Then, the hapless members asked George the big question: Are you now or have you ever been?
George Anastaplo refused to answer. He could have truthfully said, No. End of story. His three-fold reply was that (1) the Constitution guaranteed freedom of association; (2) it was not illegal to belong to the Communist Party; and, most important, (3) it was totally improper for the Illinois Bar Association to ask him that question – or any question about an applicant’s political affiliation. His application to practice law was promptly denied . . .
George also received strong support from Leo Strauss, the great political philosopher ... George was never admitted to the bar. Instead, he taught political philosophy for six decades, wrote multiple books on political thought and civil liberties, eventually teaching at Loyola University’s law school.
I'm proud to say I cut back my donations to Cal by 95% two years ago. After reading this article and seeing the news about violent antisemitism, I'll eliminate the remaining 5%.
Why were you donating to such a low-impact charity in the first place? Why not donate to a high-rated one? I mean, $5000 to Helen Keller International saves a life. Seems like a lot more bang for your buck than donating to an already-wealthy western university.
This will be an exercise worth revisiting a couple of years down the road when Christian Nationalist oaths become conditions of employment for many US academics.
If you are pretty sure about that and interested in betting, you could probably find a number of people here who would be willing to take the other side of that wager for a significant amount of money.
russian christians left the western church during the renaissance explicitly over its compromise w/reason. Christianity is a death-worshipping hatred of mans mind and the resulting pride. It takes extreme evasion to regard crucifixion as ones symbol of morality and then deny its necessarily bloody history or to claim that its the base of Americas founding politics of individual rights. Christianity is a rationalization of the evasion of mans survival need to focus his mind, thru his senses, onto the concrete, material universe.
If it does happen, do you think Bryan would oppose it just as steadfastly as he opposes "woke loyalty oaths" today? Or would he simply find reasons to ignore or downplay it? Now there's a wager worth betting on.
Bryan? Oh yes, he would oppose it. I know him personally, well enough to say with confidence that he would have nothing good to say about a Christian Nationalist oath, whatever that would look like, being necessary to work in a state school or for government. If it were as comparatively mild as the 1950's oath he might say so, and likewise if it is as onerous as the current oath-in-diversity-statement-clothing model he will oppose it to the same degree.
There might be a loyalty oath that would turn Caplan's head, but it certainly wouldn't be some manner of Christian Nationalist one, and I rather doubt there would be one at all.
>A key tenet of American’s civic religion is that the McCarthy-era persecution of Communists and Communist sympathizers was both paranoid and immoral.
In the 1990s(?), the NYT Bk Rev favorably reviewed several pro-McCarthy books, concluding that there had been commies in the govt and that Truman, post-election, fired 70% of McCarthys targets. Conservative, William F. Buckley, said that McCarthy, while properly exposing commies, was also a liar.
Was McCarthyism really all that bad? I mean ultimately you're enforcing a taboo on center-left civil servants in the national security state to stop hanging out with Henry Wallace fans. They bitched and moaned, but they wanted the tax bump to pay for NATO and some of the new large military % GDP after Korea, so if the taxpayer insists, they will follow. Obviously left-wing people don't think it was that bad if they think we should ruin a few people's reputations to deter sincere belief in white racism, which they believe is growing in a sub-culture of right-wing professional types who bring up IQ charts all day. Are they descriptively correct about that phenomenon? Probably depends who you talk to.
I think the main problem with wokeness is the lack of a clear foreign policy angle. You could inflame people with accusations and then it was kind of done, the country was consolidated on foreign policy post-WW2. By contrast, wokeness is a lot more like the Americanization movement; assimilating people to new millennial social mores around race. Like Americanization, it's strongest in major cities and universities where the most foreign-born people are. But we like taking in some immigrants, so social panics to assimilate people is kind of the price of doing business. It was true then, it's true now. If we can avoid the worst of domestic policy during WW1, we'll be doing okay. But there needs to be an endgame, which the cold war strategy provided among elites and this situation so far does not.
Who is saying this? Biden is proposing real value Pentagon cuts for FY 2025, but I don't think it's because of wokeness. The Democratic party favored domestic spending over military spending much earlier than the cultural phenomenon of wokeness in the 2010s...
The last US foreign policy was WW2. After that, we rejected policy for bipartisan Pragmatist response to crises. Now we have Reps evading a strategic need to support a potential ally, Ukraine, because they have no intellectual alternative to immigrant traditions. And Dems who want an ally, Israel, to aid its invading enemy. Both parties are intellectually chaotic. We need a rational philosophy.
Well, one of those loyalty oaths was easy for white people of strong character to make in good faith and the other isn't, so according to disparate impact the ones we have now are actually more humane.
Very good. I've listed it at https://www.rasmusen.org/rasmapedia/index.php?title=Loyalty_Oaths
and https://www.mitfreespeech.org/dei_statements.php.
See also:
"Today’s ‘Diversity’ Oaths Resemble 1950s ‘Loyalty’ Oaths," RealClearPolitics (May 12, 2022).
Then, the hapless members asked George the big question: Are you now or have you ever been?
George Anastaplo refused to answer. He could have truthfully said, No. End of story. His three-fold reply was that (1) the Constitution guaranteed freedom of association; (2) it was not illegal to belong to the Communist Party; and, most important, (3) it was totally improper for the Illinois Bar Association to ask him that question – or any question about an applicant’s political affiliation. His application to practice law was promptly denied . . .
George also received strong support from Leo Strauss, the great political philosopher ... George was never admitted to the bar. Instead, he taught political philosophy for six decades, wrote multiple books on political thought and civil liberties, eventually teaching at Loyola University’s law school.
I'm proud to say I cut back my donations to Cal by 95% two years ago. After reading this article and seeing the news about violent antisemitism, I'll eliminate the remaining 5%.
Why were you donating to such a low-impact charity in the first place? Why not donate to a high-rated one? I mean, $5000 to Helen Keller International saves a life. Seems like a lot more bang for your buck than donating to an already-wealthy western university.
This will be an exercise worth revisiting a couple of years down the road when Christian Nationalist oaths become conditions of employment for many US academics.
If you are pretty sure about that and interested in betting, you could probably find a number of people here who would be willing to take the other side of that wager for a significant amount of money.
The Christian Dark Ages make todays Christian Nationalists, even Putin, look like, well, a Sunday school picnic.
I suspect you could redact the word "Christian" from each instance in that sentence and it would be true. It was all very bad by modern standards.
russian christians left the western church during the renaissance explicitly over its compromise w/reason. Christianity is a death-worshipping hatred of mans mind and the resulting pride. It takes extreme evasion to regard crucifixion as ones symbol of morality and then deny its necessarily bloody history or to claim that its the base of Americas founding politics of individual rights. Christianity is a rationalization of the evasion of mans survival need to focus his mind, thru his senses, onto the concrete, material universe.
If it does happen, do you think Bryan would oppose it just as steadfastly as he opposes "woke loyalty oaths" today? Or would he simply find reasons to ignore or downplay it? Now there's a wager worth betting on.
Bryan? Oh yes, he would oppose it. I know him personally, well enough to say with confidence that he would have nothing good to say about a Christian Nationalist oath, whatever that would look like, being necessary to work in a state school or for government. If it were as comparatively mild as the 1950's oath he might say so, and likewise if it is as onerous as the current oath-in-diversity-statement-clothing model he will oppose it to the same degree.
There might be a loyalty oath that would turn Caplan's head, but it certainly wouldn't be some manner of Christian Nationalist one, and I rather doubt there would be one at all.
That's the thing about professing the importance of free expression and inquiry above all other civic values: no loyalty oaths required!
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/
>A key tenet of American’s civic religion is that the McCarthy-era persecution of Communists and Communist sympathizers was both paranoid and immoral.
In the 1990s(?), the NYT Bk Rev favorably reviewed several pro-McCarthy books, concluding that there had been commies in the govt and that Truman, post-election, fired 70% of McCarthys targets. Conservative, William F. Buckley, said that McCarthy, while properly exposing commies, was also a liar.
Is there anything in this post one could bet on?
Yes. Also, McCarthy underrated the infiltration of Communism in the U.S.F.G. and lower levels.
Was McCarthyism really all that bad? I mean ultimately you're enforcing a taboo on center-left civil servants in the national security state to stop hanging out with Henry Wallace fans. They bitched and moaned, but they wanted the tax bump to pay for NATO and some of the new large military % GDP after Korea, so if the taxpayer insists, they will follow. Obviously left-wing people don't think it was that bad if they think we should ruin a few people's reputations to deter sincere belief in white racism, which they believe is growing in a sub-culture of right-wing professional types who bring up IQ charts all day. Are they descriptively correct about that phenomenon? Probably depends who you talk to.
I think the main problem with wokeness is the lack of a clear foreign policy angle. You could inflame people with accusations and then it was kind of done, the country was consolidated on foreign policy post-WW2. By contrast, wokeness is a lot more like the Americanization movement; assimilating people to new millennial social mores around race. Like Americanization, it's strongest in major cities and universities where the most foreign-born people are. But we like taking in some immigrants, so social panics to assimilate people is kind of the price of doing business. It was true then, it's true now. If we can avoid the worst of domestic policy during WW1, we'll be doing okay. But there needs to be an endgame, which the cold war strategy provided among elites and this situation so far does not.
>the main problem with wokeness is the lack of a clear foreign policy angle
Their clear angle is that America should decrease its military to equity w/its enemies.
Who is saying this? Biden is proposing real value Pentagon cuts for FY 2025, but I don't think it's because of wokeness. The Democratic party favored domestic spending over military spending much earlier than the cultural phenomenon of wokeness in the 2010s...
The last US foreign policy was WW2. After that, we rejected policy for bipartisan Pragmatist response to crises. Now we have Reps evading a strategic need to support a potential ally, Ukraine, because they have no intellectual alternative to immigrant traditions. And Dems who want an ally, Israel, to aid its invading enemy. Both parties are intellectually chaotic. We need a rational philosophy.
Well, one of those loyalty oaths was easy for white people of strong character to make in good faith and the other isn't, so according to disparate impact the ones we have now are actually more humane.
Because the ones we have now are easy for white people of strong character to make.
😘