Here it is, our regular Friday diet of suggested readings for the weekend:
Two very important graphs embedded in this article on Brexit and Trumpism.
There is a line from Hayek through Thatcher and Reagan to Trump. And it’s time to change the narrative.
A semi-useful 12-step program to respond to the election of Trump.
Trump’s attacks on the media, they are only going to get worse.
No, Philosopher Richard Rorty did not prophesy the rise of Trump.
Education, not income, predicted who would vote for Trump vs Clinton.
Umberto Eco’s 14 signs of fascism.
Footnotes to Plato 
Hi Coel and db–
Thanks for the replies. I agree that early Enlightenment thought emphasized the individual–the US would not have a Constitution emphasizing the centrality of rights otherwise–but in the 19th century the influence of Bentham and MIll via utilitarianism brought a new perspective on that. When all individuals in a society are recognized as having equal importance, then the “It Takes a Village” viewpoint is the only way that any given individual’s interests are rightly assessed along with those of others.
FWIW I’m a reasons-based values realist. The objective existence of best reasons underlies the objectivity of value claims. Late in my philosophical life I’ve gravitated toward pragmatism, but I think pragmatic claims at least frequently require grounding in values this way.
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No doubt. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t both them.
And in physics I’m no Genius. Just one of the brick layers.
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https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/kahneman-facts.html
Rational choice doesn’t work. See, e.g., the work of Kahnemen and others https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/kahneman-facts.html
Games are irrelvant if based on false premises.
PS. I can could up with a lot of liberal intellectuals that disagree with you and (may or may not be ‘smarter’) l. It’s not an argument. It proves nothing.
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I’m not even sure Neoliberalism is a thing or something we should focus on but it seems to be one of the many factors driving the level of disparity.
What I’m a lot more sure of is less adversarial perspectives are useful in general, and that economic considerations aren’t the only aspect of the current disparity and probably not even the main one.
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You know people, I’ve been working really hard for years, first at Scientia Salon and now here, to provide a forum for thoughtful discussion. This certainly includes disagreement, even vehement one. But is it really that difficult to engage without sneering at others, belittling them or their opinions, and so forth? I certainly can’t claim complete purity either, but c’mon, let’s try a bit harder, yes?
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The point just is that it isn’t obvious. There’s tremendous disagreement over these things and for you to suggest that one is just obviously correct and it happens to be the liberal, rather than the conservative one, is just silly.
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That said, I think that you, Dan, suggested on economic theory, the arguably conservative one, rational choice theory, was “obviously correct.” That, in turn is yet more …erm, interesting? as at times in the past you’ve said you think Massimo overrates human rationality.
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Hi Alan: I wonder if Dan’s conservative intellectuals who are smarter than me run to global warming idealist. In which case they are idiots, no matter how smart they are.
And ‘reality having a liberal bias’ is a joke *with some truth in it. A joke you have to explain is a unfortunately a poor joke. And it seems to me Dan engages in some sort of logical fallacy (but I don’t know which) in his reply to it.
I do like Milton Friedman’s negative income tax, but despise him for cozing up to Pinochet. He was w/o doubt smarter than me. He was also an idiot.
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Marc,
While my history isn’t clear on this, I think neoliberalism harkens back to the original English liberalism, which was more concerned with economic, rather than social opportunities. Usually at the expense of the more unwilling participants in the British Empire. Consequently its appeal to the computer industry.
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Coel: ‘liberal’ has shift it’s meaning over the years. I think ‘clasic liberal’ refers to Adam Smith et al., where has I use it in the 1950/FDR sense of somewhat active gov., but not too active. E.g., LIBerals and LIBertarians agree on most free speech, and other civil liberty. type issues and disagree about lesser things like economics. The so called liberal ACLU defended the right of Am Nazi Party to march through Skokie. I’m didn’t agree with that as the people living there have some right to no be harassed too; the Nazi have a right to march somewhere[a].
[a]Maybe Skokie should have given their police the day off and ivinted ADA and seen if the Nazi would still wanted to March through town <|;_)=
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The universe has no values and gives no meaning. That’s a difference.
Valuing ourselves may be ‘hardwired’ by blind evolution, but however it got there, it is there. Thus, I value human more than trees. I have no problem with cutting ’em down to build my house, but if you take a longer view we need to preserve them for our own good (so don’t cut down the Amazon to make fancy furniture or did up useless yellow metal). Don’t burn so much oil and goal that we heat the earth to fast to adapt to the change. etc.
So I do value people more than nature. It’s not a fallacy, but likely just ‘human nature’ (I term Dan dislikes).
If an endangered Lion were stalking children in Mountain View, I’d kill it. On the other hand police around here shoot often shoot Lions (not that endangered here) who wonder down from the Santa Cruz mountains in to town and who don’t really threaten anybody. Mountain View did recently dart and relocate one from Rengstorff Park near my housew/o problems.
Palo Alto killed one a dog had tree’d. I thought firing off a high powered rifle [a] in town was more dangerous than the lion.
The wonderful Trump boys go to African and shoot lions just for fun…
[a] We own a Manlicher-Carcano that we used for some experiments. Even this rather ancient,, crummy weapon has incredible penetrating power and if you miss the bullet may end up — who know where. Stucco walls aren’t going to protect you.
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I think if the words “liberal” and “conservative” were limited to their adjectival use, the language would benefit. For the political connotations, any two words would serve as well: Scribes and Pharisees, perhaps, or Publicans and Sinners.
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Socratic: No, of course I don’t think it is obviously correct. I was simply replying to Synred’s incredible claim that “reality is liberal” (paraphrase) and that’s why the smart people are liberals.
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socratic: As well as to his apparent view that markets are just obviously irrational. The fact that there is an entire science and mathematics devoted to rational choice theory in economics shows that this is not obvious.
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Dan, thanks for the clarification!
==
Cousin, you own a Mannlicher? Where were you on Nov. 22, 1963? Hmmmmm …
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Finally, I can see that there are now several people who think that liberal values just obviously reflect “reality” and “truth” more than conservative ones. I find the view incredible and cannot imagine how anyone outside of an echo chamber could possibly hold it, but there it is. Obviously people are free to think what they want.
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Hi synred,
I think you’re on a slippery slope if you start regarding a political march as “harassment”. This is akin to students at universities trying to censor a speaker by smearing themselves with fake blood and claiming that the speech amounts to “violence” against them.
Hi Alan,
The whole emphasis that each and every individual counts is again the product of the enlightenment focus on the individual and individual liberty. That protects each individual; a focus on the collective “we” does not (as seen, for example, in communism).
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Dan,
I think that stating that liberal values reflect reality is obviously indefensible. However, people may have simply been referring to Stephen Colbert’s famous quip (reality has a liberal bias), or, more seriously, to MLK’s idea that the moral arc of history bend towards justice. Then again, it can reasonably be argued (yes, by liberals) that a lot of modern society’s progress has been achieved by the implementation of liberal ideas like labor laws, equality for women and minorities, and so forth, very much against the resistance of conservatives.
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synred: Irony and sarcasm don’t come through well in text. If you didn’t mean your “reality is liberal” line, then great. I’ll drop it. But the rest of your remarks suggest that you do, which is why I said what I did.
The notion that there are no/have been no absolutely brilliant conservative and even religious thinkers — in comparison with their liberal and secular counterparts — just strains credulity and sounds like self-serving, echo-chambery stuff. And I think it is our occupying an echo chamber that largely cost us the last election. i don’t want to lose another one.
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Outside of politics, liberal and conservative have fairly clear meanings, which I suspect, are reflected in their political connotations.
Under all the baggage and finger pointing, liberalism has fairly expansive social implications, while conservatism tends to be more structured and reductionistic. Leaning more toward civil and cultural aspects.
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Massimo, but, per you, per MLK, per Socrates, and per Walter Kaufmann, what is “justice,” both as an abstract concept and as demonstrated in individual empirical acts? Kaufmann, as I’ve said before, argues that no such thing exists as a Platonic or quasi-Platonic concept, because different people will differ, sometimes radically, as to whether an individual act is “just” or not.
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Socratic,
I don’t believe in an ideal Form of Justice either. But unless someone is going full relativist – and I know Dan is not – then we’ll have to agree on some basic common principle.
For instance, it shouldn’t be difficult to have conservatives agree that equality of opportunity and fair treatment of others are fundamental principles of justice. They may disagree on specific instances, but I doubt they’d reject the basic ideas.
An overt racist, of course, would reject this premise. Which is why I don’t engage in discourse with apologists of racism. I try to educate them, and when that fails I ignore them. Should they take control of society, I will then take up arms against them.
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I don’t think I said that. I don’t think even ‘reality has a liberal bias’ says that. jE.g., Global warming is real those who think it isn’t or that Gd will fix it are wrong. Doesn’t mean conservatives or some relgious people are can’t be ‘brilliant’. Thomas Aquinas was brilliant. Wrong, but brilliant [a]. Counting how many brilliant people advocate an idea or world view does not help figure out which are correct. One is pretty much has to rely ones own judgement and, of course, ‘philosophy’, e.g., ‘common good’ or whatever.
[a] And I don’t mean ‘flashy’as Putin said of Trump.
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Massimo, I think you’re right on the large scale, but per LBJ’s comment on how you don’t remove the chains from a black person and suddenly expect him to run a race, I think that, if one gets more granular, liberals and conservatives will quickly diverge on what is needed to establish equal opportunity. Most conservatives, as well as neoliberals, would also underestimate, if not outrightly reject, the role of luck.
How much that could be filed as disagreement on specific instances, and how much it should honestly be called fundamental-level disagreement is of course itself a matter for discussion. (There are also, surely, still certain types of paleoconservatives who, if not actually racist, nonetheless support varieties of Social Darwinism.)
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When it comes to politics, words are Humpty-Dumpty things; they mean what somebody says they mean, so I don’t find them very meaningful. I think if you define qualities or ideas that you find attractive, that’s a start to getting on the right track: the French triad of freedom, equality and brotherhood come to mind; also our own “with liberty and justice for all”; and such good character traits as kindness, reasonableness, courage, fairness, etc., I would say, promote things in this direction, and never mind the labels. If you’re going to argue (how otherwise!), argue about whether something is fair and reasonable or not. This, of course, does not describe any political discourse that any of us has actually experienced, but one can hope.
This being the season for thanks, I am very grateful to Massimo and everyone else for providing a place where I can say things like this.
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.>I think you’re on a slippery slope
Well political slopes tend to be slippery. One has to stand your ground as best you can. Liberal students objecting to conservative speaker is one thing [a], Nazi marching through a town with many holocaust survivers is another.
Generally, I agree with ACLU when they defend the KKK or other bad guys, but old ladies that survived of the Nazi have rights too. The slope is slippery.
[a] Private schools, of course, can do what they want about speakers. The first amendment only refers to goverment interference with speech.And ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ protesters have the right to yell as loud as they want about anybody they want.
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Sorcatic,
“There are also, surely, still certain types of paleoconservatives who, if not actually racist, nonetheless support varieties of Social Darwinism.”
There are also points where too much pearl clutching becomes more weakness than strength. Human civilization is built on a pyramid of skulls and it continues, if we look outside our particular cocoons. If we substitute “racist” for “nationalist,” much of the foreign policy of the US doesn’t look particularly ennobling.
Individual lives are designed to be expendable. Each generation is the husk for the next. If we can’t really develop an understanding of nature that can both see the raw and how it might be transformed and refined, but only one or the other, than we are either cynics, or delusional.
I’m afraid I would fall on the side of cynicism, before deluding myself.
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Ps,
It is difficult enough to predict potential emergence, given initial conditions. Much more so, if those conditions are actively ignored.
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Also, re the exchange between Massimo and I, the right and left, or at least significant portions of both, might disagree as to which area of opportunity is most important for its equality being addressed. The capitalist right would surely say economic equality opportunity; the labor left would counter that’s not possible without labor-management equality opportunity. Voting access equality of opportunity and other things would be raised elsewhere, and disputed.
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Socratic,
What is to be the mechanism of this economic equilibrium? Decrees by a government increasingly in thrall to economic forces? A choice of voting for someone blatantly serving trickle down economic interests(rather than sereptitiously, like the prior president), versus someone already at the top of this economic pyramid?
Labor at least had some leverage when much of the economy was national, not global. There were practical, a bit self serving, reasons the Democratic establishment sold out to the bankers.
No one seems inspired enough to examine my argument that the next step will have to involve taking back the currency itself, as a public function, so I would be interested to see alternative visions of how this balance between labor and management is to be established.
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