To oppose “rationalism” is not to oppose reason; rather, it is to oppose a particular conception of reason, a conception according to which the intellect is “omnicompetent,” judge, jury, and, if need be, executioner of all traditions, institutions, customs, and laws that fail to vindicate themselves before its bar. The notions that nations can be “built,” societies “engineered,” and governments “justified” by “the consent” of their subjects or the extent to which they promote “human rights,” are alike the progeny of rationalism.
Before commencing, I should thank readers generally, and Joseph McMillan in particular, for having taken the time to engage my last two articles, “Neo-conservatism vs. Classical Conservatism,” and “Rationalism and ‘the Founding’ of America.” Self-identified conservatives of all stripes can only benefit from a candid conversation on the meaning (or meanings) of the intellectual tradition from whose resources they claim to draw their identity. In my experience, however, this conversation has yet to transpire, for a genuine conversation demands civility, intellectual honesty, and, in short, good will, but these conditions severally, much less collectively, are seldom if ever satisfied by partisans in this debate. Mr. MacMillan, I believe, as well as some others whose comments I have read, have proven themselves exceptions to this rule. For this, I thank them.
My gratitude to my respondents aside, their thought-provoking comments are not for that accurate. Thus, it is my purpose here to dispel both their misconceptions concerning my position and the confusion regarding their own. Let me begin with the first part of McMillan’s response to my “Neo-conservatism v. Classical Conservatism.”
(1). McMillan writes that since his “primitive instinct conjures up a vision of blood on the floor” upon seeing “the word ‘versus,’ or its abbreviation ‘v.’,” the title of my article proved misleading, for I not only failed to achieve a “knock out” in favor of my conception of conservatism, I didn’t even attempt to “draw blood.” He then laments: “At the risk of being unkind, I fear that the article provides a sort of summary of the assumptions underlying each ‘brand’ of conservatism, or Conservatism without a commentary of the ‘fight’ itself.”
McMillan should rest easily, for his remarks are not unkind. In fact, they are partially correct. My primary objective was indeed to offer nothing other than a relatively succinct summation of the formal or philosophical presuppositions of classical conservative and neo-conservative thought. I stated as much at the very outset of the article. As for the charge that I failed to provide “commentary” on “the fight” between these two schools, I confess that I am uncertain as to in what exactly such a “commentary” would consist. If we insist on using McMillan’s boxing metaphors, I suppose I can say only that by delineating key differences between these two visions, I both established the conflict as well as provided some commentary on it: the stances that each persuasion assumes on such major philosophical issues as the origins and character of reason, morality, and the State are “the punches” that each hurls at the other. There is more that can be said, of course, but given spatial limitations, I could only say so much.
(2). I did not, or at least I did not intend, to “denigrate” neo-conservatism by referring to it as a version of Enlightenment liberal rationalism. I tried to show that given their trans-historical conceptions of Reason and morality — conceptions that rose to dominance during the eighteenth-century and that found expression in such documents as our Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man — neo-conservatives locate themselves squarely within this camp. Aside from noting that there were differences between the American and French revolutions — and practical differences there indeed were — I don’t think that many neo-conservatives would take exception to this description. In any event, I can’t imagine tenable grounds on which they could.
The Enlightenment was anything but an intellectually homogenous project. Classical conservatism is no less a contributor to it than, say, Jeffersonian liberalism. What many have called “the Enlightenment project” consists of multiple currents of thought, some of which are in stark conflict with one another. Furthermore, classical conservatism — again, the conservatism for which Burke can and has rightfully been credited with inspiring — is as much an expression of “liberalism” as neo-conservatism or libertarianism. Burke and Hume in the eighteenth century, and F.A. Hayek and Michael Oakeshott in the twentieth, are conservatives, but they are equally liberals. Their suspicion of large concentrations of power, respect for private property rights, and affirmation of individuality and plurality go some distance in establishing this. The fundamental distinction between classical conservatives and neo-conservatives, what makes them competing accounts of Enlightenment liberalism, is that the latter is rationalistic while the former is not.
(3). This brings me to the third of McMillan’s objections. Because I draw attention to the fact that conservatives have always recognized the tradition-constituted character of reason, McMillan identifies classical conservatism as a species of “irrationality.” This conservative notion of reason “implies that reason is the product of a ‘tradition’ not itself based on ‘reason.’ We could then call it ‘irrational tradition.’” There are two points to bear in mind at this juncture.
First, to oppose “rationalism” is not to oppose reason; rather, it is to oppose a particular conception of reason, a conception according to which the intellect is “omnicompetent,” judge, jury, and, if need be, executioner of all traditions, institutions, customs, and laws that fail to vindicate themselves before its bar. The notions that nations can be “built,” societies “engineered,” and governments “justified” by “the consent” of their subjects or the extent to which they promote “human rights,” are alike the progeny of rationalism.
Second, to equate the classical conservative’s tradition-based conception of reason with an endorsement of irrationality is to beg the question in favor of the rationalism that he rejects. As any remotely sober assessment of it readily reveals, the concept of reason has a storied past: it is susceptible of multiple variations or conceptions, each of which reflects the sensibilities of particular peoples living in particular places and at particular times. The idea that Reason is prior to and hence independent of all tradition, an idea that McMillan apparently favors, is but one conception of reason among others. It is fine if he wants to maintain it, but it is something for which he needs to supply an argument. It is illegitimate to assume, as he assumes, its superiority in advance of the discussion when one of the principal goals of that discussion is to determine which conception of reason is rationally superior.
To this, no doubt, McMillan will direct me back to his column where he rhetorically asks: if reason is the product of tradition, "what instituted the ‘tradition’ in the first place?"
It is understandable that appeals to “tradition” should in no time lapse into confusion. Everyone, especially self-styled conservatives, refers to “tradition” from time to time, but by virtue of the many disparate contexts in which it finds expression, the term has been made to sustain a range of meanings: the Christian tradition, the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, the Thanksgiving traditions of eating turkey and watching football, the Marxist tradition, family traditions, etc. There is certainly some sense in which each of these activities can be said to be “traditions.” But when Burke and other conservatives have insisted that reason is constituted by tradition, it is something else that they have had in mind.
The “tradition” of which reason is the product is a tradition of conduct, or what Michael Oakeshott called a “tradition of behavior.” As John Donne said, “no man is an island.” The identity of each person is derived from the historically and culturally specific complex of relationships in which he or she is immersed. That is, each person’s “mind” — his experiences, feelings, skills, and values — is begotten by the form of life — the tradition — to which he belongs. This is not to deny that the son becomes the father, however, for mind or reason (I use the terms interchangeably) in turn furthers the development of the tradition from whence it sprang.
For purposes of clarity, it would serve us well to think of a tradition in this sense analogously with a natural language. Natural languages have an internal logic, a systemic order, and they fulfill a variety of purposes, yet not for a second would anyone seriously suggest that they have been rationally designed. Since there is no one who originally “instituted” any of our natural languages, just as there is no one who originally “instituted” our traditions of conduct, is McMillan willing to argue, as he argued in the case of the latter, that our natural languages are “irrational” or devoid of thought? It would seem that by parity of reasoning he would have to draw this conclusion.
We learn about ourselves and our world through the language(s) that we speak. It is with justice that it can be said of language that it constitutes who we are. In order to modify or revise a language, one must first speak it. But one learns to speak a language only by speaking it with others. Similarly, reason and, for that matter, morality (both of which are inseparable from language), while shapers of tradition, are products of it as well. That we are, first of all, engaging in this particular discussion, and that, secondly, we are capable of doing so, are facts made possible by a shared language and a heritage that neither we nor anyone created. In short, tradition precedes theory, even if the latter can in turn contribute to (or corrupt) the development of the former.
(4). By now I hope that classical conservatism’s idea of tradition is becoming clearer. But we should still turn to McMillan’s enlistment of Albert Schweitzer in his campaign to discredit its tradition-based conception of morality. Of Darwin and Spencer, Schweitzer says “that they have not gone to the root of the problem of the relation between instinct and reflection [individual reason] in ethics.” Darwin and Spencer may very well have not provided an adequate account of the relationship between the individual’s instincts and his reason, but by dichotomizing ethics in terms of “instincts” or “reason,” Schweitzer’s project runs aground.
For the conservative, there is something of no small importance in addition to and lying between individual instinct and individual reason. As F.A. Hayek persuasively argued in his The Fatal Conceit, and as I have tried to show above, this something is “tradition” — a more or less shared way of life.
For rooting morality in tradition, the classical conservative makes himself vulnerable to the charge that he is a “relativist.” “Ethical relativism,” considered as a doctrine that asserts that there is no “objective” or “universal” or “absolute” moral truth, is itself a manifestation of rationalism. The relativist “absolutizes” the relative, as it were. In contrast, the classical conservative tends to eschew such dogmatisms. His is a more nuanced position, a healthy combination (though, admittedly, not a seamless one) of, on the one hand, a keen awareness of and profound appreciation for the tradition-specific character of our moral judgments (their temporal and cultural hue), and, on the other, an openness to the possibility that they are true in a sense that transcends the tradition from which they unfold.
Take the issue of slavery, for example. There are no Americans today who would even flirt with the notion that slavery might be a good thing. Leftists — including and especially, ironically enough, those who identify themselves as “relativists” — incessantly berate the United States as a “racist” nation because of the fact that it once practiced slavery, and even neo-conservatives who never tire of expressing their reverence for our Founding Fathers describe slavery as “reprehensible,” “repugnant” (Sean Hannity) and “criminal” (Michael Medved). But if slavery was a “crime,” then it follows that George Washington — the “Father” of our country — and Thomas Jefferson — the author of that document, the Declaration of Independence, that supposedly embodies our “national creed” — were criminals. If slavery is reprehensible and repugnant, then Washington, Jefferson, and all of our Founding Fathers, to say nothing of many others who made enormous contributions to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual traditions of Western civilization — men like Aristotle, Jesus, and St. Paul — were also reprehensible and repugnant. Aristotle articulated a defense of “natural slavery,” and while neither Jesus nor Paul ever explicitly defended it, neither condemned it in spite of having had numerous opportunities to do so.
This list of illustrations of great and even magnanimous Western figures endorsing practices and institutions that we today judge immoral can be multiplied exponentially. If it is a universal moral truth that “slavery is a ‘crime’ against humanity,” a proposition, say, to be deduced from the “self-evident” claim that “all people have a ‘right’ to liberty,” then Aristotle, whose treatises on logic remained normative in the West for well over two millennia after he wrote them and that continue to exert influence to this day, must have been an intellectual and moral idiot for not recognizing it. Jesus — who the greater part of the Western world for nearly 2,000 years has viewed as God incarnate — also must have been rationally inept and morally unenlightened, for given the great numbers of people that he attracted, he surely would have invoked tirelessly “the inalienable rights” of all humankind to life and liberty in condemning slavery, which was ubiquitous throughout the Roman Empire under which he lived. But alas, not once did he so much as insinuate that it was wrong and he even taught in parables — the parables of the “talents” and the ungrateful “servant,” etc. — that reinforced the status quo in this respect. St. Paul, without whose inexhaustible evangelistic efforts Christianity more likely than not would have perished before the end of the first century, must have been a moral monster, for he went beyond the realm of theory and encouraged the institution of slavery by convincing a run-away slave to actually return to his master.
None of this is to suggest that we are not justified in condemning slavery today, but not even the most unabashed moral universalist would say of any of the people to whom I have referred that they are deserving of any less respect or, in the case of Christ especially, reverence, for having failed to condemn it. In any case, no moral universalist of a neo-conservative persuasion, to my knowledge, has of yet to declare Jefferson, Washington, Aristotle, Jesus, or Paul a cretin. In fact, these men elicit unqualified praise from them. Would the same universalist, though, refrain from condemning say, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or any other contemporary figure who approved of slavery, much less owned slaves? The question is rhetorical, for of course the answer is a resounding “no.” Neo-conservatives (as well as others, to be fair) have “exiled” from “polite society” people for much less than this (recall the treatment that Trent Lott received by his own party for the innocuous remarks he made at the 100th birthday celebration of Strom Thurmond, or the treatment that the opponents of “comprehensive immigration reform” — the majority of American citizens — received at the hands of its proponents who summarily dismissed and denigrated their concerns as “racist”). What accounts for the difference in reaction regarding this issue that these universalists have toward their ancestors, on the one hand, and their contemporaries on the other? The answer is obvious: the circumstances of time and place. But if universalists are willing to permit such contextual considerations to enter into their moral deliberations, then by the logic of their own reasoning against my account of classical conservatism, they are “relativists.”
Our moral determinations are informed by the conceptual resources — the language, values, customs, and habits into which we are educated. But those resources are in turn the products of place and time. It may or may not be fair to say that had they been exposed to it, Jesus, Paul, Aristotle, Plato, and every other moralist, secular and religious, that lived outside of the modern Enlightenment West would have been taken by the language of “natural” or “human rights.” I personally believe that those who I named would most decidedly oppose it, but my point here is that they did not and could not have conceived it considering that it didn’t yet exist. Historically speaking, the idiom of “natural rights” is not at all old, yet true believers in “rights” would have us believe that they express timeless and “self-evident” principles.
Yet even if there are “natural rights” that are intuitively obvious to all people in all places and times, it is irrelevant. This speaks to another criticism that a reader posted. The reader launched into a tirade against “paleo-conservatives,” charging them with suffering a shortage of theoretical resources — “principles” — by which to formulate sound “policies.” My response is twofold.
First, at no time have I identified my position with “paleo-conservatism.” I do not deny that the claim of this orientation to the conservative intellectual tradition is legitimate. However, my interest is to defend what I have called “classical conservatism,” a rich, diverse philosophical tradition going back to the eighteenth century. Classical conservatism is not identical to “paleo-conservatism.”
Furthermore, in spite of the moral universalist’s insistence to the contrary, “principles” like “natural rights” or “human rights,” are incapable of informing policy. Such principles are universal, but policies are specific. Principles are formal, policies substantive. From the beginning of the Western philosophical tradition roughly 2,500 years ago, the greatest thinkers have struggled mightily with the problem of reconciling the universal with the particular. Some, like Plato, have denied that particulars are ultimately real. Others like Locke denied that universals are real. Aristotle said that universals are embedded in particulars. Two-and-a-half millennia later, the problem remains just as intractable as ever.
Stop and think about any contemporary political-moral issue. Take, say, abortion. How have the “principles” of “the right to life” and “the right to choose” helped to resolve this issue? Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept that the unborn have a “right to life,” nothing substantive regarding the permissibility or impermissibility of abortion generally, much less in specific cases, follows. Similarly, even if we accept that women have a “right to choose,” nothing substantive follows. That this debate continues to rage on, with no end in the foreseeable (or, for that matter, distant) future, reflects not at all well on the philosophy of “rights” vis-à-vis its contribution to it. And what is true of the abortion issue is true of every other issue: appeals to “natural law” and/or “human rights” do not because they cannot determine policy.
Let the conversation continue.
Dear Dr Kerwick,
I am most grateful for some of your clarifications. Should the Editors post Parts 2 and 3 of my response to your original articles, I think many of your responses to my response will be addressed.
But I should like to mention a couple of things. Since one of my books is titled Freedom v. A Tyranny of Rights, I hope that no one gets the impression from what you say that I am a Rights proponent – quite the reverse. Neither, I hope, do I give the impression that ‘reason’ of itself can produce anything resembling morality. I hope I made it clear that reason has to be applied to premises in order to be of any worth.
Secondly, history, I think, throws a little spanner in the works of your ‘tradition-evolving’ version of ethics. For example, the preamble to the Code of Hammurabi, 1760 BC, says that one of the objectives of Hammurabi’s Code was this – “so that the strong should not harm the weak”.
Another is this: “to further the well-being of mankind.”
Perhaps Hammurabi was conditioned by the traditions he found himself in, but that would mean that we have regressed as a species. That doesn’t seem to sit well with the ‘evolutionary, tradition-based morality’ espoused by Classical Conservatism.
I am grateful, however, for your response. And, like you, I hope the conversation can continue.
Otherwise, an excellent article!
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Joseph, I think a lot of conservatives, paleo, classical and otherwise, believe we have regressed morally on a lot of issues. Think of each generation decrying the morals, habits, attitudes, dress, etc. of the younger generation. In fact, conservatives tend to do this. I am not sure that Jack is arguing that morals generally evolve with time.
Jack, is your usage of “Classical Conservative” exclusive to you? I was going to quibble a little with your nomenclature before, but didn’t because I didn’t want to side track the discussion. I think American conservatives, likely as a result of the enormous influence of Kirk, tend to be Burkecentric. I think only in hindsight can Burke play such a prominent role.
I see Classical Conservatism as largely pre-Enlightenment or counter Enlightenment. I see it as the reaction to much of the excesses of the Enlightenment that formally expressed what before were just the largely unquestioned ways people thought and behaved. It was a system of thought that arose against forces that were seeking to undermine the way things were. Why is Classical Conservatism not as much Filmer as Burke, for example? How does it start with Burke unless that is just a semantic definitional thing?
I have more to say on reason, but will do so in a separate post for the sake of keeping it short.
Dan,
I hope I was referencing Dr Kerwick’s assertion of an evolution of tradition which informed morality, rather than the evolution of morality itself. I certainly agree that we are regressing so far as morality is concerned (if there was anything to regress from at the beginning).
My apologies if I didn’t make the point clearly.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Jesus lived in a culture where slavery was a reality. The fact that He did not specifically condemn it is an irrelevancy. He also had little or nothing to say about the manifold evils of the Roman government, yet we do not assume that as a result He approved of it.
The mistake is that too many people tend to see everything through a political lens, especially leftists. As a result, Jesus is examined for his political impact, his relevancy to political ideas, and whether or not He is a useful ally to accomplish political ends.
But Jesus is the King of kings, and the sacrificial lamb. He came to show mankind true liberty (So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed – John 8:36), which is freedom from the condemnation of sin and freedom to live a life that is pleasing to God.
Of course His words and His deeds do have impact in other arenas as they trickle down, permeating a person’s life and influencing the spiritual climate.
His ministry of freedom can and does apply in political systems, and the principles He taught are relevant for a society to function in a healthy manner. But He specifically avoided being made king by men. It would serve us well to understand why.
Joseph, traditions certainly “evolve” (change), but I don’t think Jack was asserting that they always evolve for the better. That would actually be a very progressive attitude.
Dan, perhaps it’s my dim mind, but I am getting a little confused – and I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense.
May I please try to summarize what I understand Dr Kerwick to be saying – that is, what the rationale is that informs Classical Conservatism v Neo-conservatism. Perhaps then you, or Dr Kerwick, could correct any misconceptions I have before I make a fool of myself by constructing a non-existent target to shoot at (or to use my initial analogy, to jab at).
I understand the argument to be that as humans develop, their thinking (or reason) modifies their behavior (traditions), but by confining their reason to an orderly progression of their traditions, morality (or civilization) develops at a pace which does not turn the whole basis of their heritage upside down (the Classical model).
What I understand Dr Kerwick to be arguing in respect of the Enlightenment is that it did the reverse – it went off on a frolic on its own without any regard to the traditions which informed its methodology (ie, the Enlightenment claimed that reason could operate in a sort of vacuum).
So on the one hand, the Classical hand, we have reason that modifies our traditional behavior while itself being informed by that behavior, whereas on the other hand, the Enlightened hand, we have reason running around interfering in the orderly progression of things without regard to why they are there in the first place.
Apologies for admitting my ignorance at such a late stage in the process!
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Dan:
Glad to see you could tear yourself away from writing that article you promised us back in August 2007 where you would show us all how to apply paleoconservative principles to the details of actual, real world policy prescriptions(like immigration).
I realize that 9 months may be too short a time to translate the political rhetoric you constantly cite into something approaching an actual policy, and thus relate it to the world we actually live in, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
As you recall, our last conversation didn’t end. It was put on hold at your request so that you could actually tell us something of substance instead of popping off every once and a while with slogans disguised as policy. I said I would keep reminding you of this every time you spouted off, and I am nothing if not a man of my word.
Nine months ago I said that paleoconservative philosophy is just a bunch of empty slogans that is incapable of being translated into specific policy proposals without exposing the true underpinnings of those beliefs (see “How to Fix a Problem”). We all remember your comments, Dan, about your belief in a kith and kin-based “natural hierarchal social order”. To which I asked, exactly what does this mean for US immigration policy, as one example? End it completely? End it for non-Europeans only. Send back all non-Europeans already in the country, etc?
You’re very good at offering slogans, but absolutely refuse to tell us — from a practical policy perspective — just how to put these slogans into effect. And when you are confronted with the charge that “You have no guts to state your case forthrightly,” as I confronted you back in August 2007, you responded as follows:
“I am going to write an article on what I think we ought to do about immigration. It is a very long and complicated issue and deserves an in depth treatment.” Comment by Dan Phillips | September 3, 2007
Well, we’re now nine months later —and you’ve still refused to accept your own challenge to do more than offer empty meaningless slogans.
Until you actually do what you said you would, I see no reason why I or anyone else should treat anything you say seriously, since all you are doing is shooting off your mouth.
Or, to again summarize my reply to your September 3, 2007 comment when you said you’d actually give us a practical policy analysis: “Dan, when you write your article … could you find your way to actually offering a real world policy instead of regurgitating your belief that paleoconservatism is the True Conservatism, that everyone else is acting unconstitutionally, that neocons are unprincipled, that you reject liberal baseline assumptions, and that the natural order demands only one course of action which we should all infer from the above, because you still haven’t gotten around to telling us what we should actually do? Or are we just going to be treated to another long preamble about what you believe philosophically, rather than what the nation ought to do in concrete practical terms?”
It’s been 260 days and counting since YOU volunteered do this to shut me up, and still you can’t do anything but offer more slogans. I can’t say I’m shocked. I for one am not surprised that you’re apparently incapable of producing anything of real substance.
See Jack, I told you he was obsessed. Phil, again, out of respect for the author of the article, perhaps you could comment on the actual article. You might learn something.
This article and the past ones are speaking directly to you and your universal moral code which you argue is accessible by reason alone and does not require an appeal to Revelation or tradition. Why don’t you argue it up with Jack?
Actually Jack, I’m not the one who used the phrase “natural hierarchical social order” to describe paleoconservative thought.
Dan gave us that little gem to describe the genetic based, kith-and-kin social order that paleos supposedly aspire to. It’s only fair that people reading Dan’s pontifications on morality and virtue understand what he, as the self-appointed definer of all things Paleo (see his article in the IC archives) really believes when he hides behind the words he uses.
The issue is really simple, Dan. You enter conversations, shoot off your mouth about True Conservative principles, but never seem to have a practical policy suggestion to accompany the slogans.
When you are challenged you repeat your slogans, and say they are “policies”. [Note: “End the War” is a slogan. “Bring 50,000 troops home in 30 days” is a policy action. You won’t state a policy action because then you’ll be questioned about exactly how to do this, and the strategic/political implications of doing it.]
Finally, when it becomes embarrassingly clear to all that you have nothing but slogans to offer — or that what you offer is genetic-based racial bilge — you either go away to slogan again another time; or, as you did in September 2007, you insist that you actually HAVE paleo-inspired policy prescriptions to share with us, but you just need a little time to write them all down.
Now maybe the people you’re used to conning have short attention spans, but I don’t. I’ve called you an “empty suit” for a reason. You have absolutely nothing of any real substance to offer, and this is all the more apparent when you won’t even honor a commitment that you yourself made!
Our last conversation didn’t end on September 3, 2007. It was put on hold awaiting the substantive comments you said you were capable of producing. If you don’t have anything of substance to offer just admit it, and we’ll go on to pointing out the next slogan you offer. But I’m not going to pretend that the issue isn’t there just to spare your feelings at being caught making a thoroughly stupid comment that there is a kith and kin-based “natural hierarchal social order”.
If you don’t have anything to be ashamed about for viewing the world this way, then let’s see some clear, concrete policies that arise from it on the subject you originally picked: immigration.
I said before that “You have no guts to state your case forthrightly.” And it’s obvious that you don’t.
Oh Dan, by the way — since you are so concerned about keeping this discussion on topic, you might want to refer back to Paragraph 1 of Jack’s article: “Self-identified conservatives of all stripes can only benefit from a candid conversation on the meaning (or meanings) of the intellectual tradition from whose resources they claim to draw their identity.”
I’ve been trying for two years to get a “candid” answer from Paleos in general why they believe that “race matters” in valuing other human beings, and from you in particular for the last 9 month exactly what the hell is the meaning of a kith and kin-based “natural hierarchal social order”, other than exactly what it appears to be: a genetic-based division of human society.
I can’t imagine why you would be so reluctant to educate us all about the particulars of your own philosophy?
Mountain Man
Your comments on Jesus are spot on in relation to his apolitical character. The liberation he points to transcends the terrestrial flailings of human preoccupation and leads us to a complete and perfect horizen of freedom.
Ugh! Phil, you once again demonstrate that you are utterly incapable of nuanced thought. Despite good advice to the contrary, I will try to address your foolishness out of respect for the other authors who I might post a reply to.
Phil, you read and believe what you want to read. As I have pointed out before, I generally do not use the language “kith and kin.” Look back at all my posts and you will see that. When and if I do, it is as a nod to those who do likely after it has already been introduced into the conversation. I don’t use it because to me it seems like not the way normal people talk. It means something to those who use it. It is a sort of internal in-group speak. Nothing wrong with it. I just generally don’t use it.
As to “natural hierarchal social order,” as I explained before, that is an expression of the non-disputable brute fact that societies historically have always been ordered in a hierarchal way as opposed to egalitarian. Please name me one society in the entire recorded history of all mankind that was ordered in an egalitarian way. That does not necessarily have anything to do with race because historically most societies were racially (and ethnically) homogenous. Was the aristocracy in England race based? When societies were not homogenous, it was usually because one group was subjugating and oppressing another. Some of us think this little thing called history is important. You should look into it. It might help modify some of your Utopian thinking. So get to work finding me that egalitarian society, and the Oneida Colony (which was actually quite authoritarian, BTW) or some Kibbutz somewhere doesn’t count.
And for the record, I believe I said I would remove the troops as quickly as safely possible, and would leave how exactly to do that up to the generals. That answer was not good enough for you because you have an irrational bias against anything I propose.
Of course, you don’t care one iota what I actually think we should do about immigration. You are just awaiting my reply, crouched like a jungle cat, so you can do the PC pounce on anything that I say that strays from Phil approved PC right-think. I find it really kind of sad. But here goes. In no particular order, we should repeal the disastrous 1965 Immigration Act, an act that was championed by your PC buddy Ted Kennedy. We should place a moratorium on legal immigration. (Some exceptions for highly skilled, highly needed, and spouses for example might be in order.) We should build a border fence. We should vigorously prosecute employers who knowingly hire illegals. We should give no public benefits to illegals. (If an illegal rolls into the ER bleeding to death we will obviously treat them, but no non-emergent benefits.) We should end birth-right citizenship which is a misinterpretation of the Constitution to begin with. We should not “round up” all the illegals that are currently here which is a frequent straw man, but we should definitely not offer amnesty or a path to citizenship to those who are already here. In fact, we should have a reverse amnesty. If you are currently here illegally, then you lose any chance of ever becoming a citizen. (Again, exceptions for spouses of citizens who have overstayed their visa or something like that would be in order.) When illegals are caught for whatever reason, they should be deported. The 12 million illegals (most likely much more) who are already here will be taken care of by attrition or remain in the shadows. The cry of “what are we going to do with the illegals already here” is intended to manipulate an amnesty. We shouldn’t and don’t need to do anything about the illegals who are already here. Denied public benefits and employment, there will be attrition. I had intended to write as a lead up to my “policy proposals” an explanation for how America is not really a nation of immigrants despite the mythology, and how our current immigration rates, legal and illegal, are unprecedented, again despite the mythology and false history, but this will have to do for now.
Now please, out of respect for Jack, refrain from attacking me for my un-PCness on this thread. Thanks. And I anxiously await the many examples I am sure you will provide of historical egalitarian societies.
“Phil, you read and believe what you want to read. As I have pointed out before, I generally do not use the language ‘kith and kin’.”
*** This is precious logic. You don’t assert that “kith and kin” has an odious racial connotation to it. You simply say that you don’t use the term that frequently. Exactly how many times must you use the phrase before we are allowed to question you about it?
“It means something to those who use it. It is a sort of internal in-group speak. Nothing wrong with it. I just generally don’t use it.”
*** Um, yeah. Like “mongrel” is used to described mixed raced people in the klan’s … I mean group’s … internal “group speak”, or other similar code phrases. There are lots of words people use in “group think” that I wouldn’t associate myself with, even if they were the ones who introduced it into a conversation. But I guess that’s just me.
You’ve now spent two paragraphs telling us that while you don’t initiate the term “kith and kin,” you will use it —- although not in everyday conversation. I don’t use the word epistemology in everyday conversation either, but I don’t assign any particular value to this observation.
You still haven’t addressed the issue I raised that the same people who introduced this term into our conversations told me that “race matters” in assigning value to a human being. Perhaps you’d care to distance yourself from that association which they have drawn, and you have adopted as part of their “group think” common dialogue. Remember this little pearl of wisdom? “for “Traditional Conservatives race does matter. So does loyalty to one’s family, ancestors, region, blood and soil, kin and kith.”
When I asked you about this as the man who wrote “What the Heck is a Paleoconservative and Why You Should Care”, your response was that since you didn’t initiate the term, you have no obligation to repudiate it. That would be fine — if you didn’t find the need to keep repeating and defending it, albeit “occasionally” (as if that matters!)
“As to ‘natural hierarchal social order,’ as I explained before, that is an expression of the non-disputable brute fact that societies historically have always been ordered in a hierarchal way as opposed to egalitarian.”
*** Yes Dan. We all know that you said on August 23 that “conservatives should recognize that rigorous egalitarianism is an enemy of the natural hierarchal social order. We should recognize that we should limit not expand the franchise. The direct election of Senators and the breakdown of the true intent of the Electoral College is a bad thing. Etc.” All I’m asking is for the clear-cut blueprint that tells us what the “natural” order is. Is it based on sex (men are naturally superior to women)? Skin color (white Europeans are naturally superior to darker skinned people?). An ancestor’s birthplace (northern Europe vs. southern Europe)?
All of these are genetic or racial distinctions. I guess it’s kind of a coincidence that the guys who maintain that White males of Northern European ancestry are at the top of the natural food chain are White males of northern European ancestry. When we return to the limiting the franchise, etc. as you so eloquently propose, it will be another coincidence that this happens to benefit the dominant “natural” class.
There is nothing “natural” about the details of your “natural order.” The only thing “natural” is that people will tend to organize themselves, and as more people join the group there will be pockets of power and people to inhabit those pockets. But nothing in nature requires the “social order” to limit the involvement of women and people of the wrong ancestry or color. That kind of bigotry is entirely man-made.
You want to dress the pig up and present it in lofty terms as if nature itself is on your side in assigning different values to human worth. What separates people are their talents and abilities, and the way they use them. A political system that artificially imposes a “natural” order (which is also called a class-system) isn’t a higher expression of human worth. It’s a venal attempt to protect and advance one group’s interests over another.
How’s that for nuance?
“ … historically most societies were racially (and ethnically) homogenous. Was the aristocracy in England race based?”
*** You value history over humanity. Your guidepost is whether it was done in the past. If it was, it’s assigned a value: “good”. If it wasn’t, it’s “wrong”. You point to a class-based society as an example to support your “natural order”. You are everything I said you were above. You’re not a philosopher. You’re a charlatan masquerading as an educated man. Your only interest is to preserve and protect your “natural” place in society, as you define it.
“When societies were not homogenous, it was usually because one group was subjugating and oppressing another. Some of us think this little thing called history is important. You should look into it. It might help modify some of your Utopian thinking.”
*** And now we get to the crux of it. A country like America cannot exist, where people have equal opportunity to succeed regardless of race, color or national origin, because when it was founded in 1776 there were no previous Americas. The past is not simply prologue; it’s determinative.
Equality of opportunity does not require equality of outcome. That’s as perverse a notion as assigning no value to people at all. There is nothing utopian about believing that your political system is founded on inalienable rights bestowed by God, rather than a human-defined “natural hierarchal social order”.
History is important for what it teaches. The fact that something was done one way in a primitive society does not forever constrain men and women to behave in a similar way throughout eternity.
“And for the record, I believe I said I would remove the troops as quickly as safely possible, and would leave how exactly to do that up to the generals. That answer was not good enough for you because you have an irrational bias against anything I propose.”
*** You’ve again shown why your philosophy is bankrupt as a guide to practical action. Not only have you said nothing of substance, you now want us to believe that while you contend the war was a horrible mistake and threatens the very framework of American constitutional government, if the generals said “we need to stay another 30 years to do this as safely as possible”, your response would be “ok”.
And even if this was the case, you are unprepared to discuss how leaving, or staying, will impact the country internationally or domestically from a security, economic, or political perspective. Once again all you have to offer is slogans.
“Of course, you don’t care one iota what I actually think we should do about immigration. You are just awaiting my reply, crouched like a jungle cat, so you can do the PC pounce on anything that I say that strays from Phil approved PC right-think.”
*** Oh, but I do care. I’ve have no problem articulating my positions on a subject. I’ve written 66 articles to date. And I don’t really care whether you or anyone want to call me a “Liberal, Marxist-sympathizer, PC-con, regular Neocon, Neocon spokesman for the Chicago School of Political Thought, Leftist, genetically-inferior, white race hating, uneducated, undereducated, poorly-educated, Sicilian criminal, New Age Hippster, morally superior, politically-correct, thought-slavery promoter, Lockean, Mr. Right Think Enforcer, Official PC enforcer, lunatic exposing himself to a nubile woman grievance collector.” I keep count just for the fun of it.
What I do care about is whether you or anyone has a substantive objection to what I say. In this regard I’ve entered into a number of conversations with people of all political persuasions. I don’t whine that someone might call me a name if I state my position honestly and forthrightly, and refuse to respond for 9 months because of it.
“ In no particular order, we should repeal the disastrous 1965 Immigration Act, an act that was championed by your PC buddy Ted Kennedy.”
*** Sorry, I’ve never met Teddy. For those unfamiliar with the act, it abolished the national-origin quotas that had been in place in the United States since the Immigration Act of 1924. So Dan, just say it directly: there are too many non-white people in this country, and your “natural order” won’t stand for that.
I would not be in favor of re-assigning race-based quotas. I would value people for what they can contribute to the country, regardless of where they were born. However, my further question to you is, what do we do about all those dark skinned and slanty-eyed people in this country now? If their presence violates the natural order of things, shouldn’t they be removed like the cancer they are? Why is stopping it an issue, but reversing it not an option?
“We should place a moratorium on legal immigration. (Some exceptions for highly skilled, highly needed, and spouses for example might be in order.)”
*** For what purpose? To repair the present broken system, then start again? Or, to keep all those bad-genes out of the country? Are you really suggesting a moratorium, or an end to non-white immigration unless we want that individual’s particular skill?
“We should build a border fence. We should vigorously prosecute employers who knowingly hire illegals. We should give no public benefits to illegals. (If an illegal rolls into the ER bleeding to death we will obviously treat them, but no non-emergent benefits.) We should end birth-right citizenship which is a misinterpretation of the Constitution to begin with. We should not “round up” all the illegals that are currently here which is a frequent straw man, but we should definitely not offer amnesty or a path to citizenship to those who are already here. In fact, we should have a reverse amnesty. If you are currently here illegally, then you lose any chance of ever becoming a citizen. (Again, exceptions for spouses of citizens who have overstayed their visa or something like that would be in order.) When illegals are caught for whatever reason, they should be deported. The 12 million illegals (most likely much more) who are already here will be taken care of by attrition or remain in the shadows. The cry of “what are we going to do with the illegals already here” is intended to manipulate an amnesty. We shouldn’t and don’t need to do anything about the illegals who are already here. Denied public benefits and employment, there will be attrition.”
*** Actually, I can agree with much of this, as I did on May 28, 2007 in “Why Don’t We Just Bring Back Slavery?” There is nothing wrong with repairing the present broken system. In fact, it would be a dereliction of duty not to do many of the things advocated here. But this is the “illegal immigration” problem, not what I asked you to comment on and what you agreed to do. I asked you to tell me how paleoconservative principles will guide US immigration policy. Paraphrasing my earlier comment #7, Regarding your belief in a kith and kin-based “natural hierarchal social order”, I asked, exactly what does this mean for US immigration policy, as one example? End it completely? End it for non-Europeans only. Send back all non-Europeans already in the country, etc?
Once again you will not address the issue forthrightly. But then again I understand why, now. Despite the fact that there were no white people in North America before the Vikings, you actually believe that “America is not really a nation of immigrants despite the mythology, and … our current immigration rates, legal and illegal, are unprecedented, again despite the mythology and false history.”
“Now please, out of respect for Jack, refrain from attacking me for my un-PCness on this thread. Thanks.”
*** I’m sure Jack is a big boy and can make the request himself if he cares to. However, I don’t see this as a diversion from his discussion of natural rights, morality, and relativistic thought. Rather, it’s a clarification for those looking in on the conversation that some people — that’s you, Dan — are a bit more (or less) than meets the eye, and that a bigoted world view is still a bigoted world view, no matter how much lipstick you put on that pig. And when you weigh in on the topic, your motivations should be matched with your words.
Now that we’ve cleared the air a bit, here’s my two cents on some of the specific issues discussed in the article. I’d like to focus on the following thought to articulate my point of view: “If it is a universal moral truth that “slavery is a ‘crime’ against humanity,” a proposition, say, to be deduced from the “self-evident” claim that “all people have a ‘right’ to liberty …”
Crimes are violations of laws created by men. In Cuba it’s a crime to own and operate a capitalist enterprise. This does not necessarily make it a moral or immoral issue.
Mixing discussions of morality with discussions of man-made laws distracts from a discussion of morality. In a broad sense, morality is assigned either by human convention (society, human consensus, education, etc.), human genetics, or it comes from God.
If human consensus/societal influences is the foundation of morality, then the UN is its fountainhead. Elective abortion is either a moral or immoral act. It isn’t moral when the US Supreme Court discovers a right to privacy, and immoral when Roe v. Wade is overturned. This is relativistic nonsense.
If human consensus is the product of genetic evolution, then we need to identify the morality gene. Moreover, everyone must possess this gene. While most people possess most genes, not everyone possesses the same genes as the rest of the population. Logically, those people without a morality gene should be identified and imprisoned at birth, because no amount of education or training can make them “moral” any more than it can make a blue eye turn brown. What genetics can do is suppress the expression of morality, much like autism suppresses the expression of love. Autistic people are not without a “love gene”. They suffer from a genetic inability to recognize and express that emotion the way most people do. Love is still there; it’s just not accessible to them.
Which brings us to option #3. As I have argued, what a religion teaches about is not necessarily the same thing as “God.” While Religion A may teach things that are indeed moral, it is the intrinsic morality of ta thing that makes it moral, not the religious expression of morality. Whether Religion A got the details right or not is irrelevant. Morality is not the product of human consensus, whether it is expressed religiously or not.
So what is a God-given definition of morality? It’s contained in the simple phrase “it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human being.” I’ve detailed my thinking on this in “The True Nature of Human Morality”, so I’ll end here with a brief summary of my main point.
All people understand intrinsically what is moral or immoral, regardless of their level of sophistication, education, the society they live in, or the time they lived. Men still act brutally against the innocent (we’ve aborted 50 million babies and counting, as one example). However, they can only justify the morality of their action by defining away either the innocence, or humanity, of the “object” in question.
Whether it’s aborting a healthy baby when its mother’s life is not at stake, raping and killing a young child, placing another human being in slavery, or blowing up a school bus full of Jewish children because they don’t believe in Allah, the perpetrators of this act must first define away that individual’s humanity and/or innocence. Only by doing this can they rationalize their actions, because otherwise it would be a clear violation of the Universal Moral Code.
Rather than inundate you with more on this, I refer you to the article itself where I debated Raymond Ingles on this topic.
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/07/13/the-true-nature-of-human-morality-a-response-to-the-critique-%e2%80%9cuniversal-morality-and-the-morality-of-the-universe%e2%80%9d/
By the way, notice how none of this requires a “natural hierarchal social order”.
“it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human being…”
Good, so now you are joining me, the Pope, and many others in condemning the unjust Iraq War. Great to finally have you on board. :-) BTW, Mr. Catholic who is against appeals to Revelation in favor of universal moral codes, did you happen to pay attention to what the Pope had to say about the War when he visited America? Or is the Pope too particularistic for your universalist self? But I digress.
I will address your rant @ #13 just briefly, and then I will have nothing else to say about it on this thread. Thanks for at least addressing Jack’s article by the way. I hope he replies.
It is the sign of either a weak or disingenuous argument when someone knowingly distorts what the other person says, other than in jest, of course. (See above.) For example, that I would turn details of our withdrawal over to the generals means that I would be OK with us staying there 30 more years if they said so is just silly, and you know it. That doesn’t pass any sort of good faith smell test. I was in the military, but I was a noncombatant. How the heck do I know the finer details of troop withdrawal? But my point was obvious to all. Even many who disagreed with me in that tread took you to task for your petulance. How did we leave Vietnam? The fewer people you have remaining the trickier it gets, I suppose, but it wasn’t a 30 year affair.
Also, almost every paleoconservative that I know is a devout Christian. In fact, commitment to Christianity partially defines paleoconservatism. I know of no honest paleo who would argue that a human’s ultimate worth has anything to do with race, and no honest paleo has suggested such a thing here. Such would be un-Christian. You see, we have this particular moral code Revealed to us by God called the Bible. Scandalously particularistic, I know, but some of us who call ourselves Christians actually take it seriously as a direct Revelation of the one true moral code on those things about which it authoritatively speaks. That said, that people historically and intrinsically concern themselves more with and generally prefer people like themselves is another indisputable brute fact. The same way parents look after their own kids more than the neighbor’s kids. Or they concern themselves with their neighbor’s misfortunes, regardless of race, more than they do the misfortunes of people half-way around the world. In an ancient tribal society, perhaps this meant the person assigned more intrinsic ultimate worth to one person than another. That is one thing Christianity moderated. (In fact, if you could get past your preconceived irrational biases, you would realize that many overt racialists condemn Christianity for just this reason.) But Christianity does not condemn the basis of social organization since the dawn of time. What was the point of the story of the Tower of Babel?
History instructs us on the limits of human nature. It teaches us what is possible and what is likely. You are a hopelessly clueless Utopian. Why have blacks voted 90%+ for Obama? Why do blacks speak openly about helping the Black community? Have you taken a look at LA these days? There are these things called Mexican gangs, EL Salvadoran gangs, etc. How is that assimilation going? This is how people behave. We know this, and no amount of feel good Utopian wishful thinking will change this. It is common sense that if you allow large scale immigration in over a short period of time, Balkanization will result, and that is just what is happening. This is the way human beings act. Not a value judgment. An observation. If pointing out the obvious makes me a “racist” in your unnuanced mind, then so be it. Why on earth would we intentionally invite Balkanization? It is disruptive and profoundly unconservative.
History and an understanding of human nature should have clued the Marxist in that their little experiment wasn’t going to work. But their ideology blinded them to the real world and this little fact of human nature called self-interest and the profit motive. Low and behold, their experiment failed miserably but only after much human suffering trying to make it work. (That old square peg round hole thing.) You are no different. In your pursuit of the pure ideological society of absolutely no unegalitarian thought, you are blinded to the real world around you. You are like the ideological libertarians I sometimes joust with at third party sites. The fact that there has always been throughout the entire course of human history, some form of authority and restraint, deters them not at all from their ideological Utopian project of perfect human freedom. What are inconvenient little facts and history when you have a Utopia to create?
You are like them in another way. You have a pathological fear of the slippery slope. You can’t harbor the slightest thought that most people act as if race/ethnicity matters to them and so it might not be the best idea for the conservation of good order to invite a large number of foreigners into a country over a short period of time, because to do so inevitable means the next step will be either mass deportation of the other or the gas chamber. Just like with the ideological libertarian who believes there is either perfect freedom or there is tyranny. No middle ground can be conceded despite the fact that the whole of human history is middle ground.
You are older than me, but you need to grow up. You think like the 18 year old just introduced to some new idea who has fanatically embraced it. Now, at some point I would like to address a few other things about Jack’s essay.
Dan Phillips:
“it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human being…”
“Good, so now you are joining me, the Pope, and many others in condemning the unjust Iraq War.”
There are two key words in Phil’s statement: “deliberately” and “innocent”. If you are arguing that Saddam was innocent, then we can end the discussion right here and now because you will never convince me of that.
As far as harming non-combatants who just happen to be near Saddam when he is the target, that’s just their tough luck as long as they are not deliberately targeted.
As far as the pope goes, EXACTLY what did he say? I’ll bet he didn’t say what you thought he meant.
Bush-haters have been beating this drum for over 5 years now, and I have yet to hear a single one of them condemn Saddam for starting the whole thing when he invaded Kuwait. Nor have I heard a single condemnation for his adamant defiance of 17 UN resolutions, the same UN that they demanded the US get permission from. I think that if Clinton had been president and all other things were the same, it would have been just hunky-dory with you and the rest. This appeal to a higher moral authority is just politics by other means.
“Good, so now you are joining me, the Pope, and many others in condemning the unjust Iraq War. Great to finally have you on board. :-) BTW, Mr. Catholic who is against appeals to Revelation in favor of universal moral codes, did you happen to pay attention to what the Pope had to say about the War when he visited America? Or is the Pope too particularistic for your universalist self? But I digress.”
*** Ladies and gentlemen, we have here a practical example of a self-educated idiot. I just finished saying that religion does not define morality, so by extension it stands to reason that the Pope does not define morality. This comes from someone who now claims to be offended because “It is the sign of either a weak or disingenuous argument when someone knowingly distorts what the other person says, other than in jest, of course.”
Dan has set himself up as an educator and prognosticator on Paleoconservative thought. So I asked him a simple question: Is paleoconservatism capable of offering more than slogans? Is it capable of actually offering policy prescriptions?
What is the purpose of philosophy? To toss out phrases like “the rights of man”, or “natural hierarchical social order”, then trace the genesis of these words back through human history? Or, is it to lay the foundation for action, much like the Declaration of Independence gave rise to the U.S. Constitution.
Policy without philosophy is nothing more than venal self-interest. But a philosophy that is incapable of formulating specific policy prescriptions is just a lot of hot air — or worse.
A philosophy built on a race-based “natural hierarchical social order” is not incapable of producing actual policy options. On the contrary, it must take great pains to hide the policy it produces, because to acknowledge them publicly would be to expose the petty prejudices and distorted world view of its author.
I’ve never served in the military, but I can write at length (as I have) about the real-world implications of abandoning Iraq now, regardless of whether we were correct in going in there in the first place. We’re there, and that’s the starting point for all future action. I can offer assessments of whether it will help or hurt us from a security standpoint, economic standpoint, whether it will strengthen or weaken us politically in our domestic and international dealings, etc.
Dan says that he isn’t capable of offering any judgments like these. So I ask, if the purpose of discussing philosophy is to simply discuss abstract notions without any regard for the way they are expressed through policy, then isn’t it nothing more than a self-indulgent exercise? And if so, who cares what paleos think if they can’t relate their thoughts to actual real world policies?
“Also, almost every paleoconservative that I know is a devout Christian. In fact, commitment to Christianity partially defines paleoconservatism. I know of no honest paleo who would argue that a human’s ultimate worth has anything to do with race, and no honest paleo has suggested such a thing here.”
*** Then what the hell is a society based on “race matters … So does loyalty to one’s family, ancestors, region, blood and soil, kin and kith.”?
As a fellow Southerner, I’d like to share an expression that Dan should be familiar with. Don’t p*ss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. If these good-hearted Christian paleos see society as a “natural hierarchal social order” based on family (race and genetics), ancestors (race and genetics), region (race and genetics), blood and soil (race and genetics), then exactly where is this vaunted moral code that rejects the concept that “a human’s ultimate worth has anything to do with race”.
The paleo answer is, of course, that all people of different races have value — as long as they keep out of his country, and don’t intermix with his natural social order” that puts white male Europeans on the top. As Dan himself says, “some of us who call ourselves Christians actually take it seriously as a direct Revelation of the one true moral code on those things about which it authoritatively speaks. That said, that people historically and intrinsically concern themselves more with and generally prefer people like themselves is another indisputable brute fact.”
In other words, your country is only your country if everyone looks like you. Forget about what values these people hold in common with you. It’s the color of their skin that counts. Whites must stay with whites, blacks with blacks, and so on. And remember, none of this has anything to do with race!
As Dan reads the Bible, “Christianity does not condemn the basis of social organization since the dawn of time.” And just what is this social organization of which Dan speaks? The races do not mix! But of course, none of this has to do with race; it’s just the paleo version of God’s will being expressed, much like Himmler searching the far corners of the earth for the true Aryan nation, so the pure race could be preserved and protected.
“In your pursuit of the pure ideological society of absolutely no unegalitarian thought, you are blinded to the real world around you. You are like the ideological libertarians I sometimes joust with at third party sites. The fact that there has always been throughout the entire course of human history, some form of authority and restraint, deters them not at all from their ideological Utopian project of perfect human freedom. What are inconvenient little facts and history when you have a Utopia to create?”
*** I’ll now add “libertarian” to my business card. What sickens me, Dan, is the thought that someone could lay claim to the designation “Conservative” by advocating the things you and other “race matters” paleos do. I invite people to look at the comment sections of their websites. These people are obsessed with ridding the country of the wrong kinds of people — not illegal aliens per se, but people with the wrong ancestry or skin color. But it’s not about race.
What I, and most Americans ask for, is the opportunity to be judged on our merits, not where our great grandfathers were born, or how white our skin is. It that’s utopian, then add it to my business card. I’d rather live with people of all races who share my values than pure white a**holes who don’t, but whose grandfathers came from the same country mine did.
“You are like them in another way. You have a pathological fear of the slippery slope. You can’t harbor the slightest thought that most people act as if race/ethnicity matters to them and so it might not be the best idea for the conservation of good order to invite a large number of foreigners into a country over a short period of time, because to do so inevitable means the next step will be either mass deportation of the other or the gas chamber.”
*** And now we get to the really sad, but revealing part. No where have I said the US should ”invite a large number of foreigners into a country over a short period of time”. [Who was it who admonished that “It is the sign of either a weak or disingenuous argument when someone knowingly distorts what the other person says”?]. And now we see the vision Dan has of too many non-whites in the country — the gas chamber? How does anyone even reach this point of logic unless their mind is twisted with bigotry and hatred for people who don’t look like they do? Where is any recognition of an individual’s value apart from the color of their skin/national origin?
But again, it’s not about race. It’s about history. Primitive man lived in groups of extended families, so the Bible now says that this is the way a good Christian should organize every society
I refuse to let the Dan Phillips of the world profess this belief as the basis of “True Conservatism”. It’s bigotry dressed up in a fancy language, but bigotry all the same. And I’ve used your own words to demonstrate it, rather than inventing phrases to make my point.
RE: The Dan Philips/Phillip Jackson discussion:
It’s not intrinsically racist, in my opinion, to make value judgments about who to allow in to a particular country. Let’s take en example: say there is a large number of job-qualified Muslims entering the United States via the legal immigration process. Despite being qualified for employment, these particular Muslims are the Allah-seeking, Koran-believing variety, and they believe, as the Koran instructs them to, that there should be a global Islamic state and that Christians and Jews should be either converted or subjugated for that purpose. Regardless of whether we call them “extremist” Muslims, meaning they actually act on these beliefs, or whether we call them “moderate” Muslims, meaning they hold these beliefs, but do not desire to take action to bring them about, we can say that a growing population of people who hold these beliefs may pose a threat to the stability and security of other American people. So what to do? To refuse entry to Muslims based on their religion, despite their qualifications for employment, would indeed be discriminatory (using the term in a neutral sense). Would it be prudent to discriminate based on religious philosophy, and would it be any more or less prudent to allow the expansion of a population of people who, as a group, hold views that could be considered subversive to the United States government? This is a not-so-hypothetical situation in many parts of Europe right now. And there is a clash going on as a result. But it’s not a clash of races – not a brown-skinned Muslims vs. white-skinned Europeans clash – it’s a clash of cultures and ideologies. The way that the one group of people – the Muslims – think and behave is fundamentally different from the way that the other group of people – the “Western” Europeans – think and behave. This has led to situations, like in the United Kingdom, where one group of people is subject to a completely different application of the law than another group of people based on their religious philosophy. Obviously this is not a desirable situation. It leads to factionalization and societal discord. This same type of situation can arise when any incompatible ideologies are mingled – Muslims are just a convenient example. *Ideology* matters, to put it succinctly, and it is undeniable that people who come from particular geographical areas, or races, or cultures, often have shared ideologies (that isn’t to say “black people are dumber than white people”, but to say, generally, that French people have an ideology that is different from English people’s ideology, that is different from Egyptian people’s ideology, that is different from Mexican people’s ideology, etc). For instance, Isrealis are not of European heritage ethnically or culturally, but their country’s form of government and ideology is largely compatible with the United States’ government and ideology. That, in my opinion, makes Isrealis better immigration candidates than, say, Syrians. Phil is right in saying that we should judge people based on their ideology – not on race, or national origin. Unfortunately, there is no way to know ahead of time which immigrants share American ideas and which ones don’t. Employability or skill isn’t necessarily a good measure of whether or not someone’s ideology will mesh well with American ideology. I’m not sure if Dan Phillips’ ideas on immigration (and greater American society in general) are entirely based on a racist idea of “I don’t want any more colored people here”, but more of a “I don’t want anymore radical subversive groups who want to kill me here”. Where I think Dan veers off course is in chiefly emphasizing the role of race in determining those characteristics. However, the overall type of reasoning is understandable. Open the doors to everyone from anywhere and leave employability or education as the only qualifier and you could easily end up doubling your population with people who absolutely despise you. The pre-1965 approach to immigration was to minimize exposure to that possibility by accepting entrants mostly from countries with similar styles of government and ideology to the United States – “Western” countries. And allowing about 1/3 as many people into the country per year to allow a wider “buffer” for assimilation. Now a variety of factors are used, including education, special skills, refugee status, socioeconomic status, national origin, and more. Federal guidelines call for about 700,000 immigrants to be admitted per year, but in reality we allow over a million people per year to emigrate legally (not including “guest workers”, students, temporary visas and illegal aliens). We have an exploding population of uneducated or undereducated third-world immigrants, whose birthrates are about double natives’ of all races, and whose use of state resources is astronomically higher, not to mention illegal aliens to the tune of a half million per year. I don’t think this is a particularly noble or well-functioning immigration policy. I don’t think it’s morally or ethically superior to the previous admissions system either. I don’t think it was racist to say, “let’s accept more immigrants from these countries that are ideologically similar to us, fewer from these countries that are ideologically disimilar to us, and fewer still from these countries that want to blow us up.” It was definitely discriminatory – but discriminatory is not synonymous with “racist”. Any admissions system we use for immigration that does not allow in everyone who applies is in some way discriminatory. Basing the decision entirely on race for no other reason than race is racist.
Patrick Mulligan:
“The pre-1965 approach to immigration was to minimize exposure to that possibility by accepting entrants mostly from countries with similar styles of government and ideology to the United States – ‘Western’ countries.”
This idea might have worked in pre-1965, but now there are countries like Great Britain, France, and Germany with similar styles of government and ideology, that have significant numbers of the type of people we should want to keep out.
I say “should” because there seems to be this drive for “diversity” at all costs, as though everyone, even anarchists, can make a positive contribution to the American experiment.
My grandparents came to the United States in 1913, and I found their names on their ship’s manifest on
the Ellis Island website. That manifest included the following “Affidavit of Commanding Officer”, dated 1913, as
required of each ship carrying immigrants to the United States. (Thousands of these affidavits can be found on the
Ellis Island website.) It’s interesting to note that disqualifying health conditions and debauchery then are celebrated as “diversity” now, and there was no ACLU to constipate the government’s efforts:
Affidavit of Commanding Officer
I, (name of ship’s commanding officer), of the (name of ship), from (port of origin), do solemnly, sincerely, and
truly (swear) that I have caused the surgeon of said vessel sailing therewith, or the surgeon employed by the owners
thereof, to make a physical and oral examination of each and all of the aliens named in the foregoing Lists or
Manifest Sheets, (number of sheets) in number, and that from the report of said surgeon and from my own
investigation, I believe that no one of said aliens is an idiot, or imbecile, or a feeble-minded person, or insane
person, or a pauper, or is likely to become a public charge, or is afflicted with tuberculosis or with a loathsome or
dangerous contagious disease, or is a person who has been convicted of, or who admits having committed a felony
or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, or is a polygamist or one admitting belief in the practice
of polygamy, or an anarchist, or under promise or agreement, expressed or implied, to perform labor in the United
States, or a prostitute, or a woman or girl coming to the United States for the purpose of prostitution, or for any
other immoral purpose, and that also, according to the best of my knowledge and belief, the information in said
Lists or Manifests concerning each of said aliens named therein is correct and true in every respect.
Patrick: Racism doesn’t exist. As Dan has told us that it’s a Marxist term, so it isn’t a real word. And since it’s not a real word, it can’t describe a real action, so judging people solely on the basis of their skin color/genetics/country of origin isn’t possible.
This is why I’ve converted to using words like “race-based” instead of “racist” (since paleos do indeed recognize that there are different races), and “genetics” (since paleos understand and appreciate the genetic link between “kith and kin”). And of course there’s the word “bigot”, which describes someone who assigns lesser value to people solely on the basis of race or genetics. To my knowledge Marx, Lenin or Stalin never used this word, so I think it’s still safe.
The issue in managing immigration is not to simply open the borders to all countries, period. Common sense would maintain, like you have, that we need to look carefully at the individuals wishing to enter our country. I would maintain that someone from France or England could be just as dangerous as someone from the Sudan — not because of their country or origin, but because of their values and beliefs. France today has something like a 25% Muslim population, and England is the home of many of the radical factions already at war with us. It’s their beliefs we need to guard against, not their skin color.
Because of the radicalized nature of Islam today, it would be prudent to give Muslims greater scrutiny than, say, a Buddhist, because Buddhists are not in a holy war against the West. More Buddhists may be found in Asia than Norway, but this doesn’t argue for opening up immigration from Norway and restricting it from India. It simply argues for a different kind of screening for Indians than Norwegians. The result may be to allow more Norwegians into the country than Pakistanis, but the decision would not be written into law as assigning different quotas to Norway and Pakistan, as the 1924 Immigration act did. If we simply adopted this logic as our guide, as Dan suggests by wanting to return to repeal the 1965 Act, then Pakistanis who immigrate to Britain and become citizens, or are born there, are relatively free to enter the US. This provides no real defense against Islamic extremism.
Neither does simply assigning a special status to skin color — all brown skinned or Arab looking people are restricted, all white skinned, blonde haired people are welcomed. Right now we’re at war with Islamic radicals. 60 years ago it was the white skinned blonde haired Nazis who were a danger. The common thread in identifying our enemies is their beliefs, not skin color or national origin. We need to establish sound reasons for wanting/allowing immigrants in the first place (specific skill sets, etc.), then match our laws and screening policies to achieve this end. We don’t do this backwards — pick the white northern European nations first, then work backwards to limit or exclude everyone else based on skin color or nation or origin.
The focus, therefore, is on individuals and their belief/value system, not on skin color, race or national origin as determinative factors in and of themselves. The pre-1965 immigration laws were not simply a way to keep foreign ideologies out of the country. It was a way to exclude races like the Chinese, southern Europeans, and other “undesirables” who would dilute our pure white Christian nation — the one Dan suggests that God and the Bible intended. It wasn’t just the “dangerous” people who were targeted by the 1924 act. It was the “different” ones.
In regards to the original article, it seems that “Classical”-conservatism is the grand unified theory of political philosophies. It is relativistic without being relative, rational without relying on reason, and reasonable without rationalizing. It is immune to criticism because it is, well, perfect – “A healthy combination (though, admittedly, not a seamless one) of, on the one hand, a keen awareness of and profound appreciation for the tradition-specific character of our moral judgments (their temporal and cultural hue), and, on the other, an openness to the possibility that they are true in a sense that transcends the tradition from which they unfold.”. All that’s left to do now is to get the word out to the rest of the hyphen-conservative communities so the rest of these neo-pseudo-proto-crypto-paleo-anarcho-conservatives can realize the error in their ways.
Phil & Sedonoman,
You both bring up the excellent point that there are people in every country we would most certainly want to keep out of the United States. This is, of course, obviously true. But immigration policy cannot really use a case-by-case system without becoming maddeningly inefficient. So rules and policies have to deal with generalities. We can be reasonably sure that we are more likely to choose an anti-Western terrorist at random out of the population of Saudi Arabia than Switzerland. In the Cold War era, we could be sure that it was much more likely for an immigrant from the Soviet Union to be a subversive Communist than one from, say, Japan. So while I would agree that national origin is not an effective screening method when used exclusively, it isn’t necessarily an illegitimate practice altogether. The alternative that we got in 1965 was so radically lax and ineffective that it hardly beat the alternative (knowing the author of the bill – one Uncle Teddy – one hardly has to labor to infer that subversive Communists, radicals, the poor, the unskilled, the undereducated, and welfare recipients were exactly who it was designed to attract).
“It’s their beliefs we need to guard against, not their skin color.”
Absolutely, this is exactly what I was saying. Indirectly, I think it’s an underlying component of what Dan Phillips is trying to convey as well, but he simply generalizes certain attitudes and ideologies to particular ethnic groups. In other words, he doesn’t want to exclude, say, Hispanics from entering the United States because he doesn’t like brown-skinned people, but because he perceives Hispanics as all representing an ideology fundamentally incompatible with the United States’. I suppose the end result makes the difference trivial, but the reasoning is more complex than “simple” bigotry. That is, if that is indeed the way Dan’s reasoning goes.
Patrick: You need to look at Dan’s previous writings concerning ideology. He expressly rejects the idea that a nation should be built around a common value system and ideology (the so-called Proposition Nation debate). It’s not about shared values, it’s about keeping out people who don’t look like you or share your genetic ancestry.
You might want to have a look at a few of Dan’s teachings on this subject http://noleftturns.ashbrook.org/comment.asp?blogID=10784
Remember, this is the same Dan Phillips who just told us that all paleos are good Christians who value people for who and what they are, not on the basis of their race. At least that’s what he says here. In other forums among his friends, it’s all about preserving the White Race.
Comment 6 by Dan Phillips
More births would certainly be a good thing, but that is not what I was getting at. And birthright citizenship is a huge problem, and not a correct interpretation of the Constitution, IMO. …
But worrying about race and ethnicity in the broad sense of wanting to maintain the core ethnic balance of the country is I believe entirely appropriate and inherently conservative. Ann Coulter was brave enough to raise this issue recently, but few others have. Even Frum raised it. Before 1965 our immigration quotas were specifically designed to reflect the ethnic make-up that was already here. And proponents of the 1965 Immigration Act were very much on the record that their intent was precisely to dilute (disempower) the demographic core, and that the old quota system was inherently “racist.” If current trends continue, America will be less than 50% White by 2050. That can not be just an insignificant, incidental fact. But that gets to the whole proposition nation debate.
Comment 20 by Dan Phillips
Marxism was an idea that railed against nature and tradition and the way things were. (As is the proposition nation.) Ideas matter, but they are not what unite a people.
Comment 33 by Dan Phillips
That “all men are created equal” is neither self-evident nor true. That is the problem. To quote Mel Bradford quoting an unnamed congressman, that all men are created equal is a “self-evident lie.” To echo Robert Locke in his brilliant dismantling of the Proposition Nation thesis, only two people were ever created, and one was created subordinate to the other.
… But the point that the demonization of the majority’s ethnic consciousness was popularized by neo-Marxist is the main point. Do you disagree with that?
… the immigration issue can not be rightly separated from the proposition nation debate. And the demonization of what should be the natural instinct of nativism is one of the things that is standing in the way of an honest debate.
You’ve been busted, Dan. I’ve known for some time what your “immigration” policy is: Keep the nation as white as possible. As you so directly stated in another forum, “If current trends continue, America will be less than 50% White by 2050. That can not be just an insignificant, incidental fact. But that gets to the whole proposition nation debate.”
There’s nothing more at work here than “simple” bigotry.
Page breaks make my last comment difficult to read. Here it is again.
***
Patrick: You need to look at Dan’s previous writings concerning ideology. He expressly rejects the idea that a nation should be built around a common value system and ideology (the so-called Proposition Nation debate). It’s not about shared values, it’s about keeping out people who don’t look like you or share your genetic ancestry.
You might want to have a look at a few of Dan’s teachings on this subject http://noleftturns.ashbrook.org/comment.asp?blogID=10784
Remember, this is the same Dan Phillips who just told us that all paleos are good Christians who value people for who and what they are, not on the basis of their race. At least that’s what he says here. In other forums among his friends, it’s all about preserving the White Race.
Comment 6 by Dan Phillips
More births would certainly be a good thing, but that is not what I was getting at. And birthright citizenship is a huge problem, and not a correct interpretation of the Constitution, IMO. …
But worrying about race and ethnicity in the broad sense of wanting to maintain the core ethnic balance of the country is I believe entirely appropriate and inherently conservative. Ann Coulter was brave enough to raise this issue recently, but few others have. Even Frum raised it. Before 1965 our immigration quotas were specifically designed to reflect the ethnic make-up that was already here. And proponents of the 1965 Immigration Act were very much on the record that their intent was precisely to dilute (disempower) the demographic core, and that the old quota system was inherently “racist.” If current trends continue, America will be less than 50% White by 2050. That can not be just an insignificant, incidental fact. But that gets to the whole proposition nation debate.
Comment 20 by Dan Phillips
Marxism was an idea that railed against nature and tradition and the way things were. (As is the proposition nation.) Ideas matter, but they are not what unite a people.
Comment 33 by Dan Phillips
That “all men are created equal” is neither self-evident nor true. That is the problem. To quote Mel Bradford quoting an unnamed congressman, that all men are created equal is a “self-evident lie.” To echo Robert Locke in his brilliant dismantling of the Proposition Nation thesis, only two people were ever created, and one was created subordinate to the other.
… But the point that the demonization of the majority’s ethnic consciousness was popularized by neo-Marxist is the main point. Do you disagree with that?
… the immigration issue can not be rightly separated from the proposition nation debate. And the demonization of what should be the natural instinct of nativism is one of the things that is standing in the way of an honest debate.
You’ve been busted, Dan. I’ve known for some time what your “immigration” policy is: Keep the nation as white as possible. As you so directly stated in another forum, “If current trends continue, America will be less than 50% White by 2050. That can not be just an insignificant, incidental fact. But that gets to the whole proposition nation debate.”
Oh yeah you really “busted” me PC Phil. I stand entirely by everything I wrote in the No Left Turns thread, and I highly recommend that people here read the whole thing because it is a very enlightening discussion. NLT is primarily a neocon site frequented mostly by academics, but it is very easy to have an intelligent and thoughtful discussion there without Phil like PC hysterics.
I said nothing in that thread that I have not said here. Demographic change is something any conservative should be concerned about. Conservative by definition conserve, do they not? As I said there Anne Coulter has made this point. Is she a racist? David Frum has made this point. Is he a racist? Jonah Goldberg has made this point. Is he a racist? Pat Buchanan has made this point. I’m sure you think he is a racist.
BTW, how long did you spend scouring the internet for “dirt” on me? Don’t you have anything better to do with your time? I don’t know why I even bother with your simple mind.
As to your reply to my post above, I will say very little. I made it clear that my application of your comment to the War was twisting your words somewhat. That is why I put the smiley face and wrote “in jest.” I guess for a sour fellow like you, humor is not allowed. But I didn’t understand your reply. (I can’t seem to cut and paste from the comment section for some reason.) Just to be clear, I would argue that morality is not separable from religion and Divine Revelation on matters that Revelation is clear about. Since I am not a liberal and I am a very partisan Christian, I have no need to pretend that all correct morality can be arrived at through universalistic rationalism. (That is partially the point of this and Jack’s previous essays.) Beyond that, I can’t make hide nor hair of your reply. I honestly can’t tell where you are intentionally twisting my words to score PC brownie points, where your delusional mind can’t separate what I’ve actually said from your preconceived biases, and where your simple mind just can’t grasp anything beyond your simplistic formulations.
Now go dig up some more “dirt” on me. Oh, the scandal.
I haven’t read the “No Left Turns” discussion as I don’t have the time right now. On the immigration matter, I actually wrote a couple of papers about a year and a half ago for college classes regarding immigration policy in general, and illegal immigration in particular, and I can say that I agree with a lot of Dan Phillips’ policy prescriptions (though a full moratorium for an undetermined amount of time on legal immigration is an over reaction, in my opinion), but maybe not for exactly the same reasons. I can even understand his reasoning to a certain extent, though I think his emphasis on race/ethnicity as *the* primary determining factor in social organization, and as a consequent guide to immigration admissions policy, is incorrect. I do think there is a reasonable discussion to be had about the tendency for people of like ethnicities to group together, the cultural behaviors of such like-grouped people, and how it relates to US immigration policy. I’m familiar with some of the Coulter, Frum and Buchanan writings Dan referenced on the matter, though the only one that I think really comes close to his position is Buchanan (who, incidentally, I do believe is Euro-centric and borderline anti-Israeli in his writings, amongst other things, though I do agree with him on certain issues). I think the other arguments I’ve read on the subject fall more in line with what I said earlier: ideology matters. Certain ethnic groups, as a generality, hold ideological positions that are odds with the foundational ideology of the United States (for instance, Muslim-faithful ethnic groups, as I referenced earlier, or, say, the Hispanic reconquista movement), and THAT is the reason they should be excluded from emigrating – not solely because of their race or ethnicity. “White” Europeans who happen to be national socialists, Marxist communists, neo-fascists or even plain old, new-age, democratic socialists have no more in common with the founding American ideology than the above-mentioned groups. I would unequivocally rather share the country with a group of constitutionalist, conservative Asians, blacks, and Hispanics than with exclusively, or majority, “white” European socialists, communists, and leftists.
Forgive me if this is too simplistic or if I have veered into the realm of delusional. I do think I’m understanding the arguments here though. Disagreement is not necessarily the result of ignorance or simpleness (unless, of course, somebody happens to be disagreeing with me :D ).
Dan:
It took all of about two seconds to Google “Dan Phillips Proposition Nation” to come up with your racial bilge about needing to preserve the whiteness of this country. You’re really not worth much more than this effort. Your devotion to All Things White has always been close to the surface. You just speak about the need to preserve a White America more directly in other forums, where you and your friends don’t have to hide the way you feel about the importance of race in determining human worth — your earlier pseudo-protestations to the contrary.
I told you the first time we spoke that all I needed to do to expose the underlying racist nature of paleoconservatism was to let the paleos speak for themselves. You’ve done a great job of educating us all about what you and your philosophy stands for: a return to our White American roots. In your world it’s skin color that counts, not shared values.
You keep invoking Christianity and the Bible to support your claims that God wants America to be white. I don’t see a lot of people who frequently speak about their Christianity in these threads coming to the same conclusion. In fact, I see them concluding the exact opposite.
This conversation is no longer with you. It’s for the benefit of others who are trying to figure out what your brand of conservatism really stands for. You can’t even be honest about what you wrote here. To us you say “I know of no honest paleo who would argue that a human’s ultimate worth has anything to do with race, and no honest paleo has suggested such a thing here.” To your friends you lament that “If current trends continue, America will be less than 50% White by 2050.” If the race of people didn’t matter, this wouldn’t be an issue. But it does matter — to you. There are too many people in this country whose skin is the wrong color, and that in and of itself is bad according to Dan.
As for your “smiley face” comments, you seem to forget it was followed by the Bible’s and Pope’s pronouncements regarding morality, which is something I’ve argued against as the technical definition of the universal moral code. [“Good, so now you are joining me, the Pope, and many others in condemning the unjust Iraq War. Great to finally have you on board. :-) BTW, Mr. Catholic who is against appeals to Revelation in favor of universal moral codes, did you happen to pay attention to what the Pope had to say about the War when he visited America? Or is the Pope too particularistic for your universalist self? But I digress.”] You can object to my conclusions; that’s legitimate debate. But to argue that I’m violating my own definition of morality (which transcends religion) by supporting an allegedly-immoral action is dishonest debate.
This is why I always quote you as fully as I can, because you hang yourself with your own words. All you can do is call me “simplistic” without addressing the particulars of my criticisms of you.
You are a bigot, Dan. This is not a name calling contest like “PC,” “simple minded,” etc. It’s a description of the bilge you produce.
Finally, you keep invoking Jack’s name to come to your rescue. I’m sure if he wants to support your call for a White America he’ll chime in at the appropriate time, and then he and I can have a chat. But in the meantime you’re in this boat by yourself, unless you want to alert your friends at the Vanguard News (“No Jews, Just Right”), and the other websites that advocate a White America, to join the party. If so, please do it soon. I’ll be away for about a month beginning mid June. I’d hate to miss the opportunity to have some other white supremacists tell me I’m violating God’s laws and being politically correct.
Patrick: As I said in an earlier post, I too agree with Dan’s prescriptions regarding illegal immigration. But that’s not the issue. The issue here is legal immigration, and whether the starting point is a person’s skin color or their value system.
Phil, you seem to think I live in mortal fear of being branded non-PC. Well I don’t. If I was concerned about anything I have written do you think I would have written it on a public website under MY OWN NAME? In fact, if I wasn’t being branded un-PC by PC thought slaves like you, I wouldn’t be making the right arguments. Despite your conspiracy theory, there is nothing different between what I wrote at No Left Turns and what I wrote in #15 above.
I am not asking for Jack to “come to my rescue” whatever that is supposed to mean. I do wish he would tell you to quit cluttering up his thread with your PC jihad against me and all things paleo.
I have been told by several people that I should just ignore you. I would definitely be wise to follow that advice, but for some reason I just can’t help myself. But talk about letting someone’s words hang him. Your rants are an embarrassment of twisted words and logic. I am sure most of the good readers here are wise enough to understand that a conservative being concerned about rapid demographic change has nothing to do with assigning a different intrinsic worth to people. What I don’t know is whether you really think those two things are equivalent or if you intentionally twist things because you think it will help you win an argument.
Um … reality check to Dan. I’ve never called you “non-PC.” Invoking “PC” is your standard way of reacting to ideas that upset your white world view, along with Marxist, Neocon, Utopian, etc.. I’ve called you a bigot, which is the dictionary definition for someone whose judgments about people revolve around their race. I don’t care whether your bigotry is PC or Non-PC. It stinks either way.
You hide behind words like demographics, as if there is something magical about the term. You’ve yet to explain why it’s important to have more than 50% of the nation be “White”, other than you think it’s important that the majority of the nation be white. If we had a nation of Nazis they’d all be white. White isn’t the determinative issue, it’s beliefs and values.
But your “demographic” analysis stops at race. In fact, you specifically reject values as a key consideration. If you did, your comments would have lamented the change in political opinion/philosophy/values, etc., instead of skin color.
Your “True Conservative” vision assigns value to people on the basis of race. The races must stay apart and not overly-mix. If there’s too much non-white blood legally in our country, that’s bad. If there’s a lot of white blood in the country — particularly the right kind from Northern Europe — that’s good. That’s the driving force behind Dan’s Demographics.
You want a country where blood-ties and shared genetic ancestry prevail. I want a country where shared values prevail. Those are Phil’s Demographics. Not once in making my case for my views about morality or politics have I found it necessary to point to a person’s skin color as the determining factor in the calculation. The race/genetic ancestry/national origin of a person is the starting point for your calculations.
Not all Conservatives are obsessed with the color of a person’s skin, and not all Southerns are bigots. But some clearly are.
For those who might be interested, here is that vile racist Jonah Goldberg writing in that white supremacist rag USA Today.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/07/you-cant-say-th.html
Here is Klan member Ann Coulter writing at National Vanguard adjunct World Net Daily.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56054
Here is that bigot David Frum writing for that veritable Klan newsletter National Review.
http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDM3NzNjYzQ4ZWU4YzBhNmRmOTg0MWQyM2U0Njk4MzA=
Jonah and Ann in particular have Phil’s number. They expose his little PC game perfectly.
By the way, just to save Dan the trouble of writing back and trying to convince everyone that “demographics” always means “race”, and thus someone who is concerned with the legitimate study of demographic issue is forced to focus on race, here’s the thumbnail sketch from Wikipedia.
Literally any variable that can be measured can be a demographic variable. Only those obsessed with race always equate demographics with race.
“Demographics or demographic data refers to selected population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research. Note the distinction from the term “demography” (see below.) Commonly-used demographics include race, age, income, disabilities, mobility (in terms of travel time to work or number of vehicles available), educational attainment, home ownership, employment status, and even location. Distributions of values within a demographic variable, and across households, are both of interest, as well as trends over time. Demographics are frequently used in economic and marketing research.
“Demographic trends describe the changes in demographics in a population over time. For example, the average age of a population may increase. It may decrease as well as certain restrictions may be in place, for instance like in China if the population is high.
“The term demographics as a noun is often used erroneously in place of demography, the study of human population, its structure and change. Although there is no absolute delineation, demography focuses on population structure, processes and dynamics, whereas demographics is most often used in the fields of media studies, advertising, marketing, and polling, and should not be used interchangeably with the term “demography” or (more broadly) ‘population studies’.”
“…a conservative being concerned about rapid demographic change has nothing to do with assigning a different intrinsic worth to people.”
Not necessarily, no. Your reasoning behind being concerned about rapid demographic change makes the difference. That is why I have been trying to make a case on your behalf by filling in your line of reasoning to get to your conclusion. It is an entirely different thing to say, “I believe we should admit fewer people from Central and South America to the United States each year, because currently, they tend use state resources at an abnormally high rate, and tend to have less education and higher illiteracy rates than the average native.” than it is to say, “I believe we should admit fewer people from Central and South America to the United States each year, because they are not white, and they will increase the Hispanic population.”. The first statement is an objective value judgment – the reasons WHY I believe we should admit fewer Central and South Americans each year are external to the individuals; the concern is what people from a particular country or region generally contribute to United States interests. The second statement is a subjective value judgment – the reasons why I believe we should admit fewer Central and South Americans each year are based purely on race; the concern is race in and of itself. You have ignored all of my comments instead of clarifying your logic, and it appears that you fall more into the subjective value judgment camp than the objective.
Patrick:
Actually, I think you’ve been given your answer, and its rationalization.
If Dan’s (and the Paleo’s) desire for a white America is based on the example you gave (Central Americans in 2008 are using more of the nation’s resources than other groups, and thus their entry should be limited for the good of the nation), then at some future point when this situation reverses and, say, White Northern Europeans are in a similar state, Dan would have to argue for limiting white Northern European immigration and increasing Central American immigration.
But this flies in the face of Dan’s/Paleo’s belief that “blood and soil,” shared ancestry with Northern Europeans, kith and kin, etc. are the determining features of a nation.
Dan’s continued focus on racial demographics, combined with his denunciation of values or any other such factors as the legitimate building blocks of a national identity, tells you his position. He just states it more directly elsewhere when he’s among friends. Here, where people ask him these disturbing questions, his only recourse is to challenge their mental capacity to reason properly.
I posted links to some of the articles I referenced by Ann Coulter, Jonah Goldberg, and David Frum, but that comment appears to be in the queue. I suspect because it has links. I hope y’all read them when they appear. I am sure, given your reasoning here, that you will be forced to condemn them all, esp. Jonah and Ann, as vile racist bigots. Ann’s reasoning is so close to mine that I could be accuse of plagiarism.
Anyway Patrick, I was not ignoring you, and I appreciate your comments. I was just preoccupied dealing with Phil. I would not use your word ideology. I would say that people from like background tend to share like beliefs, traditions, folkways, habits, baseline assumptions, etc. It is not just a matter of economic disadvantage, for example. It is that Mexicans or El Salvadorans or Vietnamese Hmong or whoever else tend to come here and act like Mexicans or El Salvadorans or Vietnamese Hmong in and among other Mexicans, El Salvadoran, and Hmong. (Go figure.) This invites Balkanization when groups come here in large numbers and rapidly. This was the point of my example of LA. There are now large sections of LA that are entirely Mexican. Much to the chagrin of African Americans, many of these neighborhoods used to be black. There is a lot of conflict between Blacks and Mexicans in LA. Consider La Raza (ironically translated The Race). Consider the concept of Aztlan and reconquista. Notice all the Mexican flag images. Why would a conservative, who by definition seeks to conserve, invite this?
Have you looked at immigration restrictions and rates in other countries? I am told India, which sends us thousands of immigrants a year, has an Indian only immigration policy. Are they all a bunch of “bigots?” By Phil’s logic they most certainly are. Ever looked into how difficult it is to immigrate to Japan? All a bunch of racists I guess.
It is really only White people in Western countries who are supposed to not think the way everyone else thinks. This is clearly, regardless of how much Phil wants to poo poo it, a product of the overwhelming influence of cultural Marxism.
The issue of “worth” is a disingenuous strawman and Phil knows it. By worth I assume he means something like an individual’s inherent value in the sight of God. I certainly do not believe that someone’s intrinsic value in the eyes of God has anything to do with race. As I said, such a view would be, IMO, contrary to the Bible and the spirit of Christianity. And I don’t know of a single paleo, and I know many, who believe such a thing. But that has nothing to do with the issue of what would be a wise and conservative immigration policy. To suggest that it does is rank demagoguery.
Cont’d…
Phil, the folks at NLT are not “my friends” as you suggest although I do know Dr. K. They are generally neocons with very conventional neocon attitudes. What I said is that it is easier to have a civil conversation there without PC hysterics and grandstanding. I have never once been bothered that you think I don’t meet your PC standards. In fact, if I thought I did, I think I would slash my wrists knowing that I was a ball-less PC shill carrying water for the left. It does, however, bother me somewhat that you think I say one thing one place and one thing somewhere else. I rather pride myself on saying just what I mean regardless of forum. I’m not sure how what I said at NLT, which I in no way disclaimed, is somehow different in kind than what I have said many times here.
I used to enjoy our little jousting matches, but I admit I have come to find them quite aversive. I have intentionally not posted many comments at IC because I knew you would come along with your off topic jibes. I have posted under Jack’s essays because I think they are largely on target, and then you proceed to clutter up the threads with your more PC than thou posturing.
I will admit that one reason I drug my feet on your immigration answer is because I just didn’t want to have to deal with your shenanigans. Once you are off to the races with your real or feigned (?) PC indignance, there goes my day. As I suggested above, you never cared in the slightest about my answers, you just wanted to do the “PC pounce.” I submit the above as Exhibit A.
Why don’t you go conduct your PC Crusade against those vile bigots Ann and Jonah, and let the rest of us have a civil conversation?
Talk about straw men.
No one is suggesting that we open our borders and let anyone in from anyplace, period. Part of the logic of immigration has to do with assimilation. People who share our values, and who have skill sets or other attributes advantageous to the country, emigrate to the US. Dan’s vision of the world is a Borat movie where immigrants cook their meals on an open flame while riding in a bus, or ritually sacrifice the neighbor’s cat because that’s the way they did it in lower Slobovia.
Assimilation means leaving behind the way you did things in El Salvador. When done correctly these people are brought into the American system, and learn not to do any culturally-inappropriate things like they did in the old country. This of course presumes that non-White people have the mental ability to learn not to pee in public while walking down the street because that’s what I saw a peasant do once in Ambato Ecuador. But call me the eternal optimist. The doctor we let in from India will at least know enough to wash his hands after doing it. Assuming that non-white people will always act like they did back in the old world is a fatuous argument.
If the assimilation system today is broken, as it surely is in part due to uncontrolled illegal immigration, we fix it. We don’t automatically assume that because our founders were Northern European only the people of 2008 who live in Northern Europe have the mental capacity or innate cultural understanding to conduct themselves appropriately within the United States.
The fact that other countries are more restrictive about their immigration policies than the US is a meaningless comment. We are not governed by what other nations think about immigration, abortion rights, capital punishment, or other issues — that is unless you believe that the UN is the source of all reason. We are the United States of America, a unique, singular country that was founded on the belief that government should reflect the inalienable rights granted by God. That guides us, not whether or not a native born or naturalized U.S. citizen looks like I do.
The problem with Dan’s protests about the Balkanization of the country is that it is a dishonest argument. We’re not talking about creating a country from scratch. We’re talking about managing a country in 2008 — and beyond — as it presently exists. Unless Dan is advocating rounding up all non-White people and expelling them, then we have to account for them in all future activities. If, as Dan contends, the Mexicans, Asians, Central Americans, etc. presently here are incapable of assimilating, then by definition he sees the country’s future where pockets of white people exist like some western fort surrounded by injuns.
If they can assimilate, then we don’t need to expel them because of their national origin. But admitting this would cut the legs out of Dan’s argument, so he simply assumes that because illegal immigration has screwed up the present-day assimilation process that worked in earlier decades, it can never work again. My grandfather came to this country in 1890. He couldn’t speak English, and had never seen a streetcar before. And yet within 10 years he was a railroad engineer. He managed to assimilate despite his southern European genetic deficiencies. I’m sure others could today as well if we fixed the broken system.
Once again this is the problem with applying Paleoconservative theory to reality. Lamenting the current state of affairs is not the same thing as offering concrete, practical ways to fix problems. Wishing the country was all white is not the same thing as telling us how to overcome current problems. Dealing with illegal immigration — which is a crime — is not the same thing as establishing immigration policies and procedures.
And talking about the sorry state of affairs today which are due largely to uncontrolled illegal immigration only defines the challenge. It doesn’t establish the conditions by which the world will forever operate.
Finally, while yes one way to discuss human worth is to look at the value of human life in the sight of God, everything I’ve personally written on the subject has been about humans assigning different values to different people: a developing child is not really human, a Jew is not “innocent life” because he believes in the wrong God, etc.
In this regard I continue to maintain that stating categorically that only white people of northern European ancestry are deserving of citizenship in the United States is to devalue the worth of all other human beings. It speaks only to their genetic profile, not to the values they possess, or the individual actions/choices they have made in life. Offering as a solution that all people have value — as long as they keep with their own kind and don’t mix with other races — isn’t valuing people without regard to race. It’s precisely the opposite, as we did in earlier times with Colored/White distinctions.
This isn’t Christianity, regardless of what Dan says it is. It’s simple bigotry.
Dan, regarding the NLT, I stand corrected. They are not necessarily your friends. As I re-read the citation, many of them rejected your positions. The Vanguard News Network is more in tune with your whites-only philosophy.
I am so sorry that you don’t find our discussion fun any more. I never debate just for fun. I fairly quickly realized what you actually represented, so it was more a matter of not letting you get away with your sophistry unchallenged.
I’ve pressed you on immigration because you said you were going to actually apply Paleo principles to a real world policy prescription like immigration. This got you out of our last conversation. After 9 months of asking you to do what you’ve said you would do, you’ve finally done something along these lines. However most of what you offer are platitudes, not policies, with the exception of your policies regarding illegal immigration. These are real concrete actions which can actually be debated. As it turns out, I agree with most all of them.
Regarding legal immigration, you still mire yourself in what the country ought to be, with no concrete roadmap (like you do with illegal immigration) to tell us how to get there. This isn’t 1776, so the debate today isn’t about the Articles of Confederation. If these non-whites represent a grave threat to the US as you contend, what exactly do you propose to do about the non-Whites ALREADY HERE? If you let them stay then they can’t really be a problem. We don’t leave cancers untreated.
You have no real solutions, just slogans. Or, you have solutions, but you won’t detail them. Either way it’s an empty suit we’re dealing with.
Phil,
Is it even possible to turn back the clock to when assimilation mattered?
Like you, I think it is the most important factor, but far too many Americans either don’t care or are so committed to “diversity” and respect for other cultures, that they actively campgaign against assimilation, seeing it as a form of oppression.
Now mind you I can buy part of that argument, because I believe in oppression, discrimination and all manner of politically incorrect things under the right circumstances.
I expect immigrants to voluntarily be oppressed (adapt, learn English, stop urinating on trees) if they want to become Americans. The one’s who don’t, show their hand and reveal that it is something else that brings them here.
I see it as just a reality of where we are now as opposed to where we were 200 years ago. Then, America offered opportunity to make something for yourself. Today, we offer the opportunity to take something for yourself.
Nothing, and I repeat nothing, makes me more proud than to see a new immigrant, speaking in broken English and tears of joy in his eyes, wave his hard-earned citizenship documents for all to see. It is, the beautiful and respectful act of assimilation that signals to everyone that this person “is” an American – not just “in” America.
I’d trade every, Pablo, Pamoja and Phang I’ve seen honor us in this way for every white American bonehead socialist trying to turn us into the country from which these hopeful new Americans escaped.
As for the inconsiderate immigrants, legal and illegal, who either by plan or ignorance, take more than they give, count on our contempt, which we serve ice cold and with every expectaion it will earn us the racism brand.
What I fear is that if things keep up as they are, racism/descrimination may begin to emerge as the most practical solution to our problem.
It would be a shame for all the legal immigrants who appreciate and respect our laws and institutions. It would be a shame for all it would do for the leftist who abhor our laws and institutions.
Phil,
“If, as Dan contends, the Mexicans, Asians, Central Americans, etc. presently here are incapable of assimilating, then by definition he sees the country’s future where pockets of white people exist like some western fort surrounded by injuns.
If they can assimilate, then we don’t need to expel them because of their national origin. But admitting this would cut the legs out of Dan’s argument, so he simply assumes that because illegal immigration has screwed up the present-day assimilation process that worked in earlier decades, it can never work again.”
Here again, we come to a matter of underlying reasoning. If it is one’s contention that the present level of legal immigration – which is historically high – is not allowing enough of an assimilation “buffer”, if you will, and one believes that consequently, all legal immigration should be reduced or halted, then it’s possible to have a reasoned discussion on the matter. Indeed, such arguments have been made throughout American history, even when our immigration originated primarily in European countries. Irish and German immigration that occurred rapidly drew the same arguments of poor assimilation harming the greater society. That is partially why our immigration policy became so tight when the 1924 immigration law was designed. If one believes we should reduce the overall level of immigration for external, objective reasons – like my Central and South Americans example above – then his objections are not illegitimate. It may very well be that certain groups are assimilating poorly, and that we need to reduce our legal immigration in order to properly assimilate and manage the large immigrant population already here as part of our immigration strategy. It’s not bogus to bring that up. (As a quick sidebar, I don’t think our assimilation problems today are entirely, or even primarily, the result of the level of immigration, or even of illegal immigration, but of liberal politically correct policy and the nanny state that it produces preventing people from assimilating the way they used to and encouraging racial and ethnic divisions. There is a whole discussion unto itself to be had on this topic alone). If, on the other hand, one believes we should reduce the overall level of immigration for subjective reasons – again going back to the Central/South American example – then the reasoning isn’t good and the argument loses its legitimacy. To say that one particular ethnic group is intrinsically incapable of assimilation and should be kept out is a subjective value judgment.
Lookie here what I just ran across. More racist bildge. This time form that well know Northern European Supremacist Jewish lady, Ilanna Mercer, again from the bigoted rag World Net Daily.
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=64381
I find it odd that a Jewish lady would be a Northern European supremacist, but perhaps she learned it from that other Northern European supremacist Jew, Jonah Goldberg.
Look Phil, you need to quit worrying about a small fry like me and get busy purging Ann, Jonah, and now Ilana from your movement. They are tainting it. And you definitely need to call out National Vanguard … err … I mean World Net Daily as they seem to be a continual source of all this White Supremacism that seems to be popping up all over the place.
While you are at it, you clearly need to call out Israel, that racist ethno-state. A right of return only for Jews. How dare they? And Ms. Mercer is defending these blatantly discriminatory policies.
Get busy Phil. You have some serious purging to do. :-)
Nick:
Excellent questions.
There is nothing inherently wrong about “discrimination”. We do it all the time when we discriminate between people to choose our spouse, to decide whether to eat fish or steak for dinner, to vote Republican or Democrat.
In America the Constitution gives you a right to discriminate when it comes to casting your vote, choosing your spouse, and selecting your dinner. Some of these issues are morally-neutral: blonde or brunette, Coke vs. Pepsi. Some aren’t: If we vote for Candidate X because he’s of white Northern European ancestry regardless as the motivating factor, it’s just as discriminating in an odious way as if we vote for a person because they are Black, Asian, male or female, etc. But casting your vote for a stupid reason is a Constitutionally-protected right, so if having a vowel on the end of a candidate’s name is an immediate disqualifier for some people, they have a protected right to exercise that form of bigotry.
But we’re not talking about individual actions in this discussion. We’re talking about establishing national policy. And here it doesn’t matter whether your motives are pure, venal, inspired by your twisted reading of the Bible, or based on your particular notion of “True Conservatism”. It is both immoral — and thanks to a certain constitutional amendment, illegal — to make national policy based on a person’s race, creed, or national origin. And no amount of lipstick on that pig will hide the odor of a race-based view of the world.
Which brings us to the matter of assimilation. Dan is entirely correct about one matter, as I have long agreed. Absolutely nothing can be done to remedy the problems we face today unless and until we end illegal immigration, and begin to control those illegals already inside the country. Like Dan I believe that there are enough disincentives that can be instituted to dramatically decrease this population through a self-selection method (i.e., they leave). That will produce a more manageable residue that can be dealt with more directly through legal action (incarceration and deportation).
The system is broken today because the Courts, schools and politicians have substituted the abstract notion of “fairness” for the Constitutional rule of law. Because of this assimilation is now seen as unfair and biased, instead of a necessary part of preserving the national identity. Multiculturalism is valued over Americanism in the schools. And politicians pander to bring in more foreigners as voting blocks rather than as citizens.
Regardless of the bilge that some want to propagate, we are a nation of immigrants. This nation was colonized not just by the English, Dutch and the slaves they brought with them, but unless we want to give up 60% of our land mass, we must also recognize that America was colonized by the French, Spanish, Mexicans, and Asians (particularly in the West). To assign predominance to white Northern Europeans is both ahistorical and bigoted. I say bigoted because it’s the people of White Northern European ancestry who always magically find this special place for their people in the “natural order”.
The Paleos and other race-based advocates do us a disservice by focusing on the color of a person’s skin to “solve” this problem (blood and soil, family ancestry, kith and kin, etc.). If we look at the shared vales that define us as Americans, then we can begin to correct this mess. Rather than elect a politician because he’s grandfather was Aryan, why not elect a Bobby Jindal? Rather than worry about whether the country is only 50% white, why not work to educate the public on why the present-day ACLU-driven interpretation of “fairness” is claptrap. Rather than abandon the party system as it currently exists to make a protest vote for Bob Barr, why not stay and fight as Reagan did after 1976 and transform it into a vehicle to promote this change?
My problem with political philosophies that focus on whether Lincoln was a tyrant, or the Articles of Confederation gave the South the right to secede, is that they cannot (or will not) address present-day problems. The political system as it presently exists exercises power over the issue of immigration. Change must occur within that power structure. But change is not possible if your philosophy automatically assigns lower status to darker skinned people whose parents came from the “wrong” country.
No trend is forever set in stone unless the people substitute wishes for change in place of the real-world actions needed to accomplish this change. We’ve had over 80 years of liberal policies govern this country, save the Reagan years. The time is right for someone with the courage to state the problem forthrightly to again shape the public debate. But this requires an honest approach devoid of hidden agendas. People lamenting the problems brought about by uncontrolled immigration have no credibility if, at the end of the day, their solution is not to reach the proper flow, terms and conditions of immigration, but to end non-white immigration. While both I and the Aryan Nation may agree that the current immigration situation is a mess, I don’t want to attach myself to their hidden agendas. This is why the Ron Paul wing has gotten so little traction politically. There’s too much “other stuff” that taints some of his good ideas.
It will take time and a lot of hard work to re-direct America in the right way to again assimilate its legal immigrants. But we won’t get there if our governing philosophy is to treat all non-whites as inferior potential citizens by focusing on skin color and national origin instead of the common values we share.
And so, having ended my Paleoconservative “tirade” that Jack referenced in his original article, let me again return to some of the notions contained in “Replies to Critics on Behalf of Classical Conservatism.”
In the Ph.D. programs of major universities, there’s a quite understandable division between policy wonks and political philosophers. Wonks, in their most extreme, like to assign numbers to human activity. They take a few polls or run a few regression analyses, and presto-chango, come up with an “answer.”
When the subject is whether Candidate A or B will win an election, these conclusions have some degree of measurable accountability. You are either right or wrong within your model’s margin of error. But when a wonk ties to measure something intangible, like “fairness”, “justice”, “natural rights”, etc., they need to first make certain relativistic assumptions. Is American justice the same kind of justice as Islamic justice? Is American justice in the 21st century thought of and measured the same way as American justice in the 19th century? Is American justice even “justice” in the first place?
This is where clear thought needs to be given to considering what, exactly, are the universal traits of something like “justice”, assuming it isn’t as some suggest simply a time-and-situation-dependent historical concept.
The same goes for other issues that underlie or are part of a notion of justice, such as “morality”. Is morality relative/conditional, or universal? Is it as Jack asserted at one point that “Our moral determinations are informed by the conceptual resources — the language, values, customs, and habits into which we are educated. But those resources are in turn the products of place and time.” Or is morality something that extends beyond what humans define it to be?
This leads to the wonkish criticisms of philosophy. My personal pet peeve about philosophers is that, when taken to the extreme, their ultimate goal seems to be to build the ultimate reading list. Trace the genesis of a thought back through history, and you have the definitional terms of a concept.
I’m not a numbers guy, so I’ve never succumbed to the temptation of reducing all things political to a set of numbers. But I’m also not a philosopher as I’ve readily admitted on many occasions, so tracing the genesis of an idea has only limited appeal to me. What I like to do is look at real world situations (like US abortion policy), and understand how and why it evolved the way it did, what justifications were used on both sides to advance or defend their positions, whether these justifications were rationalizations or reflected something deeper, and if something deeper is involved, assess what it is and how it operates. This allows me to do things like recognize the similarities and differences between religion and morality, lay the blame for Roe v. Wade at the doorstep of the religious Right through the law of unintended consequences, and illustrate how — from a policy perspective — the philosophical underpinnings of the abortion proponents contain the seeds of its own destruction.
I can do this — blend policy considerations with philosophical issues — because I’ve spent the majority of my academic and professional life working with real world policies, which is supposedly a sub-theme of this article. In this way I specifically reject Jack claim that “… in spite of the moral universalist’s insistence to the contrary, ‘principles’ like ‘natural rights’ or ‘human rights,’ are incapable of informing policy. Such principles are universal, but policies are specific. Principles are formal, policies substantive.”
This doesn’t mean that Jack is entirely wrong. I’ve taken great pains to show how some of what Jack says is true, but not for the reasons he claims. Using my debate with Dan, Paleo philosophy is either incapable of moving beyond rhetoric to address 21st century real world issues. Or, it can do it, but the policy prescriptions are so odious (the creation of a whites-only America) that they must be hidden from view. Either way there is a practical disconnect between philosophy and policy.
But this doesn’t need to be the case. Just look at the way the Declaration of Independence (philosophy) relates to the Constitution (policy) regarding the issues of “Rights” and “equality” under the U.S. Constitution:
The United States system of Constitutional government was founded on a Declaration of Independence that recognized that laws made by men APART from a Higher Authority, as opposed to laws that are A PART OF a Higher Authority’s PURPOSE FOR MAN, are fundamentally immoral. And immoral laws, ultimately, cannot stand. Not even ones rationalized as conforming to this Higher purpose.
This is why the seeds of slavery’s own destruction were sewn at the very creation of the U.S. Constitution when southern landowners acknowledged the limited humanity of their slaves through the Three-Fifths compromise. The same human being who had no Constitutional rights was counted as three-fifths of a person for taxation and representation purposes.
It took almost a hundred years for those seeds to blossom, but that intervening time was used to clarify the moral bankruptcy of slavery and prepare the country for eventual change. If the Civil War had not been fought, enough new states would have joined the Union to legally abolish this abominable practice. With each passing year the rationalizations for allowing slavery were slowly being pealed away to expose the moral ground below it, until nothing but naked, venal self-interest remained to justify the practice of owning another human being.
The question isn’t whether the laws and Constitution of the United States directly acknowledge the existence of God, but whether the laws man makes conform to the God-given moral justification for having a government in the first place. This justification for rebellion against England both defines “equality” and “Rights” under what was ultimately to become the Constitution of the United States. So-called majority rights and actions must conform to this justification for government, the same as minority rights and actions must conform to it. It isn’t whether the majority — or minority for that matter — appear to be acting tyrannically. It’s whether their actions are part of the higher purpose for man as stated in the Declaration of Independence, which derives its source authority from God, not human consensus or the work of any individual political philosophers.
By reducing the moral and policy implications of slavery to a trans-historical “crime”, and then discussion whether Jefferson and the other founders should be labeled as hypocrites, criminals, etc. for not abolishing slavery in the DOE, misses the point. Slavery is morally wrong because it goes against the universal moral code that it is immoral to deliberately harm another human being. Its morality (or lack of it) is not due to human convention, or as Jack framed it “conceptual resources — the language, values, customs, and habits into which we are educated.” It’s morally wrong because it does deliberate harm to innocent human life, even if its continued presence is rationalized or justified by referring to a historically-dependent higher purpose (to keep the fledgling nation together).
Philosophy can indeed inform and guide policy regardless of the time, place, or relative sophistication of a society — if it is based on sound principles reflecting universal moral truths. If Philosophical or moral “principles” are not universal, then they are not truly moral nor philosophical. They are just devices to help one group proclaim their rights over others as part of some human-invented “natural social order”.
Policy without philosophy is nothing more than venal self-interest. But a philosophy that is incapable of formulating specific policy prescriptions is just a lot of hot air — or worse.
If Jack cares to respond to me directly on this instead of lamenting the incivility of my challenges to Paleoconservative morality (an oxymoron if I ever heard one), I’m around until the middle of June then out for a month with limited internet access.
For those of you still around to follow this exchange, let me bolster my point above by replying to Jack’s specific question:
“Stop and think about any contemporary political-moral issue. Take, say, abortion. How have the “principles” of “the right to life” and “the right to choose” helped to resolve this issue? Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept that the unborn have a “right to life,” nothing substantive regarding the permissibility or impermissibility of abortion generally, much less in specific cases, follows. Similarly, even if we accept that women have a “right to choose,” nothing substantive follows. That this debate continues to rage on, with no end in the foreseeable (or, for that matter, distant) future, reflects not at all well on the philosophy of “rights” vis-à-vis its contribution to it. And what is true of the abortion issue is true of every other issue: appeals to “natural law” and/or “human rights” do not because they cannot determine policy.”
Well, here’s a way to do what Jack says you can’t possibly do. End the linguistic charade, and you alter the existing policy. My full answer can be found in http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/08/25/what-kind-of-car-would-jesus-drive-to-take-his-girlfriend-to-an-abortion-clinic/
Despite any lingering objections from moral relativists who see no difference between the actions of George Bush and Osama Bin Laden, or who equate the actions of Islamo-fascists terrorists deliberately targeting Israeli civilians with the unintended death of a Lebanese civilian who allowed his house to be used as a rocket-launching station, I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that killing people because they don’t worship your God is, well, wrong. Not kind-of-wrong, or a little misguided, or the product of a different cultural view of the world, but totally, completely, and unmitigatedly wrong! This is indeed a moral judgment. It is not just one man’s private, personal opinion, but a reflection of the inherent truthfulness of this universal, God-given principle that we must all show a basic respect for innocent human life.
Which leads me to the killing of another form of innocent human life. We know that in-utero infanticide (pardon me, I mean the exercise of “a Woman’s Right to Choose”) is a universal truth enshrined somewhere in The Constitution. Just don’t look too hard for the actual words, because they’re bundled inside the Constitutional Right to Privacy, which, er, is also a little difficult to point directly to. But that shouldn’t be too much of a worry. After all privacy, by it’s very nature, likes to keep the shades drawn and hide from the limelight, so we’ll just all have to accept the fact that it’s really there, even though no one can actually see it. Like the proverbial little old lady who triple locks her door and only opens it a crack to let the local Meals on Wheels volunteer slip her a daily hot meal, we know that she really exists because, well, why would we be delivering food to her door if she didn’t? So too it is with the Right to Abortion, which derives from the Right to Privacy, which comes to us from our basic Constitutional Rights.
That’s three “Rights,” so it must be a pretty compelling argument. Compelling, that is, until we ask what is the foundation of these rights? Yeah sure the Constitution was built on Judeo-Christian values, but in recent years the Supreme Court and our friendly neighborhood Liberals have made it pretty clear that The Declaration of Independence, which speaks about some kind of Creator who bestows God-given rights, is not The Constitution, which expressly insists on the separation of Church and State. Well, it doesn’t “expressly forbid” that, because like the Right to Privacy, you won’t really find those words anyplace inside it. But the government can’t establish an official religion, and a lot of you folks keep talking about Jesus, so that automatically means God does not exist in so far as the U.S. government is concerned. His name may be on our currency, and the Ten Commandments may be etched into the walls of the High Court itself, but those are just cultural manifestations not religious edicts. God doesn’t make the laws of the United States or have anything to do with that process. That’s “settled law,” as Chuck Schumer would say, and not subject to debate.
Okay then. The Right to Choose is a man-made right, and has absolutely nothing to do with morality. It draws no strength from any connection to an intrinsic notion of “right” vs. “wrong,” but instead finds its grounding in the concept of privacy and fairness. But privacy and fairness have meant different things to different people throughout time and throughout the world. These differences are neutral in terms of any discussion of morality or justice, unless they specifically impinge upon a basic issue of morality or justice. “Fairness,” like “privacy,” is a culturally-based, temporally-ephemeral concept. Morality isn’t.
So let’s do the math and evaluate how a man-made “Right to Choose” holds up against a God-given foundation of morality. Specifically, we need to ask the question: “by what justification does an individual have the right to take another individual’s life without the state first making that decision through due process, a trial, appeals, and then an order of execution signed by the proper legal authorities?”
The first thing that strikes me about the abortion debate is the proposition that a state-created “Woman’s Right to Choose” automatically trumps the God-given human rights of a healthy, living twenty-week old fetus attached to her womb. I will admit that the idea of another life form growing inside you is kind of creepy when you think about it, like some scene out of the movie Alien where this foreign creature attaches itself to the host and distends its body. That is, until you realize that nine months later what comes out of a pregnant woman’s body isn’t a tentacle-waving monster with sharp fangs and acid coursing through its veins, but a little human being.
But hey, the child-bearer has rights too. I’m sure not every woman asked to get pregnant, or can afford to have another kid and still pay the rent, not to mention what it might do to her career prospects while she carries the little booger for nine months and then has to care for it after it’s born. Besides, a lot of people think this world is so crummy that no one in their right mind would want to be born into it, even though as current residents of planet Earth they aren’t thinking about putting a gun barrel in their own mouth and pulling the trigger to hasten their own departure.
Even so, the reasoning goes, we need to do what’s in the best interest of all parties; that is, mother and undifferentiated tissue mass. So, we kill the kid (I mean, “choose” option A instead of option B). There’s no need to agonize over this decision, since that thing — whatever it is — isn’t really human . . . yet. A seed isn’t a tree, just like a zygote isn’t a little boy or girl. Perfect analogy. Perfect justification.
Perfect crap.
It’s this pseudo-moralistic legerdemain that I find the most repulsive. Except for permitting abortion, I can’t think of a single case in history where society has sanctioned an individual, not the state, with the right to arbitrarily end another individual’s life. No trial or due process, not even a stated “reason” is needed, just a quick trip to the Planned Parenthood clinic and a stitch or two here and there, and then let the nurses dump the residue in a biohazard container. The right to defend yourself in your own home isn’t even a universal right within this country. And where such laws exist, a variety of different rules exist. In some states you must use non-violent resistance first, or attempt to run away. In others you must meet different standards of threat before deadly force can be used.
But try as they might to render any discussion of God irrelevant in the making of moral laws, and deny that a higher morality trumps their man-bestowed permission to take a human life, it is clear by their actions that abortion proponents don’t actually believe their own rhetoric. Even those who deny the existence of God all together, as opposed to those who merely say He’s irrelevant to this conversation, feel the need to justify their actions on the basis of universally-accepted moral values.
So how do they get around the dilemma of acting morally while killing innocent human life? Easy.
They simply announce that contrary to common sense, it’s not really a human life after all.
The undifferentiated tissue mass may have grown in a few weeks to resemble a human being, but it can’t live life on its own. So ipso facto and whatever other appropriate legal lingo they need to produce, it’s not really a child . . . yet. (Note to file: Update my living will so the grandkids don’t automatically ship me off to the organ-donor farm if I’m temporarily unconscious and can’t feed myself, or need a respirator to breathe because I have a serious case of pneumonia. Killing me off may be logically seen as a post-natal abortion because I can’t eat or breathe on my own, but I may not be quite ready to go yet.)
But what if that little booger growing inside her tummy survives for 7-8 months, and she discovers at this point that she needs an abortion for health reasons? (Note to file, this time from abortion advocates: Make sure that no one substitutes the phrase “save her life” for “health,” because as we all know a healthy mental attitude about yourself is just as important as your physical health. The fact that you may not die if you have the child shouldn’t prohibit you from killing it if your mental state needs a boost. It would be too traumatic to give your child (or whatever that thing is inside you) up for adoption. You’d go crazy wondering where it was and how it was doing. Better to kill it now so you’ll have closure, and you can get on with your life.)
Which leads us to the most despicable logic of all.
Assuming that a woman exercises her [wo]man-given right to end her pregnancy just before the twentieth week, what happens if once the thing comes out of her it starts breathing on its own when it’s not supposed to? Some people might actually think that aborted fetus is a baby! This poor woman would certainly get in trouble if she had her doctor kill it, like happened a few years back. She came into the clinic for an abortion, not eighteen-plus years of raising a child or a lifetime of personal misery after giving it up for adoption. That thing is supposed to be dead, not wiggling around like some little human being.
Which explains why partial-birth abortion is so necessary to preserving the “right to choose.” And why it is fought for so hard by abortion advocates when a less draconian procedure would still abort the fetus.
No brain. No breathing. No bother.
Phil,
The problem with your argument is that it presumes that there is a morality that transcends “tradition” – a universal morality. However, as you you have just read in the article, this is impossible – “universalists” are the product of whatever “tradition” into which they were born, and consequently they are actually relativists. Your conception of universal morality exists only because of the traditions into which you were born. Someone born 600 years ago, or 600 years from now, may *define* universal morality differently because of the traditional context of their culture, and therefore universal morality is not actually universal, and morality in and of itself is relative.
The only thing that IS universal is “tradition”, although tradition is in a constant state of change, because each generation is simultaneously the product of tradition and a contributor to it. “Tradition” is an external force, like space, or time, or gravity, that dictates who we are, and nothing can exist outside of it. “Tradition” predates human reason, so human reason is a product of it. It had no beginning – it was not created, and it has always existed – and since we do not exist apart from it, it has no end. And thankfully, that is what “Classical”-conservatism is based upon. That is why “Classical”-conservatism is unquestionable and beyond criticism. If you disagree, it is simply because you do not understand the nature of morality and tradition. See comment #21.
Patrick: Well put!
One other thing though. By defining Tradition as something with “no beginning” and “no end”, you have just made “Tradition” synonymous with “God.”
Classical conservatism is therefore more than a philosophy. It becomes a religion. No need for any further reflection on life beyond what it teaches.
“By defining Tradition as something with “no beginning” and “no end”, you have just made “Tradition” synonymous with “God.”"
Yes, exactly. It really does seem like the author, by his definition of “tradition”, has elevated “tradition” in the context of “Classical”-conservatism, to a supernatural, quasi-religious status.
In defence of Dr. Kerwick, it doesn’t appear he is suggesting there is “no” beginning of tradition, only that it can’t be pinpointed. Otherwise he would have to explain not only what “tradition” was before there was a word or concept for it, but what it was before there were human beings.
As for the question of the morality of slavery, it is clear that we cannot assume people of the past (even Jesus – I know, rain down the fire on me, but he was a man) viewed all upright, talking creatures as equal human beings.
Slavery is wrong because the premise now is that all humans are the same – that there is no lesser species. There may come a day when we feel we have to release all our closest relatives – the primates – from slavery (ownership) from zoos.
Likewise, despite what seems to be the seeming inevitability of progress in the progressive sense, I suspect there will come a day when the question of abortion may not be so muddled.
To me it seems we are going through an interesting period of adjustment, and it is only a matter of time before declaring developping human life non-human catches up with those who make that claim – just as it caught up with those who defended slavery on the grounds blacks were less than full humans.
Nick: You are indeed correct. The only way slavery (or abortion) can be morally justified is to assign less-than-human status to these people (deliberately or through ignorance), or if their humanity is acknowledged, assign them non-innocent status by virtue of their race, tribe, different language/culture, or whatever other artificial divice man employs to rationalize immorality.
If true morality is not universal, rather than the product of the times we live in, education, societal evolution, etc., then exactly when has it ever been considered moral to rape and murder a five year old child? Different societies throughout history have defined many things as moral or immoral depending upon transcient historcial consensus (capitalism is a good case of this). But no society has ever treated the killing of their neighbor’s/kin’s/society’s children like the killing of an animal for sport or food. 50 million abortions in the US are possible only by pretending that the thing being killed “isn’t really human”.
Phil:
I don’t recall if this point has been made already, but for an evil to be sold to the people, a good aspect (true of false) of it must be presented. This implies some sort of built-in sense of right and wrong on the part of the people.