tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38413397.post4366500980479656042..comments2023-12-19T15:10:02.866-08:00Comments on ex cathedra: What gives you the right?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38413397.post-80983860192822230252012-03-06T21:25:08.617-08:002012-03-06T21:25:08.617-08:00Tremendously pleased to receive the crystalline pe...Tremendously pleased to receive the crystalline peals of your words on rights after my inquiry.<br /><br />Where rights are from is a worthy question. What rights are at all is tough too, and what I'd wait a thousand years to hear you pronounce upon.<br /><br />You answered the best question, though: what sort of rights do we need to not have (how have 'rights' been over-applied).<br /><br />- Thoughtful CommentorAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38413397.post-72010573177862832512012-03-06T15:56:43.063-08:002012-03-06T15:56:43.063-08:00Accordingly, calls to keep government limited are ...Accordingly, calls to keep government limited are surely only a smoke screen for those whose material and prestige interests are served by limited government. The only freedoms we care about are lifestyle freedoms, and obviously the executive orders don't force Catholic bishops to use contraception, so what's the objection?<br /><br />It's like restrictions on hate speech. They're restrictions only on those who want to misuse the first amendment for false and offensive speech: one has no more "unalienable right" to find fault with Islam as such, or to publish demoralizing crime statistics, as to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre.<br /><br />Formerly, the courts felt that restrictions on obscenity weren't real restrictions on speech. They were wrong. Freedom of "expression" is more important than freedom of logos. (Maybe logos is intrinsically hate speech?) But the point is well taken: there's always been restrictions on freedom of speech, and restrictions on hate speech are the restrictions that make most sense and serve the cause of lifestyle freedom or expression freedom better than any other restrictions.<br /><br />If you have something worth saying or expressing, restrictions on hate speech won't restrict your expression.<br /><br />In sum, as long as the state isn't control'd by white males of a certain kind, we the people have no valid reason to fear the state as such, any more than we have reason to fear man (human) as such. ... What really was the problem with Nazi totalitarianism? The totalitarianism or the Nazi programmes that the totalitarianism was used for? If the Third Reich was for the sake of lifestyle freedoms, we wouldn't have to be constantly learning about how bad Hitler was on the History Channel.<br /><br />... Formerly Anglo-Saxony's "Whom Are We Kidding?" mediating institutions dispel'd the flimflam of political rhetoric, for instance, that the Civil War was fought for the sake of the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the slaves, or that the First World War was fought to make the world free for democracy, or that the Second World War was fought in order to shut down Hitler's death camps.<br /><br />But desublimation requires that correcting the flimflam cease in the post_war_ aion, for after all, if repression and sublimation aren't essentially necessary and even more than necessary, then government too needn't be repressive but can be affirm'd and repurposed as a lifestyle enhancer.<br /><br />Or, more to the point, if there is no need for primary repression and sublimation, then one can't explain classic liberalism. The liberal is reduced to the libertarian, arguing abstractly that the individual should be left free (but why?) and that government should appropriate, control etc -- even if in fact the individual can't subsist on his own but needs government, and it may seem to some, that an extensive system of governmental institutions is preferable to extremely limited government.<br /><br />If Locke, Montesquieu and the Framers had been libertarians, there never would have been a Revolution of 1776, the Constitution of the United States, etc. Locke et al didn't balk at explanations of God and nature and man. ...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38413397.post-80225485192055506562012-03-06T15:54:58.411-08:002012-03-06T15:54:58.411-08:00I dunno. If ex cathedra balks at providing a logos...I dunno. If ex cathedra balks at providing a logos of »human nature, human communities, history, the world and God« that could account for "rights," then who will stand up and speak for Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, which did provide the self-evident foundation for the American system?<br /><br />Straussians go on and on in public about how statesmen should always avoid indicating first principles, as did Machiavelli, for instance. Whenever possible, that is, political speech should be unserious flimflam that rhetorically makes any substantive divisions and problems and conflicts seem to melt away.<br /><br />In emergencies, they say, a statesman may allude to first principles, but only obliquely, as did Lincoln, during the emergency of the southern secession and the war to preserve the union. If this means pervading the message that the war was for the liberation of slaves, then so be it. What constitutional harm could follow from a pervasive cultural misunderstanding of the purposes of the union? For example, government and even war are fitting instruments for major social reform.<br /><br />Yes, Lincoln was depending upon cultural commentators and clergy and so on to dissolve the unstated but definitely rely'd upon message that the war was fought for the abolition of slavery, that is, for the sake of the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the slaves (and then curiously follow'd up by the wars of Indian extermination, expropriation and relocation effected by the union armies). ... To this day, owning slaves isn't a disqualification from American herodom, as indicated e.g. by the figures selected for American coinage and currency.<br /><br />But isn't the situation today an emergency that validates or rather obligates statement of first principles? Evidently jumping up and down about the danger of domination by Io stato isn't rhetorically sufficient to preserve Locke and Montesquieu and the Framers' system.<br /><br />Pointing to recent executive orders compelling Catholic employers to provide indirect prescription coverage for contraception isn't terrifying enough to rally the population to limited government.<br /><br />"We the people" don't really believe there's evil in the heart of man. Lincoln balk'd at mentioning the Biblical doctrine as much as any Transcendentalist. Calvin is a horrifying fuddy-duddy for us the people. (We all can name the one person he is responsible for executing. Calvin is that evil! And accordingly we the people perceive we musn't learn from him. We incomparably prefer social-justice Catholicism -- the Catholicism that Catholics eagerly built in the culture. Killing Servetus, who was in Geneva because he was on the run from the Inquisition, is the final truth of Calvin, whereas everything cruel or oppressive or otherwise Calvin-like in Catholic history is some kind of intrusion into social-justice Catholic teaching. In every important respect, Thomas Aquinas is a Calvinist. Dorothy Day has voted democrat in every election since whenever (she's still on the voter rolls in Chicago).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com