For the no-one that reads my LJ, here is my Amazon Wish List.
It's at over $1400 now, heh. I like my books.
- So I Got a Wish List
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7)
sarahdroppedout- May 23rd, 2009
giddy
- Community and Pluralism
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- sarahdroppedout
- May 23rd, 2009
listless
It seems obvious to me that most human beings want to feel like the 'belong' to something - a group, a tradition - which is beyond their immediate, personal interests. They want to feel that there is somewhere they can be comfortable and accepted, as well as that they are contributing to something which is 'greater' than themselves. Most people want to (and do) belong to several such traditions. Yet this yearning for finding others like us, and this sense of moral responsibility which extends beyond our fragile personal relationships, can frequently take a turn for the nasty. As Russell Hardin observes in "One for All",The reason for the relative strength of such group commitments is largely
a function of individual self-interest and of epistemological flaws, which do
not correlate with goodness or rightness. Hence, group commitments are
unlikely to be good per se. Given that their effect is often appalling, we
might as soon conclude of a particular commitment that it is bad as that it is good.And this is where I think conservative philosophers like Robert Nisbet and John Kekes have an advantage in developing pluralistic ideas. Whereas liberal pluralism has frequently referred to the relative benevolence of a plurality of views, conservatives pluralists (and Hayek) tend to emphasize the rather strong epistemic and empirical claims that would be required to justify the abolition or modification of widely accepted traditions, as well as the danger of a 'rationalistic' politicizing which aims to legislate directly at individuals, without regard to traditional structures of society. Both have amply emphasized the disasterous consequences which frequently attend anti-pluralism. Yet where the liberals tend to take a cosmopolitan view (in which there is no particular reason we should be politically divided over such inconsequents), Conservatives tend to argue for the strength of intermediary institutions in preserving civil society and individual freedom. Robert Nisbet examined the institutions of the middle ages and concluded that the primary draw they had for philosophers like Burke was not some romanticism for a bygone era, but the presence of intermediary and mixed institutions of governance without appeal to a sovereign authority. The recognition of a central 'authority' in itself seems dangerous to pluralistic enterprises, whether they be liberal, conservative or something else. For factions may (even unconsciously) strive for possession of 'authority', and this will tend to result in the eroding of intermediary protections from political power and the intermediary allegiances that support them. The French Revolution is not hated out of sheer reactionary spite, it is hated because it was the original bloody 'Steamroller' of modern statism. Likewise, it was central a continental war of an extent virtually unknown in history.
Communism, National Socialism and World War I generally were perhaps unimaginable in a world without the French Revolution. Quite frankly, it was their blueprint and their genesis.
When striving for community I think it is important that we emphasize a plurality not only amongst individual views and preferences, but also the loyalties of individuals between various institutions. The specters of Absolutism and Monism, whether manifest in Wilson or Cromwell, always seem to revive quickly whenever some political or religious institution is seen as omnicompetent and all-inclusive. Part of the explanation for the modern politics of schizophrenic radicalism, according to Nisbet, is that royal absolutism had absolutely destroyed the intermediary and alternative institutions of the middle ages. These had been replaced with only one plausible and ideologically cohesive focus: the modern civil state as the gaurdian and provider of 'rights', the gaurantor of 'justice', which was to be guided by reason in all things, even values and morality. A combination of institutional, ideological and psychological circumstances such as this were perhaps the birth pangs of modern mass society, but it seems to me that we will have to learn to live in a tolerant, roughly liberal, decentralized and pluralistic world if we want it to be anything more than stillborn.
- Right-Wing Radicals, Moderates and Rolling Stone
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- sarahdroppedout
- May 23rd, 2009
bored
Rolling Stone's #1079 (May 28, 2009) contained an article called 'The GOP's Jihad', in which they discussed the flight of moderates from the Republican party, allegedly due to the, "GOP's far-right radicalization". Apparently the source of this radicalization is the party's 'embittered dregs'. Now I don't wish to deny that the Republican party has plenty of embittered dregs, but the same could be said of any given organization with more than ten members. The planet is just chock full of embittered dregs, and to use them as the focus point of your criticism borders on a straw-man fallacy.
That aside, it got me thinking about 'mainstream' Democrat liberalism and it's supposed opponent in the Republican's slightly-conservative populism. Neither of them, of course, are so different as they imagine. Most of it is just ideological factions, which have inherited minor variations on the 'consensus ideology' of modern democracy. Their differences between liberalism and conservatism as a philosophy may be great, but insofar as actual popular parties and governance are concerned they are more of the same.
And this is the problem with 'moderates'. Unlike real Demopublicrats, they don't even have the ghost of a philosophical principles to appeal to. What they essentially do is try to integrate the various popular ideological elements (and popular appeal) without wondering too much whether this is logically consistent, and worrying even less about whether their principles are lost in the process of electioneering. Candidates such as Schwarzenegger are simply indulging in the worst features of paternal social management; the moralistic nonsense and the money-grabbing that both parties are despised for by their respective opponents. They are not the paragons of reasonable compromise they present themselves as, they are the paragons of compromised reason. When a moderate wins, everybody loses.
Finally, the Rolling Stone article had this gem, "Rather than acknowledge the party's failed policies & reaching out to new constituencies, the GOP...is retrenching around the anti-government, free-market, fundamentalist strain...championed by Barry Goldwater."
Now, there is a lot wrong with this. It associates Republicans with anti-government and free market policies, which is only rhetorically true, and hardly then. And to tie this together with so-called fundamentalism simply issues a guilt-by association, since most vulgar liberals hate religion almost as much as they hate Nazis. It also blames, by implication, the failure of the Republican representatives as being traceable to 'free market' and 'anti-government' policies. Yet perhaps these Republicans feel that the failure of the Republican and Democratic administrations is traceable to an insufficiently free market, anti-government platform. Maybe these Republicans are just as interested as saving the country from Neo-Conservatism as their Democratic cousins are? And perhaps they have not reformed their views because they believe that strong interventionism and statism are immoral, and such 'constituencies' as can be reached by these appeals are not such as they want to have? As much as it may entrance vulgar liberalsm, 'Vox Populai, Vox Deus' is not a Universal truth, and the evidence mounts daily that the voice of the people is as close to the voice of the devil as it is to the voice of god. If democratism and republicanism (in the classic sense) are to be taken seriously by political philosophy, they must drastically scale back their pretensions of both moral and practical superiority. A strong, decentralized localism may be the best method of salvaging what we think is valuable; but too many of the Democrats simply live for the Federal Government (except when it's used by their 'enemies').
An unwillingness to even consider the views of ones opponents in any charitable light, and to demonize and ridicule opponent's positions is the classic sign of an Ideologue, and also the preponderant mode of 'discourse' in this country. It is precisely this sort of mass-democracy electioneering that helped to push Weimar politics into communist revolutions and eventual takeover by the National Socialist party. Most communists and Nazis were, in fact, former social democrats - who have much more in common with American Democrats than they do with American Republicans. Nazism may have been a reactionary movement, but it grew out of Republican-Progressivist ideology. The 'will of the people' that empowered the single-party state had its roots in Robespierre and Rousseau, not Bernhardi and Bismark.
Additional notes: Barry Goldwater's excellent rhetorical campaign was largely due to the ingenious Karl Hess. Goldwater was a national-security anti-communist fanatic (not to mention a drunken populist), and his apocalyptic foreign policy combined with free market rhetoric have strained the credibility of the Republican 'message' ever since.
- A Conservativism I Can Respect
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- sarahdroppedout
- May 23rd, 2009
tired
As a liberal pluralist hippy, I rarely have anything good to say for much of what passes under the name 'conservatism'. But John Kekes has summarized a kind of conservative pluralism which I find attractive. Though I do not agree entirely with his rejection of liberalism, nor his pessimism, I do find myself having similar thoughts on many variants of Rationalistic Liberalism. Here is the gist of his Conservatism from "Handbook of Political Theory", (Gerald Gaus, Ed.).Changes, of course, are often necessary because traditions may be vicious, destructive, stultifying,
nay-saying, and thus not conducive to good lives. It is part of the purpose of the prevailing political
arrangements to draw distinctions among traditions that are unacceptable (like slavery), suspect but tolerable
(like pornography), and worthy of encouragement (like university education). Traditions that
violate the minimum requirements of human nature should be prohibited. Traditions that have shown
themselves to make questionable contributions to good lives should be tolerated but not encouraged.
Traditions whose historical record testifies to their importance for good lives should be cherished.
The obvious question is who should decide which tradition is which and how that decision
should be made. The answer conservatives give is that the decision should be made by those who are
legitimately empowered to do so through the political process of their society and they should make
the decisions by reflecting on the historical record of the tradition in question.
From this three corollaries follow. First, the people who are empowered to make the decisions
ought to be those who can and do view the prevailing political arrangements from a historical perspective.
The political process works well if it ends up empowering these people. They are unlikely to
be ill-educated, preoccupied with some single issue, inexperienced, or have qualifications that lie in
some other field of endeavour. Conservatives, in a word, are not in favour of populist politics. Second,
a society that proceeds in the manner just indicated is pluralistic because it fosters a plurality of traditions.
It does so because it sees as the justification of its political arrangements that they foster good
lives, and fostering them depends on fostering the traditions in which participation may make lives
good. Third, the society is tolerant because it is committed to having as many traditions as possible.
Its political arrangements place the burden of proof on those who wish to proscribe a tradition. If a tradition
has endured, if it has the allegiance of enough people to perpetuate it, then there is a prima facie
case for it. That case may be, and often is, defeated, but the initial presumption is in its favour.
This implies that a conservative society that is sceptical, pluralistic, and traditionalist will be in
favour of limited government. The purpose of its political arrangements is not to bring heaven on
earth by imposing on people some conception of a good life. No government has a mandate from
heaven. The political arrangements of a limited government interfere as little as possible with the
indigenous traditions that flourish among people subject to it. The purpose of its arrangements is to
enable people to live as they please, rather than to force them to live in a particular way. One of the
most important ways of accomplishing this is to have a wide plurality of traditions as a bulwark
between individuals and the government that has power over them.
...
Conservatism has been called the politics of imperfection (O’Sullivan, 1976: ch. 10; Quinton,
1978). This is in some ways an apt characterization, but it is misleading in others. It rightly suggests that
conservatives reject the idea of human perfectibility. (For the history of the idea, see Passmore, 1970;
Kekes, 1997.) Yet it is too sanguine because it implies that, apart from some imperfections, the
human condition is by and large all right. But it is worse than a bad joke to regard as mere imperfections
war, genocide, tyranny, torture, terrorism, the drug trade, concentration camps, racism, the murder
of religious and political opponents, easily avoidable epidemics and starvation, and other familiar
and widespread evils. Conservatives are much more impressed by the prevalence of evil than this label
implies. If evil is understood as serious unjustified harm caused by human beings, then the conservative
view is that the prevalence of evil is a permanent condition that cannot be significantly altered.
The politics of imperfection is a misleading label also because it suggests that the imperfection is in
human beings. Conservatives certainly think that human beings are responsible for much evil, but to
think only that is shallow. The prevalence of evil reflects not just a human propensity for evil, but also
a contingency that influences what propensities human beings have and develop independently of
human intentions. The human propensity for evil is itself a manifestation of this deeper and more pervasive
contingency, which operates through genetic inheritance, environmental factors, the confluence of
events that places people at certain places at certain times, the crimes, accidents, pieces of good or bad
fortune that happen or do not happen to them, the historical period, society, and family into which they are
born, and so forth. The same contingency also affects people because others whom they love and depend
on, and with whom their lives are intertwined in other ways, are as subject to it as they are themselves.
The view of thoughtful conservatives is not a hopeless misanthropic pessimism, according to
which contingency makes human nature evil rather than good. Their view is rather a realistic pessimism
that holds that whether the balance of good and evil propensities and their realization in people tilts one
way or another is a contingent matter over which human beings and their political arrangements have
insufficient control.8 This point needs to be stressed. Conservatives do not think that the human
condition is devoid of hope. They are, however, realistic about the limited control a society has over
its future. Their view is not that human beings are corrupt and that their evil propensities are uncontrollable.
Their view is rather that human beings have both good and evil propensities and neither
they nor their societies can exercise sufficient control to make the realization of good propensities
reliably prevail over the realization of evil ones. The right political arrangements help, of course,
just as the wrong ones make matters worse. But even under the best political arrangements a great
deal of contingency remains, and it places beyond human control much good and evil. The chief
reason for this is that human efforts to control contingency are themselves subject to the very contingency
they aim to control. And that, of course, is the fundamental reason why conservatives are
pessimistic and sceptical about the possibility of significant improvement in the human condition. It
is thus that the scepticism and pessimism of conservatives reinforce one another.
...
The central concern of conservatism is with political arrangements that make a society good. Since
conservatism takes the goodness of a society to depend on the goodness of the lives of the people
who live in it, it is a moral view. Good lives, of course, require much more than what political
arrangements can secure. The right political arrangements, however, do secure some of the conditions
necessary for them. These arrangements, according to conservatives, are discovered by
reflection on the history of the political arrangements that prevail in one’s society. This discloses
that the society is partly constituted of various enduring traditions in which individuals participate
because they conceive of good lives in terms of the beliefs, values, and practices that these traditions
embody. The reasons for or against particular political arrangements are then to be found by reflection
on their historical success or failure in fostering those traditions and participation in them that is
conducive to satisfying and beneficial lives. As a result of differences in history and circumstances,
political arrangements, traditions, and lives that are reasonably regarded as good are likely to vary
from society to society. Conservatives, therefore, do not seek to formulate a general theory that
provides a blueprint for a good society. There is no such blueprint.
This is why the most reasonable version of conservatism is sceptical and pluralistic. The absence of
a blueprint, however, does not mean that conservative politics is doomed to arbitrariness.
Good reasons in politics, beyond a basic level, are local and historically
conditioned. Their concern is with the evaluation of the arrangements and traditions that provide
the particular framework in which individuals can try to make good lives for themselves. This is why the
most reasonable version of conservatism is traditionalist. But it is also realistically pessimist because it
recognizes that the prevalence of evil is created by contingencies over which human control is imperfect,
since the attempts at control are affected by the very contingency they aim to control.
- More CATO Stuff
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- sarahdroppedout
- May 23rd, 2009
relaxed
I found this article by David Schmidtz a nice read. I agree that, when deciding what sort of issues to address (especially with politics) we need to keep in mind what limitations of reality restrict the possibility or plausibility of our actions. Developing equality should 'matter' in some sense, if done 'for its own sake' it simply becomes a Procrustes Maxim.In a race, equal opportunity matters. In a race, people need to start on an equal footing. Why? Because a race’s purpose is to measure relative performance. Measuring relative performance, though, is not a society’s purpose. We form societies with the Joneses so that we may do well, period, not so that we may do well relative to the Joneses. To do well, period, people need a good footing, not an equal footing. No one needs to win, so no one needs a fair chance to win. No one needs to keep up with the Joneses, so no one needs a fair chance to keep up with the Joneses. No one needs to put the Joneses in their place or to stop them from pulling ahead. The Joneses are neighbors, not competitors.
...
Robert Axelrod says he puts students in game situations, instructing them “that it should not matter to them whether they score a little better or a little worse than the other player, so long as they collect as many dollars for themselves as possible. These instructions simply do not work. The students look for a standard of comparison to see if they are doing well or poorly.” Moreover, “people tend to resort to the standard of comparison that they have available—and this standard is often the success of the other player relative to their own success. This standard leads to envy. And envy leads to attempts to rectify any advantage the other player has attained.” Axelrod concludes that, “Asking how well you are doing compared to how well the other player is doing is not a good standard unless your goal is to destroy the other player.”[13] Is Axelrod exaggerating? Perhaps. Yet he has a point. Sometimes we care about inequality because we are envious, but envy is not a good reason to care.
- Now this is Interesting
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- sarahdroppedout
- May 22nd, 2009
I was reading CATO Unbound lately, and I found this little exchange. It discusses whether limited government is possible or desireable:
Government (Bound or Unbound?) by Anthony de JasayThis paper is a sequel of an article I wrote twenty years ago that I now think can be put more tightly and clearly.[1] That early paper was born of the irritation I felt, and continue to feel, at much of the classical liberal discourse about limited government. At least since Locke, that discourse sets out a normative ideal of government: the protector of “rights” its citizens are in some fashion endowed with, and the guarantor of liberty that ranks above rival values. Such government uses coercion only to enforce the rules of just conduct. This ideal is attractive enough to the liberal mind. The reason why it nevertheless irritates is that it makes it seem that the writing of a constitution of liberty is a plausible means for transforming the normative ideal into positive reality. The message is that “we” can have limited government in the above sense if only “we” understand why we ought to wish it. The “we” is crucial, for it suppresses the essence of collective choice. Collective choice starts where unanimity ends, and involves some deciding for all, where the “some” control the apparatus of government. It is the potential for some to benefit morally and materially at the expense of others that creates the bone of contention and that limits on government are meant to move out of reach. It is odd that little or no awareness is shown of the “incentive-incompatibility” (if we may use ugly but handy jargon) of limits that would exert real rather than illusory restraint.Our Moral Sense and the Extensive State by Gerald GausGiven all this, if we follow de Jasay and think of the rules of ordered anarchy as the background against which we measure the rules of government, the evidence is that the subjects of authority will accept the legitimacy of government-made rules overriding conventional rules, but they will resist government-made rules that override moral rules. We now see the deep problem for the classical liberal project of holding back the state. If the rules that are fundamental, according to classical liberals, are merely conventional, then citizens will see them revisable by authority. The legitimacy of democratic authority and its laws will override the authority of the conventional rules classical liberals so stress. We do not need an account of how the interests of the state cannot be constrained: it is the weakness of conventional rules that is the real culprit. Of course, if the basic normative commitments of classical liberals were widely conceived of as moral rules, then there would be much deeper resistance to government-made rules that seek to cancel or override them. The problem is that the opposite seems nearer the truth: for many citizens, their understanding of the moral norms related to fairness endorses government-made rules overriding the conventional rules of property. The welfare state reigns supreme not because the state and it allies have tricked the rest of us in a power grab; it reigns supreme because in the eyes of most citizens it conforms to the egalitarian fairness norms that have evolved with humans (Fong, Bowles, and Gintis, 2005). Classical liberals who convince themselves that the New Deal is best explained as a power grab by Roosevelt and his allies are manifestly deluded: it was (and still is) very widely seen as demanded by our sense of fairness.These two are some of the leading lights of modern liberalism, in my humble opinion.
- Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood - Property
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- sarahdroppedout
- May 22nd, 2009
So, in an earlier comment discussion with Agorist I mentioned that I had reservations about the Libertarian-Propertarian ideologies that one finds on the internet. Agorist mentioned that he himself had some reservations, but though it had consequential benefits.
So I wanted to say what I think of property. But I think it might be a good place to give my view on morality, and specifically political morality.
Morally, I believe that we should begin with a presumption of liberty towards others - that other people can do as they please, unless we can establish a good reason why we ought to interfere with them. Amongst several individuals, this involves a social norm or convention on what is disrespectful of other individuals, and what is conducive or inhibitive of civil peace, personal well-being and a clearly delienated sphere of personal activity within which we will cede to the will of others.
I am a liberal of the post-enlightenment, sceptical pluralist variety. Unlike Enlightenment and Progressive liberals (among others) I share a great deal of the scepticism towards government intervention and paternalism that libertarians like Herbert Spencer might. I agree with some of the reasons they give for this, but I also have additional ones. I believe that politics ought to be the operation of people getting along, and especially avoiding violent confrontation or restriction of individual liberties. But we have to recognize the reality of human nature and the logic of our institutions, and of society itself. It seems that neither ideologies, nor States, are particularly good at economizing on resources. They also have vast difficulties getting ahold of problems and proposing both effective and acceptable solutions.
It seems to me that property is both realistic, conducive to liberty and well being and extremely useful for allowing a pluralistic manifestation of personal, divergent ideas of good. Essentially, without property some sort of tyranny or another sets in. And if we interfere with others property without sufficient justification, we are simply limiting their liberties of action (for all action includes property) arbitrarily. And the only violently enforced rules should be those acceptable to basic civil harmony and a variety of views and ideologies.
- Interesting Articles by John Kekes
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- sarahdroppedout
- May 22nd, 2009
John Kekes, advocate of 'conservative pluralism' and a fine political philosopher, wrote the article "Why Robespierre Chose Terror".While I don't agree with Kekes on everything (I am not a conservative, for one) I nonetheless think that he sees one of the dangerous darksides of Rationalist-Absolutist Republican-Liberalism that came out of the Enlightenment.Historical distance and revolutionary rhetoric must not be allowed to obscure the Terror’s savagery. The descriptions that follow are only a few among many that could be given. Stanley Loomis writes in Paris in the Terror that, in the September massacres of 1792, “the bloody work went on for five . . . days and nights. On the morning of the third, the prison of La Force was entered and here took place the murder of the Princesse de Lamballe. . . . The frenzy of the crazed and drunken murderers appears to have reached its highest pitch at La Force. Cannibalism, disembowelment and acts of indescribable ferocity took place here. The Princess . . . refused to swear her hatred of the King and Queen and was duly handed over to the mob. She was dispatched with a pike thrust, her still beating heart was ripped from her body and devoured, her legs and arms were severed from her body and shot through cannon. The horrors that were then perpetrated on her disemboweled torso are indescribable. . . . It has been loosely assumed . . . that most of the other victims were, like herself, aristocrats—an assumption that for some curious reason is often supposed to mitigate these crimes. Very few victims were, in fact, of the former nobility—less than thirty out of the fifteen hundred who were killed.”...It may be said in a misguided attempt to defend Robespierre that he sincerely believed his ideology and acted on it in good faith; people can do no more than that. Of course, if this excuse were valid, it would, absurdly, excuse SS concentration-camp guards, if they were sincere Nazis; KGB torturers, provided they were committed Communists; or Islamic terrorists, if they are truly fanatical. But the reprehensible beliefs of the ideologues strengthen rather than weaken responsibility for such actions. One wants to say that people ought not hold beliefs from which monstrous actions follow. And this is just what is right to say in response to any effort to excuse Robespierre. If his ideology led him to mass murder, he should not have held it.
Many people, of course, do not choose the ideology they hold but acquire it through indoctrination. It may be too much to demand of them to resist indoctrination, if it is persistent and sophisticated, and if they know of no reasonable alternatives. Not being able to resist ideological indoctrination, however, is one thing; committing atrocities in its name is quite another. People do have a choice as to whether they torture or murder. Decent people will question their ideology if they see that it leads to inflicting horrors. And if they do not question it and commit atrocities, then they are justly held responsible not for what they believe but for what they have done.
Robespierre, however, was not indoctrinated. He constructed his ideology himself, from his readings, education, and early political experience. As a lawyer trained to sift through evidence and evaluate the interpretations of facts, he had the ability to think critically about his ideology; yet he did not. He is, therefore, responsible for the mass murder he caused. And the same is true of countless Communists, Nazis, Maoists, and terrorists who chose their ideology in preference to readily available alternatives of which they could not be ignorant.
- Stupid Political Quizzes
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- sarahdroppedout
- May 22nd, 2009
annoyed
My Political Views
I am a right social libertarian
Right: 7.19, Libertarian: 8.34
Political Spectrum Quiz
My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -8.6
Political Spectrum Quiz
My Culture War Stance
Score: -6.87
Political Spectrum Quiz
How come I keep getting so right-wing? It has to be the economic stuff. Let's just forget Free Trade was the staple of the liberals for like 200 years - I guess 'conservatives' have a lock on it? But, then again, I have as much in common with some conservatives as I do with some 'liberals'.
- Writer's Block: There Can Be Only One
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- sarahdroppedout
- May 22nd, 2009
Well, the answer to this question is somewhat complicated. As usual per annoying intellectuals, I will say yes and no.
Yes, in that I believe monogamy is a perfectly natural and normal institution, and that it is not fundamentally anyone else's business. I myself like to have a monogamous relationships. I think, between the right people, it can be a rewarding experience and a strong basis (both financially and socially) for the raising of children.
On the other hand, many people are not (or would not be) happy in a monogamous relationship. I certainly do not feel any sort of revulsion towards people who choose to avoid monogamy, or adopt alternative lifestyles.
