“Liberal” gradations may be less divisive than “conservative” and “progressive” proclivities. Time once was when conservatives fit well within a liberal tradition that valued ordered liberty. In the post-WWII period, a vibrant middle class - open to rising effort - became an ideal stronger than just reducing tax rates. Enforcing equality by strictly Marxist doctrine always seemed to defy human nature, but helping less privileged talent rise seemed once to be acceptable even to conservatives. It seems a laudable goal still.
Yes. Years ago I had no difficulty embracing some of the virtues of progressivism which still retained it seemed to me basic American values (however nebulous that phrase may be). No longer.
Extremism - of any kind - interferes with rational thinking. The less doctrinaire we keep ourselves, I think, the more open we remain to facts and reason. American ideals favor respectful discourse and reasonable compromise, not doctrinaire ideology or any form of mass hysteria.
Reasonable and doable. Unfortunately, lately, seemingly out of reach. I just wish I knew why. I often think of a term I learned from Dr. Scott Peck--"overdetermined." That seems an appropriate term for what's happening in discourse recently.
It is mystifying, but somehow Americans have lost all patience with people who don’t (or won’t) share all of their particular views exactly. As if it were ever at all reasonable to expect perfect unanimity on any topic or policy. Our civic sickness approaches a kind of political “psychosis.” We need to talk reasonably with each other, using facts as a common ground for discussion.
I was out of town and probably missed your Oct. posting, so will eventually find it, I presume.
But learning the American version of the Englishman's English in the 1950's, I never came across something like "But the really skewiff thread of the argument is when he starts to speculate ..."
For an American audience I would never skewiff a thread, although perhaps it would still go askew, even if we are all sloping downhill in our moral preferences on both sides of the pond. :-) [Have I violated some rule by using an adjective as a verb?]
And this is just top notch writing (even if I did not already happen to fully agree with you about it):
"What then of the conservative’s alternative perception: that the human condition – in terms of the affairs of the heart, of the interplay of desire and fear, of the capacity for what used to be called good and evil – is fundamentally unchanging? The skepticism that fills the columns (and comment threads) of conservative media, on both sides of the Atlantic, is not in fact especially about violence or even about the long term fate of humanity. It is skepticism about the chances that swathes of one’s fellow men in the here and now will ever emerge from their lefty p.c. arrested adolescence and grow up. For is that not what the politically correct version of Progress is really about? Ever since Rousseau - ever since Marx - it has been an essentially an arrested-adolescent mind-game - and a deliciously cost-free one for the well-healed middle class virtue-signaller. Not surprisingly, succeeding generations of real adolescents have lapped it up in spades."
It just reconfirms the wisdom of Thomas Sowell, in his book Conflict of Visions, as the dichotomy between the unconstrained (utopian) and the constrained (realistic) versions.
We got bamboozled by thinking that by adopting politically correct language, we were just being politically "polite", not adopting a new radical meaning for any term the Leftists wanted to push down our throat, to the point that all meaning was either reversed or totally lost.
It could be said that the unconstrained utopian (kakatopia) vision is now being mooted by this outfit http://www.project2025.org A project which, if it gains the necessary political power to enforce its all-encompassing project seeks to re-arrange and dominate all aspects of human culture.
When fascism comes to America it will be heralded in the name of freedom and with appeals to the Bible for its "religious" justifications.
"But the conservative is unlikely to grab the megaphone to tell you all about it."
This line is spot on as one of the two actionable things that the modern leftist will always engage in involving their need for virtue signaling and their constant drumbeat for the mob mentality much faster than a true modern day conservative, a true populist, a libertarian, etc.
The need to be heard and to threaten and "other" those that will not hear them is the modern progressive, or more accurately in my view Communist, modus operandi.
Found you via Hoel’s TIP substack, and I am looking forward to reading more of your thoughts.
I, too, liken myself some form of a conservative in the classically liberal sense.
Big C conservatives often speak of “the conservative movement” as if it were some new, revelatory idea progressing toward some greater concept of Conservatism. Which is, as a past US President might say, ironical.
My best and most sincere curmudgeonly GenX wishes to you and yours.
Does the great white hope Donald Trump appeal to the better angels of your conservative nature, or does he invoke and empower the dark hob-goblins of human nature?
"This mood was manifested in (amongst other things) the demolition not just of bomb sites but also swathes of ‘old-fashioned’ Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian buildings to make way for futuristic urban road schemes and Corbusian concrete tower blocks (see last month’s post for details). If those old-fashioned buildings had survived into the 21st century, they would now have a market value in the billions; possibly trillions."
For years in the USA we had to hear conservatives whine about the "out of wedlock birth rate" and "teen pregnancy". Now that these things have been on the steady decline for several years we have to hear them whine about "the lack of sex" young, unmarried people have having. As if that's supposed to be some sort of a problem. You would think they would be celebrating.
This project which pretends to be conservative intends to radically transform every aspect of American culture and politics. http://www.project2025.org
It is backed by at least 70 right-wing (conservative!) groups/organizations/think tanks with very deep pocket funding. Some of them invoke the "spirit" of Ronald Reagan to justify their cause.
That having been said why not check this truth-telling expose of Reagan's toxic legacy. Among other things it includes a review of the book The Man Who Sold the World - The Betrayal of Main Street American.
Please also check out this website by the author of three books on the nature of the Wetiko psychosis which has now reached its inevitable terminal manifestation.
Check out the essay on the TV zombiefication of US "culture" (in particular) The term Wetiko was first used in the book Columbus and Other Cannibals by Jack Forbes in which he describes the all-inclusive nature of the psychosis.
I too was somewhat mystified by the notion that conservatism is on the retreat. It seems to me that Conservatism has been fighting an ever more successful rearguard action all of my lifetime. When I recall the speeches given by Lyndon Johnson on his vision of a 'Great Society' and then look at the lack of ambition shown by current left-wing leaders combined with the mis-placed admiration of Reagan it seems absolutely clear that the Conservatives have done a very good job of changing perspectives and the ground rules for debate. I clicked your first link and the notion that the Biden administration is the 'radical left' is too absurd for words. Sadly the second link did not work.
However, with respect to this site Graham is a conservative, not necessarily a Conservative and his values probably have become more scarce as Conservatives have become ever more rancorous. After all I understand it was Eisenhower who first spoke about the 'Industrial Military Complex' and President Ford who wanted us to disagree without being disagreeable. One wonders how either of them would fare in one of next years Republican gatherings.
The author writes "souls like Me – and throughout all of history - probably never were ... misogynistic"
Seriously? You are 9 years older than I so you may recall this riddle I first heard in the early 1970's.
A famous surgeon and his son get involved in a serious car accident. The father is pronounced dead at the scene, while his son is critically injured and rushed to the hospital., where he is sent directly to the operating room for emergency surgery, The surgeon comes in, takes one look at the patient and exclaims "I cannot operate, he is my son!". How can this be?
The answer is obvious today, but back then it was a head scratcher, with most people (including me) proposing that the son was adopted, and the surgeon was his biological father.
The reason the riddle worked is because the idea than the surgeon was the boy's mother simply did not occur to most people, even smart ones. But why not? Because women were not doctors and certainly not surgeons. That was simply the order of things My wife, who was born in 1954 was forbidden to play with the boys' toys in kindergarten, she was supposed to play with the girls' toy's which was small versions of household appliances they would use once then became WAMs (wife and mothers). In junior high boys took shop and girls took Home Ec., and that was that.
It is not hard to see that the jobs reserved for women back then paid much less than those for men, even when they did the same work (the job titles would be different). This began to change in the 1970's. Conservatives opposed it as contrary to nature and some are still arguing that women really belong in the home as Trad wives.
But things have changed and today some men stay home with the kids while their wives work, usually because she has the higher paying job. Those I know complain that though they love the time with their children, they mourn the loss of the career they might otherwise have had, and also feel less of a man-as-provider. I can tell you, no way I would have stayed home.
A desire to keep women in lower status roles that men do not want is a kind of misogyny.
None of the things you refer to in this comment are misogyny.... you need a different word. Patriarchy perhaps. I am not generally one to get pedantic about the evolution of language but your misuse betrays a fundamental misunderstanding. Misogyny and misandry - an inclination to dislike the opposite sex - are real psychological traits. But they do not automatically correlate with the cultural traditions that you dislike. Bandying the term misogyny in the way you have done is akin to people calling other people commies or fascists when what they really mean is merely people they dislike.
OK, I see that. I stand corrected. But using the term in its psychological sense then makes your statement about souls like Me not being misogynistic pretty weak sauce.
In this psychological sense, many slaveowners would not qualify as racists in that they did not dislike black people, as long as they knew their place and did not shirk.
Hi again, It was not really intended to be any kind of sauce ... just a qualifer of Stephen Pinker's theme about human progress. My own theme gets summarised in the last couple of paragraphs I would say.
I find it kinda depressing and seems to be against my nature to think that this is it. Life doesn't get any better for the most part. Even though evidence seems to confirm that, hope springs eternal in the human soul, at least mine. The potential for human greatness is there, collectively as well as individually. But it would take a evolutionary leap for that to happen, and that ain't coming anytime soon it would seem. Unless.... there are enough crisis that force a change forward. But crisis can also force a change backwards, which might also be a change for the better anyways. I'm not running the world so it's okay for me to think like this.
Sure maybe i'm not grateful enough for what I have. What I don't have is community and many of us don't in our atomized world as it is. Heading into the AI zombie apocalypse doesn't look like fun either. Oh my!!
I can relate to all of that - your sort of angsty stream of consciousness - although I can't think of anything hope-springing to sa. Except perhaps this: I bet you still laugh sometimes, even dance for joy maybe? I do... and at 73 I feel lucky.
“Liberal” gradations may be less divisive than “conservative” and “progressive” proclivities. Time once was when conservatives fit well within a liberal tradition that valued ordered liberty. In the post-WWII period, a vibrant middle class - open to rising effort - became an ideal stronger than just reducing tax rates. Enforcing equality by strictly Marxist doctrine always seemed to defy human nature, but helping less privileged talent rise seemed once to be acceptable even to conservatives. It seems a laudable goal still.
Yes. Years ago I had no difficulty embracing some of the virtues of progressivism which still retained it seemed to me basic American values (however nebulous that phrase may be). No longer.
Extremism - of any kind - interferes with rational thinking. The less doctrinaire we keep ourselves, I think, the more open we remain to facts and reason. American ideals favor respectful discourse and reasonable compromise, not doctrinaire ideology or any form of mass hysteria.
Reasonable and doable. Unfortunately, lately, seemingly out of reach. I just wish I knew why. I often think of a term I learned from Dr. Scott Peck--"overdetermined." That seems an appropriate term for what's happening in discourse recently.
It is mystifying, but somehow Americans have lost all patience with people who don’t (or won’t) share all of their particular views exactly. As if it were ever at all reasonable to expect perfect unanimity on any topic or policy. Our civic sickness approaches a kind of political “psychosis.” We need to talk reasonably with each other, using facts as a common ground for discussion.
I was out of town and probably missed your Oct. posting, so will eventually find it, I presume.
But learning the American version of the Englishman's English in the 1950's, I never came across something like "But the really skewiff thread of the argument is when he starts to speculate ..."
For an American audience I would never skewiff a thread, although perhaps it would still go askew, even if we are all sloping downhill in our moral preferences on both sides of the pond. :-) [Have I violated some rule by using an adjective as a verb?]
And this is just top notch writing (even if I did not already happen to fully agree with you about it):
"What then of the conservative’s alternative perception: that the human condition – in terms of the affairs of the heart, of the interplay of desire and fear, of the capacity for what used to be called good and evil – is fundamentally unchanging? The skepticism that fills the columns (and comment threads) of conservative media, on both sides of the Atlantic, is not in fact especially about violence or even about the long term fate of humanity. It is skepticism about the chances that swathes of one’s fellow men in the here and now will ever emerge from their lefty p.c. arrested adolescence and grow up. For is that not what the politically correct version of Progress is really about? Ever since Rousseau - ever since Marx - it has been an essentially an arrested-adolescent mind-game - and a deliciously cost-free one for the well-healed middle class virtue-signaller. Not surprisingly, succeeding generations of real adolescents have lapped it up in spades."
It just reconfirms the wisdom of Thomas Sowell, in his book Conflict of Visions, as the dichotomy between the unconstrained (utopian) and the constrained (realistic) versions.
We got bamboozled by thinking that by adopting politically correct language, we were just being politically "polite", not adopting a new radical meaning for any term the Leftists wanted to push down our throat, to the point that all meaning was either reversed or totally lost.
Thanks for top notch.
Skewiff? What can I say.... it's just how it came out.
I think you will like October's Deconstructing Deconstructivism... it's still there on the site.
It could be said that the unconstrained utopian (kakatopia) vision is now being mooted by this outfit http://www.project2025.org A project which, if it gains the necessary political power to enforce its all-encompassing project seeks to re-arrange and dominate all aspects of human culture.
When fascism comes to America it will be heralded in the name of freedom and with appeals to the Bible for its "religious" justifications.
You're my bedtime horror tale. May I awake tomorrow as a Pinkerite, oblivious to the news whilst I bathe in sunshine.
"But the conservative is unlikely to grab the megaphone to tell you all about it."
This line is spot on as one of the two actionable things that the modern leftist will always engage in involving their need for virtue signaling and their constant drumbeat for the mob mentality much faster than a true modern day conservative, a true populist, a libertarian, etc.
The need to be heard and to threaten and "other" those that will not hear them is the modern progressive, or more accurately in my view Communist, modus operandi.
Very good write up my friend.
Thank you.
Found you via Hoel’s TIP substack, and I am looking forward to reading more of your thoughts.
I, too, liken myself some form of a conservative in the classically liberal sense.
Big C conservatives often speak of “the conservative movement” as if it were some new, revelatory idea progressing toward some greater concept of Conservatism. Which is, as a past US President might say, ironical.
My best and most sincere curmudgeonly GenX wishes to you and yours.
Thank you... likewise.
Absolutely loved this! Heading to your site for more. Definitely appeals to the “better angels” of my conservative nature.
Thank you!
Does the great white hope Donald Trump appeal to the better angels of your conservative nature, or does he invoke and empower the dark hob-goblins of human nature?
You have a wonderful day Jonathan!
"This mood was manifested in (amongst other things) the demolition not just of bomb sites but also swathes of ‘old-fashioned’ Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian buildings to make way for futuristic urban road schemes and Corbusian concrete tower blocks (see last month’s post for details). If those old-fashioned buildings had survived into the 21st century, they would now have a market value in the billions; possibly trillions."
Is there a collective cultural regret over this?
For years in the USA we had to hear conservatives whine about the "out of wedlock birth rate" and "teen pregnancy". Now that these things have been on the steady decline for several years we have to hear them whine about "the lack of sex" young, unmarried people have having. As if that's supposed to be some sort of a problem. You would think they would be celebrating.
This project which pretends to be conservative intends to radically transform every aspect of American culture and politics. http://www.project2025.org
It is backed by at least 70 right-wing (conservative!) groups/organizations/think tanks with very deep pocket funding. Some of them invoke the "spirit" of Ronald Reagan to justify their cause.
That having been said why not check this truth-telling expose of Reagan's toxic legacy. Among other things it includes a review of the book The Man Who Sold the World - The Betrayal of Main Street American.
http://thirldworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/RonaldReagan_page.html
Please also check out this website by the author of three books on the nature of the Wetiko psychosis which has now reached its inevitable terminal manifestation.
http://awakeninthedream.com
Check out the essay on the TV zombiefication of US "culture" (in particular) The term Wetiko was first used in the book Columbus and Other Cannibals by Jack Forbes in which he describes the all-inclusive nature of the psychosis.
Thanks for the links...I'll check them out.
I too was somewhat mystified by the notion that conservatism is on the retreat. It seems to me that Conservatism has been fighting an ever more successful rearguard action all of my lifetime. When I recall the speeches given by Lyndon Johnson on his vision of a 'Great Society' and then look at the lack of ambition shown by current left-wing leaders combined with the mis-placed admiration of Reagan it seems absolutely clear that the Conservatives have done a very good job of changing perspectives and the ground rules for debate. I clicked your first link and the notion that the Biden administration is the 'radical left' is too absurd for words. Sadly the second link did not work.
However, with respect to this site Graham is a conservative, not necessarily a Conservative and his values probably have become more scarce as Conservatives have become ever more rancorous. After all I understand it was Eisenhower who first spoke about the 'Industrial Military Complex' and President Ford who wanted us to disagree without being disagreeable. One wonders how either of them would fare in one of next years Republican gatherings.
Always a pleasure to read you, Mr. Cunningham!
Thank you...that's kind!
The author writes "souls like Me – and throughout all of history - probably never were ... misogynistic"
Seriously? You are 9 years older than I so you may recall this riddle I first heard in the early 1970's.
A famous surgeon and his son get involved in a serious car accident. The father is pronounced dead at the scene, while his son is critically injured and rushed to the hospital., where he is sent directly to the operating room for emergency surgery, The surgeon comes in, takes one look at the patient and exclaims "I cannot operate, he is my son!". How can this be?
The answer is obvious today, but back then it was a head scratcher, with most people (including me) proposing that the son was adopted, and the surgeon was his biological father.
The reason the riddle worked is because the idea than the surgeon was the boy's mother simply did not occur to most people, even smart ones. But why not? Because women were not doctors and certainly not surgeons. That was simply the order of things My wife, who was born in 1954 was forbidden to play with the boys' toys in kindergarten, she was supposed to play with the girls' toy's which was small versions of household appliances they would use once then became WAMs (wife and mothers). In junior high boys took shop and girls took Home Ec., and that was that.
It is not hard to see that the jobs reserved for women back then paid much less than those for men, even when they did the same work (the job titles would be different). This began to change in the 1970's. Conservatives opposed it as contrary to nature and some are still arguing that women really belong in the home as Trad wives.
But things have changed and today some men stay home with the kids while their wives work, usually because she has the higher paying job. Those I know complain that though they love the time with their children, they mourn the loss of the career they might otherwise have had, and also feel less of a man-as-provider. I can tell you, no way I would have stayed home.
A desire to keep women in lower status roles that men do not want is a kind of misogyny.
None of the things you refer to in this comment are misogyny.... you need a different word. Patriarchy perhaps. I am not generally one to get pedantic about the evolution of language but your misuse betrays a fundamental misunderstanding. Misogyny and misandry - an inclination to dislike the opposite sex - are real psychological traits. But they do not automatically correlate with the cultural traditions that you dislike. Bandying the term misogyny in the way you have done is akin to people calling other people commies or fascists when what they really mean is merely people they dislike.
OK, I see that. I stand corrected. But using the term in its psychological sense then makes your statement about souls like Me not being misogynistic pretty weak sauce.
In this psychological sense, many slaveowners would not qualify as racists in that they did not dislike black people, as long as they knew their place and did not shirk.
Hi again, It was not really intended to be any kind of sauce ... just a qualifer of Stephen Pinker's theme about human progress. My own theme gets summarised in the last couple of paragraphs I would say.
I find it kinda depressing and seems to be against my nature to think that this is it. Life doesn't get any better for the most part. Even though evidence seems to confirm that, hope springs eternal in the human soul, at least mine. The potential for human greatness is there, collectively as well as individually. But it would take a evolutionary leap for that to happen, and that ain't coming anytime soon it would seem. Unless.... there are enough crisis that force a change forward. But crisis can also force a change backwards, which might also be a change for the better anyways. I'm not running the world so it's okay for me to think like this.
Sure maybe i'm not grateful enough for what I have. What I don't have is community and many of us don't in our atomized world as it is. Heading into the AI zombie apocalypse doesn't look like fun either. Oh my!!
I can relate to all of that - your sort of angsty stream of consciousness - although I can't think of anything hope-springing to sa. Except perhaps this: I bet you still laugh sometimes, even dance for joy maybe? I do... and at 73 I feel lucky.
Actually you hit it! At seventy I can dance them youngsters up against the walls. Never gonna stop neither!