In response to yesterday’s post detailing the structural linguistic assertions that I believe inform (either consciously or unconsciously) the progressivist project—namely a post-structuralist attempt to conflate interpretation with meaning, and so therefore to validate interpretations that are dependent upon nothing more than the agreed assertions of a given interpretive community without respect to originary signification, creating the conditions for relativism and the will to power that are, in my estimation, anathema to classical liberalism—a reader emailed me to recommend John Ellis’ 1989 book, Against Deconstruction, a book that I in fact had already read (about a decade ago now), and one that I remembered as having leveled some forceful critiques against post structuralism.
Curious about what I highlighted back when I first read it—which, coming at the beginning of Clinton’s second term, would have been well before I ever considered myself in any respect “conservative”—I went and pulled it off the shelf. Coincidentally, the first thing I noted was the following passage, from the very first page of the first chapter:
Scholars who have discussed deconstruction in a critical way have generally elicited the response from its advocates that what they have discussed was not, in fact, deconstruction because any statement or logical analysis of what deconstruction is sins against its nature: it cannot be described and stated as other positions can. To underline this, proponents commonly object to the notion that deconstruction can be thought of as “a theory”; it neither is, nor does it depend upon, a theory, they assert. The word project is preferred: Derrida’s work, and deconstruction, is not a theory but a project. It is not obvious why this change of terminology should make any difference; a project can be characterized just as a theory can, and the resulting characterization can then be examined and analyzed. But the underlying motive in this change of terminology is clear enough: the intent is to make the point that deconstruction cannot be discussed using the tools of reason and logical analysis because it functions in a different way, both requiring and embodying a different logic, a kind of alternative or “other” logic.
[my emphasis]
In other words, it is a project that relies upon nothing more than its adepts’ willingness to accept its pretenses, which it then refuses to illuminate in a way that can be properly “understood” by those who insist upon viewing those pretenses from the very frame of reference the “project” purport to “deconstruct.”
Those who understand and accept this new logic, therefore, are, by virtue of that acceptance, “authentic”; while those who don’t—those who insist on regarding the post structural “project” from the perspective of traditional western logic—cannot, the argument goes, properly criticize it. Or rather, their criticisms are to be dismissed for presumptuously assuming to speak of the “Other” (logic) without having first proven themselves authentic members of this particular linguistic cult.
More than that, though, as Ellis goes on to point out, even those who have provisionally entered the cult (the example he gives are a series of attacks on Jonathan Culler’s On Deconstruction and The Pursuit of Signs) but who, once inside, then try to elucidate clearly its philosophical and linguistic assumptions, are criticized for using what Mas’d Zavarzadeh called “the conceptual tools of conservatism.” In short, they are perilously close to surrendering that authenticity and being purged from the ranks of the annointed elite.
Sound familiar?
Sadly, deploying an idea of language that purports to be ineffable in order to undermine certain foundational ideas of western epistemology has proven quite successful as an academic project; and its latest real-world incarnation, what I’ve called cynical pragmatism, has been embraced by many progressives (and accepted uncritically by many who would never consider themselves progressive but who have nevertheless internalized incoherent ideas about language that allow interpreters to define meaning, and then, should these interpreters wish to, attribute that meaning to the utterer, who they’ve ironically claimed has no control over meaning himself) as a way to take meaning, detatch it from intent, and make it the province of an interpretive community who need do nothing more than insist upon it’s “truth,” truth being always contingent and linguistic, and so unassailable from any position outside of rhetoric.
And, because “logical consistency” as a necessity is the mandate of an outmoded paradigm for thought (with truths now provisional and contingent, consistency of process remains important only insofar as a given audience still demands it as intellectually important, meaning one who eschews it runs the risk of losing rhetorical points with those who still adhere to a particular school of thought), there is no necessary intellectual dictate demanding consistency in one’s argumentational precepts, though doing so in certain situations is helpful as a means to achieving an end.
All of which is to say that the linguistic ideas we hold about how meaning and interpretation work—and from whence meaning derives—have a conceptual impact that often goes unremarked upon, but that in fact shapes the very nature of the way we come to see the world, which in turn shapes the way we try to organize and structure it politically and socially.
…or I could be completely off base, forcing connections where none exist. Thoughts?
I’m waaaay to hungover to process that. Will try again Sunday.
I totally agree. That was the most eloquent way of explaining a phenomenon that I experienced a few years ago when I realized that I was a conservative (ie. Libertarian), and my liberal friends stopped returning my phone calls! Sadly, being a gadfly and pulling the Socratic method gets you into trouble with the collectivist elite.
I really enjoy your blog; it is very refreshing to hear an honest, intellectual response to the wasteland of American education.
Go back to the Cratylus, then consider Roman Jacobson’s conception of privileging the axis of similarity, then consider the dreadful punning of the academic titles. What we have is lalangue masquerading as privileged insight. Or, in other words, the idea that reality can be manipulated through a manipulation of the relations of sign and signified is a core academic credo in humanities, because that is what people in these areas are actually able to manipulate, and thus makes them important. Because their beliefs are largely aesthetic in origin, that means in effect that they pervert the relation between the sign and what it is supposed to represent in the real world, in the service of ideology.
But there’s nothing totalitarian about it, no not at all.
Thinking about thinking leads to drinking – Immanuel Kant
or, in the original German.
Das Denken an unsere kognitiven Prozesse führt zu Verbrauch von Spiritus Prost!
I believe I’ll have another beer.
Paste-eater.
(Thought I’d get that out of the way before Greenwald’s sock puppets and various community college “professors” show up).
Thanks alot- now I have a headache. Or at least, I think I have a headache.
Is this one of those ‘man dreaming he’s a butterfly’ kind of things? ‘cause if it is, I got a 2×4 and we can find out right away.
I know what you mean. I got some rummy yogurt this morning, and ate it all up before I figured out what was wrong.
Or maybe not. I might be projecting my experience and internal “bias’ onto you. And maybe your shoes. It’s true I didn’t have any graham cracker cereal. I’m confused, did you mean what i think you mean? I don’t know what’s real anymore.
Do unarticulated linguistic assumptions shape the way we try to organize and structure it politically and socially? I am being really bossy this morning. So empirically your theory would seem to be borne out. Or next time I should observe the sell-by date on dairy products.
“which…. would have been well before I ever considered myself in any respect “conservative—
I don’t believe that I’ve seen a definition provided as to what you consider “conservative”, as differentiated from just plain conservative.
Do you have one? If so can you provide the requiste epistemological foundation that would differentiate your “conservative” from the often pronounced but seldom defined “classical liberal”.
I find the difference to lie (descriptively, if not nominatively) in a locale that might best be described as that of reaction, i.e. The signifiers used by a conservative will differ in substance from those used by a classical liberal.
Just curious.
In short, then, proggressivism is a religion. And its proponents will probably object to its being criticized on that basis too.
From what we have been hearing from the proggs, it would seem the only valid way to criticize their church is something along the lines of, “You’re just a big Zionazi poopyhead!!!”
Geez, Sarah. What could happen to yogurt? If you leave it out long enough, will it go “good,” or something?
Not being a linguist or a philosopher, but having a background in engineering and law, it seems to me that deconstruction, as described here, is the linguistic equivalent of dividing by zero. I.e., if permitted, anything can be “proved” (such as 2=3, or 1=1,000,000).
TW: Miles, as in, “Deconstructionists are miles away from being sane.”
Sorry, no.
My milk was fine this morning.
Deconstruction, structuralism, structuralist, progressivist… howcum all these real smart innalekshuls need 6,000 words to say ‘snake oil?’
TW: ‘states’ as in, ‘They state so little but they say so much to do it…’
Thanks ExRat!
I was struggling to come up with logical analogy for my man brain(strong on math, weaker on language). Yours was very helpful.
But the difference, mojo, is that you’ll actually get off your ass and get it.
Three observations.
—Austin Bay‘s getting all Goldstinean in discussing Günter Grass.
–It seems to me that this, this train of posts, connecting interpreting meaning and religion and politics, is your book. Write the damn book, and publish it so I can buy it–assuming you don’t make it boring as hell by omitting various Protein fauna. Hell, get Chris Ware or the guy from Attack Cartoons or Something Positive to illustrate it as a manga or something.
–I sure is hard to provide a link to all those interesting posts, and I don’t have that book. Which sucks because I’m now in a heavy discussion with a leftist high school teacher about meaning interpretation, and I need help getting through this Austin Bay – Günter Grass thing without having my head explode.
Chap-who long ago, in ROTC, saw the answer in a quote supposedly from John Paul Jones: “There’s always some son-of-a-bitch that doesn’t get the word.”
Ah well, as an unsophisticated, pragmatic industrial chemist I regard deconstructionism to be a load of bullshit…
Updates! I forgot to check your last post for updates! Now I look silly!
Darn it, man! How am I supposed to catch up here?
I think it’s more of a cult. You have to know the secret handshake. Think the Monty Python job interview sketch where Cleese asks Palin a completely absurd question: “3… 2…1… “Bawkkbawwkbawwk!! Good, good!”
Once the world is solely your invention, you become an island. Having abandoned the traditional agreements that bind you culturally or ethically to other humans, you float alone in the ether, isolated and unattached–alienated–unless you find kindred spirits suffering the same illusion. And when you do, it’s like being in a madhouse where you can play in your own shit and bark at the walls all you want.
There’s little difference between deconstruction and various forms of insanity.
It’s the spastic-elastic metaphysics (“There are many truths…â€Â) that permeates every scheme progressives float. It’s not the deconstruction of logic so much as the making shit up and then making more shit up that contradicts the first pile of shit – and then yelling Q.E.D.! Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Crack whores on “COPSâ€Â, Howard Dean and actus use this same method to try to make us understand them. It apparently works on about 49% of the population.
I hope you get this out of your system before the bash. Because I am not trying to talk another waitress out of her panties while she cranes to hear more about the asymptotic spiricules of lexicomorphic analysis or whatever it is the hell you are saying.
Everything I know about Semantics I learned from Hayakawa in the 7th grade. Deconstruction is Bullshit.
TW: Issue, as in what’s the issue here?
A couple of questions.
Could a post-structuralist engineer build an airplane?
Could a hunter gatherer tribe in the Kalahari which had a post-structuralist philosophy survive?
Could a post-structuralist write a constitution which would govern a nation for over 200 years? 1 year? 15 minutes?
Deconstructionist arguments are constrained by the ‘“Oh, Bullshit.” Boundary’
Several thoughts:
i – There is more to post-structuralism than Derrida. In point of fact, most Derrideans I have met would deny they are post-structuralists. That said, the entire Derridean edifice is utter nonsense. Except the “differance” pun which is mildly clever.
ii – Most advocates of this or that post-structuralist cant I have encountered would have trouble offering a brief summary of structural linguistics. For this reason, I believe your opening paragraph lends itself to a mistaken conflation of structural-linguistics with post-structuralism.
iii – My own bias is toward structural anthropology and structural psychoanalysis. I have even been known to enjoy a little Greimas but only for his semiotic squares and then only for analysing episodes of Melrose Place (though I expect they can be applied to Desperate Housewives.
iv – In any event, structural analysis is not everyone’s cup of tea but it is at least dependent on making sense of stories, myths, dreams – coherent, repeatable narrative forms, in other words – and not about repeating leftist cant and calling it “theory”. I think Saussure had some sensible thoughts to offer on signification. Let us not throw the structuralist baby out with the post-structuralist bathwater.
The incoherent ideas about language that this non-progressive has internalized compell him to regard
as sharing with the targets of its critique the fundamental error (or evil) of holding concepts abstracted from behavior as conditions of possibility for (or normative re: ) the behavior from which they’re abstracted, and that’s where shit went wrong in the first place.
PLATONIST!
Flea —
First, of course we shouldn’t throw the structuralist baby out with the post-structuralist bathwater. In fact, if you’ve read my other writing on this stuff you’ll find that I am heavily influenced by narratology and semiotics.
Second, yes, there is far more to post-structuralism than Derridean deconstruction (Lacan, Barthes, Kristeva, Foucault, etc). And yes, most Derrideans deny that they can be categorized (which is one of the points Ellis makes).
Third, having not surrendered to post-structural dictates, I have no trouble using structuralist language to describe the kernel linguistic assumptions of post-structuralism.
Bah.
You could walk near Marines in a smoking circle spouting that “Everythang is Everythang” crap before Derrida’s shit ever saw print.
All you had to say was, “Red tracer rounds, green tracer rounds – any difference?”.
Talk would turn to women, music, sports, past & future R&R’s.
Even smoked-up, when green rounds came in, they acted right.
The eggheads didn’t start living inside their heads because of weed though. And the towers falling was long ago for them. I’m afraid it’s going to take several glowing craters to shake them awake.
Even then some of them will prefer living life in their brain caves.
World events may just be conspiring to make all the post-structuralism crap a footnote. But maybe not.
Meantime it’s fun as hell watching Jeff slap the snot out of them in a way damned few (anyone else?) are equipped to do.
Jeff a chickenhawk? HAH!
The man’s an anti-fifth columnist Warlord.
Jeff –
These are great posts and go a long way towards explaining my utter befuddlement when I talk to a Progg.
For a while there, I thought I had lost my mind when I talked to my ledftard friends.
Thanks.
My Daddy used to say “Never argue with a deconstructionist. It wastes your time and annoys the pigs.” Or, something like that.
TW: married
Too damned many married men are deconstructionists.
So…I shouldn’t have milk with my cereal?
I’m completely convinced that this discussion violates every law and custom of decency that ever existed, contradicts two hitherto accepted mathematical theorems, and rearranges the Periodic Table of Elements starting at about chromium.
There will probably be a disturbance in the Force any second now.
On a Saturday afternoon!?!
Go outside, folks!
So not to remain a dufus who usually avoids these posts, I read the whole thing twice. Then I read the comments. This is what I learned. BumperStickerist may, or may not drink. Mojo drinks beer. Sarah eats yogurt.
Did I miss anything?
Hi Jeff,
I think we are basically on the same page. Though Lacan is clearly a structuralist no matter the work his writing is put too by too many post-structuralists. So many good things are ruined by the people who enjoy them.
Not much of a Golden Grahams man myself either. They have a sickly sweetness like from that ST:TOS episode where it looks like Bones is finally going to get laid but it turns out she was an alien salt-sucker. I much prefer Brown Sugar Mini Wheats. Now there is a man’s breakfast cereal.
Not that I am saying Golden Grahams are unmanly.
Yes. Throwing babies out with the bath water. don’t do that. That’s the physical approach to deconsturionalism, and it’s really fucked up from the baby’s standpoint.
I ment of course “Deconsterializationism”
….?
…Oh never mind.
Didn’t you guys get the memo?
We’re supposed to be recycling bathwater.
Is this post just some really long-winded, pretentious way of saying that Democrats are moral relativists, while Republicans serve Eternal Truths? Because that would be really trite.
I don’t see anything about the 2 major American political parties in there, mikd.
Do you?
that first paragraph is only one long sentence..couldn’t get beyond there..
Who ya going to believe Pablo, a de-constructionist, or your own lyin’ eyes?
There is no truth.
Let’s examine that statement logically.
If it is false, then its opposite is true, in which case there is truth.
If it is true, then there is no truth, in which case no statement can be true, including the statement “There is no truth.”
Therefore, the statement cannot be true and must be false. QED: There is truth.
But don’t try to explain that to a deconstructionist. You’ll only be demonized as a “conservative.”
Of course our ideas about how meaning and interpretation work shape the way we see the world, and in turn shape the way we organize it politically and socially. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous.
If one studies philosophy, the history of ideas, one will note that it follows a sine curve, fluctuating between “the universe is intelligible” and “the universe is unintelligible.”
We are currently in a downward curve, from intelligible to unintelligible. This sort of thing happens every couple of centuries. But in the end the curve will turn upward and the universe will be intelligible again.
I don’t think Mr. Goldstein is “forcing connections where none exist.” I think he has lucidly illustrated how flawed ideas of language lead to flawed ideas of truth as it pertains to the organization of politics and society. That is, to how progressives believe the foundational ideas of western epistemology are no longer relevant, but the foundational ideas of cynical pragmatism are.
Words mean things. If they don’t, then we’re back in Wonderland with Humpty Dumpty: “A word means what I say it means. The question is who is the master, that it is all.”
Note the use of the word “master.” Those who control the language control the politics and society. Thus, the progressives would make themselves the masters and the rest of us slaves.
I seriously doubt they will succeed. But I could be wrong.
It sounds like Parochial school all over again. You’ve just got to believe, absent evidence. In fact, there can’t be any proof. If there were proof, you couldn’t show your faith. Merely asking for proof shows you lack faith.
Deconstructionism – different club, same rules.
All the more reason that we(the rational) control the political dialog.
Democrats aren’t moral relativists, they’re merely ambitious cynics.
Progressives are moral relativists.
Yep, the eternal leftist project seems to be to immunize themselves from any criticism whatsoever.
If criticial tools like rules, hierarchy and logic ever pose a threat to their egos, they must be torn down and the world must be rebuilt without them.
Cherished assumptions must never be endangered apparently.
– And then they bitch about religion… Feh
– I guess they focus on the idea that once all practical social basis and communications is desconstructed, they’ll be able to do anything they want, such as pee in the aisles on airplanes, and not have any moral or social norms to deal with. Of course what the fools forget is without structure, they can also be the target of unfortunate events for the same reasons. Then too, Anarchists, once they get the rule free situation they want, are generally the first to be shot, which leads to the natural possibility that “progressive” neo-Liberalism, is really just an elaborate form of mass suicide by politics.
TW: Are you being existentionally served?
No. No. No.
This is the way you were taught:
Shorter Jeff Goldstein: Democrats are moral relativists, while Republicans serve Eternal Truths.
Now back to Remedial Trolling class for you.
Possibly several.
SB: hospital
oh, surely not
I disagree that proggs are moral relativists.
They are moral absolutists. No matter what people who are not within the cult, or accepted by the cult, do … they are not just wrong, but eeeevvvilll
Take Jhimmi Quisling Carter’s interview in der Spiegel. All that’s wrong in the world is the fault of Bush and
JewsIsrael. Jhimmi even revised his own role in ME peace (taking credit for what Anwar Sadat did) while later, to another question, coming up with this needlepoint sampler moment:You are on to something, Darleen, and I mentioned it in my post the other day. They moral relativism—or “cynical pragmatism,” as I’ve taken to calling it—is a method used in service of an ideological rigidity that is indeed absolutist.
Hence the purging.
Jeff,
Have you ever read C.S. Pierce? I keep coming to your discussions of language from my own base which is philosophy and Pragmatism. For anyone not familiar with Pierce, he restated Plato’s (yes BoZ, Plato) concepts of substance (that essence of a thing which cannot be further reduced; ex: Table) and Accident (any attribute which can be described about a thing; ex: brown, wood, four legs, hand made) and then added a point which is what anyone may think or feel about a thing, or ascribe to it (ex: well-made, valuable, homey). He refers to these as Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, respectively.
So from that frame of reference, it seems that Progressives (and Deconstructionists, if they can be said to actually be two separate Firsts) have divorced Firstness from the process. What a thing actually is, is no longer important. (What the meaning of is, is?) Instead, Thirdness has been catapulted to primacy in argument, evaluation and, especially in regard to Progressives, policy.
Am I tracking? Does anyone know what I’m talking about?
Ergo, progg-ism is a religion.
Wow. People would get to the answer a lot sooner if they’d just keep in mind that I’m always right.
Hm. The TW on that last one was faith.
Quit it, Goldstein. I mean it.
Love me some Peirce. Ever read Eco’s semiotics? They are Peircean and address well the deconstructionists.
In fact, I often recommend to those who ask for books on interpretive theory Interpretation and Overinterpretation, which is a very accessible public debate between Eco and Culler, who I mention in the post.
– Purging and silencing of any opposition voices whereever they can get away with it. Try posting anything, and I mean anything, that questions harpie Hampsher, and her merry band of group think birdbrains. Total brownshirt fascism in its worst reincarnation. The one good thing about absolutism is that it is inherently impulsive, and lacks self control, even as it seeks to control everything else around it. Kos will discover his falibility the hard way when he tries to shut down the beast.
Posts like this make my fillings ache.
But, someone’s gotta know how to beat the pomos back, I guess.
BBH, the other good thing is that it’s inherently self-limiting.
One of two things will occur:
** this phase will pass and and a return to concrete references will take place, or
** This phase will run to completion, in which case the society will cease to throw off the surpluses which constitute the “thinkers’” support.
In either instance the supremacy of narrative control by academics and others at third or fourth remove from the actual production of goods and services will be short-lived. That doesn’t mean some other set of parasites won’t arise, but these, like red tides and ebola infections, must of necessity burn themselves out. Unfortunately it also doesn’t mean the process will be quick.
Regards,
Ric
tw: Maybe a generation or less.
All the more reason that we(the rational) control the political dialog.
Posted by Rusty. | permalink
on 08/19 at 06:41 PM
It’s a shame our redneck overlords can’t spell “dialogue” properly. There’s probably a lesson in this, if only I could think of what it is.
They are so cute when they attack their own tail like that!
I wasn’t aware that only the French spelling was acceptable.
– The Left never misses a chance to amplify it’s lack of real idea’s, and it’s obsessive preoccupation with things sophomoric. Anything will do to avoid debate. Loser’s in a losing “cause”.
Perhaps the supreme irony of our age is that the “Reality-Based Communityâ„¢” is peopled with practitioners of this pernicious form of sophistry. They take words with perfectly good meanings, and emotional loading based on ethical evaluations of those meanings, then substitute new meanings in an effort to hijack the ethics.
I’ve tried to have honest discussions with people who would twist my plain meaning by noting that some of the words I used had more than one meaning, and that somehow they got to choose what my words meant.
In my job, I diagnose why computers don’t do what they’re supposed to do, and get them to work correctly. If I engage in deconstructionist thinking, I fail. Calling a computer a racist or blaming its failures on a scapegoat doesn’t make it work. My thinking is useful only to the extent that it produces concrete results.
I have noticed the correlation between the RBCâ„¢ and high population density. My theory for this is that urban populations traditionally have had the luxury of being insulated from reality: They buy burgers, milkshakes, and leather goods having never seen a cow. They put fuels into their automobiles, with no concept of the work done to extract petroleum from the earth, ship it to refineries, and convert it into those fuels. The elites manipulate words and images, and would never dream of getting any dirt under their perfectly-manicured nails.
In contrast, the people who live in rural areas see reality up close. If the cows don’t get fed and milked every day, there’s no milk to drink. When you try to play deconstructionist games with them, they’ll say delightful things like “You can wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills up faster”, or “The only way you can be that stupid is to be college-educated.”
TW: Epistemology is the lifeblood of philosophy, without which ethics cannot inform us in the life-or-death choices we face in the struggle for the very survival of Civilization.
FabioC- I’m one of those, too.
But what Jeff said somewhere in the post… let’s see:
So while I fundamentally agree that deconstruction is so much bullshit, the reason it makes sense for a hardhead (engineer, scientist, accountant(?)) to pay attention to all this linguistic stuff is that the side doing most of the linguistic theorizing is manipulating the ground underneath those of us who might be slightly sympathetic to their putative aims, while assuming that stuff means what, you know, it is defined to mean, and that logic still holds (without being a tool of oppression).
So, for example, ideas like fauxtography representing a ‘deeper truth’, which to a hardhead is absolutely anathema (it’s faked data, for fuckssake!) go unquestioned, and you get a sort of weary stare if you bring such things up in some progressive circles. But these ideas are still influential, so I feel like I have to keep an eye on ‘em. They make my head hurt, though.
Monster,
Don’t kid yourself, and don’t wander off into any variant of Rousseauvianism—that’s where the error comes from in the first place.
Rural people can be, and often are, just as deluded as urbanites. The errors and delusions are different, though with a shared philosophical basis. To generalize, and in my experience/view: urbanites tend to lose sight of causation altogether and (e.g.) regard food in the fridge as an inevitable happenstance (but happenstance none the less), where rurals tend to assign causation on the basis of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy or the Laws of Contagion and Similarity (magical thinking).
Both errors are grievous, though the rural can continue to exist if his assignments of causation aren’t antithetical to the real world, where the urbanite dies if his assumptons are violated.
But don’t romanticize the people with dirt under their fingers. Doing so is how multi-culti got started—a rural error, actually.
Regards,
Ric
All I can say is it’s going to be mondo interesting watching the intercine conflageration within the Dem party this fall, and later leading up to the 2008 election cycle. Those Kosites are screaming to be heard, peeing in the cornflakes with the Lamont fiasco, and cenrists, and faux centrists are, on the one hand trying mightily to keep the dirty laundry from the public, and on the other trying to simmer down the anti-war rhetoric, knowing full well it will be the kiss of death if Bush can win the PR war with the majority of the electorate.
– I’ll tell you if the advocacy and success of my party and its goals hinged on the failure, and wishing for same, of American policies across the board, I’d get the hell out of politics for good. I simply cannot get my arms around how anyone with an ounce of self respect could follow, and justify, such an unprincipled position. Hubris gone wild.
Jeff, you talk prettier than a 5 dollar whore. ’Course, you already knew that.
Tempting as it is to just let that comment stand there and quiver, the obvious answer is no.
Some minds take the step into the truth of a kind of Descartesian space—the awareness that there are absolutes and that they certainly transcend narrative and even sensory input. An absolute preceeds the debate, the platform, the thesis. You have to first possess it to know it and that phenomenon resembles faith.
The Universe supports such things insofar that the mind exists in that environment and forms it’s principles there. We can therefore point to such principle as being part of the logical, rational Universe; of God, if you will. Principle is not a choice from a subjective menu of relative humanist limits. It is the All of existence as well as It’s Point.
The opposite condition is the escapist deconstruction Jeff refers to: What appears to initially be the righteous, semi-openminded self-doubt of the educated secularist’s relativity may eventually devolve into the nihilism of say, the psychopath; in this approximate context, the Islamofascist. That continuum is painfully obvious these days.
Therefore your “Democrat” should be worded (as many here have done) as “progressive” and “Republican” merely as a principled mind with the sense of uncompromising principle and virtue that typically embodies a solid classical liberal (to borrow Jeff’s other convention) or if you prefer, one who “conserves” proven principles precisely because they exist and they form the opposite of dysfunction. There’s nothing new under the Sun.
As confirmation, minds that have little in the way of respect for absolute principles tend to become those relativist deconstructionists—that smug postmodernism that’s outing itself these days as the intellectual defect it really is—and in literal, physical turn, liberal progressive Democrats.
As Darleen nicely points out, these days they even resort to conflicting that prior, superior, scientifically-open mindset with the narrow religion of willful confusion and obstruction they now find they’ve inherited for themselves. It didn’t quite work out as they expected, did it?
This isn’t about predefining Democrats as intellectual degenerates—that’s too easy and lacks meat on it’s bones. As only a sidebar, this is about merely identifying that the Democrat party’s frequent domestic sloth and foreign apathy and capitulation—it’s growing internal greed and theft and it’s overseas intolerance—is a natural political haven for the unprincipled! It only makes sense.
Jeff, you’re now headed off into the realm of principle more than you are pitting conservative values against progressive corruption. I like that as it further confirms that this is all really about the survival of simple but elegant principle and not about a couple of otherwise noble political opponents horizontally giving and taking equivalent ideas.
…and so, not unlike the Vampirish ghoul, they deny their very faith, and scurry away into the kind shadows, to escape the glaring truth of the incesant sun…
TW: The more you protest, the greater is my convictions.
Here’s a real-world example, that I think, opposing, has helped keep me from falling into these Progressive pits.
“Liberal” is left-wing. “Democrat” (capital C) is not equal to liberal. I am a Democrat. I am not liberal. That’s where I’ve always started.
“Conservative” is right-wing. “Republican” (capital R) need not be conservative.
There are words, also, ascribed to the extremes of Liberal and Conservative. These are Radical and Reactionary. Reactionary has fallen out of linguistic favor, and so we hear of “radical Republicans,” which is odd, and “radical conservatives” wich is an oxymoron that the general public accepts be cause useage has erased the fact that the word “radical” denotes not only an extremity, but also an orientation.
In this thread even, I’ve had to bow to the author’s intent to understand what was meant by refering to Progressives (who are liberal) as “fascist” (which is reactionary), a word that has been victim of collateral damage in the langauage of politics, in particular during the 80’s and 90’s.
TW: Asking who’s side someone is on these days, may not anser teh question.
And somehow I’ve even come tothe conclusion that “Democrat can be spelled with a capital C.
Good grief. The damage, the damage……
If words should have only the meaning assigned to them by the reader, then why should letters have any meaning beyond that assigned by each individual? Following this line of reasoning, not only the written but also the spoken language should be capable of being deconstructed to uncover the meaning assigned to speech by the listener.
The conclusion that can be reached from all of this is that the ideal of communication consists of animal-like grunts and howls interspersed with Moe-slaps.
Mikey, remember where you are.
So tha makes Jeff a what, a peninsula?
Anchored in reality but waaaaay out there.
….Somebody…anybody…..try to remember where we parked……
Contortion itself is not validation of intellectuality. Contemporary liberalism – progressivism – is intellectually bankrupt because it is morally bankrupt. Unable to admit the falsity of its intellectual bases since it lacks honesty, progressivism contorts thought as an effort to earn admiration. Fearing that one may not be able to understand the lie, the realistic observer sighs at the monstrous monument and smiles, hoping to sidle away slowly to avoid being hailed an idiot.
It is like the Three Stooges episode where the wealthy socialites at the banquet mistake the Stooges for the three Ivy League graduates who were supposed to attend, but could not. When the Stooges began eating peas using knives dipped into mashed potatoes, the social elites, fearing to appear to be ignoramuses, copied the behavior. And, lacking all external reference, unable to see beyond their dining room, the elites could not see that their guests were merely loony funseekers. Naturally, the dinner became a food fight. And we all laughed at the elitists who were duped by idiots.
I think Jeff’s analysis is very good. Acedemics have lost authentic objectivity and substituted perception in its place. Without reference from the outside, the inside becomes chaotic and meaningless.
Which is scary when the reality-immunized insiders can vote and shape young minds and speak to cameras and congressmen…
BTW, didn’t Ayn Rand cover all this?
Posts like this make my fillings ache.
But, someone’s gotta know how to beat the pomos back, I guess.
You wanna borrow my 2×4?
Ric: He can speak for himself, but I took Monster’s point to be that the rural person’s survival requires that his theory of the world be at least functionally accurate. His theories are tested constantly for some mimimum level of functional accuracy. But the urban person, being essentially parasitic, can entertain theories that bear no relationship to reality (and even be antithetical to it) without survival consequences. It’s that latter that allows extreme forms of skepticism like poststructuralism to hang around way past their sell date. Their proponents are never required to really test them against the facts of the world. Once a certain lingusitic turn is taken, they are not even tested against the requirements of logic. At that point, their continued existence can only be accounted for in terms of personal and political agendas.
– the greater is my convictions….Damn I must have really been tired last night…. It’s all McGehee’s fault….He made me done it.
TW: the lexiconal monster appeared, as if out of nowhere, burned all the dictionaries, and then just as quickly disappeared….
I don’t know about that.
Communism fell, didn’t it?
Shamelessly cut and pasted from Instapundit, but I thought it topical(kinda), and pretty damn funny.
N.O. Brain
Atlas Shrugged hardcover 13th printing pages 889-890
Communism finally fell because it failed certain real-world tests, having to do with economic productivity primarily. It could be propped up for political and personal reasons for only so long.
The problem with stuff like poststrucuralism is that it never gets tested against the brute facts of the world. As long as that’s the case, it hangs around as a great mound of verbal hooey.
Epistemology shot its wad quite a while ago, and has become academic and sterile. You can pretty much take the views of Thomas Reid, substitute some ideas from D.T. Campbell’s Evolutionary Epistemology for Reid’s religious ones, and leave it at that. The onus should be squarely on any form of radical skepticism to makes its case in some convincing way, or to go away and stop bothering the rest of us with foolish word games.
Byron,
You and I are on the same page, but I’d put it more weakly: a rural person survives if his theory of the world doesn’t contradict objective reality. The more nearly congruent his theory is with The Real World™ the more successful he will be, but survival requires only that his theory not be antithetical. In cases where the rural person is part of a larger society including some urban/industrial component, erroneous theories may not be tested for because of the support of the society. This allows the rural person to be grossly mistaken in many ways.
My original point was simply that treating the rural person as a paradigm of correctness is a variant of Rousseauvianism, and is therefore one of the errors that lead to post-structuralism as now encountered. Don’t do it.
And yes, Socialism has fallen—but that is, in fact, one of the major drivers inducing urbanites (especially academia) to engage themselves in the crusade to destroy meaning. They remain True Believers; unfortunately what they Believe can be tested against reality, has been so tested, and has failed. In order for their Belief to survive, they have to alter reality—and the fact that they are parasites utterly isolated from any form of test against reality enables them to play verbal games to convince themselves and their audiences that they can do that. That’s what the whole Movement is about.
Regards,
Ric
Ric: Yes, we basically agree. I think your principle of non-antitheticality states the minimum requirement for my principle of functional accuracy.
And, really, what we’re requiring here is all that science (“scientific realism”) has, or can ever have, when you get right down to it, with a coherent, actually-existing real world as the best available hypothesis to explain the data of experience. Nothing about that bothers me at all, as long as we keep banging our theories up against those data, and revising our theories as required.
I’ve always found theories of reality (I include Kant’s here, also) that depend on some fancy conceptual activity by the human mind to be highly implausible. When I take my dog for a walk, she responds to the same world I do (though she smells more and sees less of it), and so does the lizard she’s chasing. All three of us have to be operating on a functionally accurate version of the world, at least within the limits of evolutionary survival, and I don’t think anything fancy is going on in the head of that lizard.
Byron,
Agreed. The existence of an objective, consistent Universe is a postulate—a “belief”, if you will—but it’s turned out to be a damned useful one. Among other things, it makes engineering possible.
Solipsism is always an attractive hypothesis, though. It feeds the ego so beautifully. I don’t know a word that means the cognate concept as applied to a society, if one exists; perhaps one of you could coin one. But it’s also highly attractive from an ego point of view: I and my friends/associates/peers are the only ones who matter, and we dispose…
Regards,
Ric
Posted by Darleen | permalink
on 08/20 at 11:29 AM
Good job.
Thanks.
Ric: I think cultural relativism, at least in its more extreme forms, is solipsism at the group level.
Ric,
Not that I’m argueing what you are saying, as I’m a little out of my depth here (no idea what that Rousseauve fella has to say) but assuming that only a tiny fraction of one percent of rural people are not a part of a larger society including some urban/industrial component, can you give an example of how they can be grossly mistaken in many ways with regard to their perception of reality?
This piece made my head hurt. Just say what you mean.
“Progressive.”
Anyhow, I’d like to point out that while the rural member of society is better exposed tothe cows and cornstalks rather than simply the urban hamburgers and canned cream corn, the Urbanite has a whole panoply of other empirical survival scenarios with which the rustic would not necessarilly quickly grasp.
It’s the same thing, only different.
TW: It’s just your own values showing.
RTO Trainer,
Might sound right, but the vast majority of rural people do spend time in the city, but very few city people spend time working a ranch.
Jaysus, Alan, way to mangle a joke. It’s “you use yore tongue prettier than a Kansas City hoor…”
TW: Fall, as in, ‘yes, standards fall everywhere these days…’
Jaysus, Alan, way to mangle a joke. It’s “you use yore tongue prettier than a Kansas City hoor…”
TW: Fall, as in, ‘yes, standards fall everywhere these days…’
Jaysus, Alan, way to mangle a joke. It’s “you use yore tongue prettier than a Kansas City hoor…”
TW: Fall, as in, ‘yes, standards fall everywhere these days…’
Jaysus, Alan, way to mangle a joke. It’s “you use yore tongue prettier than a Kansas City hoor…”
TW: Fall, as in, ‘yes, standards fall everywhere these days…’
Jaysus, Alan, way to mangle a joke. It’s “you use yore tongue prettier than a Kansas City hoor…”
TW: Fall, as in, ‘yes, standards fall everywhere these days…’
Amazing and deliciously ironic, making progressive the cognate concept describing a solopsistic society: a political philosophy ostensibly existing primarily to benefit individuals in societies is based upon making the individual and its perceptions paramount in society; it must, since individuals’ perceptions define reality. That process results in societies that fail to support individuals in them, which drives the intellectuals formulating progressivism to academic fortresses in which their ideas can exist. Their ideology can exist only if untested in the world in which societies must exist.
By George, that’s why progressives support dictatorships, isn’t it? Individual perceptions of reality must be forced to be the same in a progressive world, since a forced reality, an artificial reality, is the only one in which progressive ideologies and their economies can exist.
This ain’t nothing new, really. The victims of Soviet communism used to stand in the lines at the collectivist stores and grimly say, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
That is because your brain is filled with a bunch of emotional synapses mistakenly disguised as logic. While we persue a logical discourse, you perceive what transpires as magic.Henceforth you shall bear the appellation,’poopyhead’
Didn’t this current wave of [progressives] take their name from MoveOn.org?
Progressiveness is simply moving on —and away from any responsibility for one’s prior mistakes.
Anyway, weren’t the first Progressives into eugenics, segregation, and temperance? That doesn’t really fit the current lot so much.
Current progressives are heavily into eugenics (please see abortion, embryonic stem cell use, and euthanasia), segregation (please see victim politics, academic preferences, group identity, group validation, use of abortion to reduce black population numbers), and some temperance (please see outlawing of any use of tobacco anywhere, anytime, anyplace, with severe stigmatizing of users as irresponsible idiots).