are sacred, and our revolution will decree that we will fight tooth and nail for these things, politely.
“Let’s have a revolution! Does July 14 work for you?”
https://www.salon.com/2006/03/29/revolution_2/
DNW
You continue to blow, stick to philosophy.
“Besides this very blog and the comments,… I honestly have no one to talk to about the situation who understands.” – Gwynmir
A lot of us are in that situation.
We have 3 sons & wives we can talk to pretty bluntly (because they generally agree with us), 1 who is still open-minded and rightish but his wife is a mine-field of ideological opinions that I can never walk through safely, and 1 who was brainwashed from working at Google too long.
“We all know what kindness means, and I think we can all agree that libraries are sacred, and our revolution will decree that we will fight tooth and nail for these things, politely.” – Lamont
If only that was the way it worked!
The Best Biography of Robespierre: J.M.Thompson
The Twelve Who Ruled by R.R.Palmer
I am very thankful that our 3 adult children (ages 31-39) and their spouses all share our values and political positions. The oldest (only female) is an artist by nature and was the main provider of her household of 3 (1 daughter, age 10) for the last 11 years. They are not church-goers but are good, moral people, and we pray together as needed. She stays abreast of issues and votes like we do despite the fact that none of her friends (and she does have wonderful friends) share her understanding. (Neo you can no doubt relate to that.) Our oldest son served 8 years with the Marines and finished his education after. He has 2 sons, almost 3 and 1 year old. He and his wife are the only practicing Catholics of the 3. Our youngest and his wife have a 1-1/2 year old daughter and attend an evangelical church (her father is the Pastor). When I homeschooled them, I always shared every side of an issue as I understood it, telling them from a young age that the most important thing they will ever learn is to “think” for themselves otherwise there will be those quite willing to do their thinking for them. The truth is at this present time, there is pain in seeing it as we do. They feel grave concern for this country. We do not personally know another couple that can state that all of their adult children haven’t embraced the x, y or z being offered as the wisdom of our present age. At the end of the day, I can say I respect and admire each and every one of them, value their opinion and enjoy their company.