Scores of liberal signatories question left/progressive tactics

A coming article in Harpers warns Democrats against an illiberal reaction to the anti-democratic pathologies of the Trump regime:

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts.
But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. … The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion.

The signatories to this warning against the illiberal, “ideological” faction within the Democratic Party do not name the faction, but it is a group within the party which owes more to Central Europe and Marx than to the Western European Enlightenment outlook of the Declaration and Constitution: left/progressives.

Liberalism, like democracy, is about cooperation. Its most famous three words are, “We the People.” Liberalism gives the citizen the maximum possible amount of freedom (“pursuit of happiness” is a fundamental right) and asks citizens to be public spirited and give some of it back.

Left/progressivism, like its Marxian forebear, is about enmity. Marx declared that the very existence of the bourgeoisie constituted a fundamental wrong to the workers. When left/progressivism says “white privilege” it implies that white people are in an equally problematic relation to African Americans. In both cases it is not clear how the wrong can be expiated — what the path to redemption might be. “Ye have the poor always with you,” said Jesus of Nazareth 2000 years ago, but the privilege “argument” would seem to require a society in which no one is ever disadvantaged.

Huffington Post recently wrote, in 6 Things White People Say That Highlight Their Privilege, “If you want to be an ally in the fight against racism, start by acknowledging your white privilege.” The scores of Harpers signatories(1) wrote, “resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion.”

As liberals in the Democratic Party would say, if they dared face the consequences, you can ask free citizens, who are exercising their “pursuit of happiness,” to be concerned about the everyday racism experienced by African Americans. But you cannot order them to do that. And you certainly cannot declare them guilty if they don’t (That is the business of the courts.). In a liberal society, political movements are not allowed to coerce.

It is likely that the Democratic Party’s fecklessness in the face of the present crisis of democracy is because the liberal wing and the left/progressive wing cannot both belong under the same umbrella. The Democratic Party cannot long endure half democratic and half coercive.

/*****/

(1) Among the signatories:

Martin Amis
Anne Applebaum
Margaret Atwood
Noam Chomsky
Francis Fukuyama 
Todd Gitlin
Wendy Kaminer
Randall Kennedy 
Dahlia Lithwick
Winton Marsalis
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Katha Pollitt
Jonathan Rauch
Salman Rushdie
Gloria Steinem 
Fareed Zakaria 

Self-validating arguments

I recently criticized “white privilege” on social media because it damns people for immutable characteristics, and because arguments which can’t be countered by evidence and reason are necessarily fallacious. “No one should be persuaded by it.” The “argument” is a gotcha: “Check your privilege” and assent to an ideology’s charge of racial guilt. Or be accused by that ideology of the guilt of refusing to take responsibility for “privilege.” A similar situation just appeared in Quillette.

Rob Henderson:

Consider the way charges of “racism” have been used to target individuals. People used to appropriately get rebuked or fired for expressing racist views. Today, though, people are getting cancelled for not supporting the claim that America itself is irredeemably racist. Never mind that such a position is in fact a Kafka trap: Danger awaits no matter how you respond. If America is a racist country, and you agree, then you are admitting that more purging and re-educating must be done. However, if you disagree, proponents of cancel culture take this as evidence that you and others like you are more racist than you realize, and thus more purging and re-educating must be done.

Ideology is the deformation of thought and language in the service of power. It is a belief system, whereas legitimate conceptual systems such as liberalism are information systems. Left/progressive ideologies say “America itself is irredeemably racist” and “confess your white privilege.” But they refuse to enter into debate. Instead of examining countervailing argument on its merits, they treat any attempt at refutation (“if you disagree”) as proof of guilt.

There’s a further problem on social media, where indicating agreement with the seductive falsehoods of left/progressivism — “white privilege” or “America is irredeemably racist” — is virtue signaling. Mindless agreement proves one is on the side of the angels. No debate is necessary, and no evidence or reason will be listened to.

This illustrates a fundamental difference between liberalism and left/progressivism. Both agree that a statement such as “black (derogatory characteristic)” would be racist. But liberalism holds that statements such as “white guilt” and “white privilege” are equally wrong. The left thinks that there is good racism (“white privilege”) and bad racism. Liberalism hold that all racism is wrong, because it does not accept moral double standards.

The Defeat of the Constitution

Waking up several mornings ago, I finally realized what it is: A Constitutional nation would never have elected the continual travesty that is Donald Trump.

Somewhere between the end of World War II and now, we lost the authenticity of character that defines a democratic people.

Despite all the criticism of the president*, we are failing to adequately describe the calamity of the “extinction level event” his illegitimate ascension to power is to America, the world, and civilization.

The left during the McCarthy hearings recognized, and opposed:

End justifies the means rationalization 
Groupthink 
Guilt by association 
Conformism.

Today, the rejection of groupthink is a sin against solidarity. We now understand liberalism so poorly that the democratic press speaks of AOC and the Squad(1) as the most liberal segment of the House when they are clearly antiliberals whose deepest affinity is to Marx, not the Constitution (which The Newspaper of Record, in the “1619 Project,”(2) described as hypocritical).

Today, collectives are thought of as liberal, although they are based on “moral ties antecedent to choice.” But when de Tocqueville surveyed the young American democracy, he marveled at our penchant for forming “voluntary associations.”

Nations which admired us when Obama was President (which, it was thought, would be “transformational,” — McConnell made sure that didn’t happen, and we let him) they now pity us.

We have fallen so far that the “news” gives no inkling, for all its 24-hour coverage, that the left is not liberal. Today the news has no opinion, although it has constant insinuation. Once, as Sorkin’s “The Newsroom” said half a decade ago, Edward R. Murrow had an opinion, and that ended McCarthyism; Cronkite had an opinion, and that ended Vietnam.

Today forty percent of us will follow Trump come hell or high water, will follow him if he shoots someone on Fifth Avenue at high noon, will follow him into the grave.

That’s not a metaphor.

/*****/

(1) “What makes "The Squad" such a tantalizing and obvious political target for President Trump is that all four are on the wrong side of every major 2020 issue. From their calls to “abolish ICE” and the Department of Homeland Security, a position that even the ultra-progressive Center for American Progress suggests is bonkers, to their support of the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-all, impeachment for Trump and outright disdain for Israel, they are the 2020 gift that keeps on giving for the Trump White House.” - https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/456033-trumps-greatest-allies-for-a-2020-win-aoc-and-the-squad

(2) Andrew Sullivan: “The original ideals were false, and then the country was founded on “both an ideal and a lie.””

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ White Supremacy argument, and more recently, the NYT in its 1619 Project, have argued that America was born in sin.

Andrew Sullivan noted that the Times wrote, “Our democracy’s ideals were false when they were written.”

Coates wrote, “White supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it.”

In asserting these claims, they reject The Great Emancipator’s defense of the Founding.

Lincoln used textual analysis to demonstrate that the Founders were confronted by "the necessities arising from [slavery's] existence." He goes on to show that they carefully crafted the Constitution, therefore, to accommodate slavery (for the time being) without legitimizing it:

It is easy to demonstrate that "our fathers, who framed this Government under which we live," looked on slavery as wrong, and so framed it and everything about it as to square with the idea that it was wrong, so far as the necessities arising from its existence permitted.  ... If additional proof is wanted it can be found in the phraseology of the Constitution.  When men are framing a supreme law and chart of government, to secure blessings and prosperity to untold generations yet to come, they use language as short and direct and plain as can be found, to express their meaning  In all matters but this of slavery the framers of the Constitution used the very clearest, shortest, and most direct language.  But the Constitution alludes to slavery three times without mentioning it once  The language used becomes ambiguous, roundabout, and mystical.  They speak of the "immigration of persons," and mean the importation of slaves, but do not say so.  In establishing a basis of representation they say "all other persons," when they mean to say slaves--why did they not use the shortest phrase? In providing for the return of fugitives they say "persons held to service or labor." If they had said slaves it would have been plainer, and less liable to misconstruction.  Why didn't they do it? We cannot doubt that it was done on purpose.  Only one reason is possible, and that is supplied us by one of the framers of the Constitution — and it is not possible for man to conceive of any other — they expected and desired that the system would come to an end, and meant that when it did, the Constitution should not show that there ever had been a slave in this good free country of ours.” (Emphasis added)

/*****/

In other places Lincoln pointed out that the Constitution could not have been ratified if it had an anti-slavery provision;(1) and he documented that by his own research those Founders who held office in the new country preponderantly took anti-slavery positions in the course of their official duties. “They expected and desired that the system would come to an end.”

To the best of my knowledge, neither Coates nor the Times addressed Lincoln’s powerful rebuttals of their assertions, leaving the voting public with a very incomplete impression of what the Founders achieved.

/*****/

(1) “I think that was the condition in which we found ourselves when we established this Government. We had slavery among us, we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped for more …” — Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Prophet or fool; “All democracy, science, justice, and genuine intellectuality are liberal”

Are you left/progressive? Or are you liberal?

I've already written that all democracy, science, justice, and genuine intellectuality are liberal.
That liberalism is the central theme of first-world modernity.
And that liberalism is the methodology of the good life. [These assertions haven’t been challenged yet. Feel free.]

Left/progressivism conflicts with or violates many of the values, methodologies, ethical principles, and standards of liberalism, as will be discussed below. Yet on our campuses, and in the news, left/progressivism seems to predominate over liberalism. [Former President Obama criticizes two aspects of progressivism, the desire for a revolution; and “cancel culture.” (When Virginia Governor Northam continued to serve after a youthful picture of him in blackface emerged, the media kept asking why he didn’t resign.) These two topics don’t appear in this post. Perhaps in a later post.]

First example. In a widely hailed article in The Atlantic a few years ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates said that the policy he was advocating would end "white guilt." Liberalism holds that statements such as race [derogatory characteristic] or gender [derogatory characteristic] are prejudicial, and as such, not allowable. Andrew Sullivan, in "We all live on campus now," suggested that important decisions should not be "based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation."

There is a tendency, with left/progressivism, to treat certain identities as "oppressor groups." It is acceptable to attribute derogatory characteristics to these groups, or to their members. This violates an important principle of liberalism: All people are created equal. Egalitarianism is the principle which made first-world modernity the first era in history to condemn slavery unequivocally.

Sullivan adds,

This is compounded by the idea that only a member of a minority group can speak about racism or homophobia, or that only women can discuss sexual harassment. The only reason this should be the case is if we think someone’s identity is more important than the argument they might want to make. And that campus orthodoxy is now the culture’s as a whole.

Second example. The left/progressive belief that identity is important, as seen in the two preceding paragraphs. This, too, conflicts with the values of liberalism. If all are created equal, then the only identity that matters is "human being," and all possess it.

Someone recently tossed off a remark about "the patriarchy." Apart from the problem that its vagueness makes it difficult to construct a refutation, it treats a particular identity, possessing the immutable characteristic, male, as having a derogatory nature, "oppressor." For left/progressivism, "patriarchy" is a term thought to resist evil. It is a logical consequence of progressivism's implicit decision to abandon egalitarianism, to divide humankind into a good group, the oppressed, and a bad group, the oppressor, and to support prejudicial language against those who are born into the bad group.

Liberalism opposes progressivism here because to abandon human equality invites the us-against-them conflict which has always beset us; because it initiates a slippery slope whose terminus is the reintroduction of slavery;(1) and because liberalism considers such remarks to be bigotry.

/*****/

Where to find out about liberalism? The inspiring passages of the Declaration and Constitution are liberal. President Kennedy’s presentation to the Houston Ministerial Association is a stirring liberal argument for separation of church and state. Naipaul’s presentation, “Our Universal Civilization” is liberal. The concept of the Rights of Man is liberal, plus the meta-right to the pursuit of happiness.(2)

(1) Slavery is justified because the slave has a “slave nature,” said one Greek thinker.

(2) Andrew Sullivan: “ … The most radical statement of the Enlightenment, which is why it is indeed of such world-historical importance. As I write I have no idea as to the conclusion of this new drama in world history, except that it will have ramifications as large and as lasting as the end of the Cold War. 

What power four little words—the pursuit of happiness—still have.”

Orwell on the American President’s Historical Revisionism

Orwell in 1946 explains why Trump gets so angry when reporters remind him what he said: A totalitarian ruler “has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. … Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, …”

In “The Prevention of Literature,” Orwell speaks of “a liberal historian who believes that the past cannot be altered and that a correct knowledge of history is valuable as a matter of course.”

However, Orwell continues,

From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a re-evaluation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.

Note that the URL is in Russia!

[https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/prevention/english/e_plit]

Following Donald Trump’s lead, authoritarian leaders abroad are able to quote America in attacking freedom of the press

David Smith in The Guardian:
“For more than three years, [Jonathan] Karl has been on Trump’s trail, even receiving a hug from Kanye West in the Oval Office. He has also witnessed Trump’s war on the media with barbs such as “the enemy of the people” – a phrase which, Karl notes, the Nazis used in 1934. So what message does it send to the rest of the world?”

I think it is deeply disturbing that you have authoritarian leaders around the world who shut down a free press, jail reporters and potentially even worse and do so invoking the words of the American president. So you see Erdoğan and Putin. You see it’s been documented in Kazakhstan and in Egypt. You see authoritarian leaders echoing the precise words of Donald Trump, talking about ‘fake news’ as reporters are thrown in jail. 

The other thing that I think is really troubling is when the president calls real news ‘fake news’, when he suggests that the act of being an aggressive reporter is ‘treasonous’, it has undermined the faith in an independent free press among a significant segment of the population.

The revision of the past Orwell often spoke of is one of Trump’s frequent tactics. When Journalist Yamiche Alcindor calls him on contradicting what he previously said, he doesn’t deal with the issue, but calls her “snarky.”

Yamiche Alcindor of PBS NewsHour put the US president’s own words to him. “You’ve said repeatedly that you think that some of the equipment that governors are requesting, they don’t actually need. You said New York might need –”
Trump interrupted twice: “I didn’t say that.” Alcindor stood her ground: “You said it on Sean Hannity’s, Fox News.” Then Trump lied: “I didn’t say – come on. Come on.”

Henry Giroux:

As Orwell often remarked, historical memory is dangerous to authoritarian regimes. In Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, it is a crime to read history against the grain. In fact, history is falsified so as to render it useless both for understanding the conditions that shape the present and for remembering what should never be forgotten. As Orwell makes clear, this is precisely why tyrants consider historical memory dangerous; history can readily be put to use in identifying present-day abuses of power and corruption.

But Trump’s worst enemy is reality, and the fearless thinking which exposes authoritarian efforts to mislead and delude the people.

It is a terrible spot to be in. And history will record him as a monstrous perversion of the aspirations of the Founders.

What will it say about the perfect storm of errors and misguided notions which put him in the White House?

The fact that Hitler was chancellor of the land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms revealed that something had gone badly wrong with Germany.

What does the fact that the oxymoron “President Trump” is now being bruited about in the land of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln say about what the United States has become?

Prophet or Fool: An American Journey, Part 1

In 1944, when I was three, I remember my father galloping around the farmyard on a farm horse without a saddle. In certain seasons his routine was, Get up early and milk the cows. Plough rich coastal bottomlands all day behind a team of horses. Milk the cows.

It was an essential civilian occupation, and had exempted him from military service.

The next year, as the war was winding down, he enrolled in a junior college. From then to 1952, he completed college and divinity school.

Having been ordained, a Protestant denomination sent him (and his family) to an American territory as a “home missionary.”

Being a PK (Preacher’s Kid) shaped my outlook.

There is a personage in the New Testament who Low Protestants call the Rich Young Ruler. He is mentioned in the first three Gospels as approaching Jesus of Nazareth to join his movement. One day, reflecting back on this, I realized that no one can be characterized as such in our society. In fact, in the American culture, no one can legitimately be called a ruler. Democracies hold that their citizens enjoy liberty and are not “subjects.” They are not subject to the will of another, as they would be under rulership.

This distinction is found in our common language. The Mayor is never spoken of as our ruler, nor the County Executive, the Governor, or the President. In cartoons where a saucer lands, its strange creatures say, Take me to your leader.

“Rulership is illegitimate in our society.” So far, I haven’t found it stated anywhere else. Prophet? Or fool?

Instead, such language as “the will of the people” appears routinely in our public discourse: “once the legislature, reflecting the will of the people.” Even Federalist 46 appears to err: “But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force.” Federalist 46 should probably have used different language, such as “But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the conclusion of the national deliberation and direct the national force.”

I can live in a liberal democracy because I can live with public policies reflecting the considered deliberation of the people, flawed though it sometimes may be. But neither I, nor anyone else, should ever consent to be subject to the will of another. As Immanuel Kant wrote in “What is Enlightenment?” to enjoy freedom is to enjoy freedom from tutelage. “Dare to know,” and to act on your knowledge without guidance from another.

“I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice.”

During the second administration of W. Bush, the late, inimitable Englishman Christopher Hitchens rejected the claim of practitioners of Islam that they had the right to prevent, by violence, the scholarly analysis of Islam, or the creation of any image whatever of the Prophet:

The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize … Islam … Islam makes very large claims for itself. …

The prohibition on picturing the prophet … is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. … [He seems to be saying,] For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.

I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice.

Implicit in American liberal democracy from the Founding is that rulership is forbidden. Our highest official is a “presider,” not a “ruler.” No one anywhere in our society can subject us to their will. And as Kant says below, no one can tell us what to think and say:

In “What is Enlightenment?” the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote,

Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! [Dare to know!] “Have courage to use your own reason!”—that is the motto of enlightenment.

/*****/

That is what bothers me about the way Bernie Sanders speaks to us. He lectures. He harangues. Constantly raises his right arm and points.

I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice.

Judging by the recent election, so do most Democrats.

[Afterword: The Hitchens article cited claims to make a “case for mocking religion.” I do not. I seek to identify and correct the errors of organized religion, which, not honoring the insight of Jesus of Nazareth, that God is to be considered kind, generous, loving, and good, seems to prefer the red meat of the Jealous God; the God of Wrath.

For me, religion is a sensibility, an intuition that reality is deeper, richer, more profound and wondrous than the secular outlook imagines.]

[https://tinyurl.com/I-RefuseToBeLectured]

[http://www.indiana.edu/~cahist/Readings/2010Fall/Islam_and_Modernity/Kant_Enlightenment.pdf]

The Court’s memorable language in Romer v. Evans.

Revisiting Romer v. Evans. “The state had impermissibly made them ‘a stranger to its laws.’”

In the ‘Nineties, Colorado Amendment 2 prevented local jurisdictions in that state from enacting or enforcing protections of gay people. The Supreme Court, in Romer v. Evans, struck that law down in memorable language.

“[Justice] Kennedy felt that there was no possible justification for the law other than a specific animus against the group that it targeted, since its virtually limitless scope dwarfed the justifications that the state provided. …

First, the amendment is at once too narrow and too broad, identifying persons by a single trait and then denying them the possibility of protection across the board. This disqualification of a class of persons from the right to obtain specific protection from the law is unprecedented and is itself a denial of equal protection in the most literal sense. … the amendment raises the inevitable inference that it is born of animosity toward the class that it affects. Amendment 2 cannot be said to be directed to an identifiable legitimate purpose or discrete objective. It is a status-based classification of persons undertaken for its own sake, something the Equal Protection Clause does not permit.”

/*****/

Digitalcommons_dot_law adds:
“‘These are protections … against exclusion from an almost limitless number of transactions and endeavors that constitute ordinary civic life in a free society.’ The Court concluded that Amendment 2 classified lesbians and gay men, not to further a proper legislative purpose, but to make them unequal to everyone else. In so doing, the state had impermissibly made them ‘a stranger to its laws.’”

[https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1457&context=lawreview]

[https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/517/620/]

Many American Bernie Sanders supporters seem to believe the sacrifice of civil liberties is a small price to pay for guaranteed social welfare

Jonathan Zimmerman recently explained in USA Today why Bernie Sanders would be an inappropriate Democratic nominee for the presidency. The Latin American regimes he praises, ramming that upraised right arm at you, aren’t even remotely democratic socialism, as he seems to imply. They are Marxist, “dedicated to destroying freedom.” … “Yes, we learned, socialist economies provided health care, education and other state services to their citizens. But if you dared to criticize the state itself, it could remove your services — and, of course, your freedom — at any time.”

Zimmerman wrote that he and a young Barack Obama “took a class about socialism's dark side … entitled “The Sociology of Socialist Societies.” … A few students in the course gamely tried to defend these systems, arguing that the sacrifice of civil liberties was a small price to pay for guaranteed social welfare.”

As we’ve been reminded over the past few weeks, the Democratic presidential candidate is stuck in a Cold War time warp. Like the students in my class in 1983, Sanders continues to congratulate Cuba and other socialist regimes for improving the lives of their people. … The course did not romanticize socialism in any way. If Obama did the reading, he discovered that socialist societies oppressed their citizens in the name of a revolution that never delivered on its promise of human dignity and liberation.

Zimmerman added, “Imagine if Sanders praised Hitler for reducing cigarette smoking or Mussolini for making the trains run on time.”

/*****/

When I brought Zimmerman’s article to some American readers’ attention, some of them still defended Bernie Sanders and his persistent tendency to romanticize Latin American dictatorships.

One said, “ I don't think you understood what Bernie said. He never praised or ignored the governmental failings. What he DID do is recognize that even the worst people can do some good things -- like education and food for the people. Cubans are well-educated today, despite the Castro dictatorship. We can never have a good government if we throw every baby out with the bathwater.”

Another said, “ I’m not convinced that electing Bernie Sanders would lead to a fascist government. I do want all Americans to have access to affordable healthcare and post secondary education. Is there another candidate that advocates for that?”

I answered this last, “Nominating Bernie Sanders would lose a lot of moderates and people in swing states, increasing the likelihood that the current wretched situation would continue.

The recent surprise swing toward Biden suggests that the American people have begun to realize this.”

Worldwide pandemics and the culinary customs of Communist China

Perhaps the world’s nations should have a word with China concerning culinary customs which appear to repeatedly result in deadly worldwide pandemics.

1. “The Covid-19 outbreak, which has now led to 2,666 deaths and over 77,700 known infections, is thought to have originated in wildlife sold at a market in Wuhan.”

2. “At least two flu pandemics in the past century—in 1957 and 1968—originated … [from] millions of live birds … still kept, sold and slaughtered in crowded markets.”

3. “In late May 2003, [SARS] studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. … high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets.”

/*****/

‘The Guardian’: “Peacocks, porcupines and pangolins among species bred on 20,000 farms closed in wake of virus. Freshly-slaughtered meat from wildlife and farm animals is preferred over meat that has been slaughtered before being shipped. Nearly 20,000 wildlife farms raising species including peacocks, civet cats, porcupines, ostriches, wild geese and boar have been shut down across China in the wake of the coronavirus, in a move that has exposed the hitherto unknown size of the industry.

Until a few weeks ago wildlife farming was still being promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich.

But the Covid-19 outbreak, which has now led to 2,666 deaths and over 77,700 known infections, is thought to have originated in wildlife sold at a market in Wuhan in early December, prompting a massive rethink by authorities on how to manage the trade.” — Michael Standaert in Shenzhen

/*****/

Melinda Liu in ’The Smithsonian’: “At least two flu pandemics in the past century—in 1957 and 1968—originated in the Middle Kingdom and were triggered by avian viruses that evolved to become easily transmissible between humans. Although health authorities have increasingly tried to ban the practice, millions of live birds are still kept, sold and slaughtered in crowded markets each year. In a study published in January, researchers in China concluded that these markets were a “main source of H7N9 transmission by way of human-poultry contact and avian-related environmental exposures.””

/*****/

Wikipedia: “In late May 2003, [SARS] studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. The results found that the SARS coronavirus could be isolated from masked palm civets (Paguma sp.), even if the animals did not show clinical signs of the virus. The preliminary conclusion was the SARS virus crossed the xenographic barrier from asian palm civet to humans, and more than 10,000 masked palm civets were killed in Guangdong Province. The virus was also later found in raccoon dogs (Nyctereuteus sp.), ferret badgers (Melogale spp.), and domestic cats. In 2005, two studies identified a number of SARS-like coronaviruses in Chinese bats.

Phylogenetic analysis of these viruses indicated a high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets.”

The crisis of democracy we’re now facing was predicted sixteen years ago. We didn’t believe it; and we took inadequate measures to prevent it.

“We’re an empire now”

In 2004 Ron Suskind wrote:

“The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' ... 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.” (Emphasis added)

The aide was predicting RepublicanWorld, which is an emergent effect of the pathological chief executive elected by minority vote in 2016.

1. ‘Empire’ means ‘an undemocratic authoritarian society.’

2. ‘Judicious study of discernible reality’ is the basis of Justice, Democracy, Science, and Scholarship.(1) An ‘empire’ based on their absence is a doomed barbarism whose primary achievement is calamitous human suffering as it collapses under the weight of its internal contradictions.

3. We’ve seen ‘we create our own reality’ before. It’s usually called ‘the triumph of the will.’

4. Democracy is based on the love of knowledge. ‘Empire’ is based on obsession with ‘power.’ The Big Lie is its characteristic mode of discourse.

To quote Andrew Sullivan, This has to end, but we cannot yet see how it will end.

(1) Author’s current working hypothesis: All justice is liberal; all democracy is liberal; all science is liberal; and all genuine intellectuality is liberal.

Liberalism is the methodology of the good life. It is the central idea of what Naipaul called “Our Universal Civilization.”

NYC Bar Association implies that “The norms and standards that govern the fair administration of justice” unmask “Social Justice”

On many campuses “Social Justice” is doctrine. Andrew Sullivan: “When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based “social justice” movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well.” This is a problem for law faculty as well as any other higher education staff who have bar accreditation.

In a current article in Business Insider, the NYC Bar Association charges that US Attorney General William Barr violates “the norms and standards that govern the fair administration of justice.”

Mr. Barr's recent actions and statements position the Attorney General and, by extension, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) as political partisans willing to use the levers of government to empower certain groups over others," the letter said. "These statements are the latest examples of a broader pattern of conduct that is inconsistent with the role of the Attorney General in our legal and constitutional system and with the norms and standards that govern the fair administration of justice.

Social Justice does not meet these standards because it is indifferent to them. Its identity-based values result in the same deviation from universal justice that the New York City Bar Association accuses Barr of, seeking to “empower certain groups over others.”

The reason is that under the politics of identity there is no equality. There is, Sullivan argues, “the idea that only a member of a minority group can speak about racism or homophobia, or that only women can discuss sexual harassment. The only reason this should be the case is if we think someone’s identity is more important than the argument they might want to make. And that campus orthodoxy is now the culture’s as a whole.”

If Social Justice had “the norms and standards that govern the fair administration of justice,” it would be just. These are some of the elements of actual justice which Social Justice lacks:

Due process, including

The presumption of innocence
The presumption of equality
Rules of evidence
The right to legal counsel
The right to confront witnesses or accusers
The right of appeal
The right right to trial by impartial jury, rather than the “community” which accused them in the first place, and is hardly likely to be impartial
Constraint by the laws

Lacking the norms and standards of justice, Social Justice is a contradiction in terms. On campuses where Social Justice is de rigueur, staff having legal accreditation have the difficult choice between upholding the standards of their profession and risking dismissal, or countenancing the travesty of Social Justice and risking disbarment.

/*****/

In the Business Insider article Sonam Sheth wrote:

The New York City Bar Association asked Congress to investigate AG William Barr for political bias and weaponizing the DOJ 

In October, Barr "launched a partisan attack against 'so called progressives' for supposedly waging a 'campaign to destroy the traditional order,'" the letter [from the NYC Bar Association] said. Barr accused these individuals of "marshal[ing] all the force of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values" in order to achieve the "organized destruction" of religion. 

In November, Barr "vilified" progressives and "the Left" during a speech to the conservative Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention. The letter accused Barr of characterizing "the other side" as people who "oppose this President" and doing so in "highly partisan terms." 

The attorney general accused progressives and the left of launching a "holy war" and using "any means necessary" to engage in "the systematic shredding of norms" and undermine the rule of law.

The Enemy Within

The Enemy Within (Posted elsewhere a few months ago)

“You will rule or ruin in all events.”

This “enemy” first prevented the Founders from including an anti-slavery plank in the Constitution. Lincoln:

“I think that was the condition in which we found ourselves when we established this Government. We had slavery among us, we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped for more …” — Lincoln-Douglas Debates http://www.bartleby.com/251/pages/page44.html

In 1860 Lincoln faced plantation owners’ demand that slavery be extended to the territories which were being added to the original thirteen states. At Cooper Union, according to Wikipedia, he reasoned, “the federal government can regulate slavery in the federal territories (but not states), especially resting on the character of the founders, and how they thought of slavery.”

The Southern Democrats refused to take no for an answer. Lincoln charged:

“Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_Union_speech#Summary

Beginning April 12, 1861, the plantation states of the Confederacy committed an act of war. Near Charleston, South Carolina, they fired on Fort Sumter, a military installation of their own country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter

The Confederate states, defeated in their war against the United States and compelled to release their slaves, never, in their hearts, rejoined the country they had attacked, or accepted its principles of equality and liberal democracy. [As a personal note, in 1964, having graduated from a college in the Pacific Northwest, people in Texas and Arkansas told me I was from “Yankeeland.”]

There was a postwar period of Reconstruction. Wikipedia: “Blacks remained involved in Southern politics, particularly in Virginia, which was run by the biracial Readjuster Party.[206]

Numerous blacks were elected to local office through the 1880s, and in the 1890s in some states, biracial coalitions of Populists and Republicans briefly held control of state legislatures. In the last decade of the 19th century, southern states elected five black U.S. Congressmen before disfranchising constitutions were passed throughout the former Confederacy.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era

Like an abscessed tooth in the body politic, the Jim Crow South thwarted Lincoln’s aspiration that his beloved country, “shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

A century after their ancestors attacked us and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of us, the ruthlessness of the sullen, resentful enemy within was evident in their response to a crusade for reform: “The brutality displayed towards the [Civil Rights] Campaign's demonstrators and King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", written while he was incarcerated, brought national and international attention to the civil rights movement.” https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/martin-luther-king.htm

On the eve of the slaveholding plantation owners’ traitorous attack on America (wrongly, the “civil” war), the Confederacy, relative to the industrialized United States, was like a third-world country: Lower per-capita income; lower average educational level; feeble industrial output; fewer scientists; fewer professionals; more superstitious; in all, far more backward.

Since modern war is won by materiel (cannon, shells, gunpowder, combat engineering), those who made treasonous war on the United States would, predictably, lose, provided they did not overrun our America before we could ramp up our inherently superior war-making capacity.

“This good free country of ours,” as Lincoln called it, endured early setbacks and eventually ran those whose betrayed their nation in the sordid cause of “property in man” into the ground.

Today the descendants of the treasonous slaveholders impose their mindless backwardness on our entire nation. Relative to all other industrialized democracies, the United States is “like a third-world country: Lower per-capita income; lower average educational level; … more superstitious; in all, far more backward.” The sullen, resentful neo-Confederates impose on Americans worse, more expensive health care; shorter life expectancy; hostility to reproductive rights; higher infant mortality; higher maternal mortality; and a gap between rich and poor that shocks the conscience.

No other modern liberal democratic nation endures a ruthless politicization of the courts; practices wholesale voter suppression; or teaches its innocent children that evolution is a wicked fallacy.

In no other modern liberal democratic nation are racial minorities routinely shot by fascistic public safety officers; or schoolchildren massacred every few days by machine guns in the hands of psychotics in the defense of an RKBA ideology ferociously defended south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

In no other modern liberal democratic nation are the citizens of “the land of the free and the home of the brave” resigned to such an appalling state of affairs because the Undead Confederacy controls the Congress, the Courts, and the Presidency through a generation’s cynical abuse of the machineries of democracy.

What we have lost:

One person, one vote (gerrymandering, voter suppression)
Impartial justice (McConnell’s theft of the Garland Supreme Court seat; a minority president* who has already made two lifetime Court appointments)
The ability to pass laws restoring democratic principles without a corrupt Court striking them down using crazy constitutional interpretations.
The power to expel a president* who is tanking democracy.
Capacity to remedy policy risks like climate change and health care, currently blocked by spiritual wickedness in high places.

In the Amicus podcast of 3/29/19 (about 33 minutes in), Aaron Belkin suggests that extreme conditions require strong measures. “It’s time to bring a gun to a gunfight. … The progressive agenda is DOA unless we protect it from the courts.” Belkin argues that the Framers left it up to the Congress keep the courts from getting out of hand, by leaving the composition of the courts to the legislature.

Roosevelt’s New Deal was blocked until he proposed to alter the composition of the Court, whereupon the Nine realized that the better part of valor was to cease being obstructionist.

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Notes I’ve transcribed approximately from what Belkin said:

Court packing is the moderate, workable way to stop our radical court from continuing to sabotage democracy. …
Court making bizarre convoluted decisions against people of color, women, and workers. …
Packing threat saved FDR’s New Deal.
Packing is honest and people understand it. …
A generation of ruthless judicial politics which put W. in the presidency for no reason. …
No reasonable concept of democracy supports throwing millions of votes away because of gerrymandering. …
Campaign on bold, clear ideas.
Ruthless Republican judicial politics.
Revitalize democracy by reforming the courts.
Theft of open seat (Merrick Garland).
Illegitimate judicial appointments by pres. elected by minority.
Trump should not be making lifetime appointments.
Time to bring a gun to a gunfight.
They prioritize party over the national interest.
Tell the truth.
‘Balls and strikes’ grossly disingenuous.
The Supreme Court has spent the last generation attacking workers and women and brown people.
What the voters saw in the Kavanaugh hearings.
The connection between Kavanaugh and the theft of the Garland seat and the destruction of democracy.
Five presidential candidates have admitted that something needs to be done about the courts.
The voters understand that Trump is tanking democracy.
How to fix broken democratic institutions.
We are in deep trouble.
Change our beliefs when new facts dictate.

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In closing:
The liberal democratic nation Lincoln thought he had preserved by defeating the slave-holding rebels has had its government hijacked by brutal, ruthless, sullen, angry Rule or Ruin neo-Confederates nursing centuries-old grudges. Belkin: “They prioritize party over the national interest.”

To them, we are not in their nation. We are in “Yankeeland” and they are implacably opposed the American idea we represent.

Nevertheless, it is our country, not theirs; we are in the majority; the future is not theirs to determine, but ours.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter