“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.”

On liking to read the same book over and over

Rebecca Jennings, in "In defense of reading the same book over and over again": “We know how Harry Potter will end, and, more importantly, how that ending will make us feel.”

I like to read Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy over again because it puts me in touch with the moral order. The story contains ordinary people who display decency and moral courage when confronted with someone in need; or a situation that needs rectifying. I find the same qualities in the Harry Potter series, and in a mainstream bestseller such as Nelson DeMille’s Up Country.

Aristotle’s Poetics suggests that the arts enable us to have, vicariously, experiences we need to experience in order to broaden our awareness and deepen our humanity.

Like Jennings, we return to works that afford us this.

“If the incumbent* wins, there will be four more years of enabled destruction of our political institutions.”

In a democracy, the party out of power is “the loyal opposition.” Under the treason party, election is simply the chance to continue the war of the slave-holding rebels against the United States by other means (as previously argued in “The Enemy Within”). “The upper echelons of the Republican Party in Congress decided to obstruct Barack Obama at a dinner on the night of Obama's inauguration. … [a] Democratic president simply will not be allowed to govern … as a Democrat.”

Charles P. Pierce wrote:
“Nobody who watched William Barr's performance before a Republican-majority Senate Judiciary Committee this past week can sensibly deny that, as long as the Senate remains in the hands of the Republican Party, it doesn't matter what happens in the 2020 presidential election. If the incumbent* wins, there will be four more years of enabled destruction of our political institutions. If one of the Democrats wins, and the Senate stays Republican, the Democratic president simply will not be allowed to govern. Not as a Democrat, anyway.

And this didn't start with El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, either. The record shows that, upon Bill Clinton's election, good ol' Bob Dole announced that he was there to represent everyone who didn't vote for the winner. The Florida burglary in 2000 was in part a refusal to allow another Democrat to succeed Clinton, and the upper echelons of the Republican Party in Congress decided to obstruct Barack Obama at a dinner on the night of Obama's inauguration.”

Sullivan and Naipaul on the link between Christianity, Enlightenment Liberalism, and modern civilization

Last week Andrew Sullivan responded to the burning of Notre Dame by describing [secularized] Christianity as one of the “metaphysical foundations” of liberalism:

“It remains an open question whether liberalism, broadly understood, can survive the loss of its metaphysical foundations [its defense of the individual soul as inviolate]. And as we see liberal democracy struggle to articulate its truth against the ocean of nihilism, the lure of tribalism, the cult of the strongman, and the left’s contempt for the Enlightenment and religion — the burning of this symbol of Christian devotion [Notre Dame] cut me to the quick.”

The heart of “our universal civilization”(1) is the Christian value Sullivan cites: The individual soul is inviolate. From this value stems that Eighteenth Century rallying cry, The Rights of Man, which even a criminal “president” cannot abrogate.
 
-*--

(1) V. S. Naipaul on “Our Universal Civilization”

Excerpt: “A later realization—I suppose I have sensed it most of my life, but I have understood it philosophically only during the preparation of this talk—has been the beauty of the idea of the pursuit of happiness. Familiar words, easy to take for granted; easy to misconstrue. This idea of the pursuit of happiness is at the heart of the attractiveness of the civilization to so many outside it or on its periphery. I find it marvelous to contemplate to what an extent, after two centuries, and after the terrible history of the earlier part of this century, the idea has come to a kind of fruition. It is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit. I don’t imagine my father’s parents would have been able to understand the idea. So much is contained in it: the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist; and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.”

Ferlinghetti turns 100

Ferlinghetti turns 100

America was founded by profound people.

Their descendants are incapable of profundity and would not want it if it were in their power to achieve it.

What they want, and what they produce:

Venting

and platitudes.

Shields and Brooks, discussing the social attack on Ralph Northam,(1) noted that it lacked “a path to redemption.”

This is a characteristic of a people who have lost the faculty of empathy and the concept of pluralism.

Martin Luther King appealed to the American mainstream of his time to “rise up and live out the meaning of their creed, that all men are created equal”; and the majority ended Jim Crow for people who did not look like them, in an enormous nationwide effort which required decades.

Contrast: When Hispanics and Native Americans, thinking Ta-Nehisi Coates was leading a civil rights crusade, came to join him, he said they were “disrespectful.” The situation of black people, he said, was unique and deserved its own focused examination.

It’s not that Ta-Nehisi lacked the concept of pluralism — that he might be called on to be his brother’s keeper — it’s that the progressive journalists who adulated him did not notice that this new version of the American crusade for reform wanted no part of empathy and altruism.

It’s all about ego and group aggrandizement. It lacks compassion and the milk of human kindness. It lacks public-spiritedness. The democratic disposition and concern for the public good is alien to it.

I Am Waiting
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe …
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

-*--

(1) Ralph Northam, an exemplary governor in Virginia, under social media attack because of blackface photo in the early eighties.

Hayek on The Liberal Founding

What in Europe was called “liberalism” was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense. — Hayek

The term “liberal” in the United States is the cause of constant misunderstandings today. (1) — Hayek

F. A. Hayek, “Why I am Not a Conservative” 1960:

Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change. It has, since the French Revolution, for a century and a half played an important role in European politics. Until the rise of socialism its opposite was liberalism. There is nothing corresponding to this conflict in the history of the United States, because what in Europe was called “liberalism” was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense. ... Some time before this, American radicals and socialists began calling themselves “liberals.” I will nevertheless continue for the moment to describe as liberal the position which I hold ... I shall later have to consider what would be the appropriate name for the party of liberty. The reason for this is ... that the term “liberal” in the United States is the cause of constant misunderstandings today, ... (Emphasis added)

“Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change.”

This is why English conservative Andrew Sullivan, now an American citizen, believes that American conservatives are not at all conservative. Mocking “presidential,” as our current president* does; doing whatever he can to violate the Constitutional separation of powers, particularly with respect to the independence of the judiciary; doing the best he can to undermine and sabotage the guardrails of liberal democracy; and abrogating the faith and credit of the United States by subverting international treaty obligations, is not “opposition to drastic change”: It is a most un-conservative disruption of constituted authority and public order. More anarchy than prudence.

It resembles the childish narcissism described by Stu Rothenberg on a recent PBS broadcast:

Do Democrats want to feel good, or do they want to win? … Many Democrats just can't resist themselves. … Many of the younger Democrats, insurgents, anti-establishment ...

Trump's fawning prostrate “conservative” sycophants practice an insurgent, anti-establishment anarchy not remotely conservative. They didn't drain the swamp, they wallow in it. They didn't balance the budget, they instituted a burn-the-candle-at-both-ends era of heedless borrow-and-spend regime involving unprecedented budgetary stimulus during a fevered prosperity: The consequence will likely recapitulate W Bush's world-wide recession. They didn't Make America Great Again; they put a compulsive liar at the helm of the free world, who “immediately set about dismantling it.” America First has the same paradoxical flaw as Deutschland über alles: proclaiming “I am the greatest” is a clue that you're not.

The cultural Marxist left ideology of today is as dysfunctional, as illiberal, as anti-democratic, as the neo-Confederate Trump right ideology.

-*--

(1) “The term “liberal” in the United States is the cause of constant misunderstandings today.” — The more extreme, radical, Marxist the left is today, the more the news media tend to characterize it as “liberal.” (Hayek: American radicals and socialists began calling themselves “liberals.”) 

As Orwell wrote, “The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

Alexander Hamilton: “Good government from reflection and choice,” or from tweets and lies, “accident and force”?

Jim Sleeper, 1/7/13: “Where should power come from in a free country? Alexander Hamilton wrote that history had destined Americans, “by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined for their political constitutions on accident and force.””(1) 

Andrew Sullivan warned, three years ago, that the ascension to power of the illiberal, anti democratic, “post truth” regime which now rules us against our will, would be an “extinction level event.”

“[History has destined Americans, said Hamilton,] “by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable … of establishing good government.”” (Emphasis added)

Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, attributed the vigor of the early American republic to Americans' “habits of the heart.”

James Madison spoke of Americans' democratic dispositions, chief among which was virtue:

“I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks — no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.” (James Madison, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, vol 3, pp. 536-37.)

Absent virtue, we will not “select men of virtue and wisdom,” Madison wrote. In that case, “No theoretical checks — no form of government can render us secure.”

Enough of us, fed up with decades of neither Democratic nor Republican presidents addressing growing inequality, gambled, despite Madison's warnings, on a wild man. And the “theoretical checks” are near the breaking point.

Ironical point from The Onion: “We refuse to allow a clickbait-driven journalism industry that privileges scandal and controversy over facts and nuance to shape our discourse. Our democracy is too important.”


-*--

(1) Federalist No. 1 [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Federalist]

Trump: We know already. And our response is …

David Graham: 

But if one is not already convinced that the president’s behavior is unacceptable, it would require an immense revelation to change one’s mind—if that’s even possible. Conversely, if one looks at these facts and believes they merit impeachment (or another sanction), then standing sentry for a nebulously timed, nebulously structured report hardly seems worth the effort.

Perhaps it’s the paralysis implied by Andrew Sullivan a year ago: "Think of the wonderful SNL sketch recently, when three couples at a restaurant stumble onto the subject of Aziz Ansari. No one feels capable of saying anything in public."

For all our platitudes and our venting, our language has lost the power it had in 1776. What Hayek called “The long-range power of ideas” — the very essence of a free, liberal society — has fled us as we’ve lost the democratic voice. “We’re an empire now,” and as we deliberate “judiciously, as you will,” our rulers, way ahead of us, have subverted the rule of law, slammed innocent children in prison, and joked about knocking reporters to the ground.

We the People, who cannot even prevent the manifestly illiberal, unjust, unfit Goresuch and Kavanaugh from being imposed on the highest court of the land in rapid robotic succession, have lost control of our destiny.

“A republic, if you can keep it,” said the Founders, as they bequeathed us a marvelous creation, something new in history.

*If*

"The tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling" on late night TV

Protection ... against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. — John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Social-media frenzies carelessly destroy the lives and careers of individuals who transgress orthodoxies.” — Andrew Sullivan

A few nights ago Stephen Colbert opened his show with two cheap shots at Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. Despite a substantial majority of the African American voters in his state encouraging him not to resign, and liberal Mark Shields on PBS delineating Northam’s good works for minorities and the poor in his state, Colbert mocked him as a scoundrel to the applause of his worshipful audience.

Colbert went on to put Northam down for reporting that the American slave situation began with the euphemism “indentured servants,” scolding him for the insufficient wokeness of his language. Again the crowd cheered. As Andrew Sullivan wrote recently, “Social-media frenzies carelessly destroy the lives and careers of individuals who transgress orthodoxies.”

A couple of points here. This faux “social” justice is intended to impede the free thought and free speaking out which is particularly needed now if we are to counter the deluge of lies our current government is dumping into public discourse.

Second, Colbert, his conformist(1) audience, and the communitarian cadre itself need emphatic reminding that not all social disapproval is justified. His audience should be ashamed of itself for cheering these Colbertian cheap shots. Wrongful social disapproval is the essence of prejudicial discrimination.

Here you have an entire audience (apparently), before the whole television world, gleefully attempting to destroy the life and career of someone who demonstrably is one of the better public servants out there. This is exactly the “social tyranny” whose denunciation in On Liberty was documented a few posts back.(2)

Before you participate in a “community” which is denouncing someone who has got on the wrong side of public opinion, remember: there isn’t always safety in numbers; and it is always disgraceful to gang up on someone simply because they are at a disadvantage.


-*--

(1) Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms. Norms are ... forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics, which ignores realistic appraisal of other courses of action. (Emphasis added) Wikipedia

(2) John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.

We have become an uproar society, not a deliberative society. The result is lawless abuse of power.

It's a question of what society has a right to ask us to do.

In an SNL skit years ago, ditzy blonde character Victoria Jackson chirped, “It has to do with the in dih vid you al.” The Ralph Northam brouhaha addresses the matter of the rights of the single person in the context of the tendency of society to gang up on the individual.

The controversy over Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is not about race or racism. It is about whether our society has the right to ruin the life of what appears to be a perfectly decent, capable, well-intentioned Democratic governor because he may have appeared in a possibly satirical picture incorporating blackface and Klan robe thirty-five years ago.

The author of On Liberty explicitly addressed the case where society issues “mandates ... in things with which it ought not to meddle.”(1)

We have the right to throw Virginia Governor Ralph Northam out only if he’s a bad governor, not because of something that has no impact on policy or act, done in another era, under different social standards, for which he has publicly repented and apologized.

The treatment of Northam is a response to symbol, not substance. The howling mob appears to be acting, not because it is right, but because it can.

What is happening is a perfect example of what John Stuart Mill called “social tyranny”: society overstepping its bounds to impose illicit constraints on one of its members, in lawless abuse of power.(1)

A public which too readily goes ballistic over a vivid graphic that lends itself to the term “racist” and can explode into a witch hunt when it smells fresh blood, is in danger of becoming a callout society, a gotcha society, a fear society, where the individual is afraid to think or speak or act fearlessly because the consequences may be all out of proportion to the cause.

The motto is no longer,  “Be kind, decent, ethical, and public-spirited,” but “Whatever you do, never appear in anything that goes viral.” “Social justice” has come to mean, “Be totally, utterly, cravenly conformist at all costs.”

One of the catchphrases of Enlightenment liberalism is “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” We should be willing to fight to the death to thwart “the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.”(1)

One should regard with utter disgust the manner in which the media are handling this, with headlines such as “Northam in Racist Photo: Refuses to Resign.”


-*--

(1) John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.

The values of the state's higher education system cannot be reconciled with the values of its justice system

I have written before that all democracy is liberal, all justice is liberal, all intellectuality is liberal, and all science is liberal.(1) If all justice is liberal, then the political orientation of any judge is the jurisprudential outlook of those who love justice above all else. It follows that there cannot be a "Republican judge" or a "Democratic judge." If a judge's highest loyalty is not to "the known rules of ancient liberty", to eternal justice, they could at best preside over a kangaroo court, at best practice a travesty of justice. (The current practice here in the United States where the Republican Party nominates judges and justices only from a list of candidates provided by the Federalist Society violates the principles of the legal profession, since its intent is to guarantee that only jurists who are activists committed to the doctrines of a partisan ideology rather than universal justice will be appointed. Edmund Burke, in a related case, argued against "instruction" whereby legislators were constrained to proceed only under designated foregone conclusions.)

I know a person who is a dean in the local state higher education system, and is also licensed to practice law in this state. If he were to praise "social justice" as widely understood in the current campus outlook, in writing, he could be in danger of having his law license revoked, since "social justice" lacks the elements of due process.(1) If he were to say, as a practicing legal professional, that "social justice" is, from the standpoint of the legal profession, an oxymoron, the same block of students who prevent speakers with the wrong viewpoint(2) from appearing on campus under the "no platforming" standard would likely hound him from campus (as, below, "a hobgoblin whose career needs to be ended").

Andrew Sullivan describes the illiberal campus intolerance:

And yes, I’m not talking about formal rules — but norms of liberal behavior. One of them is a robust public debate, free from intimidation. Liberals welcome dissent because it’s our surest way to avoid error. Cultural Marxists fear dissent because they believe it can do harm to others’ feelings and help sustain existing identity-based power structures. Yes, this is not about the First Amendment. The government is not preventing anyone from speaking. But it is about the spirit of the First Amendment. One of the reasons I defended Katie Roiphe against a campaign to preemptively suppress an essay of hers (even to the point of attempting to sabotage an entire issue of Harper’s) is because of this spirit. She may be wrong, but that does not make her a hobgoblin whose career needs to be ended. And the impulse to intimidate, vilify, ruin, and abuse a writer for her opinions chills open debate. This is a real-world echo of the campus habit of disrupting speakers, no-platforming conservatives, and shouting people down.

The tragic aspect of this is that it not only erodes the student's sense of justice, but is deeply and thoroughly anti-intellectual. Higher education is not about teaching only the right things, it is about learning how to determine what the right things are. It is not a platform, it is an arena where competing viewpoints are debated and compared. Anything that "chills open debate" is by definition anti-intellectual.

Why are the state's universities and colleges substituting indoctrination for education? Why are they teaching, and that most stridently, principles of intolerance and censorship which the state's own justice system explicitly forbids?

You can be expelled from one set of state institutions for refusing to endorse unconstitutional practices which another set of state institutions consider worthy of legal sanction. "Brethren, these things ought not to be so."


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(1) Commitment to evidence and reason: Democracy (the informed consent of the governed); Justice (rules of evidence); Intellectuality (rejects false premises and invalid syllogisms); Science (testable predictions). Egalitarian and universalist: Lincoln, praising the Declaration's "All men are created equal," called it "an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times."

(2) First Amendment jurisprudence explicitly prohibits viewpoint discrimination and prior restraint.

It is time to be clear about the difference between the Democratic Party and the campus left

There’s no overlap.

One is liberal, one is a form of Marxism. And Marxism never cared about equality, about civil rights, about the dignity and privacy of the single person, about the right to the pursuit of happiness.

On NPR a few months ago, Linda Wertheimer responded to a study in which women came off better than men by saying, “Perhaps women are just better people.” Would it have been okay to say, “Perhaps men are just better people?”

We may be used to this sort of implicit sexist, inegalitarian, prejudicial language, but we shouldn’t be.

In “We All Live on Campus Now,” Andrew Sullivan wrote, “In the world beyond campus, few people use the term microaggressions without irony or an eye roll; claims of “white supremacy,” “rape culture,” or “white privilege” can seem like mere rhetorical flourishes.” He identifies these as effects of “neo-Marxism.”

Democrats hold that such implicit race and gender prejudice is morally wrong, since it is about attacking people because of immutable characteristics, race and gender, which they can’t change, rather than harmful attitudes, habits, and social conventions, which they can.

Sullivan adds, “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. If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large. What matters most of all in these colleges — your membership in a group that is embedded in a hierarchy of oppression — will soon enough be what matters in the society as a whole.

And, sure enough, the whole concept of an individual who exists apart from group identity is slipping from the discourse. The idea of individual merit — as opposed to various forms of unearned “privilege” — is increasingly suspect. The Enlightenment principles that formed the bedrock of the American experiment — untrammeled free speech, due process, individual (rather than group) rights — are now routinely understood as mere masks for “white male” power, code words for the oppression of women and nonwhites.”

The Constitution is a representative Enlightenment document; and the Democratic Party honors “the Enlightenment principles that formed the bedrock of the American experiment.” By contrast, the no-platforming of the campus left violates the free speech principle of the First Amendment by engaging in viewpoint censorship of prospective campus speakers, sometimes specifically because they endorse liberal values such as the central intellectual concept that competing ideas should be freely debated in the University.(1)

Finally, campus left politics of identity is about approved identity. As Linda Wertheimer inadvertently revealed, this is inseparable from its counterpart, the unacceptable resurrection of such politics of disapproved identity as sexism. The campus left meets a definition which once appeared in the OED: “Not generous in respect to the opinions, rights, and liberties of others: narrow-minded.”

(1) “Academic freedom is the freedom to profess a discipline according to its recognized content and procedures, free from constraints and considerations extraneous to that discipline.” — Mary Lefkowitz

Then and now

All democracy is liberal, all intellectuality is liberal, all science is liberal, and all justice is liberal

Personal reflections on the America I knew in high school (I went to high school during the second Eisenhower administration, college during the first Kennedy administration), contrasted with the America I write about now. This will not be particularly organized or structured: it is exploratory.

It is my impression that the Great Break in American principles occurred about the time I graduated from college in the spring of 1964. That fall the news was full of Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement on the Cal campus at Berkeley. I had missed the revolution.

Roger Ebert: 

The great divide was November 22, 1963, and nothing was ever the same again. The teenagers in “American Graffiti” are, in a sense, like that cartoon character in the magazine ads: the one who gives the name of his insurance company, unaware that an avalanche is about to land on him. ... The music was as innocent as the time. Songs like “Sixteen Candles” and “Gonna Find Her” and “The Book of Love” sound touchingly naive today; nothing prepared us for the decadence and the aggression of rock only a handful of years later. (Emphasis added)

From the Founding until the counterculture, the methodological, liberal approach of the Declaration and the Constitution had held ideological impulses in check. Ideology is the deformation of thought and language in the service of power, as a result, it feels free to silence expressions of ideas not its own.

The difference was that up through JFK's time the right of people to have diverse opinions was accepted. This had an advantage: the various sides of an argument could be discussed, generally to everyone's benefit.

An acquaintance of mine who works in the state higher education system recently defended "no-platforming," the prevention of speakers who have the wrong opinions from appearing on campus. (I'm reminded of the Stalin era Soviet writer Isaac Babel, who said that he and his comrades had every right except the right to make a mistake.)  Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, spoke of the university [PDF] as the "church of reason," where ideas could be debated. The university was an arena, not a platform. To allow a diversity of ideas to be presented for educational purposes did not arouse the fear of legitimizing wrongthink.

So this is one primary difference between the America of my K-12 years and America now. The earlier America honored a principle which makes ideology uncomfortable: the liberal free speech provision of the First Amendment. And our universities did not need "safe spaces" where one retreats to avoid being traumatized by an opposing viewpoint.

The difference is the difference between liberalism, which is an information methodology that proceeds from foundational values, and constantly advances human knowledge; and ideology, which operates from undiscussable doctrines and dogmas and is afraid of free debate.

The "tribalism"(1) issue of today's media is a symptom. The underlying point is the prevalence of ideology, which turns every conceptual position into an armed camp, and which speaks the language of enmity and battle. This is fatal to democracy, which is based on friendship, cooperation, pluralism,(2) altruism, and constructive thinking.

For example, the watchwords of left ideology are "oppositional," "adversarial," and "subversive." Right ideology is concerned with nationalism, strength, supremacy, and bell curve racial superiority (the post-Nazi euphemism for Herrenrasse).

The ideologies (left and right) are about enmity; liberal information methodology is about friendship. As Amy Walter recently said on PBS, "fight or fix."

Foundational characteristics: Ideologies are characterized by zero-sum-game thinking; liberalism by positive-sum-game, win-win outlook. An acquaintance described zero-sum-game as "when somebody wins, somebody else loses." The leftism of Marx was clear: Everything should go to the proletariat, who by the labor theory of value deserved it, none to the bourgeoisie. The size of the pie is fixed: the point is to get the larger portion. The problem is mostly unnoticed: Under zero-sum-game thinking, there is no reason for generosity, pluralism,(2) or altruism. To be anti-racist makes no sense, for then the other guy wins and you lose.

By contrast, for liberalism a foundational value, such as liberty or freedom of speech, benefits everybody. For example, while freedom of speech allows bad people to get away with verbal abuse and racial slurs, without freedom of speech Martin Luther King would have had no influence on civil rights history. With liberalism you have democratic dispositions, what Washington described as "the public good," and enlightened self interest.

A probable second foundational characteristic of ideological thinking: belief in original sin. Original sin is a negative, destructive, theological notion which has no place in liberal democratic thinking. (The parable of the prodigal son seems to indicate that the founder of Christianity had moved beyond original sin. The son's prodigality is presented as reversible error ("he came to himself"), and the successful outcome is presented as developing without needing the intervention of a Redeemer or an Atonement.)

There is no upside to thinking in terms of original sin. "We are all sinners!" does not point to a solution: it displaces the solution. Original sin creates a hostile, "gotcha" social climate with what literary critic Frederic C. Crews called "the reckless dispensation of guilt." Original sin facilitates targeting and provides spurious justification for imputing bad motives to others.

(1) Andrew Sullivan: nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/09/can-democracy-survive-tribalism.html

(2) The acceptance of Martin Luther King's civil rights campaign by the mainstream is an example of liberal democratic pluralism. The mainstream for years worked against segregationist opposition to make their country more just towards African Americans.Pluralism in this sense is ethically responsible action to benefit those who are different from oneself.

Randall Kennedy's "My Race Problem"

No teacher should view certain students as his racial "brothers and sisters" while viewing others as, well, mere students. — Randall Kennedy

A brute fact does not dictate the proper human response to it. ... In choosing how to proceed in the face of all that they encounter, blacks should insist, as did Martin Luther King Jr., that acting with moral propriety is itself a glorious goal. — Kennedy

Unless inhibited, every person and group will tend toward beliefs and practices that are self-aggrandizing. — Kennedy

I would propose a shoe-on-the-other-foot test for the propriety of racial sentiment. If a sentiment or practice would be judged offensive when voiced or implemented by anyone, it should be viewed as prima facie offensive generally. — Kennedy

In 1997 Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy wrote "My Race Problem: A consideration of touchy matters -- racial pride, racial solidarity, and racial loyalty -- rarely discussed."

"What," he asked, "is the proper role of race in determining how I, an American black, should feel toward others?"

It was a liberal African American's response to a left issue of the time, multiculturalism. Today we would call it the politics of identity.

The politics of identity is the politics of approved identity. Professor Kennedy immediately objects to the proposition that

There is nothing wrong with having a special -- a racial -- affection for other black people. Indeed, many would go further and maintain that something would be wrong with me if I did not sense and express racial pride, racial kinship, racial patriotism, racial loyalty, racial solidarity -- synonyms for that amalgam of belief, intuition, and commitment that manifests itself when blacks treat blacks with more solicitude than they do those who are not black. ... [There is a] notion that blackness gives rise to racial obligation and that black people should have a special, closer, more affectionate relationship with their fellow blacks than with others in America's diverse society.

Professor Kennedy replies, "I reject this response to the question. Neither racial pride nor racial kinship offers guidance that is intellectually, morally, or politically satisfactory. ... the belief that because of racial kinship blacks ought to value blacks more highly than others." Such attempts to counteract discrimination recreate discrimination in another form.

Stephen L. Carter, a professor at Yale Law School writes, in Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, "Each December, my wife and I host a holiday dessert for the black students at the Yale Law School." He says that he feels a special "solidarity" with them, a racial love for "one's people."

Professor Kennedy:

I contend that in the mind, heart, and soul of a teacher there should be no stratification of students such that a teacher feels closer to certain pupils than to others on grounds of racial kinship. No teacher should view certain students as his racial "brothers and sisters" while viewing others as, well, mere students. Every student should be free of the worry that because of race, he or she will have less opportunity to benefit from what a teacher has to offer.

Randall Kennedy suggests that instead of the left principle of solidarity, which tends to result in a double standard, we should engage in a liberal method: outreach:

The justification for outreach ... is that unlike an appeal to racial kinship, an appeal to an ideal untrammeled by race enables any person or group to be the object of solicitude. No person or group is racially excluded from the possibility of assistance, and no person or group is expected to help only "our own." If a professor reaches out in response to student need, for instance, that means that whereas black students may deserve special solicitude today, Latino students or Asian-American students or white students may deserve it tomorrow.

History, Kennedy argues, is a poor argument for a double standard:

Some will argue that I ignore or minimize the fact that different groups are differently situated and that it is thus justifiable to impose upon blacks and whites different standards for purposes of evaluating conduct, beliefs, and sentiments. ... A brute fact does not dictate the proper human response to it. That is a matter of choice -- constrained, to be sure, but a choice nonetheless. In choosing how to proceed in the face of all that they encounter, blacks should insist, as did Martin Luther King Jr., that acting with moral propriety is itself a glorious goal.

People who have suffered past wrongs, unfortunately, are no more immune than anyone else to the temptation of favoritism toward one's own:

In seeking to attain that goal, blacks should be attuned not only to the all too human cruelties and weaknesses of others but also to the all too human cruelties and weaknesses in themselves. A good place to start is with the recognition that unless inhibited, every person and group will tend toward beliefs and practices that are self-aggrandizing. This is certainly true of those who inherit a dominant status. But it is also true of those who inherit a subordinate status. Surely one of the most striking features of human dynamics is the alacrity with which those who have been oppressed will oppress whomever they can once the opportunity presents itself. Because this is so, it is not premature to worry about the possibility that blacks or other historically subordinated groups will abuse power to the detriment of others.

Another argument against double standards concerning identity is reciprocity: They don't meet the "shoe-on-the-other-foot test":

A second reason I resist arguments in favor of asymmetrical standards of judgment has to do with my sense of the requirements of reciprocity. I find it difficult to accept that it is wrong for whites to mobilize themselves on a racial basis solely for purposes of white advancement but morally permissible for blacks to mobilize themselves on a racial basis solely for purposes of black advancement. I would propose a shoe-on-the-other-foot test for the propriety of racial sentiment. If a sentiment or practice would be judged offensive when voiced or implemented by anyone, it should be viewed as prima facie offensive generally. If we would look askance at a white professor who wrote that on grounds of racial kinship he values the opinions of whites more than those of blacks, then unless given persuasive reasons to the contrary, we should look askance at a black professor who writes that on grounds of racial kinship he values the opinions of blacks more than those of whites.