tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305228.post4256755239815702251..comments2023-11-02T11:32:38.324+00:00Comments on The Joy of Curmudgeonry: An Intolerable State of AffairsDeogolwulfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02197539477668018797noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305228.post-13702314425170410532011-03-17T21:37:03.031+00:002011-03-17T21:37:03.031+00:00If the problem is deeper than politics, then, we a...If the problem is deeper than politics, then, we are not dealing with some "thing" (a leader, a regime, a "system") that can actually "fall" -- and I am not trying to prod you here, only point out a bit of faulty rhetoric on our side. I don't believe we are entitled to that imperial "of course", and I question the exact shape of this "fall". Without meaning to give offence, he better analogue is the christianization of Europeans, which graded off dramatically in just the past two centuries. In the same way there can be no "fall" of multiculturalization being an ideology and not a political dynasty or simple closed system. For something to fall, it must stand on two or so legs. The multicult is not that kind of phenomenon, precisely as Christianity, after reaching all Europe, was not sustained by the emperor or the clerisy. European Man identified himself with it and no external check was needed, and therefore nothing could be to dislodge it but the slow passage of centuries wearing it down to liberalism. We are stuck with the multicult as the new default sense of being shared by whites everywhere -- outside of Russia perhaps.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305228.post-50051721135243174892011-03-02T18:06:40.881+00:002011-03-02T18:06:40.881+00:00This extended interview contains great examples of...This extended interview contains great examples of Rorty's inability to be coherent, and his satisfaction with remaining in a state of incoherence:<br /><br />http://www.scribd.com/doc/36656596/Against-Bosses-Against-Oligarchies-A-Conversation-with-Richard-RortyBruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305228.post-77399277529071452762011-03-01T22:58:08.157+00:002011-03-01T22:58:08.157+00:00Rorty is well worth reading. As a case-study in th...Rorty is well worth reading. As a case-study in the grimness of modern thought, he is hard to beat, and also for that reason can be a great spur to an interest in the history of that thought to which he gave such smug expression.Deogolwulfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02197539477668018797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305228.post-27149778069697129422011-03-01T21:02:36.545+00:002011-03-01T21:02:36.545+00:00Good quote from Rorty.
I have in fact read a gre...Good quote from Rorty. <br /><br />I have in fact read a great deal of Rorty, with intense attention, over many years. <br /><br />(Yes, I know... I'm not proud of it.)<br /><br />My conclusion is that although superficially Rorty was talking incoherent and obviously-wrong nonsense - at a deeper and less-obvious level he was in fact talking incoherent nonsense.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305228.post-83870296369049899832011-03-01T20:37:52.979+00:002011-03-01T20:37:52.979+00:00It's a rare leftist that has the self-insight ...It's a rare leftist that has the self-insight and intellectual honesty to admit that he's just as intolerant and hectoring as his opponents, if not more so. I think Richard Rorty nailed the liberal perspective on this when he wrote this:<br /><br />"I don’t see anything herrschaftsfrei about my handling of my fundamentalist students. Rather, I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents ... I am just as provincial and contextualist as the Nazi teachers who made their students read Der Stürmer; the only difference is that I serve a better cause."<br /><br />Or as bonald at <a href="http://bonald.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow">Throne and Altar</a> says, "Everybody censors, but especially the liberals."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305228.post-73871490148401414362011-02-20T04:21:41.563+00:002011-02-20T04:21:41.563+00:00Since no identity was claimed, it cannot be a fals...Since no identity was claimed, it cannot be a false one.<br /><br />“one has not grown out of the other”<br /><br />I have never believed that one brother can grow out of another.<br /><br />“they are not related”<br /><br />They most certainly are.<br /><br />“nor is the reign of liberalism the same structurally as the reign of Leninism”<br /><br />I have never thought so.<br /><br />“it now is inside, is itself the people. Its will reaches beyond secret police and oppression into the pleasure centers in the brains of men, to which it has wed itself.”<br /><br />Indeed. When I said that the liberal-bureaucratic regimes are “more refined” than the Marxistic ones, I did not mean it as a compliment. The liberal regimes are more sublimely evil than the Marxistic regimes partly for the reasons you give.<br /><br />“So to suggest that liberalism . . . can ‘fall’ as did the Soviets is semantically specious.”<br /><br />I have suggested no such thing. Our particular liberal-bureaucratic regimes will of course one day fall, and I say that one may take as a hopeful sign any crudeness on their part, anything more “Soviet”, if you like, for crudenesses are more visible, and “it is in greater subtleness that the lasting evil of our regimes has lain”. Once these regimes are gone, it is still anyone's guess whether anything can be done to cure European man of his illness, or even just to alleviate some of the symptoms, otherwise these latter will show up again. The problem is deeper than politics. It concerns metaphysical or theological beliefs.Deogolwulfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02197539477668018797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305228.post-41193477376243560412011-02-20T02:41:00.195+00:002011-02-20T02:41:00.195+00:00and as they abandon the expedient device of tolera...<i>and as they abandon the expedient device of tolerance for those areas where their power formerly could not determine the case, they risk becoming as unsubtle as the old Marxistic regimes, whereof they have been hitherto the more refined brethren. </i><br /><br />False identity there. They may be alike in respects, but the one has not grown out of the other, and except for the anology or the fact that both powers are against us, they are not related, nor is the reign of liberalism the same structurally as the reign of Leninism, which is to say not subject to the same political weaknesses; there is moreover the vast time / technology differential. Soviet states were self-contained coherent political entities housing populations consciously opposed to the master class and its ideology. Political correctness or liberalism is not a coherent politic entity as such. It is not a state: it is <i>every</i> state. It is not over the people: it now <i>is inside, is itself</i> the people. Its will reaches beyond secret police and oppression into the pleasure centers in the brains of men, to which it has wed itself. So to suggest that liberalism, which agains is not a party or a class as such, but the "default religion of European man for (x) years", can "fall" as did the Soviets is semantically specious. Unless one means to kill off millions of bourgeois and lower-class whites who harbor the illness that is liberalism.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305228.post-66667604163204549952011-02-18T17:23:58.104+00:002011-02-18T17:23:58.104+00:00It is always a red letter day when Deogolwulf post...It is always a red letter day when Deogolwulf posts! Another gem.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305228.post-7308430408062938092011-02-17T06:19:03.427+00:002011-02-17T06:19:03.427+00:00From the psychological-engineering point of view, ...<em>From the psychological-engineering point of view, the liberal’s idea of tolerance is a remarkable one. It encourages him to feel magnanimity in upholding his own beliefs whilst damning all others, with little or no care for the truth or reasonableness thereof, which is to say, it encourages him to feel magnanimity in bigotry. Liberal bigotry is that wonderful state of mind in which one is compelled to call a bigot anyone who stands at odds with it, which is to say, it is bigotry made sublime. Or: the typical liberal is so great a bigot that he feels magnanimous as such.</em><br /><br />This is the nub of the matter. <br /><br />Regarding puritanism, I've written recently about children being protected, which is not necessarily puritanism in itself.James Highamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14525082702330365464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305228.post-61544288295893718842011-02-17T00:11:50.747+00:002011-02-17T00:11:50.747+00:00According to his wiki page he isn't even a sci...According to his wiki page he isn't even a scientist but an economist.Dismalistnoreply@blogger.com