The Darien Gap & Postmodernism | Bret Weinstein | EP 434
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkC1BYzK4NA

Consider me in the voluntarist subspecies.

The constitution is the rule book for society. It is inflexible in the sense that the precepts should be locked in place. The founders gave us the ability to add on to that or take away by amendment, which was purposefully difficult.

But the current notion that we can just re-define the meaning of the existing words destroys the compact.

I would suggest that every human society ends in authoritarianism/totalitarianism. That’s just human nature.

“No one, I think, is in my tree/ I mean it must be high or low.” John Lennon, “Strawberry Fields Forever”. 😉

“The constitution was the secular framework to build a legal/civic basis for society. The Judeo-Christian moral framework was so imbedded I don’t think the framers ever envisioned having to defend its relevance or necessity”

Yeah, that’s pretty much right, and it forms the first half of the analysis.

And because they never had to argue for the celebrated self-evident principles against nihilists, as opposed to monarchists [ or those who kept the application narrow] , and because neither they nor the opposition at the time of the founding believed that natural facts were irrelevant to the formulation of social values and norms but rather that facts entailed them, we in the United States had a comparatively free philosophical ride for 200 years, having and preserving and accepting an intellectual inheritance that was abandoned in Europe about the time of our political founding. No Jacques Hebert or Robespierre here. No David Hume. No Nietzsche, Marx or Freud. Urban American populations encountered such theories of life in universities and in magazines, not so much on the streets and in their faces at home. Until now.

Thus, Americans preserved a natural law and rights credo like some honored but only half understood language; one ultimately deriving from classical antiquity and the late middle ages, but had by and large forgotten how to argue the principles, if indeed they mostly ever knew. (And that cannot be ignored because even principles have a producing context that at base itself bears – or will eventually be subject to – scrutiny and question.)

But, eventually the corrosion worked its way into and throughout society through the efforts of the Marxists in the law schools and teachers colleges and university liberal arts departments; and now churches. And here we are.

And the American Protestant [ of the voluntarist subspecies ] had in general, and until recently, no clue at all how to even approach the issue, other than to try and recite the time honored platitudes in a louder or more affecting manner.

And of the Jews, the only socially influential one I can think of off the top of my head, the guy who got it early and right at least as far as the core issue being the anthropological fallout of epistemological and metaphysical principles, was Mortimer Adler.

Two faith traditions producing between them one guy, standing more or less alone.

And now to mention objective truth, or even teleonomy as distinct from teleology, is considered by the freaks, to be “fascism ”

There is a really precious irony in that, isn’t there: these modern apostles of the “will”, shrieking about “fascism” …

So let’s say they should climb the tree of rational thinking, along with gardening and cooking.

We could get along without the latter two if they had the slightest rational thought process as regards public affairs.

What do conservatives do if there is nothing left of the moral/legal framework which was the basis of our founding? If there is nothing left to conserve.

The constitution was the secular framework to build a legal/civic basis for society. The Judeo-Christian moral framework was so imbedded I don’t think the framers ever envisioned having to defend its relevance or necessity. Those that didn’t ascribe to Judeo/Christian moral standards tolerated the parts they didn’t like and practiced whatever deviation they preferred in private/semi-private ways.

I listen to radio programs from the 30’s-50’s. I was listening to the Easter episode of the Phil Harris-Alice Faye show where they were preparing to go to church. Now the underlying schtick of Phil Harris and his band (as portrayed on the Jack Benny show) was Phil and his band were lushes. It was the running gag. Yet Phil Harris the family man was getting ready to go to church.

It’s my anecdotal evidence that Christian principles were so ingrained in society they weren’t questioned.

The two-pronged humanist assault on our society will leave us with no framework to continue– rejection of Christian moral principles and a constitution that means whatever the left says it means, and nothing more. We’re hanging by a thread of traditional constitutional principles, but one more election and they’ll be gone. In fact, I doubt the rearguard action of the existing justices can stave off the leftist model of a living constitution.

Where do we go from there? The idea of conservatives taking up arms is foolish talk. A coalition of deeply conservative states forming a practical alliance against the smoldering corpse of what was the former republic would be an interesting proposition but would require a massive realignment.

Even that would only be temporary. I was listening to a podcast where the virtues of monoculturalism was mentioned. Ultimately, we can’t escape “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams

As a Christian I’m reminded of an old hymn,

“This world is not my home I’m just passing through
my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
the angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door
and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore
O Lord you know I have no friend like you
if Heaven’s not my home then Lord what will I do?
the angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door
and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore…”

Putin, Islamism and the Case for Monoculturalism | Konstantin Kisin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiXzMntCEfk

the conversation turns to monoculturalism around minute :40.

That was Einstein’s point. There is no one tree that “everybody” needs to learn to climb in order to have a decent society. To have a decent society (or at least take a few steps toward it), we should accept that there are many, many kinds of intelligence and/or talent, not just having a college degree, or a lot of trophies, or a great sales record, etc.

“Social,” ordering question you say. An association of exactly what, for what – ostensibly agreed upon – purposes?

It’s really the reappearance of an ancient question, admittedly radical, which conservatives just cannot seem to bring themselves to face.

My personal opinion, is that conservative Americans who come from a Protestant tradition, and Jewish as well, have imbibed a voluntarist ethics along with their religious formation which has left them ill prepared; meaning that right and wrong are whatever God wills, plain and simple, full stop, no further conceptual or grounding analysis required.

This leaves them in the position of feeding off of a third hand natural law report as adverted to in the Declaration, with no idea where to go once someone says to them: “You take your dead white man incantations and stuff it”.

Duh … now what? Pound the Bible harder? Recite the Declaration of Independence again as if it will be more persuasive on the second reading? Whine about the consequences of not being nice and the dangers of looking too closely into the reasons for tolerating in the first place?

We – or conservatives – act as if we know why no one could ever step beyond their humanity, without being able to argue why that is, even though we see it unfolding in real time right before our eyes. Trans this, trans that, all hail the sovereign impulse coming for a throat near you. “Good” itself redefined. But once it becomes truly subjective, what then? Scary.

Best not to look too close then, and keep chanting, I do believe, I do beleve, I do believe, as if that will repel the flying monkeys.

And why not? It’s worked so well so far …

As Einstein once said “Everyone is clever at something. If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, the fish will go through its whole life thinking it is stupid.”