WWWtW-Watch #23: Catholic Charities?

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The Legion of the Damned over at What's Wrong With the World is predictably having a field day with the death of liberal Catholic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. One of the W4 minions (I think they call him "Frankie") felt it necessary to give additional exposure to a hatchet job by a self-righteous outfit which cynically calls itself Human Life International. As the piece in question amounts to a verbal desecration of Sen. Kennedy's corpse, I will not reiterate Frankie's incredibly poor taste by providing a link to it. As it the purpose of my WWWtW-Watch feature to expose these soi disant "Christians" for the loveless crypto-fascists that they truly are, however, I will provide this link to the relevant comments section. Hold your nose and check it out.

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WWWtW-Watch #22: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

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It's been many months since I've bothered to aim a critical spotlight at the crypto-fascist crew over at What's Wrong With the World. The recent murder of Dr. Tiller in Kansas, however, incited my curiosity as to what kind of rhetorical treatment the pseudo-Christian hate-mongers at WWWtW would be giving the incident.

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What I found was the following post by an evidently mainstream Roman Catholic man named Edward Feser who teaches philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. The post is an extended comparison of Dr. Tiller to serial sex-killer and cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer. I was pretty much expecting the worst, but this kind of screed surpassed all of my most cynical expectations:

Do I seriously mean to suggest that Tiller was as bad as Dahmer? No, because Tiller was almost certainly a more evil man than Dahmer was.

If a keen appetite for the grotesquely hateful has been whetted by that uncharitable little blurb -- if you really have the stomach for it -- you can read the whole agape-free, despicable article here.

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WWWtW-Watch #21: All of Me

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Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

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While undertaking this little foray behind fascist lines, I also reconnoitered a post over there with the catchy title of “The Mass Marketing of Hell”. Seduced into taking a closer look, I learned that this post had been occasioned by the response of readers to a previous post, entitled “The Measure of Sincerity”.

Apparently, it was the measured “sincerity” of the message delivered by this paragraph that prompted the second post:

Any Catholic Obama supporters who did not vote for him on this basis [i.e. the principle of “double-effect”] were formally cooperating with Obama's wicked and vicious policies, committed a grave sin, and will go to Hell for it if they do not repent, confess, and do penance. I'm not really addressing those Catholics in my posts, but I do pray for their damned souls, that they may repent before it is too late.

The second post sounds a claxon resonant to that of the first:

A number of people reacted rather strongly to this post, as if I had said something shocking. The part that got the strongest reaction is where I re-state the Catholic doctrine that formal cooperation with grave evil is mortal sin, and that when we commit mortal sin that means we will go to Hell for eternal damnation unless we repent, confess, and do penance.

The whole shebang is reiterated at Zippy Catholic, for the benefit and edification of the orthodox.
As I contemplated all of the above, bemused, and not a little alarmed, I was reminded of the following excerpt that I had included in a post concerned with my reading of Erik H. Erikson’s book, Young Man Luther:

The Roman Church, more than any other church or political organization, succeeded in making an ideological dogma—formulated, defended, and imposed by a central governing body—the exclusive condition for any identity on earth. It made this total claim totalitarian by using terror. In this case (as in others) the terror was not always directly applied to quivering bodies; it was predicted for a future world, typically in such a way that nobody could quite know whom it would hit, or when.

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Right. Why not take all of me?

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It wouldn’t be too much to say that the Zipster has gone all friggin’ medieval on ‘em! But all kidding aside, when fear and zealotry combine, the all-too-common result is war-most-unholy. That is so Old Testament.
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WWWtW-Watch #20: Eating (Jim) Crow

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

I haven't done any What's Wrong With the World-Watch features for quite some time. Frankly, I just haven't had the interest in wading through the redundant, repetitive, repugnant screed the authors at that site keep posting. That said, this morning I thought I'd take a peek to see how the soi-disant saviors of Western Civilization were taking the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. It did not surprise me to find that they have descended into outright racism. Don't think that the reference to "McDonald's" isn't code, for it surely is.

Onward, "Christian" soldiers.

WWWtW-Watch #19: Of Silk Purses and the Ears of Sows

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

It has been some weeks since I've directed your attention to the ravings of our would-be masters over at What's Wrong With the World. But since we're on the fascinating topic of Gov. Sarah Palin and the wisdom of her selection as the vice presidential candidate of the GOP, I thought you might find it amusing to see the lengths to which the crypto-fascist/politico-religious right is forced to go to defend that selection. Here they even bring the Obamamomma into it. Tsk.

It should be noted, by anyone who is buying the constant refrain wafting from the camp of the forces of reaction, that our colleges and universities have been ruined by leftists, that the core authorial cabal of WWWtW are academics; academics, and manifestly not so very bright...

WWWtW-Watch #18: Darwin's Revenge

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

This just in:

In a new post that is just too good to pass over without comment, WWWtW doyenne, Lydia, expresses her secret fear of being taken for one of the Pongidae, or even, perhaps, in a certain light, for vegetable salad makings. Expressing her disdain for chimpanzee tool-making skills, Lydia shrills:

“I don't consider learning termite fishing to be sort of "on the way to" having a fully developed language and arts, a la Watership Down. Or New York City.”

Judging from her attempt at spelling “radicchio,” termite fishing is no certain indicator of the eventual development of that skill, either. A mostly liquid, reddish, vegetable existence does, however, seem well within reach.

WWWtW-Watch #17: Fair and Balanced

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.





While I continue to be banned from What’s Wrong With the World for commenting while (allegedly) trollish, I do check in on those folks from time to time to see what kind of progress they have made towards the resuscitation of Western civilization. I’m sorry to say that I can’t give a particularly glowing report on the progress of their project to-date. They continue to post along frequencies in the cyber-spectrum ranging from disheartened grumbling to shrill invective; never yet the blaring brass of a trumpeted triumph.

Meanwhile, dissent is still being answered with their patented “good cop, bad cop-hit ‘em high, hit ‘em low” routine as seen in the comments section following this post on gun control. The loyal opposition on this thread is primarily provided by a blogger calling himself “Morning’s Minion”. Mr. Minion is visiting from a site that is apparently universally scorned by the WWWtW cabal. Here we see self-appointed WWWtW enforcer, William Luse, reacting in his characteristic, intellectually impotent, manner to Mr. Minion’s refusal to back away from his eminently sensible argument:

Lydia, this is the second or third time I've seen him accuse you of wanting to execute prisoners to relieve prison overcrowding, even after you've retracted it more than once. If he does it again, I hope you'll delete his comment.

And here we see the economically dismissive “thebyronicman” addressing the earnest attempt to communicate in a civil manner of another commentor according to his usual m.o.:

Policraticus,
You could have said absolutely nothing whatsoever in far fewer words. Next time, give it a try.


Sweet charity. But, lest I stand rightfully accused of lacking fairness-and-balance, I am now going to recommend and endorse a recent post by WWWtW author, Jeff Martin (Maximos). Here is the link. I encourage any person who is interested in the current plight of the conservative movement to read it and give it some thought. It is replete with trenchant rhetoric such as:

The Republican party has strangled the small-government policy program in its crib, replacing it with a tawdry emphasis upon a select blend of upper-bracket tax reductions, coupling this program with a world-historical deficit-spending bender; identified economic conservatism with a regressive and debilitating package of corporatist and neoliberal economic policies that threaten to render trade imbalances and deficits permanent and structural; papered over the instabilities with a profligate monetary policy, which itself reinforced the other insalubrious trends; established as a principle of American governance that any profits accruing to financiers in consequence of these policies would be valorized as the triumph of the American way, while any losses would be socialized, so that avarice need never receive its recompense; embarked upon a foreign policy that even Woodrow Wilson might find audacious and hubristic, in the process ordaining unjust war and torture as central precepts in the right-wing catechism; sought to legitimize an unprecedented demographic and economic experiment upon the American body politic, all at the behest of the narrow coterie of corporate interests who cut the campaign finance checks; cynically deployed "social issues" as instruments of voter mobilization, then snickered behind the backs of the salt-of-the-earth folks who voted for them on the basis of those issues (revealing that they really do think as they were portrayed by Thomas Frank), dropping those initiatives in favour of grand schemes of policy reform that hadn't a snowball's chance of seeing enactment; formed ranks behind a President poised to violate campaign pledges regarding judicial nominations, when he wished to nominate his incompetent cronies and lickspittles to the Supreme Court - need I continue?

As impressive as the righteousness of the above is the fact that it is all one magnificently Teutonic sentence!

I greatly fear that the scorn displayed by Maximos is the result of his perception that America is moving ever further away from the allegedly benign form of totalitarianism favored by the WWWtW faithful, towards a neocon mode of liberalism that is neither New Deal fish, nor Morning in America fowl. But, let us, nonetheless, not look this gift horse in the mouth.

WWWtW-Watch #16: Letting It All Hang Out

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

Compare the central idea of this excerpt from a recent post at What's Wrong With the World...

In my estimation, Christians of the West ought to adopt the territorialist ethic of Islam: any territory falling within the compass of what once was Christendom should be considered irrevocable and inalienable, and Islamic influence therein entirely illegitimate, the Near East, for obvious prudential reasons, tragically excepted. No compromise. No quarter. We've got nowhere else to go, and we will be besieged, over the generations, if we acquiesce in the permanence of the Islamic cultural presence - because what Muslims have done in Europe, in establishing their no-go-for-Euros sharia zones, in what they will do, forever and ever, amen. The acceptance of Muslim tribal enclaves in the former Christendom is a courting of disaster, like ingesting a poison for which the body cannot develop a tolerance.

...to the this excerpt from the Museum of Tolerance site:

From 1933 to 1939 the Nazis systematically excluded Jews from participation in German life. Jews lost their jobs, their citizenship, and their civic rights. They were isolated and cut off from society. But flight was still possible. Although the world knew the plight of the German Jews, little refuge was offered. The world watched while Nazi Germany became a testing ground for an accelerating persecution that ultimately became the epitaph for six million Jews.

We can see where this is inexorably leading us:

So I believe that I act in the spirit of the Almighty God: by defending myself against the Jew. I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. 1924

WWWtW-Watch #15: Mole

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.


It can now be disclosed – since I have been banned for a second time – that, over the course of several days, I had again been posting comments on threads at What’s Wrong with the World. As I am no geek, I was without technical knowledge of how such a ban is effected. What I discovered, almost by accident, is that one can apparently only be banned on one computer network at a time. (Or something like that.) Anyway, I found that I could post to WWWtW from home, and so I did.

I was not without some moral misgivings about entering a “place of business” from which I had been 86’d. But, as the saying goes, I decided that I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Taking those misgivings into account, however, I entered without disguise, using my real name, and providing the address of an email account that I have been using for nearly a decade. I expected to be discovered and shown the door immediately. As it went down, I was able to comment there over the course of several days. If I was a mole, I was a mole who was hiding in plain sight.

I was spotted almost immediately by a guy named Brandon. Brandon had previously known me as “Rob,” primarily at Disputations. There is a Brandon in every grade-school classroom and on every cell block in the slammer. He’s the guy who runs up to tell Teacher (or the turn-key) about whatever it is that his classmates (or fellow inmates) are trying to get away with. The most polite word for Brandon’s type is probably “snitch.” Unless they are very large guys, the Brandons of this world usually pay for their compulsive police work on the playground (or on the exercise yard). I just ignored Brandon. For whatever reason, his I.D.ing of me was without result.

I next aroused the suspicions of the redoubtable Lydia McGrew (and isn’t that a perfect name for the female heavy in this drama?) who thought that she recognized the rhetorical stylings of “Rodak” in the commentary of “Rob.” It is nice to know that one has developed a distinctive voice. Again – since she did not directly ask if “Rob” was, in fact, “Rodak” – I simply ignored Ms. McGrew’s musings on the subject.

What I believe to have been the terminal Rodak-spotting was effected by an intellectual pug named William Luse. This is an individual who is in the habit of taking any counter-argument to one of his unimaginative pronouncements as a personal insult. If that ESPN announcer who delights in giving nicknames to sports figures turned his talents to the WWWtW regulars, he might dub this jamoke as William “Fast and” Luse – because that’s how Bill plays with the words of his interlocutors. Billy was the easiest to ignore sans twinges of guilt.

I have to believe that WWWtW staffer, Zippy Catholic, who had known me well as “Rob” – first at Disputations and then on his own site – was immediately aware of my reemergence at WWWtW and decided, for whatever reason, to let me slide for awhile. It was Zippy who originally aroused my ire by suggesting that I had been operating as a “troll” in my exchanges at WWWtW. (see comment section here).

As I said, I am no geek. I knew, obviously, that “troll” was a pejorative term. But I had only a vague idea as to the specific shortcomings included in its usage. Now that I had been commenting at WWWtW illicitly, it occurred to me that maybe Zippy had been correct. Nonetheless, I did not really worry myself too much concerning this transgression of cyber-etiquette, since, for all their intellectual pretensions, the WWWtW cabal are absolutely vulgar and déclassé in their response to any comments that are other than adulatory affirmations of their narrowly orthodox dicta. They disrespect honest dissent. So be it, then. To put it in the vernacular – what goes around comes around.

But the question remains: what is a troll? This will be considered in a subsequent post.

WWWtW-Watch #14: Projectile Posting

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.


Q: What do you get when you mix an ounce of race-baiting with a cup of gay-bashing and blend into an illiberal dollop of intellectual arrogance?

A: Something like this:

Pot: Yo.

Kettle: ‘Sup?

Pot: You one black m****rf**ker!

Kettle: Yo mom-ma!

See the full treatment here.

WWWtW-Watch #13: An Immodest Proposal

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

One can often not be entirely certain that "Zippy Catholic" (my own personal Bill Richardson) is being completely serious in the stuff he posts for public consumption. My guess is that most people find much of Zippy’s output to be patently tongue-in-cheek. I’m here to say it’s not.

Zippy’s latest proposal is that divorced individuals should be required to pay a surtax since, by dint of having divorced, they constitute a pollutant of “the commons.” Zippy peers into the plate, gets the sign, goes into his windup—there’s the signature high leg kick!—and casts the first stone.

Ball one.

In reiterating my belief that Zippy is dead serious here, I also want to point out that, like a dog returning to its vomit, Zippy’s superficially amusing metaphorical theme of divorce as pollution turns back upon itself rhetorically to identify with its eagerly probing snout the true agenda embedded in this steaming pool of nonsense:

Environmental regulations can of course be a subterfuge, a political tool used on false pretenses to sieze [sic] power for other purposes.

When you’ve stopped chuckling, then, it might be prudent to consider just exactly what are Zippy’s “other purposes”…?

WWWtW-Watch #12: Tuskegee Experiment Exposed--as Good

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

I’ve been very lax in tending this regular feature of Rodak Riffs of late. To tell truth, I’ve been impeded both by lack of stomach for reading the stuff, and by the evident lack of interest on the part of what I sardonically refer to as my ”readership.” But today, finding myself in a bit of a rut elsewhere in the blogosphere and in a bit of a funk emotionally, rather than resorting to cutting myself with a dull blade, I gave WWWtW a glimpse. I found that my old friend Maximos has been a busy lad. Maybe he’s off the decaf -- who knows? But it was a post by his colleague, Steve Burton, that prompted this latest installment of WWWtW-Watch. Mr. Burton’s revisionist justification of the notorious and shameful Tuskegee Experiment (yes, you read that correctly) I just couldn’t let slide without comment.

I’ll let interested parties read Burton's post for themselves. But briefly, it seems that the Tuskegee Experiment was actually a “progressive” operation (those damned liberals again!) staffed largely by African Americans, undertaken with the full approval of “black medical authorities,” and designed to provide compassionate help to blacks, since they were a group particularly plagued by syphilis.

Oh. Well that’s very different. Never mind.

If you will check out the comment section following this retroactive exoneration of those involved in this peculiar investigation, you will note that it has drawn more than the usual amount of dissent for a blog whose comment sections routinely consist of self-congratulatory circle jerks.

The most emphatic of these dissenting opinions was a long one posted by a reader signing as “Jean.” Here is an excerpt:

In the face of such evil, labels like "progressive", "conservative" and "liberal" would laughable if the tragedy weren't so dark. These are your brothers, and they were wronged. Did you hear yourself? You are disregarding evil (the experiments) because you say those who are ideologically opposed to you supported it back then (progressives), and it is pointed to by liberals today. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't count. Kings's X.

I urge you to read Jean’s entire comment, as it hits home hard. And, predictably, it was immediately followed by this lightly veiled threat from WWWtW’s resident Thought Patrolman, Paul J. Cella:

Jean, please confine your disagreements to the substance of Mr. Burton's argument, rather than imputing malice to his motives. Thank you.

Uh, excuse me, but I think Jean’s central point was that Mr. Burton’s intent is malicious on the face of it. I concur. One suspects that the rehabilitation of Dr. Mengele lags not far behind.

WWWtW-Watch #11: Bwaaa-ha-ha-ha!

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

I only wish that I had read this WWWtW post, entitled Art Imitates Death, before its author discovered that its basis was a “hoax.” Hoax is not even the word for it—it’s a joke. I will not recapitulate the basis of this WWWWtW offering here, since it is ugly in the extreme. I wish only to point out that the simple biological and physiological implausibility of the story having been true should have tipped off any but the most credulous of bumpkins that the thing was a total fabrication. Read it -- it'll blow your mind.

So why was it believed? It was believed because the kind of self-righteous, finger-pointing and prurient hatred that fuels WWWtW can have no existence, no raison d’être, unless the hate-ful can be found and made the object of scorn. It was believed because the author wanted, nay, needed to believe it.

And these are the type of people to whom we entrust the education of our children

But, at the same time, what better case could one make against the wisdom of accrediting home schooling than this post?

WWWtW-Watch #10: I Own, Therefore I Am

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

In his latest stab at profundity, Paul J. Cella, who moonlights as beadle over at WWWtW, has presented a scenario in which he purports to counsel a “correspondent” in How to Argue Against Socialism. We must admit that in so doing he does, indeed, descend to the depths.

In offering his sop of wisdom to this eager would-be disciple, Mr. Cella inadvertently discloses yet again that as a self-designated “Crusader” (Bwaa-ha-ha-ha!), he is--in heedless imitation of the Crusaders of old--out, not for the rescue of souls in captivity, but for the taking of plunder:

What I should like to recommend to my correspondent, who so boldly demanded how to argue against the Servile State which is Socialism, is this.

He should forget attacking Socialism because it doesn’t work (the politics of it), and begin attacking it on its own principles (the philosophy guiding it). Admittedly this is a greater burden on the intellect, but I believe my correspondent is up to the challenge. What he must demonstrate is that Socialism is evil even if it does what it says it will do; that to destroy the principle of private property is to amputate an irreplaceable part of what it means to be human, what it means to labor and create and be fruitful; in religious terms, that it is a heresy, an innovation that will annihilate, a revolt against the nature of man and the natural order of the world; in short, that it fails not because it doesn’t work, but rather it doesn’t work because it fails — fails utterly to reflect in any meaningful way the truth about Man and Society.

Let's examine the core of this remarkable pronouncement in isolation:

[...] to destroy the principle of private property is to amputate an irreplaceable part of what it means to be human, what it means to labor and create and be fruitful;

Setting aside for a moment the inconvenient truth that socialism per se does not proclaim as a goal the destruction of the principle of private property, what does Mr. Cella--who holds himself out as an exemplar of unquenchable zeal for the preservation of “what remains of Christendom”-- make of the words of Our Lord with regard to the concept of allowing the ownership of private property to become central to one’s life, and to one’s very self-image as a human being?:

Matthew 6:19-21: Don’t lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume, and where thieves don’t break through and steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

It might also be pointed out to Mr. Cella that “what it means to labor” is that Man has been cursed by God for his sin in the Garden to earn his living by the sweat of his brow. None of this, apparently, “speaks to Mr. Cella’s chest”; but it speaks to mine.

The name of Mr. Cella’s god is, evidently, I OWN THAT I OWN. Mr. Cella has clearly snatched at the offer made to Jesus Christ by Satan on the heights, and clings to it with a bitterness undiluted by such weaknesses as humility, brother-love and charity. Mr. Cella and his correspondent make a good pair, of the kind which Our Lord may have had in mind when He said, Leave the dead to bury the dead.

WWWtW-Watch #9 : A Little Help

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

Being a former English major, I was severely tempted to dedicate an installment of WWWtW-Watch to Lydia McGrew's modest proposal, entitled Plotting to Save the Humanities. The situation is, however, that I currently have seven books checked out of the library, and my leisure time to read is falling ever further behind the branching interests of my intellectual curiosity: I've bitten off more than I can chew. Since I feel a real need to be spending more time reading than blogging for the nonce, I was very pleased to see that Kyle of Postmodern Papist has taken Lydia on himself. He has said everything that I might have said, and has done so not only better, but with much more propriety than I would have been able to muster. Therefore, without further ado, I direct you to Kyle's post.

WWWtW-Watch #8: Pharisees - Which Kind Are You?

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

This installment of WWWtW-Watch is not going to direct you to any particular posting on that site, but rather will ask you to contemplate the following excerpt from Thomas Merton’s book, The Ascent to Truth, from which I also quoted in my previous post. I find that what Merton has to say here is particularly applicable to the attitudes towards dissenting “outsiders” who have been unfortunate enough to stumble into the doctrinaire realm of What's Wrong With the World. Here, then, is Merton:

Just as there is a Pharisaism of knowledge, so also there is a Pharisaism of studied ignorance, for one perverse instinct can feed on everything under the sun. The man who is proud of an abstruse and technical doctrine, difficult to acquire and acquired by few, may be proud in the same way as another man who is pleased with a sweet religious ignorance that makes him feel complacently superior to all learning. Each of these two men is proud of the same thing. Each thinks he has reached a peak of secret wisdom which is closed to all but a few. But the ignorant Pharisee is perhaps more obnoxious than the other, since he is proud of what he conceives to be his humility, and this is a great perversion.

It seems to me that it is precisely because the WWWtW crew is comprised of individuals who are “proud of an abstruse and technical doctrine” – a doctrine which they would, given power, establish as a “public orthodoxy” – that they are so belittling, contemptuous, derisive, and dismissive of any person who disagrees with their point of view. I have in previous installments of WWWtW-Watch provided examples of this mode of “argument” and so will refrain from repeating those here. Suffice it to say that it is highly unlikely that any person finding his way to WWWtW is going to be of the “Aw, shucks-Just regular folks-Gimme that old time religion, it’s good enough for me” type of Pharisee who is characterized by Merton as the most obnoxious. I, for instance, was led to WWWtW by Zippy Catholic, whose personal site I had been visiting for years, and whom I considered to be a friend until he took to labeling me a “troll” for the benefit of his WWWtW cronies.

But, it’s not about me, or my hurt feelings; rather, it’s about the attitude displayed at WWWtW for any and all thought that can’t, or won’t, be brought into conformity to the party line. It’s about the subtextual agenda at WWWtW to subvert the Constitution by outlawing dissent. It's about intellectual totalitarianism.

WWWtW-Watch #7: Credit Due

Dedicated to the proposition that nobody can be wrong all the time.

Kudos to WWWtW author, Lydia McGrew, for posting the poem "Seven Stanzas at Easter" by one of my favorite writers, John Updike, to celebrate this joyous day.

Thanks, Lydia

WWWtW-Watch #6: You Say Re-van-chist, I Say Re-vahn-chist

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

What follows will not be a radical criticism of the WWWtW post cited below, but will rather ponder the implications of the use of the word “state” in that post by author, Maximos, and how it relates to concepts of “society” and “government” and “nation.” I will be attempting to combine here my intention to initiate some talk about conservative guru, Russell Kirk, with my on-going critique of the concept of a “public orthodoxy” as proposed at WWWtW. Don’t be expecting a whole lot of coherence, as my thoughts are all over the ballpark.

In the comments section of WWWtW-Watch #5, Tom said:

I'd say it's reasonable to distinguish between "society" and "government”.

I'd also want to distinguish between a "public orthodoxy" enforced by the society and one enforced by the government. (Come to think of it, I want everyone else to make that distinction, too. Especially the government.)

My reply was that I did not see how “society” could enforce a “public orthodoxy” without resort to governmental power.

But, exactly what is meant by “society” in this context? The United States of America is a nation that has been characterized as The Great Melting Pot. In many respects, this has been a valid description. But America also remains, due to continuing waves of immigration, a nation comprised of a number of subcultures in various stages of assimilation and coexisting in an often uneven state of mutual acceptance. That being the case, what forms the core of American society? I would say that it is the Constitution, and only the Constitution.

In the excerpt below, WWWtW author Maximos seems to indicate that the crucially operative dichotomy is not that between society and government, but rather that between “nation” and “state.” Maximos, I surmise, is an avowed nationalist. Those individuals who disagree with his favored policies, whether foreign or domestic, one gathers, are “statists.” That which is identified as the “nation” seems to be an amalgam of “society” (presumably the entity that would embody any “public orthodoxy”) plus the geographical entity found within our national borders. The ”state”, then, would be an unholy alliance of the political and economic powers-that-be. Maximos writes:

A decadent state, inclusive of the political and economic establishments of a country, will war against the nation over which it rules, seeking to efface the world-image that has nourished and sustained it - and will employ the nationalisms of others in the process.

Maximos, as I understand him, is speaking here of the lack of will on the part of “the state” to stem the tide of illegal immigration across our southern border. He characterizes these elements as Mexican “revanchists.” Presumably, it is “society’ that is most at risk from this invasion; and as goes society, so goes “the nation.”

As a benighted lefty attempting to get all of these conservative ducks in a row, the better to conduct an accurate taxonomy of them, I have been looking into the thought of that ideological saint of the WWWTW team (see archives, April 24, 2007), Russell Kirk. In the opening chapter of his seminal work, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (entitled “The Idea of Conservatism”), Kirk outlines his “six canons of conservative thought.”

In the first of these canons, Kirk provides magisterial authority for the WWWtW call for a “public orthodoxy” by positing a “Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience.” He goes on to say: “Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems.” In the second canon, Kirk decries egalitarianism and utilitarianism. We may return to those issues in a subsequent post. But in the third of his six canons, on which I want to focus here, he adds another layer of meaning to the mysterious term “society,” by asserting his “Conviction that a civilized society requires orders and classes. As against the notion of a “classless society.”

Hmmm. It would seem to me that, in America, the horse is pretty much out of the barn in terms of any kind of permanent caste system. What would be the basis of that which Kirk has in mind here? Economic level? Educational/cultural attainment? Heredity? A combination of all of these? Don’t we have that now, pretty much? Isn’t the opportunity for upward mobility both the pride of our nation and the aspiration that every father has for his son? What’s the beef?

I have to ask here: wouldn’t some kind of economic egalitarianism that would eliminate the extremes of both wealth and poverty, still leave open the possibility of a de facto “class system” based on educational and cultural attainments, especially in the sciences and in the fine arts?

And, to get back to WWWtW and the idea of a “public orthodoxy”—I ask again: why does a class system—even though it admits of a hypothetical cultural/moral elite--automatically empower that elite to decide what the “others” may read, think, and discuss in a public forum? I don’t find such a power anywhere in the Constitution. In fact, I believe that the Constitution proscribes any group having that kind of power.

I’m not sure that I’ve connected many dots here... Any thoughts?

Oh, the title of this post? I was amused at the horror expressed by Maximos at the revanchism expressed by the Mexican official in the video clip embedded in the post in question, as compared to his strident endorsement in the February 22, 2008 post, "Reflections on Kosovo, In the Wake of Independence” (you’ll need to scroll down to it in the archives) of the instantaneous Serbian revanchist aspirations with regard to Kosovo. I guess it’s all a matter of whose Christian ox is being gored by what Muslim bull?

WWWtW-Watch #5: First We Burn the Books...

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

…then we come for the readers.

Yes, just as you may have feared, Fire Marshal Maximos, not content with having burned every book he and his troopers found to be effervescent of liberalism, is now out to get the readers of those books:

For, while we may speak somewhat jestingly of consigning certain works to the flames, what we are doing, if we do so reflectively, is expressing the conviction that there either is, or ought to be, a public orthodoxy, and that it is preferable that this orthodoxy be explicit when necessary.

Maximos proposes a public orthodoxy, because:

No society is obliged to extend its protecting shelter, nor the dignity of "right", to its own subversion, and the means thereof.

Oh, really? What about this?:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it…

Well, there you go: there’s the right to subvert it, no? And the Second Amendment to the Constitution—or so I am told by my local patriot-slash-biker-slash-militia man-slash-yahoo--is there to protect one of the means--should Hustler magazine prove inadequate to the task, that is.

Maximos continues to wax eloquent in defense of thought control, by stating that

the singular and salubrious virtue of actually consigning to the flames some pernicious piece of writing is that of honesty: the declaration that there obtains, if fact, an orthodoxy which we mean to uphold. [How do you mean to uphold it?] That act announces that there shall be no confusion, no ambiguity; certain ideas and the practices they sustain are excluded [How do you plan to exclude them?] as inimical to a way of life.

Does this mean that he’s stopped “jesting”?

Was it not to uphold a public orthodoxy that Torquemada did his funky thing during the Spanish Inquisition? And was it not for the sake of a public orthodoxy that John Calvin consigned Michael Servetus to the flames? To bring things closer to our day and age, what were The Great Purge and the Moscow Show Trials of Joseph Stalin meant to perpetuate, if not a public orthodoxy? Ditto, the Cultural Revolution, and the trial of the Gang of Four, perpetrated by those Maoist Red Guards, so very zealous in the cause of a public orthodoxy. In the good ol’ U.S. of A. we had our own pale version of that in the kangaroo court that tried the Chicago Seven for inciting the police force of the Windy City to riot.

A public orthodoxy, you see, is just a gaudy rhetorical vestment, to be pranced around in by a poseur—unless, of course, he has the both the will and the means to enforce it.

WWWtW-Watch #4: BYO Weenies!

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

Oh, boy! Hey kids! Guess what?! A virtual book burning! What fun!

In your heart, you know they’re right. Sure. You know that you don’t possess the intellect, the discretion, the maturity, or, at long last, bubba, the class, to decide on your own what to read. Well, happily for you, your moral superiors at WWWtW have undertaken the task of protecting you from your own so very apparent shortcomings. A list is being drawn up of those books which should be removed from the shelves and incinerated before intellectual dwarves such as yourselves incur irreparable harm by reading them.

Look, it worked in 1933, and it can work again today.

In the words of Fire Marshal, Maximos:

There are books that, by virtue of their publication and continued existence, so corrupt, distort, and occlude the perception of reality that they decrease the sum total of knowledge in the cosmos; these are books that function as intellectual black holes, actively negating knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, leaving the void of ignorance and depravity in place of these. It would have been better for all the world had they never been written, or, having once been written, that they had been consigned to the flames, so that we could discuss the temperature at which ignorance burns.

And, maybe, if we’re all real good, they’ll make us virtual s’mores!

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UPDATE: Kyle R. Cupp of Postmodern Papist had the temerity to visit WWWtW’s crypto-fascist bonfire and to there suggest:

Not into burning books myself. If an author's ideas are wrong or dangerous, let them be shown as such in open, hospitable discussion. Those eager to burn a book may even have something to learn from the author.

This polite and in my opinion, civilized, point of view on the subject of book burning was requited thusly:

Go wring your hands somewhere else.

Posted by thebyronicman March 6, 2008 11:56 PM

Evidently, at WWWtW, not only are the blog authors empowered to quash dissent, but it would seem that every undergraduate sycophant in residence is also equipped with a hook. Caveat emptor.

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UPDATE.1:

It's nice to be remembered. And they even spelled my name right:

Apparently we've agreed to burn Rodak's computer (wink).
Posted by Michael Bauman March 7, 2008 9:19 AM