Political Views from the SCMC Thread

[_Mister Scratch]

Enough with the political blather from Loran.

Liz---if he cannot maintain the maturity necessary for topicality, please move the thread to the Off-Topic Forum, where, thanks to him, it has begun to go already.

[_Coggins7]

Can you give us some examples of "shallow materialist decadence" that somehow relates to libertarian isolationism? And, for that matter, some examples of "historical amnesia" that in any way relates to the same?

Oh, now I see. Your learning from Scratch aren't you. Well done. If you really, honestly don't comprehend what I'm talking about when I mention "shallow materialist decadence" with regard to modern American and western society, with particular emphasis on changes that have occurred since roughly the late Sixties, do you really expect me to believe your going to understand any examples I might be able to give you.

Historical amnesia? Our entire society is bathed in it. Gen X in particular terrifies me collectively speaking, because of its gross disdain for history and historical context. This decline began in my generation but has blossomed in the past couple of decades. Nehor is a textbook example of exactly this.

OK, I'll give you one little bite to chew on. Pornography. The exponential spread and popularity of pornography since the early Seventies, its second great wave of expansion during the Eighties due to the mass availability of the VCR, and its third wave into the internet, where its available to anyone, at anytime, for free in virtually unlimited quantity. This must be understood in conjunction with the eroticization of much of the mainstream pop entertainment media proper, to the point of cultural saturation. What are the priorities, intellectual and social, or a culture in which this kind of material has such wide and pervasive popularity and influence? why should I not term this as indicative of "shallow materialist decadence" in a cultural sense?

[_Runtu]

Except moderation in religion is frowned upon in the scriptures. Lukewarm members are supposed to be spewed out. Come to think of it, one of the charges against my ancestor FG Williams was that he was "lukewarm."

Moderation and being "lukewarm" have nothing to do with each other. Lukewarmness means tepid; it means that ones convictions, beliefs, or claimed principles are mealy, half baked, and rubbery, like Paine's "sunshine soldier". Moderation does not mean one cannot have total commitment and conviction, it means only that one does not push his principles beyond appropriate bounds. For example, the Word of Wisdom doesn't mean that one must be a vegetarian, not eat white sugar or candy, or that one assumes that his entire spiritual walk is fundamentally mediated by diet. I've met people who think in this way, and that is "extreme", meaning not that one does not commit to principle, but that one drives certain principles into self contradiction or banality. Another example is pacifism. All true Christians are against war, but the belief that Christianity implies pacifism, ie., the refusal to defend oneself or others from violence regardless of consequence, is not. This is why pacifism, as in the run up to WWII, always goes hand in hand with aggression. Pacifism, to take a term from the addiction literature, is an enabler to aggression. The principle of non-violence, or of being, as a general principle, against it, turns on itself and becomes evil when taken to an extreme.

Funny how I've read most of the folks you cited earlier. I used to read The Corner every morning, and I still like Victor Davis Hanson. I don't have as much time these days, and my interest in politics has faded a little.

I note that you denounce DeMan, Derrida, Barthes, and Foucault, among others. Have you read any of their stuff? Just curious. Derrida I find insufferable. It's telling that Gayatri Spivak's foreword to "Of Grammatology" is more lucid and useful than the book itself. I have to admit to being partial to DeMan (one of my professors referred to "DeManiacal deconstruction") and Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge is pretty good stuff. "A Lover's Discourse" is beautifully written and quite thought-provoking. Have you read Hayden White's "Metahistory"? That's another of my favorites. And I'm still a fan of Thomas Kuhn, though it seems less fashionable to say so these days.

[_Mister Scratch]

I note that you denounce DeMan, Derrida, Barthes, and Foucault, among others. Have you read any of their stuff? Just curious. Derrida I find insufferable. It's telling that Gayatri Spivak's foreword to "Of Grammatology" is more lucid and useful than the book itself.

And even that is a stretch.

[_Coggins7]

Coggins7 wrote:

Quote:
Did you finish the book? Or did you read it? Anyways, the point is that, as you yourself have indicated, that you "subsist" on a "steady and consistent diet and collection of conservative and Libertarian writings." So, you don't really *read* stuff that runs contrary to your thickheaded beliefs, you "finish" it. You are probably too old to change, Loran. You will go to your grave as a hardheaded, conspiracy-minded, far-right-wing, uneducated rube who happened to be into booze, fusion music, and karate. No one will ever see you as a serious thinker, because you are too freighted with that "steady and consistent diet" which you are incapable of criticizing. You have, in effect, brainwashed yourself. In the end, I guess you can find comfort in the fact that the Internet provides ample outlet for your Gomer Pyle-esque pseudo-intellectualism. I actually pity you in the fact that you will probably never feel validated as an "intellectually and philosophically serious" person. You will always be the butt of a very sad joke.




This is just a fine and dandy resting of my case for Mr. Scratch. He appears not to have actually read many of the posts I've written over some months--even the one's he cuts and pastes to support his, what are at all events, bigoted ravings.


What, pray tell, is it that you think I'm bigoted against, Loran? Your hick-ism? Your racism?

Quote:
Keep in mind: Scratch is a leftist;



No, I'm not a leftist, Loran.

And this is why I keep pounding you. You claim to want "philosophically and intellectually serious" conversation, but how is that possible when you trot out this howl of "your a leftist!" and then dispense with your usual barrage of clichéd stereotypes? You're going to have to let go of that rhetorical tactic, Loran.

Quote:
as such, his entire world view is, (and most of my conversations with him demonsttrate( primarily emotion based. Political and social leftism is one great public moral breast beating session combined with the anethemization of anyone who dares dissent from the dictates of the righteous. You will notice that Scratch doesn't allow me to speak for myself as to my own educational background or intellectual habits, but prefers to spin his own version from whole cloth.



No, I don't. I rely on the information which you yourself have provided, Mr. Pyle. It is *you* who "spins" everything. You trot out your label of "leftist," and that's it.

Quote:
So be it. Rational discourse with this individual has always been virtually impossible and still is.



And yet you keep engaging in it!

Quote:
I find it interesting that he pounds his chest regarding his own alleged intellectual gravitas while labelling me a hick, yet while I have read and am familiar with his intellectual icons, he has never read William Buckley, one of the major conservative intellectual leaders of the last century.



So what? Why should I care? Because you of all people, said so? I think not.

Quote:
He has also clearly never read Horowitz, and is utterly ignorant of his history and activities (calling David Horowitz a racist is positively side splitting.



I don't think I was the one calling him that... Didn't we come to that conclusion on the basis of a piece released by the anti-defamation league?

Quote:
Scratch clearly has no living idea of how this makes him look).



Sort of like how you were unaware how you're use of those FBI stats made you look like a raging, Confederate-flag-waving racist?

Quote:
He apparently has never read Von Mises, Heyek, Hazlitt, or Friedman. Has he read the work of Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, George Will, Charles Murray, John Q. Wilson, Marvin Olasky, Stephan Hayward, Victor Davis Hansen, Russel Kirk, Richard Pipes,



Do you mean Daniel Pipes?

Quote:
Robert Conquest, Peter Collier, or any of a large number of conservative and libertarian intellectuals, scholars, and academics? Does he read National Review, Commentary, or Policy Review, or peruse the writings of scholars at think tanks such as Hudson, Heritage, Claremont, and AEI?

I think I know the answer to these questions. So while I consume classic liberal texts like The Greening of America and Teaching As A Subversive Activity, Scratch assiduously avoids Buckley. While I read books of Marxist economic theory, Scratch assiduously avoids Reisman or Gilder. And who's the hick again?



You are the hick, Loran. This is all you've got. You cannot hold your own in any way other than to scream "You're a LIBERAL!" I have kicked your butt so many times that I have lost count.

Incidentally, this thread's topic is the SCMC. How did you respond the charges that the SCMC is an unethical and disquieting aspect of the LDS Church? By claiming that criticism of it has its basis in liberal paranoia, of course.

You keep saying, "Move along. Nothing to see here." When are you going to follow your own advice, Gomer?

I need do nothing here but let readers compare and contrast. This is an ego war with Scratch, and nothing more.

This individual doesn't even know who Richard Pipes is. Can anyone give our resident intellectual heavyweight some help regarding one of the eminent Sovietologists of the 20th Century (oh, but he's a conservative, which means Scratch has assiduously avoided him).

Sorry.

Let see, Scratch isn't a leftist. He's not a Conservative, nor is he a Libertarian. Based on his ideology, as manifested ever since we've been debating, that leaves Communist, neo-Communist, Anarchist, Anarcho-Communist, Fascist, and Teletubby, all of which are a part of the Left, as a matter of class designation.

Go figure.

(Let's wait and see how long it takes for him to actually pin himself down to a coherent world view we can critique openly).

[_Runtu]

I note that you denounce DeMan, Derrida, Barthes, and Foucault, among others. Have you read any of their stuff? Just curious. Derrida I find insufferable. It's telling that Gayatri Spivak's foreword to "Of Grammatology" is more lucid and useful than the book itself.

And even that is a stretch.

Agreed. Derrida is one of those folks that people like to quote because it makes them sound smart, but they have no idea what the hell he's talking about. He's living proof that you can make a decent living by being deliberately obtuse.

[_Coggins7]

Enough with the political blather from Loran.

Liz---if he cannot maintain the maturity necessary for topicality, please move the thread to the Off-Topic Forum, where, thanks to him, it has begun to go already.

The topic has turned to politics, but the blather is only coming from one participant in the discussion.

[_Coggins7]

Funny how I've read most of the folks you cited earlier. I used to read The Corner every morning, and I still like Victor Davis Hanson. I don't have as much time these days, and my interest in politics has faded a little.

I note that you denounce DeMan, Derrida, Barthes, and Foucault, among others. Have you read any of their stuff? Just curious. Derrida I find insufferable. It's telling that Gayatri Spivak's foreword to "Of Grammatology" is more lucid and useful than the book itself. I have to admit to being partial to DeMan (one of my professors referred to "DeManiacal deconstruction") and Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge is pretty good stuff. "A Lover's Discourse" is beautifully written and quite thought-provoking. Have you read Hayden White's "Metahistory"? That's another of my favorites. And I'm still a fan of Thomas Kuhn, though it seems less fashionable to say so these days.

Yes, I have read Derrida and Foucault (as well as other less known such theorists--Douglas Kellner at UCLA is one of my favorites and has tons of stuff on his personal webpage) and I plan to do much more of that as I find time in between my other reading. To me, Deconstruction and Post-Modernism are rather the final outrage of what the Left has sought to do (and has always sought to do) to language and the artifacts of culture: politicize them and turn them into weapons of cultural and political warfare. Foucault is indeed a lucid and sophisticated writer, but much of his Marxian influenced theoretical structure is bunk. That's a matter of philosophical difference, not dislike of his prose style.

Deconstruction and its children turned literary studies and history into an intellectual ghetto as well as a playground for academic ideologues (but at the end of the day, French philosophy as a whole is an intellectual ghetto, so this one major branch bears no surprising fruit).

You may be surprised to learn that I think some of Deconstruction's and Post-Modernism's insights into culture and literary production contain grains of truth. I do not agree with the overall ideological uses to which those insights have been put, however, nor to the overall theoretical framework in which those insights are embedded.

[_Runtu]

Yes, I have read Derrida and Foucault (as well as other less known such theorists--Douglas Kellner at UCLA is one of my favorites and has tons of stuff on his personal webpage) and I plan to do much more of that as I find time in between my other reading. To me, Deconstruction and Post-Modernism are rather the final outrage of what the Left has sought to do (and has always sought to do) to language and the artifacts of culture: politicize them and turn them into weapons of cultural and political warfare. Foucault is indeed a lucid and sophisticated writer, but much of his Marxian influenced theoretical structure is bunk. That's a matter of philosophical difference, not dislike of his prose style.

Deconstruction and its children turned literary studies and history into an intellectual ghetto as well as a playground for academic ideologues (but at the end of the day, French philosophy as a whole is an intellectual ghetto, so this one major branch bears no surprising fruit).

You may be surprised to learn that I think some of Deconstruction's and Post-Modernism's insights into culture and literary production contain grains of truth. I do not agree with the overall ideological uses to which those insights have been put, however, nor to the overall theoretical framework in which those insights are embedded.

Well, I've said before that I lean more toward Eagleton's view of deconstruction, which is that it allows you to drive a wagon train through everyone else's ideas without the inconvenience of putting forward any ideas of your own.

I don't think it's turned literary studies into a wasteland of ideas, but for me it forced me to see things from a different perspective, which isn't a bad thing. I'm not as much a postmodernist as, say, Juliann, but there are some intriguing ideas in it.

[_Coggins7]

Exposure to any set of serious ideas forces one to expand one's own, I think that's a given (if one is truly thinking about them). I do think, based on what I've seen over the last two decades, that French philosophy has indeed helped turn several departments, and especially lit crit, into intellectual ghettos generally speaking. At least, that's the use to which American leftwing academics have put this material. As I understand things, Deconstruction actually begin to wane in France in the early Eighties, at about the same time it begin to be all the rage here. Which brings up another point. Post Modernism is an intellectual fad that will eventually wane and make way for another in the humanities and social sciences. Given the ideological make up of much of the humanities and social science professorate, the traditional Marxism and Cultural Marxism so long at home there will be a set fixture for the foreseeable future, but Post Modernism and its Felix The Cat black bag of pseudo-sophisticated jargon and obtuse verbiage, despite some strong conviviality with traditional leftism, will wither on the vine, eventually.

The only sad part about that is that that which then replaces it may be even worse.