Human nature, liberty, and who “deserves” what
Commenter “DNW” writes, in a fairly lengthy comment:
You say that at some period or periods during your life, those in your circle have accused you of ” arguing like a lawyer” and being guilty of the acts of reasoning and logical analysis. This is if I understood you correctly, nothing new and very mich predated even your law degree. It was many of those you knew from day to day living who maintained this.
You have mentioned that 30 years ago in grad school, alarmed, you pointed out the dire consequences for the rule of law and constitutional governance for a particular trajectory upon with your masters of social work associates ( I think it was) had set. And that they heard you out with an air of polite if not sublime indifference not even bothering to respond or rebut.
You have mentioned that in your grammar school days children were drilled in civics and on the importance of Liberty and personal civic responsibility and that heritage of rights which were theirs to keep or lose; but that they got none of that, so you believed, at home. And after all, “Who did normally, or should?” was the standard operating assumption.
Your progressive minded grandmother friends, you say, are mentally occupied for the most part with doting on their grandkids and enjoying themselves; without ever really thinking too deeply about where their choices at the ballot box are driving us all; trusting to the same class affirming news sources they have always defaulted to, along with their feelings.
So, what are the personal responsibilities in a constitutional polity constructed to ensure a regime of Liberty and personal freedom, of such people? Are they meeting them?
In what sense are they deserving of receiving the benefits of such a life lived in a clearing they expend no effort whatsoever in perptuating?
Are they even ” constitutionally” ( no pun intended) fitted by nature for such a life? In what sense do they deserve the freedoms they are so indifferent to maintaining?
Frankly, I don’t think they do much value freedom for themselves if they have comfort and emotional tickles in compensation, nor do they like it much when others have it.
1. What are the personal responsibilities of these individuals insofar as it comes to being informed and thinking critically …whether they are spoon fed it or not.
2. Is it possible that they are not really fit to be free and don’t want to be, as Sarah Conley suggests?
I think you can see the answer for yourself in the words that loom largest in their minds: ” inclusivity”, “acceptance”, ” affirmation”, “community”, “feelings”.
If I was in error in describing them as effen peasants to the core, as basically clever grazing animals, concerned only with the languid enjoyment of their bodily functions and with not a higher consideration in their heads as Aristotle had asserted, I don’t think I could be shown to be in error by much.
I was planning on responding in a comment, but then I thought it might be a good idea to highlight my answer as a post.
First, I’ll get the simplest point out of the way: people who angrily accuse me of arguing “like a lawyer” are not usually referring to political discussions. They often are engaged in a more personal exchange with me, and are trying to defend themselves. I think most people – even logical ones, no matter what side of the political spectrum they may be on – get flustered if and when they’re emotionally involved in an argument, and are especially annoyed if the other person seems to more easily marshal counter-arguments.
The rest of DNW’s comment seems to me to completely ignore the basics of human nature, and to set up a meritocracy of freedom (perhaps “liberty” would be a better word, however) instead of a natural rights belief that all are entitled to it as their birthright. Obviously, freedom must be taught and defended – at least it’s obvious to me, although I seem to recall that DNW (at least, I think it was DNW; I don’t have time to go back and check and so I apologize if it was actually someone else) felt that it was somehow innate in certain people and not only should not have to be taught but could not be taught.
I disagreed then, and I disagree now. Yes, there are people who appear to just naturally (seemingly naturally, anyway) value liberty much more than others. Those people are not necessarily either peasants or aristocrats, and so I have no idea why DNW would consider them peasants, except as some sort of metaphor (a bad one, IMHO). And I find offensive any characterization of human beings as grazing animals – “clever” or not.
The people DNW are describing don’t share his – and my – fascination with politics. What’s more, they don’t read the same sources as DNW and I, and so what interest they have is skewed to the MSM “narrative” which is incomplete at best and deceptive propaganda at worst. That is the fault of the MSM, a group of people I consider far more guilty than any human being (not grazing animal) living his or her life and trying to be loving and responsible while getting a certain amount of joy out of existence.
I would be highly wary of anyone – and that most definitely includes DNW – who sets him or herself up as the arbiter of who “deserves” freedom or liberty and who does not. Talk about elitism! However, it is indeed the case that if enough people in a society do not value liberty, then liberty probably won’t last long in such a society. That is the situation in which we seem to find ourselves, but part of the reason we are here is that people who do value liberty were not aware enough of the leftist march through the institutions to stop it in time, before it had infected such an enormous number of people and such a huge part of our culture.
When I speak of human nature, I am thinking (once again) of Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor.” Here’s a previous post in which I quoted it at length. The Inquisitor believes that the vast majority of people will willingly give up freedom for security. He uses the metaphor of daily bread, but it can mean any sort of security, such as the hope that the government can protect us from a pandemic, for example. Some people are indeed willing to lay their freedom aside for something like security, but in my opinion most of the people DNW is so incensed at here do not believe they are giving up their freedom in any substantial way. In fact, due to the MSM and other propaganda, they strongly believe it is the right that wishes to take away their freedom.
Lastly, the idea that these people are only “clever grazing animals, concerned only with the languid enjoyment of their bodily functions and with not a higher consideration in their heads” is profoundly mistaken and profoundly narrow-minded. Lack of intense interest in politics, and lack of understanding of what the left is doing, absolutely does not preclude “higher considerations.” Some of these people are religious, many are good spouses and parents, some volunteer to help others, some are into various arts and other pursuits of that nature, and they ponder the meaning of life and all that other non-grazing-animal stuff.
I’m not in the habit of judging people’s lives that way. I figure that’s not my job. My job is to try to live a good life myself, and a responsible one.
[NOTE: I have no idea why DNW wrote that I believed this:
You have mentioned that in your grammar school days children were drilled in civics and on the importance of Liberty and personal civic responsibility and that heritage of rights which were theirs to keep or lose; but that they got none of that, so you believed, at home.
I certainly said we were taught those things in school, but never did I say many of us were not taught those things at home also.
In addition, I’ll add that the people who failed to answer or rebut what I said back when I was in grad school were in an undergrad class with me and members of a much younger generation than I. I was in my forties and they were college-age at the time, between 18 and 21 I’d estimate. So I have no idea what they were taught about liberty when they were growing up.]
First, I’ll get the simplest point out of the way: people who angrily accuse me of arguing “like a lawyer” are not usually referring to political discussions. They often are engaged in a more personal exchange with me, and are trying to defend themselves.
I take it your husband was on the losing end of a lot of arguments.
I’m not sure DNW was making a normative argument (as opposed to a sociological one).
Everyone is entitled to freedom. That’s what being a “natural right” is all about.
And frankly, the “clever grazing animals” out there aren’t the real problem. Yeah, they voted out Trump but they’re now turning on Biden in a big way.
Our problem isn’t the sheep. It’s the shepherds.
Mike
Art Deco:
Indeed, he was.
But they were all arguments he started 🙂 .
Actually, we’re very very good friends now and have been for years. And we still argue!
Also, starting when I was about 2 or 3 years old, my mother used to say to me, “You argue like a little lawyer!” She said it with some amusement, but it wasn’t altogether a compliment (my father was a lawyer, by the way).
Great post. Sadly, I’m with you. I’m the outlier in a family of devote democrats. I abandoned the One Truth Faith when the DNC went insane. It’s a shame. When I was a card-carrying democrat, I thought they had the best ideas, and I could talk rings around my conservative friends in college. Now, not so much.
RE: “I think most people – even logical ones, no matter what side of the political spectrum they may be on – get flustered if and when they’re emotionally involved in an argument, and are especially annoyed if the other person seems to more easily marshal counter-arguments.”
My late father, who was a scientist and college professor, used to “study” to get his arguments ready ahead of my visits. Having read left-wing web sites constantly, I knew his arguments better than he did. He’d proudly launch into some attack, and I’d nod my head and add something like, “Yes, that’s EXACTLY what HuffPo put out last week. That’s been completely refuted by … The better argument is … But that’s easily refuted by …” His favorite response was, “Well, those are good talking points.” And then he’d move on.
As an independent, my goal is to find the Truth and to adopt the best available ideas to maximize human flourishing. My family’s goal is to spread the gospel of the DNC. I told my father once, “You’re acting as if the DNC is your religion.” He surprised me by stating, “Yes, it is.” I then gave him several reasons why the DNC was failing, and finished with, “It’s a very poor religion.” He took it well, but he was capable of logical thinking.
The rest of the family isn’t. They react to any counter argument to DNC talking points like a 17th century Puritan hearing about witchcraft. My sister, for example, is happy to express her point of view and make you listen, but try to offer an opposing view or point out why she’s wrong, and she cannot accept it. She’ll literally scream, “Nothing you say will convince me …” It’s cowardly.
RE: “Freedom must be taught and defended – at least it’s obvious to me. … There are people who appear to just naturally (seemingly naturally, anyway) value liberty much more than others.”
I agree. A major cause is a lack of imagination. Americans have always had freedom. Therefore, many cannot imagine ever losing it. The System has always been there, and it always survived. No matter how far the Left bends it, it won’t break. They can’t see where restrictions on freedom of speech will lead. They cannot see the harm in a technocracy.
The Ruling Class is doing a first rate job of making people complacent.
RE: “The people DNW are describing don’t share his – and my – fascination with politics.”
I don’t like politics at all. My political philosophy is the same as most: I just want to be left alone. I started becoming a political animal to prevent some very bad ideas from being implemented. But the country has changed: the values and norms that make this country work are under attack and are hanging by a thread. I must fight in the political sphere to preserve the Republic with words and ideas. Failure means that we’ll have to fight to re-establish a Republic — by other means. Or we’ll have to fight for survival in a tyrannical state.
I have had people angry with me because in discussions about an important subject I would continue calmly to refute their points which they could not defend. On a visit to my cousin a few years ago she was complaining about Rush Limbaugh and his term “feminazis”. I asked how vigorous she though the feminist establishment had been in fighting FGM. I got the “Shut UP, she explained” response.
Neo, certainly people natural rights, but you seem to think the United States is immune from succumbing tyranny no matter what. I have to agree with DNW that a great many people in this country have the mindset of serfs; they know their place, and they have no inclination to challenge their masters’ narrative. That’s pretty harsh, I agree, but liberty is in danger when there is a two-tiered system of justice. When the national components of law enforcement are corrupt. When many don’t know they’re being lied to, or just don’t care. A serf might agree they have natural rights, but if they will not fight for them they identify themselves as serfs.
I have had people angry with me because in discussions about an important subject I would continue calmly to refute their points which they could not defend. On a visit to my cousin a few years ago she was complaining about Rush Limbaugh and his term “feminazis”. I asked how vigorous she though the feminist establishment had been in fighting FGM. I got the “Shut UP, she explained” response.
Neo, certainly people have natural rights, but you seem to think the United States is immune from succumbing tyranny no matter what. I have to agree with DNW that a great many people in this country have the mindset of serfs; they know their place, and they have no inclination to challenge their masters’ narrative. That’s pretty harsh, I agree, but liberty is in danger when there is a two-tiered system of justice. When the national components of law enforcement are corrupt. When many don’t know they’re being lied to, or just don’t care. A serf might agree they have natural rights, but if they will not fight for them they identify themselves as serfs.
An interesting line of inquiry — and one that is presumably not open to you, Neo — would be whether your younger classmates evolved as they gained age and experience. Is understanding liberty something that has to await a little maturity? (I ask that fully aware that many of our founding fathers were no older than your classmates when they were drafting our foundational documents.). But in the general population, does maturity bring appreciation of liberty?
My recollection is that this was the case in my own life. And given online games and a partisan MSM, I suspect today’s youngsters are even less capable of understanding the responsibilities of liberty or of growing up in America.
Of current interest to me (largely because I lived there for two years) is the fact that Peru has once again elected a socialist president, even though their previous experience with socialism (overlaid with a lot of terrorism) was not successful.
Do we in the USA have to vote in socialism in order to realize just how bad it is as a national policy? And once having opened ourselves to socialism, would we have the opportunity to reverse course? That has not been the case in Cuba, as just one example.
Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” is certainly floundering through a dark period.
We all make our choices and we all have to live with the consequences of those choices. Whether obligated to pay attention to politics or not, one way or another, they shall reap the consequences of their inattention because the left has plans… for everyone.
Plans perhaps most directly expressed by Michelle Obama: “Barack Will Never Allow You to Go Back to Your Lives as Usual.”
They may not be interested in politics but the political left is interested in them.
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ? Benjamin Franklin [my emphasis]
IMO, it’s brutally obvious that those uninterested in politics who vote democrat are enabling the fashioning of the future chains of their enslavement.
“Students sign petition to abolish the U.S. Constitution”
https://campusreform.org/article?id=18168
Jack Okie:
Why on earth would you think I believe the US is immune? Did you see where I wrote this?: “it is indeed the case that if enough people in a society do not value liberty, then liberty probably won’t last long in such a society. That is the situation in which we seem to find ourselves…”
Not at all immune, unfortunately.
What’s more, what is this “serfs” malarky? First of all, did not some serfs value freedom? I seem to recall that quite a few did yearn for freedom and even were part of revolts to gain it. Secondly, most of the people I know who don’t value liberty are highly educated and have a lot of liberty – they just don’t get what it would be like to lose it, plus they think it is the RIGHT that would threaten their liberty more than the left.
It’s got nothing to do with serfs or peasants vs. middle class people vs. upper class people.
Geoffrey Britain:
I agree that they are sabotaging the future of all of us.
And even though Franklin said it, I still take issue with the word “deserve.” Franklin himself seems to have “evolved” on the issue – see this:
Franklin also wrote: “Every man…is, of common right, and by the laws of God, a freeman, and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty.”
He wrote a lot of things, and some seem to contradict others. Maybe he made a distinction between “deserves” and “is entitled to.”
As to valuing liberty, some will give it up, buy whatever stupid stuff the Bigs are telling them is absolutely necessary they give up, and resent those who will not. Not necessarily because they damage the public welfare–not vaxxing–but because they are not obeying.
“. . . if enough people in a society do not value liberty, then liberty probably won’t last long in such a society.” [Neo]
IMO, part of the problem is that we become inured to the freedom that we have. In the same way as, when growing up, we may be surprised to find other families whose home lives differ from ours. Likewise, it is hard to understand that other peoples lack certain freedoms that we take for granted.
Quite simply, I believe that most people think of freedom as something that just naturally is, not as something that must be defended and exercised (in spite of numerous warnings). That we have had it too good for too long is testimony to the success of the founding fathers vision and a blight upon our ability to live up to their charge: A republic, if we can keep it.
I infer the question DNW is asking is this: Do people value freedom if they are unwilling to risk anything to have it? And if people are unwilling to risk anything to be free then do they deserve the blessings of freedom?
The lesson of history is a people unwilling to make personal sacrifices to ensure their freedom will lose it.
But what does it mean to be free? Modern thinking has corrupted the truth so freedom now has no cultural meaning. For example, it is now argued that freedom from fear is freedom, that freedom from want is freedom, that freedom from discomfort is freedom. These artificial forms of freedom are what the “elite” promote. And it is how they make the people comfortable and accepting of the constraints that are then imposed on them.
But if people want to trade freedom for security, what can be done about it? Education is the answer but that presumes a critical mass of people can be taught true principles of freedom. This isn’t going to happy in the public schools. It is not going to happen at the vast majority of universities. Even our churches are failing at this task.
This is a big problem and an answer is not apparent.
Jack Okie wrote:
“I have had people angry with me because in discussions
about an important subject I would continue calmly
to refute their points which they could not defend.”
Leftists of all stripes and, to be fair, some rightists simply go
ballistic when I, too, calmly refute their points. The wronger [sic] they are … the louder they get.
I can be calm in discussions because I spent years on Academic Debate teams in both high school and college. Losing your cool in that activity was an automatic loss.
Jordan Peterson also makes his opponents go nuts because he is so calm.
More to the point of where the grazing herds stand today, a goodly number of grazers intended to vote out President Mean Tweets. The MSM lied to them (as usual) confirming they were successful, and repeatedly dismissed mountains of election fraud evidence as “baseless” and “unfounded”.
In a postmodern/post truth world, does reality matter? We wonder if truth will eventually catch up to deniers. We believe it will, but honestly don’t know if the reckoning will happen in this lifetime or not. Judging by history, maybe, maybe not.
Here’s a question for Neo, who has a background in family therapy as well as law: In your opinion, what role does childhood family environment play in a person’s valuation of freedom in adult life? I was struck by T’s comment: “When growing up, we may be surprised to find other families whose home lives differ from ours.”
I know I was. Most of my school classmates and most of my first cousins had a fair amount of freedom to explore ideas, speak their minds, and cultivate their interests with minimal interference from parents. By contrast, I was an only child who was subjected to relentless “snoopervision” by several relatives on my mother’s side of the family after my father’s untimely death. They seemed to be afraid that all hell would break loose if I were allowed to think for myself, read as much as I liked, and say what I thought. I could escape some of what I called The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You syndrome by visiting my friends and cousins– that was how I discovered that their home life was very different. It wasn’t until I went off to college that I felt truly free of an oppressive extended family– and I have valued freedom ever since.
I must add that recent moves toward Internet censorship as well as widespread political lying really disturb me because these trends feel like the return of the family-of-origin nightmare. I fought too hard for my freedom from domineering relatives to surrender it to politicians and others who consider themselves our rulers.
My parents were Depression Democrats and were quite upset with me when they learned I had voted from Nixon in 1960. We had the same last name (and possibly some family connection) but I had taken an Economics class in college. I’m not sure an Economics class today would have the same effect. I blame the Vietnam War for much of the leftism in college today. Lyndon Johnson allowed exemptions from the draft as long as students were enrolled. As a result, the anti-war leftists students became the PhDs and the entire college faculty world shifted left.
I have two children who are lawyers and leftists. My leftist daughter’s argument consists of “Daddy you have to stop watching Fox News.” Telling her I don’t watch TV does not impress her. Of my five children, the only one who owns his own home in California is the only one who did not get a bachelors degree. Fortunately, his three kids are conservative. My other two grandchildren I don’t know. Their mother is a hard leftist college professor with, I think, some mental health issues.
Neo: “Actually, we’re very very good friends now and have been for years. And we still argue!”
A good description of my marriage. But we never argue about politics. (My wife is somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan.) And we ‘re still married. Thank goodness!
Why do some people prefer a strong central government and less freedom? I can’t prove it but I believe it goes back to our tribal roots. Hunter-gatherer tribes were a good example of socialism at work. The survival oft he tribe was more important than the survival of any individual member. The Chief and his sub-chiefs were all powerful. All members had to contribute to the tribe or they were likely to be shunned and cast out. Which meant almost sure death. Sticking with the tribe and following its rules meant security. Humans lived as hunter-gatherer tribes for hundreds of thousands of years. It has only been since the development of agriculture about 8,000 years ag0 that humans have begun to live under conditions where individuals could begin to go out on their own. But it was only in in1776, when the U.S. began, that the idea of liberty ad self -government really began to take root in the world. At that time, all other nations were still governed by kings, queens, or tyrants of some sort. Thus, the idea of liberty and individual freedom is relatively new. I believe the instinct for powerful government to provide security is still imbedded in many people’s genes.
It is also clear that humans have always had a percentage of people who lust for power over others. Add these two human tendencies together and you have a recipe for socialism/communism. And that is why clear-headed thinkers have warned that liberty and individual freedom is always in danger. It is not the normal state of human existence.
It’s also true that there are many people who don’t want to think too deeply about b the issues of government. I have acquaintances who, when engaged about a political issue, will throw up their hands and say, “I don’t want to think about all that stuff.” The Low Information Voter (LIV) is a big part of the problem today along with the Big Government Disciples (BGD) who are represented by the likes of Bernie Sanders, AOC, and their acolytes. They tend to outnumber people who value liberty and individualism.
Judging who is and is not worthy of freedom is a dangerous thing.
I don’t think freedom can be taught. It must be experienced. I was fortunate to have been a little kid on a small farm in flyover country, especially when I was four and five. My sister and I didn’t have kindergarten, but we had square miles of open fields (until the corn grew tall, and then it was a maze). In winter, it was a cold wonderland. No grown-ups supervised us (well, my sister was bigger than me, and Grandpa would scold us if we scared the chickens), but Mom knew where to look for us if we were late for supper. We were totally free, but if we got hurt, or lost, we had to solve it. We were never taught to be afraid of any human being that we might encounter in the little world we knew.
My daughters raise my grandchildren under total adult supervision. They’re on camera when they’re sleeping. Oh, the kids have all sorts of great educational, and artistic, and cultural experiences that I missed. They’re early readers; they go on long bike rides and hikes — with their parents. But they will never experience innocent, unsupervised, utter freedom.
I fear that if we never experience freedom, we will never fight for it.
Anyone here read “Rule Makers, Rule Breakers?” I read it earlier this year, and the main premise, that most fundamental divide in our world is between people who strictly and loosely follow social norms, is a possible explanation for why some people just seem to have the instinct for liberty.
Ok.
I see that there are several strands of objection to what I wrote being raised concurrently, and that they vary from a mild indignation over the descriptors or characterizations I employed, to outright denials of the propositional senses of those same predications. ‘ Outraged at the term “grazing animals”! And besides they are not!’ so to speak
So, how to approach this …
Perhaps by clearing away a few of the assumptions we are lumbered with when we try to discuss these matters.
Let’s start with the term, “human nature”.
When that term has been brought up for discussion on this site, it has usually been – to my recollection anyway – in the “Nature or Nurture?” context of certain impulses, tastes, or (drum roll) traits.
But we have to face a more radical question here, and one which seems to have been answered clearly and to the satisfaction of most of the people who we call progressives. The question is, “Is there anything that can meaningfully [in an ethically freight bearing sense] be called human nature in the first place?”
And the answer to that, i.e., the question as to whether there are intrinsic traits across humanity from which moral imperatives may be deduced, is “No”.
“Doubly, ‘No!’ “, in fact.
First of all, “No, because there is held to be no constant nature with regard to the organisms we call men; and that therefore there is no natural teleology from which to derive – by whatever imagined means or process – objectively implied social norms, and eventually, on to individual legal rights and immunities.
Second, because even if the fact situation were such that the human organism in general and on average had such a definable nature and teleology (or developmental programming if you prefer), the progressive interpretation of reality – or at least epistemology – holds on one ground or another, that there is no connection discernible between what is and what is prescribed or proscribed, that is neither arbitrary, nor purely emotional.
There is no way they assert, in which one can logically derive (famously) an ought, from an is. This claim has been formulated in various ways and to various effects by various philosophers, and we don’t need to go into them here. But among the more famous are Hume, and then eventually the logical positivists of the early 20th Century who advanced the emotive theory of ethical statements.
I connected to Ayer’s interview with Bryan Magee to Zaphod’s great amusement, some may recall.
I also linked to Rorty’s interview on Texas Public Television, I think it was, wherein, Rorty hit all the doctrinal high spots making up the modern progressive anthropology and world view.
A Quine Interview I have alluded briefly to, also with Magee, is highly instructive.
He makes some good sense, and makes some fairly obviously bad assumptions for a philosopher. But for the life of me I cannot grasp what he means when he says that he thinks abstract objects deserve status as objective elements of our modern ontology. Unless by physicalism he means neutral monism or something. Or maybe his use of the term, “intersubjective” (as do the phenomenologists) in place of “objective” gives us a clue as to his meaning.
Anyway a must watch… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2fLyvsHHaQ
And all this my friend is why talking natural rights talk with a progressive is not only futile, but faintly ridiculous.
So, now, we are brought to the point in which my questions find their context.
What substantive sense can it make to assert that all men have X rights, when we cannot even define the essential attributes which serve to land a particular instantiation of humanity in the rights bearing class? Much less go on then as we do, to describe how these imperatives are derived from sheer physicalist statements describing some particular material state of affairs
It does not make any sense to do so; which is why I posed an easier question related to the personal responsibilities of those persons to whom we would impute a claim to respect and forbearance which is then based on nothing more than the raw principle of reciprocity.
But the principle of reciprocity, demands … well, it demands that they are willing, capable, and actively doing the basic civic work necessary to maintain that clear space from which they clearly benefit.
Because obviously, if they are not on their own analysis entitled by “nature” to rights and immunities, they must then only possess them as a matter of formal exchange courtesies; as active stakeholders in the proposition one might say.
But we have seen that there too, they fall short.
So let me as a simple and analogous question, ask that which I have repeatedly asked before: What claim has someone who will not defend themselves, to be defended by another?”
You can play around with this by substituting various terms if you like.
But I think that the general thrust of the point is clear enough.
That might be. There are lots of dangerous things in life if handled irresponsibly.
And as we know, the burden of responsibility lies intolerably heavy on the hearts and heads of those who seek “liberation” from such outrages as “the tyranny of biology”, and the “exigencies of life” which impede free expression, according to, in order, third wave feminists and uncle Karl Marx.
Yes, true “freedom” they say can only be found in a smorgasbord of options and choices paid for by the productive and enjoyed by those who feel themselves oppressed, by whatever, whenever.
But, to hell with what they say. Being a sap who pays the bills of the knowingly irresponsible, the nonchalantly improvident, and ultimately the nihilistic hedonist – or even moron – seems just as dangerous.
In that instance, it is dangerous to your own life and liberty; if indeed these things count for more with one than the satisfactions one (of the sensitive sort) gains from mutual ass sniffing inclusivity.
I, on the other hand, not being an inclusion freak, think that calling for an accounting by those whom we to our cost include as peers within our so-called circle of concern, is reasonable. At least to the extent of requiring that they are not complete intellectual and moral free-riders, and that they demonstrate they understand the basics of the regime of liberty.
At least I take it as a reasonable assumption for we non-masochists in this polity.
Lyndon Johnson allowed exemptions from the draft as long as students were enrolled. As a result, the anti-war leftists students became the PhDs and the entire college faculty world shifted left.
??
Pretty sure student deferments were available for a time during the 2d World War (I believe most eschewed them or took an accelerated program) and were bog standard during the period running from 1948 to 1973, when college students commonly enlisted or were conscripted after finishing their degree. (See Michael Dukakis and Jonathan Bush for examples). Deferments for post-baccalaureate schooling were discontinued at the end of 1967. Then they instituted the draft lottery two years later, which allowed more aspirant graduate students to eschew service.
I’ve seen some data from the Statistical Abstract in re how common military service was by cohort. IIRC, for those born during the years running from 1930 to 1938, about 55% were on active duty at some point, 9% in the Guard or Reserves, 24% disqualified, and 12% excused for miscellaneous reasons. For the next dozen cohorts, roughly 45% had some sort of service, about 25% disqualified, and 30% excused for miscellaneous reasons. Disqualifications were split 50-50 between the categorical (IV-F) and the contingent (I-Y).
Donald Trump’s taken a lot of flak for the contingent disqualification that kept him out of the service for 19 months, by people who do not deign to notice that Joseph Biden was also issued a I-Y (which covered the seven month period between his graduation from law school and his 26th birthday, when he was quite vulnerable given the queuing system Selective Service was using at the time). The same sort made hay about Dan Quayle’s 1969 enlistment in the National Guard while ignoring (1) that Michael Dukakis had had a student deferment during the Korean War and (2) Richard Gephardt was also enrolled in the National Guard. Richard Cohen wrote a column at the time insisting that Guard berths were so sought-after the Pulliam family must have pulled strings to get one for their scion, when running in the very same year was Richard Gephardt, National Guard veteran and son of a wage-earning dairy employee.
My 2d favorite draft board story was Bernie Sanders’. He loses his student deferment in 1965 when he washes out of graduate school. So he hires a lawyer (presumably paid for by his brother, also a lawyer) who presses a bogus claim for conscientious objector status; his counsel wins so many continuances that they manage to run out the clock (which took 28 months worth of dilatory maneuvers). Sanders, btw, was a salesman’s son whose prosperous parents had died. He didn’t have a brass farthing, just brass and people willing to help him. Everything Creedence Clearwater Revival told everyone about the draft was a lie.
/ rant off.
Dennis Prager once said that strict loving parents raise conservative children. And that seems to be true in my circle of friends/relatives. The reason (in my opinion) is that a child raised by strict loving parents quickly realizes that even the most loving parent is no substitute for the child making their own decisions. Children raised by strict loving parents never yearn for a benevolent ma ma and pa pa government.
Children raised by strict loving parents never yearn for a benevolent ma ma and pa pa government.
Disagree. Portside politics in our time is a manifestation of socially-sanctioned aggression. Different segments of the Democratic electorate have different objects of resentment and the degree to which the aggression permeates mundane life varies. “Conservatives” in our time are the people baffled by the aggression and repelled by it.
My question has always been, “Why are my two brothers and I so different?” Same parents, same schools, same teachers, many shared friends, lived in the same town as children. You would think we would be similar in our ideas, tastes, habits, and so on. But no. Totally different. Ad totally different life paths. We remained life long friends, but were never really close – not like some brothers I have encountered along the way.
I want to believe I found the answer in Steven Pinker’s book, “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.” In it he shows how we are born with certain genetic traits that can be modified somewhat by your education, and culture, but actually shape who we are. There are five personality traits that he focuses on:
1. open/closed minded
2. conscientious/careless
3. extroverted/shy
4. aggressive/passive
5. neurotic/stable
Pinker has been attacked about this because it says some things about us are immutable. Such as, if you are born aggressive, unconscientious, neurotic, and introverted, you have a good chance of becoming a career criminal.
Be tat as it may, Pinker’s explanation has made more sense to me as to why my brothers and I are so different. It also explains why humans aren’t all conservatives, or conversely, progressives We can’t change much, but we can channel our traits in both positive and negative directions. IMO, it explains al lot about what we are seeing today. YMMV.
Eva Marie, et al:
I don’t think any particular family structure or type of parent raises political conservatives vs. liberals, except perhaps that there’s a tendency for people to follow their family’s politics more often than not.
I was the same person when I was a liberal Democrat as I am now that I’m a conservative, with the same family history.
Picked this up at Bookworm’s blog in a comment.
https://paganvigil.com/cms-data/gallery/freedom_memes/1601287826-every-time-something-really-bad-happens-people-cry-out-for-safety-and-the-government-answers-by-taking-rights-away-from-good-people.jpg
As with all things Bookworm, the post is worth reading; this is the link to the commenter who posted the meme.
https://www.bookwormroom.com/2021/09/26/sic-semper-tyrannis-they-fear-the-people-and-neil-oliver-explains-why/#comment-5549339981
To which Book replied: “Although for reasons unclear to me, it appears that Penn Jillette supported Gavin Newsom in the recall election. That’s not a very libertarian stand.”
Most of the “news” stories just recycle Twitchy, but this has heartfelt responses in the post and comments.
https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/politics/come-the-f-on-penn-jillette/98351799/
https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2021/09/15/famed-magician-and-libertarian-penn-jillette-seems-relieved-that-power-hungry-elitist-liberal-gavin-newsom-is-still-californias-governor-pic/
When hating one’s political opponent becomes THE moral imperative…;
when demonization of one’s political opponent becomes one’s “OBVIOUS” ethical responsibility…;
when the incessant, ubiquitous media propaganda machine encourages, promotes and generates such incitement, lack of judgement and moral/ethical perversity…
…then that person—and that person’s so-called society and, ultimately, country—have a tremendous, perhaps insurmountable, crisis to deal with.
That such hatred and demonization has been pushed relentlessly and with extraordinary—and shocking—success by the Democratic Party (and the scoundrels in the media and the universities that support that party) for the past 13 years—even more, if not as fiercely and/or constantly—means that the Democratic Party has become the Party of HATE and DEMONIZATION: the party of both revolution AND reaction (in ways similar to authoritarian governments, generally if not always of the extreme-“left” variety).
Nonetheless, many of the people who continue to support the Democrats do so because of historical reasons, i.e., because of what they remember that party as being (though what it is no longer, viz. a party whose goal is the destruction of the individual, of society and ultimately the American nation—all for the highest MORAL “reasons” of course) and are shielded from its current enormities and subversive policies of destruction by a criminally colluding and fatally corrupted media and infotech sector.
So…to paraphrase that other great Democratic Party paragon: “It’s the hate, the demonization and the non-stop propaganda, stupid…”
If history is any indicator, then the ONLY way out of this is for the country to be able to, somehow, weather the coming, unavoidable disaster.
Either that or hope that—the brilliant—Bismarck’s assessment of America’s good fortune continues to be accurate….
To be sure, let us hope that I’m entirely wrong about this mega-grim prognostication…; that I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning…
Correction. Should be:
“…then that person—and that person’s so-called society and, ultimately, country—have a tremendous, perhaps insurmountable, crisis to deal with…even if, PARADOXICALLY/IRONICALLY, they most likely don’t even realize it or—even worse—interpret that crisis to be exactly the OPPOSITE of what it is really is.”
“…Bismarck…”
…would appear to be working overtime “behind the scenes”…
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/chaos-hill-progressives-threaten-nuke-infrastructure-deal-schumer-blows-gasket-over
Or at least doing what he can… (He always had a rather strong Teutonic(?) aversion to being proved wrong….)
Meanwhile, one wonders just how many “gaskets” Schumer has. (Would be delicious to see him “seize up”…but I may be counting my chickens, alas…)
>Creedence Clearwater…draft
I enjoy(ed) their music, but bandleader John Fogarty is a bit of a chameleon. In the sixties he sang “I ain’t no military son”. Now that veterans are respected again, he proudly acknowledged that he served a hitch in the army.
In fact, “Biden” really has to establish that glorious Democratic Party tyranny as fast as he can…since time may well be running out (AKA “Zerohedge” is on a roll; though “caveat emptor”…):
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/jim-bovard-he-thought-i-was-undercover-fed
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/bidens-vax-mandate-be-enforced-fining-companies-70000-700000
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/americans-trust-president-biden-provide-accurate-covid-info-tumbles
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/its-fking-kid-johnson-johnson-official-says-children-shouldnt-get-vax-due-unknown
And from our neighbors to the north (AKA ‘”Biden” Light’):
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/military-leaders-saw-pandemic-unique-opportunity-test-propaganda-canadians-report
But perhaps even more egregiously:
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/shortagewatch-sorry-no-french-fries-any-order-we-have-no-potatoes
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/t-shirt-and-jean-inflation-coming-decade-high-cotton-prices
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/us-hog-herd-hit-largest-monthly-drop-1999
(Though for the life of me, I can’t figure out why—given the continued Chinese hog crisis—the US couldn’t have figured out a way to engage in “Pork Diplomacy” with the Middle Kingdom….)
And so, here we are:
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-purges-have-begun/
+ this absolute obscenity:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/us-marine-who-sought-accountability-military-leaders-over-afghanistan-withdrawal-jailed
“…absolute obscenity…”
…to be compared with this outrage:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/09/28/in-sworn-testimony-generals-accuse-biden-of-lying-about-afghan-pullout-n1490535
…and this bizarro admission:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/09/28/milleyaustin-hearing-n2596592
Somehow, the Democrats have succeeded in totally corrupting the military leadership of the country.
(But how/why/when did they become ripe for being corrupted??)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuNJq_wI1ns
Holy rollers gonna roll ye’….
“NY Governor Hochul proclaims, “The vaccine comes from God…”
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1442629323870121989
Presumably, this too is a gift from the Almighty:
“New York to deploy National Guard to fill expected staff shortages as unvaccinated nurses and hospital workers will be fired effective tonight.”
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1442572759180079106
(Hmm, one wonders: is “Tammy Faye” Hochul preparing the ground for Andrew Cuomo’s rehabilitation…?)
And so, BRACE yerselves…as the EVANGELICAL wing of the Democratic (sic) Party (sic)—IOW, the whole insane git-go—is shooting for PEAK MADNESS…
Related:
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/bidens-vaccine-mandate-causing-another-pandemic-hospital-staff
OTOH, it’s hard to believe but Biden, here, may well be speaking TRUTH:
https://justthenews.com/nation/states/critics-pan-bidens-claim-35-trillion-spending-bill-costs-zero
…simply because he’s about to garnish or otherwise squeeze every cent he can from the income of His Fellow Americans!
File under: Land of Opportunity!
The latest SPECTACULARLY WRONG misreading of the “Biden” administration (AKA Obama2.0):
“NO ONE IS IN CHARGE…”
Whereupon we witness, dear reader, a—relatively(!!!)—sane Democrat demonstrating his inability to comprehend his party’s concerted, ingeniously-formulated and seeming unstoppable PLAN to SUBVERT, SABOTAGE and ultimately DESTROY the United States of America.
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/09/28/dem-senators-assessment-of-biden-admins-senate-testimony-is-searing-no-one-in-charge-n449490
(Nor is he, alas, the only one. And it’s not just Democrats….)
Wesson —
John Fogerty was from El Cerrito, CA, but that didn’t stop him from pretending he was from down on the bayouuuu in his songs.
I lost a lot of respect for him when I discovered that.
I started public school kindergarten in 1954. My recollection is that the teachings of “the importance of Liberty and personal civic responsibility and that heritage of rights which were theirs to keep or lose” came principally from the TV shows (including Hollywood movies shown on TV).
In response to Barry Meislin’s comments:
Yours truly has expressed wonder why any, not to mention most, Jews still support the Democrat party. (Heck, why do any Americans????)
I say that the sane amongst us, alas a minority, don’t.
See this article:
https://spectator.org/yoo-hoo-tucker-carlson-were-here-and-weve-got-your-back/
And, see this orgainzation:
https://coalitionforjewishvalues.org/platform/
And, of course, the RJC:
https://www.rjchq.org
The damn “progressives” have, for over a century, been playing a long game. They are importing tomorrow’s Democrat voters.
It’s going to be a real struggle for us Americans. (And always remember the reason stewardesses tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first.)
Indeed.
And when it rains it pours….
Here’s another ULTRA-phony “compatriot” and charlatan who is simply Full Of It (FOI?)
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/yellen-amends-her-previous-inflation-prediction-says-it-will-be-closer
..which, together with her ultra-sleazy “compatriots” and charlatans, makes me wonder who’s going to write the post-mortem on American Jewry…
..but then I buck up and say to myself: “Hold on there son: Americans are a fair people and judge INDIVIDUALS on the basis of their INDIVIDUAL actions and choices….”
…but then I remember all the “compatriots” and charlatans who are in complete and total support—with their full-hug embrace of CRT, BLM and antifa—of the absolute tribalization of America…
…which is precisely what, um, certain (actually, ALL) minorities in America DO NOT NEED…and then I sink into a lonnnngggg blue funk and start writing non-stop comments to certain blogs….
(In fact, I probably owe NEO several thousands of dollars in therapy fees…but PLEASE don’t tell her…at least not yet…I have to convince myself that I OWN THIS, etc., etc.)
Spartacus?
Spartacus??
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/damn-you-hell-you-will-not-destroy-america-here-spartacus-covid-letter-thats-gone-viral
I’m not going to try to refute all of DNW’s points, partly because (to be honest) I may not fully understand them.
But I am skeptical about one of them:
“And the answer to that, i.e., the question as to whether there are intrinsic traits across humanity from which moral imperatives may be deduced, is “No”.”
This seems to me to be tied to an argument I’ve read – I don’t remember the author – that most of human behavior is driven by socially constructed “myths”.
This raises the question of why do these particular myths exist ?
Rousseau said that man was born free, but I don’t see that. I’ve never heard, and can’t easily conceive, of a human society that didn’t have some kind of rules and some kind of hierarchy to enforce the rules. I’ve never even heard of social animals that didn’t have those things. Anarchy may or may not be logical, but in the real world it usually doesn’t happen – humans everywhere and throughout history are organized into groups and groups have structure.
A lot of them have had the SAME structure. Most of the societies I’ve heard of are patriarchal; most of the societies I’ve heard of are built around the family
(nuclear or extended).
If our behavior and values are completely dictated by society, then why have so many societies dictated the same behavior and values ?
Maybe because, historically, they usually worked ? And maybe they worked because that’s how people work.
So it seems likely that there are “intrinsic traits across humanity”.
Whether or not we can deduce moral principles from them is of course a different question.
Ira M. Siegel:
I would imagine it depends also on what school system a person went to, and even what teachers he or she had. It was a common message that could be gotten from any number of sources – and often was – such as schools, movies, TV, family, politicians, and books.
Ira M. Siegel: “Learning the importance of liberty” by watching tv shows and movies on tv. Especially Westerns.
DNW:
I think you are making the error of assuming that most or all of the people I’m talking about (my friends, etc.) are “progressives” in having some sort of internally consistent political position based on a philosophy such as what you describe, in which there are no “intrinsic traits across humanity from which moral imperatives may be deduced.” The people I’m talking about – and perhaps the majority of those who vote Democratic – probably could come up with a list of such traits and such moral imperatives. They might (and probably would) be different than yours, of course. But most people did not study philosophy in college and are not of the bent to do so, and if you mentioned someone like Rorty or even Rousseau to them they would either draw a blank or have a very cursory knowledge of such people.
I once wrote a post – don’t have time to find it now – about how, even among my liberal-Democrat friends, there is a wide variety of positions with regard to liberty and its importance. They are definitely not a unitary bunch, although the way they vote can be inexplicable in the group that values liberty and yet consistently votes for Democrats. Some force of habit keeps them doing this – something I’ve also written about elsewhere, as well (for example, in this post from 2005).
When, and by whose choice, does a human life acquire and retain the right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness?
For example, there is no mystery in sex and conception. A woman and man have four choices: abstention, prevention, adoption, and compassion, not including the wicked solution a.k.a planned parenthood. The edge cases are exceptions and the outcome of criminal and socially liberal religion (i.e. behavioral protocol).
Then there are the Nazis who brayed Jew privilege, the neo-Nazis who bray White privilege, the feminists who bray male privilege, too. Diversity, inequity, and exclusion.
@ Neo,
Somehow we keep talking past each other.
For example, I am not particularly concerned with your acquaintances’ details and referenced them only as examples of the subtle civic dysfunctions which you have yourself brought them up previously to exemplify.
Instead then, of exploring what non-negotiable duties they have as political peers and citizens in a system.of reciprocal obligation and imputed respect, we are now dwelling on the excuses they might have for not rising to the responsibilities expected of peers in a polity that exists for the purpose of maintaining a regime of Liberty.
Frankly it does not matter one damn bit what these people are interested in or not interested in, if they are to have the privilege of being reckoned peers or moral equals. It is their goddamned duty to step up to the plate or to hell with them.
And whether they understand where the subversive doctrines they in practice ( if unconsciously) embrace originated or not, does not matter either. My recitation of these doctrines was delivered only to prove that those who live by the postmodern doctrines concerning man’s nature, truth, and reality, have no claim to place against their political fellows on the basis of some natural law supposition.
All that they have to offer in defense of their status as political peers, or human equals, is to be found within the boundaries of a system of reciprocity. They either pony up on their most basic duties as citizens and jurors, or admit to being outside the system of moral exchange and mutual recognition.
All the rest which I had mentioned was in the nature of propaedeutical remarks.
It is the final question that I posed that needs to be answered within the boundaries which I at some length delineated.
I will be in the office later and see if this entry needs to be reworked.
But until then, and once again as a paradigm question ( and within the conditioning facts I have described) : What political obligation does anyone have to defend those who refuse to defend themselves?
DNW:
I find your question to be coming at things from the wrong direction, and I’ve tried to explain why. If you don’t understand, I’ll stop explaining except to say that you and I have very very different orientations towards our fellow human beings and towards the idea of being deserving.
You are free to consider yourself to have no obligations at all to anyone who doesn’t meet your standards for being deserving. That’s not the way I make such decisions about other human beings. I believe, as I’ve said before (quoting various Founders), that everyone is born with liberty and everyone’s liberty should be defended. Not everyone agrees with me, of course.
You may wish to orient yourself in that direction Neo, but that is no way to run, or maintain a constitutional polity.
And frankly, I don’t believe that I have read anything resembling a persuasive argument out of you for applying what ever moral sentiments you may personally feel, or accept, to the political and associative questions involved here.
More later, when I get to a keyboard.
Another question. Where the hell is our resident agent provocateur when I have actual work for him to do?
Distributive attribution of Natural rights hinging on the one humanity precept and the deductibility of oughts from an is.
3 videos as a head start, Zaphod.
Your conclusion?
DNW:
I find your arguments completely unpersuasive.
I’ve explained why and don’t need to spend more time on this. Fortunately, though, you are not in charge of this particular constitutional polity, which does not defend or declare rights only for those people who meet your criteria for being “deserving.”
Alright. I see that just as with every prior discussion occurring along these lines this discussion too goes off the rails as the premisses are never defended but merely repeatedly asserted.
Quoting – or merely alluding to – constitutional pronouncements or axioms advanced by the writers of the Constitution, in order to defend the Constitution and its enabling worldview assumptions is a circular enterprise.
One has to dig deeper into the mechanics of the arguments as well as into the grounding of those premisses which we call principles.
Otherwise you just run in circles endlessly. Dare one wonder then why no one gets anywhere except into shouting matches or pronouncements such as “if you don’t know already no one can explain it to you”. Which apparently, if we wished to be generous, could be understood as the first gestures toward an intuitionist argument of some kind. Not that that is easily defended either.
But the reason we are in the straits we are in right now, is because “we” meaning the generality of the American people, are deeply divided in our views of what constitutes reality. So much so, that our fundamental assumptions concerning good and bad, right and wrong, are antithetical in principle, and incompatible in practice.
I think a big part of it is that people would rather kill and die then to trouble themselves to actually think critically through to a defensible understanding of what it is that they purport to “believe”.
If Neo’s associates cannot even trouble themselves to look closely at and behind the news; then, what hope is there that they would be willing to address the more fundamental and critical issues of the grounding of their morality and concepts of law as befits responsible citizens; as opposed to subjects – however jaded by comfort and satisfaction these bought and paid for social elements might be.
It’s a sad thing to think that if the shooting ever starts, the issues that were staring all of us in the face, and which precipitated it all, were never even once squarely addressed.
Among them, as paradigmatic of the rest:
“people would rather kill and die then to trouble themselves to actually think critically….”
That’s likely always been true, tho it’s likely gotten worse in the last 7-8 years, with the emergence of Wokeism.
Part of the diff nowadays owes much to, that so many go to social media, and seem not to mind the brutally unfair atmosphere in such forums.
@DNW:
Exterminate the Brutes!
Well, you *did* ask.
My untutored thoughts on Natural Rights are right up there with Old Ben’s “A Republic, if you can keep it.” For those who cannot: ‘Tutelage’.
If I speak in enough riddles, can I get my Jaffa Card punched and get tenure at Claremont or Hillsdale. Asking for a Friend.
Do Claremont or Hillsdale have programs in animal husbandry? Our sage from Hong Kong is certainly qualified to sling the manure, although it would be hard to tell the slinger from the slung.
@Om:
“although it would be hard to tell the slinger from the slung”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/255807-once-upon-a-time-i-dreamt-i-was-a-butterfly
“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
— Zhuangzi, The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang-Tzu
Confucius Say: “When Shit Fly, Dung Beetle Rhapsodize.”
Dung beetles roll theirs, how do you roll yours? Actually you don’t have to answer, TMI.
I don’t know. Jaffa was never on my reading list. Plato, Aristotle, the Scholastics, Ayer, Quine, F.P. Ramsey, Wittgenstein, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and a host of others were.
Neither was Leo Strauss on my list officially, though I slogged through his work on Hobbes.
That was enough to convince me that the approach there led eventually to a dead end. Thucydides, Machiavelli, blah blah blah.
But of course if we do go down the path of trying to construct such an ersatz rights theory in order to go up against theories of might and will to power based on an ultimate nihilism, we should remind ourselves that as we strip mine Hobbes and Thucydides for historical material to pave this road to nowhere, where we wind up is, at a “Theory of natural right”; and most definitely not at theory of natural rights based on natural law as understood by the Scholastics or even by classical era theorists.
This sideways attempt to construct a theory of rights is, in my view, not a founded exercise but rather a temporizing one: “Wouldn’t you rather live like this, than that? So let’s look at history – or a particular narrative – and pretend”
Answer: “No I would not; not if it implies I have to put up with, much less cater to or identify with you, and with your concerns, you simpering asswipe.”
It all results in something about as insubstantial as that New Natural Rights theory erected on the base of “human flourishing”. You could not pick a better weasel phrase upon which to ground a a theoretical movement, if you tried. And John Rawls certainly tried: “distributive justice”
Why not, rather than play that game, just do as you say, and kill “the brutes”?
Damnit, OM. He’s not harming you, nor this site. For God’s sake, stop with the hall monitor shit, and address the issues rather than the man.
Leave that to Neo, eh?
Oh, all hail the philosopher! You can go play lumberjack, and sleep all day.
@DNW:
“That was enough to convince me that the approach there led eventually to a dead end. Thucydides, Machiavelli, blah blah blah.”
Melian Dialogues and Machiavelli read as Straight Man without all the S&J attempts to imbue him with hidden esoteric meanings. That’s really all the political philosophy I need given that Other Players Get to Have a Say.
— Edit just realised that my last sentence is deeply stupid because an irrational actor believing some sugar plum fairy BS is just as capable of throwing me onto a cattle car as the most brutal base reality realist. So have to study it all to keep one’s head on a swivel, even if it won’t provide useful solutions. And I’m powerless. Not an actor.
I would dearly *like* there to be a better way, but see Act 1, Scene the Last of Kubrick’s 2001.
Theology can ameliorate, but then you run into the need for esotericism. High Priests and Kings had better be Machiavellians, but you can’t have the Rank and File seeing things that way or you’re not going to live to hear the Blue Danube Waltz. And the problem with Esoteric Systems is that eventually your elites resemble Human Klein Bottles with the same olfactory/inhalation issues. See present day.
We can’t all be the Druze. they’re Esoteric and Lindy.
I don’t have your philosophical chops and get lost in the underbrush very easily. All I see is endless cycles of the same stuff. It could be worse.
“Zaphod on September 29, 2021 at 9:59 pm said:
@DNW:
The Melian dialog is one of the profoundest pieces of ancient literature I have read. It’s importance is reflected in the fact we got it in high school literature class.
So, although I might have little to no appreciation for those who try to squeeze a secular morality out of Thucydides, I am certainly well able to appreciate the moral (pun intended) of some of his accounts. Though, truth be told, sitting in the stacks for hours reading the Oxford edition (or was it Cambridge?) was an exercise in will power, I’ll tell you.
One unfamiliar name after another. One morally unedifying episode after another. Might as well have been a recounting of the story of the war between red and black ants who all have confusing names, for all the sense of identification one might have derived from it. At least at 19.
Of course, that morally neutral descriptive stance might be, and apparently definitely was by some, taken as reflecting human “Social life as it really is, my boy”, and not as we might dream or wish it to be.
Well, maybe … if you take the political quarrels of a race of pederasts to exemplify human nature.
Yet along with the highly satisfying image of hubristic Athenian predators dying of disease, thirst, and famine, on the shores of Sicily, there is that alarming lesson in the Dialog for those stupid enough to imagine that democracy as a value and practice, is much more than the best of several imperfect methods for stymieing the tyranny of the few.
As for the tyranny of the majority – or even the plurality – no matter how degenerate, “democracy” itself has nothing to say. A democratic union of vampires, or vaunting phallus worshiping homosexual buggerers, is nothing more than those terms describe, for those disaffected insiders or for the outsiders who wish to retain their freedom.
Democracy, as predicted by the Founders, and as we have come to discover, has nothing at all to do necessarily, with the promotion and preservation of either virtue or liberty.
Unless, like the modernists, you intend to call whatever “democracy” decides – or those claiming to adjudicate the discovery of its will proclaim – is by that very fact, defined as virtuous and free.
Aristotle on the other hand, at least provides us with the entertaining story of an eastern king’s catamite slaying him, after king asked him in public if he was pregnant. Apparently even a sack of bugger meat can be expected to tolerate only so much humiliation.
And I, at least, got the distinct impression that Aristotle approved the slaying. Though that may have been me projecting my applause onto “The Philosopher”
That was Aristotle, wasn’t it, and not Plutarch?
richf on September 29, 2021 at 12:17 pm:
Thank you for responding to DNW’s comments on “intrinsic traits across humanity from which moral imperatives may be deduced “.
I concur that that assertion is subject to severe question. For example, Larry Arnhart, in his Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature, lays out 20 “Darwinian natural desires” or traits that might be a foundation for such human morality, with a wide variety of cultural adjustments made based on local conditions and/or what has been historically successful.
@DNW:
Don’t know that story and consequently its provenance. But there’s generally only so much that a Koala can Bear. It’s usually more than the perpetrator at first expects, and so he naturally develops a certain complacency. Aristotle certainly would have had more of a bee in his bonnet about Medes and Medizers than Plutarch.
Anyway Two Cheers for the Tyranny of the One or the Several. They can’t be everywhere; not even today. And nice to be able to bug out to the Great King’s Court if things turn iffy in the Agora. Universalism is the Great Curse.
I too appreciated his response, and your comment gives me the opportunity and reminder to say so.
Bear in mind, that when you argue with the negative proposition, you are arguing not with me exactly, but with the default worldview and anthropology held by the progressives generally.
I pointed it out to cut off their dishonest attempt to smuggle natural law into their moral schemata, and to force them to rely either on reciprocity, or to admit as Rorty does that it boils down to a matter of affect and identification and little else. Or take Obama’s “learn to see ourselves in others”, BS as a sample.
No need to cite who at length, as the chief characters are known from Margaret Mead on. And the Rorty and Quine interviews by Magee make explicit reference to such an assumption.
Now, to your point: I myself first noticed a mild recovery of Nat Law type speculation, in about ’99 in an article in Scientific American which revisited the question of universal taboos and in light of new discoveries affirming at least some.
And of course then came along, if not the affirmation of the reality of universal values, then at least the undermining of Mead’s research; and the revelation by Australian [I think both were] anthropologists of a sociopolitical agenda regarding her supposed discoveries, which were falsifications of the real record.
So, what one would have there, as with Arnhart is, I reckon, a kind of potential grounding for what the Romans called the law of nations or the ius gentium. Legal forms and proscriptions revealed by reason, as common to more or less all societies.
This however only takes the advocate part of the way as richf, takes the trouble to admit.
Mortimer Adler is one who famously attempted to do this as part of a popularly aimed work titled, “Ten Philosophical Mistakes”.
Given that this is Neo’s personal and fast moving blog and not a symposium debate designed to settle a particular question, I have probably dragged this thread out too long.
But this following assertion required a response that I had forgotten to post til now.
Neo says:
“….I would be highly wary of anyone – and that most definitely includes DNW – who sets him or herself up as the arbiter of who “deserves” freedom or liberty and who does not. Talk about elitism!…”
I think that in dispassionately reading my complete original remarks, it should become clear that when I question whether some people are ” deserving of”, freedom, it is not to challenge the abstract presumption that the principles of negative liberty apply distributively; but rather, given that some individuals not only do not value political liberty, but may even lack it as a primary ” taste” , the question instead is whether or not they deserve the sacrifices of their supposed equals and peers … and by implication either such a status, or the resultant benefit itself.
So the elements conditioning the analysis here of who is ” deserving” , are initially a formally presumed equality of privilege AND responsibility. Next, reciprocity as a non-negotiable condition factor. And then, demonstrable commitment to the project. In this latter instance, one amounting to not much more than being informed and committed to the regime of liberty itself.
I took obvious pains to exclude a so-called natural law entitlement because: 1, most progressives do not believe in it; and 2, because this discussion is about being informed as a civic obligation conditioning one’s being accepted or considered an equal or political peer, and as a result ” deserving”
I am not addressing the question as to whether some people are born serviles, or whether Nature’s God wishes and intends that all men be free.
This is why I repeatedly posed a paradigm question concerning the situation of those who will not defend themselves being alternatively defended by others.
If the question of deserving freedom seems too tangled up in too many strands of law, and metaphysical assumptions, and emotion to answer, the latter question should be clear enough to answer.
Are such people peers, and do you have an obligation to do for them what they will not do, or have no interest in doing, for themselves?
This seems to me to be a rather straightforward question, with direct application to the actual conditions on the ground, and the actual social dynamuc operative in, our present polity.
I am not sure why it is so difficult for some people to face, much less answer.
A moment’s reflection will reveal that the left in this country – the chief peddlers of nonjudgmental inclusivity has already answered a parallel question arising within their own value system with a resounding “No”.
I even have personal information regarding woke medical practioners effectively taunting unvaccinated patients dying of Covid. But, that, is another issue …
DNW:
Your question in its original form was answered here by many people, and I think you just keep posing it because the answer is not one that conforms to the assumptions inherent in your question. That is, many of us don’t think of our fellow citizens as unworthy serfs if they don’t agree with us about liberty and its importance. The concept of whether they “deserve” liberty was inherent in your original question, and – as Robert Frost wrote in a very different context – “I should have called it/Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”
Now you rephrase your question as, “Are such people peers, and do you have an obligation to do for them what they will not do, or have no interest in doing, for themselves? ” To me, such a question makes no sense. If I am part of a country that has as one of its most basic founding principles that liberty is part of humankind’s God-given birthright, and I agree with that principle, then my “obligation” (whatever that obligation consists of in terms of action) is to defend the liberty of all.
I, however, am no soldier. So if you’re talking about taking up arms, I’m afraid that wouldn’t be my forte. If you’re talking about writing – well, that’s what I do. And I consider it my obligation to stand up for the rights of everyone.
Everyone else can decide his or her own obligation or lack thereof.
I’m going to respond to this relatively briefly, instead of at point by point length, as it has become clear that my question intended to provoke thought, merely provokes defensiveness.
But for clarification’s sake; you say:
If you mean that I simply reworded the question so as not to endlessly repeat myself with the exact wording I have used over the past month, then fair enough.
If however you imply that I am now equivocating or trying to introduce a new shade of meaning, then the answer is , “No, it is not so”.
I have repeatedly and consistently used the term in the same context.: i.e., the context of political and civic equality of both status and responsibility conjoined. This is nothing new, either with me here, or in the realm of political ideas: as my occasional coupling of the term “peer” with jurors, should indicate.
Though of course you may be forgiven for not noticing inasmuch as the other language I used to describe those who are not morally up to their obligations as equals in a system based on reciprocity, obviously unsettles you.
If evidence is needed of my recent use of the term however, click on :https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/09/04/a-post-9-11-political-changer-tells-her-story/
Then use the find function to look up “peer”. If there is significant daylight between my many applications of the term in this and in those comments, it is completely invisible to me.
Well, that’s all very nice and all. But the problem is that 9/10ths of academia, and 50% of the American populace either laugh at the notion of Natural Rights or have some ridiculous, shallow, and misshapen idea of it which they deploy, or ignore, or reject at their rhetorical convenience.
Playing such a game with two sets of rules makes you a sap and allows them to skate as free riders on your morality.
That is why, I went for the more fundamental notion of strong “reciprocity”; which has no particular metaphysical connotations; which people don’t seem interested or capable of defending – as opposed to insisting on – in any case.
But of course as you intuit, or infer, and then allude to, in order to fit into a system of rights based on reciprocity, you have to be fit enough to qualify. And what might add up for the men of the war band, or farmers on the frontier, is likely not to sum up satisfactorily for the mentally ill 26 year old with blue hair and an eating disorder.
But … if you don’t have a Natural Law theory which you can actually explain and defend against criticism, then all you do have left is your ability to pay your dues.
Failing that, it’s all just hot air and emotion …
Eva Marie on September 29, 2021 at 2:12 pm said:
“Especially the Westerns.”
YES!!!!
And, just a few minutes ago I finished watching 1953’s Man on a Tightrope. Another great lesson on government oppression, and the yearning of some for freedom. Sadly, many people are actually into submission.
In my view those who, cluelessly or not, support and vote for the Left and their proxy-party named Democratic, are the water within which sharks such as this one swim and prosper.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/476790/
Related to my above:
https://pjmedia.com/columns/kevindowneyjr/2021/09/29/clown-world-fake-news-is-the-only-approved-news-while-real-news-gets-you-banned-on-social-media-n1520610
And when you scroll down you might see the why behind this FBI action.
https://twitter.com/SebGorka/status/1443686769833168905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw