The problem with admitting that progress has been made is that it lessens your ability to feel like a noble peasant, bravely and selflessly storming the Bastille to release the prisoners in the face of implacable and overwhelming force.
Mounk and Neiman provided a very interesting and serious exchange of ideas. How do we drive their level of discourse down to our political and chattering classes when Congress - you can't make this stuff up - spends valuable time holding hearings about UFOs?
When Jews and the American South are discussed, we should recognize that Charleston colony and a little bit later Georgia colony provided Jews with a level of freedom and with it civic engagement equal (or almost equal) to their Protestant neighbors.
This is one of the best discussions I've heard on Persuasion yet -- thank you.
I consider myself to be a person of the Center-Right and so have plenty of ideological differences with Susan Neiman, but I'm impressed by the depth and breadth of her reflections, her willingness, even zest, in addressing complexity, and what I can only call the humanity with which she shares and explains her thoughts. Her book is now on my Reading List.
I was impressed enough with Neiman's piece in Persuasion that I ordered her book--and quickly regretted it. First, she writes like Communism really wasn't that bad, that the fact that Paul Robeson supported one of the worst tyrants who ever lived is irrelevant to his greatness, that the poor innocent Soviet Union only "turned from ally to enemy" because the Evil US "decided its interests lay in recruiting former Nazis to defeat Communism." Second is her caricature of evolutionary psychology, acting, as do so many creationists, as if its recognition of nature's cruelties is an endorsement of them. She writes as if evolutionary psychology doesn't believe in the possibility of moral progress. Uh, does the name Steven Pinker ring a bell?
To be conservative is to be cautious about changing things. No more, no less.
Everyone should be able to walk around unmolested. Everyone should be able to go to a bar unmolested. That includes people who just want to have a quiet drink without someone in a grotesque getup shouting in their face. Most people want to be able to ignore all this. How would you feel about a Jehovah’s Witness who won’t leave you alone?
I think that noting progress is very important and the example of using the term patriarchy to describe the situation today is simply off the mark. Under patriarchy wives and children were the property of the husband/father. If the marriage broke down the children were to stay with the father. The father could prevent the mother from ever seeing her children.
In a similar vein the use of “tribal” is not helpful either. Tribes are typically linked by blood. At the lowest level is the family and then the clan (a very large extended family) and then the tribe. A person cannot “join” a tribe (with very rare exceptions). In the US Native American tribes have been shattered by violence and disrupted by intermarriage. This means that many US Native Americans now use DNA in order to identify their tribe.
I find myself on the same side politically as the author and yet why this Foucault bashing (and this in demonstrating a real almost intentional misunderstanding of his work each time mentioned)? There is nothing to suggest that a familiarity with Foucault would lead to the sort of woke character that is painted here. Otherwise in terms of the necessary political and ideological battles that have to happen, in total agreement. I would suggest that Foucault, Adorno and the other authors cited would complement rather than detract from this struggle. That part was superfluous for me.
"Tribalism has always been a conservative view,"
I think this a hilariously off statement considering what I know and observe in both liberal and conservative communities.
The problem with admitting that progress has been made is that it lessens your ability to feel like a noble peasant, bravely and selflessly storming the Bastille to release the prisoners in the face of implacable and overwhelming force.
Mounk and Neiman provided a very interesting and serious exchange of ideas. How do we drive their level of discourse down to our political and chattering classes when Congress - you can't make this stuff up - spends valuable time holding hearings about UFOs?
When Jews and the American South are discussed, we should recognize that Charleston colony and a little bit later Georgia colony provided Jews with a level of freedom and with it civic engagement equal (or almost equal) to their Protestant neighbors.
This is one of the best discussions I've heard on Persuasion yet -- thank you.
I consider myself to be a person of the Center-Right and so have plenty of ideological differences with Susan Neiman, but I'm impressed by the depth and breadth of her reflections, her willingness, even zest, in addressing complexity, and what I can only call the humanity with which she shares and explains her thoughts. Her book is now on my Reading List.
I was impressed enough with Neiman's piece in Persuasion that I ordered her book--and quickly regretted it. First, she writes like Communism really wasn't that bad, that the fact that Paul Robeson supported one of the worst tyrants who ever lived is irrelevant to his greatness, that the poor innocent Soviet Union only "turned from ally to enemy" because the Evil US "decided its interests lay in recruiting former Nazis to defeat Communism." Second is her caricature of evolutionary psychology, acting, as do so many creationists, as if its recognition of nature's cruelties is an endorsement of them. She writes as if evolutionary psychology doesn't believe in the possibility of moral progress. Uh, does the name Steven Pinker ring a bell?
The correct phrase is "to home in" not to hone in.
Good conversation here.
stanley
To be conservative is to be cautious about changing things. No more, no less.
Everyone should be able to walk around unmolested. Everyone should be able to go to a bar unmolested. That includes people who just want to have a quiet drink without someone in a grotesque getup shouting in their face. Most people want to be able to ignore all this. How would you feel about a Jehovah’s Witness who won’t leave you alone?
Sir…
I think that noting progress is very important and the example of using the term patriarchy to describe the situation today is simply off the mark. Under patriarchy wives and children were the property of the husband/father. If the marriage broke down the children were to stay with the father. The father could prevent the mother from ever seeing her children.
In a similar vein the use of “tribal” is not helpful either. Tribes are typically linked by blood. At the lowest level is the family and then the clan (a very large extended family) and then the tribe. A person cannot “join” a tribe (with very rare exceptions). In the US Native American tribes have been shattered by violence and disrupted by intermarriage. This means that many US Native Americans now use DNA in order to identify their tribe.
I find myself on the same side politically as the author and yet why this Foucault bashing (and this in demonstrating a real almost intentional misunderstanding of his work each time mentioned)? There is nothing to suggest that a familiarity with Foucault would lead to the sort of woke character that is painted here. Otherwise in terms of the necessary political and ideological battles that have to happen, in total agreement. I would suggest that Foucault, Adorno and the other authors cited would complement rather than detract from this struggle. That part was superfluous for me.