Category: Leftism – Statism – Democracy

Plato’s Republic Redux

Guest commentary by Postmodern Conservative

Another good piece in First Things is by R. R. Reno who warns that we are coming closer to realizing Plato’s utopian design in which the state defines all relationships, not only political and economic, but also social and domestic, with new state backing of same-sex unions. Reno calls it the “politicization of culture.”

[T]he left imagines itself expanding the scope of freedom for all. It seems all gain and no loss. In California, homosexuals can get married, and nobody is prohibiting heterosexual marriage. Everybody seems to be getting what he or she wants. But what seems is not necessarily so. When the state can rise up to redefine marriage, then the counterweight of tradition is diminished, the political instruments of power are emboldened, and our collective liberty is at peril (“Personal Freedom Without Political Liberty“).

"Great" Britain No Longer

Guest commentary by Postmodern Conservative.

Tom Bethell addresses this topic in a recent article for The American Specator. As a British expatriate, he tells us

I go to England fairly often as I have family there — a brother, two sisters, and my 95-year-old mother. Otherwise I doubt if I would go back.

In particular, he points to socialist-driven economic decline and the related social rot:

The same culture war that is being waged in the United States is already much further advanced in Britain. Over there, the forces of resistance are negligible, so the cultural revolution has almost completely triumphed…. The ruling-class embrace of semi-capitalism has brought about the rise in prosperity, but this has been accompanied by mounting social chaos. One of the main indicators is the rise of family breakdown (or non-formation) and out-of-wedlock childbearing. The key enabler of this change has been the transfer of tens of billions of pounds to fatherless households. Only a society wealthy enough to collect and redistribute revenue on this scale can sustain widespread illegitimacy.

I can contribute some further thoughts: I was told that in the UK people now speak of “Britain,” not “Great Britain.” I guess it’s considered too imperial and anachronistic. But even this small change in usage is revealing. Quite simply, in all the years that I’ve been to Britain, beginning in the 1980s, I became slowly aware it is no longer the “blessed plot” of Shakespeare. Like most Americans, my vision of a quaint, gentile civilization was derived from old film depictions. For that reason I was an Anglophile, and even now I can’t quite shake my love of England (or least the England that once was). I like hot tea with milk, Youngs and Sam Smith stout, and most of my favorite authors are English.

Of course every culture has it downside. When I speak of Britain I am thinking specifically of the English, since they have been its rulers and imparted to it many of its virtues, as well some of its vices. England always had a checkered past: the persecution of Catholics under the Tudors, the ill-treatment of the Irish, the massacres at Culloden, the depredations of the American Revolution, the Boer War concentration camps, to name a few instances. But in general the English have held up pretty well…. at least until the last two or three decades.

I was reading some comments in Orwell about how, in the 1940s, the English even then regarded Americans as purveyors of decadence. But, to take the example of rock music, the American variety wasn’t politically subversive. British rock was. But then it came out of a totally different political and economic climate. (One thing I learned in my travels in the UK was that a permanent welfare class need not be relatively new or relatively non-white. In England it goes back to the 1950s, if not earlier, and is traditionally white.)

Elvis was no saint, but his vices were normal and he was as patriotic as the next American. By contrast the music of “British Invasion” was more explicit in its promotion of sexual decadence, drugs and political radicalism. But if hippie scene was bad, the punk rockers of the following decade were overtly nihilistic. It’s this punk/skinhead subculture that gradually spread through the UK and into the US. In those years I’ve seen fringe behavior become mainstream, like body piercing and extensive tattooing, not only of men but women as well. And we got all of this from the UK.

Colin Firth, star of the 1990s version of Pride and Prejudice, said that: “The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I’m not denying they exist. But it’s a far more philistine country than people think.” Say what you like, the last great figure in English history was Margaret Thatcher, who embodied all the best qualities of “Britishness.” At least she was no philistine.

Not Really a "Dumbass Idea"

Doug Mataconis accuses an Arizona legislator of “trying to turn schools into propaganda mills.” In fact, according the quotation furnished by Mataconis, the legislator is trying to do just the opposite:

[Arizona Senate Bill] 1108 states, “A primary purpose of public education is to inculcate values of American citizenship. Public tax dollars used in public schools should not be used to denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization.”

Given that public schools already are government-sponsored propaganda mills — usually for anti-American, anti-market crap — the proposed measure seems reasonable to me. As long as government is in the business of running schools, it ought to run them in ways that don’t spread discord and preach the “social gospel” according to Al Gore, Michael Moore, and their ilk.

I’m a product of public schools whose teachers (probably) were old-time Republicans, and who extolled the virtues of “dead, white males” like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. We need more of that, not less.

Paternalism, Yet Again

Bryan Caplan skewers another effort by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein to defend government-mandated, “libertarian” paternalism. As Caplan says, “government long ago took up the burden of helping consumers, and the result is a mess.”

Thaler, Sunstein, and their ilk must not have been paying attention when Ronald Reagan (supposedly) said that the scariest phrase a person can hear is “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you.” If you’re not scared by that phrase, you should be. If you badly want government to do something, government will do it badly.

Related posts:
“Libertarian Paternalism” (24 Apr 2005)
“A Libertarian Paternalist’s Dream World” (23 May 2005)
“The Short Answer to Libertarian Paternalism” (24 Jun 2005)
“Second-Guessing, Paternalism, Parentalism, and Choice” (13 Jul 2005)
“Another Thought about Libertarian Paternalism” (16 Aug 2005)
“Back-Door Paternalism” (20 Jan 2006)
“Another Voice Against the New Paternalism” (22 Feb 2006)
“The Feds and Libertarian Paternalism” (17 Aug 2006)
“A Further Note about Libertarian Paternalism” (15 Sep 2006)
“Apropos Paternalism” (04 Oct 2006)

Bail-Outs

For my views about the present effort to bail out home buyers who borrowed money foolishly and lenders who lent money foolishly, see this and this. Just change the subject from bankruptcy to default.

Democracy vs. Liberty, in a Paragraph

Colin McGinn writes:

In order for democracy to be acceptable, it needs to be combined with legal protections for the rights of minorities (gays, atheists, et al), or else there will be a tyranny of majority rule. But these protections cannot be made subject to the will of the majority or they lose their point and force. So, they must stay in place even if the majority opposes them–which is undemocratic. Therefore, democracy is acceptable only if it is not absolute. A tolerable form of democracy cannot be consistently democratic. The problem is that democracy and individual rights are at odds with each other.

My own views about democracy and its insidious effect on liberty are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

(Thanks to Maverick Philosopher for the pointer.)

Religion in Public Schools: The Wrong and Right of It

Below the Beltway scorns a lawsuit, which (as FoxNews reports)

demand[s] that a popular European history teacher at California’s Capistrano Valley High School be fired for what they say were anti-Christian remarks he made in the classroom….

[Chad] Farnan recorded his teacher telling students in class: “What country has the highest murder rate? The South! What part of the country has the highest rape rate? The South! What part of the country has the highest rate of church attendance? The South!”

Scorn is the wrong reaction. If employees of public schools are forbidden, as they are, to proselytize for religion (or to allow students to do so through voluntary activities that might somehow be related to school), then employees of public schools, by the same token, should be forbidden to proselytize against religion. And that is evidently what the “popular” teacher did.

Classical Values, on the other hand, has it right. First, the relevant bits from another FoxNews story:

A Tomah [Wisconsin] High School student has filed a federal lawsuit alleging his art teacher censored his drawing because it featured a cross and a biblical reference….

According to the lawsuit, the student’s art teacher asked his class in February to draw landscapes. The student, a senior identified in the lawsuit by the initials A.P., added a cross and the words “John 3:16 A sign of love” in his drawing.

His teacher, Julie Millin, asked him to remove the reference to the Bible, saying students were making remarks about it. He refused, and she gave him a zero on the project.

Millin showed the student a policy for the class that prohibited any violence, blood, sexual connotations or religious beliefs in artwork. The lawsuit claims Millin told the boy he had signed away his constitutional rights when he signed the policy at the beginning of the semester.

The boy tore the policy up in front of Millin, who kicked him out of class. Later that day, assistant principal Cale Jackson told the boy his religious expression infringed on other students’ rights.

Jackson told the boy, his stepfather and his pastor at a meeting a week later that religious expression could be legally censored in class assignments. Millin stated at the meeting the cross in the drawing also infringed on other students’ rights.

Here’s what Classical Values has to say about that:

This is a public school, and the state is not supposed to take positions on religion. It would be one thing had the school told students that they must depict or display images of the cross, but here a student acted on his own, and in a constitutionally protected manner.

Precisely.

More about "Libertarian" Paternalism…

…from Jonah Goldberg, here. See related posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE (04/04/08): See these three posts by Jim Manzi, and related posts here, here, here, and here.

Divorce and Crime

MarriageDebate.com notes “The Impact of Unilateral Divorce on Crime,” by Julio Cáceres-Delpiano and Eugenio P. Giolito (March 2008)

Abstract:
In this paper, we evaluate the impact of unilateral divorce on crime. First, using crime rates from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report program for the period 1965-1998 and differences in the timing in the introduction of the reform, we find that unilateral divorce has a positive impact on violent crime rates, with an 8% to 12% average increase for the period under consideration. Second, arrest data not only confirms the findings of a positive impact on violent crime but also shows that this impact is concentrated among those age groups (15 to 24) that are more likely to engage in these type of offenses. Specifically, for the age group 15-19, we observe an average impact over the period under analysis of 40% and 36% for murder and aggravated assault arrest rates, respectively. Disaggregating total arrest rates by race, we find that the effects are driven by the Black sub-sample. Third, using the age at the time of the divorce law reform as a second source of variation to analyze age-specific arrest rates we confirm the positive impact on the different types of violent crime as well as a positive impact for property crime rates, controlling for all confounding factors that may operate at the state-year, state age or age-year level. The results for murder arrests and for homicide rates (Supplemental Homicide Report) for the 15-24 age groups are robust with respect to specifications and specifically those that include year-state and year-age dummies. The magnitude goes from 15% to 40% depending on the specification and the age at the time of the reform.

Which surprises me not at all. In “Equal Time: The Sequel” (05 Nov 2005), I say:

The state began many years ago to encourage [single parenthood] by enabling [men and women] to break their [marriage] contracts at will instead of trying to work out their differences. (The lesson: When the state sends signals about private arrangements, private arrangements tend to align themselves with the signals being sent by the state.)

And innocent bystanders reap what the state sows.

Other related posts:
“I Missed This One” (21 Aug 2004)
“A Century of Progress?” (30 Jan 2005)
“The Marriage Contract” (16 Feb 2005)
“Feminist Balderdash” (19 Feb 2005)
“Libertarianism, Marriage, and the True Meaning of Family Values” (06 Apr 2005)
“Consider the Children” (07 Oct 2005)
“Same-Sex Marriage” (20 Oct 2005)
“Equal Protection” and Homosexual Marriage” (30 Oct 2005)
“Marriage and Children” (05 Nov 2005)
“Social Norms and Liberty” (02 Mar 2006)
“Parenting, Religion, Culture, and Liberty” (04 Jun 2006)
” ‘Family Values,’ Liberty, and the State” (07 Dec 2007)

Radical Chic Redux

Barack Obama’s white Leftist defenders are reprising an old form of racial condescension. Tom Wolfe called it “radical chic.” Wolfe coined the term in Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers to

describe[] an intriguing phenomenon of the late Sixties: the courting of romantic radicals—Black Panthers, striking grapeworkers, Young Lords—by New York’s socially elite.

Socially elite Leftists, that is.

Here’s an excerpt (of an excerpt) of Wolfe’s book:

…There seem to be a thousand stars above and a thousand stars below, a room full of stars a penthouse duplex full of stars, a Manhattan tower full of stars, with marvelous people drifting through the heavens, Jason Robards, John and D. D. Ryan, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Schuyler Chapin, Goddard Lieberson, Mike Nichols, Lillian Hellman, Larry Rivers, Aaron Copland, Richard Avedon, Milton and Amy Greene, Lukas Foss, Jennie Tourel, Samuel Barber, Jerome Robbins, Steve Sondheim, Adolph and Phyllis Green, Betty Comden, and the Patrick O’Neals . . .

. . . and now, in the season of Radical Chic, the Black Panthers. That huge Panther there, the one Felicia is smiling her tango smile at, is Robert Bay, who just forty-one hours ago was arrested in an altercation with the police, supposedly over a .38-caliber revolver that someone had, in a parked car in Queens at Northern Boulevard and 10th Street or some such unbelievable place and taken to jail on a most un-usual charge called “criminal facilitation.” And now he is out on bail and walking into Leonard and Felicia Bernstein’s thirteen-room penthouse duplex on Park Avenue. Harassment & Hassles, Guns & Pigs, Jail & Bail—they’re real, these Black Panthers. The very idea of them, these real revolutionaries, who actually put their lives on the line, runs through Lenny’s duplex like a rogue hormone….

The thrill of seeing Obama consort knowingly with anti-Americans (his wife, his pastor) must transport his fans on the Left into a Bernsteinian swoon of ecstasy.

Obama vs. the Second Amendment

Barack Obama’s speech about racism in America vied for blogospheric attention with today’s oral argument in District of Columbia v. Heller (the U.S. Supreme Court’s first Second Amendment case since 1939).

Here are some key passages from Obama’s speech:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper….

This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

It’s the politics of victimhood. It’s the politics of socialism. It’s the politics of class warfare. It’s the politics of economic ignorance. Not a word about cultural influences or dependency on the state. Not a word about the growth of real income at all levels (not just at the top). Not a word about upward economic mobility, which is the norm in America. Not a word about the fact that economic progress depends upon that “dirty” profit motive.

Obama’s speech may be “eloquent,” in some sense. But it fully reveals him for the dangerous demagogue that he is: a latter-day FDR.

As for the Second Amendment, I predict a 5-4 decision in D.C. v. Heller that upholds an individual right to own a handgun for the purpose of self-defense, subject to “reasonable” regulation in the interest of safety. Some of the dissenters will maintain, illogically, that handguns should be prohibited in jurisdictions with high rates of crime (e.g., D.C.). As if criminals honor bans on handgun ownership. And so it goes, in the upside-down world of liberalism.

Quotation of the Day

From Louis Michael Seidman’s paper, “Can Constitutionalism Be Leftist?“:

Being a leftist … is being temperamentally drawn to permanent critique. It is never having a home, always being dissatisfied….

(I’ll have something to say about the paper in a future post.)

Is There Such a Thing as Society?

Margaret Thatcher often is quoted as saying that “there is no such thing as society.” But when Mrs. Thatcher said that, she was arguing against the entitlement mindset, as in ” ‘society’ owes me a roof over my head and three meals a day.” As she put it, “people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbor.”

What Mrs. Thatcher meant to say is that people shouldn’t look to the state (and, thus, to taxpayers) for charity. “Look[ing] after our neighbor” is a clear acknowledgment of the primacy of society (as against the state) as the source of legitimate charity, that is, voluntary charity.

The question now becomes: What is society?

“Society” is not easily defined; it is a word with many meanings, most of them vague. In that respect, it resembles “culture.” And the two words sometimes are used to mean the same thing. Where to begin?

What Society Is Not, and Is

I begin by defining what society is not. It is not merely an economic arrangement: an arms’ length exchange of goods and services for mutual benefit. Nor is it merely a political arrangement, such as the vesting of power in a government for the purpose of making and enforcing laws within a specified geographical area.

There is more to society than economic and political arrangements. The “more” is mutual respect. Mutual respect implies trust, and with trust goes forbearance — a willingness to forgo retribution and violence for slights and trespasses, until one is mightily provoked. (That is why, for example, “redneck culture” is a culture — a way of life — but not the basis of a society.)

There are three outward signs of mutual respect: politeness, thoughtfulness, and neighborliness — practiced in combination, not singly or in twos. Politeness is simple civility: “please,” “thank you,” and the like. (Easier said than done, these days.) Thoughtfulness goes a step beyond politeness; it is seen in such simple acts as returning a stray animal to its owner or picking up litter along a public thoroughfare. Neighborliness (true voluntarism) goes well beyond thoughtfulness; it boils down to burden-sharing, that is, helping others in need through direct action (e.g., cutting a sick neighbor’s grass or bringing her a meal).

As the saying goes, “what goes around comes around.” Mutual respect is impossible where politeness, thoughtfulness, and neighborliness are met consistently with their opposites, which can be characterized as disdain, hostility, or enmity, depending on the virulence of the contrary behavior. To put it positively, by acting (or not acting) in certain ways we foster mutual respect, which repays us with the trust and forbearance of others. This is, of course, the “Golden Rule,” stated in other words.

Mutual respect, by my rigorous definition, is meaningless in the abstract; it must be tested and proved through continuous social contact. Mutual respect is therefore meaningful only to the extent that it is found among persons who are well known to each other and who have frequent social contact with each other. Family and work contacts, like cocktail-party contacts, may involve mere role-playing and politeness. You can pick your friends but not your family or, in most cases, your co-workers. This is not to rule out families and workplaces as venues for mutual respect, but simply to note that they do not rely on mutual respect for their sustenance.

Social Units, the Extent of a Society, and Alliances of Convenience

How many persons can be comprised in a cohesive social unit that adheres around mutual respect? An individual probably can have a relationship of mutual respect (as I define it) with no more than 150 persons (and probably far fewer). A cohesive social unit is most likely to be a nuclear family, an extended family, a rural community, a very small village (or part of a larger one), or a neighborhood in a town, suburb, or city.

A social unit can be likened to a physical atom: an entity with a nucleus (an individual or small number of tightly bonded individuals), surrounded by some number of other persons who are connected to the nucleus by mutual respect. Just as a chemically bonded group of atoms forms a compound, an interlocking network of social units forms a society. By interlocking network, I mean that some (perhaps most) members of each social unit (outside its nucleus) also are nuclei or members of other social units.

How far can a society extend; that is, how many interlocking social units can it comprise? That depends on the extent to which the various social units possess common socio-economic (i.e., cultural) characteristics. (See below.) For, though it is true that a culture does not make a society, a society is bound to have a dominant set of cultural characteristics. It is not in the nature of human beings to bond in mutual respect without the “glue” of core cultural values, or social norms. The more disparate the range of cultural characteristics in a given geographic area (such as the United States), the greater the number of distinct (and possibly antipathetic) societies will be found in that geographic area. This nation is not a society, even though the word “society” often is used (incorrectly) instead of “nation.”

What about those persons who are not members of a social unit? It takes no more than casual experience of life in cities and suburbs to confirm that most of the denizens thereof are not members. (Nodding acquaintances with neighbors, memberships in churches and clubs, and a few friendships with work associates do not a society make.) I am not denigrating those who live in social isolation — whether it is urban, suburban, or even rural — but merely saying that they are not members of a social unit, and that their numbers have been growing faster than the nation’s population. (For more on this point, see this article by Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital. See also this table, prepared by the Census Bureau, which documents the growing urbanization of America.)

There is no such thing as American society because not only are Americans too often socially isolated, but also they are too disparate in their cultural characteristics. What we have (for the most part) is not mutual respect but indifference and state-imposed order. More than that, we have state-imposed behavioral norms, which — in and of themselves — have contributed to the breakdown of societal bonds. We are left with some number of distinct (and probably dwindling) societies, around which are spread a vast number of unaffiliated, loosely affiliated, or simpatico individuals.

Distinct societies and unaffiliated persons may, despite their social separation, join in common cause. In the United States, for example, there was until recent decades broad agreement about the ends and means of ensuring “domestic tranquility” and providing for “the common defence.” But cultural diversity begets political strife, which intensifies as the state (goaded and led by élites) undermines traditional societies and their cultural values. The state becomes the arbiter of moral values and the dispenser of charity. The voluntary bonds that enable societies to persist over time — and to co-exist within a nation — are therefore frayed and, eventually, snapped. The nation becomes less like a collection of distinct societies joined by common purposes and more like scorpions fighting in a bottle. (For more on this point, see “The downside of diversity” at the online edition of The Boston Globe.)

Societies in the United States

What characteristics delineate the societies that are found in the United States? The most important characteristics are moral values: definitions of right and wrong actions. In this context, moral values are deeper than generalities (e.g., murder is wrong, terrorism is wrong, theft is wrong); they extend to specific practices (e.g., abortion is murder, terrorists have legitimate grievances, government-enforced theft is theft). Other salient characteristics are:

  • racial and/or ethnic identity (to the extent that these are central to a person’s self-image and a group’s cohesion)
  • religion or attitude toward religion (e.g., “high” or “low” church, Christian or other, believer or strident atheist)
  • education (level, where obtained, field of specialization)
  • type of work (menial/mental, private-sector/public-sector, small-business/corporate, “artistic”/otherwise, etc.)
  • economic class (from the lowest decile to the super-rich, from “old money” to “nouveau riche”)
  • leisure pursuits (NASCAR, bowling, knitting, golf, reading, music, etc.)
  • preferred locale (rural, small-town, suburban, etc.; Northeast, upper Midwest, Southwest, etc.).

I do not mean to say that mutual respect is impossible among persons who possess different cultural characteristics. But persistent differences (especially on fundamentals such as morality) tend to strain mutual respect and, thus, mutual forbearance. When the strain is too great, mutual respect breaks down, and restraint must be state-imposed.

Each of the characteristics listed above, beginning with moral values and running down the list, is a potential source of unity and division. Certain characteristics often appear in clusters. Think, for example, of academics in the so-called liberal arts, who tend to be pro-abortion-anti-U.S.-socialistic moral relativists, strident atheists, Ph.D.s (in impractical specialties), “toilers” in the fields of mental esoterica, upper-half to upper-quintile earners, and effete in their tastes. Those who live near each other (in the vicinity of a particular campus, for example) may sometimes form a social unit — in spite of their innate misanthropy. But those social units will exclude unlike-minded persons and members of groups toward which they (the liberal-arts academics) feign compassion (e.g., poor blacks and Latins), while living securely in their comfortable enclaves.

Which brings me to the types of society that do exist in the U.S.:

  • Blacks of the lower-middle and middle classes who live in urban enclaves, and whose social lives often revolve around church, club, and neighborhood. (“Underclass” neighborhoods riddled with drugs and crime do not qualify because mutual respect has been replaced there by fear and force.)
  • Black Muslims with the same demographic characteristics as their Christian counterparts.
  • Lower-middle and middle-class Latins, especially in the Southwest but also in other areas where they have concentrated. (Latins subdivide into several types of social unit, generally according to country and/or region of origin.)
  • Jews, to the extent that they are concentrated in urban areas and adhere to one or another orthodoxy.
  • Recent immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia — not as a bloc, but in their various ethnic/national identities (i.e, Lebanese Arabs, Lebanese Christians, the various Muslim sects, Pakistanis, Indians, etc.).
  • Descendants of the immigrants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the extent that the old social units founded by those immigrants have not been dissolved by the forces of education, out-marriage, economic progress, and geographic mobility. I am referring, particularly, to the waves of Irish, German, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, and other (less numerous) groups that founded many rural communities and formed enclaves within cities.
  • Neighborhood-based social units, in which proximity replaces the “glue” of race, religion, and ethnicity. These are found mainly in places where hedonistic solipsism hasn’t replaced the “Golden Rule,” that is, in villages, small towns, and small cities.

Some types of society are extensive, regionally (e.g., Mexican immigrants in Texas, Muslim Arabs in southeastern Michigan). But there is no single, large society that extends throughout the United States. And there has not been one since the demise of the rather extensive societies of early America — notably, those societies whose members represented various regions of the British Isles.

Whether today’s rather fragmented and dispersed societies will persist is another question. The United States was long a “melting pot,” wherein education, out-marriage, economic progress, and geographic mobility tended to make generic “Americans” of immigrants. But that was true mainly of white, European immigrants. “Persons of color,” whose cultures and geographic origins differ vastly — blacks, Latins, Middle Easterners, and Asians of various types — will not “melt” for a very long time, if ever. Which means that they will retain their political influence, as protégés and supporters of the vast, Left-wing alliance.

The Vast, Left-Wing Alliance and Its Anti-Social Agenda

Another type of society to be found in the U.S. is composed of liberal-arts academics. Whether there is an extensive society of such academics is doubtful. The quality of mutual respect probably is rather strained within any given social unit, and unlikely to survive the trip from campus to campus, fraught as such distances are with academic rivalries.

But there certainly is a broad, Left-wing alliance that consists of liberal-arts academics and their sycophantic students; Hollywood and New York celebrities and their hangers-on; “artists” and “intellectual workers” of most stripes; well-educated, upper-income, professionals who live in and around major metropolitan areas; and hordes of politicians (local, State, and national), who foster and benefit from the prejudices of the alliance. This broad alliance patronizes — and draws political strength disproportionately from — blacks, Latins, and labor-union members.

The Leftist alliance scorns America and traditional American values. It exalts the politics of class, ethnic, racial, and gender conflict. It has demolished the long-standing, trans-societal agreement to ensure “domestic tranquility” and provide for “the common defence.” (See, for example, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and many of the posts at this blog in the category “Leftism – Statism – Democracy.”) If there were an American society, the Left would not be part of it.

Conclusion

There is such a thing as society, contra Margaret Thatcher. But that “thing” is not the state. It is not even a single “thing”; it is a multitude of them.

Members of a true society may, by virtue of their membership, depend on other members of the same society for succor in times of need. But citizenship in the United States is not membership in a society.

Moreover, citizenship in the United States is no longer what it once was: membership in a broad alliance dedicated to justice and defense. Thanks to the vast, Left-wing alliance, U.S. citizenship has become a passport to statism.

Political Correctness (II)

Ed Brayton, a member of the politically correct “libertarian” Left, takes exception to John Ray’s characterization of Barack Obama as a fascist. Here is part of Ray’s response to Brayton:

He presents a set of fairly reasonable excerpts from my various notes about the similarities between Obama and the Fascists of the 1930s. I am glad that he has exposed my contentions to his Leftist audience. Some intelligent Clintonista (if there is one) might note them and use them! I am pretty sure no Clintonistas read this blog!

Brayton thinks it is self-evident that my comparison is absurd — and he would not be alone in that: Fascists are nasty and evil and Obama is nice. Sadly, the Leftist control of the education system has almost completely blanked out how Hitler was seen in his time. I guess it is hard for a survivor of a modern education to accept but Hitler too was seen as “nice” in his day — as a caring father figure for all Germans in fact. He was even seen as devoted to peace! I include some documentation of that in my monograph on Hitler.

And Obama and the Fascists have lots of policy in common too — government control of just about everything, in fact. And I pointed out recently on my Obama blog that Obama is not at all averse to military adventures abroad.

And the public adulation Obama receives is eerily reminiscent of how Hitler was received by vast numbers of Germans. But you have to know history to realize that.

This strikes me as right about Obama and right about the “libertarian” Left, which — like the unvarnished Left — seeks to paint Obama’s critics as racist.

I must add that Ray is too easy on Brayton, who — in addition to being an anti-libertarian Leftist — is a fanatical anti-religionist. He and his ilk at The Panda’s Thumb subscribe to the idea that the government (especially judges) should be in the business of deciding what science is, and isn’t. As I say here,

Think of the fine mess we’d be in if the courts were to rule against the teaching of intelligent design not because it amounts to an establishment of religion but because it’s unscientific. That would open the door to all sorts of judicial mischief. The precedent could — and would — be pulled out of context and used in limitless ways to justify government interference in matters where government has no right to interfere.

It’s bad enough that government is in the business of funding science — though I can accept such funding wheere it actually aids our defense effort. But, aside from that, government has no business deciding for the rest of us what’s scientific or unscientific. When it gets into that business, you had better be ready for a rerun of the genetic policies of the Third Reich.

Liberty, to Brayton and his friends on the “libertarian” Left, is the “right” to believe as they do.

It Depends on Where You Stand

The New York Times has an article about Martin Amis’s estrangement from the English left, on the issue of Islam:

[Amis’s] “slogan on [the] distinction [between Islamophobia and Islamismophobia] is, ‘We respect Muhammad, we do not respect Mohamed Atta.’ ” Jihadism, he said, is “racist, homophobic, totalitarian, genocidal, inquisitorial and imperialistic. Surely there should be no difficulty in announcing one’s hostility to that, but there is.”

Indeed there is if, like Amis, you are out of synch with “England’s left-leaning intellectual culture, [which is] traditionally somewhat hostile toward Israel and the United States.” “Somewhat”? Now there’s an understatement for you.

In fact, as the article continues, it becomes clear that Amis sees English “intellectualism” for what it is:

“The anti-Americanism is really toxic in this country, and the anti-Zionism,” he said, attributing the sentiments to empire envy. “I think we ceased to be a world power just as America was unignorably taking on that role.” The dominant ideology “told us that we don’t like empires, we’re ashamed of ever having one.” In England, he continued, “we’ve infantilized ourselves, stupefied ourselves, through a kind of sentimental multiculturalism,” Amis said. He called for open discussion “without self-righteous cries of racism. It’s not about race, it’s about ideology.”

What the Times calls a “transAtlantic divide” is really a chasm between the Left (everywhere) and the remnants of minarchist libertarianism-cum-Burkean conservatism. The Left in this country is every bit as toxically anti-American as the Left in England (and elsewhere). Leftists of all nations stand opposed to liberty. Islamism is merely the Left’s “poster child” du jour.

For more, see the posts in the category “Leftism – Statism – Democracy.”

I Hate This Kind of Talk

Do presidents “run the country”? I think not, and hope not. But a blogger at The Moderate Voice says, in a long pro-Hillary post, “I believe that Hillary is the best person to run the country.”

I guess the blogger in question is willing to take dictation from Mme. Clinton about eating habits, smoking habits, auto purchases, job preferences, medical care, etc., etc., etc.

No one should “run the country.” And if anyone were to “run the country,” a Democrat (or other fascist type) would be my last choice for the job.

On Prejudice

I have just finished reading Theodore Dalrymple’s In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas. Dalrymple’s thesis is simple but profound: We cannot (and do not) operate in this world without the benefit of preconceived ideas about how the world works. If we tried to do so, we would be as helpless as babes in the wood.

To state Dalrymple’s thesis so baldly is to do a grave injustice to the lucidity, incisiveness, elegance, and ruthless logic of his short book. At the outset, Dalrymple makes it clear that he holds no brief for racial and ethnic prejudice. As he points out: “No prejudice, no genocide.” But he adds that

If the existence of a widespread prejudice is necessary for the commission of genocide, it is certainly not a sufficient one. Nor does it follow from the fact that all who commit genocide are prejudiced that all who are prejudiced commit genocide.

Dalrymple spends many pages (fruitfully) eviscerating John Stuart Mill’s simplistic liberalism, which holds that that one may do as one pleases as long as (in one’s own opinion) one does no harm to others. This belief (itself a prejudice) has led to what Dalrymple calls “radical individualism” — and it is just that, despite the efforts of libertarian apologists to demonstrate otherwise. Dalrymple offers a spot-on diagnosis of the wages of radical individualism:

What starts out as a search for increased if not total individualism ends up by increasing the power of government over individuals. It does not do so by the totalitarian method of rendering compulsory all that is not forbidden … but by destroying all moral authority that intervenes between individual human will and governmental power…. “There is no law against it” becomes an unanswerable justification for conduct that is selfish and egotistical.

This, of course, makes the law, and therefore those who make the law, the moral arbiters of society. It is they who, by definition, decide what is permissible and what is not….

Given the nature of human nature, it hardly needs pointing out that those who are delegated the job of moral arbiter for the whole of society enjoy their power and come to thing that they deserve it, and that they have been chosen for their special insight into the way life should be lived. It is not legislators who succumb to this temptation but judges also….

Dalrymple, an admitted non-believer, also slices through the pretensions of Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins, strident atheists both. He exposes their prejudices, which they try to conceal with the language of science and bombastic certitude.

There is much more in this delightful book. I offer a final sample:

In order to prove to ourselves that we are not prejudiced, but have thought out everything for ourselves, as fully autonomous (if not responsible) human beings should, we have to reject the common maxims of life that in many, though not in all, cases, preserve civilized relations. Enlightenment, or rather, what is so much more important for many people, a reputation for enlightenment, consists in behaving in a way contrary to those maxims. And once a common maxim of life is overthrown in this fashion, it is replaced by another — often, though of course not always, a worse one.

Social norms that have passed the test of time are more likely than not to be beneficial. And, so, we owe them the benefit of the doubt, instead of discarding them for the sake of change, that is, for the sake of new prejudices.

I urge you to buy In Praise of Prejudice, to read it, and to re-read it (as I will do).

Related:
“The Meaning of Liberty” (25 Mar 2006)
“Atheism, Religion, and Science Redux” (01 Jul 2007)

Lochner, Where Are You When We Need You?

SCOTUSBLOG reports:

Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy refused on Thursday afternoon to forbid the city and county of San Francisco to continue enforcing a local ordinance that sets minimum levels of spending by employers for their workers’ health care.

Back when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Constitution, the City of San Francisco would have thought long and hard before interfering in employment relationships. (See Lochner v. New York.) But that was before the New Deal Court began to find constitutionality in government-imposed conditions of employment, from mandatory unionization to Social Security to affirmative action.

Well, if the Circuit Court and the U.S. Supreme Court uphold San Francisco in this case, that “fair” city will be waving bye-bye to a lot of companies and a lot of jobs.

Related posts:
“The Cost of Affirmative Action” (01 Jun 2004)
“A Very Politically Incorrect Labor Day Post” (06 Sep 2004)
“Freedom of Contract and the Rise of Judicial Tyranny” (07 Sep 2004)
“Social Security Is Unconstitutional” (31 Oct 2004)
“Race, Intelligence, and Affirmative Action” (05 Dec 2004)
“An Agenda for the Supreme Court” (29 Jun 2005)
“Substantive Due Process, Liberty of Contract, and States’ ‘Police Power’” (28 Nov 2005)
“Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part IV” (06 Aug 2007)

Are Leftists Crazy?

Dr. Lyle Rossiter, a psychiatrist, thinks so. Rossiter also says:

Like spoiled, angry children, they [Leftists] rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.

My thoughts exactly, which I have expressed here, here, here, and here.

(H/T John Ray)

I Don’t Get It

Publius Endures (a libertarian? blog) comes close to endorsing Barack Obama. Why? Because Obama is anti-defense (hmm… I thought defense was one of the few legitimate functions of the state), somewhat “fiscally responsible” (in that he would cut the defense budget), pro-freedom (if you think that the “War on Drugs” is as important as, say, a massive regulatory burden that harms businesses and therefore consumers), and “good” on education (in that he favors a different kind of ill-advised federal involvement than NCLB).

Needless to say, I find a lack of perspective and balance in the mish-mash offered by the proprietor of Publius Endures. For antidotes, read this and this.