Some reflections in the wake of Newtown

The tragedy in Connecticut this past week, with the deaths of nearly thirty people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, left me dumbstruck. I suppose one is never really prepared for these things, and one never really can be. Every time I attempted to write something, it always came up short – every sympathy sounded vain; every condolence lacked conviction; every attempt to find meaning in the event in the end came off as monstrously officious and insensitive. In the end, I merely wrote, ‘I share your grief and outrage’, which seemed the best thing to do. Every time I look at my own daughter now, I can’t help but imagine the depths of the grief and the outrage that each parent and each friend of the victims of Sandy Hook must be feeling now, and pray fervently that Ellie remains fortunate, safe and healthy every day from now on.

And this brings me to the reaction to them. Not politicising the tragedy is perfectly sound advice in this case for humanistic reasons: no mourning family deserves a lecture on the merits of gun control or on the need for more teachers to pack heat, on the dangers of violent movies and video games or the need to protect free speech, from the mouths of the bobbleheads on any cable news network they would care to watch. I know I certainly wouldn’t appreciate such, even from my own ‘side’. But on the other hand, there is ultimately no avoiding the fact that these tragedies are inescapably political events, in that they are consequences of the way we have chosen to order (or not) our society. The murders at Sandy Hook were carried out by a young man with Asperger’s, a treatable disorder, who had easy access to high-powered weaponry from his mother (the first among his victims). These are social facts. Another such fact is that, concurrently with this rampage murder, another rampage assault (this one with a knife) took place in Chenpeng, Henan Province, a ways southwest of my wife’s hometown. However, this rampage has so far resulted in no deaths, because the Chinese kids’ knife wounds turned out to be treatable in ways which the American kids’ multiple puncture wounds from .223 cartridges fired in three-round bursts from a Bushmaster M4 carbine were not.

Guns are not the main problem, but – as Dr John Médaille pointed out – they do have a tendency to exacerbate all of our other social problems. Mental disorders are made less manageable by guns; gang violence and organised crime are made much more deadly by guns; the drug culture is made more dangerous by guns. The bromide that ‘such people’ would have found a way to kill anyway seems to ring particularly hollow in this case; if they have to work harder to kill, there is a greater chance for them to be stopped without such a massive loss of life. Likewise, if we had a better and less costly health-care system, one not so heavily dominated by big insurance companies and big pharmaceutical corporations, we might not have so many ‘such people’ in the first place, since so many mental disorders are treatable and need cause no harm to the broader society – but both big interest groups, as a result of their incentive structures, want to privatise their profits and socialise the costs of treatment as much as possible.

For now, silence and honour for the dead, and reflectiveness and prayer, are the appropriate responses. But dealing with the hubristic social root causes of each successive tragedy should not be long delayed.

Pope Benedict XVI on individualism versus the dignity of the person

Yet one more reason to admire and revere the opinions of the regnant Holy Father; he is one incredibly sharp fellow. Via Daniel Nichols over at his excellent blog Caelum et Terra, an excerpt from the Bishop of Rome Benedict XVI’s address to the Plenary Assembly of Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace:

By accepting Jesus Christ and his Gospel, in addition to in our personal life also in our social relations, we become bearers of a vision of man, of his dignity, of his liberty and relatedness, which is marked by transcendence, be it in the horizontal be it in the vertical sense. The foundation and meaning of human rights and duties depend on the integral anthropology that derives from Revelation and from the exercise of natural reason, as Blessed John XXIII reminds us, in fact, in Pacem in terris (cf. n. 9). In fact, the rights and duties do not have as their sole and exclusive foundation the social conscience of peoples, but depend primarily on the natural moral law — inscribed by God on the conscience of every person — and, hence, ultimately, on the truth about man and society.

Although the defense of rights has made great progress in our time, today’s culture, characterized among other things by a utilitarian individualism and a technocratic economism, tends to devalue the person. The latter is conceived as a “fluid” being, without permanent consistency. Despite being immersed in an infinite network of relations and communications, the man of today often appears paradoxically as an isolated being, because he is indifferent to the constitutive relation of his being with God, which is at the root of all other relations. The man of today is considered in a prevailingly biological key as “human capital,” “resource,” part of a productive and financial mechanism that surpasses him. If on one hand, we continue to proclaim the dignity of the person, on the other, new ideologies — such as the hedonistic and egotistic one of sexual and reproductive rights, or that of an immoderate financial capitalism that prevails over politics and alters the structure of the real economy –, contribute to consider the worker dependent and his work as “minor” goods and to undermine the natural foundations of society, especially the family. In reality, the human being, constitutively transcendent in relation to other earthly beings and goods, enjoys a real primacy which makes him responsible for himself and for creation. Concretely, for Christianity, work is a fundamental good for man, in view of his personalization, of his socialization, of the formation of a family, of the contribution to the common good and to peace. In fact, because of this, the objective of access to work for all is always a priority, also in periods of economic recession (cf. Caritas in veritate, 32).

A new humanism and a renewed cultural and planned commitment could derive from a New Evangelization of the social context. It would help to dethrone the modern idols, to replace individualism, materialistic consumerism and technocracy, with the culture of fraternity and gratuitousness, of solidaristic love. Jesus Christ summarized and gave fulfillment to the precepts in a new commandment: “love one another; even as I have loved you” (John 13:34); herein lies the secret of every fully human and peaceful social life, as well as the renewal of politics and of national and world institutions.

CT and EifD on an anti-neoliberal roll!

John hasn’t been particularly active recently over at Economics is for Donkeys, much to my chagrin, but when he came back he came back with both barrels fully loaded: he links to a piece by Peter Radford about the destruction of the economy of the vital centre, and to a brief by Gavin Rae which finds that mass privatisation is statistically linked to a rise in the death rate, producing what might be over 13 million excess deaths. Yet somehow, neoliberalism is given a Get Out Of Gaol Free card where communism has been routinely (and justly) reviled for similarly destructive famines.

In another corner of the blogosphere, Crooked Timber plays upon the same theme, describing the ways in which the Economist both acknowledges, and then tries to weasel out of its support for, the role of free trade policies in creating and then perpetuating the Irish potato famine, which was responsible for at least one million Irish deaths. The verdant island was a net exporter of food throughout the early years of the famine, whilst people who could not buy food locally were starving to death.

Not the lightest of reading, true. But important reading, all the same.

Pointless video post - ‘Let It Loose’ by Savage and ‘Don’t Break The Circle + Father Of Time’ by Demon

Been listening to a lot of NWoBHM recently - the old standbys of Saxon and Maiden and Priest, of course, but also some Legend and a couple of old gems which to yours truly are newly-unearthed: Loose ‘N Lethal by Savage, and Night Of The Demon and The Unexpected Guest by Demon. Both Savage and Demon have flirted with more mainstream rock sounds in their careers, but both bands have impeccable metal credentials: Savage with their speed-metal stylings was a primary influence on early Metallica, and Demon (much like their better-known contemporaries, Saxon), despite various flirtations with glam and college rock, managed to stick by their heavy metal guns and hold out until even now. Both bands also have proven themselves willing to tread topical ground: Savage’s newest album, Sons Of Malice, has a definite pro-Occupy bent to it, and (once they got over their original fascination with the occult) all of Demon’s albums since The Plague have been arguably political (unsurprising when one considers that they swapped members with the hardcore punk band Discharge on and off throughout the 1980’s).

Anyway, here’s ‘Let It Loose’:

And ‘Don’t Break The Circle’ and ‘Father Of Time’:

Enjoy!

EDIT: I happened to hear also, via SEK at Lawyers, Guns and Money, of the manufactured outrage in the right-wing blogosphere over a concert held eight years ago by PSY of ‘Gangnam Style’ fame wherein he covered a song with arguably anti-American lyrics by South Korean ‘progressive thrash / power / heavy metal / hard rock’ (according to their Metal Archives profile, anyway) band N.EX.T. And, guess which phrase in that popped out the most to me? Overrated K-Pop star? ... No. Eight-year-old concert? ... No. American right-wingers wetting their panties over said concert? ... No; that has become SOP for them. South Korean progressive thrash / power / heavy metal / hard rock with controversial lyrics? Quick, to the Taobaowang!

If I find they are any good, expect more pointless video posts from me in the future.

The errors of Chinese liberalism and of Chinese neoleftism

As Xi Jinping finishes up his tour of Shenzhen to the unvarnished adulation of a great many of China’s right-liberal ‘public intellectuals’, it bears remembering that these ‘dissidents’ are really anything but. Xi Jinping declared, seemingly in all honesty, that China must ‘keep on the correct path’ laid out for it by Deng Xiaoping – the course which, naturally, has resulted in massive corruption at local levels of government; which has caused the wealth gap to balloon past that of even the United States; which has caused public ownership and basic welfare services to atrophy practically to uselessness; which has caused millions of farmers to be evicted from their lands under the ‘household responsibility system’, in reality a new enclosures movement guaranteeing a steady flow of landless migrant workers to keep wages depressed. The right-liberals applaud all of this – indeed, they keep asking for more of it. The only thing that makes them unhappy, it seems, is that China is not even more the ersatz-democratic crony-capitalist war-mechanical monstrosity that the United States has become.

The right-liberals are emphatically not to be believed that what they want is greater transparency and greater personal freedom of conscience. Theirs is a completely Nietzschean exercise: they are willing to countenance the ‘artwork’ and ruffianism of Ai Weiwei, the Islamophobia and neoconservative warmongering of Liu Xiaobo, and the Randian crypto-Satanism of wannabe-teabaggers Liu Junning and Mao Yushi; but they cheer when the government arrests Bo Xilai and his wife on murder charges which (for all we know) are and always have been trumped-up, or detains and silences the owner of a small bookstore who also happens to be a Maoist (misguided, true, but if the liberals were being consistent, they would have to stand up for his free-speech rights as well). They unequivocally (and rightly) condemn Han Deqiang for roughing up an old man and calling him a ‘hanjian’, but they are all too quick to make excuses for the mob beating of Wu Danhong (who doesn’t share their ideology), led by right-liberal journalist Zhou Yan. As demonstrated by their public statements and actions, they have no problem with the violent censorship of ideas and religious expressions they do not agree with. Furthermore, they even have no problem with mob rule and the tactics of the Cultural Revolution, or (to hear some liberal intellectuals or Reform-era grad students on the topic of filial piety) even with the actual aims of the Cultural Revolution.

The only topic on which the right-liberals deserve to be taken seriously – and viewed as even more dangerous on that account – is when they insist on fazhi 法治 (often mistranslated into English as the ‘rule of law’, which conjures images of an Anglo-American jurisprudence which has never been and likely never will be applicable in China). In actuality, what they mean is a bureaucracy in which only the technical competencies demanded by the post are considered, rather than the quality of the person occupying it, and whose compliance is guaranteed through a universally applicable system of rewards and punishments. The ‘fa’ 法 in their ‘fazhi’ is not the ‘fa’ of the Anglo-American legal tradition, but rather the Legalist (法家) ‘fa’ of Han Fei and Qin Shihuang. The resemblance is coincidental, but not insignificant: the post-Enlightenment strain of liberal political philosophy beginning with Machiavelli and Hobbes has always shared a certain degree of ideological overlap with Han Fei’s conception of government. Because people are intrinsically depraved, greedy and incapable of altruistic behaviour (a key tenet shared by Legalism with liberalism going back to Machiavelli and Hobbes, though these vices were transformed into virtues by the work of Adam Smith among others), they have to be controlled through the power of Leviathan, or by a Prince who appears virtuous but who is willing to use ruthless tactics to maintain his control. Chinese right-liberalism shares a great deal in common with these early proto-liberal theorists of totalitarianism; sadly, far too many Western China-watchers are either lazy or wilfully ignorant of these distressing tendencies (though some thankful exceptions exist, such as Daniel Larison, David Lindsay and Hansen Ding).

The left-liberal ‘neoleftism’ of theorists such as Wang Hui, Cui Zhiyuan and Wang Shaoguang would seem a tempting solution in comparison. Wang Hui’s The End of the Revolution, a compilation of the English translations of several of his essays, following the theme of the political development of China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution and the Reform and Opening periods, is a stupendous and insightful work of political philosophy. He deserves a great deal of credit for being one of the most unique Chinese political thinkers of the modern day. He draws upon a number of critical historical insights which need to be further explored: the mutual dependence of the ‘West’ and the ‘Rest’ upon each other going much further back than the dawn of ‘modernity’ being just one example. His insights into how the Chinese political system works (a critical one being the continuity between Mao and Deng, which is often ignored), and how ideologically-distorted misperceptions of history continue to foment misunderstandings of critical events within it (like the protests in the Square), are utterly invaluable. The spectre of the Cultural Revolution continues to haunt enough memories that it can be used as a political weapon, by the party which perpetrated it and then renounced it, against those (like Bo Xilai and like his supporters) agitating for economic reforms which might have a chance at reducing the wealth gap and giving China’s economically-distressed classes (not least of whom are the owners of small- and medium-sized enterprises) a shot at a dignified existence.

It would be a critical error to call the neoleftists in the vein of Wang Hui and Cui Zhiyuan Marxists, let alone Maoists. Cui Zhiyuan describes himself as, and is to all appearances, a ‘liberal socialist’ in the vein of John Stuart Mill (in spite of having been accused of being a reactionary earlier in his career). Wang Hui’s ideological disposition, on the other hand, draws equally from Daoist and from Hegelian insights. And therein lies the great problem: neoleftism’s basic message should have a great deal of appeal to a great number of Chinese people, but that message gets lost in the medium. Daoism and Hegelianism both have aspirations of exploring universal truths, though naturally they speak in different philosophical dialects, one of which nears on incomprehensible even to German ears (let alone English or Chinese ones!). To be sure, where Wang Hui’s neoleftism borrows from Hegel, it does so in intriguing ways: his excavation of lost traditional counter-histories as narratives antithetical to modern developmentalism carries with it overtones of an almost Milbank-esque left-conservatism which I believe the New Confucians would do well to emulate. He blessedly does not fall prey to Hegel’s end-of-history hubris, as his analysis is very – I might even say frustratingly – open-ended.

On the other hand, it is easy to see where, if the neoleftists are not careful, they might begin falling prey to nihilism, as certain students of Hegel did, and as Daoism sometimes trends. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the final chapter of The End of the Revolution, which is essentially a tribute to Lu Xun – whose revolutionary fervour arguably did wind up staring out over the bleak and barren landscape of nihilism. A nihilistic foundational philosophy should not be an attractive prospect for any honest leftist, as in the levelling of all value the good values are rendered helpless: namely, that of life and the quality thereof, particularly for the poorest and most vulnerable, who have the least ability to defend themselves. I am unsure of the reason for this turn, however. Perhaps it is because Wang Hui approaches his topic as a political philosopher rather than as a theologian, or perhaps it is because he finds himself wary to embrace the radical-communitarian and -traditionalist elements of Confucian virtue-ethics and risk being branded as a reactionary himself (by China’s Old Left, amongst others); ultimately, though, only Dr Wang himself can answer that question.

I honestly think that there is a vast and fruitful territory for dialogue, mutual learning, and shared social action between China’s Christians (especially her Catholics), her Confucians and her more thoughtful neoleftists. Perhaps China’s liberals could get in on that conversation as well, but first they need to do some careful self-examination and police their more objectionable elements: namely the agents of avarice, debauchery and hatred who reside safely in their midst.

Here we go again

Via Zuo Shou at Sweet and Sour Socialism, we have this from Peter Hart and the watchdogs at FAIR:

The message could hardly be clearer: According to U.S. intelligence, Syrian government could very well be preparing to use chemical weapons to put down the long and bloody rebellion against ruler Bashar al-Assad. That was the signal from the TV networks and other major media. Should anyone believe they're right?

[...]

So where did all of this new information [coming through ABC, CBS and NBC] come from? Anonymous government officials talking to outlets like the New York Times.

On December 2, Michael Gordon and several others reported in the Times that

Western intelligence officials say they are picking up new signs of activity at sites in Syria that are used to store chemical weapons. The officials are uncertain whether Syrian forces might be preparing to use the weapons in a last-ditch effort to save the government, or simply sending a warning to the West about the implications of providing more help to the Syrian rebels.

"It's in some ways similar to what they've done before," a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. "But they're doing some things that suggest they intend to use the weapons. It's not just moving stuff around. These are different kind of activities."

That somewhat sketchy take was reiterated the next day in the Times (12/3/12), where readers learned that "what exactly the Syrian forces intend to do with the weapons remains murky, according to officials who have seen the intelligence from Syria." By December 4, the Times was reporting on Obama's explicit warning to Syria:

The White House said it had an "increased concern" that the government of President Bashar al-Assad was preparing to use such weapons, effectively confirming earlier reports of activity at chemical weapons sites.

Absent any further details, that would seem to be a strange standard for confirmation: U.S. officials make anonymous claims, and then different officials say on the record that they are concerned about what those anonymous sources are claiming.

A strange standard? That is true in the sense Mr Hart clearly means it, but this should hardly come as a surprise to anyone with a memory lasting longer than ten years, since this was precisely the puppet show the Bush Administration used to push its phoney casus belli in Iraq. Of course, the anonymous sources which were used in the justification for that war proved rather less than trustworthy under close scrutiny. As David Lindsay writes (and how I dearly wish I could say the same of my own country, but I am all too painfully aware of how gullible we have allowed ourselves to become),

Not that I, or 90 per cent of other people in this country, were fooled the first time.

Weapons of mass destruction in Syria? Seriously? Is that really the best that you can do?

"They are the ones that were spirited out of Iraq." Course they are, dear. Course they are.

Please, friends, Americans, countrymen: protest and resist the complicity of our news media in cheerleading yet another horrific, bloody tragedy in the Fertile Crescent, whose victims will not solely be the vulnerable-but-perpetually-unfashionable Christians and Alawites, but also ultimately the ordinary Sunni Syrians whose first desire is to see the conflict end.

The matter of Monticello

Wow, wouldn’t that title make for a great 1960’s musical number?

Ahem. Anyway, the phrase ‘the Monster of Monticello’ appears prominently in this New York Times op-ed, ‘The Real Thomas Jefferson’, by Dr Paul Finkelman, who writes a devastating critique of the man for his practice of slavery, and how it made him into a ‘creepy, brutal hypocrite’. Dr Finkelman was rebutted by David Post here, who was in turn rebutted by Corey Robin of Crooked Timber, here. The argument between Finkelman and Post (or rather, the argument Post wants to have with Finkelman) is basically a retread of a retread, an unending Nietzschean struggle-drama between memory and pride, and so has rather limited interest to me. Corey Robin’s post is far more interesting because it delves so much deeper into the underlying debate over political philosophy.

Firstly, I should make it clear that I agree with Corey Robin’s conclusion, and with part of Dr Finkelman’s article linking the political philosophy of Jefferson with that of Calhoun. But I also believe that Corey Robin overstates his case more than slightly by trying to link both with fascism. He is only slightly mistaken about the history of racism - rather than being a counterrevolutionary ideology specifically designed to combat abolition (abolitionism not having been a formidable force at the time), it was an ideology designed by the merchants and industrialists who profited from slavery, to prevent poor whites from identifying with blacks. But this slight mistake is indicative of a greater one which he makes: attempting to show racism to be fundamentally conservative, or counterrevolutionary.

I have shown previously that many of the conservatives of the time - in particular Pope Gregory XVI and Dr Samuel Johnson - were very much anti-slavery and anti-racist, and this not in spite of their traditionalist conservatism, but rather because of it. To them, racism and slavery were forms of untruth: a white Anglican and a black Anglican immediately have deeper common interests in the promulgation of the Gospel than they have divergent interests in the colour of their skin; and slavery as an institution was destructive to the virtues of both by which the Gospel could be made manifest. This bears (not accidentally) a great deal of similarity with later ‘progressive’ thinking, on account of the fact that such thinking had been shaped along the way by Quakers, Anglicans and Catholics (all of whom tended to harbour high-Tory sympathies, if they were not Jacobites outright). Mr Robin’s argument sheds more light on the ways in which modern American coalition politics informs our historiography, than it does on the political proclivities of Thomas Jefferson.

For, if we were to trace that common thread, it would be along the lines of a form of liberalism, not of counterrevolutionary thought. It was not uncommon for liberals at the turn of the 19th century to be racist in ways which contemporary conservatives were not (witness Metternich, who fought tooth-and-nail for peace in Europe and for the rights of European Jews at a time when the classically-liberal Burschenschaften he was charged with oppressing under the Carlsbad Decrees were clamoring for their ostracism or expulsion in the pursuit of racial purity). The juxtaposition of a classical Tory like Dr Johnson, or better yet a Burkean conservative like John Adams, with Thomas Jefferson is equally enlightening: John Adams detested slavery and refused (along with, or inspired by, Abigail) to employ slave labour on principle, but at the same time argued for a society based on traditional Christian morality and a ‘natural hierarchy’ which sounds, for lack of a better word, like a reconstituted aristocracy. On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson was an enthusiast for the French Revolution (and showed a cavalier disregard for its human cost), detested traditional, creedal Christianity to the point that he made his own version of the Gospel which was in line with classical liberalism, and based his own revolutionary ideology upon the Lockean philosophy of greed and upon the denial of the divine right of kings. Slavery was not incompatible with such a system - or rather, Jefferson tried his damnedest (as Corey Robin ably shows) to make it compatible through ‘scientific’ proof of whites’ racial superiority.

The task which all of the above authors (Finkelman, Post and Robin) are attempting either to surmount or to evade - the real matter of the man of Monticello - is the task of reconciling the ideology of liberty of which Jefferson was a supporter, with the brutalities, hypocrisies and ‘creepiness’ of Jefferson the man. Either one does as Post does, and says ‘so what’ to the content of Jefferson’s character and the real suffering the man caused in defence of the ideology he came to embody; or one does as Finkelman and Robin do, which is to claim that Jefferson was not actually such an embodiment, but rather stood for something else. Neither option is really fully desirable, since they overlook a third option: that Jefferson genuinely believed what he did, and that he genuinely did what he did, and that as a consequence something is wrong with the way we as a nation have historically conceived (in both senses of the word), and continue to conceive, of ‘liberty’. If ‘liberty’ is merely the licence of white Europeans to be removed from the social strictures and restraints of traditional creedal Christendom and from the ancien régime of Europe, then chattel slavery (being an institutional artefact of the outward migration from Europe at the dawn of the colonial age, and thus part-and-parcel with the early capitalist and anti-aristocratic ‘arc’ of the Enlightenment) is by no means incompatible with such a conception. Slavery on the basis of skin colour was certainly if not anathema, then at least incomprehensible and alien, to the Scholastic medieval mind.

This way of framing the argument is not likely to be a popular one in American political discourse or historiography, because a.) it explodes the left-liberal mythology of linear historical progress in the direction of greater and more refined morality, whilst at the same time yoking one of the central concepts in that mythology (that of personal licence) with one of its most unfortunate consequences; b.) it directly contradicts the right-liberal, American exceptionalist idea that Jeffersonian ideology has given America a unique place and moral mission within world history; and c.) it does not kowtow to the demands of the evangelical right that the Founding Fathers be recognised ahistorically as the guardians of some sort of Christian moral order. But it is necessary to consider this way of thinking about it if we are to take any edifying lesson away from Jefferson and his complicated place in the American story.