Tretiak
2mo ago
No I get it. Just as outside the urban centers most of California is red. I always tell people whenever they ask, that I was born in "Red State California." It's just not the typical place people would place their bets on.
If people are asking Charlie Kirk of all people to defend their views, they've got problems much more fundamental than that. Charlie Kirk was good for the establishment right. He wasn't good for philosophical conservatism. He was a polished product marketed to people, in the same way Ben Shapiro was the "cool kid's philosopher."
Tretiak
2mo ago
Had me fooled for a second. I would have thought Ezra Klein wrote this shit.
The biggest shock to me was that this happened in Utah of all places. That's like a fat, blue haired activist giving a lecture on transphobia getting shot in the middle of Seattle.
Tretiak
2mo ago
I've never followed the young conservative influencers much, but Kirk always seemed like the moderate, respectable sort -- it's wild that he would be the victim of political violence and not someone like Fuentes.
When Charlie Kirk was on the up and up along with other figures like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes riding the new political wave Trump ushered in, I can remember the presence of numerous conservatives who hated him for his gatekeeping of the mainstream within the new conservative movement. I'm not just talking about the Nick Fuentes faction either. Kirk attacked quite a few conservatives because they didn't fall in line by upholding the status quo of the mainline punditry and conservative mainstream. And that was a cheap and quick path to be catapulted into riches and be put in front of cameras. Nothing Charlie Kirk did was unique in the larger view of his activities. Fuentes is presently mourning over the loss, but the response I'm being hit with tells me even more right-wingers hated Charlie Kirk than his actual opposition does. There's quite a bit of celebrating here on my back end of things.
I think this is a good place to leave this discussion. If liberty is an idea so sacrosanct that it can’t be discussed in a meaningful relationship to the rest of the world in all its friction, I see little utility to it in any sense. Someone can hug the idea to them if they like, but it’s not for me; nor do most people care about it in that way.
If you don’t want to read in greater detail the information I want to present to you and simply dismiss it out of hand, that’s fine. The data itself is about “perceptions,” not how you may feel about the idea in private abstract.
It's not an assumption that the US is the wealthiest country in the world, it's an observation. And that's not the only barometer I mentioned -- another is the revealed preference of immigrants.
I didn’t say it’s an assumption that the US is the most wealthy country in the world. I said the assumption lies with thinking that that’s an important barometer for gauging liberty. Which I reject. 10 fish in a bucket is quantitatively the same thing as 1 fish in 10 buckets. The latter is a ‘wealthier’ society measured by its health as a whole, because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Conservatism includes a “place” for personal liberty in the lives of ordinary individuals. I completely buy that premise and reject any one of them that postulates the totalitarianism of liberty over anything of equal or greater importance.
Tretiak
2mo ago
Who the hell steals vegetables?
You’d be surprised.
I also object to the idea that vulnerability to theft makes anything cheap, but I recognize that was tongue in cheek.
Thanks for noticing. Lol. A friend of mine impressed it upon me once: “you know if you shoplift you don’t pay taxes right?”
If you do not value liberty, perhaps. If you do value liberty, the phrase "effective governance" sets off alarm bells. Having a government that is more effective at directing the activities of its people is not an uncontroversially good thing. This is a difference in terminal values, not a matter of "better" or "worse" according to any values shared between you and most Americans.
Well if I look at the Democracy Perception Index 2020, which measures the public perception of a country's governance. 52% of respondents think France is democratic. 73% think China is democratic. They may not value your personal conception of liberty, but that doesn’t mean they don’t value liberty. To quote Alasdair MacIntyre’s “Whose Justice, Which Rationality?,” so too is the case with your Liberty. Maybe they’re brainwashed fools who don’t understand the true concept of liberty, but I’m doubtful.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If those Asian countries have all that human and social capital, why is the US the wealthiest and it isn't even close? If Asia has some other ineffable superiority, why do US anti-immigration people have to beat off that Asian human capital with a stick to keep it from relocating to the US?
Because as I said earlier if GDP and wealth is your sole barometer for measuring the success of a society, then your conclusion is built directly into your assumptions: the US is the wealthiest country in the world. I don’t buy that framing of the argument however. You and I aren’t having the same conversation.
Incidentally is immigration something I’m supposed to be impressed with here? Even most Afghans aren’t clamoring to come to the US and of those that are and desperately want to attach themselves to jet turbines and escape, I say let them. People immigrate all the time. So what? I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of any country the US is actively bombing, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that people are trying to escape it. They don’t envy American liberty. They envy American wealth. And unless you can explain to me how the latter is causally explained by the former, I’m not going to buy that argument. I’d argue you care as much about the terminal as well as instrumental values of your liberty, because you don’t place the same value on alternative conceptions of liberty. And the reason for this is because it doesn’t produce outcomes that are agreeable to you.
Also don’t know what your link has to do with my argument.
Sounds like most of what people complain about in the modern western world today.
If you mean people didn’t have modern concepts of leisure and recreation that’s true. The world they also had to concern themselves with was a lot smaller.
Tretiak
2mo ago
When you know people that put ketchup on burritos, this one doesn’t come far out of left field.
Definitely had me fooled.
Tretiak
2mo ago
The world after modernization moves so much faster and is far more competitive than the world before it. Makes sense why people are so mentally drained, tired and stressed out. You have to grow up with a lot of grit and be used to difficult environments to live there and be truly happy as opposed to surviving and being content at best.
Tretiak
2mo ago
Florida would be a relevant comparison in this context. A huge pillar of its domestic economy is tourism.
Fruits and vegetables are cheap here in America too. We call it “shoplifting.”
Food anywhere else is surely more healthy than ours. But I find American food is more tasty and agreeable to my palette than a lot of other ethnic foods simply because I was raised on it. Chinese and Mexican food I have a very weak spot for. But I have idea who the hell coats raw vegetables in syrup. That sounds disgusting.
I don't know what barometer you're using to call the US a success in detail so I can't effectively comment on it. And unless you think the US in 2025 is the only example of a successful society out there such that it merits setting it categorically apart from other nations, there are plenty of other successful societies out there. China has a more effective governance system (it's why even scholars of the right-wing like Paul Gottfried have taken to admire it and refers to himself as a "right-wing Leninist"). Japan has a better transportation system. Singapore has a better drug policy. Finland has a better educational system. Many European countries have a better healthcare system. Even North Korea has a better border policy than we do. What’s the superior individual liberty policy prescription for these domains?
A lot of times I see this way of thinking omnipresent in almost every argument left-wingers and progressives alike make in policy circles when it comes to taxing everyone and everything to fund their utopian social programs (and no amount of money will ever be enough to see them achieve their goals). And this is a problem Americans have more generally with the way they look at things; because Americans are a group of people that money will solve anything. I think most people will find it shocking that there are other qualitative aspects to life that are at least equally if not more important to them because believe it or not, money isn't everything.
If all you're talking about is material wealth the US is the richest country in the world. Calling that a product of individual liberty leaves a massive hole in the argument that I haven't seen filled by anyone. The article I posted earlier for instance lends credence and empirical evidence to the argument many intellectuals in Southeast Asia made, namely that a social system which adopts a collectivist attitude such as 'Asian Values', dramatically increases the overall amount of human and social capital in society. I don't see how a similar argument could be made for 'Individual Liberty' in western societies.
Modern collectivism of the sort that tends to make complaints like liberty "optimizes solely for individual preference" has the worst record of all -- the many skulls piled up by fascist and Communist regimes.
I didn't cite communism in my prior example because there's no disagreement I have with the people who make this argument. I'm about as far right-wing on this point as you can get. But there's a reason most civilizations who have flourished over the long run or at best or withstood the test time of time have been ran by highly illiberal regimes, whether democratic or not. I think historians of the future will in a way look back on America with a similar view.
Government policies that respect the natural law and seek to make obedience to it easier push back against this, and they have the potential to create a literally virtuous cycle between law and custom. They also facilitate human flourishing, which is no small thing. The state can't solve the problem, but it can do better than it has done. I am not optimistic about achieving this as a political matter, but I've been surprised before.
You're not going to inspire a country like the US with 300M+ people to return to good sense where it concerns our shortcomings and failures. That's about right up there with thinking you can solve problems like prostitution through moral lectures. You can't. The State may not be able to completely solve that problem on it's own, but it's all but impossible to solve without it. You need the political mechanisms, coercion and sometimes even the looming threat of intimidation to get people to act and behave right. For me the only reason to be optimistic is where there's a political will for the government to lay down it's iron hand on a number of important issues.
Tretiak
2mo ago
I have no idea what lends credence to his argument. The exact opposite has been shown to be true since the end of the 20th century. Fukuyama's 'End of History' thesis was laudably ambitious but most societies that were wrapped up in his prediction went the other direction by almost 180 degrees. They greatly retain and drew their ideas for economic and technological development from their historical traditions. Japanese manufacturing for instance did that with Zen Buddhism in the 20th century at the same time people were declaring the triumph over tradition. Technology has hardly supplanted tradition and I think it's unlikely it will in the near future either.
This relates to the culture war for the simply fact that I think just like the religious piece, most conservatives that ostensibly want to tear down the liberal establishment, actually don't want to give up their liberal freedom and personal autonomy. It's all well and good to make arguments about tradition and the importance of paternal authority etc in the abstract, but personally submitting yourself to someone else's rule (in a very direct way, I understand that we are ruled indirectly now anyway) would, I suspect, be a bridge too far.
No conservative I've ever met has said he wants to tear down liberal institutions. But individual liberty doesn't perform very well when it comes to producing and sustaining constructive, civilizational habits. It has little to provide when it comes to guiding the broader optimality of society and optimizes solely for individual preference. Most of the western legal system over the course of centuries has been nothing short of codified tradition (which is exactly what 'law' is and is inherently what established tradition is). And no one person's personal experience will overturn the collective experience and collected wisdom of the millions among the generations that came before them. To quote a halfway intellectual idol of mine:
Man is instinctively conservative in the sense that probably millions of years of experience have taught him that a stable environment is the best for peace of mind, present and future security, automatism of action, and a ready command of material and artificial circumstances. It is the repeated introduction of new instruments, new weapons, new methods, and needs for fresh adaptations, that makes automatism impossible. And it is the complication of life by novel contributions to life's interests and duties that makes a ready command of circumstances difficult.
To this thesis I have never seen what I regard as an adequate refutation or substantial challenge to conservatism, defined as such.
In addition though, I simply think that modern liberty is good. I'm a sort of reluctant conservative I'll admit, but even in the traditional conservative picture of the world, I think that personal freedoms from the state and even to a certain extent within traditional communities are great. To me, the project of the conservative in the modern world is not to sort of force us via governmental apparatus back into some halycon pre-modernity days. Instead, the conservative impulse should be focused towards explaining and convincing people in a deep and genuine way that living in a more traditional way is better for society, and better for people in particular.
I enjoy my liberty too, but it's a constrained liberty that exists within a very specific and particular context that's defined and guided by our traditions. I would in no way enjoy the unconstrained, every man for himself liberty that a local Somali warlord would have enjoyed decades ago. And most people generally overstate their love for freedom and liberty. If freedom entails responsibility, most people don't want to have 'anything' to do with it. Conservatism has never rejected the importance of liberty. It just doesn't regard it as the highest value and neither do I.
Tretiak
2mo ago
Some laws that exist clearly go by the unstated rule that says "for display purposes only." At best when it comes to liberality, laws exist to make you think twice before breaking them; not prevent them from ever being broken. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that when it comes to immigration though, that people don't run afoul of American laws with ease. And actual legal immigrants have it harder than anyone in this regard.
I wasn't making a moral defense of Klein, I think his behavior speaks for itself. But I think you're underselling just how many people have these same beliefs. Most people don't care and/or instinctively side with Klein (or know they should if they know what's good for them).
Virtually my entire critique of Ezra was the intellectual indefensibility of what he was saying. I wasn’t primarily talking about his moral characteristics either.
I’m actually very concerned about the number of people who think like Ezra does, because I live in an urban center that’s full of people as insane as he is.
In this environment, this behavior can work or fill an important niche. Who is more likely to get a say in polite circles? Some Vox writer posting about an exciting study on some teaching intervention that showed IQ improvements or a more Murrayist take?
Ezra would, sadly enough.
I don't think you give Klein enough credit. He is a higher class of commentator than Seder. He reads. By his own account he has read and reviewed Murray, and at least knows Murray is for UBI…
And that’s the sad part if people consider Ezra a cut above the rest, because his analysis is almost equally mediocre by comparison. If Ezra does read, he shows little in the way of his ability to comprehend and integrate what he’s read. And his appearance on Sam’s podcast in particular is but a small indication of that.
If Vox is trying to enhance the arguments of the left, then they’re incredibly bad at it. The best critique of Murray’s argument that could be characterized as ‘left-wing’ came from Chomsky in the appendix of The IQ Controversy which was published several decades ago. And it’s one that doesn’t begin with the premise of how butthurt you are over basic scientific facts. I suspect Sam had more than enough space to have a sensible discussion with Ezra about policy specifics, if only Ezra were able to get past the most basic hurdles in the argument; which he failed to do.
I don’t know how influential people like Murray are today. I suspect he’s hardly animating activity in the social sciences or having an analogous impact like the shadow of neoliberalism that Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys cast over our economic policy, which still rules the day, today. Maybe he’s inspired present day researchers like Razib Khan or others, but I don’t know.
Tretiak
2mo ago
If Ezra wanted to refuse to engage the claims then he should’ve refused to appear on Sam’s podcast altogether. Agreeing to it and then looking like a fool trying to be obscurant over every point doesn’t only make you look disingenuous; it also makes you look like an idiot.
This isn’t an ongoing debate that’s being had behind closed doors in lab coats and under microscopes. What Ezra did was the equivalent of walking onto a debate stage and try to lecture an astronomer that the Earth is flat. Maybe he’ll end up appeasing everyone in his political circle who’s got blinders onto the world. To everyone else, he looked like a moron; because he was one.
I don’t know what anyone has to consult Murray over. Scholars like Richard Haier have already upheld his claims and have said Murray was being very conservative in presenting his findings. This says nothing of the idiots on the popular left circuit like Seder who contend Murray is a racist, while having never read his book. In fact, Seder hasn’t even read Murray’s Wikipedia page; if you think a man who married and had children with a one handed Thai Buddhist in a foreign country is a racist. You’ve exposed nothing but your own ignorance at that point. Most of his critics are idiots because they refuse to read or actually engage his arguments. Ironically, his conclusions are also very much in line with policy works like Ezra in the first place. It goes to show Ezra has likely never read a word of anything Murray ever wrote.
Tretiak
2mo ago
You and I, I suspect have the same stance on this. I’m not a supporter of drug use and have never taken any drug in my life.
But on this particular point, you’re drawing up a distinction that isn’t relevant to what I’m pointing out. Is the problem ‘weed’ or weed smokers who are “basically using hashish?” I’m pretty judgmental in general of casual drinkers who help themselves on far too casually an occasion, never mind the scorn I have for truly intense drinkers. But there is a qualitative difference to be between comparison someone who picks up a joint and someone who picks up a container of everclear.
It's always been in poor taste outside of the ghetto to celebrate over someone's death, but I'd be lying if I said the reports of someone's passing has never made be smirk before.
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