• Well, I got a good 3 hours of LSD in today. Btw, LSD in distance sports means Long Steady Distance not the other thing, in zone 2 mostly with a few zone 4/5 kicks on hills for fun. That felt really good. Cloudy skies medium wind and lower to mid 80s. Nice. Hopefully I’ll be able to repeat that Thursday.
• Well, during the ride I was thinking I’d try to work on thoughts for an essay. But … I’ve got reading to do and time is short, so it’s going to be brief and likely a bit scattered [hah! like that’s different than usual?]

When I wrote an essay on one reason “why I’m conservative” it engendered an oddly heated response. I was considering the opposite, “why I’m not a liberal” and one reason was that I see the elephant in the room they seem to miss. Some examples:

• A year or two ago, Mr Schraub suggested some books for me to read. One of these was called Covering, which was an narrative account by a gay lawyer of the “covering” up of a persons identity to fit in the job he of his choice and how hard that was. Yet, the elephant he missed was the reverse effect Badging. He had to “cover” to hide personality traits and lifestyle “badges” that were not accepted in his chosen workplace. Yet badging is done and in fact sought out by everyone. As I have noted before, cyclists shave their legs as a “badge” demonstrating to those in the know that they belong to that group. Yes, professional cyclists have practical reasons to shave their legs, but the rest of us amateur cyclists do so as well even in the absence of those reasons … to badge. Covering in essence is a violation of badging. It is camouflage, i.e., deception … which is why society reacts poorly to it. But the point here is not about the details of badging vs covering. It is that liberal/progressives focus on the element that they are sensitive to, and ignore the larger elephant, i.e., reason for the practice.
• Take marriage. Progressives are up in arms about the equality and the rights for gays to marry. When last discussing this, I ran some numbers for the village in which I reside, Lemont.  Lemont  has a population of just under 16k. My rough calculation yielded that for towns in general in the states about 15 gay couples would like to marry in this town (total not per year). Furthermore the population in Lemont contains a good proportion of Hispanic and Eastern European immigrants. It is likely that demographic would depress this number by a significant fraction, so my guess would be that the real number would be around 4-6 couples. Yet the elephant is missed. This is one of the big hot topic family issues for progressives. Yet, if you listed and polled and did a real study of problems families and couples face in Lemont. Then order them by the numbers where do you think by the numbers that SSM would appear? I’m guessing it wouldn’t show in the top 100. Yet this is the one that gets airtime. Now I can understand when actual gay bloggers and writers who wish to get married discuss this. I don’t get it when the rest do. There’s something else going on here. Why are they ignoring the elephant?

Now it’s likely that a progressive might be able to make the same accusation turned around at me, a conservative. Claiming on some other issue I’m ignoring the big picture for a seemingly insignificant detail. So, is this a generic feature of our divide? Or is it a right looking left one?

From Politico (HT: Holycoast), former Governor Mark Sanford writes,

Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign – as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword. A long list of close friends have suggested otherwise – that for God to really work in my life I shouldn’t be getting off so lightly. While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride. They contended that in many instances I may well have held the right position on limited government, spending or taxes – but that if my spirit wasn’t right in the presentation of those ideas to people in the General Assembly, or elsewhere, I could elicit the response that I had at many times indeed gotten from other state leaders.

Mr Westmoreland-White here offers an “explanation” for why the GOP reacts differently to scandal than the Democrats. One wonders if he knows any conservatives or republicans. He could, you know, ask one or two what their reason for caring about scandal,  unlike the Democrats who apparently don’t. The point is, I’m a conservative. The reason I’ve given and heard from other conservatives why personal scandal matters for politicians is the same every time. And it’s not the reason he gives, to whit:

It seems to me that the difference is the hypocrisy factor.  The Democratic Party in the U.S. has not tried to set itself up as the “morality police.”  Democrats sometimes campaign as “strong family people,” but this is seldom the center of the campaign.  They don’t claim to be morally superior.  They don’t try  to claim that voting for them is the only way to save the American family.  Republicans do make such claims–usually by implication, but sometimes in almost those very words.  Further, Republican politicians loudly call for Democratic politicians to resign if they get caught in sex scandals–and claim that voting for them is a way to restore the moral fabric of the nation.

This is uncharitable. It is not any reason that he, I suspect, or I have ever heard given. So that liberals and progressives get this straight, here is why the GOP (in office and out) call for Democrats caught in sex and other scandals to resign from public office.

Conservatives believe that private dishonest is reflective of personality. That a person who is dishonest in his personal affairs will also be dishonest in public and is not worthy of public trust. Cheating on a spouse affects a number of people, the wife, the children, and the social community in which the person resides. It is at the core, a breaking of trust. Conservatives believe that a person who is dishonest in these things will cannot be trusted in other things. That dishonesty of this sort disqualifies one from public office where great trust over money and power is given to a person for whom integrity is important.

The question then redounds to the liberal side. Why do they for their part feel that a person who lacks personal integrity is worthy of public office? I might suggest reasons why I might think that liberals like Mr Westmoreland-White might feel that personal integrity is unimportant to those in public office, but unlike him I fear that any reason I might sugggest would be uncharitable. So … I’ll await suggestions from him and from other liberal/progressive readers to answer that question defending the notion that personal integrity is unimportant.

Last week, Mr Dreher noted an essay by Mr Coates a progressive blogger for the New Atlantic. Mr Coates offers his reasons “why I’m a liberal,” which Mr Dreher disputes. This weekend this came up in conversation and a friend offered “why he’s a conservative”, and offered a point on which I agree. In brief:

I’m a conservative because our civilization is fragile.

Liberal/progressives don’t believe that to be the case. Unlike Mr Dreher, who says:

I am not a liberal because I do not share the same view of human nature that most liberals do, and because I think that in my culture and country, our traditions and institutions, broadly speaking, are a wise guide to our life in common. And I believe liberals have such an unrealistic view of human nature that they typically run off to tear down fences without any regard for why the fences were erected, so to speak.

Not that I disagree strongly with that viewpoint, but that the more important thing is the fragility of the order in which we live. They believe they can whack away, merging politics and science strongly regarding climate, futz with marriage, redefine sexual mores and roles, bludgeon our healthcare establishment, and so on. That the structures that drive and which serve as the foundation of our civilization is fundamentally fragile. Our very progressive President has grand plans to restructure society. Progressives forget the disasters they reap. For example it was the progressive movement which brought us Prohibition and the twin progressive reforms of the 60s easing divorce and of welfare which annihilated the inner city family structure so effectively. And don’t examine Europe … the 20th century history is a wrecking yard of progressive ideas which foundered on reality.

How is that they don’t realize that their progressive failures are disappointing failures and disasters most of the time? They use a few mechanisms and repeat as needed. The primary mechanism is to forget that the failures were progressive innovations … they pretend that they were innovations pressed on society by the conservative faction … even though that very idea should resound with cognitive dissonance. The other mechanism is ignorance. For example, Black slavery in the New World was a progressive innovation introduced by a Spanish nobleman in order to allay and ease maltreatment of native central American peoples by the conquering Spanish peoples. And yes, it wasn’t his plan that the evils of the triangle trade might arise … but that’s always how it goes … and this is the third mechanism. Because the “plan didn’t work out” … the massive suffering that entails the enterprise is exonerated. Throughout the 20th century, Western European and American liberal establishment was enthralled with Marxism and the communist bloc. They ignored the suffering and pain because that wasn’t in the plan. It wasn’t intended. Thus it was forgiven and forgotten and ignored.

Take science for example, Mr Polanyi notes in Personal Knowledge that the transmission from master to apprentice is the primary way in which our scientific methodologies are transmitted. He notes that University culture has been transplanted into a variety of cultures and settings and the results by and large have not been as successful as would be expected, in many places it hasn’t worked at all to this point. The key here is that the culture on which our scientific progress depends is fragile. It is hard to construct. It took centuries to arise and … didn’t arise in many other places which were more literate, wealthier, and had more time. Likewise our social customs and practices fit together to form our society … are very fragile. They took centuries, millenia to build up in a way in which they fit. It is a progressive conceit that they have “new ways” of social arrangement untried and unconsidered by anyone in the previous 5000 years. They believe that their scientific knowledge will protect them from error at the same time at which is retreating rapidly from the notions that it has anything to offer in moral and social arenas. Odd that.

I’m conservative because I’m aware our track record at intentional innovations in engineering and fixing our society is very very poor. I’m conservative because the effort to make decent human society was bought at great price. 500 years ago the “Emily Post” etiquette manuals of behavior had to instruct individuals to eschew public defecation in dining areas at mealtime. Our manners, our culture, and the institutions which bind us together took great effort to erect. They are fragile. The first impulse should not be to whack them indiscriminately as they are planning and doing right now.

"Buyer’s remorse" is a phenomenon where, once a purchaser gets a product home and uses it, they decide it’s not living up to its potential, the advertising hype, or their expectations (realistic or otherwise).  According to Rasmussen, looks like America is getting a case of "Voter’s remorse".

Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on six out of 10 key issues, including the top issue of the economy.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% now trust the GOP more to handle economic issues, while 39% trust Democrats more.

This is the first time in over two years of polling that the GOP has held the advantage on this issue. The parties were close in May, with the Democrats holding a modest 44% to 43% edge. The latest survey was taken just after General Motors announced it was going into bankruptcy as part of a deal brokered by the Obama administration that gives the government majority ownership of the failing automaker.

Voters not affiliated with either party now trust the GOP more to handle economic issues by a two-to-one margin.

If voters didn’t realize that a President and a Congress in the hands of Democrats was going to be a big-spending perfect storm, they were just reading the advertising hype before casting their ballots.  Republicans certainly tarnished their "fiscal conservative" image in the last 8 years, no doubt about it.  But claims of "It would be worse with Democrats" is ringing true right on cue. 

And how about that "culture of corruption" that the Democratic party has tried hard to pin on Republicans?

Republicans also now hold a six-point lead on the issue of government ethics and corruption, the second most important issue to all voters and the top issue among unaffiliated voters. That shows a large shift from May, when Democrats held an 11-point lead on the issue.

There are others, and it’s worth reading.  Again I will say that most polls (or as fellow Stone Mark refers to them as, "cricket races") are simply a measure of emotion, and it’s also true in this case.  Polls that ask whether or not the economy is getting better measure what people think is happening.  What is really happening may be completely opposite to that. The general public, myself included, don’t know enough about economics to make the answer anything but a hunch.  But this poll is asking who people trust, which they, in fact, are experts on.  If the winds blow a different way tomorrow, these numbers could in fact change again.  However, the trend right now is that folks see where we’re heading, and they don’t like it.

Neither do the folks in Europe, where EU Parliamentary elections finished up recently.  This election, following the global financial crisis, shows which way the world leans when the find themselves in an economic pickle; to the Right.  The love affair with the Left and the Socialists has grown cold — more voter’s remorse — especially in France, which started a move to the Right with Sarkozy and continued with a crushing defeat for the Socialists, losing almost 20% of its French seats.  They may cheer Obama on the Left, but then they go home and vote Right when the chips are down.

Via the Corner, Ed Whelan notes two instances in which President Obama previously said,

[W]hile adherence to legal precedent and rules of statutory or constitutional construction will dispose of 95 percent of the cases that come before a court, so that both a Scalia and a Ginsburg will arrive at the same place most of the time on those 95 percent of the cases — what matters on the Supreme Court is those 5 percent of cases that are truly difficult.

OK. What is that man talking about? A quick look at some, you know, actual statistics shows that the agreement is just a little less. Ms Ginsberg agreed with Mr Scalia less than 15% of the time and Mr Thomas less than 10%. A far cry from 95%.

So, remind me why is this man touted for his “high intelligence?” He’s either bright … and a bald faced liar … or he’s innumerate. Pick one.

In the nineteenth century in California a housing bubble popped. Californians promised themselves that never again would they come to believe that could depend on housing prices would rise indefinitely.

In the nineteenth century scientists consistently and continued to deny the possibility that rocks (so-called meteorites) could fall from the sky (via Personal Knowledge), evidence be damned.

Today we too believe ourselves immune to this failing. We insist that our epistemic armor has no chinks. We think that our understanding of man, society, and our surroundings is improving and in the main correct.

Epistemic humility, to know that we do not know, is as was noted just a few (countable number of) weeks back by that Socrates fellow that knowing the actual extent of our expertise and knowledge is the first step to wisdom.

One of the consistent features of the political left and specifically our Administration today is a distinct lack of epistemic humility. They are the “smart” ones who have the answers. They will avoid the sins and faults of other side committed because they are far more clever, because their epistemic skin has been dipped in the Styx and is invulnerable to the slings and arrows and mortal failings unlike the clueless other guys. How long will it take then for Paris, aka reality, to slide the poisoned arrow into their ankle?

One thing that comes to mind when issues regarding increased influence by the government in healthcare. Today there are no public hayrides. Why? Because somewhere someone decided they could sue if some rambunctious teenage got hurt during the ride … which mean insurance was required … which meant no more hayrides. How much public interest in health care of this sort not give increased impetus to control risk or other behavior deemed not necessary if that activity has but the smallest negative impact on public health and subsequently public insurance rates. Hayrides are harmless romantic fun that were once common in the New England autumn. Now they are only a private affair hidden from any organized groups that might be subject to suit.

There is a notion among so many today, and my impression is that this idea is found more on the left than the right, that if someone is injured especially badly then there is necessarily another at fault. Actual accidents do not exist in their world. And that it is right to use legal proceedings after any substantial injury to redress the wrong and to locate (or invent) a guilty party and get them to pay. This is, I think, quite a childish impulse. I don’t understand how an adult can act on such an idea in the absence of evidence or any suggestion of malfeasance or malice.

Negligence is often cited as a cause for accidents and used as a proxy for fault. Tiger Woods occasionally misses a nominally routine putt. Jose Calderon has an 2008/9 NBA free shooting percentage of 98.052%. Why not 100%? After all free throws are routine. The point is that humans performing any routine activities will occasionally fail or introduce a mistake. Accidents can occur which are not intentional and are not actionable. All too often an error is cause for suit even when it is an “honest” mistake. An obvious rejoinder is that this is what courts are for, to distinguish between honest mistakes and ones which arise from malice, greed, or other intentional errors. And yes, that is the case. But the courts should not be the place where this issue is explored, but the place where evidence of error is tried.

Equality. Liberty. Virtue. These are all features which all citizens of almost every state will agree are good and required for a civil and stable union in some measure. I’ve claimed before that today’s progressive/liberals, libertarians and conservatives differ largely in that the different groups differ in the relative importance they place on these values. That is liberal/progressives value equality the most, libertarians liberty, and conservatives virtue. And it’s not that progressive/liberals find virtue or liberty bad, just that these things are less important than equality and so forth.

What does it mean that one values virtue in a civic sense? There are certainly things it should not mean but often does, that is often this is confused with the idea that particular virtues are required and preeminent. The Greek political thinkers thought that the primary purpose of the state was to create an environment in which the virtues of its citizens would and could be cultivated. Virtue for them was the road to happiness. In our day and age, so many confuse happiness with pleasure and therefore forget the importance of virtue. Now, the Greek city states were small enough that a much more pronounced uniformity of opinion about what constitutes virtue could be established in one community. This helped of course but is not essential.

C.S. Lewis in the The Abolition of Man suggests the notion of a universal sense of right and wrong within all people. Put in the context of virtue, there is a common core notion of what virtues are which all societies and people hold common. Different societies value different virtues with varying gradings and, again at the periphery, some virtues are thought vices and vice-versa, for example modern educators think self-esteem is a virtue and many Christian fathers taught self-esteem a vice. The existence of these differences is however often used mistakenly to suggest that the common notions of virtues in the main are held all cultures and societies.

From the standpoint of political thought and theory however the matter is that a multicultural society, of which most of us belong, can and should foster the development of virtues in its citizens and that this can be done without prejudicing which virtues its citizens value and are being in effect fostered and developed by the state. The primary purpose then of a state is to create an environment in which its citizens can cultivate virtue. So that we can be come better, happier as individuals. As a consequence this requires freedoms (liberty) and equality. But the goal of that liberty (and therefore also where it may and might be restricted) is to foster virtue. Again, where the purpose of equality between citizens is to allow each to cultivate his or her own virtues. Enforcement and encouragement of that equality is not for the purpose of granting equality qua equality to each but to allow each full opportunities to cultivate individual virtue.

Well, in the light of the fact that it’s been touted that “conservatives” have abandoned their defense of high culture. I’ll freely admit that I have not. Friday night my beloved, who coincidentally is also my wife 😉 , and I attended the CSO for a concert conducted by Bernard Haitink. I was surprised this year, for I don’t recall Mr Haitink having such trouble getting around. He used a cane to assist his walking and stood/sat/leaned on a edge of an elevated chair while conducting. I have to admit his mastery of the orchestra and his use of subtle controlled gesture to get his meaning across was a wonder to behold.

Three peices were performed, none of which I’d ever heard earlier. They were Max Webern’s Im Sommerwind (In the Summer Wind), Gustov Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder, and Franz Schuberts 9th Symphony (the Great). I’d like to offer a few remarks on the short Mahler songs. They were five Ruckert poems set to music sung by Mezzo Soprano Christianne Stotijn. Ms Stotijn sang beautifully, and my only critique might be that I thought she needed sing a little more strongly to counterbalance the orchestra better. Of these poems, the fourth was a simple love poem which Mahler dedicated to his new bride. It is simple but poignant.

Liebst du um Schonheit (If you love for beauty)
(translation from program notes)

If you love for beauty,
then do not love me!
Love the sun,
for he has golden hair.

If you love for youth,
then do not love me!
Love the spring,
which is young every year.

If you love for money,
then do not love me!
Love a mermaid,
for she has many find pearls.

If you love for love,
then yes, do love me!
Love me forever,
I’ll love you evermore.

Today’s discussion arising from Monday’s link post, frequent commenter took exception to the linked analogy from Joe Carter’s Commonplace. Mr Carter quotes from a interesting essay in Policy Review. Mr Carter quotes:

Today’s prevailing social consensus about pornography is practically identical to the social consensus about tobacco in 1963: i.e., it is characterized by widespread tolerance, tinged with resignation about the notion that things could ever be otherwise.

My (liberal/progressive) commenters objected tacking two tacks. JA defended pornography as harmless (or a good?). What harm can pornography cause after all, it only “leads to erections.” However pornography is indeed harmful. It is harmful in that it corrupts our relationships. A young man may argue and perhaps even convince his lover that this habit of his is in no way harming his relationship with his young (beautiful) spouse or lover. After all he loves her but is only engaging in behavior that doesn’t touch their relationship by engaging in viewing pornography. However … that plays out a little differently 20 or 30 years down the road. When the images he views are of women 30 years younger than his beloved. When she views the women he views and sees differences between herself of her past and her present body image that can certainly cause pain … and damage relationships. Ms Eberstadt (the author of the Policy Review piece) notes:

Indirect evidence from other sources, such as divorce cases and reports by clergy and therapists, also suggest that pornography can cause harm. Consider the increasing role played by internet pornography in divorce proceedings. According to a meeting of the American Academy of atrimonial Lawyers, for example, 62 percent of the 350 attendees said that the internet had been a significant factor in cases handled that year — and that was in 2002, well behind today’s levels of pornography consumption. Numerous pastors and priests and ministers and therapists have reported that pornography use is now the leading cause of marital trouble and breakup they encounter as counselors.³ If we accept that marital breakup itself causes distress to both parties as well as to any children involved, then pornography’s potential cast of victims appears to widen significantly by virtue of that fact alone.

So it seems clear that far from being harmless it it seems clear that harm does come from porn.

The other commenter Mr Boonton offers a different tack. He views porn and tobacco as not analogous because:

I think the analogy breaks because tobacco is basically exogenous while porn is endogenous. Tobacco is a foreign substance introduced to a subject that causes the body and mind to create a physical addition and also generates long term health problems.

But one problem with that is that pornography and sex in general, like tobacco, certainly can become an addictive behavior.

For Christian readers, the very notion that many (possibly including commenter JA here) who would defend pornography as “a good thing” this short podcast by Khouria Matthews-Green is relevant.

Chuck Colson explains that we disregard the past at our own peril.

One of the best exponents of [the role and importance of tradition] was G.K. Chesterton. In his book Orthodoxy, he wrote, “Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.” And he wrote that “tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”

It’s not only respect for tradition that’s involved here—it’s prudence. These institutions and arrangements have helped to preserve the moral order, which is our first duty to maintain. They have been shaped by people who took into account the world as it is—filled with fallen human beings—instead of an imaginary utopia filled with perfectible people.

This respect is why true conservatism is a disposition, not an ideology. It doesn’t seek to reinvent man and his world—its concerns are about what T.S. Eliot called the “permanent things.”

In contrast, perverted modern liberalism, which includes many who call themselves “conservatives,” is about innovation, breaking from the past, upsetting the established order, and maximizing individual autonomy.

Colson is responding to the liberalism that is being taught in our universities, as exemplified in a quote from a Harvard faculty committee.  Read the whole thing.

I was recently reading about some protesters fasting in order to raise awareness for one cause or another.

It struck me that the secular left and the religious right have very different notions about fasting and its means and purpose. Read the rest of this entry

Well, I can’t leave comments at Positive Liberty for some reason or other, however a brief response to Mr Kuznicki seems in order.

Mr Kuznicki is up in arms about conservatives daring to “defend” a Rick Warren/Martin Ssempa connection. He finds a movement toward abstinence inappropriate as well as Mr Ssempa’s anti-gay rhetoric. Now, I’m not going to defend the latter. However, a little googling shows that the Saddleback church (Rick Warren’s “purpose driven” mega-church) has embraced an AIDS ministry. The concentration of this ministry accoriding to their web site concentrates confronting AIDS in particular because of the stigma associated with the disease. And additionally, they’ve chosen to focus their aid on orphans and children with AIDS. In spreading their assistance from the States to Africa apparently Mr Ssempa has aided their particular mission.

Mr Kuznicki asks how those particular things which bother him about Mr Ssempa:

–Agitated successfully to remove all mention of condoms from Uganda’s anti-HIV campaign.
–Burned condoms in public and otherwise condemned them. For Jesus.
–Recommended that gays be imprisoned.
–Expressed a belief that witches were making people sick.

He wonders how this could be worse?

Well, obviously it could. African AIDS is not a homosexual phenomena, unlike in the States. That epidemic is apparently driven by rampant widespread adultery. One might Imagine burning condoms were part of a movement to stem this tide and promote the notion of fidelity to one’s spouse. Imagine that, the horror! Why might a conservative support such a clearly silly notion.

It was Mr Kuznicki’s last bullet point that inspired my initial remarks regarding intentions and deeds. If one takes the two notions that Mr Ssempa has been allowing and facilitatting the Saddleback church in getting aid medical, food, and support to orphans and children with HIV/AIDS and at the same time Dr Ssempa thinks that witchcraft and the supernatural impacts the spread of disease. Well, we have an effect, i.e., aid to orphans. We have a belief, witchcraft. The question I posed, and Mr Kuznicki has failed to address, is to ask is why he discounts aid to HIV infected orphans because Mr Ssempa has a belief in witchcraft, i.e., if one’s beliefs (intentions) aren’t pure … does that discount one’s deeds, i.e., facilitating aid to orphans?

Apparently, in Mr Kuznicki’s world … it does.

One final remarks, I don’t know the extent or basis of Mr Ssempa’s political influence in Uganda. However, it is my impression that in sub-Saharan Africa in general there are generically very strong anti-gay biases in the populus. That a politician personally on occaision panders to this to garner support is no indication of their personal feeling and may in fact just be a requirement to get support to garner the political capital to do other things, such as for example try to turn the culture toward monagamy and to aid orphans.

This was the title of a post on Redstate by Aaron Gardner, regarding where the Republican Party goes from here.  Gardner started, as his foundation of what the Republicans need to stand for, from the party platform of 1980, when Reagan was swept into the White House with 489 electoral votes.  He made some of his own modifications, but overall the (lengthy) statement stands as a good starting point.

Read the rest of this entry