Caring about truth, caring about liberty
Not everyone cares about either of the above. And among those who care, not everyone cares equally. To some, truth and/or liberty (usually both together) are essential. They are things worth pursuing to the utmost, and even in some cases worth dying for.
To others, not so much, or not at all.
Commenter “DNW” describes the phenomenon:
…[O]ne day – [a woman I knew who] liked to discuss such issues- …began talking [with me] about what was really important, or should be important to or valued by the individual: what persons should want or strive to achieve failing all else. I said something a bit pompous, like, “to know the truth, whatever it might be”. She actually snorted before laughing. “Truth? Truth! Who cares about that?!” And then, “I want to be happy!”.
Now I suppose if we were both more conventional -me less priggish and she less aged – a psychologist might have said that we should both have said ” love” or something. But I feel fortunate to have said what I did, because it allowed me to gain insight into what this pleasant Episcopalian church lady and social activist really considered the proper ranking of truth in the hierarchy of her value system. It didn’t mean jack shit to her when push came to shove.
Reminds me too, of the politically minded mail lady who after asking me what I thought was the most important issue in a previous election, responded by laughing derisively and shouting at the ceiling: “Freedom?! You sound like Mel Gibson! Hahaha. ‘Oh, freedom, oh freedom. Let me have my freedom’ hahaha”.
The first lady reminds me of the saying in AA: “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” “Right” is not exactly the same thing as “truth,” of course, because “be right” can be interpreted as “win arguments” (which I must confess I also like to do). But to me “being right” isn’t just that, it’s pursuing truth as best you can. And although that endeavor can cut into happiness in many ways – especially interpersonal ones – it does bring a certain happiness of its own, which is the happiness and even perhaps joy of trying to tune yourself to the truth, a pursuit that is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying.
The second lady reminds me of John Kerry’s remark back in 1971, when he was young and pompous and arrogant rather than old and pompous and arrogant:
We found most people [in South Vietnam] didn’t even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart.
I’m not sure who this “we” is who “found” this out – was Kerry using the royal “we,” or did he have access to a poll of the South Vietnamese people? And if they didn’t know the difference between Communism and democracy – or care – did Kerry? And how many of them cared later, I wonder, when the North Vietnamese took over and they learned the difference?
Or was Kerry really just saying that most people aren’t willing to endure a war to be free rather than Communist, and that most people reject the sentiment “Live Free or Die?”
The Grand Inquisitor passage from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov (hmmm; I seem to be thinking quite a bit lately of Dostoevsky) indicates that the Inquisitor is with Kerry on this. Here the Inquisitor is speaking to a returned Christ, in words that always give me goosebumps of fear:
Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? “Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!” will be the words written upon the banner lifted against Thee–a banner which shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel…
…It is then that we will finish building their tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall finish it, and we shall feed them in Thy name, and lying to them that it is in that name. Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: “Enslave, but feed us!” That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious. Thou has promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And even supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will become of the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings too weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread?…In our sight and for our purpose the weak and the lowly are the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and rebellious, but we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will admire us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to those who have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden of freedom by ruling over them–so terrible will that freedom at last appear to men!
[NOTE: There’s also this fascinating essay from 1941 called “Who will go Nazi?”]
I think it’s useful to remind ourselves every so often that most of this nonsense and hullabaloo is happening within the confines of the overwhelmingly white upper middle/semi-rich professional class.
An example of the problem is Stephen L. Miller (redsteeze on Twitter). He’s a Trump-hater who has refused to simply abandon everything he previously believed and valued, which differentiates him from the NeverTrump brigade. Miller spends very little time trashing Trump, probably because he understands he’s lost that argument, but he’s clear that he didn’t support Trump in 2016 and doesn’t support him now.
But what is Miller’s opposition to Trump based on? It sure doesn’t seem to have anything to do with policy. Not the economy. Not taxes. Not even immigration or trade. And if you read Miller’s twitter feed, it’s pretty clear he doesn’t profoundly dislike Trump because Miller is some sort of uptight prude offended by the President’s vulgarity.
No, Miller seems to oppose Trump solely because Miller is a self-consciously cosmopolitan New York pseudo-intellectual and Trump proudly is not. You see this in contrasting Miller’s loathing for Trump with his fanboy crush on Mitt Romney. I don’t think there is any way you can argue that Romney, who once tried to out-liberal Ted Kennedy in a campaign, is a better champion of conservative or Republican values than Trump. I certainly don’t think Romney’s vulture capital background is better than Trump’s business history.
No, Miller’s slobbering over Romney quite clearly seems to be about nothing more than how Romney looks and talks. Mitt Romney fits Miller’s idea of what a President/political leader should be and Trump doesn’t, results be damned. It is entirely an aesthetic judgment. Which demonstrates a big problem with America’s professional/leadership class. It’s jammed full of people like Miller who without actually producing much of value to society as a whole have managed to accumulate enough wealth, status, and security that aesthetics can be the main thing they care about.
Mike
Neo’s reference to an AA expression “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy” needs some comment.
AAs define themselves as alcoholics, admit they are “insane” and cannot manage their own lives successfully. AAs turn their will and their lives over to God as they understand him (Step 3 of 12).
Rightness in an alcoholic’s mind is based on self-centeredness and self-will. It is NOT based on truth. Far from it.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” For which he was crucified.
In our secular world, ever more secular, the “Episcopal activists” are the equivalent of phony, pompous, self-centered alcoholics in their false rightness.
And the Grand Inquisitor is correct in his prediction.
John F. Kerry:
Neo:
Regarding caring about the North Vietnamese taking over, recall that in 1954 a fair number of Vietnamese left the North for the South, to avoid a communist regime.
Four decades ago- that long ago- I worked at an oil drilling site in the Guatemalan jungle, in Alta Verapaz. This was in a war zone of sorts. Driving from the airstrip to the drilling rig, one saw soldiers. A rig about 20 miles away got taken over by guerrillas for a short time. The rig workers were very reluctant to talk about the ongoing conflict in a group, but in a one-on-one conversation with me were more willing to talk to me.
The impression that I got was that most just wanted to be left alone. They saw the Generals as thieves and thugs. One rig worker told me of a land grab – thinly populated jungle- in the area by some generals. I later read in NACLA confirmation of this account of a land grab. They viewed the Guerrillas as thugs. I was told Guerrillas had killed 10-15 in the village on suspicion of being orejas (informants). Yes, it is possible that the Generals had done the killing, but I trusted the locals to know what was what in their village.
Some months after I left Guatemala, I was back in the Houston office. There was a notice on the board.”Due to mortar fire at the airstrip, per diem may be increased $10/day.” Thanks.
(The then-current General-President Lucas was from the area. Everyone told President Lucas jokes, including government employees. My President Lucas joke: the madam of a house of prostitution introduced me to some of President Lucas’s relatives in his hometown of Las Casas.)
Judging from my experience in Guatemala, my guess is that the South Vietnamese peasants had formed some sort of opinions regarding the Cong versus the Army, even if their knowledge of political theory wasn’t up to that of Yale grad Kerry. After Tet, the Viet Cong was finished as a force. From then on it was NVA versus SVA and USA. That also reflects the opinion of the South Vietnamese peasants, I would think.
It was found a couple millennia earlier. And Aristotle put his thumb on the crux of it.
It is perhaps worth mentioning that principally the esteemed Democrats (Nixon was POTUS until 1974) in the Congress voted to cease financial support of the South Vietnamese, who were then not losing to the North. Thus the Republic of Vietnam collapsed, thousands of boat people drowned, and the communist North seized control of the country.
“in June 1973 Congress passed legislation that included an amendment sponsored by Church and Case to prohibit the use of more funds in Southeast Asia after August 15. Sixty-four senators voted in favor. When the House assented, its vote marked the first time that chamber had agreed to cut off funds, too.”
RE: “I seem to be thinking quite a bit lately of Dostoevsky.”
#MeToo
Orwell and Dostoevsky understood human beings for what they are.
When civilization collapses, their true nature is revealed.
A lot of foolish people are about to get an education.
People have different opinions about issues that are difficult to prove scientifically. Climate change is one. The efficacy of masks against the COVID-19 virus is another. How powerful the Federal Government should be is another. Too many such issues to list here. Those who seek to control others (The Democrats, primarily.) have taken to calling anyone whose opinions differ from theirs liars, science deniers, or Nazis. To them, they are in possession of the truth and no other opinion/idea will be tolerated. No amount of evidence, rational argument, or logic will change their minds. They have become “The True Believers.”
Eric Hoffer had it right. A True Believer “identifies the most as ‘a member of a certain tribe or family,’ whether religious, political, revolutionary, or nationalist. Every important part of the true believer’s persona and life must ultimately come from their identification with the larger community; even when alone, the true believer must never feel isolated and unwatched.” Social media has amplified the tribalism and reach of the True Believers.
More from Hoffer:
” The generation that made the French Revolution
had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence of
man’s reason and the boundless range of his intelligence. Never, says de Tocqueville, had humanity been prouder of itself nor had it ever so much faith in its own omnipotence. And joined with this exaggerated self-confidence was a universal thirst for change which came unbidden to every mind. 4
Lenin and the Bolsheviks who plunged recklessly
into the chaos of the creation of a new world had blind
faith in the omnipotence of Marxist doctrine.
The Nazis had nothing as potent as that doctrine, but they had faith in an infallible leader and also faith in a new technique. For it is doubtful whether National Socialism would have made such rapid progress if it had not been for the electrifying conviction that the new techniques of blitzkrieg and propaganda made Germany irresistible.”
The goal of most True Believers? Merely Heaven on Earth. What could go wrong?
“The generation that made the French Revolution
had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence of
man’s reason”
That kinda ties in with the self-will of alcoholic thinking I mentioned above. Cut from the same cloth. Needing booze is only a symptom of a greater thought disorder, just as the Jacobins had. No “in vino veritas” in that gross and bloody era!
A good friend of mine has been in AA for 38 years, still attends, and I have learned much from him.
I wonder about the effects of unlimited truth. If you took a bright 18 yr old and had him visit with dentists, doctors, surgeons, psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, and wise old men and women, and their instructions were to inform him of all the difficulties he was probably going to face in his life from age 18 until demise….and all the times his teeth were going to be worked on and the expenses of heartbreak relationships and all the pain from arthritis and reflux disease.,,,on and on…i.e. try to get him to picture and imagine the actual and real and probable truth of his future life…,do you think this youth would be happier as he ventured forth or less happy?
Dnaxy, but that scenario is not ‘unlimited’ truth – the difficulties are only half the story. To refer only to those and not the benefits is by definition a limitation.
Just look at our political class for whom truth is a malleable concept. For Nancy Pelosi, today’s party line is the truth, even if it completely contradicts yesterday’s party line. A lot of the Dems are quite egregious that way, Adam Schiff and Chuck Schumer come to mind, they are completely unfazed by lying and getting caught.
It’s also important to point out that the Dems never mention liberty, only the great stuff they’re going to give to you. It’s a worthwhile trade off and the rubes never catch on.
Paul in Boston @ 8:21. “Just look at our political class for whom truth is a malleable concept.”
That is why our political, media, business, technology and entertainment elites are so shocked when there are true believer practitioners like Al Qaeda, Hamas, Antifa and BLM. These believers practice the Toyoda method of politics. “Say what you do and do what you say.” So when they make their move and don’t bend ala the Jacobins, Nazi’s, Fascists or Bolsheviks they are shocked because in their self congratulatory supposedly sophisticated world view they are the ones on top. The true believer does not want accommodation but domination and these people think that they can just slide in with them and in a sense they do….for a while then they are consumed in the fire of the true believer. Revolutionary causes always eats its own until the most ruthless comes out on time.
They, the supposed smart ones will be shocked if BLM and Antifa prevails. Portland is a harbinger. The technologists will be the most shocked of all when the tools they used to suppress independent thought and action are turned against them.
I was thinking about this when I looked at “the squad” of the Democratic party. Would any of them in the end that come out on top? For sure Ocasio-Cortes wouldn’t nor Pressley. Talib might but I doubt it. For sure Omar would as she is a ruthless manipulator, liar, non-sentimental and is quite practiced in dirty politics. She would make it and yet all those upper class rich progressives don’t see it.
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
MARTIN NIEMÖLLER
The Harpers article was very thought provoking.
Absent liberty, claiming to be happy is self-delusion.
Liberty absent truth is self-indulgence.
“We found most people [in South Vietnam] didn’t even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart.” John Kerry [my emphasis]
IMO, somewhat true but incomplete in its understanding. Certainly, true of the rural villages. Though to point to “napalm burning their villages” without also mentioning the Viet Cong and NVA slaughtering village headmen and their families revealed Kerry’s disinterest in the truth and agenda driven motivations.
Nor was it a case of not knowing the difference between communism and democracy. As practically speaking, there was no ‘democracy’ in S. Vietnam, as villagers had no say in how S. Vietnam was governed with only the corrupt elite having a say. In reality, villagers and anyone not of the power structure had a ‘choice’ of siding with a corrupt governance in which they had no say or a communist governance in which they had no say.
The Vietnam war was, for America never about preserving democracy in S. Vietnam. It was solely about preventing the spread of communism, end of story.
The Grand Inquisitor is/was full of sh*t. Not that many people do not put “bread and circuses” above any other consideration. But if that were the primary truth about humanity… Christianity, the Enlightenment and the American experiment in Representative Democracy would never have existed.
That Christianity, the Enlightenment and the American experiment in Representative Democracy are now gravely threatened is due to the struggle between far larger forces than mankind’s failings in character.
The struggle between good and evil is fought in the field that lies within the hearts of men, media portrayals of that struggle are but a dim reflection of it.
In the world of the Grasshopper and the Ant, that lady is the grasshopper that has never seen a winter.
Sometimes I think it’s just too damn easy to live well in our society.
Pulling a few themes together.
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/10/Screen-Shot-2020-10-01-at-3.17.04-PM.png?w=986&ssl=1
“…truth is a malleable concept…”
Yes, but to put a finer point on it, for such people,
“…’truth’ is what enables us to crush our enemies, put us in power and keep us there.”
In other words, ‘truth’ is LESS a concept and MORE of a TOOL.
Orwell’s “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” demonstrates the degree to which the Democratic Party and its helots in the Mainstream Corrupt Media and the universities and acadenmies have, over the past four (actually make that 12, and even more) years, rationalized and internalized the usefulness of authoritarianism, with that Party’s latest deployment and support of Antifa/BLM perfectly expicable(!) as the (to-be-expected) next evolutionary stage: the transition to actual terror.
And what is the Grand Inquisitor except Machiavelli wedded to the “principle” of science- and technology-based terror?….Of whom, ideologues such as Lenin and Mao and “philosophers” such as Marcus, Fanon and Zizek, among many, many others—and now, the Democratic Party—are enthusiastic acolytes? (Except that today, one can add “mass-communications-based, network terror” to the above…. Or as an earlier post on this site might have put it, the Terror of “Moral Truth”.)
In the current election cycle, Biden, no matter how commendable and decent are his recent expressions of good wishes and recovery to the President and the First Lady, remains, alas, a lying, corrupt thug, whose internalization of this “principle” remains his guiding light—as shown by his performance in last week’s debate, his (such as it is his) campaign thus far, and the following grotesque example:
https://www.unionleader.com/opinion/columnists/david-harsanyi-hey-joe-biden-here-are-some-scandals-you-forgot/article_cd75dbf9-b8ae-54b4-8223-77a69cda22b6.html
The answer to all this will require an extraordinary, a tremendous resolve in defense of “Liberty”, of “truth, and of “the good”—all the while rejecting the deceptive principle of “the perfect”, as exemplified by those manipulating (and manipulated) expounders of “Moral Truth”.
Correction: “Marcus” should be “Marcuse”.
I think Paul in Boston’s note that Dems rarely talk about liberty is apropos. Maybe they’ve confused liberty with ‘rights’. Everybody pretty much talks about rights, but what, in comparison with those, is liberty? How does one know the difference? I would have to say that if pressed right at the moment, I’m not sure I could really define liberty in the political sense. I’m sure I’ve read it elsewhere, just can’t remember where, that such an overabundance of ‘rights-talk’ is a major burden on political maturity, etc. (paraphrasing). But I would tack onto that – and again, no original point here – that if tons of Americans are not educated into what liberty really is, are we really surprised at where we are?
That, then, is the political work of the future with our youth.
Philip:
As our Founders recognized, rights are part of Natural Law, They are not man-given but God-given. As such they are immutable by man and by government.
For many, perhaps most Americans today, liberty means license to do as you wish, the natural result of the emphasis on individuality. Even as we struggle in a political and legal environment that more and more resembles the USSR.
I see literal commitments to LBGT+…with the ending letters unmentioned because I cannot recall them. But it is a string! Gender self-selection is now a fluid and an official “right”.
Food for thought.
I did a cursory check and didn’t see this link posted on other threads so far.
https://reason.com/2020/10/02/the-conservative-trans-woman-who-went-undercover-with-antifa-in-portland/
I think Paul in Boston’s note that Dems rarely talk about liberty is apropos. Maybe they’ve confused liberty with ‘rights’. Everybody pretty much talks about rights, but what, in comparison with those, is liberty?
Philip Sells: I see this discussion going back (at least) to FDR’s “Second Bill of Rights” (1944) in which he declared the “Bill of Rights” to be a catalog of “political rights” (we might call these liberty), which he argued had “proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness”. (Shades of “equity.”) To that end he recommended a “Second Bill of Rights,” such as rights to employment, housing, medical care, social security and education.
One way I understand Democrats is that their programs since have been to proceed as though Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights” was already in the Constitution because it should be. Hence, the legal decisions of judges who support the Democrats’ agenda.
huxley, that’s illuminating. I was reminded of the old saying that “you can’t eat democracy,” which probably also plays into the modern conception somewhere.
}}} “Right” is not exactly the same thing as “truth,” of course, because “be right” can be interpreted as “win arguments”
I won’t say people don’t misinterpret the term “be right” this way, but it’s an invalid lefty kind of “be right”, not a valid one.
To be Right, you must express the Truth. You can be right and still lose an argument, both by failing to make your case well, or by having the other person lack the intellectual honesty to ack your valid points.
The term “Right” in this context, is synonymous with “Correct”. How can you be “correct” if you aren’t arguing The Truth, as best you know it?
I suspect the former is probably unusual for you (you seem to have a decent head on your shoulders for making valid points and conclusions), but the latter is common these days, with the Left finding Truthiness to be much more important — aka, “What I want to believe is True, facts be damned”.
Mind you, especially with the left, I am put in mind of physicist Wolfgang Pauli’s comment about a paper published by a colleague:
“This isn’t right. It’s not even wrong.”
And yes, that is very much a valid statement in many cases. When they assert that Police are racist because they killed George Floyd, they aren’t right. They aren’t even wrong. Their argument is failing because it’s based on invalid assumptions, not just because the internal reasoning is wrong.
The Truth is politically incorrect.
Blacks and Whites are different,
men and women are different.
Americans and non-Americans are, legally, different.
Tho a great thing about America is that every legal immigrant into the US can become a Full American.
I can never become a Slovak, tho I can become a Slovak citizen (and my kids are Slovaks.)
Tribalism is bad, and the Dems are trying to create more of it in America – and the truth about the Dems is uncomfortable to those who want to hate Republicans. Because they are tribal Democrats.
Somewhat OT. This is scary:
The Conservative Trans Woman Who Went Undercover With Antifa in Portland
https://reason.com/2020/10/02/the-conservative-trans-woman-who-went-undercover-with-antifa-in-portland/
The story of the undercover reporter is scary, but also encouraging.
Conservatives now include a transwoman – who used to be a tug boat captain! – with courage and commitment. Constitutional values and rational economics & politics transcend the oddness of our current social, racial, and gender constructs.
Orwell’s “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
But what about people who not only don’t know about the past, but don’t care?
One factor in Hillary’s defeat is IMO that younger voters may have checked off her name, but they weren’t voting FOR Hillary in the same way that our own generation of Democrats were.
The youth don’t have an internalized investment in the Clintons or the Bidens, or the Congressional gerontocracy of both parties (including Pence and Harris, I suspect).
They may be more willing to judge candidates on present policy rather than a re-invented past.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/10/04/rasmussen-voters-under-40-say-trump-won-debate-and-even-changed-their-vote/
As for the younger Democrat candidates, I think Ilhan Omar is a local deal only (because of election fraud in the Somali community), but AOC is of their generation; maybe some voters are smart enough to see that she is not really helping them with their personal concerns.
I am very encouraged by the upcoming Republican cohort (Crenshaw et al) and hope they sweep the polls.
“One way I understand Democrats is that their programs since have been to proceed as though Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights” was already in the Constitution because it should be. Hence, the legal decisions of judges who support the Democrats’ agenda.” – huxley
You have that right, I think.
The discussions I’ve seen about FDR’s 2ndBR focus on its primary difference with the 1stBR: The original list consists of things that each person can claim without anyone else providing material support or even agreement (the Constitution only insists that the government, stay out of our way*); the Democrat wish-list entails co-opting someone else’s money & property and requires government intervention.
Liberty is a fundamental right; Democrats’ “rights” are entitlements.
https://nccs.net/blogs/americas-founding-documents/bill-of-rights-amendments-1-10
*Amendment 3, constraining the quartering troops in private homes, is a specific refutation of FDR, whose list of “rights” is analogous to quartering the rest of the world in your living room. Unfortunately, its loopholes of consent and provision of law are big enough for the ‘Rats to crawl in, despite the shakiness of any attempted justification (which I don’t think anyone has tried, but it’s there).
Look what they did with the Commerce Clause!
MBunge…”But what is Miller’s opposition to Trump based on? It sure doesn’t seem to have anything to do with policy…No, Miller seems to oppose Trump solely because Miller is a self-consciously cosmopolitan New York pseudo-intellectual and Trump proudly is not.”
Indeed,,,”not our kind of people” is a primary factor in Trump-hating, and not only among certain New Yorkers.
In the Holy Roman Empire (‘neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire’, Bismarck summarized it), there was a small group of men called the Electors. They, and only they, were allowed to vote on who would become the next Emperor. In the US, we now have a group of people who consider themselves the Electors (a term I am using in a way that has nothing to do with the Electoral College)…while they may not get to make the final decision as to who becomes President, they believe they are entitled to vet who may and may not become a candidate. Others need not apply. Who are these people?…national journalists, Ivy League academics, senior government officials, and a few other categories.
The rage at Trump is largely about the fact that not only did he not have the approval of the Electors, he didn’t and doesn’t even particularly seek it.
If they succeed in destroying Trump, there may never again be a US president who achieves office without the approval of the Electors.