Civil Commotion

“Would you raise the top marginal tax rate to over 90 percent, as it was in the 1950s, when the middle class and the economy were doing so well?” asked Milt Lauenstein, 89, who had the same white hair and hunched posture as Mr. Sanders.

“You mean under the communist Dwight D. Eisenhower?”

At a Bernie Sanders campaign appearance

The punch-line, of course, is that Eisenhower, the Republican president who shaped the last half of the American Century, couldn’t possibly win the Republican presidential nomination today; the base would dismiss him as a RINO.

It was Eisenhower who smashed Nazism and, as President, launched the Interstate Highway system; funded America’s research into, and subsequent domination of, computing; and initiated the space program while demanding it be organized under civilian control. By almost any sane reckoning he was one of America’s best and most consequential presidents — and his governance is anathema to the modern Republican Party. The deluded fantasists who are now ‘conservatives’ know nothing of their own or their country’s history.

H.L. Mencken had it exactly right: “The job before democracy is to get rid of such canaille. If it fails, they will devour it.”

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
IV: How Virtue Is Made to Dominate

§315   Morality in the valuation of races and classes –. In view of the fact that the passions and fundamental instincts in every race and class express the means which enable the latter to preserve themselves (or at least the means which have enabled them to live for the longest period of time), the desire to call them “virtuous” means:

That they change their character, shed their skins, and blot out their past.

It means that they should cease from differentiating themselves from others.

It means that they are getting to resemble each other in their needs and aspirations or, more exactly, that they are declining -—.

It means that the will to one kind of morality is merely the tyranny of the particular species, which is adapted to that kind of morality, over other species: it means a process of annihilation or general levelling in favour of the prevailing species (whether it be to render the non-prevailing species harmless, or to exploit them); the “Abolition of Slavery,” a so-called tribute to “human dignity”; in truth, the destruction of a fundamentally different species (the undermining of its values and its happiness).

The qualities which constitute the strength of an opposing race or class are declared to be the most evil and pernicious things it has: for by means of them it may be harmful to us (its virtues are slandered and rechristened).

When a man or a people harm us, their action constitutes an objection against them: but from their point of view we are desirable, because we are such as can be useful to them.

The insistence upon spreading “humaneness” (which guilelessly starts out with the assumption that it is in possession of the formula for “What is human”) is all humbug, beneath the cover of which a certain definite type of man strives to attain to power: or, more precisely, a very particular kind of instinct — the herd instinct. “The equality of men”: this is what lies concealed behind the tendency of making ever more alike.

The “interested nature” of the morality of ordinary people. (The trick was to elevate the great passions for power and property to the positions of protectors of virtue).

To what extent do all kinds of businessmen and money-grabbers, all those who give and take credit, find it necessary to promote the levelling of all characters and notions of value? The commerce and the exchange of the world leads to, and almost purchases, virtue.

The State exercises the same influence, as does also any sort of ruling power at the head of officials and soldiers; science acts in the same way, in order that it may work in security and economise its forces. And the priesthood does the same.

Communal morality is thus promoted here, because it is advantageous; and, in order to make it triumph, war and violence are waged against immorality -— with what “right”? Without any right whatsoever; but in accordance with the instinct of self-preservation. The same classes avail themselves of immorality when it serves their purpose to do so.

So far as I know, the highlighted portion never appeared in any of Nietzsche’s books — those exact words, I mean — though the idea is implicit from his very earliest writings: ‘morality’ is neither more nor less than the behaviors which profit the tribe. Those behaviors are then invested with divine authority, and that’s that.

Tribes and circumstances change, but holy instruction manuals cannot change. Thus pious nuisances who, believing morality is merely obedience to occult rules, cannot adjust to a changed world and howl indignantly as archaic strictures are set aside.

Once upon a time, for instance, a man whose brother died was expected to impregnate the deceased brother’s widow.

If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto her.

Deuteronomy 25:5, KJV

Never mind the awkwardness of that; the tribe must grow. So, too, the ancient injunction against same-sex relations; the tribe must grow.

Jerry Coyne is on the road promoting his new book, Faith versus Fact, and getting a lot of predictable blowback.

Several people seemed to conflate religious faith with other kinds of faith. One person asserted confidently that when he reads a science book, he has the same kind of faith in the scientist that he does when listening to a preacher or reading scripture. Ergo, he said science is based on faith. I told him that I discuss exactly this question in the book, and that the “faith” we have in popular science writers like Brian Greene, Richard Dawkins, Lisa Randall, Brian Cox, and so on is not the same as believers have in clerics: those scientists have attained renown because their work has been continually vetted by other scientists. It seems to be a common misconception that faith in what a scientist or doctor says is exactly the same kind of faith that believers have in their priest. The difference, of course, is that there is no way for the pronunciations of a cleric to be checked and verified reliably by other clerics. (Or, if they were, they’re likely to be repudiated: imagine an imam pronouncing on the validity of what the Pope says!). I wrote an article in Slate on this very issue (part of which appears in my book), and I hope people can think harder about the different meanings of the word “faith.”

Perhaps one of the most common criticisms of science by believers, then, is that, like religion, it is based on faith. I interpret this to mean, “You are as bad as we are.”

Scientists and engineers very rarely use the word ‘faith’ for the specific reason that it is so often misapprehended. The word ‘faith,’ as used by preachers when they tire of your objections and say “You just have to have faith,” means “You have to believe without evidence” or “You just have to believe what logic denies,” or “Shut up and take my word for it.” In that sense, ‘faith’ is all but unknown to most scientists and engineers; we are empiricists who rely on established facts. On those rare occasions when a scientist or engineer uses the word ‘faith,’ its meaning is akin to ‘educated confidence.’

David Steinman had faith in his design of the Mackinac Bridge because, following the Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster, he set aside his career and spent 7-years studying and inventing the field of suspension bridge aerodynamics; he had done the wind tunnel experiments, he had solved the mathematics, he had educated confidence in his design. If he had faith in his design in the sense in which a preacher uses that word — that is, if he ‘just knew’ the design was good even though it made no sense whatever — he would have been reckless, he almost certainly would have killed a lot of people, and he would have deserved to have his engineering license pulled.

As a consulting civil engineer, I worked chiefly (though not exclusively) with other technical professionals; I was rarely obliged to explain these elementary, but important, distinctions. I imagine that for lawyers and doctors, however, the frustrations of client ignorance and illogic must be endless.

Only the preachers, who traffic in gaseous ephemera like souls, can thrive on that. Those responsible for the well being, the real lives, of real people, can’t afford it.

LOOK OUT! A Chicago pastor says the children of homeschooling parents might be seized by gubmint nazis if the Supremes legalize same-sex marriage.

In America today, you know that the same-sex marriage issue is very, very important. Let me tell you that it would not be surprising to me if, in the future, homeschool parents, for example, if they were examined would perhaps fall under the category of what is being known as ‘intolerant personality syndrome.’ And it’s not too far a stretch to believe that their children would be taken from them because they are declared as unfit parents.

Actually … no. We are not all the Duggars. The good news, I suppose, is that when they affirm that we are all no damn good they are, though plainly projecting, at least sincere.

Part of me, I have to admit, feels kind of sorry for these poor pathetic idiots. They actually do look at humanity and see nothing but rot; they actually do believe we are all the Duggars. And when some howling yahoo in a cheap suit and with sweat running down his face points his finger and screams that they are no damn good … well, damn, all they can do is squirm because they know it’s true.

What is it to be so sick and self-loathing? To feel a tingle of excitement — The Answer! — when some predator croons that the solution to all their problems is to utterly surrender their manhood and intelligence and become as a dumb obedient farm animal? Honestly: I can’t imagine what it is to be so debased and ruined.