…is the family that fears no criminal scum.
“An entire family participated in the shooting of an intruder who broke into a house less than a mile from his own residence. A mother, father, and adult son were awoken to the sound of the intruder breaking through their back door. By the time he reached the kitchen, the whole family was armed and ready to engage the threat.”
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: No gender for you!
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
The so-called Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was defeated in large part due to it being pointed out that no longer considering any differences between the sexes would result in… men using women’s bathrooms.
“One of the markers of irrepressible liberalism is how it came to realize it doesn’t need to change the Constitution or the positive law to get what it wants. Remember the fuss over the Equal Rights Amendment back in the 1970s? Is there anything feminists have wanted that they haven’t been able to get by legislation or litigation in the absence of the ERA? Hard to think of anything.
“One of the parade of imaginary horribles that opponents of the ERA threw at it back then was that it could lead to . . . integrated bathrooms! Nonsense, said the ERA’s advocates. It would never do anything that crazy. Among the persons saying this prospect was a fantasy was. . . Ruth Bader Ginsberg, writing in the Washington Post in 1975…:
“‘Separate places to disrobe, sleep, perform personal bodily functions are permitted, in some situations required, by regard for individual privacy. Individual privacy, a right of constitutional dimension, is appropriately harmonized with the equality principle.'”
Turns out the “outlandish” claims from “fools” was spot-on. As Lord Melbourne said: ” What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.”
O’Sullivan’s First Law states that: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”
Case in point: Sports.
“Not only do Americans believe different things, they dislike their political opponents more than at any other time in recent memory. Indeed, the dislike is so strong that Americans tend to despise the other side more than they like their own side.
“Sports are perhaps the only significant cultural force to counter this troubling trend. America still watches the Super Bowl. The opening days of March Madness still cripple workplaces across the land. And when a home team wins a championship, the explosion of collective civic joy completely swallows politics — just ask the inhabitants of ‘Believeland’ after their miracle comeback against Golden State. “
But we can’t have people united together, forgetting their petty differences, can we? Nay, for only by harping on “us vs. them” divisiveness can a social justice warrior prove their social justice warrior-ness!
“Social-justice warriors, however, can’t leave well enough alone. Is the trend now that major sporting events can only occur in progressive-approved locations? Will we now be subject to a parade of progressive-approved (and only progressive-approved) player demonstrations? And spare me any argument that our sporting culture is opening itself up to free expression. I’m glad neither the NFL nor the San Francisco 49ers are punishing Colin Kaepernick, but just ask Curt Schilling how much the progressive sports elite values dissent from the social-justice orthodoxy.”
SOON
Faced with a potential recall election, Venezuela’s President Maduro has decided to make a convincing case… by firing from the civil service anyone who dares not blindly support him:
“In the last few months, Venezuelan politics pretty much has revolved around the opposition’s push for a vote to recall President Nicolas Maduro, which the socialist government has fought vigorously — and with the executive and judicial powers it still controls.
“But the government’s latest effort to stop the referendum is by far the bluntest.
“On Monday, a high-ranking Chavista announced that a big chunk of public employees who are supportive of the vote, and signed a petition for it back in April, will lose their job.
“…[T]he ruling party will provide ministers and public companies a list with all the names.”
John Rawls is a name that few Americans are familiar with, let alone a name many, if not most, conservative are unfamiliar with. Yet his major works, “A Theory of Justice” and “Political Liberalism” have served as the lens through which Americans increasingly view society and the notion of “justice”, much to our detriment. To whit, Rawl’s has contributed to:
“Many Americans think of themselves primarily in terms of the groups with which they identify. Some turn to a theoretical ‘consensus’ rather than the Constitution to determine the government’s power. Others refrain from referencing religion in the public square. Most turn to the Supreme Court of the United States as our political guide.”
Professor Jerome C. Foss, from the Saint Vincent College, presents an excellent summary and analysis of Rawls and the damage that he has helped cause. His work is worth reading in full. However, if the reader would be so kind, your humble author would like to soliloquize, so as to speak, on Rawls’ main four positions (the original position; the overlapping consensus; public reason; general theory of constitutional interpretation) as summarized in Prof. Foss’ writing, and offer a separate commentary in addition to Prof. Foss’.
The 1st of Rawls’ tenants: “The Original Position”.
Society—it’s customs, more, and folkways—should not and can not be based on abstractions, especially those of a “higher order”. Society must be consistent with reality, and with human nature. Rawls outright wished to reject mankind as having any type of essence and would rather “nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage” by pushing a pre-determined “correct” way of thinking about society upon the tabula rasa or mankind.
Rather than allow for natural rights such as life, liberty, property, Rawls proposes to treat people as nothing more than interest groups with pre-defined interests. With this assumption, he tries to lead people by the bull’s ring to the “correct” arrangement through the “Veil of Ignorance”.
Stated simply, the “Veil of Ignorance” is one where one is free to create an original position—that is, play “intelligent designer”—by constructing a social scheme without knowing which interest group or division of mankind one will belong to in this brave new world. As such, this suggests that one would support, for example, same-sex marriage and the abolition of the notions of biological sex and the “gender binary” because one might be born a queer genderfluid individual.
Lifting the Veil of Ignorance
Rawls boils down the principles that would allegedly arise as everyone having the same basic liberties and no inequality unless absolute equality of opportunity exists while the less advantaged benefit the most.
Let us examine these assumptions. As for having the same basic liberties seems all well and good, but this just means a sameness that could be fulfilled by a lack of liberty; indeed, the later is necessary for his scheme to work, as we will later see.. For example, the right to think correctly and say only socially just things would satisfy this first point, despite this resulting in some getting their way and forcing it on others, while the others are punished.
The second point assumes that equality in effect is a requirement for justice; it is not. In reality, there will always be hierarchies—save for perhaps a small primitive tribe constrained by common superstition and customs—and those hierarchies will always result in a “fair shot” as success being impossible. This is only unjust if power is totalitarian in nature, and the power that is has no checks, but rather just the result of the will of the powerful. That differences are somehow unjust just because they don’t rise up the very dregs of society is assumptive and nonsensical.
A moral structure where the poor and needy are helped out to provide some minimum level of existence could very well be considered just, and necessary in a good and moral society. But to preclude any differences—an impossible task—unless it meets this criteria does not and ought not be a requisite for a “just” original position.
Indeed, a society where there is some difference in liberty is preferable to one where everyone equally has a lack of liberty. Much how they would rather “the poor be poorer, provided the rich were less rich”, this worldview would require a flattening of society such that everyone is worse off, even though people are relatively less worse off than others.
As such, “equality” is not, strictly speaking, a question of justice per se. As James FitzJames Stephens notes:
“The general constitution of things, by which some people are better off than others, and some very badly off in all respects, in neither just nor unjust, right nor wrong. It simply is. It affects the question of benevolence, not the question of justice, of its author.”
Thus, in order to achieve this “justice as fairness”, Rawls wishes to ignore human differences and human nature in order to create a utopia ex nihilo in vacuo.
Rawls’ 2nd tenant: “The Overlapping Consensus”.
According to Rawls, one is free to come up with any justification one can rhetorically twist, hew, and haw to support the acceptable and pre-determined “justice as fairness” position, just as long as the correct answer is arrived at. The destination is the same, so the exact route thereto is irrelevant. Thus one is free to justify the mandated position of “justice as fairness” as Rawls intends to lead us to.
This is the basis for something that emanates from the Left quite often: Starting with the pre-determined answer, and then making up what ever arguments you want to reach one’s “Q.E.D.” One can most clearly see this in “Critical Theory”, whereby one criticizes an aspect of the designated boogie-man (most often Western Civilization) by presuming that it is evil, and then coming up with excuses to justify the destruction—or deconstruction, if you will—of the axiomatically evil pre-designated boogie-man. Not that the proponents are so honest to admit as much, assuming they even grok that that is the case.
So, in addition to a pre-determined idea of “justice as fairness”, the bulwark of “consensus” is added to justify this inexorable world view.
Rawls’ 3rd tenant: “Public Reason”.
In addition to a pre-conceived notion of “justice and fairness” supported by consensus by whatever means and excuse necessary, a public reason is used as justification provided that it is consistent with the pre-determined axiomatic consensus. Thus, the will of the people is valid and just, provided the will of the people is the correct ones.
This explains the seeming contraction of the Leftist thought that declares that democracy and the will of the people are paramount, while dismissing democratic decisions decided by the people that conflict with the desired outcome.
Only the reasonable people can participate and have their voices legitimately heard. In effect, only the New Soviet Man represents the just and permissible “consensus” and “reason”; as a corollary, those who espouse incorrect thinking are rejected as “wreckers” or trouble-makers who upset the “consensus”, being essentially the Kulaks and/or Mensheviks to Rawl’s Bolshevism.
It is easy, then, to reach the correct consensus when only the arguments that will lead to that consensus are deemed legitimate and allowed to be voiced. As Prof. Foss notes:
“In practice, public reason seems to ensure liberal outcomes by disqualifying any counterarguments.”
Rawls’ 4th tenant: “Courts of Constitutional Interpretation”.
By and large, the previous three tenants lay the groundwork for the fourth, and to the most palpable results that affect us.
In effect, the courts should be bound by the “public reason” of the “overlapping consensus” of the “original position” that hypothetically would happen that enshrines “justice as fairness”.
The courts should uphold “democracy” and the “will of the people” when it is considered “correct”, and rule thereagainst when it is not. Precedent and the Common Law will be cited if they can be excused into supporting the desired result; precedent and the Common Law will be rejected when they are antagonistic to the desired result, all in the name of the “public reason” of the “overlapping consensus”.
Sadly, this cerebral onanism tends to push fantasies of unintelligent designers who muse about impossible utopias they design ex niliho and en vacuo from reality itself.
News of the Week for October 2nd, 2016
What’s next? A beat up old van that has “free candy” written on the side?
The puppy was probably a misogynist anyway…
…turn out the lights.
Angelo M. Cordvilla, over at the Claremont Institute, gives an all too accurate description of how America is ceasing to be a Republic, and is mutating into a full-blown Roman-style empire.
“In fact, the 2016 election is sealing the United States’s transition from that republic to some kind of empire.
“Electing either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump cannot change that trajectory. Because each candidate represents constituencies hostile to republicanism, each in its own way, these individuals are not what this election is about. This election is about whether the Democratic Party, the ruling class’s enforcer, will impose its tastes more strongly and arbitrarily than ever, or whether constituencies opposed to that rule will get some ill-defined chance to strike back. Regardless of the election’s outcome, the republic established by America’s Founders is probably gone. But since the Democratic Party’s constituencies differ radically from their opponents’, and since the character of imperial governance depends inherently on the emperor, the election’s result will make a big difference in our lives.”
A little mood music:
We’ve seen public schools teach the Islamic Shahada, encourage “Muslim” clothing be worn, or circulating the Koran. Now, they seem to be taking all that for granted…
“The father of a second-grader in the Cecil S. Collins School was alarmed to see references to hijabs and thawbs – clothing worn by religious Muslims – and a quote from the Quran included in a health and hygiene worksheet given to his daughter.
“The worksheet included instruction about cleanliness and neatness not just of shoes and clothing but of a student’s hijab and thawb, an ankle-length robe-like garment worn by Muslim men, according to pictures sent to the Asbury Park Press by Barnegat father Chris Sharpe.
“The sheet also included a reference to a Quran quote that read ‘Allah loves those who make themselves clean and pure.'”
Two of the major contrasts between Leftist thought and conservatism (in the Anglospheric vein) are: Whether human beings are tabula rasa upon which society can writ large vs. the idea that human nature actually exists; and society should reflect an equal distribution of power, wealth, &c. vs. the idea that we should be free to be unequal in our own way. This, to whit, is the difference between equity and essentialism.
What is equity and what is essentialism?
Equity is a term that is increasingly being bandied about by Leftist of a more academic bent. Rather than stress equality, either of opportunity or of results, to those who preach this new gospel of human interaction, people are seen as nothing more than a collection of categories—such as race, gender, sexuality, and such—that must have the proportion of power, wealth, and anything and everything else found in demographic minitude reflected in anything and everything else.
Since a purported confluence of one such declared minitude—the Kyriarchy, consisting of White, straight, male, “cis”, &c. individuals—is blamed for oppressing all others by utilizing intersectional hierarchies to trick everyone else into oppressing everyone else, the doctrine of equity must then decree that the share of power, wealth, &c. of those Kyriarchs be minimized, or even abolished, in order to compensate for their kyriarchical systems of oppression, thus giving everyone else equity in order for the dieu faux Volonté Générale to be a true democracy and reflection of the greater whole.
This is why there is such a push to minimize the perceived size of those with kyriarchical traits: In order to maximize the equity of those who stand in opposition to this miasmic oppression that is Kyriarchy. And to reach this utopian ideal of absolute equity, wherein an Earthly paradise will spontaneously arise, the Left, whether individuals are conscious of it or not, will destroy society… and blame the Kyriarchs for when it inevitably fails, for “nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed“. In other words:
“But, as Cultural Marxism has replaced traditional Marxism, the Left doesn’t just want the poor to be poorer, they wand to destroy all social mores and traditions that lead to happiness and prosperity just because not everyone is partaking of it equally.
“They’d rather the failures fail harder, provided the successful were less successful.”
This thirst for inequality in the name of equity is quickly becoming manifest. When talking to the unremoulded hoi polloi, the now nebulous term “equality” is still used, but the Left are becoming increasingly more likely to substitute this new term and doctrine of Progressive faith in a sign of increasing dominance, nay, of increasing power and privilege. We are seeing it increasingly at college campuses, government bodies, and also private institutions—all of which have an over-equitable amount of wealth, power and privilege. In other words, they feel that:
“Equity derives from a concept of social justice. It represents a belief that there are some things which people should have, that there are basic needs that should be fulfilled, that burdens and rewards should not be spread too divergently across the community, and that policy should be directed with impartiality, fairness and justice towards these ends”.
Equity, then, is a fractal of this pre-categorized demographic magnitude at all levels of social representation, in all manner of things and delineations, with representation in actual effect reflecting the pre-conceived categorizations, with each category of humans reflecting a pre-determined interest and line of thinking. That the Left have squared this circle by concomitantly believing humans to be tabula rasa wherein the dieu faux Volonté Générale, having gained apotheosis, will reflect the spiritually revealed immanetized eschation. Everything must represent this equity, be it enrollment in engineering schools or to distribution of sustenance-level imitation gruel, for once set into perfect and correct thinking and social mores, this nouveau dieu Volonté Générale that is a motile and singular will of the collective humanity becomes an unslayable deity.
In contrast, essentialism is a reflection of the Aristotelian “Law of Identity“, whereby “each thing is the same with itself and different from another”. In other words, “Everything that exists has a specific nature, each entity exists as something in particular and has characteristics that are part of what it is. ‘A’ is ‘A’.” Human being may certainly have free will, and society can evolve, affected by individuals and in turn affecting them in a great interplay of near atomic scale, but humans also have a specific nature the defines how that free will and social interplay manifests itself. This is not to say that human nature can not change or be affected this great social interplay or other factors, but it is an evolutionary change determined by what is conducive towards survival, or destructive theretowards.
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