Motus Mentis

29 Comments

1. Bill says

   My take is it is the first skirmish in the coming civil war. At this point, legal has no moral position. As Hinderaker pointed out, there are enough laws to make anything the federal government wants either illegal or legal as they want it. With the federal government there is no right or wrong, only power.

   Posted April 15, 2014 at 3:20 pm | Permalink
2. The one eyed man says

   What a crock. It is Bundy who has no moral position. He is a freeloader who refuses to pay the grazing fees for land which is not his, and who subsequently assembled a lynch mob of thugs who threatened federal agents who were there to enforce the law. What makes him so special that he has the right to evade the law that twenty thousand other ranchers abide by?

   Posted April 15, 2014 at 9:06 pm | Permalink
3. Malcolm says

   As the article said: you’re right about the law.

   On the other hand, Rosa Parks broke a law that lots of others abided by, too: because it was a bad and arbitrary law. The ranchers of Clark County have been peacefully and productively grazing that land for more than a century, until the Feds decided just to shut them down, with a lot of trumped-up rubbish about tortoises (which they are busy killing, and which aren’t endangered anyway) as a cover story.

   Bundy didn’t “assemble” a “lynch mob”: that protest was a self-organized response that drew, from all over the West, good Americans who have simply had enough of this bullying Federal behemoth.

   Posted April 15, 2014 at 9:41 pm | Permalink
4. The one eyed man says

   There is nothing arbitrary about charging grazing fees for federal land, and the comparison with Rosa Parks is absurd.

   Bundy is free to let his livestock graze on his own land until the cows come home. If he wants to let them graze on federal land, he has to pay a fee for it. This has nothing to do with a “federal behemoth.” If he doesn’t want to have his cattle graze on federal land, he doesn’t have to. Except he wants to have it both ways: he wants to use land which isn’t his, and not have to pay the cost if doing so.

   Today is April 15. I don’t feel like paying my taxes. I’m a patriot! I love liberty! See my flag! Let someone else pay my bills.

   Posted April 15, 2014 at 9:56 pm | Permalink
5. Malcolm says

   It was the Federal behemoth that arbitrarily began crushing the ranchers:

   Over the last two or three decades, the Bureau has squeezed the ranchers in southern Nevada by limiting the acres on which their cattle can graze, reducing the number of cattle that can be on federal land, and charging grazing fees for the ever-diminishing privilege. The effect of these restrictions has been to drive the ranchers out of business. Formerly, there were dozens of ranches in the area where Bundy operates. Now, his ranch is the only one. When Bundy refused to pay grazing fees beginning in around 1993, he said something to the effect of, they are supposed to be charging me a fee for managing the land and all they are doing is trying to manage me out of business. Why should I pay them for that?

   As Darth Vader said: “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it again.”

   You:

   “Let someone else pay my bills.”

   Spoken like a true man of the Left. But why Cliven Bundy should even have to pay the Federal government for the use of Nevada land is far from clear.

   Where do you think those In-N-Out burgers come from, anyway?

   David French:

   While rural America literally sustains life for urban America, many urbanites dislike large-scale farming (this parody is worth seeing), would like to see the rest of the country essentially transformed into a nature preserve, and argue that to the extent land is “used,” it should be used for selectively-defined “renewable” purposes, like solar energy or wind farms. The result – when urban regions become dominant – has been amply chronicled by Victor Davis Hanson and many others: rural regions increasingly serve urban ones and do so under comprehensive urban regulatory schemes that disrupt lives, destroy livelihoods, and lead to widespread frustration and despair.

   And all of it is legal.

   As government grows ever-larger, majority rule becomes more consequential for minority populations. The regulatory state grows, and rural Americans are left with little recourse. The courts won’t overturn regulatory actions absent a clearly-identified liberty interest (with the law granting wide discretion to federal agencies), in many states legislatures are dominated by urban voting blocs, and – particularly in the West – massive federal ownership of land means the voice of the local farmer or landowner is diluted into meaninglessness within the larger national debate.

   With few options left within conventional politics, rural Americans are beginning to contemplate more dramatic measures, such as the state secession movements building in Colorado, Maryland, California, and elsewhere. The more viable state secession movements aim to limit urban control by literally removing rural counties from their states and forming new states around geographic regions of common interests.

   But until there’s a long-term solution, we may very well see more Bundy Ranch moments, where individual Americans (and their allies) simply refuse to consent to laws that destroy their way of life for the sake of regulations that provide no perceivable benefit to others.

   Posted April 15, 2014 at 10:27 pm | Permalink
6. Malcolm says

   Bill’s points are correct: first, that tensions are rising very quickly now in this country, and second, that the growth of Federal power, and the complexity of Federal regulation, have reached the point where any one of us is, as Alan Dershowitz argues in this book, liable for felony prosecution any time the government wants.

   Meanwhile the government disregards its own laws, enforcing them or not as it sees fit. The very same BLM that is so concerned about a few “trespassing” cattle in Clark County simply posts signs near the border telling U.S. citizens to stay north of Interstate 8 in order not to be killed by Mexican smugglers. If the Federal government has one primary, unambiguous responsibility that trumps all others, it is to defend the nation’s borders against invasion, and they can’t even be bothered.

   How can we expect good citizens to respect the law when the government won’t? When invading hordes get a nod and a wink? When the nation’s laws are so deliberately vast and complex that nobody, not even the people who write them, even knows what they say?

   When laws are enforced, or not, at the whim of the sovereign, and when any and every citizen can be destroyed by the law at the State’s caprice, we are no longer living in a free nation under a government of limited and carefully enumerated powers; we are living in tyranny.

   You can jeer and mock all you like, Peter, but mark my words: things are coming to a head in this nation. The American people are peaceful, and slow to anger, but there is a feeling everywhere that things have gone too far.

   Posted April 15, 2014 at 11:08 pm | Permalink
7. The one eyed man says

   Pah. Nothing is coming to a head. There is an extreme right wing fringe whose heads explode at the thought of the big, bad government tormenting the poor widdle rancher. The other 98% of Americans ignore their meshugas and go about their lives.

   Ranchers have been getting sweetheart deals since the government started grazing fees in the 1930’s. Bundy is more than a moocher. He wants it for free, in perpetuity.

   * * * *

   The Black Panther Party, aggrieved that their race has been oppressed since the Founding Fathers decided that anyone with black skin is only three fifths of a man, take over an abandoned government building to use as a school. Why should the government object when a building they are not using is devoted to the laudatory purpose of teaching children? When federal agents come to reclaim their property, dozens of heavily armed Panthers threaten the agents, who withdraw to avoid another Ruby Ridge.

   No doubt all of the freedom-loving right wingers would leap at the opportunity to defend the Panthers’ individual rights against the federal behemoth.

   Posted April 16, 2014 at 9:06 am | Permalink
8. Malcolm says

   No, you’re out of touch, Peter. This sentiment is far more widespread than you think. It is not widespread, perhaps, among affluent urban whites such as yourself, nor among those urban populations who are effectively wards of the State, nor among the millions who have flooded here, with the enthusiastic support of the party they overwhelmingly vote for, to replace the historic American nation. But when you get away from the big cities, and the big Democratic wards, things are very different; there is a rising tide of resentment that may soon overtop its banks.

   No doubt all of the freedom-loving right wingers would leap at the opportunity to defend the Panthers’ individual rights against the federal behemoth.

   Frankly, if the Black Panthers were to do such a wholesome thing — take an abandoned Federal building to use as a school — you’d probably find that they in fact did have considerable support from the same sort of people who turned out to help Cliven Bundy. (What we saw instead, however, was this administration turning a blind eye when the Panthers sought to intimidate voters in the 2008 election. Guess it was just Eric Holder looking out for ‘his people’.)

   Look, I understand your point about the rule of law. (Charles Cooke at NRO, writing in response to his colleague Kevin Williamson’s support of Bundy’s civil disobedience, sees it too.) What’s happening now, though, is that the “law” has become so vast, so suffocating, and, worst of all, so capricious, that we have devolved rather abruptly from the rule of law to the rule of men. The typical Federal statute no longer concisely describes a comprehensible law, but is merely a vast and almost unreadable collection of placeholders for regulations to be issued at the whim of unelected officials.

   Who runs the BLM? To quote Hinderaker’s article again:

   The new head of the BLM is a former Reid staffer. Presumably he was placed in his current position on Reid’s recommendation. Harry Reid is known to be a corrupt politician, one who has gotten wealthy on a public employee’s salary, in part, at least, by benefiting from sweetheart real estate deals. Does Harry Reid now control more than 80% of the territory of Nevada? If you need federal authority to conduct business in Nevada—which is overwhelmingly probable—do you need to pay a bribe to Harry Reid or a member of his family to get that permission? Why is it that the BLM is deeply concerned about desert tortoises when it comes to ranchers, but couldn’t care less when the solar power developers from China come calling? Environmentalists have asked this question. Does the difference lie in the fact that Cliven Bundy has never contributed to an Obama or Reid campaign, or paid a bribe to Reid or a member of his family?

   Based on the evidence, I would say: yes, that is probably the difference. When the desert tortoises balance out, Occam’s razor tells us that the distinction is political.

   As a reactionary, I am all for order. The Left brings us, increasingly, disorder, perversion, and chaos, because that is simply in the nature of the Left: to disrupt the natural, endogenous, harmonious and localized order of organic societies, so as to impose exogenous, central control through brute power. I would sympathize with your view of Bundy’s rebellion, were it not, in my opinion, a reactionary act: a sign of the older, more organic order beginning to rise up against the new.

   Posted April 16, 2014 at 9:57 am | Permalink
9. Dom says

   Very off-topic, but I’d like to point out that the three-fifths rule is often misunderstood. The opponents of slavery, not the supporters, proposed that a slave should count as less than a whole man, since this reduced the number of representatives given to the slave-holding states.

   Concerning the grazing fees, can someone explain what that is used for? How do you maintain land that is used for grazing? If it is simple rent paid to the owner, then It should be noted that the owner in this case owns 85% of all the land. If the owner were a private company, we wouldn’t be happy with this situation.

   Posted April 16, 2014 at 10:09 am | Permalink
10. JK says

    If he wants to let them graze on federal land, he has to pay a fee for it.

    Seen elsewhere:

    I am a bit in awe of our government’s “new” math, regarding the Nevada Rancher’s supposed $1.3 million grazing bill. Per their own web page, it charges $1.35 per animal/month. Based on the media, Bundy is grazing about 900 head of cattle; that is $16.20 per head of cattle each year or $14580 for the 900 head. Over the twenty year period for which the government is requesting payment, the sum is $291,600 and that is now where near the $1.3 million it is demanding! $291,600 assumes that he always had 900 head/year (doubtful) and that the grazing fees remained static at $1.35, which I’m certain it did not.

    http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/grazing.html
    ___________________

    Disclaimer – I can’t personally vouch for either (any) of the parties involved arithmetic.

    Posted April 16, 2014 at 10:56 am | Permalink
11. The one eyed man says

    You are referring to the incident in Philadelphia when three guys showed up at a polling place, two of them left at 10:00 when the cops showed up, and the third guy was allowed to stay because he was a certified poll watcher?

    Dozens of Bundy supporters aimed loaded weapons at federal agents who were there to enforce the law against a tax scofflaw.. Their plans included using women and children as human shields.

    Your suggestion is that the DOJ should have prosecuted the poll watcher but leave the lynch mob alone?

    Posted April 18, 2014 at 1:20 pm | Permalink
12. The one eyed man says

    More on Bundy:

    http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-18/welfare-queens-in-cowboy-hats

    Posted April 18, 2014 at 1:41 pm | Permalink
13. the one eyed man says

    Ahem.

    Right wing heads exploded when the Department of Justice did not prosecute a certified poll worker for making intimidating remarks (as though the DOJ would get involved in a local crime matter in the first place). It has served as fodder for right wing attack lines ever since, as it fits into memes about a black President and Attorney General giving a free pass to black radicals, arbitrary enforcement of the law, and white self-victimization.

    Cliven Bundy’s cattle grazed on federal land — our land — and refused to pay taxes for it — our money — by declining to participate in a sweetheart deal for ranchers which costs the federal government $123 million a year — our budget deficit. His posse of heavily armed supporters aimed loaded weapons at federal agents.

    There is quite a difference between threatening someone with racial epithets and threatening someone with a loaded gun. Yet the actions of a single poll worker have been incorporated into right wing mythology, while Bundy is the right wing’s new heartthrob.

    * * * *

    When Brandeis University looked into Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s phony claims of fleeing Somalia to gain asylum, her vile remarks about Muslims, and her support of mass murderer Anders Brievik, they decided that they did not want to provide their imprimatur for her. The right wing protested loudly, as they suddenly became staunch defenders of freedom of speech. However, if Ali has the free speech rights to vilify Muslims, then Louis Farrakhan has the same right to vilify whites, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has the same right to vilify Jews. Would those who loudly defend Ali make the same vociferous defense of a university withdrew an award to Farrakhan or Ahmadinejad? Wake me up when that happens.

    * * * *

    What do these two things have in common? Because Bundy and his supporters are white guys in cowboy hats, they are above the law, while scary-looking Black Panthers should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law (although it’s hard to see what the actual crime would be, outside of disorderly conduct). If a writer wants to defame Islam, then she has the freedom to do so and have her writings celebrated by a large university, because when Muslims are concerned, anything is fair game. If the target is closer to home: not so much.

    You like to quote from Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.” What unites Bundy and Ali is that in both cases, you have tribalism masquerading as principle.

    Posted April 19, 2014 at 10:13 am | Permalink
14. Kevin Kim says

    I’m losing all sympathy for Mr. Bundy.

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 9:39 am | Permalink
15. Bill says

    We are now seeing his comments taken out of context to further the standard narrative. Kevin, you are having exactly the response the MSM is looking for so that when the next raid comes, the public won’t be sympathetic and will say, “Get the racist ba*****!”

    If it is in the MSM, of which Yahoo news is a very liberal arm, then it is the American version of Pravda.

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 10:12 am | Permalink
16. Malcolm says

    Exactly right, Bill. Bundy is hardly an articulate man, and no doubt understands in an implicit way some now-forbidden things about the differences between human groups, but in essence he is saying that black Americans have, in many ways, exchanged one form of slavery for another, and that they are still far from achieving any sort of harmonious and organic liberty.

    Moreover, as Bill explains, the purpose here is to distract attention from the issue, and focus on the man, by publicly destroying the man. The aim is to undercut support for Bundy so that when the BLM makes its next move we will all be cowed into silence — even though the principles involved, which are what roused such fervent support throughout the American Resistance, will not have changed at all. The Feds will haul him away, and everyone will just say “Great! they got that racist bastard!”, and go back to their knitting.

    So yes, I too think you’re reacting exactly as intended, Kevin.

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 11:19 am | Permalink
17. the one eyed man says

    Wrong on all counts.

    Bundy’s comments were not “taken out of context.” They were reported fully and accurately. They are on video.

    The notion that it is part of a sinister plot by the MSM is sheer nonsense. The entire saga was reported fully and accurately. This is the standard right wing excuse to avoid inconvenient facts: blame it on perceived media bias.

    Bundy’s remarks about how “the Negro” might be better off in slavery than as free men are beneath contempt. Period.

    The issue is not how BLM manages federal land, or at least not the way those who lionize Bundy as a contemporary Gandhi or Rosa Parks imagine it to be. The entire affair brought national attention to a federal boondoggle in which ranchers pay less than ten percent of the private rate to graze cows on federal land, in a program where the government does not even recoup administrative expenses from the subsidies it provides to ranchers. Why the taxpayer should support welfare queens in cowboy hats is a mystery to me.

    The issue is not how BLM manages federal land – our land – but rather a single rancher who, dissatisfied with the generous welfare which the government provides, wants it for nothing.

    When the BLM “makes its next move” – by recouping the fees which have been overdue for years – it will be entirely justified in doing so. There are no “principles involved,” and talk of the “American Resistance” is complete blather – unless you think that there is something wrong with a landlord who evicts a tenant who does not pay rent, that the tenant’s freeloading is principled, and that he has the right to resist the sheriff who comes to padlock his door.

    The right wing lionized Bundy because he was a (false) symbol of a David being hounded by the federal Goliath, and who pronounced the required drivel about freedom, tyranny, and the Constitution. Nothing new about this.

    The right wing lionized Bush and Cheney, until it became evident to all that they ran the most disastrous administration in our lifetimes, if not all of American history. They then claimed that they were closet liberals – despite the fact that actual liberals opposed them from the start – because it avoids the pesky problem of explaining why conservative support for them, and the agenda they effected, was misguided.

    The right wing lionized Joe the Plumber, until it was evident that he was a complete fraud whose name isn’t even Joe. In fitting irony, he now works as a union man for Chrysler – a company which would not be in existence if the Presidential nominee he campaigned against didn’t save it.

    The right wing lionized George Zimmerman as a freedom-loving, gun-toting hero until enough restraining orders made it clear that he is a violent, impulsive hothead who shot an innocent child in cold blood.

    The right wing lionized Betty from Spokane, until it became evident that not only were her assertions about Obamacare entirely false, but she would have benefited greatly if she bothered to go to the health exchanges to see what the program offered her.

    So Bundy is merely the latest in a series of manufactured heroes where conservative fabulists create heroes they later are forced to renounce. Had the conservative worldview been based in fact and not myth, they would not have gone near a man who is a tax scofflaw and repeatedly denied the existence of the federal government. Now that he has been exposed as an ignorant and racist freeloader, conservatives are running away – until the next heartthrob arises.

    Conservatives seized upon Bundy as a modern American hero because he looks the part and fits into the preferred narrative of the hate-the-government set. The facts are otherwise: he is a man who has enriched himself at the public trough, refused to pay the small pittance the government charges for allowing him to use federal land, and then gathered a group of angry and excitable supporters who aimed loaded semi-automatic weapons at federal agents who came to collect the money which the government – the American people – is due.

    This would be hilarious if it were not so sad and completely predictable.

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 12:13 pm | Permalink
18. Malcolm says

    (Rule 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.”)

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 12:19 pm | Permalink
19. Malcolm says

    It’s a beautiful day here — far too nice to spend it in front of the computer rebutting and refuting all of this propaganda — and I’m on my way out. Let’s just say we disagree: fundamentally, irreconcilably, axiomatically.

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 12:20 pm | Permalink
20. the one eyed man says

    We do. I believe that people should pay their taxes, and that when they fail to do so, the government has the right to recoup them.

    Evidently you believe that the law does not apply to white guys in cowboy hats, who are free to evade the law provided they spout off about freedom and liberty.

    I would say that this is a fundamental, irreconcilable, and axiomatic difference.

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 12:34 pm | Permalink
21. Bill says

    OEM: “This would be hilarious if it were not so sad and completely predictable”

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 12:43 pm | Permalink
22. the one eyed man says

    Bill: what you share with Malcolm is the inability and/or unwillingness to respond to demonstrably true facts with anything other than irrelevancy (as though personalizing and polarizing Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are not central to the conservative worldview); evasion (calling facts propaganda does not make it so); and repetition (the right wing obsession with Joe, George, and Cliven is sadly predictable).

    Admit it: you were wrong from the beginning in characterizing Bundy and his thuggish followers as modern day heroes, simply because they fit into an equally mistaken narrative about a government which abuses its power by attempting to collect taxes which are long overdue. Even Hannity has moved on (as though he had much choice, after being subject to national ridicule). You should too.

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 1:20 pm | Permalink
23. Bill says

    And you remain sad and predictable.

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 1:46 pm | Permalink
24. the one eyed man says

    Name calling is what you do when you are incapable of making an effective argument.

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 2:58 pm | Permalink
25. Bill says

    exactly

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 3:11 pm | Permalink
26. Malcolm says

    Name calling is what you do when you are incapable of making an effective argument.

    But this is the point I’ve been making for a long time now: argument only has the possibility of being “effective” where there is a foundation of agreement about axioms, intuitions, and valuations. Even to make congruent enumerations of the raw “facts” of the world is impossible without this, because the categories and objects we pick out will differ — and so agreement on the higher-order social, moral, and narrative “facts” around which we organize our lives and communities becomes an impossibility.

    In particular, it is with respect to those narrative “facts” that the difficulty becomes clearest, and the problem most acute, because human interaction is really a dance of narratives, and little else. What really happened in Sanford, Florida? In Clark County, Nevada? What story is really unfolding in our cities, in our nation, in our civilization, and in our era?

    The answer is: it depends who you ask.

    Peter, you are a dear friend, and an intelligent man, and of course I could, as I have done so carefully for so many years, begin to unpack and address all of the points you raised in your comment above. I could start, for example, with the Bundy and Zimmerman cases, and then we could rehash Iraq, global warming, Obamacare, the minimum wage, immigration, and the dozens of other topics we’ve locked horns about over the years. Each one would expand to fill linear feet of comment-thread, and each would lead in turn to further digressions and ramifications, replete with links to appropriately selected “facts” that we would spend hours gathering and gleaning. Our readers would marvel at our doggedness, and our diligence. (In private, they email me to marvel at my patience.)

    But what would the result be?

    Well, when you want to learn to predict what will happen if you do x, a reasonable person (and we are nothing if not reasonable people) will devise an experiment. And that’s exactly what we have done here in these pages, you and I, for almost a decade now. Time and again, you mount what you think simply must be an effective argument, and so do I.

    Here we are: two educated, well-read, intelligent, reasonable, thoughtful men. For ten years of our lives, each of us, by means of “effective argument”, has tried to persuade the other to abandon his ideological framework, and the narrative structure according to which he organizes his view of human affairs, in favor of something closer to our own.

    At this point I think it is safe to say, Peter, that we have run the experiment.

    What, then, are the results? Would you say that, as a result of all this carefully reasoned argument, your views have shifted? Have you come to doubt any of what you were once so certain about? Ideologically speaking, would you say that I have budged you even an inch?

    Nah, me neither.

    Hey there, you liberal readers, lurking in the shadows! Have I changed your mind about anything?

    And you conservatives and reactionaries! Has the One-Eyed Man persuaded you at last that your entire worldview is based on myth, and not fact?

    Didn’t think so.

    So: how to explain this result? It’s because the facts of the world are normatively neutral — there are no ‘oughts’ in Nature — and so there are many, many ways to filter and organize them into a historical narrative and a coherent worldview. It all depends on your axioms and intuitions, your preferences and priorities, your affinities and aversions. This explains why two different people, both reasonable, both intelligent, can look at, say, the Trayvon Martin case and see two completely different narratives — and draw two completely different conclusions. It’s not an overstatement to say that they live, and want to live, in different worlds.

    Georg Christoph Lichtenberg once wrote:

    I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.”

    So: let’s give it a rest, OK? We’re just never going to agree about any of this stuff, and we’ll both have more free time.

    I’m hoping that at least this argument might end up being “effective”.

    Posted April 26, 2014 at 10:08 pm | Permalink
27. TheBigHenry says

    “I’m hoping that at least this argument might end up being ‘effective’.”

    A valiant effort Mal.

    But I am willing to bet you will get no agreement even on this.

    Posted April 27, 2014 at 8:04 pm | Permalink
28. the one eyed man says

    Sometimes the facts are murky, as with George Zimmerman: he is the only surviving witness of Trayvon Martin’s death (although his subsequent arrests and TRO’s are not murky at all). Other times the facts are crystal clear, as they are with Cliven Bundy. Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow would not disagree about what happened outside his ranch, although they would obviously draw very different conclusions about what those irrefutable facts signify.

    But hey: I get your point. It’s your blog, and if you would prefer that its content be limited to your posts and the responses from the amen chorus of like-minded individuals, I won’t be the skunk at the garden party.

    Perhaps I’ll participate if you have posts about music, art, or the high points of American culture, like this one:

    http://img.eastfist.com/whitemanbyRCrumb.jpg

    Posted April 28, 2014 at 10:11 am | Permalink
29. Malcolm says

    Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow would not disagree about what happened outside his ranch, although they would obviously draw very different conclusions about what those irrefutable facts signify.

    Yes, that’s the point: even facts about which all can agree have no meaning except in the context of an organizing framework or worldview. Given the same set of “facts”, those with differing worldviews will create different meanings, different narratives.

    It is one thing, and a useful thing, to offer critiques from within a shared worldview, but it is futile and belligerent to do so from the perspective of a completely incommensurable one. You trivialize the former as an “amen corner”, but that is very far from a correct understanding.

    Julius Evola said:

    “A worldview is based not on books, but on an inner form and a sensibility endowed with an innate, rather than an acquired, character. It is essentially a disposition and an attitude, instead of a culture or a theory — a disposition and an attitude that do not merely concern the mental domain, but also affect the domain of feelings and and of the will, forge one’s character, and manifest themselves in reactions having the same instinctive certainty, giving evidence of a sure meaning of life.”

    This is not to say that one’s worldview cannot change as a person grows older and wiser, or in response to the sometimes overwhelming force of life’s events. My own worldview used to be almost exactly what yours still is, but I moved beyond it after much study and reflection — and after the harrowing events of 9/11, which happened right in my backyard, and nearly claimed the life of my daughter. Thus, for me now, your political and ideological comments constitute a purely retrograde influence.

    I suppose that link you posted is meant as some sort of parting shot. It only reinforces my point.

    Posted April 28, 2014 at 12:53 pm | Permalink