Posted on 04/26/2018 6:27:33 PM PDT by firebrand
< snip of beginning>
Goldberg’s answer is so simple it seems too easy, and yet so difficult it seems unachievable. We need to teach and experience gratitude for what we have been given, which means reacquainting ourselves with the philosophical and scientific roots of the Miracle and then passing them on to our posterity. So much is arrayed against this effort, and yet we Americans, we tribal Americans, do long to belong to the American tribe.
In his pathbreaking book, Goldberg makes it clear all we need do to find our place is to understand that we are the beneficiaries of a great tradition that not only speaks the truth about us, but has rewarded us with gifts once beyond imagining. This is the book of the year.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
That might have been about jacket blurbs, if I remember right. A disgrace, I admit.
However, there is much more to culture than being relatively free to buy and sell what one pleases.
I know we are all supposed to believe that Western Europe is hopelessly socialist, but all of their economies are based on private ownership of corporations. Yes they have more taxes (usually on the citizens) and yes they have more regulations and more parts of their economies nationalized (e.g. health care), but they are not textbook socialists.
It's really just a matter of degree rather than of kind right now between the American economy and the European economy.
We conservatives have pretty much lost every battle in the culture war. We are winning small skirmishes with regard to tighter regulations on abortion, maintaining most of our gun rights, etc. However, we have lost the major battles on abortion, homosexuality, drugs, immigration, English-Only, privatized health care, privatized retirement plans, etc.
I see folks like Jonah more quickly making amends with the progressives so long as taxes and regulations aren't exorbitant and the companies that provide him speakers' fees not being nationalized.
The major culture war going on right now is that over free speech. Hate speech laws have taken effect in Western Europe and Canada. They will soon be pushed here with ever greater fervor. This will put a huge damper on free trade as anyone who disagrees with the increasingly progressive status quo will be shunned and denied the ability to fully participate in the free market. It will be a case of shutting up, going along, or being kicked to the curb.
I'm sure Jonah will always be able to triangulate his beliefs such that he stays on the right side of the line that one dare not cross, but most of us on FR will be hard pressed to follow his example.
I agree, and that’s why it is so mystifying to me. Both of these guys, and Erickson as well, clearly see the danger that the West is facing. But their bitter animosity toward Trump and his supporters blinds them to the only course of action that can reverse this decline.
If the never-Trumpers could just crawl off their limb, and the GOPe would ever realize that we hang together or hang separately, we could form a united front that would steamroll the left.
Evidently he touches on the subject of identity politics, which could be worse because of the identity phenomenon than the politics. Some of us are dividing into little tribes based on superficial adjectives rather than glorying in being part of the tribe America.
Hope I’m not misinterpreting. I’ll find out when I read it.
That has nothing to do with socialism, except that socialists love it when they divide us. Makes it easier for them to conquer us and make us little slaves of the state.
I kind of feel sorry for the Never-Trumpers. They’ve been against him so long, for all the wrong reasons, and now they are beginning to see that he is the best president for these times, possibly the best president.
This could be the way to mend fences. They can still hate him for other reasons, but the ideas embraced here seem to be Trumpian ideas. A bridge, perhaps.
Also it seems to cover 18th-century enlightenment, which has been much maligned by some but is the bedrock of the ideas on which our nation was founded. It doesn’t have to lead to the New World Order. That is a malicious distortion. By some.
Isn’t Podhoretz another neverTrumper?
The identitarians on the left are very much idea-focused; ideologues even. They are united by a common set of ideals that are in major part Marxist. In this regard they share an ideological focus with those conservatives like Goldberg who think of America as an idea.
The identitarians on the right are a different matter. They are tied to visceral things such as places, races, genetics, etc. And they actually want to form tribes, while both conservative and progressive idealists want their views to be shared by all humanity. And they seem willing to wage war to strongly urge people to their respective positions.
I understand why the average Joe would rather place his faith in something tangible rather than some vague notion which can morph over time (e.g. "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare"). I also understand why placing ones faith in philosophical principles is the wiser choice in the long run as a good set of principles can apply to all people in all places across all time.
However right now there are major disagreements about what set of principles is the proper one. And there are masses of people in other places coming here and bringing their inferior principles with them. People from countries where you can't trust the police who don't trust our police. People from countries used to higher levels of graft and corruption. People from countries where greater levels of government dependency are expected.
We need some sort of temporary identitarianism in order to maintain some vestiges of what America was and hoped to be a century or so ago. Maybe its just that we all need to agree that bacon is a good thing ... and it should never be made using turkey. I know that's silly, but the idea of an American is such a vague notion now. There are some that even celebrate the fact that there really is no such thing as an American. That anyone anywhere can just say "I'm American" and presto-chango he/she/it is an American.
If Jonah is claiming that for someone to be a true American they need to believe in the free market system and the rule of law and pretty much everything else is open for debate, then he's on a path to oblivion.
I think The Enlightenment is the West's Shakespearean flaw. It is the thing that got us where we are, and the thing that will ultimately be our undoing.
The Industrial Revolution had its critics from the very beginning, especially among the Romantics and the early stirrings of a labor movement.
Another high point in criticism was in the wake of WWI where humanity saw the great strides in scientific knowledge being used to create ever more efficient and impersonal ways to slaughter people with machine guns and poison gas. Eliot's The Wasteland is a great poetic critique of the dark side of the Enlightenment.
There were of course worries when atomic weaponry was developed, and now many are worried about runaway nano-technology, AI robots, drones, etc.
But even ignoring the worst case scenarios we see that technology separates us from the Earth, separates us from one another, atomizes society, and allows us to surf the world wide web in order to find those few people who agree with us on most issues.
The Enlightenment also advanced individualism over the interests of the community. Everyone has his own opinion, and lots of them are counterproductive to social and even technological progress: the Enlightenment creating its own enemies like Luddites, Flat-earthers, and UFOlogists who spout off on YouTube using the latest mic technology.
I know that libertarians especially revere individualism, but socialists love individualists: they are easier to pick off one-by-one. I lived in Colorado in the 90's a state which prided itself on being filled with individuals. Individuals who stuck to themselves and kept to their own business and then woke up one day to find themselves corralled in by California emigres who now run the government and the myriad covenant communities that dictate exactly what colors of paint you can use on your house, where you can park your car, and where you can stick that gun range where all the nasty noise comes from.
I guess I come more from the school of Russell Kirk and am a bit more pessimistic about the effects of technology. I love classic cars, but cars made it easier for people to get out of town rather than confront their problems, made it easier for teens to discover extramarital sex, easier to go somewhere to get drugs, easier to break free from the bonds of community and express their individualism in sometimes productive but often destructive ways. I'm glad we have this freedom, but it has a price especially when there are lots of people who are still going through life mostly on instinct and not following a well-thought-out ideology such as the one that Goldberg holds to.
I think you might be dividing things up more than they need to be divided and confusing unforeseen cultural events with the principles that did not necessarily have to lead to them. Liberty gives us the ability to be wrong. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be freedom.
If it gives light, it is enlightenment. It can never be refuted. Once we see the necessary truth of something, no one can ever convince us that it is not true. We can no more refute TRUE, undistorted 18th-century enlightenment than we can refute 1 + 1 = 2, once we understand it.
Without freedom, we can’t know right from wrong and act according to what we believe. Some people will choose the wrong thing, but we will never again (after the Inquisition) be like the Muslims and make the mistake of thinking that because we feel something is right we must enforce it on everyone. We now SEE that that would be wrong, and is wrong.
The need for human liberty, once understood, is irrefutable.
We can never un-understand it.
A friend of mine who was very well educated in a yeshiva told me that he sees mathematics as fiction, because it doesn’t really exist. He has no concept of a priori truth. Therefore he doesn’t see God as logical and necessary and an absolute truth. He told me, sad to say, that he doesn’t believe in anything, he just knows a lot of things.
If we were educated properly, we understand the concept of enlightenment. I sometimes think we can have too much rote learning and not enough wisdom.
I think of the boy whose teacher told the class to memorize one particular chapter in a spiritual book. When the boy went to class the next day, he was called on to recite the chapter. He said, “I’m sorry. I was only able to memorize the first sentence. I didn’t have time to memorize the rest.” The teacher was very strict and screamed at the boy and called him lazy and threatened to punish him. Then finally he said, “So recite the first sentence.” The boy said, “’Do not become angry.’”
Yes, but a lot of New Yorkers were and still are. We saw the younger, only partially formed Trump for so many years, all the missteps and shallowness of his younger days. We had the New York tabloids and everyone knows the power of the press.
Trump is on a journey, as all should be, and it is hard for some to make the adjustment. Cognitive dissonance and all that. Loss of face. But as he continues to show his strength many will come to appreciate it and to understand his sometimes strange sense of humor.
Whites getting up off their knees would do it but it doesn't seem that is going to happen.
bmp
Cucks gonna cuck.
If John Podhoretz gets it....
We probably don't need it.
“...they are actually on Trump’s side.”
Just like Linda Grahamnesty.
It would be quicker to say “He has to go back.” Th chattering class ‘conservatives’ couldn’t even conserve women’s restrooms.
Or female chastity or the nuclear family.
“They both deal with ideas, not with politics.”
That isn’t true. They attacked Trump throughout 2016.
Yes, but they are not politicians but journalists, both brilliant and mainly concerned with ideas, not with straight political issues.
I must say I’m kind of disappointed that no one really gets the point. I will report back when I have read the book and will direct my post to everyone who has contributed to this thread. Many thanks for posting on this.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.