Sometimes a ‘leader’ is the person at the rear directing others to do things… but sometimes the ‘leader’ is the one out in front, well, leading, and the people who follow that person’s lead only after they see the way things are developing are mere ‘followers’… the bandwagon jumpers and weathervane watchers.
And that makes Sarah Palin a leader… quite possibly the de facto leader if she really wants. Certainly people who bet their party machine politics against her will think long and hard before crossing her after what happened to Dede Scozzafava, who the left wing statist press hilariously describe as a ‘moderate’ Republican. That the likes of Palin, Armey et al. can come in and kick the snot out of the established local party, even when it has the backing of people like Gingrich, will gave many pause for thought.
Of course some Democrats will rub their hands with glee and see this as the ‘Republicans tearing themselves apart’… and they are right, but wrong to be happy about it, because in truth the party that Obama beat needs to ‘tear itself apart’ and the fact it is starting to do so means the party opposing Obama could be a very different party in a few years… a party that rejects the catastrophic Bush years that hugely expanded the scope of the state and which made everything that Obama is trying to do now possible.
I suspect the reason so much effort was put into rubbishing and ridiculing Palin was an early indication that many of the ultra-statist in both parties saw what Palin represents as deeply unsettling, and not for any of the reasons usually given. Certainly I started to take Palin far more seriously the more she was lampooned by the usual coterie of dismal entertainment biz apparatchiks.
She ain’t no libertarian but she certainly ain’t no John McCain/George Bush either. I suspect her principle-over-party endorsement of an obscure New York conservative over an obscure New York Republican on the far-left of the party, may represent one of those seemingly minor events that turn out to be the precursor to something quite interesting and far reaching. Only time will tell but I think the winds of change are blowing and quite a lot of people are going to be genuinely surprised when their political careers get dumped in Boston Harbor.
Update: And to the commenter who called himself ‘Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle’ on my previous post about this issue… you said:
You know what is really funny? The Republican party candidate is not a lefty at all. She’s made nice to unions a time or two. That’s about it. She isn’t a RINO by any stretch of the imagination
Oh really? Well guess what… Republican Dede Scozzafava, who suspended her campaign yesterday in the New York 23rd Congressional District, has endorsed Democrat Bill Owens.
Yeah, not a RINO at all. This actually makes the “Palin called it right” contention incontrovertible. By doing this Scozzafava has just made Palin even stronger.
I don’t think the Republican Party is “tearing itself apart”.
It’s the rank and file have decided it’s time to do some house cleaning.
I predict that the status quo in D.C. is going to get a big surprise in 2010. There will be primary challenges from both the right and the left against incumbents.
I think what we are seeing is a reassertion of the small government wing of the GOP. For party leaders this was always the easiest to ignore since they were not organized, did not bring much money to the table and did nothing to support get out the vote efforts.
Unlike the social conservatives, who could be counted on to go door to door and stuff envelopes and do all the boring work that wins elections, the small government branch of the party stood on principal and did little or nothing.
Now thanks to the Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin, Hoffman and a few others the small government movement has a chance to become major players in the next few election cycles. BUT they have to play smart and
not alienate the social conservatives or the national security conservatives.
Electorally, selling small government to voters is hard, but not impossible. Sarah Palin could do it if she can improve her game and her ability to deal with a hostile press.
That said I doubt she will run for office in 2012, but she might make a formidable candidate for the Senate in 2014. In any case she is the national spokesman for small government conservatives, the one that has been missing since Reagan left office.
So I went to this document (Link) to extract this bit:
And then decided this bit
Might be more apt, and then, as usual, I read more and more of the document and I found some things which apply to both the US and here in the UK regarding the reasons why it’s time and passed time for action:
Perhaps for the US, Sarah and the Tea Partiers and the conservatives in general can win enough liberty back to avoid the ultimate sanction, but for the UK there is little prospect of a peaceful resolution to the current mess.
True, but substantial change in the US is likely to have influence elsewhere.
Perhaps for the US, Sarah and the Tea Partiers and the conservatives in general can win enough liberty back to avoid the ultimate sanction, but for the UK there is little prospect of a peaceful resolution to the current mess.
Is this really true? It strikes me as unnecessarily gloomy. I don’t see why substantial change can’t come with a shift in the attitude of the electorate.
Eric, this is the key usurpation. It doesn’t really matter if the British electorate shift their attitude if they really don’t have a voice in the election of those who govern them and over the last twenty years true power has moved to unelected bureaucrats in Westminster and Brussels.
Much is I’d like to think that Palin has a chance at power, the Bureaucratic-Political Complex will thwart her, either before any election, or, should she win “power”, afterwards. We’ve allowed a Political Class to arise whilst a Bureaucratic Class has strengthened itself so much that the Political Class is the junior partner. We laugh at Sir Humphrey, but the reality is deeply sinister. The culmination of this trend is the nascent World Government now hatching at the UN. The Copenhagen Treaty, if it comes to pass, will represent a first major victory: the hobbling of western economies, the taxing of the developed world to pass trillions of dollars to the UN to dispense to its developing world clients and cronies. Oil for Food was a trial run.
Pat B
Palin doesn’t have to run for and win office to wield power. There seem to be at least parts of the country where she could well be a “Kingmaker”. Don’t forget, within hours of her endorsement an additional $116K poured into Hoffman’s war chest.
Never were truer words written. Palin does not have to run for any office to be a leader and in many ways not doing so gives her a freedom of action that would make her even more formidable. Think outside the box because I suspect she is.
There’s a lot now riding on the Hoffman-Owens ballot results, symbolically even more than practically. I’ve long thought that the GOP trying to win over swing voters with moderate-ness and Democrat-lite policies was self-defeating. Reagan for one won over independents with fiscal conservatism and personal charisma. If Hoffman can win, that will show conservatism, and especially fiscal conservatism, can be a viable path to swing votes. If he doesn’t win, the democrat-lite moderates are going to take that as a sign they were right, McCain’s loss notwithstanding.
On Palin, I’d be surprised if she got the GOP nomination in 2012, and even more surprised if she won. (Though she may well run.) Liberal attackers largely succeeded in defining her in the non-conservative mind with a combination of slander, personal attacks and satire. But the fact she retired as governor to start a facebook page, and made that work for her, shows she’s got some understanding of the new playing field. I’m rooting for her and curious to see what she’ll do.
Face it–she was McCain’s schlepp. Now that she doesn’t have that loser hanging around her neck, she is free to do whatever–and becoming the de facto spokesman of the conservative wing of the GOP (sorry, Mikie Steele, you blew this call huge!), she can say what she wants.
It drives the whole political establishment crazy, which is, I believe, precisely her intent.
Whatever . . . this is a good show!
The best reason for a Republican to back Sarah Palin is because she’ll fight. There is not a lot of that quality in evidence in the Republican Party.
Right, on Perry! And less publicized battles like this are happening in America’s Grand Old Party all over the place.
The grassroots, libertarian Republicans are taking over the party and booting out the establishment, country-club Republicans.
To answer your question- I think Rep. Ron Paul is the leader of the Republican Party. His movement foreshadowed what we’re seeing happen now in the party.
And at a time when Republicans are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, “tearing each other apart,” and unable to find a coherent message or purpose- it is telling that Ron Paul’s legislation to audit the Federal Reserve HR 1207 has the unanimous co-sponsorship of every Republican in the House of Representatives.
Just saying.
Palin and Paul in ’12.
Hell, I might vote for the first time since ’92.
Maybe . . .
But fun to watch? oh, yeah!
I followed the link to Perry’s “Who is the leader . . . ” post and I have to say, after having read the related comments, I haven’t often encountered comparable intelligence or political astuteness on a blog.
That said, I remain unpersuaded that Sarah Palin is the leader through whom defenders of individual rights might best hack out a path through the current riotous overgrowth of magical thinking and moral obtuseness characteristic of America’s political elites.
The fact is, Palin has not made her political philosophy clear. We have been disappointed so many times before.
A few potentially problematic areas include, strange as it may seem, whether she’s a religious fundamentalist, whether she’s homophobic, what role reason plays in her thinking, etc.
It may be enough for Republicans to oppose the Democrats in 2010, but what then?
If the Republican Party is “revitalized” by social conservatives, then we will have a complete disaster on our hands, the party nothing more than an expression of people who base important decisions on faith rather than reason.
One cannot defend capitalism, or individual rights, on the basis of Christian or any other faith. The only thing worse than a wrong argument is a bad argument, and bad arguments are all that Christianity can offer in support of capitalism.
Does one dare to hope capitalism and individual rights will be the focus of the coming ballot-box revolution of the American people?
We shall see.
The Republican Party is in name only.
A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
A liberal is a conservative who has been bought.
Name recognition is important in mindless politics.
Scozzafava sounds like a South American soda pop.
Good name for a career in politics. Almost as good as any last name with four letters or less.
Palin is not the leader of the “little-government” folks or the “individualist” folks or any other delusional dichotomy. She’s a real American girl, a cultural leader in a way the Clintons and John Kerry and even Obama can only dream of. There is an America with a set of shared values that are crying out to be expressed. It’s going to be a long, hard slog until 2012, but the heart and soul of these United States is patient and strong. And the real change, when it comes, will be unlike anything the world has ever seen.
“One cannot defend capitalism, or individual rights, on the basis of Christian or any other faith”
Some might argue that the drafters of the Declaration of Independence & the framers of the US Constitution make a passing fair attempt to do just that.
But more interesting is the extent to which the memes of the far left have penetrated into the culture. Even our Mr. Anderson, who doubtless considers himself a model of clear thinking, has articulated the fundamentally politically correct view that religion is the only issue on which prejudice is not only permissible but mandatory.
Tom said…
I see it much the same way but…
…that said, in truth one can make a very good Christian argument for capitalism and individual rights and I have often done so (just because I am an atheist does not prevent me from arguing such issues with Christians on their own terms).
In fact I argue that it is incoherent (certainty within the catholic Christian tradition) to *not* accept the utter immorality of things that deny several rights (and as a consequence prevent capitalism, at least in an overarching sense).
If I understand this correctly, what the Republicans tried to do in New York is what Cameron has done for the whole of Britain; decided their opponents have won the argument and tried to fight on Democrat ground with a pseudo Democrat of their own*. If So, I look forward to the result with interest. If Hoffman wins (the coverage I’ve seen says that is not unlikely, but I’ll wait and see) that may be just the spur needed to persuade a few British Conservatives that UKIP might be a better use of their votes than Cameron’s party.
*What is the US equivalent of BluLabour? RINO is about what the candidate is not, BluLabour is what they are.
MarkE, I don’t know what the official name is, but Mark Steyn has coined DIABLO, (Democrat In All But Label Only). Me, I find that a bit too OUTLAW for the likes of McCain and Snowe, but we’ll see.
Sarah Palin’s future depends on whether her book is any good (yes I have ordered it) and on whether the lady comes off well in interviews.
Two obvious things from last year:
Do not follow the advice of establishment Republicans (they do not have your best interests at heart).
And do not do nonlive interviews where the “mainstream” media person can edit what you have said.
Basic stuff really – but it is essential that Sarah Palin understands this.
We will soon see if she does.
Alice, bless her heart, writes the following:
I suspect, Alice, that you’ve drawn these insights from the following text of the Declaration, namely:
Endowed does not mean derived, for as the subsequent text makes clear, the powers delegated come from the people and not the sovereign or from the deity.
Be that as it may, and I am willing to discuss the Founders’ notions of deity, very different from contemporary Christian fundamentalism, my point about religion affording only bad arguments rests on a very simple moral observation that would not, I think, be welcome in those fevered intellectual swamps inhabited by our academic and political elites.
The essence of the Christian moral code consists in this: that self-sacrifice is a virtue.
The intellectual and moral “package deal” thus consists in either sacrificing oneself to others or others to self. The revolutionary idea of relating to others on the basis of trade, of exchanging value for value, is what differentiates capitalism from collectivism.
I do not say one cannot find in the Bible ways of defending capitalism; as someone who has studied the Bible for many years with a charitable and eager heart, I am not even now insensible of its many charms, of its deep well into human nature.
Yet for every argument one can, with equal or greater warrant, discover its counter. And then, of course, there’s the problem of Christianity’s central mystery, the Passion of the Christ.
It would be difficult, I think, to find in culture a more powerful symbol of the meaning of self-sacrifice.
To follow Christ is to deny the meaning and value of this world except as a weary traverse to the heavenly paradise promised by the Resurrection.
Yes, I understand I am presenting a point of view, and one with which Fundamentalists, particularly those in the United States who consider the strongest support for individual rights that can be imagined, that they are a “gift of God,” find disquieting, if not perverse.
Yet to defend capitalism on the basis of faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one’s enemies–that one has no rational arguments to offer.
I am not making this up out of thin air, Alice. Why do you think George W. Bush sought to justify an overly harsh Reaganite “conservativism” with the weasel word “compassionate”?
To claim that America and capitalism are based on faith in God contradicts the fundamental principles of the United States: in America, religion is a private matter which cannot and must not be brought into political issues.
If I am held to be “politically correct” I plead guilty in precisely the same sense the Founders were politically correct.
It is important to recognize the reason why the Left has been so successful in demonizing religion is because the Right has conceded reason to its enemies and now finds itself intellectually empty, its final and complete defense resting on such emotions as patriotism and the “love of God”.
Not that there is anything wrong with patriotism, but emotion is no substitute for the sharpening swords of reason and logic. It is to reason and logic we must repair if we are to defeat liberals, socialists, fascists, collectivists–statists whether of the Left or of the Right.
We have the intellectual power to render the Left powerless, defeated, which is what it should be, what it needs to be, if we are to have a civilized culture where force has been banished. Why would any opponent not utilize his most powerful weapons?
There is no leader and hasn’t been for too, too long.
That is the problem.
Lots of “moderate-wanna-be-leader-pick-me-pick-me” types though.
Which is just like having no leader.
Recursion.
Even if Palin were the goof that she is made out to be I think it is better to have an incompetent leading you in the right direction than it is to have someone supremely competent leading you in the wrong direction. The one saving grace of the Obama administration is that the guy in charge is feckless, naive and incapable of truly wielding power in a shrewd manner. The one criticism that was allowed of him in the media during the election turns out to be his greatest strength as a leader.
I think Palin is shrewd enough to learn from what has been done to her. It would not surprise me at all if the next time some pretentious twit on the left asks who her favorite philosopher is she doesn’t say “well it sure as hell isn’t Mao or Marx as it seems to be for so many of Obama’s czars.”
I loathe those sorts of questions since they are more properly reserved for beauty pageants or Playboy Bunny profiles than political races. An appropriate answer would be “I like pie” or something similarly nonsensical. Does anyone really base their vote on what someone else is reading rather than on how they intend to govern and on what their record is? Would it matter if Obama was reading Rand if he is promising to destroy the basis of all wealth creation in the US? Would it matter if Palin had never cracked a book and counted on her toes if she was in favor of the correct policies and had shown an ability to be effective in implementing them?
The media is at its most asinine when it thinks itself the most clever.
There is a future role for the Republican party structure. Bear with me:
There is the miltary concept of cadres, those persons and units which have served as the stuctures for replication of effective organized actions.
Republicans, and those who would join with them to oppose existing trends toward “Progressivism” (or whatever else Federal expansion may be called), could probably be most effective, by encouraging or recruiting candidates not AS Republicans, but by encouraging the candidacy of independents who claim no affiliation with the party. Instead of fielding a candidate, they should “endorse” and fund the independent who is anti-progressive, but carries none of the record of the party’s politics.
In Congress (or other legislatures) the independents would caucus with the cadre of the Republicans for organizational functions. This would have a side benefit of diluting certain unpopular tendencies of a dominant base within any party.
We are likely to see some of this in areas like Virginia, where I once was active (mostly by money & some writing) many years ago in breaking control of the historically dominant party in the House of Delegates.
Party functions have changed drastically since then, and the Republicans (and anti-progressivists) would do well to take on the role of cadres. It’s going to be a long fight. It will take all the “reserve” forces that can be mustered.
Tom Anderson:
We are long way off the thread of the politics, but that makes this an interesting place for comments.
Herzen: after Louis Blanc proposed to him that human life was a great social duty, that man must always sacrifice himself to society –
‘Why?” I asked suddenly.
‘How do you mean “Why?” [he said] – but surely the whole purpose and mission of man is the well-being of society?’
‘But it will never be attained if everyone makes sacrifices and no one enjoys himself.’
‘You are playing with words.’
‘The muddle-headedness of a barbarian’ I replied, laughing.
John Paul II, certainly a Christian:
There is no morality without choice
Is Capitalism not a means of providing choices through exchange in a “pricing system?”
What are the means by which choices are determined in any other systems? How do other systems remedy deficiencies in the capacity or ability to choose?
The answer to those questions will indicate why “Christian doctrines” will tend to support what we refer to as “capitalism.” It is a matter of choice, and who is to determine choice, and by what doctrines.
RSS: The person who sacrifices self to others will never want for those willing to sacrifice others to self.
The communists, the socialists, the fascists, the collectivists–the statists of every sort and description all proceed on either an implicit or explicit moral code, and that code is altruism.
It is a code that is anti-man and anti-life. Those who attempt to practice it necessarily find themselves filled with guilt. People such as Obama, or Chavez, or Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao derive their power, at least initially, by learning how to leverage this guilt to their own purpose.
There is a reason, after all, why Hugo Chavez believes socialism is nothing but Christianity made practical. There is a reason why Obama likes and feels most comfortable around dictators and moral monsters such as Bill Ayers and the Reverend Wright.
As a matter of fact, you have made my point: Christians, to the degree they embrace even a modified form of capitalism, do so grudgingly, and without understanding or enthusiasm.
A major oversimplification Tom. I know loads of Christians who are enthusiastic capitalists and proponents of several rights having derived that view from their Christian believes (in fact several write for this blog, not all the Samizdatistas are god-free like Johnathan Pearce and I). I know an American RC priest in New Jersey who makes this very argument for the morality of capitalism (and thus is fairly unpopular with his superiors I might add).
Indeed it is absurd for a Christian to claim morality springs from choice as a free moral agent (as it logically must) and then proceed to deny people the opportunity to make several choices by using force to control which choices they make. People like Chavez are utterly incoherent or simply lying about the Christian basis of their views.
Perry, at bottom, everything we say is a “simplification”; indeed, from any other point than our own it is likely to be an “oversimplification.”
For political purposes, the uses to which statists put the gifts of self-sacrifice, and trade on Christian guilt, whether in religious or secular form, is manifest to any who will open their eyes and see.
It is the gift that just keeps on giving.
Unless and until you accept the reality that your life is your own, and that you have a moral right to live your life for your own sake, and not for the sake of others, then you will always feel guilt and always be vulnerable to those who will use you for their own purpose.
Chavez is the perfect expression of this truth. He understands the practical import of Christianity much better than most Christians, since his mind is unclouded by doubt. He simply seizes the gift and makes the most of it and everyone sees this and concludes the man is a marvel, a new Castro, a channel for the fondest hopes and wishes of those who fundamentally hate life and would as soon be done with it.
But to return to the fundamental with which I began: A bad argument is worse than a wrong one. I don’t mind having a Chavez attack capitalism; my stomach turns when I hear a Christian defend it on grounds of faith, for he thereby concedes reason, logic and intelligence to his enemies. Such defense does far more damage to the cause of individual rights than a hundred Chavezes, because the young, who’ve not yet had their minds destroyed by our irrational culture, begin to believe rational people believe in collectivism and only the benighted, stupid, ignoramuses who think man walked with dinosaurs believe in capitalism and freedom.
There is a reason why young people tended to vote for Obama.
As to your other point, that you’ve met Christians who are enthusiastic capitalists, proves only that even successful capitalists, men who’ve proven successful in applying reason to the facts of reality when the purpose at hand is to make money or a better product or service, are not equally rational when it comes to the field of morality and philosophy.
I don’t deny one can be both a Christian and a capitalist; what I’ve said is one cannot be morally or philosophically consistent: the moral codes are contradictory. How can altruism be consistent with rational self-interest?
I actually do not care *why* someone supports the same political objectives I do, because what matters is they do. Christianity has a huge “installed base” and I for one have little interest in trying to “uninstall” Christianity from people already advancing the same objectives I am advancing. Moreover it is a whole lot more effective to brings Christian over to the right side by using their own ideology to show that it is illogical for them to *not* support capitalism and several rights. Politics is a war, not a competition or a sport, and I will take my allies where I find them.
Perry, ‘why’ is important. You are right in saying that we should take our allies where we find them – today, but at the same time we need to make an effort to understand their motives and their consistent logic (or lack thereof, per Tom’s argument), because those will dictate whether they will remain our allies tomorrow.
The person who sacrifices self to others will never want for those willing to sacrifice others to self. per Tom Anderson
No cavil; but that’s good enough for a fortune cookie.
We have found one a bit better,however, it said:
Disregard previous cookie
Perry has said:
How can I criticize this statement when it is so close to many of my own made so many years ago, first with Reagan, then with Bush 41, then with Clinton, and, last but not least, Bush 43.
Yes, I agree, take your allies where you find them and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I understand this point well.
That said, there is great danger here. For the “installed base,” alas, is heavily Christian, and they don’t take kindly to atheists or homosexuals in their midst.
What does the classical liberal do in such circumstances? On the Right we have proponents of economic liberty who enjoy bashing homosexuals, or at least denying them equal rights, and a childish Left that is economically illiterate and a moral sense appropriate to mob rule but who, for convenience sake, have made league with gays, since gays have been ostracized by the Republicans and the religious folks, who have, in addition, provided support for having government intervene into the private affairs of women who wish to have abortions, as if the woman’s body belonged to the state.
Perhaps we make a start by ridding ourselves of our own comforting illusions, prime among them that Christians can ever truly support a political philosophy favoring the protecting of individual rights.
They can’t.
We may ally with them temporarily, but let’s not get carried away into thinking they will not sell us down the river the moment it is convenient for them to do so.
They’ve done it in the past. Consider the Presidency of Bush 43.
We supported him because he was the enemy of our enemy, and what did it get us? Barack Obama and the electoral ascendancy of a man-child dictator lost in his own ego and magical thinking, and a majority of Congressmen who have enabled said magical thinking, either because they share it or fear the consequences to them if they don’t show proper submission to the man-child’s perfervid whims and delusions.
The fact is, there’s just not enough of us to have much of an impact; and the solution has to be making ourselves heard, which is our strength.
We need to do what we are doing, talking to friends, making new ones, getting our philosophy out there and getting it discussed.
We hurt the cause of liberty to include Christians or others of faith. I don’t say make fun of them or ridicule them. Certainly try to get through to them intellectually, but it must be on our terms, not theirs.
A bad argument is worse than a wrong argument.
To defend liberty on faith concedes reason to our opponents.
How many times do we have to repeat this process to realize we shall always get the same result?
I think we are in furious agreement on that.
What can I say… I have a critical preference for a variety of theories that lead me inescapably to an atheist and capitalist world view… but I am also pragmatic enough to conclude that given the magnitude of obstacles and enemies to realising that “unknown ideal” of capitalist severalty, we need to choose our fights carefully. So if it comes to a choice of picking a fight over a religious world view, or allying myself tactically with people who at least what to point things in the right direction for (some of) the wrong reasons, well I known which I will do… but they *do* have to at least want things to move in the same direction I do, or they are not in truth allies at all.
In my not entirely serious (but not entirely whimsical either) post above called “9/12 pledge… or why I would not hack it as a US conservative”… it is clear that there *is* common ground with the hyphenated conservatives of this world in that they want to roll back the state at least a bit, even if I find the earnest religious stuff hard to read without rolling my eyes.
I agree completely that any alliance with religious oriented social conservatives does not change the underlying reality that even if we can be fellow travellers on this journey, we are ultimately headed for different destinations. I am, to put it mildly, opposed to “broad church politics”, but I am also aware that one needs to go easy on the purity tests when, to use a military analogy, we are not besieging Jerusalem, we are defending the Gates of Vienna.
Bush was a disaster because too many people lost sight of the fact “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”is only true is the enemy of your enemy is not also your enemy… and a regulatory statist like Bush was indeed the enemy of anyone seeking not just a slower expanding state but a rollback of the state. This at least seems to be something Palin clearly understands.
I would like Sarah Palin and Dick Armey and Ron Paul, hell, and the Energiser Bunny for all I care, to work tirelessly to shrink the net size of the state because they see the moral correctness of that course of action…
… but if they really do they want to shrink the state (and that is trillion dollar question) for only utilitarian reasons, or even “because that is what Jesus would do”… I am not going to waste my time correcting their reasons, no matter how bizarre, at this juncture. We can correct their errors once we have a state 50% the size of the one we have today and have moved the whole meta-context around the discussion so that it is not “should we slow the rate we are expanding the state?” to “how much should we shrink the state?”.
It is difficult to follow the discourse about avoiding inolvement with Christianity in the structures of American politics.
It seems as if some of the commentators have no understanding of the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment on the formation of the American political system; and, further, no understanding of the role of Christian Faith in the concepts of that enlightenment, as well as in the cohesion of the objectives which led to our form of government.
Disclosure: Though reared in a Christian background, the writer is not a practicing or evangelizing Christian.
RRS, involvement with Christianity is not the same as involvement with Christians.
RSP: Interesting you should bring up the Scottish Enlightenment. That happens to be an area in which I have some academic expertise in my unfinished study of Francis Bowen, Alford Professor of Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity at Harvard University from 1853-1889.
Bowen is of interest since he brought all the resources of the Scottish Common-Sense School, Hume, and Kant to the problem of skepticism, and, in particular, religious skepticism, exacerbated considerably with the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Bowen wrote the first and in many ways one of the finest histories of philosophy, had a sharp and comprehensive intellect, and was utterly opposed to Darwinism.
He developed a version of the Argument from Design that he thought would meet the challenge of Darwin’s theory, but for a variety of interesting reasons, among them generational shift and the Civil War, the votaries of Darwin won that particular intellectual battle and the world has never been the same since.
Today’s advocates of Christian fundamentalism have not begun to meet the challenge of Darwinian evolution, the notion of Intelligent Design only the latest in a series of unintelligent and philosophically uninformed maneuvers to escape the inescapable conclusion that the old Biblical notion of a personal, creative deity has been sliced and diced by Occam’s razor, skillfully wielded, I might add, by Britain’s own Richard Dawkins, along, of course, with many others too numerous to mention.
Bowen himself maintained, with considerable philosophic backing from the heavy-weights of the Enlightenment, that the only argument that has ever actually proven the existence of God was the Argument from Design, which is why he so stubbornly and passionately defended it.
Alas, with Darwin, the only good argument was rendered unnecessary, with the ascension of a material principle, namely Natural Selection, as the blind and purposeless cause of that design we discover in the natural world.
To your point regarding the role of religion in American politics, America actually became more religious after the Revolution than at the time of the Revolution. Jefferson and Franklin were Deists and we look in vain in the writings of the Founders for that close intimacy with the Almighty that one might suppose to have existed from the vantage point of the Second Great Awakening that got into high gear by the 1830’s and 1840’s.
That zeitgeist really and truly became unraveled in the horrors of the first great mechanized war in world history, and anyone who lived through the Civil War, even those who did not directly participate, such as the psychologist and philosopher, William James, were profoundly shaken to the core of their being.
It simply was not possible to believe any longer in a benevolent deity, and Bowen, even though his argument quite resourceful and profound, was regarded, even by his students, as something of an “old fossil” by the time James became one of his students.
. . .
So long as today’s conservatives evade the issue of altruism, the moral code of Christianity, all their pleas and arguments amount, in essence, to this: Why can’t we just go back to a time when capitalism and altruism somehow seemed to co-exist? Why do we have to go to extremes and think of surgery, when the early stages of the altruist cancer were painless?
Ayn Rand, as it happens, gave an answer to this question, which I should like to quote in full, since I believe her words are so remarkably powerful and on point:
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*Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, New York: New American Library, 1962, p. 202.
It may well be the case.
Yes, but it does not follow that capitalism can in turn protect individual rights.
I don’t. I want to fight for freedom to live by whatever philosophy I please, be it altruism, or self-esteem – or lack thereof, or even communism (back to the kibbutz?), or capitalism, as the case may be. As long as I don’t force anyone else to live by it, and they don’t force me to live by theirs.
James McCosh (a conservative Christian and Common Sense philosopher – perhaps the best know American philosopher of his time) was a great defender of Darwin in 19th century.
As was Noah Porter – another Christian and Common Sense philosopher.
Christianty is fundementally about the individual sould – ONES OWN SOUL.
Living an honourable life – making the choice to do good, not to do evil.
And if the sound like Pelagianism (or at least neo Pelagianism) then I do not have a problem with that.
Well said, Alisa. And in response to the rest of Tom Anderson’s lengthy (and somewhat off-topic) post, I would say that the existence (or not) of some primordial Creator of the Universe (call it God, the Big Bang, or whatever you like) is completely separate from the existence (or not) of the anthropormophic God of the Christian faith, which Nietzsche perceptively saw as the religion of a “slave morality”.
RSP: Interesting you should bring up the Scottish Enlightenment. That happens to be an area in which I have some academic expertise in my unfinished study of Francis Bowen, Alford Professor of Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity at Harvard University from 1853-1889.
Bowen is of interest since he brought all the resources of the Scottish Common-Sense School, Hume, and Kant to the problem of skepticism, and, in particular, religious skepticism, exacerbated considerably with the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Bowen wrote the first and in many ways one of the finest histories of philosophy, had a sharp and comprehensive intellect, and was utterly opposed to Darwinism.
He developed a version of the Argument from Design that he thought would meet the challenge of Darwin’s theory, but for a variety of interesting reasons, among them generational shift and the Civil War, the votaries of Darwin won that particular intellectual battle and the world has never been the same since.
Today’s advocates of Christian fundamentalism have not begun to meet the challenge of Darwinian evolution, the notion of Intelligent Design only the latest in a series of unintelligent and philosophically uninformed maneuvers to escape the inescapable conclusion that the old Biblical notion of a personal, creative deity has been sliced and diced by Occam’s razor, skillfully wielded, I might add, by Britain’s own Richard Dawkins, along, of course, with many others too numerous to mention.
Bowen himself maintained, with considerable philosophic backing from the heavy-weights of the Enlightenment, that the only argument that has ever actually proven the existence of God was the Argument from Design, which is why he so stubbornly and passionately defended it.
Alas, with Darwin, the only good argument was rendered unnecessary, with the ascension of a material principle, namely Natural Selection, as the blind and purposeless cause of that design we discover in the natural world.
To your point regarding the role of religion in American politics, America actually became more religious after the Revolution than at the time of the Revolution. Jefferson and Franklin were Deists and we look in vain in the writings of the Founders for that close intimacy with the Almighty that one might suppose to have existed from the vantage point of the Second Great Awakening that got into high gear by the 1830’s and 1840’s.
That zeitgeist really and truly became unraveled in the horrors of the first great mechanized war in world history, and anyone who lived through the Civil War, even those who did not directly participate, such as the psychologist and philosopher, William James, were profoundly shaken to the core of their being.
It simply was not possible to believe any longer in a benevolent deity, and Bowen, even though his argument quite resourceful and profound, was regarded, even by his students, as something of an “old fossil” by the time James became one of his students.
. . .
So long as today’s conservatives evade the issue of altruism, the moral code of Christianity, all their pleas and arguments amount, in essence, to this: Why can’t we just go back to a time when capitalism and altruism somehow seemed to co-exist? Why do we have to go to extremes and think of surgery, when the early stages of the altruist cancer were painless?
Ayn Rand, as it happens, gave an answer to this question, which I should like to quote in full, since I believe her words are so remarkably powerful and on point:
_____________________________________________________________________________
*Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, New York: New American Library, 1962, p. 202.
Laird:
But I think that was the point Tom was actually making, no? (before he indeed went way off topic). Again, personally I don’t have a problem with that at this point in time. I do foresee, as pointed out earlier, a conflict with this, as well as other aspects of the Christian faith in the future, but it seems to me it’s too early to worry about that.
Alisa, perhaps you’re right, but if so I missed it in that thicket of historical religious philosophy.
I have to say, Alisa, this statement of yours is literally incomprehensible to me since you don’t seem to understand the meaning of the words you use.
Capitalism is not a primary; it is simply a name for that system in which individual rights are recognized and protected. That’s it. That’s all it means. Everything else is a corollary or consequence.
Your qualifier “. . . and they don’t force me to live by theirs,” gives your game away. It denies everything that you just said, for you can’t meet that qualifier living in the island prison of Cuba or the concentration camp that is North Korea.
My comments here have been meant, at least in part, as an invitation to think about the consequence of ideas and, most especially, not to evade those consequences by engaging in magical thinking ourselves.
You cannot “fight for the freedom to live” if you are an altruist, because to do so you would violate the meaning of altruism. This is but one example of not thinking through to the premises of your political ideas.
You cannot fight for communism without violating the rights of others. Unless and until you understand this you are useless in the fight for individual rights, and it would be better that you said nothing than present yourself as an advocate.
A bad argument is worse than a wrong argument, since it concedes reason to our opponents. In your case it also concedes logic and clarity of mind.
This is “tough love,” not disrespect, and I take a risk in alienating you in making the point I’ve made, but it has to be made.
Tom, don’t worry, I am not taking any of this personally as long as you don’t:-)
I’m afraid you are missing a crucial point, and I’ll just take one example to demonstrate it:
I am not making a case for those fighting for communism, but those fighting for the right of some to live in a communist system that is not all-enclosing (it’s not for nothing that I brought up the kibbutz). Personally I don’t want to live in a communist system (maybe because I actually lived in one or two), but I want those who do to have the right to do so, as long as they don’t extend the said system to everyone else. I hope that you can see the difference.
Why do we hold human choice to be of moral value?
Those of us who are not determinists and hold that humans are “beings” – i.e. that they have the capacity to make real (not predetermined) choices.
We hold being allowed to choose as being of moral value – because we value the free human person (a subject – not just an object).
Now it may be possible to reconcile the above with materialism (Ayn Rand certainly does her best), but historically the vast majority of thinkers who have agreed with the above (have agreed with the idea of the moral value of free human choice) have been deeply religious people who valued the dignity and freedom of the soul.
As for monks and nuns (and people living in Jewish communal communities – of various sorts).
As long as it is VOLUNTARY (as long as no violence is used on someone trying to leave) there is nothing evil in this.
Indeed many great men and women (who have led lives of great worth – both to others and to themselves, as well as to God) have been monks and nuns.
Even the homes for unmarried mothers in Ireland started out as GOOD places (places of refuge from a world full of people who despised unmarried mothers).
They only turned to evil WHEN THE DOORS STARTED TO GET LOCKED (long after their original founders had died).
We are dealing with two separate issues here.
I defend the right of any man to waste his life, but I do not thereby agree his life has not been wasted.
Wasting his life, however, is his choice to make; just as he has the moral right to take poison or drugs or anything else he wishes into his body. In my view, he owns his own body and has the right to do with it what he will; what he will, however, is not necessarily moral.
Laird, I hope you will overlook the lengthy, and, apparently, mostly off-topic excursion into religious philosophy. It is something of a hobby for me and at times I exceed the patience of my reader. As I get more familiar with the norms of the site I will doubtless take greater pains to forge a tighter, more concise, argument, bearing in mind the limits of that patience. Apparently I swooned into giddy philosophic headwinds the instant Scottish common-sense philosophy was mentioned.
I trust there are no hard feelings?
No disagreement then, Tom.
Tom, that’s part of the fun of this site: discussions veer off-topic in unexpected but interesting directions. As long as the discussion is intelligent and civil I never have any “hard feelings” about it. (Of course, I can’t speak for our gracious hosts here.)