Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion
Both Pol. and Ethical Philosophy
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Public Discourse and Rhetoric
Joan Didion is my favorite writer on American culture; always has been. She first came to fame covering events in the 1960s.If you've never seen this article from her regarding the sweeping transformation of America, it's worth a read. It may touch too close to topical issues; and it may be overly-long but the writing is (I trust you'll find) elegant.
'The New Normal'
I get job postings via email from "HigherEduJobs" (in case I ever want to go back to teaching) but they also have an occasional worthy article. Usually not, but since I've been seeking info on campus speech rights, this one is very timely and apt, indeed. Basically the article points out that state schools will protect a professor's right to speak. A private school can lower the boom. Still seeking more, because this article is probably still not forceful enough. At least it's something.https://tinyurl.com/y7vasy6w
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During my decades as a litigation lawyer, I handled many First Amendment cases involving public officials. I was almost always on the defense side. However, I once represented plaintiffs in two cases challenging tenure denial at a state university. By the time I retired, almost six years ago, I was quite familiar with these kinds of issues. The linked article is basically correct. The First Amendment applies to professors at a public college/university if they are speaking on matters of public concern, as distinguished from employment matters. The First Amendment does not apply to professors in a private college/university setting. If, however, professors in a private academic setting have tenure, there may be certain contractual limitations that prevent them from being fired, willy nilly, for expressing their public opinions. Call it "academic freedom." Some private academic institutions may also have contracts for nontenured faculty that offer such protections. But any such protections are purely a matter of contract, not constitutional law, in a private academic setting.
The examples cited in the article are quite astonishing to me. Civility and reasoned discourse are clearly things of the past at many college/university campuses. But there is, as I always told clients, a difference between what is right ethically and what is protected legally. Law and ethics/natural justice are not the same thing.
Nixon and the presshttps://tinyurl.com/hthkbj6
same topic, article in the New Yorker
https://tinyurl.com/y7g3lpnc
Atlantic
https://tinyurl.com/yayqoeww
NPR: Nixon's feud with Jack Anderson
https://tinyurl.com/y7zsxdw9
p.s. unrelated, but amusing. It turns out Herb Stein, the economic advisor, elicited the famous witty remark from Nixon re: 'stepping in the same stream twice'
https://tinyurl.com/ycsl7hf7
(I might post this in the 'property & economy' thread, but want to avoid too many postings in one day)
a follow-up article (same source as my previous posting, above) on the topic of college campus speechhttps://tinyurl.com/yco6tu33
three Deans are interviewed on policy; some find distinctions drawn. the difference between 'agitation' and 'discourse', for example
(it's not a 'liberal conspiracy' to shut down conservatives!)
Feliks wrote: "Fact check please?I've heard this weekend that the USA is the only country left in the world where free speech is protected as fully as possible (even though its undergoing sea-storms lately). Tr..."
I live in France and people here will always claim to be THE country of "la liberté d'expression". Boundaries to freedom of speech in Europe are mainly tied to hate speech, individual threats and the particular case of historical negationism. In France, the latter actually has a list of historical crimes that are illegal to dispute (holocaust, slavery, Armenian genocide...). The truth is that this has no particular impact on people's ability to write, say or debate something. The National Front has always put immigration at the centre of its political discourse and never been put on trial for saying "immigration is terrible" and that "terrorists are swarming the country". The worst someone risks from being brought to court on a hate speech or threat charge is a fine. The government or police will almost never initiate these charges. This has to come from civil society and is usually a private entity that will bring the charge. It's quite funny to think that to an American this would be an outrageous violation of individual liberties and a threat to democracy. In France, for most people I think, this is just part of public debate. I sue you, you sue me.
With regard's to gag orders, I think the reference is probably toward the new laws that are being debated to mitigate "fake news". This has caused an uprising from the media here and politicians on all sides as they fear it will be used to abuse legal recourse against media outlets when a particular scandal or story is uncovered. There are three parts to the law: one that is aimed to look into to ties between a media outlet and foreign financing, the second that is aimed to provide recourse against social platforms when they are caught massively relaying "fake news" and the third one, which gives recourse to individuals to bring legal action against news they consider to be "fake". This last one is the most debated aspect as it implies a judge will be deciding whether or not something an article is fake. The truth of the matter is that none of the latest major local political scandals that were uncovered by French media could have been suppressed by this law. In fact, many people would probably not want to use it to avoid a Barbara Streisand effect (particularly if they are trying to suppress a story they know is in fact real news). In a way, it's a pointless extension of defamation laws that already exist. Again, it is hard to imagine a case where the government would dare try to bring a charge themselves against any media company.
I think whether the US is the last bastion of freedom of speech depends entirely on how you define it and if you think you are genuinely allowed to say whatever you want with no legal consequence. This is a difference in interpretation between the US and Europe but I always considered the American position to be somewhat of an illusion. There are categories of speech that are not covered by the first amendment such as True Threat which seems widely open to interpretation. There are also defamation laws that can be considered an obstacle to free speech. People are allowed in the US to say racist things that they would be punished for in some European countries. As a European, I've always struggled to understand how that is a positive for political discourse.
re: #59. Superb info, Richard. Thank you!
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Well, the word has finally come down. I've been warning folks for years and (apparently) now it's finally here. I'm hearing rumors that the last bookstore left in America, is being sold to investment capitalists. Yes that's right, you heard me. Barnes & Noble is headed for the headsman's chopping block just like Toys'R'Us.
I understand that discussion of current events tends to lead to shouting matches.However, Erick Erickson makes a point here that I wish more "honest" Democrats and Never-Trumpers had made:
... Progressives believe Trump is an authoritarian tyrant barely constrained by the rule of law. With a straight face, these same progressives argue that the accusations against Kavanaugh are proof of his guilt, that he should not be presumed innocent, that a lack of witnesses is confirmation he did what they claim, that all women must be believed except the ones who defend Kavanaugh and that any dissent is just white male privilege. Progressives may claim Trump is Caesar at the edge of the Rubicon, but they have embraced the bastard love child of Joseph Stalin and Franz Kafka and enlisted the American political press to smear, defame and attack anyone who stands in their way.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...
In #63, Christopher says, "I wish more `honest' Democrats. . . ."The scare quotes Christopher puts around "honest" implies that his considered judgment is that "honest Democrat" is a contradiction in terms. (I assume Christopher only posts what he has considered carefully.) Christopher, do you have evidence to support this supposedly carefully considered generalization about all Democrats?
Also, what is "the bastard love child of Joseph Stalin and Franz Kafka"? For what reason does this Erickson observation have a place on the level of discussion that one expects to find here?
I use quotes too often.I put "honest" in quotes (illegitimately, I'm sure) to highlight the particular definition I was looking for:
marked by free, forthright, and sincere expression : FRANK
an honest appraisal
an honest discussion
I don't think the debate about Kavanaugh has been conducted "honestly," although I am sure not every argument that has been made has been in bad faith.
Robert wrote: "Also, what is "the bastard love child of Joseph Stalin and Franz Kafka"? I think this rhetoric is made very clear by what precedes it:
With a straight face, these same progressives argue that the accusations against Kavanaugh are proof of his guilt, that he should not be presumed innocent, that a lack of witnesses is confirmation he did what they claim, that all women must be believed except the ones who defend Kavanaugh and that any dissent is just white male privilege.
What I was hoping for was a honest (without quotes) acknowledgement from a Democrat or "liberal" or Leftist that this 'show trial' was in contempt of, what, 900 years of Anglo-Saxon legal norms.
Thanks, but instead of answering the question, this changes the topic: "`honest' Democrat" is one thing, honest "debate" is another. Is changing the topic "honest"?Also, there is no answer to the Erickson question. I really am in the dark about what "the bastard love child of Joseph Stalin and Franz Kafka" is supposed to mean.
Edit: I posted this before I saw #66, which is a partial answer to my Erickson question that leaves out an explanation of what this low level of discourse is doing here.
FYI: my view is that Kavanaugh says now is more important than what he did in high school. But that is a discussion for a different place.
Robert wrote: "Thanks, but instead of answering the question, this changes the topic: "`honest' Democrat" is one thing, honest "debate" is another. Is changing the topic "honest"?Also, there is no answer to the..."
Robert, if you're having trouble with what I said, or what I quoted, please just tell me what you think.
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Christopher, I did tell you what I think. I also asked what I consider fair questions that you evidently do not want to answer.To me, you appear reluctant to take responsibility for what you said.
Others can judge for themselves.
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This exchange is a classic example of the reason for the rule. This is not a left-right dogfight site. There are plenty of such sites on the internet. Please take such issues to those sites. Further violations of the rule will result in my deletion of the offending posts and possible removal of the offender from the group. I will not be able to revisit this discussion until late this evening. If such rules violations continue in the meantime, I will take appropriate action.
Four of the essays in my “Politics, Education, Rhetoric, and Ombudsing” (available on Kindle) may be of interest: “Modes of Discourse in Educational Administration;” “‘Cherry Picking’: Or How Decisions Are Made and Politics Explained”; “The Right of the Public To Know”: and “Common Sense Revisited.” James "Jim" Vice
re: post #140 in the Electoral College threadhttps://tinyurl.com/y9dfy6fw
Augh. How do the Washington Post and the New York Times earn the title 'fake news' when 'fake news' is so clearly dominated by Conservative news outlets?
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https://tinyurl.com/y9dfy6fw
Augh. How do the Washington Post and the New York Times earn the title 'fake news' when 'fake news' is so clearly dominated by Conservative news outlets?"
The United States has two mutually exclusive alternative realities, the like of which we may not have seen since the Civil War.
I just today read something hilarious in a work of essays by semiotician Roland Barthes. The book is Mythologies and while the first few chapters are rather innocuous (treating topics like movies, sports, manufacturing), a chapter soon appears in which he pounces on a particular style of rhetoric which was grievously annoying him at the time of writing.
He calls it out for notice, as it is detectable (he says) couched cleverly underneath all manner of advertising and propaganda.
In brief, it is the phrase "after all". For example, imagine I am arguing with you about Hitler and recounting a lengthy list of his most heinous actions, and you cut me off with this:
"Did he wreck Germany, did he cause millions of deaths, did he nearly turn Europe into a slave camp? Yes! Granted! But after all he did revive the economy and make the trains run on time..."
It is this phrase, "after all" which outrages Barthes. What does it mean? Why do we so often allow it? What are you doing, just leapfrogging over my argument and asserting a point of your own?
I chuckled audibly over this in my seat. He's right! Now, I know I will be 'listening for it' anytime someone uses it in a chat with me.
I suppose a variation of this is the phrase "apart from that".
"Alright, I admit you saved my life just now, but apart from that, what have you done for me lately?"
In the New Yorker: light and informative review of Roland Barthes and the work I'm currently absorbing. Touches on a number of topics related to political consciousnesshttps://tinyurl.com/yb3phgru
In the article Feliks mentions in #76, I would underline the article's mention of the influence of Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure was an important influence for a lot of people.A linguist, Saussure theorized that language is a system of differences with no positive terms. In other words, a language is not a bunch of signs for things. If that were the case, translation would be easy: simply substitute one language's signs for another language's signs. Rather, languages are complex systems of differences that divide things up differently. Insofar as they divide up roughly the same reality (reality stays the same in some ways but because of history it changes in other ways), you can translate from one language to another, but because of differences in the ways different languages divide things up, translation can be difficult.
This idea of language influenced what came to be known as "structuralism." Barthes is usually classified as a structuralist. Derrida took this idea and pushed it further, arguably pushing it to its logical conclusion, producing "poststructuralism" as a result. See Derrida's "Differance" (the mispelling is purposeful, combining "differ" and "defer": the differences "defer" reality, keeping one from getting all the way to reality) in Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison, Northwestern University Press, 1973.
Unrelated to anything discussed above, I have a question about word usage which a mere dictionary definition might not assist me with.For the purposes of debate and argument, what is the real difference between the terms: 'inverse', 'converse', and 'obverse'? How do you all use them, what is the best way to use them? Just curious.
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Political disinformation has always been part of American history, but it has been amplified to a new level in our time by the power of social media and the heavy involvement of foreign state actors.
We will see whether democracy survives this and related phenomena. It will depend on whether the majority of people are able to distinguish truth from falsehood in what they read and hear—in a word, critical thinking. The results to date are not encouraging.
Tacking on to the curiosity I expressed above as to the nature of our higher education system (which has become a political football in recent times). Research reports are available here...https://www.cupahr.org/surveys/resear...
...on colleges, universities, and technical schools in terms of the composition of their staff (salaries, diversity, tenure, etc). These reports contain charts and graphs very easy to read at-a-glance.
Alan wrote: "The social media disinformation campaigns for the 2020 US presidential primaries have already started. See this Politico article for details. The sources of the disinformation appear to be partly ..."About Fake News as a polarization and disinformation tool that threatens democracy and public discussion, please consider the following title:
Fake News: The Post-Truth of the Web
Does anyone have any opinion on this book?The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Feliks wrote: "Does anyone have any opinion on this book?The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure"
It's on my to-read list, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I will nonetheless comment to say that I find Jonathan Haidt's attempts to bridge partisan lines and to restore civility to public dialogue admirable (see especially The Righteous Mind). This touches on several of the issues that have been raised earlier in the thread.
I recently read the book and I think it's excellent. I discussed it here:https://the-1000-year-view.com/2018/1...
Aye. I like that set of four precepts by the U of Chicago. I'm unhappy that conservatives are taking it upon themselves to attack universities based on campus policy towards speech in common areas. As always: let anyone with 'fresh ideas' work within the system rather than tear it down because they can't make the grade.
Read this quote in a recent review of his book. This section seemed as good as any other in our group to post it - you agree with him or not. “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you,”.
James Mattis
US Marines
Former Secretary of Defense
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“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are funct..."
Wow – a rare intellectual elitist, in America of all places!
Charles wrote: "If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are funct..."Pretty subjective but I tend to agree. There have been quite a few studies in psychology that indicate that reading fiction develops social empathy because it forces you to see the other person's side of the story. Similarly, that reading broadly in non fiction helps you develop a web of inferential knowledge that allows you to develop both a logic testing "mechanism" and a inferential web allowing you to put ideas together syncretically, to make new connections.
I would have used Mattis's words exactly, but, yeah.
Thing is, chicken or egg? Are people drawn to books / reading / knowledge or do books etc confer knowledge on those who make the effort. Bit of both obviously but there are plenty of people who simply refuse to read because it upsets them. They don't want knowledge and may well be incapable of using it. They react better to emotion or propaganda (Trumpites, Brexiteers, Russian nationalists et al.) and they may well be wired up that way from infanthood. Under Mattis's definition they are functionally illiterate and I would tend to agree with him.
I've got a long list of links, book recommendations, articles, and studies affirming the positive good of building early childhood reading skills. Just PM me if anyone wishes to explore further. Literacy is under attack in our era as never before.
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An angle on American newspaper traditions which few of us probably ever gave much thought to ...when they were still around (sob). I found this in the Smithsonian Magazine.
https://tinyurl.com/yf9x58fe
For a comprehensive (and Madisonian) discussion of how public discourse operates in the American liberal democracy (and is under attack currently), I strongly recommend Jonathon Rauch’s new book, THE CONSTITUTION OF KNOWLEDGE. It is the right book for the present moment. Everyone on this string should read it.
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Thanks, Brad. I just downloaded it.
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For a debate on the merits vel non of Jefferson and Madison, see this topic in our Goodreads group. I invite you to post your own thoughts about Madison (and, if applicable, Jefferson) in that topic. Unfortunately, I will not have time to read your book until after I complete and publish my next book (Reason and Human Ethics). Your book will definitely be relevant to my book after that (Reason and Human Government). The latter may be my last (and in some ways most difficult) book.
re: #92, Brad's recommendationWe've touched briefly in this group on the concept of 'thought police' and it surprises me in retrospect. I would hope that most lay-people recognize that although we live amidst massive advertising and opinion-manipulation, we are not actually living George Orwell's exact vision.
As Alan mentioned in the 'Early Americans' thread, we do not yet have docents or 'minders' in our communities carrying out oversight on our attitudes. We do not attend party meetings, or enforced Sunday mass.
I'm not a believer in 'mind control'; though a few oddballs in my acquaintances are. Many 'man-in-the-street' types I encounter, are also.
But I hold these worthies in low esteem, as far as critical-thinking. They are paranoiacs, which I am not. They practically verge on hysteria.
On the other hand, I do believe in the power of "classical-conditioning".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic...
I believe in "in-group vs out-group" mindsets. If such techniques had no power to convince, then Reverend Jim Jones would not have had 918 followers perish with him in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.
We know that 'cults' did not wane after that incident. Waco, for example. Heaven's Gate. Qanon. Or even the Third Wave experiment (ten years earlier).
I occasionally wonder if the internet is the new Jonestown, when I see the sway it has over such large groups of people.
Just musing aloud.
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That's an astute observation, which hadn't previously occurred to me. One difference is the scale: a few hundred at Jonestown, millions on the internet.
Jones told followers to drink a drug that would kill them. Although Trump did not explicitly tell people to drink bleach to kill the coronavirus, some interpreted his remarks to mean that.
Here is a very witty satire on QAnon: http://pge.libercus.net/.pf/showstory....
This post has two parts. The second adds a major qualification of what I say in the first part.The first part comments on what is happening in Congress today as it tries to work out legislation for the Biden agenda. When things get to this extreme, media and comedians tend to treat it as a bit crazy, etc. Actually, it is simply the way democracy works; representatives with different viewpoints act on behalf of their voters to work out compromises, which can often be difficult (this is the sentence that the qualification will modify).
To comment on this democracy in action, I draw on “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s `Battle,’” an essay Kenneth Burke first published in the Southern Review in summer 1939 and later reprinted in 1941 in a collection of essays, The Philosophy of Literary Form. Burke wrote this essay to fault reviewers of Hitler’s Mein Kampf who simply listed the book’s negative attributes and called it a day. Burke cautioned: “let us try also to discover what kind of `medicine’ this medicine man has concocted, that we may know, with greater accuracy, exactly what to guard against, if we are to forestall the concocting of similar medicine in America” (p 191 in the reprint).
The part of Burke’s essay that is relevant to democracy in action covers the way Hitler regularly attacked it as “parliamentary `babel.’” What one needs instead is a good autocrat who can do things efficiently. Burke comments that the news media’s negative treatments of the “cacophonous verbal output of Congress” were doing the same kind of thing Hitler was doing and to that extent preparing the way for an American autocrat (pp. 200-01 in the reprint).
(Academics in English and Speech Communication would generally know Burke; any of them who study rhetoric would know this essay. Burke and Richard McKeon became friends as undergraduates at Columbia University and carried on a lifelong friendship after that; when McKeon moved to Chicago, they began a correspondence that became substantial. But unlike McKeon, Burke did not become an academic. Instead, he dropped out as an undergrad to go Greenwich Village to write fiction. He did that for about a decade, but in the crisis of the 1930s he turned his attention to writing criticism of literature in particular and culture in general. He went on to become a philosopher of language with special attention to its workings in rhetoric and communication).
Here is the qualification: the problem in Washington is the deep corruption fostered by the lobbyist system and campaign financing. When government officials talk about corruption in other countries, I always wonder if it is much worse than the corruption in our country which operates legally. In any case, because of this corruption what voters want, based on polling, is usually not what Congress provides. Instead, the 1% usually gets what it wants. A similar problem occurred in the 1930s, as Burke points out. The point, then, is that the media should focus 99% of its attention on the corruption that interferes with democracy in action, not the “cacophonous output” except insofar as it clarifies the issues being negotiated. Social media and some news cable channels complicate things, of course, in ways that did not exist in the 1930s. Maybe these complications make the needed corrections impossible. In any case, given today’s crisis in democracy, every effort possible is needed to spotlight what is good about democracy in order to not let today's democracy in action obscure what is good about it.
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The first part comments on what is happening in Congress today as it tries to work out legislation f..."
Thanks, Bob. You make some good points. I would add that it has been a trick of the big vested interests and their servant politicians to use social issues to distract a certain portion of the electorate into voting for those politicians.
It is difficult for the average person these days to understand what exactly is going on between the moderate Democrats and the progressive Democrats in Congress. Manchin does raise a good point, it seems to me, about means-testing some of these proposed programs: why should a family with a $300,000 annual income get a big child credit on their taxes? But I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about these issues to speak authoritatively about them. I think reasonable people should be able to sit down and hammer out the details. Climate change should be a big part of this discussion. But then you have Manchin, whose political base and bigtime funders are wedded to coal.
Political Philosophy and Ethics
Books mentioned in this topic
The Greeks and the Irrational (other topics)The Greeks and the Irrational (other topics)
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure (other topics)
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure (other topics)
Mythologies (other topics)
More...
I don't remember a post in this group along this line, but perhaps someone else does. If you receive no further responses in this group (the person who posted it should remember), perhaps you saw it in another forum.