May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022Liked by John Ganz
I find it really striking how much the entire contemporary American Right despises actually existing America. This holds true whether it’s the Claremont Institute, the Catholic integralists, white evangelicals, or Donald Trump himself—along with his Republican allies in Congress and state-level politics and the decidedly non-intellectual right-wing media outlets ranging from FOX, Sinclair, and Breitbart to OANN and InfoWars. From the highbrow to the vulgar, they are constantly talking about how much they are losing, even though on so many fronts (the courts, electoral politics, a lot of policy areas ranging from abortion to voting rights to government regulation) they are either winning or extremely competitive.
I don’t recall Reagan and his supporters presenting America in and of itself as being so disgustingly corrupted; to the contrary, they constantly maintained the US was the greatest country in the world and was only being held back by liberal bureaucrats and their allies in the Democratic Party. And this, at a time in which the Democratic Party was still more ambitious in its liberalism (ie, had yet to embrace Clinton-style neoliberalism and triangulation), and when organized labor was far stronger than it is today.
This Reaganite view continued into the George W. Bush era, at least as far as mainstream conservatism was concerned. Nowadays Republicans, and conservatives in general, are openly nihilistic and spiteful (“own the libs”) to an unprecedented extent. It’s really strange…and frightening.
"...Slavery is against nature, because it treats human beings like subhuman chattel. Sodomy is against nature, since it treats men as if they were women.”
Dude does *not* understand consent. Slaves did not consent to being slaves. Gay people consent to gay sex (and when they don't, it's bad qua rape, not bad qua gay).
"Oh, but he said that both slavery and gayness would be wrong even if everyone liked it! Are you going to say that slavery would *not* be wrong if everyone liked it? So he already anticipated your point about consent!"
No, he didn't, he just put forward a specious argument that muddied the water and missed the point.
"He [Mohr] and I [Jaffa] agree that ‘slavery would be wrong even if nearly everyone liked it.’ "
That conflates two hypotheticals:
1) "nearly everyone" of the enslavers and general non-slave public approves of and consents to the forced and involuntary captivity and labor exploitation of the enslaved population. I agree that this is slavery, and that it's still wrong, no matter how many non-slaves like it.
2) "nearly everyone" of the putative enslaved population is living voluntarily in a situation in which they work under certain conditions that they control, and which they can voluntarily leave whenever they want to. They can give and withhold effectual consent to their status and conditions at any time if they don't like them. In that case, I judge that it's not wrong any more: *because it's not slavery any more*.
Jaffa pretends that he has shown us that slavery would be wrong even if the slaves voluntarily consented to it. But that's a nonsense hypothetical: voluntary slavery, slavery in which contemporaneous consent is required for the continuation of the condition, is not slavery at all.
I don't say that it's the defining failure of the conservative mind, but the inability to understand the role of consent in morality is amazingly widespread among conservatives.
must be so tempting to third-rate minds to go over to the right and instantly become philosopher-kings just for being able to read without moving your lips
May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022Liked by John Ganz
(Sorry to comment twice, and so long elsewhere, but, bigoted, I'm particularly upset when I learn of a fellow-Jew who really ought to know better.)
Queer and feminist theory owes Harry Jaffa thanks for his inadvertent contribution to the theoretical basis of intersectionality.
Did anyone point-out to Dr Jaffa that racists are all about his observation, transformed to:
¤'Racial equality is against nature, since it treats white men as if they were black men.'
…? His likely response that this version would be a perversion stems from his reading of the Declaration of Independence, but any good Originalist or other spirit medium could tell you that this were likely not what most of the Founders believed.
May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022Liked by John Ganz
The opening quote brings to mind my belief that the people screaming (excuse the vulgarities) 'Fuck your feelings.' really mean 'Fuck _your_ feelings!', as opposed to theirs, which must be taken for facts or you're not an American.
(Has anyone asked Glenn Ellmers about the practical distance between 'not really Americans' and 'not really human'? Are the not-really-American to be killed, expelled, or graciously allowed to be non-citizen 'subjects'? Are there any ideological Mischlinge?)
Beside the few whose real freedom would be increased by orders of magnitude by the correct authoritarianism, there are millions whose vicarious feeling of freedom born of identifying with those few would dwarf that gained from mere civil liberties. If you don't own a press, what is press freedom next to feeling as one with someone who can (e.g.) impunitively make those who displease them suffer?
See also:
'Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations'
(Aleister Crowley was a bad man, but not stupid, and right more often than a stopped clock. )
Your last paragraph here strikes me as totally consonant with the Frankfurt School analysis of fascism, and it's special emphasis on inversion: accusing those trying to save the nation of trying to destroy it, snatching the mantle of the Chosen People from the Jews for themselves. Any thoughts about the centrality of this kind of rhetorical inversion to fascist movements? Is it just a case, as Corey Robin argues, of right wing movements always borrowing from the left?
Christopher Caldwell's work is an endless source of legal and constitutional misinterpretations aka lies.
Last month I had the pleasure of introducing Caldwell's paean to the old anti-American French leftist Regis Debray to Debray's daughter Laurence (a nice Spanish royalist) thus making another proof of horseshoe theory.
I find it really striking how much the entire contemporary American Right despises actually existing America. This holds true whether it’s the Claremont Institute, the Catholic integralists, white evangelicals, or Donald Trump himself—along with his Republican allies in Congress and state-level politics and the decidedly non-intellectual right-wing media outlets ranging from FOX, Sinclair, and Breitbart to OANN and InfoWars. From the highbrow to the vulgar, they are constantly talking about how much they are losing, even though on so many fronts (the courts, electoral politics, a lot of policy areas ranging from abortion to voting rights to government regulation) they are either winning or extremely competitive.
I don’t recall Reagan and his supporters presenting America in and of itself as being so disgustingly corrupted; to the contrary, they constantly maintained the US was the greatest country in the world and was only being held back by liberal bureaucrats and their allies in the Democratic Party. And this, at a time in which the Democratic Party was still more ambitious in its liberalism (ie, had yet to embrace Clinton-style neoliberalism and triangulation), and when organized labor was far stronger than it is today.
This Reaganite view continued into the George W. Bush era, at least as far as mainstream conservatism was concerned. Nowadays Republicans, and conservatives in general, are openly nihilistic and spiteful (“own the libs”) to an unprecedented extent. It’s really strange…and frightening.
"...Slavery is against nature, because it treats human beings like subhuman chattel. Sodomy is against nature, since it treats men as if they were women.”
Dude does *not* understand consent. Slaves did not consent to being slaves. Gay people consent to gay sex (and when they don't, it's bad qua rape, not bad qua gay).
"Oh, but he said that both slavery and gayness would be wrong even if everyone liked it! Are you going to say that slavery would *not* be wrong if everyone liked it? So he already anticipated your point about consent!"
No, he didn't, he just put forward a specious argument that muddied the water and missed the point.
"He [Mohr] and I [Jaffa] agree that ‘slavery would be wrong even if nearly everyone liked it.’ "
That conflates two hypotheticals:
1) "nearly everyone" of the enslavers and general non-slave public approves of and consents to the forced and involuntary captivity and labor exploitation of the enslaved population. I agree that this is slavery, and that it's still wrong, no matter how many non-slaves like it.
2) "nearly everyone" of the putative enslaved population is living voluntarily in a situation in which they work under certain conditions that they control, and which they can voluntarily leave whenever they want to. They can give and withhold effectual consent to their status and conditions at any time if they don't like them. In that case, I judge that it's not wrong any more: *because it's not slavery any more*.
Jaffa pretends that he has shown us that slavery would be wrong even if the slaves voluntarily consented to it. But that's a nonsense hypothetical: voluntary slavery, slavery in which contemporaneous consent is required for the continuation of the condition, is not slavery at all.
I don't say that it's the defining failure of the conservative mind, but the inability to understand the role of consent in morality is amazingly widespread among conservatives.
must be so tempting to third-rate minds to go over to the right and instantly become philosopher-kings just for being able to read without moving your lips
(Sorry to comment twice, and so long elsewhere, but, bigoted, I'm particularly upset when I learn of a fellow-Jew who really ought to know better.)
Queer and feminist theory owes Harry Jaffa thanks for his inadvertent contribution to the theoretical basis of intersectionality.
Did anyone point-out to Dr Jaffa that racists are all about his observation, transformed to:
¤'Racial equality is against nature, since it treats white men as if they were black men.'
…? His likely response that this version would be a perversion stems from his reading of the Declaration of Independence, but any good Originalist or other spirit medium could tell you that this were likely not what most of the Founders believed.
The opening quote brings to mind my belief that the people screaming (excuse the vulgarities) 'Fuck your feelings.' really mean 'Fuck _your_ feelings!', as opposed to theirs, which must be taken for facts or you're not an American.
(Has anyone asked Glenn Ellmers about the practical distance between 'not really Americans' and 'not really human'? Are the not-really-American to be killed, expelled, or graciously allowed to be non-citizen 'subjects'? Are there any ideological Mischlinge?)
Beside the few whose real freedom would be increased by orders of magnitude by the correct authoritarianism, there are millions whose vicarious feeling of freedom born of identifying with those few would dwarf that gained from mere civil liberties. If you don't own a press, what is press freedom next to feeling as one with someone who can (e.g.) impunitively make those who displease them suffer?
See also:
'Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations'
(Aleister Crowley was a bad man, but not stupid, and right more often than a stopped clock. )
(For a _different_ photo of him:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/60947-truth-truth-truth-crieth-the-lord-of-the-abyss-of
)
Your last paragraph here strikes me as totally consonant with the Frankfurt School analysis of fascism, and it's special emphasis on inversion: accusing those trying to save the nation of trying to destroy it, snatching the mantle of the Chosen People from the Jews for themselves. Any thoughts about the centrality of this kind of rhetorical inversion to fascist movements? Is it just a case, as Corey Robin argues, of right wing movements always borrowing from the left?
Ellmers's essay last year was pure fascism.
Christopher Caldwell's work is an endless source of legal and constitutional misinterpretations aka lies.
Last month I had the pleasure of introducing Caldwell's paean to the old anti-American French leftist Regis Debray to Debray's daughter Laurence (a nice Spanish royalist) thus making another proof of horseshoe theory.