the final batch of exports from locals

content/post/a-conservative-starter-library.md

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+---
+title: "A Conservative Starter Library"
+date: 2021-06-15T21:35:23Z
+tags: ["conservatism"]
+topics: ["philosophy","politics"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "conservative-library|/img/conservative-library.png|Conservative Library" >}}
+
+Here are some 20th century books that guided me away from contemporary American Liberalism (and its Germanic progressive bias), and contributed to my understanding of Conservatism as an evolving worldview. I will offer four philosophical, and four political suggestions:
+
+Philosophical:
+
+1. {{< newtab title="After Virtue (1984), Alasdair MacIntyre" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/After-Virtue-Study-Moral-Theory/dp/0268035040/" >}} - This book began my divorce with both Enlightenment modernism, and the English analytical tradition. MacIntyre makes a powerful case for Aristotelian ethics, and against the Germans, especially. I see virtue ethics (in whatever form) as core to any coherent conservative worldview. MacIntyre did not take the Aristotelian turn until very late in his life. This book was the testament to that turning. His ultimate vision is of a communitarian society, which I disagree with somewhat, but elements of it are essential (particularly, the relational element of society).
+
+2. {{< newtab title="The Closing Of The American Mind (1987), Alan Bloom" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Closing-American-Mind-Bloom-Allan/dp/B00E3FSO5G/" >}} - A scathing critique of the contemporary higher education system, it's drift toward radicalism, and its obsession with self-annihilation. Bloom was not a conservative, himself (he was an openly gay New York Jew, in fact). Which makes this book even more potent. He knew were all the bodies were buried. His critique of modern music was somewhat silly, but the challenge to Nihilism in this book was extremely important to me.
+
+3. {{< newtab title="On Human Conduct (1974), Michael Oakeshott" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Human-Conduct-Clarendon-Paperbacks/dp/019827758X/" >}} - Particularly parts II and III, in which Oakeshott outlines first, a view of civil society that offers a form of individualism that emphasizes the relational aspects of what he calls the "civil condition". More plainly: the need for good relationships as the ground of healthy civil society. Second, an analysis of political development in Europe focusing on the transition from medieval religious states, to secular Enlightenment states. It helped to begin the resuscitation of medieval philosophy for me.
+
+4. {{< newtab title="The Constitution of Liberty (1960), F. A. Hayek" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Constitution-Liberty-Routledge-Classics/dp/041540424X/" >}} - Everyone who mentions Hayek, inevitably does so to mention The Road To Serfdom. While that was a decent critique for its time, The Constitution of Liberty is, in my view, a much more compelling book. Hayek provides an understanding of the market in this book that is an absolute wake-up call to Rothbardian libertarians. If you cannot answer Hayek's challenges, you cannot remain a libertarian.
+
+Political:
+
+1. {{< newtab title="Up From Liberalism (1959), William F. Buckley" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Up-Liberalism-William-F-Buckley/dp/161427925X/" >}} - A wickedly funny critique of the growing phenomenon of "progressive" liberalism in the late 1950s. Also, a tongue-in-cheek play on the title of Booker T. Washington's book "Up From Slavery". Much of this book still remains relevant today, and is a testament to Buckley's prescience and insight. Gore Vidal may have bested him on TV, but Buckley was the clear winner, with the pen.
+
+2. {{< newtab title="Who Are We? (2004), Samuel P. Huntington" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Are-We-Challenges-Americas/dp/0684870541/" >}} - just after the turn of the millenium, and post-9/11, Huntington released this little forgotten gem of a book, in which he more-or-less kicks off the "identity" debate which rages to this day: what does it mean to be an "American"? What is it that a Conservative is actually "conserving"? It touches on race, geography, language, religion, and ethnic conflict. It makes some policy prescriptions I find disagreeable, but the discussion around what constitutes a political (aka civic) identity is absolutely fundamental, and it does it primarily from a conservative point of view. This book also pre-sages much later books like Douglas Murray's "Strange Death of Europe".
+
+3. {{< newtab title="The Tempting of America (1990), Robert Bork" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tempting-America-Political-Seduction-Law/dp/0684843374/" >}} - In addition to being a personal account of Bork's Supreme Court nomination battle, it is a masterful critique of most of the key supreme court decisions up to that point in history. Bork offers a rigorous defense of what is now called "the originalist position", and absolutely trounces concepts like the "living document". This book should be required reading in high school civics, if there were such a thing anymore.
+
+4. {{< newtab title="The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (2001), Russell Kirk" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Conservative-Mind-Russell-Kirk/dp/1492930717/" >}} - This book is more historical pastiche than original thought, but it's well worth the read, for two reasons (a) it's a great place to start, if you're interested in conservative thought throughout history, and (b) it's an excellent window into the modern conservative interpretation of historical thinkers who would not have recognized what we call conservatism today.
+
+There are many others that deserve mention, but they'll have to wait for now.

content/post/a-future-history-of-vice.md

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+---
+title: "A Future History of Vice"
+date: 2021-06-27T22:32:18Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "culture"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "the-vices|/img/vices.jpg|The Vices" >}}
+
+We now live in an era in which Pride is Sovereign, and his two concubines Vanity and Lust are his apostles amongst men of weak will.
+
+He is the inevitable successor to the rule of his brother Greed and his two accomplices, Sloth and Gluttony.
+
+Pride's rule will come to an end, eventually. But it will not be by succession. There is but one Sovereign of vice remaining, and he has no patience for seduction.
+
+When the rule of Wrath comes, we will beg for the return of the others, who at least offered the temporary mercies of worldly pleasure.
+
+We will beg for their return, because we have not the courage to beg for forgiveness from him who alone is granted the power to redeem.
+
+I have often wondered why cowardice is not among the capital sins - indeed, chief among them. For with courage, none of the other vices could have any purchase in the human soul; but without it, we are forever tossed on a stormy sea of vicious iniquity.

content/post/a-thought-on-the-transience-of-life.md

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+---
+title: "A Thought on the Transience of Life"
+date: 2021-06-24T22:19:52Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy"]
+draft: true
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "the-tree|/img/the-tree.jpg|The Tree" >}}
+
+> *For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.* - 1 PETER 1:24
+
+Christianity, Stoicism, Buddhism. All of them recognize the contingent transience of existence. Each of them offers a different vision, not only of what attitude to take toward this truth, but also the telos it implies.
+
+- The Christian counsels patience, in anticipation of the ultimate reconciliation before God. Indeed, it is made clear in James 5:7 - *"Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandmen waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain."*
+
+- The Stoic counsels detachment, as a consequence of the transience. The will is ultimately impotent, on the widest time scale. So, best to simply enjoy with gratitude what comes your way, for as long as it lasts.
+
+- The Buddhist rejects the reality of all of it. There is no grass, no flower, no suffering, no need for patience or detachment, if you let go of the ego, and simply dissolve into the oneness of being itself.
+
+The Buddhist solution is indistinguishable from nihilism, as far as I'm concerned. The Stoic solution is hedonism covered in a patina of ascetic virtue. The Christian solution is the only one, as far as I can see, that tries to take into account all of the complexity of the human psychology, man's situatedness in space and time, his relationship to the divine, and his yearning for both justice and mercy. While not a perfectly satisfactory answer, it is still far superior to the rest.

content/post/a-visit-from-wormwood.md

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+---
+title: "A Visit From Wormwood"
+date: 2021-07-21T22:44:57Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "psychology"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+ {{< fluid_imgs "wormwood|/img/wormwood.png|Wormwood" >}} 
+
+I had an odd little dream last night. I was walking along a road at dusk. In an ex-urban area. Not wilderness, but not suburbs either. Along the shoulders of the road, cranes or storks were standing knee-deep in what looked like long rectangle rice patches. The storks were all trying desperately to swallow elongated fish that protruded out of their beaks, and clearly did not fit into their bellies.
+
+I walked into the parking lot for a small free-standing commercial building. Red brick. Perhaps a supermarket, or a library, or a video store. In a dark corner, against a wall marking the boundary of the parking lot, something caught my eye.
+
+I turned to look, and a little blue demon with a helmet-like head, and dark eyes that glowed despite their obsidian emptiness stared straight back at me. He was squatting back on his haunches, like a gargoyle.
+
+Oddly, I wasn't bothered by his presence. I was fascinated. I stared for quite a while. Maybe a good minute or two. He just stared back. Finally, he opened his mouth and growled slowly: "Let me help you".
+
+In a sort of "TV segment" scene change, I was suddenly standing in the office of a friend of mine, asking him if he knew of any good tricks or spells for containing or controlling demons. The idea I had in my head, was that if I could somehow leash or bridle this creature, I would indeed take up the offer.
+
+My friend had no idea what I was talking about, and dismissed me. Disappointed, I left his office, and the dream ended.
+
+What strikes me as disturbing, is the fact that I would entertain the idea of enlisting a demon, if I thought I could control the situation. Clearly, the notion is ridiculous. If such things are real, they're clearly far beyond the capabilities of mortal men. So, any thought of harnessing one is pure naive hubris on my part. Probably motivated by avarice or ambition.
+
+But he's also a symbol of unearned or undeserved power. Any offer on this demon's part, could only ever come with strings attached, even if he doesn't say so out loud (and they rarely ever do). For a while, I would blissfully motor along, thinking I was in charge. In time, though, the cold hard reality would eventually come to demand payment.
+
+It's also interesting that he offers help, rather than attacking me, or insulting me. I wasn't actually *doing* anything in the dream, but going for a stroll. So, the offer of help is an appeal to broader ambitions or desires. Things he clearly knows I have.
+
+In any case, it turns out I hadn't the means to pursue my own damnation anyway. So, I survived this time.
+
+Sometimes when I dream, I become self-aware that I'm in a dream. I sort of wish that had happened in this dream. I'd have had all sorts of questions for him.

content/post/bork-on-ideology-in-the-court.md

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+---
+title: "Bork on Ideology in the Court"
+date: 2020-09-30T19:38:34Z
+tags: ["supreme court", "law", "legislation"]
+topics: ["philosophy", "politics"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "bork|/img/bork.jpg|Robert Bork" >}}
+
+----
+
+From the book "{{< newtab title="The Tempting Of America (1991)" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tempting-America-Political-Seduction-Law/dp/0684843374/" >}}, By Robert Bork
+
+> ...It is somewhat unclear whether the modern Court is more politicized than Courts of previous eras. Certainly it makes more political decisions each year than was true in any year in the nineteenth century, but that is largely due to the number of occasions for such decisions presented to it. Before the post-Civil War amendments, particularly the fourteenth amendment, the Court had little opportunity to impose rules on the states. The development of substantive content in the fourteenth amendment’s due process clause, and subsequently the incorporation of the Bill of Rights in that clause, enormously expanded the Court’s power over the states. It is conceivable, though unlikely, that, the Courts of the nineteenth century, given the opportunities that this legal structure presented, would have appeared as activist and political as do the Courts of the past five or six decades.
+
+> From era to era, the values the Court writes into the Constitution change. As new values are added, the old ones are dropped. The Court’s performance, in terms of favored values, displays no single political trajectory over time. Moreover, the style of the Court’s theorizing varies, as does the provision of the Constitution used to provide an appearance that what is being done is related in some legitimate manner to the actual document. The pace of judicial revision of the Constitution has accelerated over the Court’s history, as has the exertion of judicial power, revisionist or not. The Court struck down no federal statutes between Marbury in 1803 and Dred Scott in 1857, a period of more than fifty years. The post-Civil War Courts did strike down a number of laws. The rate of constitutional revisionism picked up with the New Deal Court and became explosive with the Warren Court. The Courts after Warren’s, those of Burger and Rehnquist, showed little significant slowing. We observe, therefore, the increasing importance of the one counter-majoritarian institution in the American democracy. That, by itself, would be worthy of remark, though not worrisome, if it merely reflected the number of occasions that the Court had to apply the Constitution to governmental incursions into more and more areas of American life. What is worrisome is that so many of the Court’s increased number of declarations of unconstitutionality are not even plausibly related to the actual Constitution. This means that we are increasingly governed not by law or elected representatives but by an unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable committee of lawyers applying no will but their own.
+
+> At the outset, I suggested that in each era the Court responded to the ideology of the class to which the Justices felt closest. By observing the values the Court chooses to enforce, it is often possible to discern which classes have achieved dominance at any given time in our history. “Dominance,” as I use the word here, is not an entirely clear concept. It refers to the tendency of a class’s ideas and values to be accepted by the elites that form opinion. In this century, we have seen the Court allied to business interests and the ideology of free enterprise. We have seen that ideology lose its power with the arrival of the New Deal and the effect of that ideological shift on the Supreme Court. The intellectual class has become liberal, and that fact has heavily influenced the Court’s performance. For the past half-century, whenever the Court has departed from the original understanding of the Constitution’s principles, it has invariably legislated an item on the modern liberal agenda, never an item on the conservative agenda.
+
+> The prospects for the immediate future are unclear. The present Court is divided in its approach to constitutional law, and it seems likely that the more extreme revisionists of a liberal persuasion will be replaced in the not too distant future. It is not obvious how the new Justices will affect the Court’s behavior, however. Our political parties have become polarized on the issue of desirable judicial behavior, as on so many other issues. The Republican Party has become more conservative, just as the Democratic Party has become more liberal. In the modern era, liberals have favored revisionist judges. The President’s nominees will have to be confirmed by a heavily Democratic Senate. That fact may mean that only persons with views acceptable to the left will be nominated or, more likely, that people will be nominated who have made no public record of their judicial philosophies. Their performance on the Court, for that reason, may not be predictable by either the President or the Senate. There was no reason to think that Earl Warren was not a moderate conservative when he was nominated, but on the bench he became a judicial radical. There have been more recent examples of judicial transformations. It is well to remember that the Supreme Court that produced liberal constitutional revisions in recent years had seven members who were appointed by Republican presidents. Nevertheless, the mood of the country is generally conservative, and that fact may in time tell on the performance of the Court.
+
+> If the performance of the Court changes, it is to be hoped that liberal revisionism will not be replaced by conservative revisionism. The two are equally illegitimate. The Constitution is too important to our national well-being and to our liberties to be made into a political weapon. Departure from its actual principles, whether in Dred Scott, Lochner, or Roe, is inconsistent with the maintenance of constitutional democracy.
+
+> There are those, and they are many, who prefer results to everything else, including democracy and respect for the legitimacy of authority. It is that view that Alexander Bickel addressed in his essay on civil disobedience. He wrote of the moral imperatives that fueled the major episodes of civil disobedience in our recent history, including Southern resistance to desegregation orders, some of the opposition to the war in Vietnam, and the complex of events we call “Watergate.” But he continued:
+
+> > The assault upon the legal order by moral imperatives was not only or perhaps even most effectively an assault from the outside. … [I]t came as well from within, in the Supreme Court headed for fifteen years by Earl Warren. When a lawyer stood before him arguing his side of a case on the basis of some legal doctrine or other, or making a procedural point, or contending that the Constitution allocated competence over a given issue to another branch of government than the Supreme Court or to the states rather than to the federal government, the chief justice would shake him off saying, “Yes, yes, yes, but is it (whatever the case exemplified about law or about the society), is it right? Is it good?” More than once, and in some of its most important actions, the Warren Court got over doctrinal difficulties or issues of the allocation of competences among various institutions by asking what it viewed as a decisive practical question: If the Court did not take a certain action which was right and good, would other institutions do so, given political realities? The Warren Court took the greatest pride in cutting through legal technicalities, in piercing through procedure to substance.
+
+> What Bickel said of the Warren Court may be said of all courts in our history that cut through procedure to substance, and through substance to political outcome. They engaged in civil disobedience, a disobedience arguably more dangerous, because more insidious and hence more damaging to democratic institutions, than the civil disobedience of the streets. As Bickel also said, “It is the premise of our legal order that its own complicated arrangements, although subject to evolutionary change, are more important than any momentary objective…. The derogators of procedure and of technicalities, and other anti-institutional forces who rode high, on the bench as well as off, were the armies of conscience and of ideology.”3 They were also, he said, the armies of a new populism, and the “paradox is that the people whom the populist exalts may well—will frequently—not vote for the results that conscience and ideology dictate. But then one can always hope, or identify the general will with the people despite their votes, and let the Supreme Court bespeak the people’s general will when the vote comes out wrong.”4 There are heavy costs for the legal system, heavy costs for our liberty to govern ourselves, when the Court decides it is the instrument of the general will and the keeper of the national conscience. Then there is no law; there are only the moral imperatives and self-righteousness of the hour.
+

content/post/cyprian-echoed-in-boethius.md

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+---
+title: "Cyprian Echoed in Boethius"
+date: 2020-11-27T20:20:19Z
+tags: ["cyprian", "boethius"]
+topics: ["philosophy","theology"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "cyprian|/img/cyprian.jpg|St. Cyprian" >}}
+
+Yesterday, I stumbled across a treatise of St. Cyprian to his congregation that might sound remarkably familiar, if you've been following the podcast at all. The letter is written from exile, during the Decian persecution (ad 250). A few years later (ad 258), Cyprian would be executed by Valerian for disloyalty to the emperor - albeit, exhibited by his refusal to participate in Roman religious rites. All of this echoes the life of Boethius in distant ways, but also with Socrates, who was executed in part for introducing false gods into the city.
+
+Cyprian was a prolific writer whose works were widely circulated among early Christians, and as such, he enjoyed a stature among them at the time that was only demoted after Augustine appeared on the scene much later. This is interesting, because as a well-educated Roman Christian, Boethius most assuredly would have been familiar with him.
+
+Here is the passage from the epistle that stood out for me:
+
+> "...The world and its allurements will pass away, but the man who has done the will of God shall live for ever. Our part, my dear brothers, is to be single-minded, firm in faith, and steadfast in courage, ready for God’s will, whatever it may be. Banish the fear of death and think of the eternal life that follows it. That will show people that we really live our faith.
+
+>  We ought never to forget, beloved, that we have renounced the world. We are living here now as aliens and only for a time. When the day of our homecoming puts an end to our exile, frees us from the bonds of the world, and restores us to paradise and to a kingdom, we should welcome it. What man, stationed in a foreign land, would not want to return to his own country as soon as possible? Well, we look upon paradise as our country, and a great crowd of our loved ones awaits us there, a countless throng of parents, brothers and children longs for us to join them...."
+
+The talk of being temporary denizens of earth, and living in accord with God's will should ring loudly in your ears, given the dialogues of Book 2 of The Consolation, and will ring even louder once we get stuck into Books 4 and 5. But in particular here, pay attention to the appeals to travel: "the day of our homecoming", "stationed in a foreign land", "returning to his own country". This, it seems to me, is the same thing Boethius is referring to, when he puts these words into Lady Philosophy's mouth at the end of Book 4, Chapter 1:
+
+> "...all due preliminaries being discharged, I will now show thee the road which will lead thee home. Wings, also, will I fasten to thy mind wherewith thou mayst soar aloft, that so, all disturbing doubts removed, thou mayst return safe to thy country, under my guidance, in the path I will show thee..."
+
+It is possible that Boethius is making a typological comparison, here: In the same way that Justin and Cyprian are martyrs for the one true God, so too are the philosophical martyrs, among whom I am soon to be one.

content/post/kant-vs-anselm-vs-cary.md

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+---
+title: "Kant vs Anselm vs Cary"
+date: 2021-02-07T20:56:50Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "theology", "culture"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "philosophy-and-religion|/img/philosophy-and-religion.jpg|Philosophy And Religion" >}}
+
+I have been listening to {{< newtab title="this lecture series" url="https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Philosophy-and-Religion-in-the-West-Audiobook/B00DEQO5US/" >}} to supplement the readings in my philosophy of religion course.
+
+In the first Kant lecture, Cary says that Kant argues against Anselm on the ground that being isn't a property. It goes a little something like this:
+
+1. Anselm says, that which actually exists, rather than which we can merely imagine, is superior in perfection because existence is superior to all other possible properties we could imagine.
+
+2. But, Kant Says, "being" isn't a property, in the way that "white" or "round" or "heavy" or "in the closet" are properties.
+
+3. Since you cannot attribute being to a thing, because it is not a property, Anselm is therefore wrong to say that being is superior to other properties.
+
+This, it seems to me, is all shockingly mistaken. Anselm was a medieval scholastic. He, therefore, would have been more than familiar with Aristotle's Categories - in which *substantial being* is argued to be a necessary thing (by indirect inference from the first mover), while a substantial being's properties are accidental to it, and dependent upon it. In other words, substantial being and accidental properties are *categorically distinct from each other*. Thus, to say that existence is a kind of perfection of a thing, is not to say that it has one more property it didn't have before. Rather, it is to say that, to *be* is better than *not to be*. And all the framing of this into "properties" language is a silly muddle.
+
+So, either Anselm was deeply confused about his own life's work, or Kant was deeply confused about Anselm's actual argument, or Professor Cary doesn't understand Kant's argument. It seems to me, based on what I know of Kant, the latter two possibilities are FAR more likely, than that Anselm was confused.

content/post/living-dangerously.md

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+---
+title: "Living Dangerously"
+date: 2021-09-05T22:49:33Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "theology"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+ {{< fluid_imgs "timothy-radcliffe|/img/timothy-radcliffe.jpg|Timothy Radcliffe" >}} 
+
+> *"...Christians must dare to challenge this fearful, risk-averse society, with its stifling multiplication of 'health and safety' regulations and its fear of life. In the sixteenth century, missionaries from Catholic orders - Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit, Carmelite, and many others - travelled in great numbers to Asia to preach the gospel. Half of them never arrived. They died of shipwreck and disease; they were captured by pirates, suffered martyrdom, and yet they dared to continue without any health or travel insurance. Today, such adventures would be condemned as crazy..."* - Timothy Radcliffe, 2019

content/post/marxism-as-false-religion.md

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+---
+title: "Marxism as False Religion"
+date: 2021-05-30T21:21:56Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "politics", "theology"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "marxist-professors|/img/marxist-professors.png|Marxist Professors" >}}
+
+The 'marxist professor' (Glenn Bracey, Villanova) highlighted by {{< newtab title="the video linked in this article" url="https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/busted-professor-admits-critical-race-theory-build-church-marxism-video/" >}} is not wrong in the most broad outline, about Marx's theory of alienation, as a critique of commodity markets. He just so mangled and misapplied the concept that it's almost unrecognisable.
+
+The theory of alienation is about the separation of human activity from fundamental human nature. It's a metaphysical theory about where value derives from in the products of human labor. It is not a "spiritual concern" (whatever that means). Marx was a materialist, not an idealist. Marx rejected Christianity as just another ideology (one that, on his view, appropriated the problem of suffering to its own ends). So this guy's attempt to incorporate liberal Christian sympathy into his analysis is purely cynical. What's more, this 'professor' is clearly differentiating between multiple human natures. Note how and where he says "our species being!" - he means, black people have a fundamentally different nature than white people, and that living in western society is alienating black people from their nature, because western society is 'white'.
+
+This is extremely dangerous rhetoric. Conceptualizing each other as having fundamentally different natures is going to lead to a race war.
+
+(PS: 'species-being' is actually a concept Marx borrowed from Hegel and Feuerbach, to use in his early Paris writings - which is where the concept of alienation comes from. He stopped using that concept by the time he got round to writing Das Kapital. 'species-bieng' is, itself a horrible German mangling of Aristotle's explanation of human nature. Marx stole the concept, and then relocated the essential feature of Man from the mind, to the body, by way of its activities. Namely, productive labor. This way, he could remain committed to his materialism).

content/post/negotiating-the-value-of-a-single-life.md

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+---
+title: "Negotiating the Value of a Single Life"
+date: 2021-06-17T22:00:46Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "psychology", "sociology"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "omelas|/img/omelas.png|Omelas" >}}
+
+In 1973, Ursula Le Guin wrote a short story about a utopian city called "Omelas". The story is, at its core, a philosophical thought experiment. To summarize: Let's just accept for the sake of argument, a city that is so self-sufficient, and so devoid of want or suffering or strife that the people of the city were able to live in an unceasing state of joyous bliss. Every season involved weeks-long festivals of celebration, and nobody was deprived of any need, material, moral, or psychological.
+
+After spending three pages describing this blissful demos, and making a philosophical defense of the pleasure of happiness itself, she then says this:
+
+> *"...Do you believe? Do you accept the festivals, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing..."*
+
+And she proceeds to tell us all that, in the lowest basement of one of Omelas' most ornate public buildings, there is a dirty little mop room full of dirty old mops, hidden by a thick steel door and locked tight with a heavy bolt. There is one more thing in this room. In the darkest corner, *"...a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect..."*
+
+The kicker: the people of Omelas all know the child is there. Le Guin explains, *"...they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery..."*
+
+In short, this story is basically an example of the extreme limiting case of a utilitarian calculus that asks, "if you could do harm to one person in order to rescue the human race, would you do it?"
+
+That is the debate we are engaged in now, as a culture, [with fetal tissue research](https://www.newsweek.com/covid-19-vaccines-fetal-tissue-science-controversy-explained-1575863). Because we have abandoned the absolute principle of the moral worth of the human being, we are now in a generations-long haggle over the price of a life. We are arguing over what exactly we're willing to accept is the ultimate worth of a human life - while simultaneously deluding ourselves into thinking we have total control over whether or not it comes into existence, how long it lasts, or what its quality will be.
+
+At the end of Le Guin's story, she says this:
+
+> *"...At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back..."*
+
+I think it is a deep shame that the Catholic church itself is actually willing to humor such utilitarian notions, to the point of parceling out portions of culpability relative to your distance from the mop closet. The more attention I pay to his society, the more I want to walk away.

content/post/obedience-and-the-intellect.md

@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+---
+title: "Obedience and the Intellect"
+date: 2021-07-14T22:42:57Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "theology"]
+draft: true
+---
+
+> "Obedience is first a virtue of the mind, rather than the will" ~Thomas Aquinas
+
+This is the Platonic understanding of virtue. As Socrates often argued, once one knows the truth, one cannot help but move toward it. If you move away from it, you do not know it, but a semblance of it.
+
+But there is a further implication. Truth is only available in dialectic, in which the commander and the commanded share the same knowledge of the truth. Obedience for its own sake (aka "blind obedience" ), therefore, is a similar form of corruption to willful rebellion.

content/post/paul-and-the-rivalry-of-reason-and-faith.md

@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+---
+title: "Paul and the Rivalry of Reason and Faith"
+date: 2021-03-15T21:09:21Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "religion"]
+draft: true
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "conversion-of-paul|/img/conversion-of-paul.jpg|The Conversion of St. Paul" >}}
+
+On the rivalry between philosophy and religion, Paul has this to say:
+
+> 1 COR 1:19-29 *For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.*
+
+Paul also seems to think that The Fall is responsible for the gap between human reason and faith. That, had Adam and Eve not listened to the snake, reason would still be capable of apprehending God in full, but the offense against God was so scarring to reason that no one since has been able to know God in full, except by way of Christ (because of the redemption).
+
+This is confusing. Because, on the one hand, Paul is taking a sort of Gnostic tack in 1 COR 1 - the physical world is so corrupt that God would not allow it to be in his presence (i.e. that reason is so base that it must be eschewed in favor of the selfless surrender to God0. On the other hand, however, Paul is suggesting that the Incarnation and Crucifixion (and our proper contemplation of it) somehow perfect reason to an original state, making it worthy of communion with God.
+
+One is a doctrine of oppositional dualism. The other a doctrine of complementary dualism (human reason being "against" faith, vs human reason being "before" or "aided by" faith). They both can't be right.
+
+I'm at the point where I can see the limitations of rational and empirical methods for explaining themselves, and the ultimate sources of the things they do explain. I also am open to the idea that this essentially opens the question again, as to whether "existence" (both in the particular and the global sense) is bound only to matter in motion, or is potentially in other forms that the empirical/rational methods can't really identify. Once you open that door, all bets are off. But the Catholics have a somewhat convincing case against the anything-goes implications. That whatever does exist beyond the realm of sense experience and logical inference, must be consonant with it in some sense (otherwise the universe in any form would be inexplicable; being inexplicable, thus irrational; irrational, thus imperfect/corrupt, and that can't be the case).
+
+It is this idea of necessary consonance that has me intrigued at the potential for a harmony between faith and reason. But every writer, including Aquinas, seems to vacillate between oppositional and complementary understandings of the duality, and leans heavily on the model of Christ as the resolution to the problem. But, to get there, you have to step into analogical thinking pretty heavily. It's not enough to just equate him with the Logos, or assert his redemptive act as salvific of reason as well, and call it a day. There literally is no logic to explain the transformation. There is only the *story*, and one's willingness to either accept it, or not. This is the act of "trust" that some equate with faith. So, you have the "trust faith" as a kind of prerequisite to the "belief" faith that follows from it, mixed with reason.
+
+But the "trust faith" presupposes the redeemer it seeks. And so we are back at square one. Justification. Or, lack thereof. It's almost a non sequitur, really. How silly is it to ask for a logical justification of, say, Napoleon's loss at Waterloo, or Columbus' accidental discovery of the Bahamas, or Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn novel. Explanations for how they came about, are not logical justifications. So, how could there be the same for Christ on the cross? Still, there are all sorts of good reasons why Christ's life is a logical necessity. The resolution of the paradox of the One and The Many. The focal point where the absolute and the contingent make contact. And, of course, the transcendent source of justice, and the redemption of mankind as the unified embodiment of a wholly human and wholly divine nature.

content/post/pride-is-nothing-to-celebrate.md

@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+---
+title: "Pride Is Nothing to Celebrate"
+date: 2021-06-22T22:14:07Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "theology"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "satans-fall|/img/satans-fall.jpg|Satan's Fall" >}}
+
+> "...It was Pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels..." - St. Augustine
+
+The layers of inversion involved in "pride" month are breathtaking when you really look into the matter.
+
+Thomas Aquinas says of the sin of Pride, that it is "inordinate self-love [which] is the cause of every sin... the root of pride is found to consist in man not being, in some way, subject to God and His rule." Pride was the first of all sins, according to the Bible's origin stories. It was what lead to Lucifer being cast out of heaven, and what inspired Adam and Eve to listen to the snake. Pride is the queen of all the vices, and according to the bible, it is found at the core of every sin (not just by way of The Fall). The line between righteousness and self-righteousness, is Pride.
+
+The rainbow is traditionally in the west, a symbol of the covenant between God and Noah, after the flood. It's meant to symbolize forgiveness on condition of humility and obedience. God destroyed mankind for his hubris, and he restored his relationship with man by way of his agreement with Noah, who submitted without question to God's will. To seal the deal, God created the rainbow.
+
+The modern social justice movement has long been steeped in a Butlerian notion of self-creation. My will is the only reality, and anything getting in the way of satisfying that will, is tantamount to oppression. I do not discover who I am, and what my purpose is. I invent who I am, and self-generate my own purpose. No appeal to either the divine or nature is compelling to me, because these concepts impose limits on the will, and that is the only moral scruple I will tolerate: the will must be free, in the sense of unconstrained by impediments. But such a will is not free. It is a slave to its own desires, and the human being has nearly limitless desires. Plato describes this vividly in the Gorgias, as a person trying to fill a water pot full of holes.
+
+Limits provide definition, structure, and form. And form provides a nature (as Aristotle later pointed out). That nature, whether the "pride" advocates want to admit it or not, is precisely what they are rebelling against. Our being is fairly flexible, as living creatures go. So, a certain amount of rejection of our own natures can take place without a complete destruction of the self or the society around it. But at some point, we are going to reach a fulcrum, and chaos will overtake order.
+
+Self-destruction is the end of every endeavor that begins with a belief in self-creation.

content/post/religions-true-and-false.md

@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+---
+title: "Religions, True and False"
+date: 2020-07-10T17:28:26Z
+tags: ["secularism", "cults", "ideologies"]
+topics: ["philosophy", "psychology", "theology"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "escher|/img/escher.jpg|The Harrowing Of Hell" >}}
+
+The following are things that are presently being informally labelled "religions" by various commentators:
+
+- Environmentalism (Michael Shellenberger, "Apocalypse Never" )
+- Feminism (Janice Fiamengo, "Daughters of Feminism" )
+- Woke Ideology (James Lindsey, "New Discourses" )
+- Anti-Racism (John McWhorter, "Talking Back, Talking Black" )
+
+There are probably others, but these are the ones I am aware of. Each of these has component features analogous to features of established religions, it is true. Here is an incomplete list that comes to mind:
+
+- millenarian fatalism
+- original sin
+- salvific rituals
+- blasphemers
+- purity tests
+- sacramental rites
+- priests and theologians
+- saints
+- unquestionable creeds
+
+The point here, is not to try to define religion, or to decide whether or not the various factious movements coming from the humanistic left are indeed religions. Rather, I just want to make the observation, and to note the parallel patterns. But I will go one step further.
+
+It is fascinating to me that most of these movements did not take on a religious character until after World War II. There were some movements that had a vaguely religious ethos to them. H. G. Wells' utopian socialism, and Emerson's variety of nature worship, for example. But they were the exception that proved the rule, that political movements were for the most part, political. Also since the war, adherence to traditional religion has declined starkly. Attendance has fallen to all time lows in historically traditional churches (the glass palace evangelicals are another matter), and professed belief in a God, in general, is waning (particularly in Europe).
+
+I want to suggest that the inverse relationship between these two phenomena is not an accident. There has never been a stable atheistic civilization in the history of mankind. Even in places like the Soviet Union, where religion was opposed as a direct competitor to the communist state, and Christianity was pursued and persecuted with systematic efficiency, it never really died out. One could argue that something like atheism cannot be imposed from above, and so, this is a bad example as a result. But it still makes my point loud and clear: human beings crave religious structures - both cognitive and physical. And will build them, where they cannot find them already present.
+
+It has occurred to me that this is what is happening in the west, right now. As Christian hegemony recedes into the background of history, people sense the vacuum and begin to crave what they are missing. As a result of secular state education and cultural conditioning, people are so utterly detached from their own traditions, they have no choice but to seek the sacred wherever else they can find it. If I may bastardize the language of economics, if you couple the Christian church's loss of dominance in the market with this pent up demand, is it any wonder that there are so many entrepreneurs stepping into the void?
+
+What is fascinating, is that all of the entrepreneurial energy is coming from the radical left -- and most of it is utterly unconscious. They don't even realize, and would absolutely refuse to accept, that they are religious entrepreneurs. But that's what they are.
+
+I'm going to set aside the question of why the right -- in particular the traditionalist right -- doesn't seem to have any purchase in this space. That will be a discussion for another time. Instead, I want to focus on one aspect of the panoply of new religions vying for attention on the left. They're all Pelagian.
+
+Pelagianism is an ancient Catholic heresy. In a nutshell, the claim of Pelagius was that man did not need the grace of God in order to attain redemption. He needed merely to make the right choices, and by his own efforts, would thus save himself. The church, however, has always taken the view that man is a fallen creature (on account of the events in the Garden of Eden), and that he needed a hand-up from God himself, in order to attain his full salvation. His own efforts, while necessary, were not nearly enough.
+
+It isn't much of a leap from the "death of God" (famously declared in 1966), and the religious yearning for meaning, to see why an opportunity for a new religion would arise, *and* for why it would be primarily focused on self-redemption (or, at most, mutual redemption), rather than divine redemption. Nowhere is this more evident, than in Environmentalism, where visions of a future burning hellscape have haunted us for decades, and constant pleas from the movement to "make better choices", and "learn to live with less". Even in movements like Anti-Racism, where an original sin still exists in the form of "whiteness", you have something like a reverse-image Pelagianism. There is no hope of ever being freed from your iniquity, but you must still strive for salvific indulgence from people of color, anyway. It is your choice to actively do so, or else face the wrath of complete ostracism.
+
+But there is a wisdom to traditional Christianity, that all these movements are missing. *You cannot save yourself*. Man is imperfect and self-centered. His judgments are never ideal, as a result. So, redemption and salvation are literally impossible, without a divine intervention. There must be a judge "outside the system", as it were, capable of tuning it independently of men's judgments. When you seek your redemption in the eyes of another man, you are subordinating yourself to that man, not to the principle of justice. This is no justice at all. For the Christian, we are, all of us, sovereign individuals because of our individual relation to God. He made us, and sustains our lives, such as they are. So, any judgments we may render of each other, are judgments made relative to the principles God sets forth in scriptural doctrine. In other words, a transcendent absolute is necessary, because otherwise, no such thing as equal justice is possible.
+
+The point here is not to launch into a sermon. Rather, it is to highlight the fact that all of these entrepreneurial efforts to reboot religion in the image of man will utterly fail, because they pit men against men. We cannot redeem ourselves, because we're all stuck in the same muddy pit together. Like the famous bucket of crabs, the most we can hope for is to clamor on top of each other, and push others down in the hope of reaching the top of the bucket before someone else pushes us down. It is only when we look to a transcendent reality, that anything like salvific redemption is possible. Any such attempt to achieve this in a terrestrial context is a self-destructive illusion.
+
+The death of God did not bring the liberation of Man. Instead, it has brought renewed enslavement.

content/post/social-media-is-groupthink-programming.md

@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ draft: true
 
 {{< fluid_imgs "witch-trials|/img/witch-trials.jpg|Witch Trials" >}}
 
-I think something is deeply wrong with social media. Mainly, I think this about Twitter, but that may just be because Twitter is the most glaring symptom of whatever this problem is. The following is a short snippet from a podcast discussion between Joe Rogan and Jack Dorsey (dated **Feb. 2, 2019**). It's at the point where they're discussing the nature of the medium, and the various forms that content on Facebook and Twitter can take:
+I think something is deeply wrong with social media. Mainly, I think this about Twitter, but that may just be because Twitter is the most glaring symptom of whatever this problem is. The following is a short snippet from a podcast {{< newtab title="discussion between Joe Rogan and Jack Dorsey" url="https://open.spotify.com/episode/60pgpGgZmGuQ0E4ho0L99c" >}} (dated **Feb. 2, 2019**). It's at the point where they're discussing the nature of the medium, and the various forms that content on Facebook and Twitter can take:
 
 ----
 

content/post/sociopathy-dressed-up-as-bioethics.md

@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+---
+title: "Sociopathy Dressed Up as Bioethics"
+date: 2020-07-14T19:04:45Z
+tags: ["utilitarianism", "technocracy", "genocide"]
+topics: ["philosophy", "sociology", "psychology", "politics"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< youtube 3jWsc0cG0wI >}}
+
+This video is absolutely stunning in its brazenness. If this fellow is what the academy is producing, then it would seem that the whole job of the bioethicist is to invent new excuses that politicians and bureaucrats can use to expand the harm they do, without pricking their own consciences.
+
+Note the magician's sleight-of-hand trick he's playing, here. His opening gambit is "making risks tolerable". So, of course, everyone goes chasing off after "tolerable". But in actual fact, there is no "risk", here. Risk implies a probability of harm in some action. But infecting everyone means it's not a risk at all: It's a *certainty*. These human beings who 'volunteer' to be infected will be harmed. Whether or not they die from the infection is beside the point. Infecting people IS harming them.
+
+He then compares intentionally infecting people with a virus, to donating a kidney (again, only for the purpose of relative risk comparison). But this is insane. This is like saying that golf and American football are exactly the same, because they're both "sports".
+
+He then launches into a rationalization for picking one person out of twelve-thousand, whom they should be allowed to kill, in the name *not* of finding a vaccine, but only in the hope of finding it sooner. Sooner than what? This is an unfalsifiable counter-factual.
+
+Also, this is the classic medical version of the trolley problem. In the hypothetical situation, 12 people could be restored to full health, if the surgeon kills one person to harvest his organs for the other 12. But in this case, 1 person is killed, and there's no guarantee that anyone will be saved in the process.
+
+He then reiterates the kidney argument. Only this time, makes the mistake even more obvious. The kidney donor -- as he rightly points out - is making a fully informed consensual choice, and his choice WILL benefit one other person, a person that the donor values . But in the case of intentional infection, he openly admits, there is only a "potential" to help others somewhere else. The benefit is only probable, and highly abstract. In other words, this option is really about satisfying researcher preferences, not actually doing good medicine.
+
+All of this in six minutes. It's appalling to me, how far up their own asses these academics have crawled. The Q&A after the speech is almost entirely dedicated to relative mathematical probability calculations comparing infection and vaccine discovery. It's like we've handed our entire civilization over to a gaggle of autistic sociopaths.

content/post/steele-on-the-history-of-the-culture-war.md

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+---
+title: "Steele on the History of the Culture War"
+date: 2020-07-05T16:45:50Z
+tags: ["culture war", "liberalism", "conservatism"]
+topics: ["philosophy", "politics", "sociology"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "steele-shame|/img/steele-shame.jpg|Shelby Steele, Shame" >}}
+
+Shelby Steele, {{< newtab title="Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06XCK22Q2/" >}}
+
+----
+
+
+> [The modern left] and I come from two very different Americas. The shorthand for these two Americas might be “liberal” and “conservative,” but this would indeed be a shorthand. These labels once signified something much less incendiary than they do today; they were opposing political orientations, but they shared a common national identity. One was conservative or liberal but within a fairly non-contentious cultural understanding of what it meant to be American. But since the 1960s, “liberal” and “conservative” have come to function almost like national identities in their own right. To be one or the other is not merely to lean left or right—toward “labor” or toward “business”—within a common national identity; it is to belong to a different vision of America altogether, a vision that seeks to supersede the opposing vision and to establish itself as the nation’s common identity. Today the Left and the Right don’t work within a shared understanding of the national purpose; nor do they seek such an understanding. Rather, each seeks to win out over the other and to define the nation by its own terms.
+
+> It was all the turmoil of the 1960s—the civil rights and women’s movements, Vietnam, the sexual revolution, and so on—that triggered this change by making it clear that America could not go back to being the country it had been before. It would have to reinvent itself. It would have to become a better country. Thus, the reinvention of America as a country shorn of its past sins became an unspoken, though extremely powerful, mandate in our national politics. Liberals and conservatives could no longer think of themselves simply as political rivals competing within a common and settled American identity. That identity was no longer settled—or even legitimate—because it was stigmatized in the 1960s as racist, sexist, and imperialistic. The very legitimacy of our democratic society demanded that America be reimagined in the reverse of this stigmatization.
+
+> This sea change meant that American liberals and conservatives were called upon to fill a void, to articulate a new and legitimate American identity. It was no longer enough for the proponents of these perspectives merely to vie over the issues of the day. Both worldviews would now have to evolve into full-blown ideologies capable of projecting a new political and cultural vision of America. Both liberals and conservatives would have to revisit their first principles, seek philosophical coherence between their own view and contemporary events, enlist intellectuals, and engage in ongoing debate. In other words, people on both sides would have to conjure up an America unique to their own first principles and beliefs—an America that epitomized all they longed for. And it fell on both liberals and conservatives to fight for their own America, to demand that it prevail over the opposing vision of the nation—and to provide America with a new singular and unifying identity.
+
+> This is how the mandate of the 1960s to reinvent America launched the infamous “culture war” between liberalism and conservatism—a war that we Americans wage to this day with undiminished fervor. After the1960s, the American identity became a self-conscious mission in our politics, so that liberals and conservatives had to contend with each other over identity as well as public policy. When we argue over health care or immigration or Middle East policy, it is as if two distinct Americas were arguing, each with a different idea of what it means to be an American. And these arguments are intense and often uncivil, because each side feels that its American identity is at risk from the other side. So the conflict is very much a culture war, with each side longing for “victory” over the other, and each side seeing itself as America’s last and best hope.
+
+> This makes for a great irony in contemporary American life: although we have come very far in overcoming old sins, such as racism and sexism, we are in many ways more sharply divided than when those sins went largely unchallenged. The culture war drew us into a very polarizing progression in which liberalism and conservatism evolved into broad cultural identities that, in turn, sought to manifest themselves in actual territorial dominance—each hoping to ultimately become the nation’s singular identity. Since the 1960s, this war has divided up our culture into what might be called “identity territories.” America’s universities are now almost exclusively left-leaning; most public-policy think tanks are right-leaning. Talk radio is conservative; National Public Radio and the major television networks are liberal. On cable television, almost every news and commentary channel is a recognizable identity territory—Fox/right; MSNBC/left; CNN/left. In the print media our two great national newspapers are the liberal New York Times and the conservative Wall Street Journal (especially in the editorial pages). The Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Grants are left; the Bradley Prize is right. The blogosphere is notoriously divided by political stripe. And then there are “red” and “blue” states, cities, towns, and even neighborhoods. At election time, Americans can see on television a graphic of their culture war: those blue and red electoral maps that give us a virtual topography of political identity.
+
+> Today, a liberal or a conservative can proudly identify with the image of America projected by their chosen ideology in the same way that most Americans in the 1950s proudly identified with a victorious and prosperous postwar America. In the America envisioned by both ideologies, there is no racism or sexism or imperialism to be embarrassed by. After all, ideologies project idealized images of the near-perfect America that they promise to deliver. Thus, in one’s ideological identity, one can find the innocence that is no longer possible—since the 1960s—in America’s defamed national identity.
+
+> To announce oneself as a liberal or a conservative is like announcing oneself as a Frenchman or a Brit. It is virtually an announcement of tribal identity, and it means something much larger than ideology. To be a Brit is a God-given fate that is likely to stir far deeper passions than everyday political debates. Nationalism—the nationalist impulse—is passion itself; it is atavistic, beyond the reach of reason, a secular sacredness. The nationalist is expected to be intolerant of all opposition to his nation’s sovereignty, and is most often willing to defend that sovereignty with his life.
+
+> Well, when we let nationalism shape the form of our liberal or conservative identities—when we practice our ideological leaning as if it were a divine right, an atavism to be defended at all cost—then we put ourselves on a warlike footing. We feel an impunity toward our opposition, and we grant ourselves a scorched-earth license to fight back. They are not the other side of the same coin; they are a different coin altogether, a fundamentally illegitimate and alien force. And we are forgiven our bitterness and contempt for them….
+
+> ...For me, conservatism revolves around the principles and the disciplines of freedom, and through its lens I can see the America that I have always wanted. So, yes, like my young nemesis [a grad student that crashed a panel at the Aspen Institute], I could experience my ideology as a nationalism. But unlike him I wanted to discipline that impulse, to subject my ideology—and all the policies it fostered—to every sort of test of truth and effectiveness. And I was ready to modify accordingly, to disabuse myself of even long-held beliefs that didn’t pan out in reality. It was exactly this loyalty to fact over ideology that had driven me away from liberalism in the 1970s and 1980s into an appreciation of conservatism’s commitment to individual freedom. In other words, for me, ideology does not precede truth. Rather, truth, as best as we can know it, is always the test of ideology. I want my fervor for conservatism to be disciplined by a deep and abiding humility. Passion is one thing, but “true belief” is blindness.

content/post/systemic-racism-is-real.md

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+---
+title: "Systemic Racism Is Real"
+date: 2020-07-09T17:17:04Z
+tags: ["racism", "welfare state", "paternalism"]
+topics: ["philosophy", "sociology", "politics"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "civil-rights-protests|/img/civil-rights-protests.jpg|Civil Rights March" >}}
+
+Martin Luther King, Jr. was the last black leader to point Americans to the divine inspiration in the Declaration of Independence, and to make us face our own hypocrisy honestly. We shot him dead for it. In his place, we substituted Lyndon Johnson, who sold us a false absolution from white guilt through condescending paternalism that maintained the status quo by making it look like charity and radical liberation.
+
+In this sense, the complaints about ongoing systemic racism are true. Before the "Great Society" and the "War On Poverty", black America had been making enormous forward strides economically and culturally. After those programs took root, entire generations of blacks were lost to poverty, drugs, violent crime, and existential despair. The effect of Johnson's welfare state was not lost on his liberal allies, either. One of the most famous canaries in that coal mine was {{< newtab title="Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous report on 'The Negro Family' in 1965" url="https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/webid-moynihan" >}}. 
+
+The extent to which a man will go to hide his crimes from others, and his sins from himself, knows no bounds. And now, a new generation sensing intuitively that a crime has indeed been committed, but unable to understand what, or why, or how -- because my father's generation and my own generation has done such a good job of burying the evidence -- lashes out in fury and nihilism, destroying the very political principles it needs to achieve real justice, and leaving behind a trail of hideous crimes of it's own.
+
+And the cycle continues.

content/post/telos-is-arche.md

@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+---
+title: "Telos Is Arche"
+date: 2021-06-19T22:08:34Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+From {{< newtab title="Love, Friendship, Beauty, and the Good: Plato, Aristotle, and the Later Tradition" url="https://www.amazon.com/Love-Friendship-Beauty-Good-Aristotle/dp/153264549X" >}} by Kevin Corrigan:
+
+> *"...Just as teaching and learning involve two different subjects, but constitute a single activity (energeia) from different perspectives, so also what is an action or an external motive force from one viewpoint is a manifestation of the deepest reality from another viewpoint. The same activity involves two distinct subjects but is nonetheless a single activity seen from two different points of view. What is divine from one aspect may be quite human from another! At the same time, the Aristotelian scale of nature embodies a hierarchy of different developmental forms, the lower forms always requiring the higher forms for their fuller actualization and explanation. All lower forms, therefore, require the energy of higher-order forms to give them their meaning. God is not therefore an explanation or cause remote from worms, butterflies, hopes, and thoughts, but their ultimate and yet proper meaning present to them from the beginning. Their telos really is their archē."*
+

content/post/the-death-of-the-transcendent.md

@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+---
+title: "The Death of the Transcendent"
+date: 2021-06-13T21:30:02Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "psychology", "culture"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< youtube GBChoazsluM >}}
+
+The emptying out of The Beautiful has finally come to fruition. As a civilization, we now worship nihilism in truth thanks to Rorty, Derrida, Simon Blackburn and others; nihilism in goodness thanks to Russell, Mackie, Hare, Foucault, and others; and nihilism in beauty, thanks to a long train of motley vandals starting at the beginning of the 20th century (some of them mentioned here in Watson's video).
+
+All that remains is the final death throw of the civilization. I fear it will be a war.

content/post/the-flag-of-greg.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+title: "The Flag of Greg"
+date: 2021-09-20T22:55:41Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "politics"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+I never used to think much of manifestos. Marx made them notorious, and subsequent generations of university students have rendered them more and more purile and self-serving, in my mind. 
+
+But I'm beginning to change my mind on the topic. I think there is utility in commiting to a cause or a set of values that give shape an direction to one's life. I just think that one ought to refrain from doing so, until one is fully prepared to explain oneself. I'm pretty close to being able to do that, now.
+
+In preparation for subsequent pronouncements on the way the world "ought to be", I think a good start would be to produce an emblem or coat of arms or flag that symbolizes the core principles and ethos of that manifesto. Here's my first draft:
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "flag-of-greg|/img/flag-of-greg.png|The Flag of Greg" >}} 
+
+The Red-White-Blue overlapping diamond pattern is meant to harken back to the American flag, but the colors have new meanings, made explicit in the flag's central standard. The best life, and a stable society is only possible where truth is sought. The pursuit of truth is possible only where virtue is cultivated. The cultivation of virtue is only possible where liberty is guaranteed. And liberty is only guaranteed where the pursuit of truth is possible. Underlying all of this, is the bedrock source of all truth, virtue, and liberty: the supreme goodness, truth, and beauty of God. 
+
+I'll have much more to say about all of this in the coming months. But this is good enough for now.

content/post/the-four-boxes.md

@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+---
+title: "The Four Boxes"
+date: 2020-11-09T20:05:38Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["politics"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "bidens|/img/bidens.jpg|Biden Boys" >}}
+
+The following metaphor is an adaptation from South Carolina Senator Stephen Decatur Miller.
+
+Modern liberal democracy is made up of four boxes. Each box represents a fundamental individual liberty, but it also represents a level of escalation in the quest for individual sovereignty in a liberal state.
+
+The first is the "soap box". This metaphor still has its old meaning to this day. You want to change the system? Well, the freedom of speech gives you the power to persuade your fellow citizens or your leaders.
+
+The second is the "ballot box". This isn't a metaphor, but a direct call to electoral politics. Where you are unsuccessful at convincing your leaders to change their ways, you have the power to either vote against them, or run against them yourself.
+
+The third is the "jury box". Again, this isn't so much a metaphor, as a veiled threat. Supposing things have gotten so corrupt that neither speech nor elections work. This alternative would only be available if either civil litigation or criminal charges could be brought and properly prosecuted.
+
+The last, is the "ammo box". In this situation, things have gotten so bad, that the only alternative is physical self-defense, or worse, open civil war.
+
+The originator of this metaphor was a Senator of South Carolina in 1830. He and his colleagues took it very seriously, as evidenced by the events that took place just 13 years later.
+
+I think the United States was hovering somewhere between soap box and ballot box until very recently. But given the sorry state of broadcast and print media, and the heavy-handed censoriousness and china-pandering of the social media giants, it's pretty clear that there won't be a soap box anymore, by the end of Joe Biden's "presidency".
+
+And now, given what we've seen take place over the last seven days, I think it's crystal clear that the the "ballot box" option is fading into nostalgia as well. So, given the political parties' willingness to engage in open censorship, and the their brazen willingness to fuck with the electoral process, it seems clear that we are transitioning into jury box territory.
+
+If Donald Trump's challenges come to nothing (and I suspect they will), then we are headed for a very bumpy decade. I hope your children are field trained on the AR-15, because they're going to need it.

content/post/the-garden-of-liberty.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+title: "The Garden of Liberty"
+date: 2021-07-04T22:39:18Z
+tags: []
+topics: ["philosophy", "culture", "politics"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< youtube TpLnQbeRyFE >}}
+
+This is a fantastic video. Highly recommend, especially today.
+
+Just a few caveats:
+
+1. He over-emphasizes Milton, and under-emphasizes the influence of Locke and Rousseau. Milton actually precedes Locke by about 25 years, and Rousseau by about 100 years. Milton was a proto-Enlightenment figure, who's literary work seeded the ground for Enlightenment political philosophy (much the same way that Dostoevsky seeded the ground for Nietzsche and Marx after him).
+
+2. He characterizes Milton's understanding of "rights" by reading Jefferson and Madison's view backward into him. But Jefferson's view (and Madison's view to a lesser extent) was one in which rights are becoming distinct from responsibilities, as a result of Jefferson's fascination with the French Revolution. Locke, on the other hand, has a very different understanding of "rights", as can be seen from his First Treatise on Government. Empire of the Mind is right to point to the Garden of Eden and The Fall of Man, as the origin of human liberty. But what he misses, is that The Fall imposed duties upon us, that we did not have in The Garden. Namely, God has sentenced us to toil on the land, in penance for our hubris. Locke read that as meaning that a right to property was a burden placed upon us necessary to fulfill our heavenly sentence -- and, that no man could relieve us of that burden, because it was imposed on each of us individually, by God himself. What's more, because we are the direct creation of Him, and the work of one's hands is what gives rise to ownership, we were therefore "owned" by God, and no man had any right to take from God what was not his to take.
+
+This biblical understanding of individual sovereignty would have been more like what Milton had in mind. But by the time we get to Madison and Jefferson, the idea of individual sovereignty had become something more like a divine entitlement, than a divine burden. This is where natural law and the agrarian sensibilities of Jefferson and Adams come in handy, in a practical sense, because they provide the moral and practical impediment to libertinism that was missing in the French Revolution.
+
+Still, the interpretation this fellow takes is incredibly interesting. He reminds me very much of Wendell Berry, who I highly recommend reading, if you get a chance. He's sort of a "soft" agrarian conservative (though he would not say that about himself). Anyway, enjoy the video, and happy 4th.

content/post/the-pope-of-platitudes.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+title: "The Pope of Platitudes"
+date: 2020-11-28T20:26:17Z
+tags: ["francis", "covid", "great reset"]
+topics: ["theology", "philosophy", "culture"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "pope-of-platitudes|/img/pope-of-platitudes.jpg|Pope Of Platitudes" >}}
+
+Today, I had a little extra time, so I was going to write a response to the {{< newtab title="Op-Ed piece that Pope Francis recently published in the New York Times" url="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/pope-francis-covid.html" >}}. Seeing as how he's such a prominent figure in the culture today, I thought it might spice up the feed to delve into current events and do an analysis. However, after reading through this twaddle twice, I have to say I found it utterly vapid and unworthy of anything like a serious critique.
+
+Reading this piece was like listening to my 85 year old grandfather grouse about a random litany of personal and social problems ("you kids, these days!!" ), with no real point other than to vent frustration. There wasn't even an attempt at deploying any coherent theology in this missive. It was just one sentimental bromide after another.
+
+He bemoans our obsessive focus on "self-preservation" and laments our exploitable "anxiety", but blames it on "feverish consumerism" and an "ideological" commitment to "personal freedom". Worse, he offers *not one argument* in defense of this position. If you're not going to bother to support the bald assertion that "consumerism" is responsible for our present mass-neurosis, then I have no reason to take you any more seriously than my curmudgeonly grandfather.
+
+He rightly points out that boots-on-the-ground practical know-how can often provide far better expertise in specific circumstances, than can a credentialed expert (as exhibited in the nursing care he received contrary to doctors' orders, when he was 21). But then scolds us all to shut up and do as we're told by our government technocrats, because they have "the good of the people" as their mission.
+
+He rightly points out that we should be working to increase opportunities for the poor to gain access to "land, lodging, and labour", but completely ignores the last 100 years of history in which precisely this work has been done under the aegis of a *free market*, flatly asserting instead without argument (again), that we "cannot return to the false securities of the... economic systems we had before the crisis..." and that we need to "dream big" (whatever that means).
+
+All in all, this editorial was an ejaculation of vacuous and confused emotional nonsense. I don't know exactly what effect Francis was expecting this piece to have, but I can sort of see why the mainstream press is totally in love with this man. He's not difficult, and he surely isn't going to challenge you.

content/post/the-regression-of-libertarianism.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+title: "The Regression of Libertarianism"
+date: 2020-09-15T19:14:44Z
+tags: ["libertarianism", "new hampshire", "free state"]
+topics: ["politics"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+When I was in my late twenties, American Libertarianism was very attractive to me, because of the intellectual tradition. F. A. Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, David Boaz, and the English heritage of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, all appealed to me greatly because it seemed to offer both a logical explanation for the state, as well as a moral foundation for its legitimacy.
+
+Some of that intellectual tradition remains with me to this day. I do not think that the Liberal intellectual answer to Hayek's challenge in Law, Liberty, and Legislation has ever impressed me. But there is something deeply wrong with Libertarianism, at least as it has constituted itself in the United States -- and there is no better exemplar of the symptoms of this flaw, than the Free State Project movement in New Hampshire over the last 15 years.
+
+The Free State Project, when it was first proposed, was initially extremely interesting to me (I lived in Vermont at the time). But, after a few summers in Keene, slopping around at the infamous "Porcfest" events there, it became viscerally clear to me, that none of these people had any idea why they were doing what they were doing, beyond the satisfaction of their own immediate libertine desires. The only difference between the Free Keene people, and the old Haight-Ashbury acid-tripping hippies, is an unhealthy fetish for guns.
+
+Flash forward from 2005 to 2020, and not much has changed for them. Though, it does seem that a more "conservative" strain of libertinism has opened up in the movement. "Free Keene" and the "Free State Project" are now estranged from each other. The "Free State Project" remains wedded to the old right-wing anarcho-capitalist separatism, while the "Free Keene" folks have taken up the mantle of radical leftist political self-expression (i.e. "trans rights" ), and they don't seem to be getting along with each other very well.
+
+What they still have in common is that neither of them yet take the political process very seriously, and are determined to make a mockery of it. I used to resent New Hampshire locals who tended to lock Libertarians out of the process. Now, I sort of sympathize with them. {{< newtab title="What is presently going on in New Hampshire" url="https://newsflash.one/2020/09/12/transgender-satanist-anarchist-wins-republican-nomination-for-new-hampshire-county-sheriff/" >}} is a juvenile clown show, and I can just imagine how dismayed the normal work-a-day folks must be at having to deal with these lunatics.
+
+----
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "libertarianism|/img/libertarianism.png|Libertarianism" >}}

content/post/two-visions-of-justice.md

@@ -5,6 +5,8 @@ tags: ["justice", "equality", "liberty"]
 topics: ["philosophy"]
 draft: false
 ---
+{{< fluid_imgs "justice|/img/lady-justice.png|Lady Justice" >}}
+
 In 1974, Robert Nozick wrote a lengthy response to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, called "Anarchy, State, and Utopia". One of Nozick's core critiques of Rawls, centers around a characterization of the kind of Justice that Rawls was advocating. Nozick called it, the justice of "patterned distributions".
 
 Famously, Nozick argued against a fixed "patterned distribution" of wealth, using the metaphor of famous basketball player Wilt Chamberlain. The entire allegory is too much for this post but to summarize briefly, he pointed out through this metaphor that, given a regime of voluntary individual exchanges which, are ostensibly morally acceptable even on Rawls conception of patterned justice, the only way to maintain a fixed pattern of distribution, would be through the application of force, which itself could be construed as unjust, on Rawls' own theory.

content/post/where-are-all-the-old-people.md

@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+title: "Where Are All the Old People?"
+date: 2020-09-22T19:28:33Z
+tags: ["storytelling", "age", "generations"]
+topics: ["philosophy", "culture"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+{{< fluid_imgs "old-man|/img/old-man.jpg|Old Man" >}}
+
+TV Shows are the dominant popular performing art form of the last 60 years. If you look at the most exemplary shows, one trend stands out: the viewership has gradually become radically homogeneous, and self-centered. This can be seen in the characters portrayed.
+
+Beginning with I Love Lucy and The Dick van Dyke show, right up to Black Mirror and The Good Place, one thing is clear: old people are anathema. Where, originally, there was always a mix of age groups and generations, now there is a sea of nothing but 20-to-40-somethings. Sometimes, you'll find a character in his old age, but invariably, this character will be treated as wicked or avoidable. Think
+
+Recall these shows:
+
+I Love Lucy: Lucy and Desi had Fred and Ethel, who were at least a decade or so senior, if not a generation older. Lucy and Desi took advice from them frequently, on account of their age and experience. And there were many other older couples in the show, as well.
+
+Bonanza: Lorne Greene was the patriarch of the show, and there was an entire town full of people of all ages, toddler to elderly, who played roles in various episodes.
+
+All In The Family: Archie and Edith were the central focus of the show, but they were surrounded by the younger generation, in the form of his son and daughter in law, and his neighbor Jefferson, while middle-aged, was still younger than Archie by about a decade or so.
+
+The Waltons and Eight Is Enough: Huge families, ages again ranging from toddler to elderly. Plot lines in these shows often involved inter-generational conflict, much like All In The Family.
+
+The Bill Cosby Show (the 80s one, not the 60s one): This show was a constant patchwork quilt of different age groups. From the extremely aged, down to toddlers. I only occasionally watched it myself (because it was out of my demographic), but the mix of generations was an obvious component of this show.
+
+Cheers: Even THIS show had 'Coach', in the first two seasons.
+
+Seinfeld: The parents of Jerry and George played a huge role throughout the life of the program.
+
+House: Being a hospital, it's hard not to have plot lines involving elderly people. But, of course, House himself is well over 50. And his boss Cuddy is obviously reaching the 50 mark by the end of the series.
+
+Now, look at most everything from roughly the year 2000, to now. Even shows like Game of Thrones had almost no elderly characters. There are two elderly's that stands out the loudest: Walder Frey, and the High Sparrow (Jonathan Price). Both turned out to be the most evil of the bunch, and eventually Walder had his throat slit by one of the YOUNGEST of the cast.
+
+Over the last year or so, I've watched three programs: Black Mirror (2011-2018), Tales From The Loop (2020), and The Good Place. Black Mirror never had a character in it older than 50. The Good Place (2016 - 2019), the same. Even the Ted Danson character was made to look like he was in his late 40's (stylish dress, salt-and-pepper hair, etc). The Loop has Jonathan Pryce playing the ONE elderly grandfather in the show, but he dies in the third episode of the first season, and has a questionable past. Everyone else appears to be 50 or younger. Even the asian woman's parents are barely old enough to count as her parents.
+
+What is going on here? I tossed out a speculation at the beginning of this rant, but maybe that's too cynical. Could it be that the producers of these shows simply can't imagine what it's like to be anything other than working age? Is it that the market is so fragmented now, that shows are tailored specifically to mirror back exactly what certain people see in themselves already? Is it that the society has become so young that it simply has no notion of what its like to live around older people? Given the fact that the US is demographically *much* older than it used to be, this seems unlikely.

content/post/yes-virginia-there-is-meaning.md

@@ -6,6 +6,8 @@ topics: ["philosophy", "theology"]
 draft: false
 ---
 
+{{< fluid_imgs "gods-truth|/img/gods-truth.jpg|God's Truth" >}}
+
 In a [recent exchange between Douglas Murray and N. T. Wright on the Unbelievable? Podcast](https://unbelievable.podbean.com/e/nt-wright-and-douglas-murray-identity-myth-miracles-how-do-we-live-in-a-post-christian-world/), Douglas poses the following conundrum:
 
 Is it the case that we are meaning-seeking beings, or, that we are meaning-seeking beings *and there is meaning to seek*?