Opinions, art, debate
Watch yesterday’s Matt Walsh, people. He discovered that the groups that harass ICE in Minnesota are funded by the state government. The state government is paying, in secret, through a series of non-profits, to organize mayhem in the streets. And the reason it pays is to keep more non-citizens in the state.
No matter how they feel about ICE, the citizens of the state should have a lot of questions to their state government about that.
I am beginning a new series of posts where I will talk about what I found in my explorations of conservative theory. I want to start with the great English philosopher Michael Oakeshott whose 1956 discussion of conservative disposition has become a classic.
Oakeshott believes that a conservative disposition can be easily identified as a
propensity to use and to enjoy what is available rather than to wish for or to look
for something else; to delight in what is present rather than what was or what may be
The reason why the present is valued by a conservative is because it is familiar:
To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.
A conservative mind perceives change, first and foremost, as deprivation and rupture of familiarity. When our administration decided to rename a certain program of study into “Changemakers Program”, I found the new name to be immediately and instinctively off-putting not only because it’s ugly but because the idea itself is negatively colored in my mind. Of course, the person who came up with this name (and was extremely baffled when I expressed my opposition to it) has a liberal disposition. This disposition associates primarily positive connotations with the word “change.” Remember how Obama used “Hope and Change” as his campaign slogan? He was talking to people to whom change is good and needs no justification. They don’t need to hear what it is that we are changing into. The fact of change is enough. Remember “the new normal”? Some people hated that phrase and the reality it denoted. Others didn’t understand why anybody would react painfully to this expression.
Yes, of course, there can be good changes. But to a conservative, there needs to be proof that a specific change will be good while for a liberal the expression “change the world” is automatically pointing towards something positive. Try asking your liberal friend, “why is it a good idea to change the world?”, and you will see a complete incomprehension on his face.
Oakeshott explains that a conservative mind perceives change as painful because it always means dissolution of attachment. To the eternal question of what it is that conservatives are conserving, Michael Oakeshott responds that we conserve attachment.
We wouldn’t want our president to be kidnapped by another country, so why should we be able to kidnap Venezuela’s? Shouldn’t we treat others the way we want to be treated?
It’s not possible to set the principles governing a relationship unilaterally. Other countries aren’t kidnapping our president and dropping bombs on us not because they decided not to but because they can’t. That’s the only true reason. And the only way for us to avoid them becoming capable of it is to be preemptive and extremely strong.
Look at what happened to Ukraine, which by the way is the largest country in Europe. Thirty years of trying to be nice, crawling on their stomachs, looking kindly and imploringly into everybody’s faces. Thirty years of trying to ingratiate themselves. No, we don’t need borders, whatever you say. No, we don’t need nukes. No, we don’t need an army. Let us disarm to show our good will. Let us hire Russian citizens for every important position in defense and intelligence to show how sweet and open-minded we are. Let’s elect a president who promises to lick the Russians’ paws. Great results that brought Ukraine. Getting bombed into the ground is the reward for all that niceness.
Of course, in our private lives we should all follow the Christian principle of do unto others. But that only works on an individual level. You can turn your other cheek. But it’s not OK to turn the cheeks of millions of people. An administration that refuses to engage in an aggressivy pursued foreign policy turns the cheeks of its citizens.
This does not mean that every aggressive foreign action is justified. Neither does it mean that none are. There’s a sea of options between “let’s do nothing” and “let’s do everything.” These two options are exactly the ones taken respectively by Ukraine (until February 2022) and Russia. Don’t they both suck? I’d say they really do.
Obviously, I hate the Iranian regime. And I feel terrible for the protesters. And, as I said before, I know very little about the country.
So the reason why I think it’s a stupid idea for the US to bomb Iran might not be my most brilliant one. But I do think it’s valid, which is why I’ll express it.
Iranians are going to hate us for it. Every time we bomb somebody not of our civilization* to bring them freedom, they end up hating us. Even if they proceed to enjoy the freedom. Why do we need to antagonize Iranians “for their own benefit”? Let them figure it out. Absolutely any engagement will lead to them hating us and pouting for the next three million years.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m also very tired with the obsessive concentration on foreign policy when domestic issues are unsolved. I live here. I want things to get better here. That’s my #1 issue.
Input is welcome but I beg people to abstain from drawing parallels between Venezuela and Iran because that just makes me very sad.
*Example of somebody of our civilization who did manage to not hate us for bombing them is Germany.
I was asked in anonymous comments to provide reading suggestions for a newly formed readers’ club for people interested in conservatism. The club appeared in a very unexpected place, and I am very glad. I want to recommend this syllabus on conservatism in America, which is the only syllabus I have been able to find where conservatism is explored honestly and without hysterical name-calling.
If the syllabus is too much, I recommend starting with the books The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana by Russell Kirk and Towards a Conservative Left: Selected Writings of Jean-Claude Michéa.
If you are wondering whether you might be a conservative, you need to ask yourself a single question. When you look back at the history of humanity, do you believe that you are morally superior to the mass of people who came before you? If you can accept a possibility that the many many generations of the past were not complete idiots mired in a pile of rotting refuse of bigotry, if you can look at the past with love and pride, then you can be one of us. Welcome to the club!
No matter how exhausted I feel during the day, at 8 pm on the dot a huge gust of energy lifts me up, and I have to struggle hard to put out the fire of frenetic activity and get myself into bed.
Life is unfair to nighttime people.
Are these people mental?
Or do you think organic brain damage? Because if two adults need 4 hours to get a toddler to pick up a carrot, the only excuse they have is if they are severely retarded. Or sadists.
Then everybody goes, “they were such a normal family. It’s incomprehensible why the kid became a heroin addict / shot up a school. It must be completely random.”
Propaganda switches off people’s knowledge about the world.
“ICE detains people without warrants! This is illegal and unprecedented!”
We’ve all seen about a trillion police shows where representatives of every possible enforcement agency constantly arrest people without warrants. The police observe somebody committing a crime. Do they stop and send for a warrant while the suspect escapes? Of course, not.
“ICE agents mask their appearance! This is illegal and unprecedented!”
Plainclothes police mask their appearance. Undercover officers change their look. It’s completely legal for police to lie to suspects. We know all this. But it says on TV that this is unprecedented and illegal, and that erases everything we’ve known until now.
“Nobody is obligated to step out of their vehicle if stopped by law enforcement!”
Dude, do you drive? Have you ever been stopped? Or observed anybody being stopped? Have you troubled yourself to find out what you are supposed to be doing in this situation? If you managed to be a driver for a few years, I assume you figured it out.
Repeating these propagandistic inventions is dangerous because people end up believing them and put themselves in danger unnecessarily. Don’t attack officers. Don’t try to flee if you are getting detained. Even if you are completely innocent, becoming belligerent and trying to escape is not the way to go about it.
The people on TV who are peddling these lies aren’t putting themselves at risk. They put you at risk because that generates stories and they make money from the stories. They are selling your risk for profit. Have you heard of risk society? Externalizing risk and privatizing the profit is one of its top strategies. Some people play this game very intelligently at the expense of those who don’t know there is a game.
It’s the first day of class. I’m in the bathroom and hear somebody in the hallway say loudly, “Research, research!” That is the first time in years I’ve heard anybody at work reference research.
Here’s to a whole semester full of research to those of us who care.
And talking about impulse control, it’s the best guarantee of marriage longevity and family happiness. There is a temperamental factor which makes it harder for some people than others, and the paradox is that temperamental people are more valuable as partners because they are more sexual, entertaining, and stimulating.
If a temperamental person learns impulse control, it’s a recipe for an excellent marriage.
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