Jim Jordan Looks For Turnaround

       One of the funniest headlines of my hometown newspaper had to do with high school wrestling:  "Eagle Grapplers Look For Turnaround."  Today's first Impeachment Inquiry made both parties look stupid, as high school wrestling coach Jim Jordan tried to put Adam Schiff in a headlock.
       The most disturbing part of the testimony showed that Assistant Secretary of State George Kent and Ambassador William Taylor, providing professional expertise on foreign policy, and National Security Advisor John Bolton, providing bad-assery, were being made to take a backseat to E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sundland and traitorous pig Rudy Guliani, who provided only Trump-humpiness.
       The story starts when Oh Blah Blah refused military aid to the Ukrainians in their efforts to repel Russian invaders.  Newly elected Donald Trump was certified to release military aid by the D.O.D. in July, but apparently held up the aid until September, seeking dirt on Joe Biden from the Ukrainians.  The Ukrainian President Zelinsky was also denied a prestige-boosting White House visit.
       Both parties looked juvenile and partisan.  Democrats looked to undo an election, while Republicans personally attacked career diplomats.   Some Republicans, like Elise Stafanik, continued to act like intelligent adults.  Others, like Jim Jordan and Eric Swallwell, looked more like they were vying to guest host The Sean Hannity Show.  Such clowns hid behind a shyster in an ill-fitting suit, who tried to use Joe Biden's corruption as a Get Out of Jail Free card.
       Political hacks like Sundland and Guliani have no business being allowed to make foreign policy decisions.  This is an effect of an administration where syncophants are valued over experts.  This looks just as corrupt as Rod Blagojevich selling Obama's Senate seat.  Which probably explains why Trump wants to pardon Blagojevich.

Lebedyev on Cannibalism

       "'An artful and ironical idea, insidious as a larding-needle!'  Lebedyev greedily caught up Yevgeny Pavlovitch's paradox;  'an idea expressed with the object of provoking opponents to battle--but a true idea!  For you, a worldly scoffer and cavalry officer (though not without brains), are not yourself aware how true and profound your idea is.  Yes, sir, the law of self-destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in humanity!  The devil has equal dominion over humanity till the limit of time which we know not.  You laugh?  You don't believe in the devil?  Disbelief in the devil is a French idea, a frivolous idea.  Do you know who the devil is?  Do you know his name?  Without even knowing his name, you laugh at the form of him, following Voltaire's example, at his hoofs, at his tail, at his horns, which you have invented;  for the evil spirit is a mighty menacing spirit, but he has not the hoofs and horns you've invented for him.  But he's not the point now.'
       'How do you know that he's not the point now?' cried Ippolit suddenly, and laughed as though in hysterics.
       'A shrewd and insinuating thought!' Lebedyev approved.  'But again, that's not the point.  Our question is whether the 'springs of life' have not grown weaker with the increase of. . . .'
       'There must have been an idea stronger than any misery, famine, torture, plague, leprosy, and all that hell, which mankind could not have endured without that idea, which bound men together, guided their hearts, and fructified the 'springs of life.'  Show me anything like such a force in our age of vices and railways. . . .I should say of steamers and railways, but I say vices and railways, because I'm drunk but truthful.  Show me any idea binding mankind together to-day with anything like the power it had in those centuries.  And dare to tell me that the 'springs of life' have not been weakened and muddied beneath the 'star,' beneath the network in which men are enmeshed.  And don't try to frighten me with your prosperity, your wealth, the infrequency of famine, and the rapidity of the means of communication.  There is more wealth, but there is less strength.  There is no uniting idea;  everything has grown softer, everything is limp, and every one is limp!  We've all, all of us grown limp. . . .But that's enough.  That's not the point now.  The point is, honoured prince, whether we shouldn't see to getting the supper, that's being prepared for your visitors.'"  Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot, Part III, Chapter 4.  

Thanks to Google

    Estase needs to thank his awesome platform, Google, for claiming that a hard-core porn site was the main source of his readers.  You people really want to drive me into the arms of WordPress, don't you?

The Incommensurability Thesis

       Is it possible for government to do more than collect garbage and punish criminals?  Is it possible for government to, without becoming a totalitarian nightmare, be a pervading force in our lives, the kind of partnership in all human things Aristotle advocated?   The Incommensurability Thesis is the idea that there are ends for which society exists to satisfy, but which are of different essential types.  There is no way of transferring or exchanging the different classes of goods for one another.  Economic goods are not the only goods.

       Aristotle lists three types of goods.  The first are goods of the body, which would cover things like food and clothing.  Second are external goods, which would include property and personal belongings.  Third are goods of the soul, which would include virtue, knowledge and friendship.  The essence of the Incommensurability Thesis is that all three types of good are valuable, but they are incapable of being exchanged.  Someone shipwrecked on a desert island with several trunks of gold bullion will still die of starvation.  And, of course, neither goods of the body nor external goods can be swapped for the goods of the soul.

       One objection moderns might raise to this theory is that external goods might pay for an education.  While external goods might pay your tuition, one still has to study and work to gain knowledge.  It might also be pointed out that students can earn degrees without gaining much actual knowledge.  Theories of justice where wealth inequality figures heavily argue that wealth redistribution helps people achieve their life goals.  Earning a college degree might be a necessary condition for a job, but it is not a sufficient condition for a job.  Completing law school does not mean that you will get to practice law, for example.

        Aristotle illustrates this thus

"Certainly no one will dispute the propriety of that partition of goods which separates them into three classes, viz. external goods, goods of the body, and goods of the soul, or deny that the happy man must have all three.  For no one would maintain that he is happy who has not in him a particle of courage or temperance or justice or prudence, who is afraid of every insect which flutters past him, and will commit any crime, however great, in order to gratify his lust of meat or drink, who will sacrifice his dearest friend for the sake of half a farthing, and is as feeble and false in mind as a child or a madman."  Politics Book VII, Paragraphs 3-5.

       In discussing the bases for government, Aristotle weighs claims made based on wealth, nobility and ability.

"The rich claim because they have a greater share in the land, and land is the common element of the state;  also they are generally more trustworthy in contracts.  The free claim under the same title as the noble;  for they are nearly akin.  And the noble are citizens in a truer sense than the ignoble, since good birth is always valued in a man's own home and country.  Another reason is, that those who are sprung from better ancestors are likely to be better men, for nobility is excellence of race.  Virtue, too, may be truly said to have a claim, for justice has been acknowledged by us to be a social virtue, and it implies all others."  Politics Book III, Section 12, Paragraphs 2-4.

       With regards to strength, Aristotle says,

"For those who found their claims on wealth or family have no basis of justice;  on this principle, if any one person were richer than all the rest, it is clear that he ought to be the ruler of them.  In like manner he who is very distinguished by his birth ought to have the superiority over all those who claim on the ground that they are freeborn.  In an aristocracy, or government of the best, a like difficulty occurs about virtue;  for if one citizen be better than the other members of the government, however good they may be, he too, upon the same principle of justice, should rule over them.  And if the people are to be supreme because they are stronger than the few, then if one man, or more than one, but not a majority, is stronger than the many, they ought to rule, and not the many." Politics Book III, Section 13, Paragraphs 7-8.

       Aristotle makes it clear that real justice transcends class interests when he says,

"And whereas justice implies a relation to persons as well as to things, and a just distribution, as I have already said in the Ethics, embraces alike persons and things, they acknowledge the equality of the things, but dispute about the merit of the persons, chiefly for the reason which I have just given--because they are bad judges in their own affairs;  and, secondly, because both the parties to the argument are speaking of a limited and partial justice, but imagine themselves to be speaking of absolute justice." Politics Book III, Paragraph 3.

       Skill, not wealth or birth, should be the basis of external goods.

"But, surely, if this is true, the complexion or height of a man, or any other advantage, will be a reason for his obtaining a greater share of political rights.  The error here lies upon the surface, and may be illustrated from the other arts and sciences.  When a number of flute-players are equal in their art, there is no reason why those of them who are better born should have better flutes given to them;  for they will not play any better on the flute, and the superior instrument should be reserved for him who is the superior artist.  If what I am saying is still obscure, it will be made clearer as we proceed.  For if there were a superior flute player who was far inferior in birth and beauty, although either of these may be a greater good than the art of flute playing, and persons gifted with these qualities may excel the flute-player in a greater ratio than he excels them in his art, still he ought to have the best flutes given to him, unless the advantages of wealth and birth contribute to excellence in flute-playing, which they do not.  Moreover, upon this principle any good may be compared with any other.  For if a given height, then height in general is more excellent than virtue, all things will be commensurable {which is absurd};  for if a certain magnitude is greater than some other, it is clear that some other will be equal."Politics Book III, Section 12, Paragraphs 3-6.

       Great ability is a threat to both those who impose tyranny or perfect equality, both of which systems cannot abide those who are exceptional.  Aristotle tells the story of a Corinthian tyrant to illustrate this.

"The story is that Periander, when the herald was sent to ask counsel of him, said nothing, but only cut off the tallest ears of corn till he had brought the field to a level.  The herald did not know the meaning of the action, but came and reported what he had seen to Thrasybulus, who understood that he was to cut off the principal men in the state;  and this is a policy not only expedient for tyrants or in practice confined to them, but equally necessary in oligarchies and democracies." Politics Book III, Section 1284, Paragraphs 12-18.

"Thus at Athens Peistratus led a faction against the men of the plain, and Theagenes at Megara slaughtered the cattle of the wealthy, which he found by the river side where they had put them to graze.  Dionysius, again, was thought worthy of the tyranny because he denounced Daphnaeus and the rich;  his enmity to the nobles won for him the confidence of the people.  Changes also take place from the ancient to the latest form of democracy;  for where there is a popular election of the magistrates and no property qualification, the aspirants for office get hold of the people, and continue at last even to set them above the laws.  A more or less complete cure for this state of things is for the separate tribes, and not the whole people, to elect the magistrates."Politics Book V, Section 1305, Paragraphs 9-11.

       Aristotle's theory of society is that a transcendence of interests between classes is the definition of Justice.  Justice does not mean mere survival or the prevention of injustice.
       Our good of the soul, Friendship, is the basis of society.  The end of politics is "a happy and honourable life."  For the majority to despoil the minority is a violation of justice.
       In conclusion, the problem of modern politics is assuming that the ultimate goods in society are economic.  The neglect of goods of the soul is one reason for the basic confusion of modern politics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Meritricious NBA

        When the whole kneeling for the National Anthem controversy led many to boycott the NFL.  Far more deserving of a boycott is the pusillanimous NBA, which has entirely too much sympathy for the Communist slave masters in Beijing.  When Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted out support for the people of Hong Kong in their struggle for freedom, the miserable NBA pressured Morey to delete the tweet, and sent out a bootlick to fawn to the Chinese government.  The equally pathetic ESPN acted as though Morey was an ignorant clod for recognizing totalitarian tyranny for what it is.

New Republic Conservatives

   When Estase was an undergraduate, he noticed a difference in the attitude of the Nation and New Republic towards President Clinton.  Nation saw Clinton as an unprincipled opportunist--someone who couldn't be trusted to stand on principle for anything.  Clinton's iffy environmental record and support for DOMA bear out the Nation's view of Clinton.  New Republic had the Tabitha Soren view of the Clintons.  Assuming that the antiwar generation was infallible, New Republic happily overlooked Whitewater and other signs of the Clintons' dishonesty.  Blind adulation was the New Republic's attitude toward Team Billary.
       If anyone wants to see what he Republican version of New Republic looks like, they need look no further than AM radio, Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News.  Loathe to say anything critical of Orange Blatherskite, these news sources come up with tu quoque on a scale never formerly thought possible.  Trump's inability to pick staff who hold their post for more than a year is of no concern.  While O.B. is in trouble for seeking dirt on Joe Biden from Ukraine, the oblivious Trump doubles down by repeating his impropriety with China!  The response of the New Republic right is to act as though Biden's potential abuses of power absolve Trump from misusing Executive power!
     Never before have Republicans had so low a bar for their office-holders.  Pointing to Democratic malfeasance is now a cover for open defiance of the public trust. 
       While it may be proper to pressure foreign governments for information about terrorists, this is of use of Executive power for public protection.  What O.B. is doing with Ukraine and China is entirely different.  This is use of Executive power for Trump's PERSONAL BENEFIT.
       By this time, the response of the right-wing Outrage Machine against the legitimate qualms of Mitt Romney (whose conservative bona fides go further back than 2015) are a sadly predictable response.  As are the memes claiming that attacks on our lawless president are attacks on conservative America.  This is just how much of a stranglehold New Republic Republicans have over the conservative movement.

Animo et Facto

       Francis Bacon said we believe nothing so much as that which we wish to believe.  After eight years of Oh Blah Blah, Estase yearned for a president who didn't make extensive use of executive orders and presidential fiat.  He thought Glenn Beck was like him in wanting a Frodo president--someone who would take the Ring of excessive presidential power created by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and then expanded by FDR, and throw it in a volcano.  To keep the business of the Dittohead Right, Glenn Beck now sings the praises of a Gollum president--someone who sits in a darkened cave where he sees only the shadows of his imagined success, clinging to Imperial power, repeating the words, "My precious!"

       Thus, the chasm between intention and reality becomes apparent.  Republicans thought they were electing a conservative super-patriot, and have actually empowered a statist who is less conservative than George W. Bush.  But you would never know this from the corrupt conservative media;  too afraid to tell the Right the truth for fear of losing listeners or viewers, they heap adulation on the same kind of autocrat they just spent eight years condemning.

Philosophy, R.I.P.

       Those who have followed my blogs for any length of time know I quoted Allen Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind.  Bloom's book diagnosed the problems with Heidegger, Critical Theory, the Frankfurt School, and what we now know as identity politics.  These trends have now become the dominant thread in American universities.  So much so that when Estase mentioned this book on a philosophy page on Facebook, another user (no doubt one of our mandarin class, entrusted with vulnerable young minds), accused him of saying that the book claimed the Frankfurt School was making everyone gay, and called him an idiot.
         This is what our philosophy departments have devolved into.

Why Liberation Theology is Heresy

       Marxism teaches that man's brokenness can be fixed by communal property.  Augustinian Christianity teaches that man's brokenness can be fixed by Christ.  These positions are fundamentally irreconcilable.  Any Pope that recieves a crucifix where the corpus is on a hammer and sickle is a false teacher.

Pro-Abortion Jacobins

       The same state of Killinois that created some of the most liberal abortion laws in America also made it illegal to smoke with children in the car.  While Drag Queen Story Hour grooms children for molestation, the fine Irish homosexual Robert O'Roarke (who supports third-trimester abortion) drops an F bomb over a baby being shot in the face.  To further emphasize the left's strong emphasis on human life, NBC Universal is releasing a movie wherein rich liberals hunt working-class conservatives.  Make the guillotine red again, indeed.

Stupid Comparison of the Day (Complete with Economic Hogwash)

       Cognitive dissonance (or rank economic ignorance) is at work when Orange Blatherskite simultaneously claims he is master of a booming economy, and says that the Federal Reserve needs to cut interest rates.  If the economy were actually doing well, basic economics says that interest rates should go up.  Some point to the decreasing value of the stock market.  The stock market rose to such heights only because lowered interest rates killed the bond market.  
           Everything above is obvious to anyone who actually understands economics.  The President apparently said that he didn't know who the bigger enemy to our economy was--the Chairman of the Fed or Chinese President Eleven.   Huh?  The President thinks the Chinese are such an imminent threat that he destroys American commodity exports a la Jimmy Carter to "fight" them, and now he implies that the Chairman of the Fed is worse than the dictator of a Communist regime?  This moment of stupidity was brought to you by the letters "O" and "B."

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 
Things fall apart;  the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!  Hardly are those words out 
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight:  somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again;  but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come around at last, 
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W.B. Yeats, 1921

Revolution Without Bullets

       Legal systems develop over time as nations enshrine their customs and adapt to changing circumstances.  Letting large numbers of immigrants into a nation is a revolutionary act because they bring foreign ideas and customs and are unlikely to conform to existing laws.  It takes time to assimilate immigrants into thinking and acting like the nationals who are already there.
       Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is a perfect example.  She has brought far-left opinions and hatred for Jews to America.  And because Oh Blah Blah brought hundreds of thousands of Somali Muslims to our shores, Rep. Ilhan Omar sits in our national legislature, where she will warp the laws created by Congress.  Hope and change meant putting a hateful leftist married to her own brother into a position of power.

One Maxim

       Estase hasn't blogged in a really long time, and has only one thing to add to current discussions.  

The opposite of an error isn't the truth;  it is the opposite error.

Low Testosterone Conservatism

       Machissimo is one of the defining characteristics of the post-Trump right.  Would-be tough guys like Mark Levin and Sean Hannity act like thirteen-year-old boys in a locker room.  Their George S. Patton posturing gets mighty old.  The Alt Right likes to dismiss their opponents as "low-T conservatives."  I guess that the people I grew up venerating like William F. Buckley and George F. Will look like nervous old ladies to those who learned their principles from shock jocks like Michael Savage.
        The granddaddy of conservative thought in the English-speaking world is Edmund Burke, who like his similar American counterpart, John Adams, was a learned gentleman.  Isaac Kramnick's 70s biography called Burke a homosexual;  how do you get more low-T than that?  Burkean conservatism is something that very few wave the flag for, and none of those people are on Fox News.

A Never Trumper Thanks Liberals

       Being a Never Trumper means that one always has to explain and justify oneself to other conservatives.  Typical accusations are of trying to ingratiate oneself to liberals, or of having impossible standards of purity when it comes to Trump's lamentable life choices.  George F. Will is an "elitist" who is "bitter" and "out-of-touch."  People who thought Paul Ryan a better conservative than Trump are just plain fools.
         The verbal abuse from the left includes the name of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which might as well be called the White Trash Law Center.  Originally formed to fight actual racists, the SPLC is now weaponized against pro-lifers.  Apparently, people who oppose abortion are white trash now.   Then comes this:

So we can now see that the left thinks everyone who rejected the demonic Hellbeast known as H-> is white trash.  And that the former Whigs who opposed slavery were white trash as well.  After all, the Republican party was formed by poor whites (easily distinguished from the fine slaveholding gentry who elected the Democrats of the 1860s).  Nancy Isenberg makes it so much harder to find fault with President Trump, and remain credible as a conservative in 2019.  The dismissal of a wide swath of Americans as white trash is amazingly arrogant, and enough to bring out the Dale Gribble in Estase.  I can see why a book like this was nominated for an award.  The NPR liberals must love Nancy Isenberg, as should President Trump.  Isenberg reinforces every trope of the Trump machine about "elitists" and the "establishment" who hate ordinary Americans.

The Once and Future Soviet Union

   Vladimir Putin's hero is the bloodthirsty tyrant Josef Stalin.  Estase has argued for some time that the current Russian state is marking time until its population have forgotten the U.S.S.R., and will then resume its role as a Communist/totalitarian state.  Russia's closest strategic partner is Communist China, and its role as a bolster to the failed regime of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela shows that Russia is still a Communist state at heart.
       With these things said, it's hard to understand why the American left is hysterical about Vladimir Putin.  Shouldn't Sean Penn be hanging out with him or something?

She Guevara

       There was a time when realism was a valued trait in politics.  The worst thing you could accuse a politician of was of having utopian dreams.
       Of course, the ultimate utopians were Karl Marx, and his disciple Vladimir Lenin.  The utopianism of Marx and Lenin led to the violence of Beria and Che Guevara.
       Those who were born after 1991 forget the horrors of Communism, mistaking Che Guevara for a hero.  Thus, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez becomes the darling of the extreme left.  Every American could be given a Ferrari for the cost of her insane Green New Deal.  She Guevara derides moderation as a basic concept, showing that today's Democratic Party is one where the Girondins have been purged by the Jacobins.

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

       The conservative movement used to have really pure ideas about the limited powers of the Presidency.  Then it embraced someone who idolized dictators and strongmen, and things went out the window.

There are several points of comparison between the pissed off British electorate of 1770 that inspired Edmund Burke's Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents and the segment of the American public who find Citizen Kane attractive.   The British rogue John Wilkes was the Donald Trump of his day.  His damning sin was bucking the Earl of Bute, but what he was denied Parliament for was his insult to George III in North Briton #45.  The first time Wilkes was denied his seat, the Middlesex electors were at least allowed to elect a replacement.  The second time, the ministry named a Colonel Luttrell to fill Wilkes' spot.

        The grievances of the British in 1770 were the weak legislature caused by an intrusive executive power (namely, Lord Bute and the court faction), the fact that competent leaders were unwilling to enter office because of the undermining of ministries (as happened with Pitt the elder and Lord Rockingham), and a public feeling that the executive was overwhelming the legislature.

       The grievances of the Trump faction today are similar.  They include a pushover Congress that does everything the President asks, Congressional leaders who are scapegoats for executive programs, and a public uninterested in empowering Congress.

       The problem with the backers of Citizen Kane is that they want to deal with an emasculated Congress, not by restoring to proper functions of Congress (e.g. by returning to actual budgets, rather than continuing resolutions;  an end to finances being designed in the White House), but by replacing one autocratic President with another autocratic President. . . .Virtually no position Trump takes is based on facts, reflection or experience.  Limited government and constitutionalism are meaningless to him.  All Trump promises to be is a different type of autocrat. . . .So, unlike the British in 1770, there exists today in America discontent, but a strange, incoherent discontent that aims to remedy a disorder by the same disorder.

       Estase wrote that on his old blog Q.E.D. before the election, and unfortunately, events have proceeded accordingly.  Orange Blatheskite has relied on Presidential Decrees and National Emergencies to achieve what he cannot by legitimate means.   

 

 

 

Pot, Meet Kettle!

       The People's Republic of Illinois at work.  The above was mailed out in a piece of mail from the Secretary of State's office.  Political propaganda mailed out at taxpayer expense.  Estase isn't positive, but he believes that Ameren is actually a nonprofit--previously known as CIPS.
       At any rate, it's just rich for the State of Killinois to complain about utility rates, seeing as how the General Assembly never tires of imposing new taxes to fritter away on whatever nonsense they think up.

Is American Politics Mere Entertainment?

          NBA referee Tim Donaghy apparently called excessive fouls to throw basketball games in favor of teams that he and his pals were betting on.  Donaghy defends himself by claiming that the NBA isn't real basketball, like college teams play.
           The idea that pro basketball is as real as pro wrestling might not sit so well with many, but has it ever occurred to many Americans that their political system is a fixed game?
           The Court of King's Bench (AKA the Praetors) are supposed to be the referees of the American government.  Ever since the 30s, their role has become that of a super-legislature, achieving through their dictate what Congress cannot do.  On everything from the unceasing ability of the Federal government to tax and regulate (Wickard v. Filburn) to striking down legitimate laws the States made concerning abortion, King's Bench does far more than tell the law.   The Federal Judiciary in general is the proudest bastion of the American left.
       In light of Tim Donaghy calling fouls to throw games, his claims that his actions don't matter because the NBA is entertainment, and not a real game, and the unnerving similarity between King's Bench and the way Donaghy officiated basketball games, one comes to a sobering conclusion.  Is American politics a real competition, or just entertainment?

The New Frontiers of Choice