Great food for thought. I just wish we lived in less than corrupt and narcissistic times. I do not blame the breakdown of America on our forefathers who through grit, survival and optimism created a government and society that worked well helping us advance through the Civil War and two World Wars. I blame the corruption and lack of cohesion on Global Marxism and narcissistic psychopathology this ideology needs to flourish. I blame the terroristic style strategies and the breakdown of moral and family using strategies needed to rule and control. We were blessed to live under the influence of men and women who could read, think, moralize and build. Who were willing to sacrifice their lives for a better future for others. The evil and corruption wrought by the thinking of one stupid, lazy and immoral man is mind numbing. The road to serfdom is paved by his ability to invert what he personally ultimately morally was bankrupt in; Innovation, hard work, creativity and building a prosperous future. The road to serfdom is paved by sloth and laziness. This was the only way Marx knew how to live and then justified it by tearing down a society that achieved what he was unable to achieve.
Do you just make shit up as you go along? Good grief. You’re so pedantic and it’s so obvious. That’s okay. Keep working on it and one of these days you’ll actually start making sense. I hope soon.
Such non sensical mumbo jumbo. The guy was a bum, lived and died a bum. He didn’t take responsibility for anything and inverted everything good, truthful and beautiful. He used his life to resurrect Lucifer and his philosophy has been a scourge on humanity. This is not projection, this is fact.
Look Elon Musk calls reporters NPC's. That is a critique of Marx if you will in so far as he was also a reporter. So there is something about being a reporter that is NPC or passive. In the same way the judge(or the professional version of the impartial spectator) is even more removed from the arena than the lawyer, and the clients are the active fighters. Marx has a philosophical method for judging and a somewhat activist legal side. But technically the achievements of the demands of the communist manifesto were probably Christian or a product of a sort of democratic movement pace deToqueville or Lincoln. Also Tocqueville says and I think Marx agreed that outside of Aristocracy or in Democracy it is hard to "pin" down a great man as the cause of sociological change. Arguably if Marx "resurrected lucifer" you are speaking liberation theology or writing your own fictional account.
One would only project that on Marx if one was a child and he was emblematic of being an "existential adult". At least some of the "existential adults" would question your theory of proximate cause with respect to Marx. "narcissistic psychopathology" is just a modern buzz word for childish selfishness or a really strong ego. Natural Law will still take care of this, unless the person is extremely wealthy. If the person is wealthy, relatively intelligent has a few virtues and still has narcissistic psychopathology they will actually get mugged by lawyers constantly. If they manage to get all of their lawyers disbarred or otherwise corrupt them then they can become president of the United States. Is it Global Marxism/Socialism(Karl Marx conjured on a Ouija board by a solitary ageing Senator from Vermont), or "Casino Capitalism" (A surveillance state+ rigged/house edge games of chance). Interestingly both the Ouija board and Boardwalk(Monopoly) are teenage games sold by Hasbro. If your ego or selfishness not correctly understood is strong enough you will find plenty of children to elect you and also plenty of system and even "existential adults" to pitch you a mash of policy.
Gordon Wood and others might wonder at your (or Tocqueville') characterization of the American Republic as a tabula rasa. There was, they might point out, this very deep and very long history as a British colony steeped in British culture and customs. Did the Revolution sweep all of it away, they would probably ask?
Even if you go with Gordon Wood it will always be a characterization, i.e. something in speech or a narrative. You can have the unvarnished Locke or the unvarnished Bible and probably both interpreted practically or eisegesically, as opposed to exegetically(as a profession within a university) Whenever you go back in time and try to do something scholarly, or even if you try to do it as a lawyer or even a reporter typically the behavior of the human actors does not fall into your boxes and its articulation feels pendantic, or missing in pieces. As if the attempt to capture the whole is the task of Sisythus/Sheer absurdity. The American Exceptionalism of DiA in Tocqueville is built upon prisons. The revolution briefly swept away British Culture, but the Brits came back in and impressed sailors, always claiming that it had citizens with certain "duties". For a time there was free trade with no real conception of "smuggling", the only thing one had to worry about was being seized or re-impressed in the Royal Navy. Jefferson was the first to crack down on "smuggling" when he tried his hand at an Embargo, in part to avoid this war. But 1812 came. According to the more geographical view of Tocqueville and others, the question is distance between "civilization" or some derivative of British culture and customs or the common law.
"Did the Revolution sweep all of it away, they would probably ask?" What would they answer to a brief monologue on Aaron Burr? That is modern science can disprove Locke on the mind being tabula rasa, if one wants to dig under(with technology) the general level of common sense observation/stipulation. In the same way one could probably prove that the American Republic or its geographic extension was not tabula rasa, but if you flee New York and go to Blennerhassett Island, that is in a sense functionally a tabula rasa reset. Tocqueville sees the American Republic as Tabula Rasa when he looks into "crime and punishment" because of this radical capacity for geographic forum shopping/evading jurisdiction or getting on a horse and ending up in South Carolina by the time the long arm of the law thinks you are near the Ohio River. Every time various actors did try to prosecute Aaron Burr they lost. Culture and Customs are dependent upon a sort of infrastructure, constitutional, cultural and extended.
The democratic socialism or "majority values" which oftentimes prevailed as a necessity in small communities was reflected in the federalism of prisons. Primarily NY vs. Philly. But the open geography and "my own private Idaho(or Blennerhassett Island functionally speaking) allowed self-exile into the west, or south or even the Canadian North without much of a passport. The closer you get to the founding or back in time, the more Canada is the 51st state. That is there is nothing of my own "private Idaho" which might not be a "private Saskatchewan". Not everyone followed an Oregon Trail dogmatically...even Lewis and Clark who were tasked with doing so sort of wandered in a path bent by nature.
The Intellectual can perhaps move from Brown to Toronto, the redneck from Idaho to Saskatchewan. But there are certain government agencies that might impose identities such as being "canadian" or being "american" upon you. Why? So that you don't evade criminal prosecution? You must stay in your "prison"? "Democracy in America" by virtue of geography and regardless of Tocqueville's being French, almost has to have applications between Canada and the United States more than France...I would think.
Rand argued that rational self-interest is a moral virtue. Unlike the claimed “immoral” consequence of self-interest – i.e., naked “selfishness,” where one becomes focused on whatever has become one’s immediate and “out-of-context” desires - desires divorced from rational guidance, the "horizon" of rational self-interest is broad and far off, while the horizon of “naked” selfishness is narrow and always right in front of one’s nose!
Rand also argued that “reason must be man’s only absolute.” When it becomes so, one’s horizon Is never just “in front of one’s nose,” but is found through their rational vision appearing along the far-off horizon. “Selfishness” becomes rationally understood and held in esteem because it becomes rationally exhibited, not emotionally driven. Part and parcel of this type of world view produces a natural benevolence, as it is understood that such rational “selfishness” is shared by others! It becomes an example of Rand’s “brotherhood of values.”
This is an exceptionally good article. Presented in this fashion the defense of Tocqueville, or perhaps the accusation against him, is that he takes what is somewhat by nature and "clothes it". That is the strength of Tocqueville could simply be a sort of "childhood" into a sort of "adulthood". Some worry that the America we have today politically at least is essentially a peak "high school" vs. a peak "college".
"By suggesting that self-interest is only “well understood” and good when it serves the interests of others, Tocqueville implicitly accepts the traditional moral premise that service to others is the highest moral good and the standard of moral evaluation."
Maybe but an equally cheeky take would be: The customer is always right. Thus moral evaluation is reduced to what someone might pay for it. Equality holds that the subjectivity of self and the subjectivity of others can be "well understood" simultaneously. That is in early American democracy or Capitalism, man is both a producer and a consumer.
"In Tocqueville’s view, the individual’s interest is validated only insofar as it aligns with the interest of the group. In other words, Tocqueville has constructed a moral half-way house between selfishness and selflessness. To change the metaphor, the Frenchman is attempting to smuggle the moral philosophy of self-sacrifice through the back door of self-interest."
Unclear about the metaphor: the word "smuggle" only has a negative connotation if one accepts the goodness of a nation state or a large collective body that might have a Coast Guard or a lot of ICE agents. Arguably "smuggling" something is in fact pure free-trade. What sort of tariff or stamp act do you want to charge the Frenchman for such "smuggling"? Odd change of metaphor.
"From this banal state of existence would arise, Tocqueville feared, “an immense tutelary power” that would seek to take “charge of assuring” men of “their enjoyments and watching over their fate.” This soft, enervating despotism would resemble a form of “paternal power” that does not prepare “men for manhood,” but instead seeks to keep them in a state of perpetual “childhood.” This new form of despotism would willingly work “for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, [and] divides their inheritances.” Ironically, democratic individualism, once birthed in freedom, now slowly turned over its freedom to think, choose, and act to the faceless and always-scolding bureaucratic Nanny State."
Alternative explanations exist, also wouldn't this be "maternal power"? Aristotle says man acquires and woman preserves. So the metaphors of child and adult or man/woman, come about from an Administrative State that preserves. That is secular(in a 100 year or long term horizon sense). That is self-interest that is far-seeing is itself enough to create a bureaucracy(or corporation), and it would create such a bureaucracy for men/children who are born tabula rasa. Dividing inheritances=trusts. The Nanny State is a sort of trustee. For the most part we wander around in the rose colored glasses of being habituated as children, only touching upon a sort of existential adulthood as a tangent if at all. The Administrative State or the idea of the Judge/impartial spectator in Adam Smith is not really the "active" or child energy part. The acquisitive man/child (Ego) of selfishness with its childlike pretensions to knowledge power and personal importance vs. the existentially adult(which may not even be a life in being, or only allegorically one.) Note that we all sort of know that almost no member of congress that we can elect(talking democracy again?) is much more than a "child" or "teenager" with respect to the vastness of a single administrative agency, and we can't even elect the cabinet members who by comparison are also often childlike.
Great food for thought. I just wish we lived in less than corrupt and narcissistic times. I do not blame the breakdown of America on our forefathers who through grit, survival and optimism created a government and society that worked well helping us advance through the Civil War and two World Wars. I blame the corruption and lack of cohesion on Global Marxism and narcissistic psychopathology this ideology needs to flourish. I blame the terroristic style strategies and the breakdown of moral and family using strategies needed to rule and control. We were blessed to live under the influence of men and women who could read, think, moralize and build. Who were willing to sacrifice their lives for a better future for others. The evil and corruption wrought by the thinking of one stupid, lazy and immoral man is mind numbing. The road to serfdom is paved by his ability to invert what he personally ultimately morally was bankrupt in; Innovation, hard work, creativity and building a prosperous future. The road to serfdom is paved by sloth and laziness. This was the only way Marx knew how to live and then justified it by tearing down a society that achieved what he was unable to achieve.
Do you just make shit up as you go along? Good grief. You’re so pedantic and it’s so obvious. That’s okay. Keep working on it and one of these days you’ll actually start making sense. I hope soon.
Such non sensical mumbo jumbo. The guy was a bum, lived and died a bum. He didn’t take responsibility for anything and inverted everything good, truthful and beautiful. He used his life to resurrect Lucifer and his philosophy has been a scourge on humanity. This is not projection, this is fact.
Look Elon Musk calls reporters NPC's. That is a critique of Marx if you will in so far as he was also a reporter. So there is something about being a reporter that is NPC or passive. In the same way the judge(or the professional version of the impartial spectator) is even more removed from the arena than the lawyer, and the clients are the active fighters. Marx has a philosophical method for judging and a somewhat activist legal side. But technically the achievements of the demands of the communist manifesto were probably Christian or a product of a sort of democratic movement pace deToqueville or Lincoln. Also Tocqueville says and I think Marx agreed that outside of Aristocracy or in Democracy it is hard to "pin" down a great man as the cause of sociological change. Arguably if Marx "resurrected lucifer" you are speaking liberation theology or writing your own fictional account.
One would only project that on Marx if one was a child and he was emblematic of being an "existential adult". At least some of the "existential adults" would question your theory of proximate cause with respect to Marx. "narcissistic psychopathology" is just a modern buzz word for childish selfishness or a really strong ego. Natural Law will still take care of this, unless the person is extremely wealthy. If the person is wealthy, relatively intelligent has a few virtues and still has narcissistic psychopathology they will actually get mugged by lawyers constantly. If they manage to get all of their lawyers disbarred or otherwise corrupt them then they can become president of the United States. Is it Global Marxism/Socialism(Karl Marx conjured on a Ouija board by a solitary ageing Senator from Vermont), or "Casino Capitalism" (A surveillance state+ rigged/house edge games of chance). Interestingly both the Ouija board and Boardwalk(Monopoly) are teenage games sold by Hasbro. If your ego or selfishness not correctly understood is strong enough you will find plenty of children to elect you and also plenty of system and even "existential adults" to pitch you a mash of policy.
Gordon Wood and others might wonder at your (or Tocqueville') characterization of the American Republic as a tabula rasa. There was, they might point out, this very deep and very long history as a British colony steeped in British culture and customs. Did the Revolution sweep all of it away, they would probably ask?
Even if you go with Gordon Wood it will always be a characterization, i.e. something in speech or a narrative. You can have the unvarnished Locke or the unvarnished Bible and probably both interpreted practically or eisegesically, as opposed to exegetically(as a profession within a university) Whenever you go back in time and try to do something scholarly, or even if you try to do it as a lawyer or even a reporter typically the behavior of the human actors does not fall into your boxes and its articulation feels pendantic, or missing in pieces. As if the attempt to capture the whole is the task of Sisythus/Sheer absurdity. The American Exceptionalism of DiA in Tocqueville is built upon prisons. The revolution briefly swept away British Culture, but the Brits came back in and impressed sailors, always claiming that it had citizens with certain "duties". For a time there was free trade with no real conception of "smuggling", the only thing one had to worry about was being seized or re-impressed in the Royal Navy. Jefferson was the first to crack down on "smuggling" when he tried his hand at an Embargo, in part to avoid this war. But 1812 came. According to the more geographical view of Tocqueville and others, the question is distance between "civilization" or some derivative of British culture and customs or the common law.
"Did the Revolution sweep all of it away, they would probably ask?" What would they answer to a brief monologue on Aaron Burr? That is modern science can disprove Locke on the mind being tabula rasa, if one wants to dig under(with technology) the general level of common sense observation/stipulation. In the same way one could probably prove that the American Republic or its geographic extension was not tabula rasa, but if you flee New York and go to Blennerhassett Island, that is in a sense functionally a tabula rasa reset. Tocqueville sees the American Republic as Tabula Rasa when he looks into "crime and punishment" because of this radical capacity for geographic forum shopping/evading jurisdiction or getting on a horse and ending up in South Carolina by the time the long arm of the law thinks you are near the Ohio River. Every time various actors did try to prosecute Aaron Burr they lost. Culture and Customs are dependent upon a sort of infrastructure, constitutional, cultural and extended.
The democratic socialism or "majority values" which oftentimes prevailed as a necessity in small communities was reflected in the federalism of prisons. Primarily NY vs. Philly. But the open geography and "my own private Idaho(or Blennerhassett Island functionally speaking) allowed self-exile into the west, or south or even the Canadian North without much of a passport. The closer you get to the founding or back in time, the more Canada is the 51st state. That is there is nothing of my own "private Idaho" which might not be a "private Saskatchewan". Not everyone followed an Oregon Trail dogmatically...even Lewis and Clark who were tasked with doing so sort of wandered in a path bent by nature.
The Intellectual can perhaps move from Brown to Toronto, the redneck from Idaho to Saskatchewan. But there are certain government agencies that might impose identities such as being "canadian" or being "american" upon you. Why? So that you don't evade criminal prosecution? You must stay in your "prison"? "Democracy in America" by virtue of geography and regardless of Tocqueville's being French, almost has to have applications between Canada and the United States more than France...I would think.
I so enjoy your work!
Rand argued that rational self-interest is a moral virtue. Unlike the claimed “immoral” consequence of self-interest – i.e., naked “selfishness,” where one becomes focused on whatever has become one’s immediate and “out-of-context” desires - desires divorced from rational guidance, the "horizon" of rational self-interest is broad and far off, while the horizon of “naked” selfishness is narrow and always right in front of one’s nose!
Rand also argued that “reason must be man’s only absolute.” When it becomes so, one’s horizon Is never just “in front of one’s nose,” but is found through their rational vision appearing along the far-off horizon. “Selfishness” becomes rationally understood and held in esteem because it becomes rationally exhibited, not emotionally driven. Part and parcel of this type of world view produces a natural benevolence, as it is understood that such rational “selfishness” is shared by others! It becomes an example of Rand’s “brotherhood of values.”
This is an exceptionally good article. Presented in this fashion the defense of Tocqueville, or perhaps the accusation against him, is that he takes what is somewhat by nature and "clothes it". That is the strength of Tocqueville could simply be a sort of "childhood" into a sort of "adulthood". Some worry that the America we have today politically at least is essentially a peak "high school" vs. a peak "college".
"By suggesting that self-interest is only “well understood” and good when it serves the interests of others, Tocqueville implicitly accepts the traditional moral premise that service to others is the highest moral good and the standard of moral evaluation."
Maybe but an equally cheeky take would be: The customer is always right. Thus moral evaluation is reduced to what someone might pay for it. Equality holds that the subjectivity of self and the subjectivity of others can be "well understood" simultaneously. That is in early American democracy or Capitalism, man is both a producer and a consumer.
"In Tocqueville’s view, the individual’s interest is validated only insofar as it aligns with the interest of the group. In other words, Tocqueville has constructed a moral half-way house between selfishness and selflessness. To change the metaphor, the Frenchman is attempting to smuggle the moral philosophy of self-sacrifice through the back door of self-interest."
Unclear about the metaphor: the word "smuggle" only has a negative connotation if one accepts the goodness of a nation state or a large collective body that might have a Coast Guard or a lot of ICE agents. Arguably "smuggling" something is in fact pure free-trade. What sort of tariff or stamp act do you want to charge the Frenchman for such "smuggling"? Odd change of metaphor.
"From this banal state of existence would arise, Tocqueville feared, “an immense tutelary power” that would seek to take “charge of assuring” men of “their enjoyments and watching over their fate.” This soft, enervating despotism would resemble a form of “paternal power” that does not prepare “men for manhood,” but instead seeks to keep them in a state of perpetual “childhood.” This new form of despotism would willingly work “for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, [and] divides their inheritances.” Ironically, democratic individualism, once birthed in freedom, now slowly turned over its freedom to think, choose, and act to the faceless and always-scolding bureaucratic Nanny State."
Alternative explanations exist, also wouldn't this be "maternal power"? Aristotle says man acquires and woman preserves. So the metaphors of child and adult or man/woman, come about from an Administrative State that preserves. That is secular(in a 100 year or long term horizon sense). That is self-interest that is far-seeing is itself enough to create a bureaucracy(or corporation), and it would create such a bureaucracy for men/children who are born tabula rasa. Dividing inheritances=trusts. The Nanny State is a sort of trustee. For the most part we wander around in the rose colored glasses of being habituated as children, only touching upon a sort of existential adulthood as a tangent if at all. The Administrative State or the idea of the Judge/impartial spectator in Adam Smith is not really the "active" or child energy part. The acquisitive man/child (Ego) of selfishness with its childlike pretensions to knowledge power and personal importance vs. the existentially adult(which may not even be a life in being, or only allegorically one.) Note that we all sort of know that almost no member of congress that we can elect(talking democracy again?) is much more than a "child" or "teenager" with respect to the vastness of a single administrative agency, and we can't even elect the cabinet members who by comparison are also often childlike.