This is the final installment of my massive data dump starting yesterday.
I probably should mention that this is the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, observed by both the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox Church. We observe it so much that we’ve been fasting for several weeks in anticipation, and by the time you read this, I will have scored some beef brisket.
Cultural
Same old story
The Titanic story is linked to themes as old as man. “God himself couldn’t sink this ship.” “If we eat the fruit against his command, then we’ll be in charge.” “Technology will transform the world; it’s a mistake to dwell on the downside.” It’s all the same story.
Liberalism promised to harmonize classes, but produces discord. It has no solution to class conflict because class conflict is baked into its faith in progress.
Genuine conservatism—as opposed to the “right liberalism” that wraps itself in the conservative banner—is cut from a different cloth entirely. Alone among modern political movements, conservatism renounces progress.
Kevin D. Williamson for Education Czar!
[O]nce you start judging it primarily on the criterion of usefulness, you have lost the essence of education and have descended into mere training. Whenever I hear somebody say that we should care about Mozart because babies made to listen to Mozart in the crib go on to score 25 points higher on the SAT, the bad part of me thinks that person should have his ears cut off, because they are not doing him any good.
Kevin D. Williamson, Eccentricity Isn’t a Political Agenda
Sport and spectacle
I’d add only that it’s not just politics that has taken over everything — at least if you think about politics as arguing over policy. It’s more accurate to say that it’s politics as spectacle that has taken over everything.
Spectacle is the sphere that achieves public titillation through public combat. In Rome, gladiatorial combat was spectacle. Professional wrestling is spectacle. Reality TV is spectacle. Donald Trump — the love child of professional wrestling and reality TV — is spectacle. Tucker Carlson presented TV news as spectacle. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence perform activism in the form of spectacle.
The point of spectacle is not to resolve differences; it is to attract attention. In spectacle you thrive by offending people. Narcissism is rewarded, humility is forbidden. Inflaming hatred is part of the business plan.
David Brooks, on the Dodgers’ descent into spectacle by honoring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
The distinction between sport and spectacle may explain my preference for basketball and soccer over pro football, and my disgust with boxing, dog fighting, cage fighting and such. Elon and Zuck, I’m lookin’ at ya’.
I’m with Ross on this
My general view is that the U.F.O.-encounter phenomena seems in continuity with supernatural experiences reported across the long pre-modern past — abductions into faerie realms, especially. As such, the experiences are more likely to offer evidence of either some kind of strange Jungian unconscious or of actual supernatural realms than they are to involve interplanetary visitors from Zeta Reticuli.
Dodging the question
The new generation of philosophers had a short way with traditional philosophy: “I don’t understand what you mean” was the favoured weapon of attack, and once ignorance is seen as a boast rather than a confession, it is in the nature of the case invincible. (J.R. Lucas, “The Restoration of Man,” 446–447)
…
In conversation with the philosopher Robert Marett, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, [C.S.] Lewis wittily expressed the value he attached to respect for the “species barrier.” Marett’s opening gambit in their dialogue went as follows: “I saw in the papers this morning that there is some scientist-fellah in Vienna, called Voronoff – some name like that – who has invented a way of splicing the glands of young apes onto old gentlemen, thereby renewing their generative powers! Remarkable, isn’t it?”
Lewis thought.
“I would say ‘unnatural.’”
“Come, come! ‘Unnatural’! What do you mean, ‘unnatural’? Voronoff is a part of Nature isn’t he? What happens in Nature must surely be natural? Speaking as a philosopher, don’t you know. . . . I can attach no meaning to your objection; I don’t understand you!’ ‘“I am sorry, Rector; but I think any philosopher from Aristotle to – say – Jeremy Bentham, would have understood me.” “Oh, well, we’ve got beyond Bentham by now, I hope. If Aristotle or he had known about Voronoff, they might have changed their ideas. Think of the possibilities he opens up! You’ll be an old man yourself, one day.” ‘I would rather be an old man than a young monkey.’”
Michael Ward, After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man
Epistemic tribalism
What happens when individual biases, especially confirmation bias, interact with the group dynamics of conformity bias? The result is epistemic tribalism.
Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge
I love those defiant British feminists
In Britain, where I live, feminism has developed around the assumption that women belong to a sex class with specific physical vulnerabilities. In America, the movement has been filtered through a progressive legal tradition of outlawing discrimination against a variety of marginalized groups, and because of the decades-long abortion fight, American feminism relies heavily on the concepts of choice and bodily autonomy. In the view of many mainstream U.S. feminist writers, Britain is TERF Island, a blasted heath of middle-class matrons radicalized by the parenting forum Mumsnet into conservatism and “weaponized white femininity.” The response of some British feminists is that, in practice, the agenda of mainstream American feminism has shriveled down to the abortion fight and corporate-empowerment platitudes, and is hamstrung by its strange refusal to accept the relevance of biology.
Personal
If you plant a salad bar, they’ll come
Legal
Republicans at SCOTUS I
Be it remembered that Justice Anthony Kennedy was appointed to SCOTUS by Ronald Reagan. Here’s a big part of his legacy.
Although I did not expect him to honor it, I appreciated what it could mean if 2016 candidate Trump did honor his commitment to appoint justices from a list made by Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society.
Republicans at SCOTUS II
Not that Leornard Leo’s nominees have proven consistently excellent, mind you:
Just this past week, he wrote four super-short opinions, which cut corners on law and fact, and failed to respond to pointed concurrences/dissents. Justice Kavanaugh was a well-regarded circuit justice for more than a decade. He routinely prepared intricate and careful decisions about the most arcane topics. But on the Supreme Court, his breezy approach to judging leaves so much to be desired. What happened? To use a theme from the case, his development was arrested. I’m about to write a sentence I never thought I would write: Justice Jackson’s opinions this term have displayed more analytical rigor than Justice Kavanaugh’s.
Josh Blackman. Read his full blog post for details.
(I don’t think that’s entirely a put-down. Justice Jackson has had a fairly impressive first term.)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 